The Old Order Changes PRINTED BY SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE LONDON AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS. From a sketch by the Earl of 'Mount- Edgcumbe. The Old Order Changes 3 liovei BY W. H. MALLOCK AUTHOR OF IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? SOCIAL EQUALITY ETC. 'Cette importune cconomie politique se glisse partout et se mSle a tout, et je crois vraiment que c'est elle qui a dit, nihil hitmani a me aliennm />uto' — Bastiat '"■' -T LONDON IPublis^ers in ©rbinarn to SJcr jUtwjtstij the Conceit 1887 53506 All rig/its reserved :.:: PR CONTENTS. i HAPTEK PAGE I. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS I II. THE OLD ORDER 10 III. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 19 IV. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST 27 V. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD . . . -34 \ VI. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 4.2 N ^ J ^ VII. SIBYL AND SIREN 52 > V VIII. A CONFESSION 64 BOOK II. I. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 75 £1 II. 6 RICHARD, 6 MON ROI ! 83 ^ III. PRESENT AND PAS1 g r IV. THE PAST JUDGES THE PRESENT IOO V. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE BY MOONLIGHT . . . 105 VI. THE RIDDLE OF LIFE ISY DAYLIGHT H3 VII. A MAN WITH A NEW ANSWER I2 5 VIII. THE PROPHET RESTRAINS HIMSELF I3O IX. THE PROPHET'S FIRST THUNDERS j -56 X. THE GOSPEL OF REVOLUTION I46 XL PONDERING IN HER HEART 174 BOOK III. I. A SEEKER FOR TRUTH SHIPWRECKED . . . 1S9 II. A SIREN 202 III. THE GATES OT' DREAMLAND 208 VI THE OLD ORDER CHANGES CHAPTER PAGE IV. 'MY HAND IS ON THY BROW ' 2l6 V. THE SIREN'S PRELUDE 219 VI. DISCORDS 226 VII. THE SIREN'S SPELL 235 VIII. A STRUGGLE IN SLEEP 242 IX. THE SPELL WORKS 249 X. THE BEGINNING OF FEVER 256 XI. THE FEVER CONQUERS ....... 26l XII. A CRISIS 267 BOOK IV. I. A RETURN FROM DREAMLAND ...... 273 II. REALITIES REAPPEARING 279 III. MORE REALITIES 294 IV. AN ECHO FROM DREAMLAND 302 V. AN UNEXPECTED MONITOR 308 VI. ROUSED AT LAST 315 VII. AN OLD ROAD REOPENING 318 BOOK V. I. THE PROMISED LAND 327 II. ON THE BRINK OF JORDAN III. UNABLE TO CROSS OVER IV. A PRISONER OF THE PAST V. A GUIDE THAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN .... VI. AN ARBITRESS VII. WAITING FOR JUDGMENT VIII. THE GOSPEL OF RENOVATION IX. WHOSO LOSES HIS LIFE X. THE CHAINS OF THE PAST LOOSENED. XI. THE FUTURE OPENS 338 345 35o 357 365 379 382 399 406 418 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES. BOOK I. CHAPTER I. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS. ' Mr. Carew, tell me. Do we ever meet without getting on this question? We discussed it the night before you left London. I only came across you again yesterday after- noon ; and see, already we are once more in the middle of it.' ' It is the only question,' said Carew, ' that to me has any practical interest. If our old landed aristocracy ever come to an end, my England will have come to an end also ; and I shall buy a chateau in some Hungarian forest. I should not be leaving my country : my country would have left me. You don't understand me — perhaps I shall never make you. In these social discussions what stands in our way is this : there are so many things which it is very vul- gar to say, and which yet at the same time it is vulgar not to feel. However, Mrs. Harley, at a more convenient season, vulgar or not vulgar, I shall come back to my point.' ' Very well,' she answered, as she looked at him with a smile of amusement. ' But never — I tell you beforehand — you will never make me a convert. I'm sure,' she went on as the idea suddenly struck her, ' if a stranger overheard us discussing vulgarity here, he would think the subject of our conversation a little out of keeping with the scene of it.' B 2 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES eook i. This observation was certainly not unjustified. They were standing by the side of a lofty mountain road, with a bank of savage rocks abruptly rising behind them, and a weather-stained crucifix, almost lost in the gathering shadows, was stretching its arms over them with a cold forlorn solemnity. The lady was a handsome woman in the girlhood of middle age. The man was apparently some few years younger ; if not handsome, he had a certain air of distinc- tion ; and his face was shadowed, if not lit up, by thought. A few paces away from them two other men were standing ; and the pair of disputants, as they brought their discussion to a close, by common consent moved forward and joined their companions. One of these last, so far as appearances went, was remarkable chiefly for the extreme shabbiness of his dress, coupled somewhat incongruously with a look of the completest self-satisfaction. The other, on the contrary, was the very picture of neatness, from his well-trimmed beard to his hand with its sapphire ring. It was at once evident that he was the lady's husband. ' Listen, George,' she said, laying her hand on his arm. ' As the carriage is so long in coming, I shall go back and sit in it till the coachman sees fit to start ; and you, gen- tlemen, I shall leave you here to look at the view until I pick you up. No, don't stir, any one of you ; I would rather go alone. If you must know the truth, I am the least bit sleepy, and shall do my best to close my eyes for a minute.' And with a slight but decided wave of the hand, she moved away from them with a firm and elastic step, and was presently lost to view behind an angle of the descending road. The three men who were thus left to themselves did as they had been told to do, and inspected the view in silence. It was certainly worth the trouble. On either side, and below them, forests of pine and olive fell like a silent cata- ract over the enormous slopes of the mountains, and, rising again from innumerable dells and gorges, seemed to pour chap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 3 themselves over pigmy promontories into the faint sea below. Meanwhile the sky overhead was clear, and was already pierced by one or two keen stars, and leagues of a red sunset were lying along the aerial sea-line. It was a scene which at any time would have been striking enough to the imagination, and it was doubly striking now in this soft and deepening twilight. But what mainly gave it its peculiar and romantic character was one solitary object which appeared to dominate everything, as it faced the road from the opposite side of a hollow. This was an isolated and precipitous rock which, rising abruptly out of a sea of foliage, lifted high into the air a dim cluster of buildings. A stranger might have been tempted to ask whether such a seemingly inaccessible eagle's nest could be in reality a col- lection of human structures at all, and whether what looked like houses, towers, and ramparts were more than spikes of crag or scars on the bare cliff. The questioner, however, had he cared to look steadily, would have at once been answered by some wreaths of ascending smoke ; and still more conclusively by the sudden note of the Angelus ; which in a few moments vibrated from a domed belfry. It was a singular cracked sound, but it was not unmusical ; rather it was like music in ruins, and it filled the mind with a vague sense of remoteness— a remoteness both of time and place. 'I expect,' said Carew, in a tone of dreamy soliloquy, as if it had acted on him like a kind of mental tuning-fork — ' 1 expect that a stranger of any kind is a rare apparition here, and, judging from the road, a carriage one rarer still. Look at these loose stones. They tell their own tale plainly enough. Little disturbs them from year's end to year's end but the peasants' boots and the hoofs of the peasants' mules. Listen: at this moment there are mule-bells tinkling some- where, and here come some of the very peasants themselves.' As he s])oke a procession of sombre figures, in clusters twos and threes, slowly emerged out of the twilight, and defiled past them towards the foot of the old town. They 1; 2 4 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. were men with slouch hats and shy glancing eyes. Some of them bore on their backs burdens of some kind ; others were driving by their side a fantastic shaggy goat ; and pre- sently those descending were met by another procession— a small caravan of heavily laden mules with their conductors. Carew stared at these visions as they gradually melted out of sight ; and then with a smile, turning round to his friends, ' Are they really men,' he said, ' or ghosts out of the middle ages ? ' ' Upon my word,' said Harley, ' one does in a place like this very nearly forget in what century one is living. Rail- ways and intelligent voters seem little more than a dream. The old town on the hill, as we see it now against the sky, is just like a single huge castle the stronghold of some robber baron. There is only one thing wanting to make the effect complete, and that is for the baron himself to suddenly appear with his men, seize on our friend Stonehouse here, and send us two back for the ransom.' The shabby man, who had hitherto remained perfectly silent, being thus alluded to, took a glance at his threadbare waistcoat, and plucking out a button that was hanging on by a thread, jerked it away with a smile of amused indiffer- ence. ' I am afraid,' he said, ' that the robber baron would find a very poor capture in me. I have, unless I happen to have dropped it, exactly four francs and fifteen centimes in my pocket ; and Carew's scarf-pin or our excellent Har- ley's watch-chain would buy me up as I stand ten times over. My dear fellows, I am the happy vacuus viator; and as I intend to walk part of the way back, you will no doubt think it lucky for me that I am. But, bless my soul,' he exclaimed, suddenly facing round with a small prim smile of minute but condescending interest, ' what the deuce can be coming now ? I doubt if we have this seclusion so com- pletely to ourselves as we thought we had.' What had caught his attention, and that of the two others also, was a sound of wheels and horses, evidently approaching them— not up the hill, as their own carriage chap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 5 would have clone, but clown it ; and in another moment a j^ight presented itself which, considering the place and hour, might well cause some surprise in them. This was a large open landau, with a servant on the box by the coachman, which was descending the road slowly with a lumbering and uneasy caution, and the body of which, to make matters the more strange, was seen, as it passed, to be altogether empty. There were, however, a number of wraps and cloaks dimly visible upon the cushions, and amongst them, in particular, the glimmer of a white shawl. The three men watched it go by in silence, and then broke out together into expressions of conjecture and astonish- ment. Presently the shabby man, with a gesture of grave face- tiousness, exclaimed, 'Of course — I know what it is exactly. It is the chariot of some milor who is making the grand tour. We shall very soon see another carriage following it, with the baggage, the lady's-maid, the valet, the courier, and the blunderbuss. My dear Harley, you are perfectly right. One could almost fancy one was onus own great- grandfather.' 'Carew,'said Harley, 'devoutly wishes he was. Look at him ! His eves have gone back again to the old town and its battlements ; and he is meditating over those coats of arms which he found above the castle gateway.' The shabby man turned to Carew with a lazy stare of amusement, which, though peifectly good-natured, was only not impertinent because it happened to be not fixed on a stranger. ' Are you a herald,' he said, ' amongst your other many accomplishments? How droll now ! How excessively droll ! ' 'I am a herald only,' said Carew, with a slight dryness of manner, ' in matters of family history. With the shields of which Harley speaks I was interested for a peculiar reason. We, in the seventeenth century, were connected by a marriage with the Lascaris, who were once seigneurs in this part of the country ; and I was pleased to find above 6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. one of those mouldering arches two of the quarterings which are above our own lodge gates at Otterton to- day.' ' Indeed ! ' said Harley. ' Otterton is a very fine old place, isn't it ? ' ' It is,' said Carew ; ' only two thirds of it are in ruins.' 'This,' went on Harley, 'about the coats of arms is really extremely interesting ' The shabby man, however, did not appear to think so, and ignoring the information as though it were some unsuc- cessful joke, he placidly interposed with an air of subdued banter : — ' My dear Carew, now can you tell me what a chevron is, or a pellet? I am really immensely anxious to know something about a pellet.' ' Carew,' said Harley, in his turn ignoring the interrup- tion, ' is exceedingly fortunate in his number of foreign re- lations. There are his Milanese cousins, who have offered him, during the spring, their beautiful island villa on the Lago Maggiore ; and his French cousins, who have actually lent him the chateau where he is now.' 'A chateau ! ' exclaimed the shabby man, at once show- ing a little attention. ' You don't mean to say that you are living in a chateau ? ' ' Didn't you know ? ' said Harley. ' This lucky Carew has a castle amongst the mountains, lent him for the winter by his relation, the Comte de Courbon-Loubet. It's a genuine castle, with ramparts, tower, and scutcheons, and Heaven knows what else ; and it has a bed in it in which Francis the First slept. So at least I discover in Murray's Guide Book.' The smile of the shabby man by a subtle change now turned into one of more or less serious interest. ' A chateau in France ! ' he exclaimed, ' and a villa on an Italian lake ! Upon my word, it's a finer thing than I thought to have a French count and an Italian marquis for one's cousins. But I only hope,' he added with a little inward chuckle, ghap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 7 ' that you won't be getting into trouble with any more French countesses.' Whatever this allusion may have meant, Carew did not seem much pleased with it, and contracted his brows slightly. The shabby man, whose eyes were sharp as a needle, de- tected this at once ; and in a tone of voice that was some- what like a slight pat on the shoulder, said, changing the subject, ' My dear Carew, one of these fine mornings I must drive over and breakfast with you.' ' Do,' said Carew ; and he was beginning some further civility, when the sound of wheels and horses was once more audible, coming this time up the hill and not down it. 'Here,' exclaimed the shabby man, with an almost childish satisfaction — ' here is our carriage at last ! I was beginning to get a little bit in a fidget about the time ; and — let me breathe it in your ear — I am also positively ravenous.' His satisfaction, however, proved to be premature. A carriage indeed it was which was now ascending ; but it was not their own : it was the other which had just passed them, and which was now returning, by the way it came, with its company. This proved to consist of an elderly gentleman, seated with his back to the horses, and two ladies opposite to him, one of whom seemed to be about the same age as himself, whilst the other was so muffled to the eyes in a soft white shawl that it was difficult, at a first glance, to form any conjecture about her. But, as she gradually drew nearer to the group at the roadside, above the cloud of the soft white shawl there became distinguishable a cloud of soft fair hair, and also a delicate hand that held the shawl against her lips. This became distinguishable, and something more than this — the glance of a pair of eyes, which at once, in spite of the twilight, sent a curious thrill through at least one of the party before he was clearly aware what it was that had caused it. Carew — for it was he who had found himself thus sus- ceptible — had just become conscious of this singular and 8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. unexpected excitement, when, as the carriage was in the act of passing him, some light object fell from it, dropped by one of the occupants. In an instant he had stepped for- ward and rescued it, and, with his hand on the door, was presenting it— it was a fan— to whoever might be the owner. A word of pleasure in English escaped from the elder lady, who then proceeded to tender her thanks in French. The former, however, was plainly her own language ; and Carew was pleased to show her he was a fellow-countryman as he expressed a hope that the fan had not been broken. Mean- while his eyes, under the kindly cover of the twilight, had sought those of her companion, and had not sought them in vain. He was one of those happy men who can look at a woman fixedly without the least air of impertinence ; and the woman he was looking at now seemed possessed of the yet rarer faculty, that of returning such a look without the least air of immodesty. In her eyes, as they fixed on his with all their soft fulness, there was not only an abandonment to the impressions and feelings of the moment, but mixed with the tenderness of a woman there was the steadfast frankness of a child. Such a silent conversation between the two perfect strangers could, of course, under the circumstances, last a few moments only ; but by the time the carriage had again moved on Carew could have imagined that it had been an affair of hours. He felt as if he had been having some new experience, as if he had suddenly had a vision of some enchanting country in May — a land blooming with lilacs and hawthorns, its air breathing with all the longing of spring — a land of promise which filled him with the desire of ex- ploring it. In an instant he was sunk deep in a reverie ; and so