Sir Henry had been talking some time. The Squire had not interrupted
him much, but the papers which Sir Henry had presented to him from
time to time--Government communications, Committee reports, and the
like--were mostly lying on the floor, where, after a perfunctory
glance at them, he had very quickly dropped them.
'Well, that's our case,' said Sir Henry at last, thrusting his hands
into his pockets and leaning back in his chair, 'and I assure you
we've taken a great deal of trouble about it. We shouldn't ask you
or anybody else to do these things if it wasn't vitally necessary
for the food-supply of the country. But we're going to have a narrow
squeak for it next spring and summer, and we _must_ get more food
out of the land.'
Whereupon, in a manner rather provokingly reminiscent of a public
meeting, Sir Henry fell into a discourse on submarines, tonnage, the
food needs of our Allies, and the absolute necessity for undoing and
repairing the havoc of Cobdenism--matters of which the newspapers of
the day were commonly full. That the sound of his own voice was
agreeable to him might have been suspected.
Mr. Mannering roughly broke in upon him.
'What was that you said about ploughing up the park?'
'We ask you to break up fifty acres of it near the Fallerton end,
and perhaps some other bits elsewhere. This first bit is so far
from the house you'll never notice it; and the land ought to do very
well if it's properly broken and trampled down.'
The Squire sat up and began to tick things off on the fingers of his
left hand.
'Let me understand. You want me to give three of my farmers notice
to quit--Gregson first of all--for bad farming; you ask me to plough
up fifty acres of my park; and you have the goodness to suggest that
I should cut some of my woods.'
Sir Henry realized that possibly a strain on his temper was coming,
but he felt sure he could stand it.
'That is what we suggest--for your own advantage and the country's.'
'And pray who are "_we_"? I don't yet understand that clearly.'
'"We,"' said Sir Henry patiently, 'are the County War Agricultural
Committee, formed for the express purpose of getting more food out
of the land, and so making these islands self-supporting.'
'And if I refuse, what can you do?'
'Well, I'm afraid,' said Sir Henry, smiling uncomfortably, 'we can
act without you.'
'You can turn out my farmers, and plough my land, as you please?'
'Our powers are very wide.'
'Under--what do you call the beastly thing?--"Dora"--the Defence of
the Realm Act?'
Sir Henry nodded.
The Squire rose and began to pace up and down, his hands under his
coat-tails, his long spider legs and small feet picking their way in
and out of the piles and boxes on the floor. At last he turned
impetuously.
'Look here, Chicksands, I shall not give that man warning!'
Sir Henry surveyed the lanky figure standing opposite to him.
'I should be very sorry, Mannering, to see you take that course,' he
said, smiling and amiable as before. 'In some ways, of course, I am
no more in love with some of the Government's proceedings than you
are. We landlords may have to defend ourselves. I want, if I may say
so, to keep your influence intact for the things that really matter.
You and I, and all the other Brookshire landlords, may have, at some
point, to act together. But we shall resist unreasonable demands
much more easily if we accept the reasonable ones.'
The Squire shook his head. The suave tone of the speaker had clearly
begun to rasp his nerves.
'No! You and I have really nothing in common. You may take it from
me that I shall not give these men notice. What happens then?'
'The Government steps in,' said Sir Henry quietly.
'And turns them out? Very well, let them. And the park?'
'We are, of course, most anxious to consult you.'
'Excuse me, that's nonsense! I refuse--that's flat.'
Sir Henry shrugged his shoulders. His tone became a trifle colder.
'I can't believe that you will refuse. You can't deny--no sensible
man could--that we've simply got to grow more food at home. The
submarines have settled that for us.'
'Who brought the submarines upon us? The politicians! No
politicians, no war! If it hadn't been for a pack of idiots called
diplomats making mischief abroad, and a pack of incompetents called
politicians unable to keep their heads at home, there'd have been no
war. It's Russia's war--France's war! Who asked the country whether
it wanted a war? Who asked _me_?' The Squire, standing opposite to
Sir Henry, tapped his chest vehemently.
