



Produced by David Widger





THE PATRICIAN


By John Galsworthy




PART I



CHAPTER I

Light, entering the vast room--a room so high that its carved ceiling
refused itself to exact scrutiny--travelled, with the wistful, cold
curiosity of the dawn, over a fantastic storehouse of Time. Light,
unaccompanied by the prejudice of human eyes, made strange revelation
of incongruities, as though illuminating the dispassionate march of
history.

For in this dining hall--one of the finest in England--the Caradoc
family had for centuries assembled the trophies and records of their
existence. Round about this dining hall they had built and pulled down
and restored, until the rest of Monkland Court presented some aspect
of homogeneity. Here alone they had left virgin the work of the old
quasi-monastic builders, and within it unconsciously deposited their
souls. For there were here, meeting the eyes of light, all those rather
touching evidences of man's desire to persist for ever, those shells of
his former bodies, the fetishes and queer proofs of his faiths, together
with the remorseless demonstration of their treatment at the hands of
Time.

The annalist might here have found all his needed confirmations; the
analyst from this material formed the due equation of high birth; the
philosopher traced the course of aristocracy, from its primeval rise in
crude strength or subtlety, through centuries of power, to picturesque
decadence, and the beginnings of its last stand. Even the artist might
here, perchance, have seized on the dry ineffable pervading spirit, as
one visiting an old cathedral seems to scent out the constriction of its
heart.

From the legendary sword of that Welsh chieftain who by an act of high,
rewarded treachery had passed into the favour of the conquering William,
and received, with the widow of a Norman, many lands in Devonshire,
to the Cup purchased for Geoffrey Caradoc; present Earl of Valleys, by
subscription of his Devonshire tenants on the occasion of his marriage
with the Lady Gertrude Semmering--no insignia were absent, save the
family portraits in the gallery of Valleys House in London. There
was even an ancient duplicate of that yellow tattered scroll royally,
reconfirming lands and title to John, the most distinguished of all the
Caradocs, who had unfortunately neglected to be born in wedlock, by one
of those humorous omissions to be found in the genealogies of most old
families. Yes, it was there, almost cynically hung in a corner; for this
incident, though no doubt a burning question in the fifteenth century,
was now but staple for an ironical little tale, in view of the fact that
descendants of John's 'own' brother Edmund were undoubtedly to be found
among the cottagers of a parish not far distant.

Light, glancing from the suits of armour to the tiger skins beneath
them, brought from India but a year ago by Bertie Caradoc, the younger
son, seemed recording, how those, who had once been foremost by virtue
of that simple law of Nature which crowns the adventuring and strong,
now being almost washed aside out of the main stream of national life,
were compelled to devise adventure, lest they should lose belief in
their own strength.

The unsparing light of that first half-hour of summer morning recorded
many other changes, wandering from austere tapestries to the velvety
carpets, and dragging from the contrast sure proof of a common sense
which denied to the present Earl and Countess the asceticisms of the
past. And then it seemed to lose interest in this critical journey, as
though longing to clothe all in witchery. For the sun had risen, and
through the Eastern windows came pouring its level and mysterious joy.
And with it, passing in at an open lattice, came a wild bee to settle
among the flowers on the table athwart the Eastern end, used when there
was only a small party in the house. The hours fled on silent, till
the sun was high, and the first visitors came--three maids, rosy,
not silent, bringing brushes. They passed, and were followed by two
footmen--scouts of the breakfast brigade, who stood for a moment
professionally doing nothing, then soberly commenced to set the
table. Then came a little girl of six, to see if there were anything
exciting--little Ann Shropton, child of Sir William Shropton by his
marriage with Lady Agatha, and eldest daughter of the house, the only
one of the four young Caradocs as yet wedded. She came on tiptoe,
thinking to surprise whatever was there. She