strangely jealous had he unconsciously become of the subject of it, that he felt, and even showed, some slight irritation when Harley remarked to him, ' What a handsome girl that was ! ' To this he replied with little more than a grunt, and was then suffered to enjoy a brief respite of silence ; but before many minutes his thoughts were again chap. i. AMONGST THE MOUNTAINS 9 distracted, and for the time being their train was finally broken, by a sharp crunching sound of something being cracked close to him. This sound proved to proceed from the shabby man, who was beguiling the time and taking the edge off his appetite by eating a gingerbread nut. A few brown crumbs were still clinging to his lips, and as soon as he saw that Carew had noticed him, he produced another from amongst the folds of his pocket-handkerchief, and holding it out, said, with his mouth full, ' Have one ? ' The offer being declined, he bit a large crescent out of it himself, and then went back to a point he had before touched upon — the lateness of the carriage and his own impatience in consequence. He was at last relieving his feelings by saying to Harley, ' I am afraid that this robber baron we have all heard so much about has seized on it and carried it off — it, with your wife into the bargain,' when both made their appearance, and set his agitation at rest. As soon as the party were settled, and had begun to move on, Carew asked Mrs. Harley if she had seen the interesting strangers. Mrs. Harley had ; but she had not much to tell him about them, except that their carriage had met them at the foot of the old town, and that they must have walked down to it from the road above, through the olive woods. The conversation then turned to the old town itself; and Harley alluded to Carew's curious discovery — that of a ' family scutcheon,' he said, ' under the marquis's coronet on the gateway.' The shabby man, meanwhile, had been sunk in a placid silence, but this last remark suddenly roused his attention ; and with an animation surprising in one who professed such an ignorance of heraldry, ' My dear Harley,' he said, ' that was not a marquis's coronet at all ; it was the coronet of a French vicomte, which is a very different thing.' This was all he said till the rough road they had been ascending at last joined a magnificent beaten highway ; and here, as the horses were just quickening their pace, he startled the coachman with a sudden call to stop. '\Yhatonearthis the matter?' Mrs. Harley inquired of him. IO THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. ' Well,' he said, ' muck as I dislike to leave this exceed- ingly pleasant carriage, I am obliged to get out here, and walk down by a mule path, through these terrific forests, to the little railway station which lies directly under us. I shall just catch the train, and my servant will meet me with a portmanteau. I arrive in that way forty minutes sooner than I should if I allowed myself the pleasure of being driven to Nice by you.' Mrs. Harley was full of surprised remonstrances. ' Surely,' she ended by saying, ' you can't be in such a hurry as all that ? ' ' The truth is,' said the other, who was by this time in the road, ' I am engaged to dine to-night with my friend the Grand Duke at Mentone ; and as to time, upon these occa- sions I am always most punctilious. Besides,' he added just as he was saying good-bye, 'besides' — and he laid his finger on his nose with a kind of solemn waggery — ■' you will observe that I save seventy-five centimes on my railway- ticket.' CHAPTER II. THE OLD ORDER. ' Who,' exclaimed Mrs. Harley, as the figure of the shabby man disappeared from them, ' would take him for the heir to one of the richest dukedoms in England ? ' ' Stonehouse,' said her husband, smiling, 'always amuses me. Life in general he seems to regard as a kind of vulgar joke, which assumes a classical character when embodied in a great magnate like himself.' ' I,' said Carew, ' should be the last person to abuse him ; for on one occasion, with his shrewdness, he was an excellent friend to me. You remember, Mrs. Harley, the trouble I had with my uncle when he took it into his head I was going to marry that French lady. It was Stonehouse entirely who chap. n. THE OLD ORDER I I managed to put things right for me. Still I must say this of him, and I don't mean it for a compliment. Though he may not look to a stranger like the typical heir to a duke- dom, to all who know him he is the very type of a modern Whig — I mean,' Carew added, ' a Whig who is shrewd enough to see his position, and has no desire to hide what he sees from his friends.' ' I'm sure,' said Mrs. Harley, 'you, with your strong feel- ings about family, ought to find in Lord Stonehouse a man after your own heart. No one has those feelings more strongly than a genuine Whig.' 'There,' said Carew, 'is the very point where you miss my meaning. It is perfectly true that, as his father's heir no one sets a higher, though a less imaginative, value on him- self than does Stonehouse ; but of family feeling, in my sense of the words, he has nothing, or next to nothing. His family is for him not so much a family as a firm, which has been established so many years, and has so many millions of capital. I was amused just now to discover this in him —his knowledge of heraldry ends with the shape of his own coronet ; and by the way, Harley, he was perfectly wrong when he tried to correct you about the coronet on the castle gate. That was the coronet, not of a French vicomte, but of a marechal of France, which, seen at a distance, is very like that of a marquis. It has eight parsley leaves with a pearl between each, whereas the other is simply charged with four large pearls. 1 think it is four ' 'Really, Mr. Carew,' broke in Mrs. Harley, 'you remind me of a treatise on heraldry there used to be in my father's library, which began by saying that hardly a subject existed more worthy of the attention of princes and of gentlemen than the origin of those titles and dignities which distinguish them from the rest of mankind* Carew laughed good-naturedly. ' My dear Mrs. I larky,' he said, ' I'm not quite such a fool about these things as you think me. I may be prejudiced, but I don't think I'm insane. As for heraldic signs, of course they are signs merely. Is 12 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. our national flag more? That, in itself, is merely a rag .of canvas. You may call it a scarecrow, or you may die for it. A coat of arms — I don't mean one supplied by the coach- maker — is for each family which is worth calling a family, the Union Jack of its own past : and what I am saying of Stonehouse and Whigs like him is, that for their past, as their past, they have no feeling whatever.' ' My dear Mr. Carew,' interposed Mrs. Harley, ' what is it but their past which keeps men like Lord Stonehouse from going over to the Conservatives ? ' 'They merely feel,' said Carew, 'like a true trading firm, that they would lose, if they did, the good-will of their poli- tical business ; as a grocer would if he suddenly turned shoemaker. No doubt the Whigs value their past in one way. They know that it has a power over the opinions of others, and that it helps to surround them with a certain ready-made deference. Of course in this way it adds to their own self-importance, but only as might the possession of some remote ancestral castle, which they like to possess but have no inclination to visit. They are proud to think of it as a celebrated show-place which oppresses the imagi- nation of the tourist, but which never elevates the imagina- tion of the owner. It speaks for them, but it does not speak to them. They don't listen for the voice which haunts, if they would only hear it, every mouldering turret and every gnarled oak-tree ; the voice which whispers to them that they are different from the rest of the world, not because they are rich, but that they are rich (if they happen to be so) because they are different from the rest of the world. It is only people to whom the past conveys this feeling who really know the meaning of the words Noblesse oblige? ' If you are talking about Lord Stonehouse,' said Mrs. Harley, ' you are very possibly right. You know him far better than I do. But about the Whigs in general I am quite sure you are wrong. Look at the 's, look at the 's, look at the 's. No one — not the most bigoted chap. ii. THE OLD ORDER 1 3 Tory in England —for bad and for good both, is more closely wedded than they are to this gratifying feeling you speak of.' ' Well,' said Carew, with a certain vindictive energy, 'if they are wedded to it, they keep their wife locked up ; and they never speak in public without denying the marriage. However,' he went on, ' as I said just now, we will have all this out more fully some day. It shall be when you come to see me at my castle among the mountains. I am longing to show you that. Everything about us will be on my side there, and will explain my meaning, and I think make you agree with it — at all events partly. The old village still clings to the shelter of the feudal ramparts. In the valley below you look down on the lord's mill, whose black wheel still turns in the blue-green snow-water. The villagers all touch their hats to you and seem proud of your presence. For miles round every hectare belongs to the House of Courbon-Loubet. The concierge delights in pointing out to a stranger certain of the scutcheons in the courtyard, and telling him that Monsieur le Comte has Bourbon blood in his veins ; and there is a huge five-sided tower, that still stands erect and stares at the landscape with all its old effrontery. Indeed, if it were not for a glimpse of the railway which that tower gives you, you could fancy that you were living before the French Revolution. Now, Mrs. Harley, when are you coming to see me, and leave the epoch of progress and the sovereign people behind you ? 'Will you come next week ? Do ! I am expecting some friends then. You probably know them all ; and I am quite sure you will like them.' Mrs. Harley's eyes had been watching Carew curiouslv, with a mixed expression of interest, of dissent, and of amusement ; and gradually, though there was still a serious meaning left in them, they began to sparkle with an irre- pressible wish to tease. ' I'm afraid, Mr. Carew,' she said, ' your friends would be a great deal too smart for me. You know that is a point 14 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. on which we agree to differ. I don't like smart people, whether they are Whigs or Tories. I'm never at home or at my ease with them. I like the other people far better.' Her words produced the exact effect she intended, and Carew's voice when he answered her had a trace in it of annoyed incredulity. 'I know/ he said, 'who you mean by the other people. You don't mean people who are something besides smart : you mean people who are something opposed to smart. You mean lions and celebrities, who are nothing but lions and celebrities, who have odd hair and vague wives and daughters, and who not only are cleverer than average people of fashion, but express their cleverness in a different social language. Now these people, if you wish to consult them on their own special subjects, are no doubt most interesting to meet, and it may be curious to watch their characteristics. But you surely — come, Mrs. Harley, be honest — you surely don't prefer them as friends, as daily companions? ' ' Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I do. I prefer them as friends, and as daily companions.' ' I,' Carew retorted, 'agree with De Tocqueville, and I tnink it the profoundest saying in his whole book on Democracy, that a man, if necessary, can learn to put up with anything except with the manners of some other class than his own. Of course I prefer just as you do a clever man to a fool ; but certainly, in a friend, the first thing I should look to would be, not that he should be fond of the same books that I am, but that he should look at society with the same inherited prejudices. However, happily, one can find friends who do both. There are surely plenty of people who are clever and smart as well.' ' Yes, clever, no doubt,' said Mrs. Harley. ' But to what use do they put their cleverness? What do they talk about ? What do they think about ? By what standard do they measure themselves and you? They are the smart set ; that is their great notion ; and if you don't belong to that, they think you are nothing and nowhere. And as for chap. n. THE OLD ORDER 1 5 manners — well, I can tell you this : I have seen worse manners amongst these same smart people than I have ever seen elsewhere in any class of society.' ' Stop,' interposed Carew. ' We are talking of different things. You have run away with the word smart, which I merely used as a piece of convenient slang. You are talking about one small clique, the personnel of which is changing every season. You are talking about a clique ; I am talk- ing about a class, or, if you like it better, a caste. That particular clique maybe as little in my line as in yours ; but surely in the class of which it is proud to form a part — and of which, by the way, some of its members do not form a part — you will find as much culture and intellect as you will find anywhere else, with social qualities in addition which you will find nowhere else.' ' I don't deny for a moment,' said Mrs. Harley, ' that there's a sort of glamour about it all. There is. And besides, it is what oneself one was born amongst and bred up to. Even the people 1 was abusing just now — the clique as you call it — and it is a clique — through all their bad manners you can see that they are ladies and gentlemen.' ' Exactly,' said Carew ; ' they possess the very thing which your other people are, in spite of their talents, distin- guished by not possessing. The difference need not always be grotesque or glaring ; but, in so far as it exists, you surely must feel it a barrier between yourself and them. It is not merely a question of how to come into a room. It is a question of the whole perspective of life.' 'Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, 'and the people I call my friends arc the people, I think, who see life most truly. I like them because they embody the real meaning, the real life of the time— its thought, its science, its art, its politics, even its dreams and its impossible aspirations.' Carew paused for a moment, and then said abruptly, ' Well, what do you say of our old Catholic families, and the circle within a circle formed by them ? Is no meaning embodied there, or, if you like to call it so, no impossible 1 6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. dream? As to politics, you are partly right about that, more's the pity : it's your other people, no doubt, who make the Radical thunderstorm. And yet, on second thoughts, if you stick to polite society, you can see the sheet lightning in the faces of Whigs like Stonehouse. Anyhow, Mrs. Harley, you must admit this : that, given what you require in the way of aspiration and intellect, this is seen to its best advantage, and is most congenial to yourself, when you find it in the world to which you yourself belong.' ' No,' said Mrs.. Harley ; ' speaking honestly, I do ?iot think so. I think that the polish and charm which charac- terise the world you speak of, and which I feel just as fully as you do ; I think that the unexpressed sympathy which exists between its members, and which forms so subtle and pleasant a link between them — I think that all this implies and is founded upon a set of beliefs and assumptions with regard to an aristocracy which, even if true once, are cer- tainly true no longer. Once, no doubt, aristocracies did lead. Of whatever life there was in the world they were the centre. But things are changed. The centre is shifted now. Not only does the life of the world no longer centre in them ; it is not even what it was till very lately, a tune that is played under their windows. My dear Mr. Carew, there is no use in disguising the fact. Aristocracy as a genuine power, as a visible fact in the world, may not yet be buried, perhaps ; but it is dead.' 