And suddenly,—it was in Kensington Gardens
that out of the heart of a long and vague reverie
there came a flash—an illumination—which
wholly changed the life and future of Doris Meadows.
After the thought in which it took shape had seized
upon her, she sat for some time motionless; then rising
to her feet, tottering a little, like one in bewilderment,
she turned northwards, and made her way hurriedly towards
Lancaster Gate. In a house there, lived a lady,
a widowed lady, who was Doris’s godmother, and
to whom Doris—who had lost her own mother
in her childhood—had turned for counsel
before now. How long it was since she had seen
“Cousin Julia"!—nearly two months.
And here she was, hastening to her, and not able to
bear the thought that in all human probability Cousin
Julia was not in town.
But, by good luck, Doris found her godmother, perching
in London between a Devonshire visit and a Scotch
one. They talked long, and Doris walked slowly
home across the park. A glory of spreading sun
lay over the grassy glades; the Serpentine held reflections
of a sky barred with rose; London, transfigured, seemed
a city of pearl and fire. And in Doris’s
heart there was a glory like that of the evening,—and,
like the burning sky, bearing with it a promise of
fair days to come. The glory and the promise
stole through all her thoughts, softening and transmuting
everything.
“When he grows up—if he were
to marry such a woman—and I didn’t
know—if all his life—and
mine—were spoilt—and nobody said
a word!”
Her eyes filled with tears. She seemed to be
walking with Arthur through a world of beauty, hand
in hand.
How many hours to Pitlochry? She ran into the
Kensington house, asking for railway guides, and peremptorily
telling Jane to get down the small suitcase from the
box-room at once.
PART III
CHAPTER V
“‘Barbarians, Philistines, Populace!’”
The young golden-haired man of letters who was lounging
on the grass beside Arthur Meadows repeated the words
to himself in an absent voice, turning over the pages
meanwhile of a book lying before him, as though in
search of a passage he had noticed and lost. He
presently found it again, and turned laughing towards
Meadows, who was trifling with a French novel.
“Do you remember this passage in Culture
and Anarchy—’I often, therefore,
when I want to distinguish clearly the aristocratic
class from the Philistines proper, or middle class,
name the former, in my own mind, the Barbarians.
And when I go through the country, and see this or
that beautiful and imposing seat of theirs crowning
the landscape, “There,” I say to myself,
“is a great fortified post of the Barbarians!"’”
The youth pointed smiling to the fine Scotch house
seen sideways on the other side of the lawn.
Its turreted and battlemented front rose high above
the low and spreading buildings which made the bulk
of the house, so that it was a feudal castle—by
no means, however, so old as it looked—on
a front view, and a large and roomy villa from the
rear. Meadows, looking at it, appreciated the
fitness of the quotation, and laughed in response.
