"Tell Miltoun to keep--an eye on that Mr. Courtier. I heard him speak one day--he's rather good."Lady Valleys, who had not yet sat down, accompanied her husband to the door.
"By the way, I've told Mother about this woman, Geoff.""Was it necessary?"
"Well, I think so; I'm uneasy--after all, Mother has some influence with Miltoun."Lord Valleys shrugged his shoulders, and slightly squeezing his wife's arm, went out.
Though himself vaguely uneasy on that very subject, he was a man who did not go to meet disturbance. He had the nerves which seem to be no nerves at all--especially found in those of his class who have much to do with horses. He temperamentally regarded the evil of the day as quite sufficient to it. Moreover, his eldest son was a riddle that he had long given up, so far as women were concerned.
Emerging into the outer hall, he lingered a moment, remembering that he had not seen his younger and favourite daughter.
"Lady Barbara down yet?" Hearing that she was not, he slipped into the motor coat held for him by Simmons, and stepped out under the white portico, decorated by the Caradoc hawks in stone.
The voice of little Ann reached him, clear and high above the smothered whirring of the car.
"Come on, Grandpapa!"
Lord Valleys grimaced beneath his crisp moustache--the word grandpapa always fell queerly on the ears of one who was but fifty-six, and by no means felt it--and jerking his gloved hand towards Ann, he said:
"Send down to the lodge gate for this."
The voice of little Ann answered loudly:
"No; I'm coming back by myself."
The car starting, drowned discussion.
Lord Valleys, motoring, somewhat pathetically illustrated the invasion of institutions by their destroyer, Science. A supporter of the turf, and not long since Master of Foxhounds, most of whose soul (outside politics) was in horses, he had been, as it were, compelled by common sense, not only to tolerate, but to take up and even press forward the cause of their supplanters. His instinct of self-preservation was secretly at work, hurrying him to his own destruction; forcing him to persuade himself that science and her successive victories over brute nature could be wooed into the service of a prestige which rested on a crystallized and stationary base. All this keeping pace with the times, this immersion in the results of modern discoveries, this speeding-up of existence so that it was all surface and little root--the increasing volatility, cosmopolitanism, and even commercialism of his life, on which he rather prided himself as a man of the world--was, with a secrecy too deep for his perception, cutting at the aloofness logically demanded of one in his position. Stubborn, and not spiritually subtle, though by no means dull in practical matters, he was resolutely letting the waters bear him on, holding the tiller firmly, without perceiving that he was in the vortex of a whirlpool. Indeed, his common sense continually impelled him, against the sort of reactionaryism of which his son Miltoun had so much, to that easier reactionaryism, which, living on its spiritual capital, makes what material capital it can out of its enemy, Progress.
He drove the car himself, shrewd and self-contained, sitting easily, with his cap well drawn over those steady eyes; and though this unexpected meeting of the Cabinet in the Whitsuntide recess was not only a nuisance, but gave food for anxiety, he was fully able to enjoy the swift smooth movement through the summer air, which met him with such friendly sweetness under the great trees of the long avenue. Beside him, little Ann was silent, with her legs stuck out rather wide apart. Motoring was a new excitement, for at home it was forbidden; and a meditative rapture shone in her wide eyes above her sudden little nose. Only once she spoke, when close to the lodge the car slowed down, and they passed the lodge-keeper's little daughter.
"Hallo, Susie!"
There was no answer, but the look on Susie's small pale face was so humble and adoring that Lord Valleys, not a very observant man, noticed it with a sort of satisfaction. "Yes," he thought, somewhat irrelevantly, "the country is sound at heart!"