'Then, in that case,' said Carew, 'let me die with it. I am only thirty-five, but I have outlived my time, and few and evil have been the days of my pilgrimage. There are other things,' he added presently — ' there are other things in my mind besides London drawing-rooms — the winter sunsets beyond the park ; the noise of rooks in the elm-trees over the graves of those who are nearest to me ; old ser- vants ; the tower of the village church ; and the welcome once ready for me in every cottage in the village.' He spoke with so much feeling that Mrs. Harley was anxious not to jar upon it. chap. it. THE OLD ORDER 1 7 1 In one thing at least,' she said, 'I think you are right. Amongst the old Catholic families of England, and amongst the converts who have been absorbed into them, there is an ideal, there is an aspiration to live for ; and I respect those who live for it, though with it itself I have no sympathy whatsoever. And yet,' she went on reflectively, ' even as Catholics their position narrows their views. I have seen it, I have felt it ; I have known and stayed with so many of them. There are my cousins the Burtons— a typical case if there is one. You know how those girls — no longer girls now, poor things ! — were brought up. You know what Burton was in the old Lord's time. I often think of poor Charley, with the three Italian priests who were his tutors ; the retainers, born on the property — you could hardly call them servants — that the whole place was swarming with ; the endless horses in the stables ; the constant coming and going ; the meets, the scarlet coats, and the foreign ecclesi- astics — any number of them — gliding quietly up and down the huge passages. It was one of the last of the really great households in England. Well, and what has been the result in this generation on those who were brought up in it and amongst the ideas embodied in it ? As for Charley, well, we won't say much of him ; but his sisters — they are really noble, high-minded women, full of intelligence, and anxious to do their work in the world ; but of the world they are so anxious to work in they know about as much as Don Quixote. They have just the same mixture in them that their parents had, of the intensest pride and the intensest humility. Each of these feelings is equally antiquated and equally genuine. They support each other like two cards in a card-house, and are about as fit as a card-house is to endure the weather of the century.' ' About the elder ones,' said Carew, 'that maybe quite true. I do not know them well. 1 hit you can't say the same about their half-sister, Miss Consuelo.' ' No,' said Mrs. Harley, with a sudden access of animation. ' In her, I admit, you come to a totally different thing. She C 1 8 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. is like the others in some ways, certainly. She has all those prejudices for which you feel so much sympathy ; but there is a passion, and an energy, in her nature which cannot be satisfied with worn-out ways of showing themselves. She doesn't hear much of any new ideas, it is true ; but what she does hear of she drinks in, as a traveller in the desert would drink in drops of water. There is a hunger in her eyes, you can hardly tell for what — whether for a man to love or for some great duty to do — perhaps for both. I often think that, could she only find the conditions of life that would suit her — could she only find a husband who could really understand and help her — she would be the most interesting and the most remarkable woman I know. Have you seen her ? ' 'Seen her?' saidCarew, half absently. 'Why, I know her !' ' I mean, have you seen her since she has been out here?' ' Out here ? Out where? I don't quite understand you.' ' Did you not know,' said Mrs. Harley, ' they have been here for the last fortnight — she and two of her sisters ? They are in the hotel next to ours. Lord Stonehouse is there also, and takes excellent care of them. I must say, whatever his faults may be, he's most kind to his own relations.' Carew, for a moment, looked as if he were going to speak. There was a light in his eye, a moment's surprise and start ; but his words died on his lips, and, leaning back in his seat, he stared absently at the view, as if he considered the con- versation ended. Silence is nowhere so catching as in a carriage, and his two companions became silent also. Mean- while, the road had begun descending. It no longer skirted the bare heights of the mountains, but was sweeping down- wards in a series of curves and slopes. Above and under it were frequent masses of foliage. On either side of it, alter- nately, as it turned and circled, expanding inland landscapes showed themselves to the eyes of the travellers, glimmering far under the rapidly brightening moon ; and at last, like a large irregular crescent of stars, the lights of some large town were seen clustering along the sea, below them. At this sight Carew suddenly roused himself, and said chap. ii. THE OLD ORDER 1 9 abruptly : ' I shall sleep at Nice to-night. I told my servants I should very possibly do so.' Mrs. Harley gave a faintly perceptible smile. ' Of course,' she said, ' you are going to dine with us ? We were counting on that in any case. If you like it, I will send over and ask the Burtons to meet you.' Carew murmured an answer of acquiescence. Then again there was silence ; and hardly a word further was spoken till the wall of a villa garden made a white glare along the road-side, in the light of a gas lamp opposite, and they saw they were approaching the town, and that their day's expedition was ended. CHAPTER III. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED. The sense of the town roused them. In another moment they passed a suburban tramcar. The world they had just left, of forests, of laden mules, and of mouldering mountain strongholds, lay like a dream behind them. They were once again in the glare and rattle of to-day. 'Mrs. Harley,' said Carew, waking up into matter-of- fact alertness, 'you must really consider when you will let me expect you. Think over your plans this evening, and you shall tell me to-morrow before I go back to the chateau.' ' We have nothing to do next week, that I know of,' said Harley, turning to his wife; 'and if Mr. Carew would really like to have us then To be sure, I forgot one thing. There is that poor invalid, to whom we promised to show the country.' 'Hush!' said Mrs. Harley. 'Not another word about him. Mr. Carew would never speak again to us if he knew who this poor invalid was.' I lad the invalid been a woman, it is possible that Carew might have been curious. As it was merely a man he let c 2 20 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. the allusion pass. 'Perhaps,' he said, with a slight accent of consciousness, 'I might get the Burtons to join our party also.' Mrs. Harley shook her head. ' I'm afraid not,' she said. 'What do you think, George? Elfrida and Mildred have still their little doubts about Mr. Carew.' 'You mean,' said Carew, not wholly without embarrass- ment — 'you mean that I am not a Catholic?' 'Yes, that,' said Mrs. Harley, 'and one or two other little things besides.' ' What ? ' said Carew. ' Do you mean that ridiculous story which so frightened my Uncle Horace, and which our good friend Stonehouse was kind enough to set him right about ? ' ' Well, yes,' said Mrs. Harley. ' More or less I mean that. I don't say that Elfrida and Mildred still think you were in love with the lady, but they certainly once did enter- tain the suspicion : and, poor dear souls, good and amiable as they are, although the suspicion is quite cleared away, it has left a little sediment in their minds of naive unworldly shyness. They are frightened of you, not because you justified the suspicion, but because you suggested it.' 'The real fact is,' said her husband, laughing, 'they think him so good they can't forgive him for not being better ; and to them he seems far more immoral, because they compare him with what they wish him to be, than numbers of men far worse, on whom they waste no wishes whatever. But I don't see,' he added, half seriously, ' why, if you were to take charge of her, they shouldn't allow Miss Consuelo to come without them. She, I am sure, would only be too delighted.' 'That,' said Mrs. Harley, 'would be luck indeed for hec. Doesn't Consuelo wish she may get it, poor child ! Besides, my dear George, we two are in rather bad odour with Elfrida and Mildred ourselves. They will never, I think, get over the shock of having seen that poor man in our rooms. By the way, Mr. Carew, as I warned you chap. in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 21 just now, had you been there you would have been horrified just as they were.' 'Who on earth,' said Carew, 'can this mysterious person be? Is it the invalid you spoke of? Is your invalid so very alarming? ' 'Tell me, George,' said Mrs. Harley, 'shall we confess it to him ? He is sure to find it out for himself, and after all he will perhaps forgive us. Mr. Carew, our invalid is Mr. Foreman.' 'Foreman!' exclaimed Carew, with a genuine start of aversion. 'Do you mean Foreman the agitator? Do you mean the Socialist ? Do you mean that lying egotistical scoundrel, half dunce and half madman, who is going about London haranguing the unemployed workmen — poor crea- tures, whom hunger has made at once savage and credulous — and trying to rouse in them every contemptible quality that can unfit them for any human society — the passions of wild beasts and the hopes of gaping children ? Is that really the man you mean ? ' ' Poor Foreman ! ' said Harley, with a smile of benign indifference, ' I think society is safe enough as long as we have only him to attack it.' ' I don't know,' Mrs. Harley retorted. ' In times of dis- tress like these, especially on the eve of a general election, a man like that can do an endless amount of mischief. You know, George, don't you, that in a number of constituencies he and his friends are going to run Socialist candidates ? ' 'And yet,' exclaimed Carew, 'you are a friend of this creature — you countenance him? Good God! I can't understand it ! I would as soon be friends with a forger. I'.esides, what has he, who says that all riches are robbery — what has he to do with a leisurely winter on the Riviera, especially at Nice, that playground of the idle and the profligate ? ' ' Poor Foreman,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is no doubt mistaken, terribly mistaken, in a great number of ways. But he is entirely unselfish, entirely honest in his opinions ' 22 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. 'Begging your pardon,' interposed Carew, 'that is just what I say he is not. He may be fool enough to be honest in his Socialistic theories ; but he cannot be honest in the way he denounces classes, who are no more to blame for having been born rich than he is to blame for having been born a biped.' 'I can tell you,' said Mrs. Harley, 'he has done one thing, in which we might all of us take a lesson from him. He has made himself familiar with the actual face of poverty. Day by day he has sought out and examined the squalor, the destitution, the hopelessness that exist at our very doors almost. No wonder, when his mind is so full of the thoughts of misery, that he feels indignant at us and at all our luxury- I confess I sympathise with him. Often and often after he has been talking to me, I have felt that every superfluous morsel I ate would choke me. I know he is a visionary about the methods of curing the evil ; but he is certainly no visionary about the evil that wants curing, or about the sullen and restless sense of it that is spreading amongst its victims. Yes, Mr. Carew, you may talk as much as you like about aristocracies, but the great question of the future is the condition of the labouring multitude.' ' And so,' said Carew, ' Mr. Foreman is one of your other people, is he ? — one of the people who embody the real life of the time ? ' 'Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, again relapsing into a smile. ' Mr. Foreman is one of my other people. You asked just now what he could be doing at Nice. He is here by his doctor's orders. He is broken with over-work. His chest is affected ; he is suffering from the results of a chill, which he caught when addressing a meeting of dock-labourers. However, Mr. Carew, we won't inflict him at dinner on you. If I can manage it, you shall have your aristocratic Burtons instead. By the way, it occurs to me now, from something you said this morning, that the hotel where you left your portmanteau, and where I conclude you intend to sleep, is the very hotel where the Burtons themselves are. Here,' chap, in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 23 she continued, for the carriage was now stopping — ' here is ours, so you are only a few yards off; and if you don't mind waiting whilst I write it, I will give you a note for Elfrida, to ask them to come this evening. I shall tell them eight. It is now a little past seven.' The note in question was soon in Carew's hand, and he turned towards his own hotel with a pleasant feeling of expectation. When he pushed open the heavy plate-glass doors, the large hall was alive with groups of loiterers ; most of them, so it seemed, fresh from the table d'hote, and about to separate in quest of their various dissipations. Taken as a whole, it was not an attractive company. The men looked, to use Cardinal Newman's phrase, like 'bad imitations of polished ungodliness,' whilst the ladies sug- gested the class which polished ungodliness imitates. What, then, was Carew's surprise when, amongst a medley of toilettes unmistakably fresh from Paris, he at once caught sight of two singularly plain black dresses, and was aware in an instant that the eldest Miss Burtons were before him ! Sur- prise, however, was not his only emotion. He became con- scious of a sudden sense of embarrassment, the causes of which he had not then time to analyse. He felt it impossible to go up to them and give them Mrs. Harley's note in person ; and slipping into the bureau, in order to avoid their notice, he determined to wait until they should go upstairs, intending as soon as they did so to send it up to them by a waiter. Unseen himself, he had now an excellent view of them : they were, indeed, but a few yards away from him, and he could also see something of what kept them in a scene so incongruous. A middle-aged man, with his back to Carew, was apparently holding them in conversation ; but the chilly smile with which they both heard and answered him, and the constant way in which their glances wandered, showed plainly enough that they were waiting for some one else, and that in attending to him at all they were simply the victims of their civility. Carew had no intention of playing the eavesdropper ; but the gentleman had a trick of occasionally 24 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. raising his voice, and as he did so, reducing the pace of his syllables, which forced what he then said on the ears of every- one in his neighbourhood. Nearly every time that this occurred, Carew caught the name of some person of high distinction ; and had he been half asleep in an arm-chair, his impression would have been that somebody was reciting a page out of the ' Peerage.' ' Lady Something did this,' and ' Lord Something did that,' formed apparently the jewels of the speaker's conversation, to which all the rest of it was nothing more than the setting. The Miss Burtons listened with a kind of patient apathy, and seemed to be giving him as little encouragement to continue as one human being could possibly give another ; when a statement he made about a certain well-known duchess at last roused the elder of them into a moment's passing animation. ' What a charming woman that is ! ' he said. ' I travelled down with her from Paris only a fortnight since.' ' Really ! ' exclaimed Miss Burton. ' How odd that we didn't see you ; for we were with her ourselves, and we shared a coupe between us.' ' Well,' he said, somewhat taken aback, ' I couldn't exactly get a seat in the same train ; but I came by the very next one, and I took charge of her white dog for her. I preferred to wait and get a whole coupe salon to myself. But here,' he added, as if glad to change the subject — ' here is your servant looking for you. Ah ! he sees you now, I think. Ici, man — Venez — this way — iaV The servant approached, and Carew could plainly hear him as he spoke. ' Miss Consuelo, ma'am,' he said, ' is with her maid, in Galignani's Library, and she orders me to say that she will be in, in another five minutes.' ' Then send Louise to me,' said Miss Burton, ' and we will dine in half an hour. And, Eugene, go to the office and ask if there are any letters or parcels.' Both she and her sister immediately turned towards the staircase, and with a slight bow, as they did so, to the chap. in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 25 Duchess's late companion, left him staring after them in an attitude of despondent meditation. An irrepressible smile, meamvhile, had been growing on Carew's lips, for it had dawned on him some moments ago who this fine gentleman was. ' Of course,' he murmured, ' it is Inigo. It can surely be no one else ; ' and if the smallest doubt had still remained as to the matter it was presently set at rest by Mr. Inigo himself, who strolled into the bureau with an air of solemn abstraction ; and finding the clerk absent, and not seeing Carew, instinctively betook himself to the book in which the names of visitors were recorded. Mr. Inigo was a man who, by long and laborious effort, had lately arrived, in the social world of London, at just enough celebrity for his presence to excite a smile. His origin, thanks to his own diplomatic adroitness, was veiled in profound obscurity. He was content to regard him- self, and he hoped he was regarded by others, as having • entered the life of fashion by a kind of spontaneous generation. ' I must say,' he muttered aloud to himself, as he stooped down to pour over the book he had opened ' I must say these two ladies have not much manners. And yet, I should like to know, what right have they to be rude ? They were not at one— I know it for a fact not at one of the really smart balls last season. I mean the very, very smart ones/ A moment later he closed the page contemptuously. 1 Pooh ! ' he exclaimed, ' there's nobody that's much good there ! ' and was turning to walk away when the clerk re- turned, and with him the Burtons' servant, who was inquir- ing after his mistress's letters. 