The light of eight candles in thin silver candlesticks, four on either side of the carved stone hearth, illumined that room. Their gentle radiance penetrated but a little way into the great dark space lined with books, panelled and floored with black oak, where the acrid fragrance of leather and dried roseleaves seemed to drench the, very soul with the aroma of the past. Above the huge fireplace, with light falling on one side of his shaven face, hung a portrait--painter unknown--of that Cardinal Caradoc who suffered for his faith in the sixteenth century. Ascetic, crucified, with a little smile clinging to the lips and deep-set eyes, he presided, above the bluefish flames of a log fire.
Father and son found some difficulty in beginning.
Each of those two felt as though he were in the presence of someone else's very near relation. They had, in fact, seen extremely little of each other, and not seen that little long.
Lord Valleys uttered the first remark:
"Well, my dear fellow, what are you going to do now? I think we can make certain of this seat down here, if you like to stand."Miltoun had answered: "Thanks, very much; I don't think so at present."Through the thin fume of his cigar Lord Valleys watched that long figure sunk deep in the chair opposite.
"Why not?" he said. "You can't begin too soon; unless you think you ought to go round the world.""Before I can become a man of it?"
Lord Valleys gave a rather disconcerted laugh.
"There's nothing in politics you can't pick up as you go along," he said. "How old are you?""Twenty-four."
"You look older." A faint line, as of contemplation, rose between his eyes. Was it fancy that a little smile was hovering about Miltoun's lips?
"I've got a foolish theory," came from those lips, "that one must know the conditions first. I want to give at least five years to that."Lord Valleys raised his eyebrows. "Waste of time," he said. "You'd know more at the end of it, if you went into the House at once. You take the matter too seriously.""No doubt."
For fully a minute Lord Valleys made no answer; he felt almost ruffled. Waiting till the sensation had passed, he said: "Well, my dear fellow, as you please."Miltoun's apprenticeship to the profession of politics was served in a slum settlement; on his father's estates; in Chambers at the Temple; in expeditions to Germany, America, and the British Colonies;in work at elections; and in two forlorn hopes to capture a constituency which could be trusted not to change its principles. He read much, slowly, but with conscientious tenacity, poetry, history, and works on philosophy, religion, and social matters.
Fiction, and especially foreign fiction, he did not care for. With the utmost desire to be wide and impartial, he sucked in what ministered to the wants of his nature, rejecting unconsciously all that by its unsuitability endangered the flame of his private spirit.
What he read, in fact, served only to strengthen those profounder convictions which arose from his temperament. With a contempt of the vulgar gewgaws of wealth and rank he combined a humble but intense and growing conviction of his capacity for leadership, of a spiritual superiority to those whom he desired to benefit. There was no trace, indeed, of the common Pharisee in Miltoun, he was simple and direct;but his eyes, his gestures, the whole man, proclaimed the presence of some secret spring of certainty, some fundamental well into which no disturbing glimmers penetrated. He was not devoid of wit, but he was devoid of that kind of wit which turns its eyes inward, and sees something of the fun that lies in being what you are. Miltoun saw the world and all the things thereof shaped like spires--even when they were circles. He seemed to have no sense that the Universe was equally compounded of those two symbols, whose point of reconciliation had not yet been discovered.
Such was he, then, when the Member for his native division was made a peer.
He had reached the age of thirty without ever having been in love, leading a life of almost savage purity, with one solitary breakdown.
Women were afraid of him. And he was perhaps a little afraid of woman. She was in theory too lovely and desirable--the half-moon.
