He confessed that there was a real need of him, if he did his duty.  But on this need the class-practice of generations had built up a deference, a sharpness of class-distinction, which any modern must find more and more irksome in proportion to his modernness.  What was in Aldous’s mind, as he stood with drawn brows looking out over the view which showed him most of his domain, was a sort of hot impatience of being made day by day, in a hundred foolish ways, to play at greatness.

Yet, as we know, he was no democrat by conviction, had no comforting faith in what seemed to him the rule of a multitudinous ignorance.  Still every sane man of to-day knows, at any rate, that the world has taken the road of democracy, and that the key to the future, for good or ill, lies not in the revolts and speculations of the cultivated few, but in the men and movements that can seize the many.  Aldous’s temper was despondently critical towards the majority of these, perhaps; he had, constitutionally, little of that poet’s sympathy with the crowd, as such, which had given Hallin his power.  But, at any rate, they filled the human stage—­these men and movements—­and his mind as a beholder.  Beside the great world-spectacle perpetually in his eye and thought, the small old-world pomps and feudalisms of his own existence had a way of looking ridiculous to him.  He constantly felt himself absurd.  It was ludicrously clear to him, for instance, that in this kingdom he had inherited it would be thought a huge condescension on his part if he were to ask the secretary of a trades union to dine with him at the Court.  Whereas, in his own honest opinion, the secretary had a far more important and interesting post in the universe than he.

So that, in spite of a strong love of family, rigidly kept to himself, he had very few of the illusions which make rank and wealth delightful.  On the other hand, he had a tyrannous sense of obligation, which kept him tied to his place and his work—­to such work as he had been spending the morning on.  This sense of obligation had for the present withdrawn him from any very active share in politics.  He had come to the conclusion early in the year, just about the time when, owing to some rearrangements in the personnel of the Government, the Premier had made him some extremely flattering overtures, that he must for the present devote himself to the Court.  There were extensive changes and reforms going on in different parts of the estate:  some of the schools which he owned and mainly supported were being rebuilt and enlarged; and he had a somewhat original scheme for the extension of adult education throughout the property very much on his mind—­a scheme which must be organised and carried through by himself apparently, if it was to thrive at all.