'Here is one,' said Carew. ' Will you be kind enough to deliver it at once. It is from Mrs. Harley, and wants an immediate answer.' The mo- ment he spoke he felt that Mr. Inigo's eyes were fixed on him ; and when he had finished some directions to the clerk about a bedroom, Mr. Inigo still was there, in readiness to claim his acquaintance. Carew recognised that there was 26 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. no chance of escape ; so he submitted to a meeting which he would have gone many yards to avoid. ' I'd no notion,' said Mr. Inigo, ' that you were in these parts. You'll not stay long — I can venture to predict that' 'On the contrary,' said Carew, 'I mean to remain till Easter.' ' Oh,' said Mr. Inigo, ' there's nobody here this winter one ever heard of before ; in fact, till the Darlingtons came I had hardly a soul to speak to. Lady Darlington, Stone- house, I, and a few more of us make up a party now and then to the Opera or to Monte Carlo ; but as for me,' said Mr. Inigo, looking round in the vain hope of an audience, 'the sole reason why I'm here is that the poor Grand Duke is expected back from Mentone ; and when his cough is bad, I amuse him with my stories in the evening. But, by the way, tell me. A moment ago you mentioned Mrs. Harley. Is she our Mrs. Harley — the Mrs. Harley we all know? And is she in Nice now ? ' 'She is,' said Carew, drily, 'and as I am going to dine with her, I fear I must leave you and go upstairs to prepare myself.' ' Dear me,' said Mr. Inigo, ' I must go and call to-morrow. I shall ' and he wagged his head knowingly — 'I shall get into dreadful hot water if I don't pay my respects to her. Perhaps,' he continued as Carew was moving off — 'perhaps, if I came, I should find her at home this evening ? ' ' Certainly,' said Carew, looking back, ' she will be in her own rooms ; but her servants will tell you better than I can if she intends to receive company.' Whilst he spoke he had his foot on the first step of the staircase ; and just as he turned to mount, he became aware that a female figure had passed him. It had moved, it had almost darted, with a noiseless graceful rapidity, something like the flight of a bird, and had nearly, by this time, arrived at the first landing. But Carew's eyes and mind compre- hended the whole vision in an instant. A knot of hair arranged with exquisite neatness ; a hand in a grey glove for chap. in. A PAGE OF ROMANCE REOPENED 2"J a moment laid on the banister ; a jacket whose fit any of the ladies in the hall might have envied ; but with all this a proud refinement and dignity which seemed to pervade their possessor, and to linger in her wake like a perfume. A second more and she was on the landing. Carew was not far behind her ; her eye, as she turned, inevitably en- countered his ; and he saw what he had felt, but what he had not distinctly expressed to himself— that it was Miss Consuelo Ihirton. It was more than a year since they had met last ; and when they had parted, it had been with some circumstances of embarrassment. The girl's face and movements be- trayed that she was conscious of this. At the first moment of recognition she stopped short suddenly ; a deep colour flushed up into her cheek, and her dark eyes seemed to ex- pand as they fixed on him ; but he had hardly uttered the most commonplace words of greeting, and she replied to them in a manner equally commonplace, when her check grew pale again, she smiled quickly and nervously, and saying, in a constrained voice, ' I am in a hurry— my sisters are waiting for me,' with another of her bird-like darts, she was gone before he had time to recover himself. CHAPTER IV. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST. Carew, as he was dressing, restlessly paced his bedroom, ^itated and plunged in rellection. Some eighteen months ago, during part of one London season, he had been by her side at nearly every party ; and whatever might have been his own hojies or intentions, he had taught her eyes to brighten the moment she saw him approaching her. Her sisters, with whom vigilance took the place of acuteness, quickly detected this ; and, for a week or tun, they were not displeased at it. They knew that Carew belonged to one of the oldest families in the kingdom j they understood that 28 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. he was the heir to sufficient, if moderate, property ; and they hoped, from the gossip of many of their own circle, that he would be shortly received into the bosom of the Catholic Church. Gossip, however, and their own obser- vations as directed by it, soon added other and very dif- ferent details about him. There was nothing definitely scandalous in anything they either heard or saw ; but there was much by which, to their minds, scandal was vaguely suggested. They were warned that he was well known for his levity in his conduct to women ; and though by no means willing to believe these warnings justified, they soon saw enough to convince them, as regarded their sister, that she was but one amongst many objects of his similar and habitual attentions. Finally something happened that was even more serious. During the past year a certain Comtesse de Saint Valery, divorced, it was said, from her husband, who was supposed vaguely to be in St. Petersburg, had been glittering before the eyes of the fashionable world, in that social penumbra by which the fashionable world is surrounded. She was a woman of much education and many accomplishments. She had eyes like a Magdalen and a voice like a sorrowing angel. Numbers of eminent men, it was rumoured, had been in love with her ; and she had saved a child from drowning in the waters of the Lago Maggiore. That in- cident, which was certainly no mere rumour, had made her acquainted with Carew, who was staying in his cousin's villa at the time. He had indeed himself been present at the scene of the accident, having just arrived in time to render some help with a boat ; and when she appeared in London some months afterwards, he renewed his acquaintance with her — his acquaintance, or rather his friendship. So marked, indeed, did this friendship seem to the small circle which had opportunities of observing it, that a muffled report reached the ears of one of his uncles that he was actually intending to marry this fair foreign adventuress. A family scene ensued, which involved certain unpleasantness ; and chap. iv. A SHADOW FROM THE PAST 29 the consequences to Carew might have been really serious if Lord Stonehouse had not, by means of a certain accident, been able to set the mind of the uncle in question at rest. What happened was this. A first cousin of Lord Stone- house's, and a second cousin of the Burtons' — a man well known in the laxer sets of society — dismayed his relations and excited his friends by eloping with the lady, and carry- ing her off to the Continent. Till this event, the Miss Burtons had hardly heard of her ; still less did they know that she had any acquaintance with Carew. Nor was this surprising. She had indeed collected round her a little private clique ot her own ; she had been constantly at- tended by a number of well-known men, and caressed by a few ladies who were known but no longer countenanced ; she had been the observed of all observers in the Park, at Sandown, and at Hurlingham ; but she had never once appeared at any recognised ball or party. It was at Hur- lingham, indeed, that she and her lover had been dining, with a number of friends, the very night before their elope- ment ; and of these friends it chanced that Carew was one. He seemed — so rumour was exceedingly careful to add — by no means indifferent to the fair delinquent himself; and the rest of those present were precisely the kind of people who would pardon her delinquency, even if they did not actually emulate it. It was then that the Miss Burtons heard for the first time Carew's name spoken of in this connection ; and they now heard it so spoken of frequently. This brought their changed opinion of him to a crisis. They were fair enough to recognise that he had not been convicted of anything definitely — not even of trifling with the feelings of their sister ; but they felt that he certainly could not be, what they had at first thought him, a very good man ; and as he consorted with bad men, lie might possibly be even a very bad man. Anyhow, as to their sister they came to this conclusion, that from her acquaint- ance with him she was running a double risk ; that if he were trilling with her she might have a broken heart, or a 37 ' 1 mean,' said Carew, ' the poison of hopes which he knows can never be realised, and of anger at conditions of life which he knows can never be altered.' ' Come, come,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I really must stick up for my friends. I don't know why you should assume that Mr. Snapper is dishonest. My own belief is that, as regards the poor, he does genuinely feel what he says, and that he is genuinely anxious to remove or to lessen their troubles. For, my dear Elfrida, the poor have troubles. Even you and Mr. Carew, I think, must admit that.' ' They have,' said Miss Elfrida ; ' no one knows it better than I do. They have many. But if you look at the few which Mr. Snapper chooses to harangue about, you will find that he chooses them for an exceedingly obvious reason — not because they are those most distressing to the poor, but because he can manage most easily to lay them to the charge of the rich.' 'You forget,' said Mrs. Harley, 'he is a very rich man himself. He has, I can assure you, no objection to riches.' ' I believe you there,' Miss Elfrida retorted. ' I should have said gentlemen, the upper classes, the aristocracy. He hates them far more than he loves the poor. Come, my dear Evelyn, even you can't deny his bitterness.' ' Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, ' he is bitter — no doubt he is ; and I confess that I don't wonder at it. After all, he is only human. My dear Elfrida, if you had seen him, as I have done, biting his lip at dinner, and wincing at the way in which he was — well, treated by some people as if he were one of the footmen ' 'My dear Evelyn,' interposed Miss Mildred, with a little good-natured gurgle, 'and what docs the man want? One human being, he says, is just as good as another. Why should he wish to be treated better than footmen are ? No, no ; I've positively no patience with him. As you yourself admit, he thinks lords and ladies such wonderful people, that he is mad with wretchedness if they don't civilly notice him ; and then, to revenge himself, he goes and shrieks in 533* 38 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book r. his speeches that they are so silly and wicked, that they ought to be noticed by nobody. Besides,' she went on, ' in spite of his denunciations of landlords, he has, I am told, been thinking of setting up as a squire himself, and has been looking about for an estate with a fine park belonging to it. I hear from our agent that he has his eye upon several in the West of England — in your part of the world, Mr. Carew.' ' I assure you, Evelyn,' said Miss Elfrida, with a more subdued intonation, ' Mildred is quite right in all she says. She is an excellent woman of business, and knows thoroughly well what she is talking about.' 'Will nobody,' Miss Mildred continued — 'will nobody show him up? Will none of the people themselves lift a voice against him? There would be no need whatever to abuse the man. Nothing would be wanted but simply to state facts. I wonder that this is not done by the gentlemen of even his own party.' ' I don't care,' said Miss Elfrida, 'who it is who exposes him — gentleman or no gentleman. Indeed, I have often thought that a man who was not a gentleman could do it better than a man who was. If one of us were to attack him, it might seem that we did so in our own interests. If some one else did it, every one could see that it was done in the interests of sincerity.' ' My dear Elfrida,' said Mrs. Harley, ' and you too, Mildred, I am in great doubt whether I shall tell you some- thing or whether I shall not tell you. I am considering how you would both take it.' ' Tell us,' said both of them, with a smile of almost childish curiosity. ' Well,' said Mrs. Harley, ' if I do, you must not be horrified. Do you remember a certain man — a poor inva- lided creature — whom you were shocked the other day to meet here, calling upon me?' 'What !' exclaimed Miss Elfrida, 'do you mean that dreadful Mr. Foreman ? I can promise you, my dear Evelyn, chap. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 39 I shall never get over that. Why, he is ten times worse than Mr. Snapper himself. Mr. Snapper would only pick the landlord's pockets. This man would murder every one who has a decent coat on his back. Mr. Snapper, too, whatever he believes or disbelieves, never openly insults the Church ; but this man is an avowed Atheist, who utters his blasphe- mies in the parks and the public streets. He even ridicules marriage, and advocates everything that is horrible. I only speak from what you yourself have told me.' ' And now,' said Mrs. Harley, ' I am going to tell you something more. You were wishing for somebody to de- nounce and to expose Mr. Snapper. In Mr. Foreman you have the very thing you were wishing for.' ' Mr. Foreman ! ' exclaimed Miss Elfrida. ' He de- nounce Mr. Snapper ! He is far more likely to egg him on than denounce him. They are both of the same party, only one is more extreme than the other. A Socialist hates the upper classes even more than a Radical does.' ' No,' said Carew, ' I think you are wrong there. What a Socialist hates is the middle classes. No doubt lie thinks landlords very bad indeed; but he thinks them good when compared with a Radical manufacturer, and if he seems to agree with the Radical in so far as he thinks them bad, the two come to this conclusion for exactly opposite reasons. The Radical hates landlords because he thinks they differ from tradesmen ; the Socialist hates them because he thinks they resemble tradesmen.' ' You see, Elfrida,' said Mrs. Harley, 'you and Mr. Fore- man will agree on this point to perfection. Come, tell me : are you prepared to meet him ? ' Miss Elfrida and Miss Mildred had, both of them, till now been listening with a patient, if somewhat puzzled, at- tention ; but at this last question, put, so it seemed, quite seriously, their faces assumed a look of surprised reproach, and they drew themselves up with the slightest indication of hauteur. Mrs. Harley, however, went on placidly with her suggestion. 40 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. ' If you like it,' she added, ' I will ask him to come in after dinner. He is staying in the hotel.' Had Mr. Foreman been the plague or the cholera per- sonified, the two elder Miss Burtons could hardly have started more. ' In this hotel ! ' they gasped, as soon as they had re- covered their voices. ' I hope and trust, Evelyn, you will not ask him to do anything of the kind.' ' I,' said Carew, 'quite agree with the Miss Burtons. I have no wish to meet one scoundrel simply because he exposes another. All the same, I believe Foreman to be far more honest than Mr. Snapper.' ' If,' said Miss Elfrida, having apparently reflected a little, ' he were not so horrid in other things than his politics, I might perhaps bring myself to see him, and to talk to him. We might — who knows ? — make him useful, and perhaps put him right in some ways. But a complete unbeliever — a man who insults the name of Almighty God in public, and who glories in despising every rule of morality ' Miss Elfrida stopped. Her feelings were too strong for utterance. ' Of course,' said Mrs. Harley, ' that side of him is very shocking; but you are quite wrong — you think that he has no morals at all. On the contrary, he has a code of the strict- est and most difficult kind ; and the first law in it is the law of justice with regard to property, and the material means of living a decent life. Without such justice he thinks every other virtue is a mockery ; and justice with him means not only talk about the poor, but it means exceedingly real and exceedingly rude self-sacrifice for them.' ' I think,' said Miss Elfrida, ' the Church could have taught him this without his taking the trouble to think it out for himself. The Church has taught charity to the poor for some eighteen hundred years : and Mr. Foreman's charity ends with their bodies — for you cannot imagine that he has any care for their souls.' 'What Mr. Foreman thinks,' said Mrs. Harley, 'is this. CHAr. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 4 1 He thinks that so long as their bodies are treated as they at present are, to work for their souls is a hopeless, is even a ridiculous task. How, he asks, shall they be pure and tem- perate, how shall they have any of the virtues which good Christians prize, so long as they are housed like pigs and fed worse than pigs — so long as they have no knowledge, and no leisure, and nothing from their childhood that so much as suggests happiness, except drink, and things worse than drink? How shall we tell them to be clean when they have only sewage to wash in ? ' ' Surely,' said Miss Mildred, ' it is the mission of the Church to bring them water. Its first message is to those in want and misery ; its chief work lies among them. It enjoins the rich to relieve wretchedness, and it helps the wretched to bear it.' 'Think,' Miss Elfrida added, 'of the monastic orders. In some the work is harder than that of any labourer ; in others the food is coarser and more meagre. In this way they are perpetually teaching the poor that there is nothing necessarily degrading either in constant toil or in privation.' ' Yes,' said Mrs. Harley, ' but the hushed asceticism of the monastery or of the convent is a very different thing from the brutal starvation of the streets. Mr. Foreman's ideal of duty differs from yours in this. You look on poverty as a thing that must be endured or at best palliated ; he looks on it as a thing that must be utterly done away with. Your notion is that the rich ought to help the poor. His notion is that there should be no poor to help. Please don't think that I agree with him in all his views ; still less do I think him right in the ways he takes to disseminate them. But I want to show you that he is something quite different from what you imagine him — a cross between a libertine and a criminal lunatic. Whatever may be your opinions of Mr. Snapper's zeal for the poor, Mr. Foreman is perfectly genuine. You, George, though you don't think much of him, will at least answer for that.' ' Yes,' said Harley, in a genial tone of amusement, 'he 42 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. is a genuine zealot ; no one can doubt that who knows him ; and if you compare him with Snapper, there is something almost grotesque in the contrast. What is genuine in Snapper is his hatred of the aristocracy ; what is genuine in Foreman is his feeling for the labouring classes. Fore- man only denounces the rich as a means of rousing the poor ; Snapper only rouses the poor as a means of attack- ing a certain section of the rich.' During all this conversation Miss Consuelo had re- mained silent ; but though silent she had been not inat- tentive. On the contrary, her attention had been increasing. She looked first at one speaker, then at another, in particular at Mrs. Harley ; and seemed several times to have been on the point of asking a question, if the presence of her sisters had not for some reason embarrassed her. At last she began, just as the ladies were rising, ' I have heard the Cardinal speak about Mr. Foreman ' ' My dear Consuelo,' exclaimed Miss Mildred, ' what can the Cardinal have possibly said about Mr. Foreman to you? ' 'He was not talking to me — he was talking to some one else ; and there was much about Mr. Foreman with which he said he sympathised.' 