The house-party were sitting round the hall-fire when he entered. The high-roofed place, the flagged floor strewn with rugs, and its walls bright with the glow of fire on armour, gave him a boyish sense of comfort. Two men in knickerbockers were lounging on a settle, and at his entrance came forward to greet him. One was Sir Hugh Clanroyden, a follower of his own; the other he recognised as a lawyer named Durward. From the circle of women Miss Etheridge rose and welcomed him. Her mother was out, but would be back for dinner; meantime he should be shown his room. He noticed that her face was browner, her hair a little less neat, and there seemed something franker and kindlier in her smile. So in a very good humour he went to rid himself of the dust of the roads.
Durward watched him curiously, and then turned, laughing, to his companion, as the girl came back to her friends with a heightened colour in her cheeks.
“Romeo the second,” he said. “We are going to be spectators of a comedy. And yet, heaven knows! Maitland is not cast for comedy.”
The other shook his head. “It will never come off. I’ve known Claire Etheridge most of my life, and I would as soon think of marrying a dancing-girl to a bishop. She is a delightful person, and my very good friend, but how on earth is she ever to understand Maitland? And how on earth can he see anything in her? Besides, there’s another man.”
Durward laughed. “Despencer! I suppose he will be a serious rival with a woman; but imagine him Maitland’s rival in anything else! He’d break him like a rotten stick in half an hour. I like little Despencer, and I don’t care about Maitland; but all the same it is absurd to compare the two, except in lovemaking.”
“Lord, it will be comic,” and Clanroyden stretched his long legs and lay back on a cushion. The girls were still chattering beside the fire, and the twilight was fast darkening into evening.
“You dislike Maitland?” he asked, looking up. “Now, I wonder why?”
Durward smiled comically at the ceiling. “Oh, I know I oughtn’t to. I know he’s supposed to be a man’s man, and that it’s bad form for a man to say he dislikes him. But I’m honest enough to own to detesting him. I suppose he’s great, but he’s not great enough yet to compel one to fall down and worship him, and I hate greatness in the making. He goes through the world with his infernal arrogance and expects everybody to clear out of his way. I am told we live in an age of reason, but that fellow has burked reason. He never gives a reason for a thing he does, and if you try to argue he crushes you. He has killed good talk forever with his confounded rudeness. All the little sophistries and conventions which make life tolerable are so much rubbish to him, and he shows it. The plague of him is that he can never make believe. He is as hard as iron, and as fierce as the devil, and about as unpleasant. You may respect the sledgehammer type, but it’s confoundedly dull. Why, the man has not the imagination of a rabbit, except in his description of people he dislikes. I liked him when he said that Layden reminded him of a dissipated dove, because I disliked Layden; but when Freddy Alton played the fool and people forgave him, because he was a good sort, Maitland sent him about his business, saying he had no further use for weaklings. He is so abominably cold-blooded and implacable that everyone must fear him, and yet most people can afford to despise him. All the kind simple things of life are shut out of his knowledge. He has no nature, only a heart of stone and an iron will and a terribly subtle brain. Of course he is a great man in a way, but at the best he is only half a man. And to think that he should have fallen in love, and be in danger of losing to Despencer! It’s enough to make one forgive him.”
Clanroyden laughed. “I can’t think of Despencer. It’s too absurd. But, seriously, I wish I saw Maitland well rid of this mood, married or cured. That sort of man doesn’t take things easily.”
“It reminds one of Theocritus and the Cyclops in love. Who would have thought to see him up in this moorland place, running after a girl? He doesn’t care for sport.”
“Do you know that he spent most of his childhood in this glen, and that he is keen about sport? He is too busy for many holidays, but he once went with Burton to the Caucasus, and Burton said the experience nearly killed him. He said that the fellow was tireless, and as mad and reckless as a boy with nothing to lose.”
“Well, that simply bears out what I say of him. He does not understand the meaning of sport. When he gets keen about anything he pursues it as carefully and