'The country is behind the war,' said Chicksands firmly.
'How do we know? How do you know? I've as much right to an opinion
as you, and I tell you the country is sick and tired of the war. We
are all dying of the war! We shall all be paupers because of the
war! What is France to me, or Belgium? We shall have lost men,
money, security--half the things that make life worth living--for
what?'
'Honour!' said Sir Henry sharply, as he got on his feet.
'_Honour_!' sneered Mannering--'what's honour? It means one thing to
me and another to you. Aubrey bangs me over the head with it. But
I'm like the Doctor in the Punch and Judy show--he thinks he's
knocked me flat. He hasn't. I've a new argument every time he comes.
And as for my daughters, they think me a lunatic--a stingy lunatic
besides--because I won't give to their Red Cross shows and bazaars.
I've nothing to give. The income tax gentlemen have taken care of
that.'
'Yet you spend on this kind of thing!' Sir Henry pointed to the
vases. He had grown a little white.
'Of course I can. That's permanent. That's something to mend the
holes that the soldiers and the politicians are making. When the
war's become a nightmare that nobody wants to remember, those little
things'--he pointed to a group of Greek bronzes and terra-cottas on
a table near--'will still be the treasures of the world!'
In the yeasty deep of Sir Henry's honest mind emotions were rising
which he knew now he should not long be able to control. He took up
his hat and stick.
'I'm sorry, Mannering, that I have not been able to convince you.
I'm sorry for your point of view--and I'm sorry for your sons.'
The words slipped out of his mouth before he knew.
The Squire bounded.
'My sons! The one's a fire-eater, with whom you can't argue. The
other's a child--a babe--whom the Government proposes to murder
before he has begun to live.'
Sir Henry looked at the speaker, who had been violently flushed a
minute earlier, and was now as pale as himself, and then at the
sketch of Desmond, just behind the Squire. His eyes dropped; the
hurry in his blood subsided.
'Well, good-bye, Mannering. I'll--I'll do what I can to make things
easy for you.'
The Squire laughed angrily.
'You'll put on the screws politely? Thank you? But still it will be
_you_ who'll be putting the screw on, who'll be turning out my
farmers, and ploughing up my land, and cutting down my trees.
Doesn't it strike you that--well, that--under the circumstances--it
will be rather difficult for Aubrey and Beryl to keep up their
engagement?'
The Squire was sitting on the edge of the table, his thin legs
crossed, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. Sir Henry coloured
hotly.
'You gave your consent to their engagement, Mannering.'
'Yes, but I propose to withdraw it,' said the Squire coolly.
Sir Henry's indignation kept him cool also.
'You can't play ducks and drakes with young people's lives like
that. Even you can't do that.'
'I can. I can withdraw my consent.'
'Because you mean to fight the County War Committee, of which I am
Chairman?'
'Precisely. The situation is too difficult,' said the Squire with
sparkling eyes. 'The young people will no doubt see it for
themselves.'
'Pshaw! Nonsense!' cried Sir Henry, finally losing his temper.
'Aubrey is long since of age and his own master.'
'Perhaps, but he is an extravagant fellow, who likes money and
spends it. And if he is his own master, I am the master of the
estate; there is no entail.'
Chicksands laughed aloud.
'So because I come on a mission to try and save you friction and
trouble, you are going to avenge yourself on your son and my
daughter?'
'I merely point out the properties,' said the Squire provokingly,
his legs dangling.
There was a pause. Sir Henry broke it with dignity, as he turned
away.
'I think we had better break off this discussion. I cannot--I do
not--believe you will carry out what you say. But if you do, I shall
stand by the young people.'
'No doubt!' said the Squire, who seemed to bristle from head to
foot. 'Well, good-bye, Sir Henry. Sorry your visit has not been more
agreeable. Forest will look after you.' And ringing the bell
vehemently as he passed the fireplace, the Squire walked rapidly to
the door and threw it open.
Chicksands passed through it, speechless with indignation and, if
the truth were told, bewilderment.
