Beyond
them, through the tall trees, over some wooded foot-hills of the
moorland and a promised land of pinkish fields, pasture, and orchards,
the prospect stretched to the far sea. Heat clothed this view with a
kind of opalescence, a fairy garment, transmuting all values, so that
the four square walls and tall chimneys of the pottery-works a few miles
down the valley seemed to Courtier like a vision of some old fortified
Italian town. His sensations, finding himself in this galley, were
peculiar. For his feeling towards Miltoun, whom he had twice met at Mrs.
Noel's, was, in spite of disagreements, by no means unfriendly; while
his feeling towards Miltoun's family was not yet in existence.
Having lived from hand to mouth, and in many countries, since he
left Westminster School, he had now practically no class feelings. An
attitude of hostility to aristocracy because it was aristocracy, was as
incomprehensible to him as an attitude of deference.
His sensations habitually shaped themselves in accordance with those two
permanent requirements of his nature, liking for adventure, and hatred
of tyranny. The labourer who beat his wife, the shopman who sweated his
'hands,' the parson who consigned his parishioners to hell, the peer who
rode roughshod--all were equally odious to him. He thought of people as
individuals, and it was, as it were, by accident that he had conceived
the class generalization which he had fired back at Miltoun from Mrs.
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