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Felix remembered that they never had any proper meals, but, when hungry, went to the kitchen, where a wood-fire was always burning, and either heated up coffee, and porridge that was already made, with boiled eggs and baked potatoes and apples, or devoured bread, cheese, jam, honey, cream, tomatoes, butter, nuts, and fruit, that were always set out there on a wooden table, under a muslin awning; he remembered, too, that they washed up their own bowls and spoons and plates, and, having finished, went outside and drew themselves a draught of water. Queer life, and deuced uncomfortable – almost Chinese in its reversal of everything that every one else was doing.

      “No,” he said, “I’m not.”

      “I am. Here she is.”

      Felix felt his heart beating – Clara was not alone in being frightened of this woman. She was coming through the orchard with the dog; a remarkable-looking woman – oh, certainly remarkable! She greeted him without surprise and, sitting down close to Tod, said: “I’m glad to see you.”

      Why did this family somehow make him feel inferior? The way she sat there and looked at him so calmly! Still more the way she narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her lips, as if rather malicious thoughts were rising in her soul! Her hair, as is the way of fine, soft, almost indigo-colored hair, was already showing threads of silver; her whole face and figure thinner than he had remembered. But a striking woman still – with wonderful eyes! Her dress – Felix had scanned many a crank in his day – was not so alarming as it had once seemed to Clara; its coarse-woven, deep-blue linen and needle-worked yoke were pleasing to him, and he could hardly take his gaze from the kingfisher-blue band or fillet that she wore round that silver-threaded black hair.

      He began by giving her Clara’s note, the wording of which he had himself dictated:

      “DEAR KIRSTEEN:

      “Though we have not seen each other for so long, I am sure you will forgive my writing. It would give us so much pleasure if you and the two children would come over for a night or two while Felix and his young folk are staying with us. It is no use, I fear, to ask Tod; but of course if he would come, too, both Stanley and myself would be delighted.

      “Yours cordially,

      “CLARA FREELAND.”

      She read it, handed it to Tod, who also read it and handed it to Felix. Nobody said anything. It was so altogether simple and friendly a note that Felix felt pleased with it, thinking: ‘I expressed that well!’

      Then Tod said: “Go ahead, old man! You’ve got something to say about the youngsters, haven’t you?”

      How on earth did he know that? But then Tod HAD a sort of queer prescience.

      “Well,” he brought out with an effort, “don’t you think it’s a pity to embroil your young people in village troubles? We’ve been hearing from Stanley – ”

      Kirsteen interrupted in her calm, staccato voice with just the faintest lisp:

      “Stanley would not understand.”

      She had put her arm through Tod’s, but never removed her eyes from her brother-in-law’s face.

      “Possibly,” said Felix, “but you must remember that Stanley, John, and myself represent ordinary – what shall we say – level-headed opinion.”

      “With which we have nothing in common, I’m afraid.”

      Felix glanced from her to Tod. The fellow had his head on one side and seemed listening to something in the distance. And Felix felt a certain irritation.

      “It’s all very well,” he said, “but I think you really have got to look at your children’s future from a larger point of view. You don’t surely want them to fly out against things before they’ve had a chance to see life for themselves.”

      She answered:

      “The children know more of life than most young people. They’ve seen it close to, they’ve seen its realities. They know what the tyranny of the countryside means.”

      “Yes, yes,” said Felix, “but youth is youth.”

      “They are not too young to know and feel the truth.”

      Felix was impressed. How those narrowing eyes shone! What conviction in that faintly lisping voice!

      ‘I am a fool for my pains,’ he thought, and only said:

      “Well, what about this invitation, anyway?”

      “Yes; it will be just the thing for them at the moment.”

      The words had to Felix a somewhat sinister import. He knew well enough that she did not mean by them what others would have meant. But he said: “When shall we expect them? Tuesday, I suppose, would be best for Clara, after her weekend. Is there no chance of you and Tod?”

      She quaintly wrinkled her lips into not quite a smile, and answered:

      “Tod shall say. Do you hear, Tod?”

      “In the meadow. It was there yesterday – first time this year.”

      Felix slipped his arm through his brother’s.

      “Quite so, old man.”

      “What?” said Tod. “Ah! let’s go in. I’m awfully hungry…”

      Sometimes out of a calm sky a few drops fall, the twigs rustle, and far away is heard the muttering of thunder; the traveller thinks: ‘A storm somewhere about.’ Then all once more is so quiet and peaceful that he forgets he ever had that thought, and goes on his way careless.

      So with Felix returning to Becket in Stanley’s car. That woman’s face, those two young heathens – the unconscious Tod!

      There was mischief in the air above that little household. But once more the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows so permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered among their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled Felix to quietude, and the faint far muttering of that thunder died away.

      Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up there by Clara. It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well known for sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though it had been there a long time – a pretty creature with shoulders drooping, eyes modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her head.

      “Well, Dad?”

      “They’re coming.”

      “When?”

      “On Tuesday – the youngsters, only.”

      “You might tell me a little about them.”

      But Felix only smiled. His powers of description faltered before that task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject them to failure.

      CHAPTER VIII

      Not till three o’clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come. Lord and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon train brought three members of the Lower House, who liked a round of golf – Colonel Martlett, Mr. Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar – with their wives; also Miss Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere; and Moorsome, the landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who went nowhere, and that in almost perfect silence, which he afterward avenged. By a train almost sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs, alone, Henry Wiltram, whom some believed to have been the very first to have ideas about the land. He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott, the advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude Ughtred in her beauty. Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while dressing, that almost every shade of opinion about the land was represented this week-end. She was not, she said, afraid of anything, if she could keep Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart. The House of Commons men would, of course, be all right. Stanley assented: “They’ll be ‘fed up’ with talk. But how about Britto – he can sometimes be very nasty, and Cuthcott’s been pretty rough on him, in his rag.”

      Clara had remembered that, and she was putting Lady Maude on one side of Cuthcott,

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