* * * * *
The Squire shut the door upon his adversary, and then, with his
hands on his sides, exploded in a fit of laughter.
'I always knew I must be rude to the old boy some time,' he said,
with the glee of a mischievous child. 'But, ye gods, how his
feathers drooped! He looked like a plucked cockatoo as he went out.'
He stood thinking a moment, and then with a look of sudden
determination he went to his writing-table and sat down to it.
Drawing a writing-pad towards him, he wrote as follows:
'MY DEAR AUBREY--Your future father-in-law has just been
insulting and harrying me in ways which no civilized State had
ever heard of before the war. He is the Chairman of a
ridiculous body that calls itself the County War Agricultural
Committee, that lays absurd eggs in the shape of sub-Committees
to vex landlords. They have been going about among my farmers
and want me to turn out three of them. I decline, so I suppose
they'll do it for me. And they're going to plough up a lot of
the park--without my leave. And Chicksands is the head and
front of the whole business. He came here to-day to try and
coax me into submission. But I would neither be coaxed nor
bullied. I've broken with him; and if my children stand by me
properly, they'll break with him too. I really don't see how
you're going to marry Beryl after this. At least, I shall
certainly not help you to do it, and if you defy me you must
take the consequences. The whole world's gone mad. My only
consolation is that I have just got some new Greek things, and
that Levasseur's helping me unpack them. However, it's no good
talking to you about them. You wasted all your time at
Cambridge, and I doubt whether you could construe a bit of
Euripides to save your life.
'Of course if you want to talk this over, you had better run
down. I have got a new secretary--came here six weeks ago--a
topping young woman--who reads Greek like a bird. But her
quantities are not always what they should be. Good-bye.--Your
affectionate father,
'EDMUND MANNERING.'
Having finished the epistle he read it over with a complacent
countenance, put it up and stamped it. Then he looked at his watch.
'What a long time that young woman's been away! I told her to take
two hours off, but of course I didn't mean it. That was just my
excessive politeness. D-mn my politeness. It's always getting in my
way. I forget that women are naturally lazy. I daresay she was a bit
fagged. But if she's interested in her work, what does that matter?
I wonder whether she's looked out all these references?'
And walking over to the one neat table In the room he surveyed it.
There were some sheets lying on it mostly covered with an excellent
Greek script, which he turned over. Suddenly he swooped on one of
them.
'Hullo! That line's wrong. Won't scan. Trusted to her memory, I
suppose. Didn't look it up. And yesterday I caught her out in her
accents. Women play the devil with accents. But she writes a pretty
Greek. Eh? What?' For he had become aware of the re-entry of
Levasseur, who was standing at his elbow.
''Fraid I can't stay now,' said that person. 'I've promised to pick
up some wounded at the station to-night.'
'You--wounded!--what do you mean?' said the Squire, turning upon
him.
Levasseur's large, thin-lipped mouth showed what seemed an habitual
grin.
'I'd been getting so unpopular, it was becoming a nuisance. Line of
least resistance, you understand. Now everybody's quite civil again.
And I like chauffing.'
'A mere bit of weakness!' grumbled the Squire. 'Either you keep out
of the war, or you go into it. You'd better go off to a camp now,
and get trained--and shot--as quickly as possible--get done with
it.'
'Oh no,' laughed the other. 'I'm all for middle courses. If they'll
let me go on with my book, I don't mind driving a few poor fellows
now and then!'
The Squire looked at him critically.
'The fact is you're too well fed, Levasseur, or you look it. That
annoys people. Now I might gorge for a month, and shouldn't put on a
pound.'
'I suppose your household is rationed?'
'Not it! We eat what we want. Just like the labourers. I found an
old labourer eating his dinner under a hedge yesterday. Half a pound
of bread at the very least, and he gets as much for his supper, and
nearly as much for his breakfast. "I shall eat it, Squire, as long
as I can get it. There's nowt else _packs_ ye like bread." And quite
right too. Good word "pack."'
'What'll he do when he can't get it?' laughed Levasseur, taking up
his hat.
