“Like other devouring wolves, he’s not personally adored.”
“Only to you? You are personally adored; you will be still more if you stand; and that, you poor lamb, is why he wants you!”
The young man accepted gracefully the burden her sympathy imposed. “I’m the bearer of my name, the representative of my family. My family and my name have been for generations indulgently attached to this countryside.”
She listened to him with a kind of passion. “You do of course what you will with the countryside!”
“Yes—if we do it as genuine Yules. I’m obliged to grant you that your genuine Yule’s a Tory of Tories. It’s Mr. Prodmore’s belief that I should carry Gossage in that character, but in that character only. They won’t look at me in any other.”
It might have taxed a spectator to say in what character Mrs. Gracedew considered him. “Don’t be too sure of people’s not looking at you!”
He blushed. “We must leave out my personal beauty.”
“We can’t! Don’t we take in Mr. Prodmore’s?”
“Call him beautiful?”
“Hideous.” She settled it. “What’s the extraordinary interest that he attaches––?”
“To the return of a Tory? His desire is born of his fear—his terror on behalf of Property, which he sees, somehow, with an intensely Personal ‘P.’ He has a great deal of that article, and very little of anything else.”
Mrs. Gracedew had one of her friendly recalls. “Do you call that nice daughter ‘very little’?”
The young man looked quite at a loss. “Is she very big? I really didn’t notice her—and moreover she’s just a part of the Property. He thinks things are going too far.”
She sat straight down on a stiff chair. “Well, they are!”
He stood before her in discomposure. “Aren’t you then a lover of justice?”
“A passionate one! Where’s the justice of your losing this house? To keep Covering, you must carry Gossage!”
The odd face he made might have betrayed a man dazzled. “As a renegade?”
“As a genuine Yule. What business have you to be anything else? You must close with Mr. Prodmore—you must stand in the Tory interest.” She hung fire a moment; then as she got up: “If you will, I’ll conduct your canvass!”
He stared at the distracting picture. “That puts the temptation high!”
But she brushed the mere picture away. “Ah, don’t look at me as if I were the temptation! Look at this sweet old human home. Do you want to know what they do to me? They speak to me for Mr. Prodmore.”
He followed with a systematic docility the direction of her eyes. “Well, there are others than these—things for which I’ve spoken, repeatedly and loudly, to others than you. One’s ‘human home’ is all very well, but the rest of one’s humanity is better! There are thousands of people in England who can show no houses at all, and I don’t feel it utterly shameful to share their poor fate!”
She had moved away with impatience, the back she turned preventing him from seeing how intently she listened. “We share the poor fate of humanity whatever we do, and we do something to help and console when we’ve something precious to show. What on earth is more precious than what the ages have slowly wrought? They’ve trusted us, in such a case, to keep it—to do something, in our turn, for them.” She shone out at him as if her contention had the evidence of the noonday sun. “It’s such a virtue, in anything, to have lasted; it’s such an honour to have been spared. To all strugglers from the wreck of time hold out a pitying hand!”
Yule, on this argument, had not a congruous rejoinder pat, and his hesitation gave him time to see that what had touched him most was her particular air in presenting it. He took refuge in general pleasantry. “What a plea for looking backward, dear lady, to come from Missoura Top!”
“We’re making a Past at Missoura Top as fast as ever we can, and I should like to see you lay your hand on an hour of the one we’ve made! It’s a tight fit, as yet, and that’s just why I like, in yours, to find room to turn round. You’re in it, over here, and you can’t get out; so just make the best of that and treat the thing as part of the fun!”
“The whole of the fun, to me,” the young man replied, “is in hearing you defend it! It’s like your defending hereditary gout or chronic rheumatism—the things I feel aching in every old bone of these walls.”
Mrs. Gracedew looked as if no woman could be shaken who was so prepared to be just all round. “If there be aches—you’re here to soothe them, and if there be draughts—you’re here to stop them up. And do you know what I’m here for? If I’ve come so far and so straight, I’ve almost wondered myself. I’ve felt with a kind of passion—but now I see why I’ve felt.” She moved about the hall with the excitement of this perception. “I’m here for an act of salvation—I’m here to avert a sacrifice!”
So they stood a little, with more passing between them than either could say. She might have flung down a glove that he decided, on the whole, not to pick up. Again, but flushed as well as smiling, he sought the easiest cover. “You’re here, I think, madam, to be a memory for all my future!”
Well, she was willing to take it. “You’ll be one for mine, if I can see you by that hearth. Why do you make such a fuss about changing your politics? If you’d come to Missoura Top, you’d change them quick enough!” Her eyes grew deep, her face seemed to pale, and she paused, splendid and serious. “What do politics amount to, compared with religions? Parties and programmes come and go, but a duty like this abides. There’s nothing you can break with that would be like breaking here. The very words are violent and ugly—as much a sacrilege as if you had been trusted with the key of the temple. This is the temple—don’t profane it! Keep up the old altar kindly—you can’t set up a new one as good. You must have beauty in your life, don’t you see?—that’s the only way to make sure of it for the lives of others. Keep leaving it to them, to all the poor others, and heaven only knows what will become of it! Does it take one of us to feel that?—to preach you the truth? Then it’s good, Captain Yule, we come right over—just to see, you know, what you may happen to be about. You know what we haven’t got, worse luck; so that if you’ve happily got it you’ve got it also for us. You’ve got it in trust, you see, and oh! we have an eye on you. Tell me now I shall have done it—I shall have kept you at your post!”
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