'My dear child,' said Miss Mildred, 'you must have misunderstood the Cardinal' ' Indeed,' said Carew, ' I venture to think not. The day before I left England, I spent an entire evening with him, and he happened to say the very same thing to me. Of Foreman, personally, he knows nothing, nor of the infamous falsehoods employed by him to further his cause ; else I am sure his opinion would be very much modified. He did know, however, that Foreman was a complete atheist ; and yet, in spite of that, he distinctly told me of him, that there was much in his social views, and much in his efforts to spread them, with which, as a Catholic, he himself agreed.' The effect of this speech on the elder Miss Burtons was considerable. It did not, indeed, seem to alter their views chap. v. THE SPHINX OF THE MODERN WORLD 43 about Mr. Foreman ; for Miss Elfrida merely remarked quietly, ' We all know that the Cardinal's a bit of a Radical.' But the fact that the Cardinal was still intimate with Carew worked wonders for the latter in restoring him to their good opinion ; and in the way they looked at him, as he held the door open for them, there was a returning gleam of their original frank friendliness. Miss Consuelo, too, as she passed, for a moment raised her eyes to him. CHAPTER VI. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER. When the two gentlemen rejoined the rest of their party, the first sound that greeted Carew's ears was his own name being uttered by Mrs. Harley. ' Did you hear us,' she said, ' taking your name in vain ? We were not abusing you much, so you need not discom- pose yourself. We have been talking again about the wonders of Courbon-Loubet ; and I have been telling the Miss Burtons the reasons why you like it. You like it, I was saying, for just the same reasons that the ostrich likes to hide his head in the sand. You lose sight there of the progress of the sacred democracy, and you think, accord- ingly, that the democracy has ceased progressing.' Carew chanced at the moment to be standing close to Miss Consuelo. ' Perhaps,' she said to him, speaking low and quickly, ' you think, also, that the poor have ceased suffering? ' There was a vacant chair beside her, and he sat down on it. Diffident, however, of even seeming to engross her, he hardly did more than glance at her ; and with a laugh of forced indifference he addressed himself to the party generally. 'If we were inclined to forget democratic progress,' he said, ' some of us here, before dinner, had an excellent reminder of its reality, in the presence of— come, Mrs. 44 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. Harley, whom do you think ? — a most eminent man, and a very dear friend of yours.' ' Of mine ! ' said Mrs. Harley. ' Do you mean Mr. **** ? ' and she named a distinguished statesman. ' He, I know, is expected here.' 'No,' said Carew; 'I mean — I mean — guess once more! — Mr. Inigo.' The elder Miss Burtons broke into a hearty laugh. 'What?' they exclaimed. 'And have you seen him too?' 'That man !' said Mrs. Harley. 'You don't mean to say that he's here ! He is no friend of mine. I have never allowed him to be introduced to me.' 'In that case,' said Carew, 'he must be in a very forlorn condition ; for he assured me just now that you were the best friend he possessed.' ' Well,' said Mrs. Harley, ' now I come to think of it, I believe that one night he did see me to my carriage — yes, and ever since he has been constantly leaving cards on me.' ' My dear Evelyn,' said Miss Elfrida, ' I can tell you he's a very grand gentleman. Mildred and I felt quite frumps by comparison.' And she began a description of their encounter with Mr. Inigo in the hall. Carew now turned to Miss Consuelo ; and, for the first time addressing himself to her exclusively, ' You have never,' he asked, ' met Mr. Foreman, have you ? ' ' No,' she said ; ' but I am not like you, and I think I should like to do so. I often feel about the poor — often, perhaps always — just, as I gather, he feels. I could never forget them because I saw none of them suffering near me.' ' Neither do I,' said Carew gravely. ' If you go merely by what I have just been saying, you will be doing me the greatest injustice — much more than you think. But I do agree with your sisters, that you, with a religion like yours, may find all the assistance and sympathy you can ever re- quire in it, without going to a soured and unscrupulous enthusiast like Foreman.' 'If you,' said Miss Consuelo, 'had been brought up as chap. vi. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 45 I have been, you would not perhaps think my religion so sufficient as you do now. And yet, no ! ' she exclaimed, ' why have I said that ? It is not what I mean. I don't know how to express myself. Of course the Church possesses all the teaching and all the sympathy you speak of somewhere — but where ? No, I can't go on ; you would not be able to understand me.' ' Try,' said Carew, ' and see. I think I should.' There was a pause of a moment or two, and then she broke out abruptly, ' Look at my two sisters. They are far better people than I am. The aim of their lives is to be and to do good ; and yet I always feel them to be aiming wide of the mark. They are constantly thinking of the poor, and, as they imagine, working for the poor ; but — ■ well, to me it all seems like weeding a flower-garden instead of ploughing a field. Mildred, whilst I am under age, manages my affairs for me. She is practical and business- like enough, and has done much to improve some bad cottages and houses. Still, to hear her talk, one would think that bad cottages and houses were sent into the world that we might do ourselves good by improving them ; and, as for Elfrida, she is far more pleased at seeing two hundred people in one chapel than she is pained at seeing twenty families in one house. Sometimes, when I watch her trotting off to Mass in the morning, looking as if she were doing the whole duty of woman, I feel as if, myself, I should never be religious again.' She spoke low, but with strong and evident feeling. There was a flush in her cheeks ; her eyes were fixed on her lap, and she was trifling nervously with the crimson feathers of her fan. ' You know,' she went on presently, with the rapid frank- ness that sometimes springs from shyness ' you know how my sisters keep guard over me — over the parties I go to, over the men I dance with or speak to. You know that, Mr. Carew, don't you ? No one knows it better than you do.' 46 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. ' Yes,' said Carew ; ( no one better than I.' ' What care,' she resumed, 'they think necessary to keep me from doing something dreadful ! Perhaps they are right,' and she gave a slight ironical laugh. ' But if we, in our class, can be so easily demoralised by our surroundings, if goodness is a flower that must be so very carefully nursed, what must be the case with the great majority of our poor ? I think I am a standing proof that wickedness must be the fruit of circumstances, and that men like Mr. Foreman are the only men who are right when they tell us we must begin by attacking the circumstances first.' Carew raised his eyes, and saw that the eldest Miss Burton was watching him. Having observed this, he in- stinctively raised his voice, and addressed his answer to the company in general rather than to Miss Consuelo. 'My quarrel with Foreman,' he said, 'is not that he wishes to alleviate misery, but that, as a matter of fact, he adds to it. As a preliminary to satisfying the natural wants of the poor, he thinks he must madden them with wants that are exotic and unnatural. To the pangs of poverty he must add the pangs of envy ; and this you may take for granted— if poverty is the parent of some sins, envy is the parent of more ; and the wants of poverty can be appeased, but the wants of envy are insatiable. Poverty is the thirst of a man on earth ; envy is the thirst of a man in hell.' ' My dear Mr. Carew,' Mrs. Harley here interposed, 'do you think for one instant that, were there no Mr. Foreman in existence, the people could possibly rest content in the state in which they are now? Do you think that sooner or later they will not insist on a change ? ' ' They have taken,' said Carew, ' a good many thousand years to think about it ; and they are no worse off now than they have been in other ages. Suffering and want there have always been in the world. No one can deplore this more than I do ; but to exaggerate the fact is even more mischievous than to neglect it. Multitudes of the poor, so far as happiness goes, enjoy practically as good a chance as chap. vr. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 47 the rich, until the agitator comes like the harpy, to ruin their simple banquet.' ' It's all very well,' retorted Mrs. Harley, ' for us to sit still and say misery has always existed, and the people have always borne it ; but in the first place, we must remember that by this time we have educated them. We have made their skins tender and sensitive, and they are now maddened by things which they hardly felt before.' 'I admit,' said Carew drily, 'that education, as the Radicals conceive it, is a crueller engine of torture than was ever dreamed of by Nero.' ' Oh, but,' said Mrs. Harley, her manner growing more and more earnest, ' the hardest and cruellest evils are those which, unhappily, it needs no education to point out to us ; and these, in our great cities at least, certainly are increasing. Think of these terrible periods, which people now call crises, when men by thousands, with wives and children dependent on them — strong men, men willing to work — rise up in the morning without any certainty at all that they will be able to earn so much as a crust of bread by the evening.' ' Yes,' said Carew ; ' but be fair as well as compassionate. There arc crises now ; in old days there were famines.' 'Think,' Mrs. Harley went on, ' of the mothers who see their children dying simply for the want of a breath of wholesome air ; and they know all the while what wealth is being wasted round them. It is a hard life, and it is a. bitter life. It is hard enough when trade is good ; but when trade is depressed, as it is now, no one can conceive it who has not looked close at it.' 'Things,' said Carew, ' have been often as bad before.' ' It seems,' said Mrs. Harley, ' that the people them- selves don't think so. Anyhow, even if their burdens have not increased, what has increased is their own impatience of bearing them. Have you ever looked into the faces of an East End mob? Have you ever realised what an ap- palling sight they are ? The French Ambassador has several 48 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. times said to me that he thinks things in England in a most critical and dangerous condition, and that the savage and sullen spirit fermenting throughout the country now is just what there was in Paris before the Great Revolution. And at this moment, to add to it, there is all the wild excitement of a general election, which will largely be managed by agitators. Nothing would surprise me less, if we have hard weather this spring, and the misery of cold is added to the misery of hunger, than to hear of serious troubles and outbreaks in London, and elsewhere also. Did you read the accounts of what was said and what happened at Fore- man's street meetings some two months ago ? He is going to repeat them as soon as ever he can get home again.' Mrs. Harley was here interrupted by a loud rap at the door. Throughout the room there was a startled sense of expectation, broken only by Mrs. Harley's faint ' Come in.' Then the door was thrown open wide by a waiter, and there, framed in the doorway, was the figure of Mr. Inigo. One of those sudden silences fell on the whole party which, so far as their meaning goes, are a kind of congealed laugh, and which fill a room with an atmosphere of slightly dis- pleased surprise. This, however, gave Mr. Inigo no distress whatever. It seemed, on the contrary, to be his native element, and he entered it as naturally as a duck takes to the water. The punctilious but blank politeness of Mr. and Mrs. Harley, and the slight bows of the Miss Burtons, did nothing to disturb his usual solemn smile and his odd composite air of determined yet apologetic assurance. Indeed, in little more than a minute he was sipping a cup of coffee ; and, unconscious of having silenced one conver- sation by his entrance, to make up for it he was already leading another. Oddly enough, too, he commanded an attentive hearing. ' I confess,' he said to Mrs. Harley, ' considering all the things that probably will be happening at home, I am surprised at your spending the whole winter abroad. I shall be back in London by the week after next, at farthest. chap. vi. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 49 And you, Miss Burton — do you mean to tell me actually that you will be away also ? ' Mr. Inigo's voice grew very grave and impressive. ' I think it's a pity,' he said. ' We may expect many things to be happening soon in London — several of them very im- portant — which will practically change the whole aspect of society. Nobody ought to miss them.' If Mr. Inigo had startled his hearers at first, he startled them now still more. They were filled with a double wonder — first at his train of thought being so nearly the same as their own, and secondly at his being capable of such a train of thought at all. ' And pray how,' said Mrs. Harley, with an odd puzzled expression — ' pray how, Mr. Inigo, do you get this gift of prophecy ? ' Mr. Inigo eyed the company one by one, the light of suppressed knowledge sparkling in each pupil ; and at last he gave utterance to this astonishing answer. ' Ah,' he said — ' ah — a little bird has told me.' If he liked attention, he certainly had it now, for every one stared blankly at him. ' You certainly,' said Mrs. Harley, ' take the matter very philosophically.' ' Oh,' said Mr. Inigo, ' as for me, I shall be back in a fortnight, so I shall come in for everything, and nothing will have begun before then. It will be three weeks, in fact, before the real movement is perceptible ; not that even now there are not premonitory symptoms. For instance,' he continued, ' take my own case. The week after next I have three dinners in London already, and I think probably a funeral — poor Lord Layham's. A very smart — I mean to say, a very sad affair that will be. Every one about the Court will of course have to be there. Gull, I am told, gives him only ten days more. It's very sad. He was a dear, dear friend of mine. He used to ask me to luncheon three times every season. However,' Mr. Inigo continued, sup- pressing an elaborate sigh, 'what I was going to tell you is this. The week after, the little bird I spoke of has told E 50 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. me that there will be a fancy ball in a house we all know ot at one corner of Grosvenor Square ; and another, two days later — I am not at liberty to say where ; and in all proba- bility there will be three Royalties at it. Now these are specimens, but they are specimens only, of all the things we may very soon be expecting. Why, there's been nothing like it, out of June and July, before.' Mr. Inigo's news was received in discreet silence, which seemed to him to argue absorbed attention ; and presently turning from the social future in England, he proceeded to discuss the social present on the Riviera. He gave a brief analysis of the Visitors' List at Cannes, from which it appeared that, of the villas let for the winter, two only had been taken by English peers. ' In fact,' he concluded, 'the whole place is going to the dogs.' Then, like a bird winging its way back to its young ones, he returned to the subject of his own engagements in London ; and he might have gone on for some indefinite time discussing them, if it had not been for an accidental remark of Carew's. A pause occurring in Mr. Inigo's list of gaieties, Carew said, with a smile : ' I suppose you never honour with your company Mr. Foreman's al fresco entertainments ? ' It was an unambitious joke, and the company received it as such — all except Mr. Inigo. He certainly had not a reputation for being sensitive ; but for some unaccountable reason this piece of banter seemed to offend and stagger him. He stared at Carew in silence, the smile died from his lips, and at last he said, ' I beg your pardon,' in a manner which, had he ever ventured to let his words go out of a walk, would have plainly expressed a mixture of sur- prise, suspicion, and ferocity. Mrs. Harley concluded that he thought he was being laughed at ; and, though not in her heart at all sorry that he should