'Stuff! This food business is all one big _blague_. Anyway the
Government got us into the war; they're jolly well bound to feed us
through it. They will, for their own necks' sake. Well, good-night.'
Levasseur nodded in response, with the same silent, aimless grin,
and disappeared through the garden door of the library.
'Queer fellow!' thought the Squire. 'But he's useful. I shall get
him to help catalogue these things as he did the others. Ah, there
you are!'
He turned with a reproachful air as the door opened.
The westerly sun was coming strongly into the library, and shone
full on the face and figure of the Squire's new secretary as she
stood in the door-way. He expected an apology for an absence just
five minutes over the two hours; but she offered none.
'Pamela asked me to tell you, Mr. Mannering, that tea was ready
under the verandah.'
'Afternoon tea is an abominable waste of time!' said the Squire
discontentedly, facing her with a Greek pot under each arm.
'Do you think so? To me it's always the pleasantest meal in the
day.'
The voice was musical and attractive, but its complete
self-possession produced a vague irritation in the Squire. With his
two former secretaries, a Cambridge man and a spectacled maiden
with a London University degree, he had been accustomed to play the
tyrant as must as he pleased. Something had told him from the very
beginning that he would not be able to tyrannize over this newcomer.
But his quick masterful temper was already trying to devise ways of
putting her down. He beckoned her towards the table where she had
left her work, and she went obediently.
'You've got that line wrong.' He pointed to a quotation from the
_Odyssey_. 'Read it, please!'
She read it. He stopped her triumphantly.
'No, no, you can't make that long!' He pointed to one of the Greek
words.
Her fair skin flushed.
'But indeed you can!' she said eagerly. 'Merry quotes three parallel
passages. I have them in one of my notebooks.' And she began to
search her table. Mannering stopped her ungraciously.
'Of course there's always some learned fool behind every bad
reading. Anyway, what do you say to those accents?' He pointed
severely to another line of her Greek. This time Miss Bremerton's
countenance changed.
'Oh dear, what a blunder!' she said in distress, as she bent over
her pages. 'I assure you I don't often do anything as bad as that.'
Mannering was secretly delighted. His manner became at once all
politeness.
'Don't worry yourself, please. We all make mistakes.... You have a
beautiful Greek handwriting.'
Miss Bremerton took the compliment calmly--did not indeed seem to
hear it. She was already scratching out the offending words with a
sharp penknife, and daintily rewriting them. Then she looked up.
'Pamela asked me to go back to her. And I was to say, will you come,
or shall she send tea here?'
'Oh, I'll come, I'll come. I've got something to say to Pamela,'
said the Squire, frowning. And he stalked in front of her along the
library passage, his brilliant white hair gleaming in its shadows.
It was well perhaps that he did not see the amusement which played
round Elizabeth Bremerton's handsome mouth as she pursued him.
* * * * *
Tea was laid on a flagged walk under a glazed pergola running along
part of the southern wall of the house. Here Pamela was sitting
waiting, with a basket of knitting on her knee which she put out of
sight as soon as she heard her father's step. She had taken off her
hat, and her plentiful brown hair was drawn in a soft wave across
her forehead, and thickly coiled behind a shapely head. She was very
young, and very pretty. Perhaps the impression of youth
predominated, youth uncertain of itself, conscious rather of its own
richness and force than of any definite aims or desires. Her
expression was extremely reserved. A veil seemed to lie over her
deep, heavy-lidded eyes, and over features that had now delicacy and
bloom, but promised much more--something far beyond any mere girlish
prettiness. She was tall and finely made, and for the school
tableaux in which she had frequently helped she had been generally
cast for such parts as 'Nausicaa among her maidens,' 'Athene
lighting the way for Odysseus and Telemachus,' 'Dante's Beatrice,'
or any other personage requiring dignity, even a touch of majesty.
Flowing skirts, indeed, at once made a queen of her. It was evident
that she was not at her ease with her father; nor, as yet, with her
father's new secretary.