think so, she civilly tried to set matters right again. ' We have been talking,' she explained, ' about socialism in the East End, and Mr. Foreman's street meetings. But that, I suppose, has very little interest for you.' chap. vi. A CHILD OF THE OLD ORDER 5 1 Mr. Inigo saw that she wished to please him. His smile, like a sun through clouds, made fitful struggles to shine out again. But his spirits flagged; his air of triumph was gone ; he was no longer jubilant in the memory of having had twelve invitations for a single night last season ; and before long he rose and took his departure. ' I must go,' he said, nerving himself to retire with honour, 'and see if a telegram has come for me from the Grand Duke about to-morrow. Poor old boy, I'm afraid he's getting very shaky.' He closed the door, and descended the stairs slowly. There were no listeners, but had there been any, and had their ears been sharp enough, they might have overheard him muttering, in a tone of anger and perplexity, ' I wonder if that fellow Carew could have meant any impertinence by that which he said just now. Let me catch him spreading any absurd stories about me, and I little know myself if I am not even with him some day ! ' The Miss Burtons presently rose to depart also, and they accepted with a very good grace, and without any air of distance, Carew's natural offer to see them back to their hotel. He told the Harleys, as he said good-night to them, that he would call the following morning, before he went back to the chateau, to know on what day he might expect them to come to him ; and he even ventured, during his short walk with the Miss Burtons, on a diffident sug- gestion that they too should drive over and lunch there. Miss Elfrida's answer, however, though good-natured, was not altogether encouraging. ' Thank you,' she said, with a little nervous laugh. ' The expedition would, I am sure, be most interesting.' But she immediately added that they were leaving Nice soon, and that, for the next few days, their time was already occupied. This statement brought them to the portico of the hotel ; and as she at once followed it by an abrupt though friendly good-night, Carew felt that even yet he was but half restored to their confidence. The next instant, however, there was some compensation for him ; and this was the glance that 1 j 52 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. Miss Consuelo gave him as she and her sisters were dis- appearing through the folding-doors. Carew did not follow them. He felt no inclination as yet to retire to rest, and he remained meditating outside in the moonlight. CHAPTER VII. SIBYL AND SIREN. The hotel was one which opened on the Promenade des Anglais ; and before Carew's eyes, as he stood silent and solitary, there rose and fell the mysterious flash of the Medi- terranean. In his state of mind at the moment, the sight had a special charm for him. The air, too, was warm as the air of a summer evening ; and far and faint, from an undistinguishable quarter, there came to his ears for an instant a vague sound of music, floating and dying away like a wandering scent of flowers. He looked at his watch. It was far earlier than he had thought it was. It was only half-past ten. He lighted a cigarette ; and, obeying some restless impulse, he crossed the road to the side nearest the sea. He stood for some moments, leaning on his stick, and taking the scene in. The moon was shining brilliantly, and right away from him, following the long curve of the coast, the broad esplanade, with its fringe of gas-lamps, seemed to stretch itself out into the heart of some unknown solitude. On one side of it was the sea, on the other its succession of houses, blanched like a row of lilies — lodging-houses, villas, hotels, and, conspicuous at a certain distance, the lighted blinds and windows of the sreat Cerde de la Mediterranee. In those windows there was a certain strange suggestiveness. They gave to the moonlight a sense of passion and reckless- ness, which was presently added to by the bells of a smart- looking Russian carriage, as it rattled by, with two men in sables in it, and left in its wake a faint smell of cigarette- smoke. Meanwhile, far off on the horizon the lighthouse of the Cap d'Antibes was shining with its steadfast eye ; chap. vn. SIBYL AND SIREN 53 and near at hand some vessels were lying black in the moon-track, whose coloured lights, as they moved almost imperceptibly, gleamed like rubies and emeralds, floating on the breast of the pale waters. The hour and the scene were full of hints and whisper- ings, as various as the thoughts by which Carew was already agitated ; and his mind began to work as if under some new stimulus. He was conscious of a sense not of happiness but of exaltation. He was not happy ; on the contrary, he was perplexed and anxious : but all his feelings and perceptions, whether of trouble or of pleasure, seemed to him to be quick- ened, and, somehow, to move to music. This was the case even with his sense of the ridiculous, as he almost directly realised ; for in another moment, on the opposite side of the road, he caught sight of the figure of Mr. Inigo posting off in the direction of the Cerde, and intent, as Carew divined, on finding some fashionable acquaintance, open to being victimised into what might be called a friend. Carew began moving in the same direction also, with no other purpose than to prolong the grotesque amusement he was aware of in watching the other. Having, however, been once set walking, it was not long before he quickened his pace, and was soon lost in thoughts with which Mr. Inigo had but little connection. At first they were far from pleasing. He knew that he had carried away from Mrs. Harley's some secret discontent with himself. Now this discontent began to disclose its nature. The part he had taken in the evening's conversation came back to him ; and certain of his sentences, like accusing spirits, began to say themselves over and over again to him. They were not sentences that he had uttered to Miss Consuelo Burton. They had nothing to do directly either with her or her sisters ; though with her, no doubt, indirectly they had to do. What they referred to was the poor in the modern world — the great industrial masses ; and the claims and struggles which Mrs. Harley said would be made by them. 54 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES hook i. 'And I,' he began murmuring, 'have done nothing but meet these claims with a sneer. I set them aside this evening with a bitter and contemptuous flippancy, as if they were nothing but the cant of a sect, or of some scheming radical faction. And all the while I myself believe in them, with a belief that is always at my heart like a dull physical pain. For the past two years what have I thought of else ? All the future is contained in them — in these hopes and claims of the people — the duties, the hopes, the fears, the whole life of the world. And we' — his reflections here grew less distinct again — 'and we, what will be our part? Is our world — the world of us who are made of different clay from the others, of us who inherit all the traditions of centuries — is that world to dissolve like a dream, and leave no trace behind it? Or shall we find that still we have a place amongst the leaders left to us ? ' Presently, into thoughts like these a new image intruded itself, and this was the image of Miss Consuelo Burton. It seemed to come to him like an answer to his vague ques- tions. The feminine charms of her smile, her face, her figure, all came back to him, making a vivid picture ; but it was not this that at the present moment appealed to him. What appealed to him was the pride that betrayed itself in her every movement, the self-possession underlying every sign of embarrassment ; and, above all, a look that he had seen in her eyes that evening — a look of want and inquiry, of desolation and vivid expectancy — a look in whose beauty there was nothing to flatter his vanity, but which made him exclaim half aloud to himself at the thought of it, ' She too watches, as I watch, but she can see farther. She asks for an answer. She must and she will command one. If ever a woman's face meant anything, hers this evening meant, "Show me the face of Duty."' His thoughts were moving something like clouds in moonlight, not disconnected in any abrupt way, but con- stantly dissolving and shifting into new and changing shapes. Often, so far as his own consciousness went, he was little chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 55 more than a passive, and even an absent spectator of them ; but now and again they would, as it were, arrest him ; and, with his whole intention, he would take an active part in them. It was thus that his thoughts behaved with regard to Miss Consuelo Burton. ' Show me the face of Duty.' He said this to himself several times over, as if it gradually merged into a personal ejaculation of his own ; and then, after some minutes of wandering and indistinct meditation, he caught himself once more murmuring in articulate and coherent words. ' Different ! ' he said. ' I should think she was different ! Nothing could produce her but a race separate from the rest of the world — separate from them and above them. No- thing could produce her but that which has produced her — the old aristocracy of an old country such as ours. Yes, we are different,' and as he said this his pace grew quicker, and his steps as they beat the pavement took something of the emphasis of his thoughts, ' we who can look back through the vistas of centuries, and hear the past speak to us, in our own private language, of our birthright of rule and leader- ship. Through the avenues of the past voices come echo- ing down to us, which the people can never hear. They place us for ever on a different level from theirs ; they make for us, if we only choose to listen to them, a second con- science, an added moral faculty ' Here, both in his thoughts and his walk, he stopped short suddenly, interrupting himself with a low ironical laugh. ' And much good,' he exclaimed, ' this faculty does us ! How does it advise us to exert ourselves ? And how do we try to exert ourselves ? ' And like many other men perplexed with moral problems, he forgot his laughter, and looked up at the stars. One or two of the constellations he instantly put a name to ; and he then began idly reflecting how completely he had forgotten the others. Presently, by one of those whimsical caprices with which our thoughts so often startle and entertain us, he found himself dwelling on the image of an old reflecting telescope, once the toy of his 56 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. boyhood on many a summer night. A moment more, and, like a figure in a shaken kaleidoscope, that image was gone, and in place of it was the face of Miss Consuelo Burton. ' Her eyes,' he said, ' to me are like the astronomer's specu- lum, in which I see the star that my naked eye cannot see — the star of duty and labour, that shines over the gate of heaven. The dreams of passion— is this a time for these, when the world is full of trouble, and change, and danger ? My star is the star not of passion, but of sacrifice.' Occupied still with reflections of this kind — with that unwritten poetry which at times visits nearly all of us, and which lifts the minds of the most prosaic to higher levels on the storm of its ' unheard melodies ' — he gradually became aware of some external influence by which his mood under- went an unbidden change ; and the dreams of passion, which were a moment ago so distant, invaded him, like music, with a tender and yet tumultuous sadness. He started as he realised what the external influence was. It actually was music in the literal sense of the word ; and he felt con- vinced, though he hardly knew why, that it was the same which had fallen on his ears as he was quitting the portico of the hotel. He had not even asked himself then what it was that produced it. He now felt certain that it was a woman's voice. He listened intently. For a moment it became inaudible. He waited, and then again there swelled another passionate cadence. Faint and far off as it seemed, he could not mis- take its meaning. He moved slowly in the direction from which he judged it proceeded, keeping his eyes fixed on the windows of the houses opposite him. Here and there, through blinds or transparent curtains, was a glow of yellow lamplight; but in most cases the Venetian shutters were closed, with the moonlight lying white on them. The voice had now ceased. There was no one stirring. The whole promenade was silent. Presently, as he was beginning to think that his search would prove useless, he heard — and now not very far off from him — the clear notes of a piano. chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 57 His eye instinctively fixed on a semi-detached villa, stand- ing back from the road, with a raised garden in front of it. The ground-floor windows were almost concealed from view ; but the upper part of them could be seen from the pavement opposite ; and Carew perceived that a bright light was shining from them, and that one of them was wide open. He had found the house at last ; this was at once plain to him ; and, conscious of a pleasant, half-boyish expectancy, he sat down on a seat which opportunely tempted him, and watched and waited for the song which he divined was imminent. A few more chords, struck, it seemed, almost at random, came sounding across to him, rich and deep and vibrating, and above them the brilliant ripple of a few notes in the treble ; but they suggested no air — nothing but the touch of a musician. All of a sudden, however, he felt them change their character, and appeal to a something deep down in his memory. They suggested something he was certain he had heard before. But when, and where ? he asked. In a moment the doubt was answered. In a moment, to his surprise, the following song broke on him It was not sung loudly, but with a liquid and mournful soft- ness ; yet every word was distinct, for his memory now assisted his hearing. ' Oh, World! whose days like sunlit waters glide, Whose music links the midnight with the morrow, Who for thine 0701 has/ Beauty, Power, and Pride — Oh, World, what art thou ? ' And the 11 orld replied, ' A husk of pleasure round a heart of sorrow.'' 1 Oh, Child of God I thou who hast sought thy way Where all this music sounds, this sunlight gleams, Mid Pride, and Power, and Beauty day by day — And what art thou ? ' I heard my own soul say, 'A wandering sorrow in a world of dreams.' That song Carew had heard once before, and he had heard it once only; and the memory of the woman who then sang it to him breathed from the air and verses as if it 58 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. had been some perfume they were full of. ' Could it be she who was now singing it?' he at once began to ask himself. There were many reasons for rejecting the idea as fantastic : yet there in the moonlight he could not resist playing with it ; and he remained, when the song had ceased, still sitting and still watching the villa. There was no more music; but presently he heard, or thought he heard, the voice of a woman talking; and then another sound which, though faint, was quite unmistakable — the rattle of an electric bell. Then, a second or two later, he saw the top of one of the open window sashes move a little ; he heard a light sound of gravel crunching under footsteps, and became aware that some one was approaching the end of the garden. Half ashamed of being caught there listening, and yet still more ashamed of letting such a feeling betray itself, he kept his position with what he hoped was an air of indiffer- ence, pretending to be occupied for the moment with a cigarette and a matchbox. Meanwhile he was conscious that a female figure had advanced to the balustrade, and was leaning her arms on it, as she stood between two palm-plants. A vague impression was conveyed to him of colour, and silk, and glitter ; but it was some moments before he col- lected courage to raise his eyes and look at the apparition directly. The moment he did so he sat upright with a start. The woman he saw before him was so singular and so brilliant in her aspect, that she might well have arrested the attention of any one ; though had it not been for an air of sadness and refinement about her, she would hardly have suggested to the moralist a world he would call respectable. She was closely enveloped in a light blue opera-cloak bordered with white fur and gorgeous with gold embroideries. On her arms, which were partly visible, and were of dazzling whiteness, was a gleam and a flash of diamonds ; whilst her hair, of the palest flaxen, with a few starry blossoms in it, shone over her forehead like a tissue of woven moonbeams. She must have seen Carew ; but she was not looking at chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 59 or attending to him. Her lips were parted, as if with a soundless sigh ; and her eyes seemed to be gazing far away upon the sea. She might have passed for a siren taken from her native element, and longing for the oblivion to which she had once tempted others. If she, however, was not noticing Carew, Carew, for his part, was intently staring at her; and a full minute had hardly elapsed since her appearance, when he rose from his seat, walked straight across the road to her, and, raising his hat as he did so, exclaimed, ' Madame de Saint Valery ! ' She started at first, with a start of alarm and wonder ; for though she had been aware of a figure seated on the bench opposite her, she had given it no attention : but before Carew had reached the pavement under her, she had divined who he was, and with a gasp had pronounced his name. ' You here ! ' she said. ' And to think of you here ! ' 'Why not?' he replied. 'This is surely a place of meetings. It is I, rather, who should be surprised at the sight of you. When last I heard of you, I heard you were in South America.' ' You 'have heard much about me probably that had very little truth in it. Some of your friends may even have told you I was enjoying myself. But answer me this — if you did not know I was here, how is it that I find you watching my windows?' 'Your song brought me,' he said. 'I came to it like a moth to a candle. Do you remember the time when I heard you sing it first? Until to-night I have never heard it since.' 'Since then,' she murmured, 'many tilings have hap- pened to me.' Carew bent his head, and said in a low tone, ' What things ? ' ' I have eaten the fruit that you urged me not to cat.' 'Well,' said Carew, with his head still bent, 'and was 60 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. the fruit good for food? What have you found life since then?' ' Listen,' she said, and she leaned forward and looked down on him, ' shall I tell you what I have found life since then — yes, and before then ? ' 'Tell me,' he answered. She paused till he raised his eyes to her ; and then, in a low voice that was almost as musical as her singing, said slowly : — '"A husk of pleasure round a heart of sorrow."' Carew looked at her with an odd sensation of wonder. There was something in her radiant aspect, touched as it was with melancholy, which made it seem as though some unreal light was playing on her, and produced a feeling in him that he was going through a scene in an opera, rather than one in actual life. He was not pleased at the meet- ing. He was not pleased with the memories awakened by it. He had long ceased to think Madame de Saint Valery worthy of the interest he had once felt in her, and the trouble he had taken to advise her and guide her prudently. Yet all the same, as he heard her voice and looked at her, he began to understand again a thing which he had almost forgotten — how that interest which he had once felt had been excited by her. Presently, however, his attention was suddenly diverted ; she too, at the same moment, turned her head rapidly ; and there, standing close beside her, was another female form, as beautiful or even more beautiful than her own. The hair was slightly darker, the dress was far simpler, and there was something childlike in the unabashed soft eyes. Madame de Saint Valery exhibited no confusion on see- ing her. ' Violet,' she said, ' here is an old friend of mine, Mr. Carew. Mr. Carew, I think you have never met my cousin, Miss Capel.' On Miss Capel's eyes Carew's were fixed intently, and hers met his without any sign of flinching. 'Yes,' he said, 'I think I have met her — and so few chap. vii. SIBYL AND SIREN 6 1 hours ago, that I hope she has not forgotten it. I had the good luck to prevent her losing her fan. It was you, wasn't it?' he went on, addressing the fair stranger directly. ' Indeed, if I am not mistaken, there is that very fan in your hand now. Let me look at it — will you ? — and I then shall be quite sure.' She made no movement whatever to do as Carew asked her ; but she looked at him fixedly as if he had been some inanimate object, and a grave tantalising smile became slowly visible on her face. Then, by way of answer, she opened the fan wide, and with a little abrupt gesture pressed it against her breast. Carew, as he watched her standing in this attitude, was conscious of precisely the same impression as that which her presence had produced on him at their first meeting amongst the mountains. Again it was as if some new country were opening out before him, all its ways blossoming with lilacs and hawthorns, full of the scents and the alluring air of spring, and yet sad, like spring, with a longing for something that is yet to come. This state of mind, however, was almost in an instant disturbed by the appearance of a servant, who spoke to Madame de Saint Valery ; and Carew gathered from what the man said that there was a carriage at the door to take Miss Capel away. 'And so,' he said, 'you are not living with your cousin?' 'No,' she replied, with an accent of slight displeasure at the question. ' I am with my parents. They have been to- night to the theatre, and I must be back by the same time that they are.' 'Indeed you must,' said Madame de Saint Valery. 'This young lady is kept in the very greatest order. It is only by way of a treat that I have been allowed to have her this evening. Violet, come, it is late ; your maid is waiting for you, and we must bid Mr. Carew good-night. Perhaps, if he is staying long here, he will come and see me some day.' Carew, left once more to himself, remained for a few moments eyeing the villa abstractedly ; and then turned to 62 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book r. resume his walk along the Promenade des Anglais. It was perfectly quiet. Two men, indeed, just as he was in the act of turning, were visible at a short distance, strolling slowly arm-in-arm together ; but they disappeared presently down a side street, and except for Carew himself, there was not a creature stirring. Stimulated by the solitude, his meditations became as busy as ever again. He was not sorry to have escaped from Madame de Saint Valery ; still he could not help thinking about her, and wondering what kind of life she was leading. He soon found, however, that his thoughts persisted in dwelling on her, less on her own account than on account of her relationship to the girl — to the strange magnetic presence, who was with her. That soft regard, which was at once earnest and languid, passionate and yet ingenuous, mature and yet childlike, haunted his memory as though it were still present. Then the image recurred to him of Miss Consuelo Burton, and he broke for a moment into a low laugh of amusement at the fickleness and agility with which his sentiments changed their object. But the sense of amusement presently died away ; and though these two female figures still held their ground in his consciousness, he ceased to regard the fact in a grotesque or ludicrous light. On the contrary, as he pursued his walk, it assumed a meaning that grew in depth and in suggestiveness, until two ways of life seemed opening out before him ; and one of these figures urged him to tread the one, and the other allured and pleaded with him to be her companion on the other. They were two ways, leading to two different worlds. One was the world of love, and passion, and poetry, where the hidden prizes of life seemed to be sleeping in the heart, as the rose in the unfolded bud, or the statue in the unhewn marble. The other was a world of ever-widening duties, where love was not absent, but by itself never could satisfy. It was a world where lovers looked beyond their own circle of bliss, and felt that there could be no rest for the soul but in suffering for those that suffer and labouring chaf. tii. SIBYL AND SIREN 63 for those whose lot their labour could make lighter, and where their deepest union was not when their eyes met, but when side by side they were fixed on a common altar of sacrifice. ' Once,' he said, ' it was enough to work out one's own salvation — to see that the blossom of one's own heart ex- panded, and that the dew of the spirit was lying clear upon it ; but now — is not the world changing? Is it any longer enough if my rose blossoms whilst a million rose-trees round me are leafless and have only thorns ? Can I,' and he seemed to see the eyes of Miss Consuelo Burton looking not at but away from him — ' can I forget that the poor are suffering, merely because I may see none suffering round me?' The current of these reflections was here suddenly broken by a hand laid on his arm, and a man's voice at his ear. He started and looked round, and there at his side was Mr. Inigo. Whether Mr. Inigo's resentment, whatever its cause, had actually evaporated or no, there was at all events no trace of it in either his look or manner. On the contrary, his eyes gleamed with an expression of intimate knowingncss, and, fixing them on Carew, as if they were a couple of gimlets, he said, after a moment's pause : — ' Upon my word, you're a pretty fellow, you are ! We saw you just now — the Prince and I, as we were passing — going through a charming little scene with Madame de Saint Valery — something quite in the style of Romeo and Juliet. I can tell you that there's been a regular sensation about her at Nice this winter.' Carew stared at Mr. Inigo witli a frigid air of surprise. 'There has been,' he said, 'as you amusingly suggest, an impromptu play. It seems that, also, there has been an impromptu audience.' Mr. Inigo winced slightly, as if he had been accused of eavesdropping ; and then, in a voice of calm and lofty ex- planation, 'I passed you,' he said, 'just now, as I was seeing Prince Olgourki home. I went back with him from the 64 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. Ccrck, as far as his own door.' He seemed as he spoke to be buoyed up above the levels of criticism ; and presently with a sigh of proud and privileged sorrow, ' By the way,' he added, 'the beggar — he's just won twelve hundred francs from me— bad luck to him ! ' By this time they were close to their hotel, and Carew, acknowledging the information with distant but scrupulous politeness, bade Mr. Inigo good-night and made an instant escape from him. Mr. Inigo stood for a moment motionless, staring at the door by which Carew had entered. ' Confound the fellow ! ' he muttered. ' Who is he, I should like to know, that he should give himself these deuced airs with me? If he did mean anything by that which he said just now — if Well, trust me for being even with him, that's all ! ' CHAPTER VIII. A CONFESSION. Carew the following evening was once more in his chateau. He had gone early in the day to Mrs. Harley's hotel, but had not at once paid his respects to her. He had found some mysterious business there, of which he told her nothing. Having transacted this, he had then spent half an hour with her, and finally made an arrangement that she and her husband should come to him three days later, which would give him time to communicate with the other friends he was expecting. He was now sitting in solitude at his writing-table, and before he went to bed he had finished the following letter. It was a letter to Mrs. Harley. ' Since,' it began, ' I am so soon to see you again, you will wonder, on receiving this, what on earth I can have to say to you. Well, first of all, I am going to say something which certainly sounds most inhospitable. Glad as I am that you are coming, I am glad you are not coming till Thursday. I will now tell you my reason. There are chap. vin. A CONFESSION 65 one or two things as to which I wish to explain myself; I should like to do so before we meet again ; and I can do so better by writing than I could by word of mouth. In a moment you will see my meaning. 'Whenever we meet, as you truly said yesterday, we have always, for some time past, got on the same subjects — subjects so near to the daily lives of all of us, but which people in our class are accustomed to think so little about. You know, of course, what I am speaking of: not of the incidents of mere party politics, but of something compared to which these are merely bubbles on the surface. I am speaking of our existing social civilisation, and our own class in particular, with the future that lies before it — of wealth and poverty, of privilege, and of popular power. We get on these subjects because we both feel their import- ance — because we both feel that the history of our own coming years is involved in them. I know, for my part, that I think about little else. Night and day they disturb and occupy me, haunting my mind as rooks haunt a rookery. The noise of society may for a time frighten them away, but they come back again the moment the noise ceases, and all the boughs are black with them. I say they are like rooks. So they are, but with a difference. They have the habits of rooks, but they have the voices of ravens. ' However, let that pass. The practical point is this. When you come here next Friday, we shall no doubt begin about them again ; and I want first to say one or two things to you, which will help you to see clearly what my own position is. You know how your views on some social points surprise me. You know, in fact, how — not to mince matters — I can hardly believe that you are quite as sincere in them as you fancy. You, a woman of old and distin- guished family, bred in the very heart of an aristocratic society, with the tastes of an aristocracy visible in every one of your surroundings, and the manners of an aristocracy visible in every instinctive movement — in the way you carry your head, in the little things you laugh at — it is impossible F 66 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES hook i. for me to believe that you can really ignore the difference between yourself and — well, how shall I best describe them ? — those excellent people we were talking about yesterday, who, however great they may be in point of talent, have not the advantages of the same social history. I am not talking of the qualities which distinguish you as an indivi- dual. I am talking of those which distinguish you as be- longing to a certain class. For social purposes, individual qualities are very little more than the strings are in a violin ; but that class which you belong to, with its natural position, with its memories, with its historic consciousness, is the body of the violin itself. And think what a structure this violin is ! All the centuries of our country's life are em- bodied in it. It is as subtle a piece of work as any master- piece of Stradivarius ; and suppose it destroyed, before we could reproduce it we should have to reproduce a thousand years of history. Think what you mean yourself by high- bred ladies and gentlemen. Think of the social tone that prevails amongst them. You will realise as fully as I do that its ease combined with courtesy, its grace without affectation, is possible only amongst a privileged circle of people with a special present position which reposes on a special past. ' Have I said one word in which you do not agree with me? In spite of all your fondness for the " other people " who amuse you so much, I am perfectly confident that you must agree with me thus far. Now, however, I am going to part company with you, and soar into the regions of what you would call the ridiculous. I'm not at all certain that I don't myself agree with you. But I can't help it. What I feel I feel. Do you know old Lady Mangotsfield ? Just before I left London I dined with her, and during dinner the conversation turned upon heraldry. "My dear," she said to me, " we have none of us our right number of quarterings ; our shocking system of marriage has always prevented that. You and I ought both of us to have a hundred and twenty- eight. We are the only people in England they would not be thrown away upon." Well, so far as I am concerned, CHAP. VIII. A CONFESSION 6? Lady Mangotsfield was perfectly right. As for a hundred and twenty- eight, I won't speak about that. I will content myself with sixty-four ; and I can honestly tell you that, were such a bargain possible, I would, for the power to prove my own sixty-four quarterings, pay a good third of the income that will be probably mine some day. In the male line, as you know, we go straight back to the Conquest ; and we have married into some of the very noblest families, not only of England, but of France and Italy also. But — there is always a but somewhere — we have married into other families as well ; and if, in such a place as the old hall at Otterton — the old hall which it has always been my dream to restore — I were to prepare places for the sixty-four shields I speak of, twenty of them at least would be blanks. Each of the blanks, every time I looked at it, would be a blow to me. Can you imagine anything sillier? I doubt if I can ; and the logic of my prejudices is, in actual life, con- stantly melted or blown to the winds by friendship. But, particular cases apart, the prejudice still exists in me. It is deep in my heart ; I can't get rid of it. My feelings as to this matter are Austrian far more than English ; and when I hear it discussed whether such and such a man is a gentle- man, I long to put the question in the simpler language of the Continent, and ask to be told whether or no he is noble. 'There's one side of me ; and I think I have drawn it plainly enough. I now come to the other ; and it is this other side which I am most anxious to show you. During the last three or four years — the very years during which my class prejudices have been strengthening — I have been setting myself to do something which I never did before. I have been studying the condition, the sorrows, the claimsj and the hopes of the poor. I have been studying the classes who live by manual labour — those on whose shoulders all civilisation rests. ' How many of us die, having known that these classes exist, and yet having never, in any vital way, realised it ! I have realised it at last; the idea of them and their lot F 2 68 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. has become constantly present to me, and I have been affected by it very much in the same way as a man who has passed his whole life by a duck-pond is affected by the sight of the seashore and of the Atlantic. ' I said just now, in speaking of social tone, in speaking of certain commanding and graceful qualities, that the in- dividual as an individual was nothing more than a violin string, whilst the body of the violin, on which the tone depended, was an historical and hereditary aristocracy. Let me use the same comparison again, but with a deeper meaning. If an historical aristocracy is the body of the social violin, the People is the body of the moral violoncello. The vibrations of our moral existence become music only through their relations to that, and through the resonance it gives them. 