The contrast between this lady and Pamela Mannering was obvious at
once. If Pamela suggested romance, Elizabeth Bremerton suggested
efficiency, cheerfulness, and the practical life. Her grandmother
had been Dutch, and in Elizabeth the fair skin and yellow-gold hair
(Rembrandt's 'Saskia' shows the type) of many Dutch forebears had
reappeared. She was a trifle plump; her hair curled prettily round
her temples; her firm dimpled chin and the fair complexion of her
face and neck were set off, evidently with intention, by the plain
blouse of black silky stuff, open at the neck, and showing a modest
string of small but real pearls. The Squire, who had a wide
knowledge of jewels, had noticed these pearls at once. It seemed to
him--vaguely--that lady secretaries should not possess real pearls;
or if they did possess them, should carefully keep them to
themselves.
He accepted a cup of tea from his daughter, and drank it absently
before he asked:
'Where's Desmond?'
'He went to lunch at Fallerton--at the camp. Captain Byles asked
him. I think afterwards he was going to play in a match.'
The same thought passed through the minds of both father and
daughter. 'This day week, Desmond will be gone.' In Pamela it
brought back the dull pain of which she was now habitually
conscious--the pain of expected parting. In her father it aroused an
equally habitual antagonism--the temper, indeed, of ironic
exasperation in which all his thinking and doing were at the moment
steeped. He looked up suddenly.
'Pamela, I have got something disagreeable to say to you.'
His daughter turned a startled face.
'I have had a quarrel with Sir Henry Chicksands, and I do not wish
you, or Desmond, or any of my children, to have any communication
henceforth with him, or with any of his family!'
'Father, what _do_ you mean?'
The girl's incredulous dismay only increased the Squire's
irritation.
'I mean what I say. Of course your married sisters and Aubrey will
do what they please, though I have warned Aubrey how I shall view it
if he takes sides against me. But you and Desmond are under my
control--you, at any rate. I forbid you to go to Chetworth, and your
friendship with Beryl must be given up.'
'Father!' cried his daughter passionately, 'she is my best friend,
and she is engaged to Aubrey.'
'If they are wise, they will break it off. Family quarrels are
awkward things. And if Aubrey has any feeling for his father, he
will be as angry as I am.'
'What _has_ Sir Henry been doing, father?'
'Taking my own property out of my hands, my dear, giving notice to
my farmers, and proposing to plough up my park, without my consent.
That's all--just a trifle. But it's a trifle I shall fight!'
The Squire struck the arm of his chair with a long and bony hand.
'Why, it's only because they _must_!' said the girl half scornfully,
her breath fluttering. 'Think what other people put up with,
father. And what they do! And we do _nothing_!'
Every word was said with difficulty, torn out of her by the shock of
her father's statement. The Squire stared at her threateningly a
little, then quieted down. He did not want a wrangle with Pamela, to
whom in general he was not unkind, while keeping a strict rule over
her.
'Do nothing? What should we do? As if the war did not bleed us at
every turn already. I warn you all I shan't be able to pay the
income tax next year. Mannering will be sold up.' And thrusting his
hands again into his pockets, he looked gloomily before him, over a
piece of ill-kept garden, to the sloping park and blue interlacing
hills that filled the distance.
Elizabeth Bremerton put down her teacup, glanced at the father and
daughter, and went discreetly away, back to the library and her
work.
Pamela hesitated a little, but at last moved nearer to him, and put
a hand on his arm.
'Father! I dreadfully want you to let me do something!'
'Eh, what?' said Mannering, rousing himself. 'Don't try and coax me,
child. It doesn't answer.'
'I don't want to coax you,' said the girl proudly withdrawing her
hand. 'It's a very simple thing. Will you let me go and do day work
at the new Hospital, just across the park? They want some help in
the housework. There are fifty wounded men there.'
'Certainly not,' said Mannering firmly. 'You are too young. You have
your education to think of. I told you I engaged Miss Bremerton to
give you two hours' classics a day. When we've arranged these pots,
she'll be free. You must also keep up your music. You have no time
for housemaiding. And I don't approve of housemaiding for my
daughter.'
'The nicest girls I know are doing _anything_--scrubbing, washing
up, polishing bath-taps, making swabs, covering splints,' said
Pamela in a low voice. 'There are two of the Joyce girls at this
hospital, just my age. Of course they don't let you do any
nursing--for months.'
'Lord Entwhistle may do what he likes with his girls. I propose to
do what I think best with mine,' said Mannering as he rose.
Then the girl's passion broke out.
'It's _horrible_, father, that you won't do anything for the war, or
let me do anything. Oh, I'm _glad_'--she clenched her hands as she
stood opposite him, her beautiful head thrown back--'I'm thankful,
that you can't stop Desmond!'
Mannering looked at her, frowned, turned abruptly, and went away
whistling.
Pamela was left alone in the September evening. She betook herself
to an old grass-grown walk between yew hedges at the bottom of the
Dutch garden, and paced it in a tumult of revolt and pain. Not to go
to Chetworth again! not to see Beryl, or any of them! How cruel! how
monstrously unjust!
'I shan't obey!--why should I? Beryl and I must manage to see each
other--of course we shall! Girls aren't the slaves they used to be.
If a thing is unjust, we can fight it--we ought to fight
it!--somehow. Poor, poor Beryl! Of course Aubrey will stick to her,
whatever father does. He would be a cur if he didn't. Desmond and I
would never speak to him again!... Beryl'll have Arthur to help
her, directly. Oh, I _wish_ I had a brother like Arthur!' Her face
softened and quivered as she stood still a moment, sending her
ardent look towards the sunset. 'I think I shall ask him to advise
me.... I don't suppose he will.... How provoking he used to be! but
awfully kind too. He'll think I ought to do what father tells me.
How can I! It's wrong--it's abominable! Everybody despises us. And
Desmond's dying to be off--to get away from it all--like Aubrey. He
hates it so--he almost hates coming home! It's _humiliating_, and
it's not our fault!'
Such cries and thoughts ran through her as she walked impetuously up
and down, in rebellion against her father, unhappy for her girl
friend, and smarting under the coercion put upon her patriotism and
her conscience. For she had only two months before left a school
where the influence of a remarkable head-mistress had been directed
towards awakening in a group of elder girls, to which Pamela
belonged, a vivid consciousness of the perils and sufferings of the
war--of the sacredness of the cause for which England was fighting,
of the glory of England, and the joy and privilege of English
citizenship. In these young creatures the elder woman had kindled a
flame of feeling which, when they parted from her and their school
life--so she told them--was to take practical effect in work for
their country, given with a proud and glad devotion.
But Pamela, leaving school at the end of July for the last time,
after a surfeit of examinations, had been pronounced 'tired out' by
an old aunt, a certain Lady Cassiobury, who came for long periodical
visits to Mannering, and made a show of looking after her
motherless niece. Accordingly she had been packed off to Scotland
for August to stay with a school friend, one of a large family in a
large country house in the Highlands. And there, roaming amid lochs
and heather, with a band of young people, the majority of the men,
of course, in the Army--young officers on short leave, or
temporarily invalided, or boys of eighteen just starting their cadet
training--she had spent a month full of emotions, not often
expressed. For generally she was shy and rather speechless, though
none the less liked by her companions for that. But many things sank
deep with her; the beauty of mountain and stream; the character
of some of the boys she walked and fished with--unnoticed
sub-lieutenants, who had come home to get cured of one wound, and
were going out again to the immediate chance of another, or worse;
the tales of heroism and death of which the Scotch countryside was
full. Her own mood was tuned thereby to an ever higher and more
tragic key. Nobody indeed of the party was the least tragic.
Everybody walked, fished, flirted, and laughed from morning till
night. Yet every newspaper, every post, brought news of some death
that affected one or other of the large group; and amid all the
sheer physical joy of the long days in the open, bathed in sun and
wind, there was a sense in all of them--or almost all of them--that
no summer now is as the summers of the past, that behind and around
the laughter and the picnicking there lay the Shadow that darkens
the world.