'Are you not astonished to hear me speak like this, especially considering the way in which I was speaking only last night, and the wonderful confessions with which I began this letter? Perhaps you will think that my popular sym- pathies are merely a piece of sentiment with which I idly like to amuse myself in a seclusion, where I have given myself no chance of ever putting them into practice. That, however, is certainly not the case. I love this castle, these walls and towers, these painted ceilings, these carved and emblazoned chimney-pieces, for the same reason that I love these old mediaeval towns. I love them because they are to my mind like a mirror in which the past is reflected, when Radicals were not, and equality was not dreamed of — ■ the past when men recognised their superiors, and ordered themselves reverently, with no sense of humiliation. But I am here, usually alone, not for the sake merely of flattering my own prejudices ; I am here to continue a study of things which are essentially modern. I am here to study that greatest of modern questions — not how to reconcile the People with their present lot, but how to make their lot one with which they shall be willing to be reconciled. CHAP. VIII. A CONFESSION 69 ' No doubt you will wonder what I can mean by all this. When you come, I will show you. 'Anyhow, as for my views, here is an honest sketch of them. I wonder if you agree with them. There is one person, at any rate, who, I think, does ; and that is Miss Consuelo Burton. I wish you could have brought her here with you. Unless I misunderstand her on the point I have just alluded to, she would have added much to the interest of the party. But I fear that her coming is quite out of the question. You shall judge for yourself, however. You saw that her sisters were very fairly civil to me, especially when they found that I was still friends with their Cardinal. But I did venture last night to suggest to them an expedition here, and I saw plainly that they were not anxious to come. It is hardly likely, therefore, that they would let her come without them. Still, if your diplomacy could manage the matter, you know what will please me ; and, now I think of it, you might mention to them, what is quite true, that I am expecting amongst my visitors two most excellent Catholics, Lady Chislehurst and a genuine live priest. 'You told me yesterday that my friends would be too smart for you. But my priest — will he be too smart ? You won't say so, I think, when you have seen him. I have mentioned him particularly, not merely as a bait to catch Miss Consuelo with, but also because a little tale hangs on his visit to me ; and I have confessed to you already so many of my own follies, that I am going to venture to add this to their number. ' Well, in spite of my idle life and many faults, some of which have been real enough, some only invented for me, you give me, I know, credit for having at least enough notion of duty to make me unhappy— I don't say at not doing it, but at not even seeing clearly what ought to be done. You know how widespread is the sense of doubt and bewilderment amongst all classes, and specially amongst our own, as to what we should do with ourselves, not only as 70 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book i. moral beings, but also as people inheriting a particular place in society. And I can tell you honestly, and without any exaggeration, that, for my own part, unless I am to loathe my very existence, some clear notion of duty I must possess or struggle for ; and if other people are to inspire me with any real interest, the same want must be in their natures too. ' Such being the case, towards the end of the London season, when many things had gone wrong with me, and all the preceding weeks stared me in the face — a cluster of wasted days — I was sitting one morning in the park, and thinking, with a sense of rest, of making a retreat to my cousin's beautiful villa, with its fountains, its terraces, and its oleanders, on the breast of the Lago Maggiore. I was thinking of this, when the idea suddenly flashed upon me of getting together a small informal society, whose members were to be bound together only by the four following links. They were all of them to have this same sense I speak of — that we each of us have some duty, could we only find it out; and that, having no duty, we simply are beasts and fools : and they were all to appreciate the changing state of society, sufficiently to see that our duty was no longer clear to us. Secondly, they were all of them, I do not say to be Christians, but at least to regard Christianity with minds open to conviction, and take at their true worth the maudlin inanities of the Humanitarians. Thirdly, as to their per- sonal conduct, there were to be no severe requirements. A member, for instance, would not be expelled even supposing he had run away with another man's wife ; though naturally he would not be allowed to bring the lady to our meetings. He would be expelled for one thing only — namely, if, having run away with her, or made himself too agreeable to her, he accommodated his theories to suit his practice, and, by persuading himself that his conduct was right, deliberately closed his ears to the religion which would pronounce it wrong. The last qualification of the members was, that they were all to be ladies and gentlemen ; and, considering chap. vin. A CONFESSION 7 1 the remarks with which I began this letter, you will know well enough what I mean by that. 1 And now you will ask, What was this society to do ? With what object was it to be got together ? The question, I confess, is a little hard to answer. That object, when I try to describe it in words, seems to shrivel up or vanish directly the words touch it ; or, at least, to become so slight and trivial as to look like a quaint fancy strayed into the daylight from a dream. But, if your imagination and sympathy will meet me half-way, you will see, perhaps, that my words suggest more than they actually describe. Well, what the society was to do was this. Its members were simply to meet each other at certain intervals, at various country houses belonging to one or other of them, and such meetings would constitute a kind of informal retreat. Yes, you say, but what then ? When these good people met, what was to be their programme ? Were they to read papers, or to have formal discussions, as if they were members of a Social Science Congress? Nothing of the kind. There was to be no programme whatever ; nothing out of the common was to be expected of them. They were to be free, if they liked, to behave themselves as idly and as pleasantly as they would if they were paying any ordinary country visit. How, then, you may ask, would such meetings differ from such a visit ? They would differ, I hoped, in this way : not in what those concerned would be required to do, but in what they naturally would do. Naturally, easily, without any stiffness or formality, some talk would arise, some exchange of ideas, with regard to those subjects which were the basis of their association. Sometimes it would be cynical, sometimes flippant ; some- times it would be earnest and serious ; sometimes it would deal with the subjects in question directly ; sometimes merely by implication, the immediate subject being, perhaps, a piece of gossip. Its tone would vary, and I should ex- pect it to vary. Sometimes there would be little of it, and sometimes much. But I am persuaded that, could my 72 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book r. idea ever be carried into execution — and I have by no means given it up — the members would, when such a meet- ing was over, carry away from it some idea or experience which would make life certainly richer, possibly more clear, and which, even if it did not make them practically more useful, would at any rate sharpen their moral sight suf- ficiently to make their uselessness a deeper and more un- pardonable sin. ' Well, such was my scheme. I conceived it, as I told you, in a moment of depression and perplexity, when I felt the want of some sense of companionship ; and though I cannot say that, as yet, my society is actually formed, I have one or two friends who already understand me, and are willing, when the occasion comes, to be members of it. One of them is the Catholic priest I spoke of. The other is Lord Aiden. These are not all, but I mention them specially now, because they will both, I hope, be here during your visit. ' Lord Aiden you know ; so I needn't say much about him. But think of him for a moment, and I am quite sure you will agree with me that he is the very man cut out to be a brother of our order. No doubt he is not one who directly would guide or strengthen us. He wants a new gospel ; he certainly has not got one, and even as for his wants, he takes them rather lazily ; but his presence always seems to fill a room with suggestion. Think how many of the fruits of life he has tasted. He has written poetry which is read all over Europe ; all over Europe women have fallen in love with him : at the same time, he has been an astute man of affairs, and has occupied one of the most splendid and brilliant posts which a public career can offer a British subject. And yet he has not found the pearl of price. He is old enough to know that he has not found it. He is not so old that he has lost the desire to find it. ' " Yes," you will say, " Lord Aiden is all very well ; but what possible place in your society can there be for a Catholic priest? Whether he is right or wrong in his idea chaf. viii. A CONFESSION J$ of duty, what duty is must, for him, be beyond question. He has got his pearl, or what he thinks his pearl, and he must stick to it. : ' I expect you will say that ; it is a very natural thought ; but wait till you see him, and then you will think differently. You don't like Papists, I know ; but you won't object to this one. I don't mean to tell you that he is not perfectly orthodox ; and he's just as intolerant as most intellectual Catholics are — that is to say, for a man who has any convictions, he is certainly one of the most tolerant men imaginable. He is also a perfect man of the world. He was once in the Guards, once he stood for Parliament, and he once had a confidential appointment under a Con- servative Home Secretary. If it were not for his dress, you would not on first meeting him suspect him to be a priest. You would only, perhaps, wonder at two things — the shadow on his face as of premature old age, and the know- ledge of the world stamped on it, with the absence of any taint of the world. Also, unless the conversation were to turn directly on religion, you might talk for days to him without knowing what his religion was. I say you might ; but there I am wrong, and I retract the word. You would, I think, in time detect the truth ; but this would not be because he flashed his spiritual lamp into your eyes, but because, though the lamp was hidden, you would recognise the light that fell from it on all the secular subjects which have been for years past engrossing him. What these subjects are you will discover when you come here ; and I think the discovery will be very interesting and wholesome for you. ' There is nothing in him that could offend, there is nothing in him that could even annoy you ; but there is, on the other hand, much — yes, I must say this again — that will interest, astonish, and be good for you. You will see that, fixed though his religious views are, the problems presented to him by this epoch of change we live in are to him as perplexing and real as they are to you and me, and that his ears are as open as ours can be to the cry that is rising around 74 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book x. us for some new moral revelation. Of course, the Church is always, according to his view, the same ; but the world is always changing, and its needs are always changing, and there is always in this way something new for the Church to discover. "The Catholic Church," he once said to me, "is the Columbus of modern society who will guide us eventually to the new moral continent which other explorers are trying to reach in vain." ' However, there is no occasion for me to go on describ- ing him. When you come here, you will be able to judge of him for yourself. He was the first person to whom I spoke about my projected society, and he is the person who has best understood my idea and most fully sympathised with it. He approves thoroughly of my rules, even my moral ones, and especially those relating to our social qualifi- cations and fastidiousness. ' I tell you all this because I have some hope it may interest you. But do not alarm yourself with the thought that when you arrive next Thursday you will find the society in conclave, and be asked to take part in its deliberations. My society, as I tell you, is as yet not even formed ; it pos- sibly never will be. Our party here will be nothing but an ordinary meeting of friends : I venture to hope, a pleasant one. ' I have one other scheme — I might almost say plot — in my head, with regard to one other person ; but it is so daring and requires so much resolution to bring about, that I must tantalise you for the present by observing a discreet silence about it. If it comes to anything, you will find it out quite soon enough. Meanwhile, it may amuse you to puzzle over it. ' I wait for Thursday with impatience. I am longing to show the chateau to you. Good-night. The clock in the tower, which is striking half-past eleven, was given to a Courbon-Loubet by Henri Quatre.' BOOK II. CHAPTER I. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU. The inland district which lies between Nice and Cannes can be reached by carriage with perfect ease from either place ; but to the average visitor who frequents these towns in the winter, it is a district practically as strange and as far off as Siberia. Of course, from the railway he has general hasty views of it. He is familiar enough with the shapes of its distant mountains, and the white and sparkling dots which he knows must be mountain villages. He is aware also of the vast intervening landscape ; and he constantly looks towards its soft, bewildering ranges, expecting them to yield to the atmosphere some new surprise of colour. But of these ranges as objects of local knowledge, with a local civilisation lurking in their folded hollows, he thinks no more than he does of the clouds that surround a sunset. He never asks why this variety of colour visits them — why some are a pearly grey, and why others are fledged with purple. He never dreams that here are fields of violets, and here terraced vine- yards, and here romantic regions of unconjectured pine- forests. Still less does he dream of the people by whom the district is inhabited ; of the embattled ramparts that their villages are still surrounded by ; of the streets and fountains that have been unchanged for centuries ; of the vaulted smithies, the old echoing drinking-shops, which are the same as they were in the days of the seigneurs ; of the feudal mills and farmhouses, still used and tenanted ; and of the roofless castles that on many a hidden eminence still rear their towers, with hardly a sign of ruin. y6 THE OLD ORDER CHANGES book ii. Certainly these sights and scenes were entirely new to Mrs. Harley, as with two companions— her husband and another lady— she was passing through them on her journey to Courbon-Loubet, in a huge old-fashioned travelling carriage which Carew had sent for them. For the first half- hour or so they had rumbled through the suburbs of Nice. The express from Paris had been sweeping by with its sleeping-cars, and the walls on each side of the road were red and blue with advertisements. An hour later, and the stamping horses were dragging them over rough mediseval paving-stones, through a street where the newest and gaudiest-looking house had been last re-decorated before the First Revolution ; where the old women sat at their doors spinning, with hats like those of witches and with distaffs worthy of the Fates ; where brown shy faces peered at them through grated windows, or from under mysterious arches, out of wells of darkness ; and where every head, as the carriage passed, was raised and bent with a mixture of grave respect and of frankness. All seemed to belong to an epoch not the present, from the fantastic beggar with his fur cap held out to them, to the old coachman, gaudy in faded livery, and the arms and coronet repeated on every panel. ' In fact,' said Mrs. Harley, when they were once more in the country, and were entering a road that led through a wild pine-forest, ' Mr. Carew was perfectly right in telling us that a visit to him would be an excursion into the last century. Of course,' she added, 'he can know nothing except the surface of things — no more do we. But so far as the surface goes, I must say the illusion is perfect. It's quite as good as a scene at a first-rate theatre.' Presently there was visible through a sudden opening of the trees a far-off village perched on the side of an Alpine precipice ; and the coachman, gathering from their exclama- tions what it was that had attracted them, turned round and said in a grave whisper that it was a village of bad repute, and that all the women in it were sorceresses. 'Better and better still,' exclaimed Harley, in high good chap. i. AN ENCHANTED CHATEAU 77 humour. ' Let us hope, however, that the Republic does not burn them. Look, what a forest this is ! It covers the whole ridge, and here we are about to toil to the top of it. The very place for the witches to have a midnight picnic with the Devil in ! I shouldn't wonder if it were the be