One gorgeous evening of gold and purple she was sitting by a
highland stream with a lad of twenty, throwing ducks and drakes into
the water. She was not at all in love with him; but, immature as she
was, she could not help seeing that he was a good deal in love with
her. He had been in uproarious spirits all the afternoon, and then
somehow he had contrived to find this moment alone with her.
'Well, it'll be good-bye to-morrow, or perhaps to-night,' he had
said, as he flung yet another stone into the river, and she clapped
her hands as she counted no less than six skips along the smooth
water.
'And then no leave for a long time?'
'Well, I'd been ten months without any before.'
'Perhaps we'll meet here again--next year.'
'I don't expect it,' he said quietly.
Her startled eyes met his full.
'It'll be worse fighting this winter than last--it'll go on getting
worse till the end. I don't look to coming back.'
His tone was so cheerful and matter-of-fact that it confused her.
'Oh, Basil, don't talk like that!' was all she could find to say.
'Why not? Of course it's better not to talk about it. Nobody does.
But just this afternoon--when it's been so jolly--here with you, I
thought I'd like to say a word. Perhaps you'll remember--'
He threw another stone, and on the moor beyond the stream she heard
the grouse calling.
'Remember what?'
'That I was quite willing,' he said simply. 'That's all. It's worth
it.'
She could say nothing, but presently her hand dropped its pebble and
found its way into his, and he had held it without saying a word for
a little while. Then after dinner, with no good-bye to her, he had
disappeared by the night train to the south.
And that had been the spirit of all of them, those jolly, rampagious
lads, plain or handsome, clever or slow. Two of them were dead
already. But the one who had thrown ducks and drakes was still, so
far as she knew, somewhere in the Ypres salient, unscathed.
And after that she had come home to the atmosphere created by her
father's life and character, in this old house where she was born,
and in the estate round about it. It was as though she had only just
realized--begun to realize--her father's strangeness. His
eccentricities and unpopularity had meant little to her before. Her
own real interests had lain elsewhere; and her mind had been too
slow in developing to let her appreciate his fundamental difference
from other people.
At any rate her father's unpopularity had been lately acute, and
Pamela herself felt it bitterly, and shrank from her neighbours and
the cottage people. When Desmond came home with a D.S.O., or a
Victoria Cross, as of course he would, she supposed it would be all
right. But meanwhile not a single thing done for the war!--not a
_sou_ to the Red Cross, or to any war funds! And hundreds spent on
antiquities--thousands perhaps--getting them deeper and deeper into
debt. For she was quite aware that they were in debt; and her own
allowance was of the smallest. Two hundred and fifty a year, too,
for Miss Bremerton!--when they could barely afford to keep up the
garden decently, or repair the house. She knew it was two hundred
and fifty pounds. Her father was never reticent about such things,
and had named the figure at once.
'Why wasn't Miss Bremerton doing something for the war? _Greek_
indeed! when there was this fearful thing going on!' And in the
evening air, as the girl turned her face towards the moonrise, she
seemed to hear the booming of the Flanders guns.
And now Miss Bremerton was to do the housekeeping, and to play tutor
and chaperon to her. Pamela resented both. If she was not to be
allowed to scrub in a hospital, she might at least have learnt some
housekeeping at home, for future use. As for the Greek lessons, it
was not easy for her to be positively rude to any one, but she
promised herself a good deal of passive resistance on that side. For
if nothing else was possible, she could always sew and knit for the
soldiers. Pamela was not very good at either, but they did something
to lessen the moral thirst in her.
Ah, there was the library door. Miss Bremerton coming out--perhaps
to propose a lesson! Pamela took to flight--noiseless and
rapid--among the bosky corners and walks of the old garden.
Elizabeth emerged, clearly perceiving a gleam of vanishing white in
the far distance. She sighed, but not at all sentimentally. 'It's
silly how she dislikes me,' she thought. 'I wonder what I can do!'
Then her eye was caught by the tea-table still standing out in the
golden dusk, which had now turned damp and chilly. Careless of
Pamela not to have sent it away! Elizabeth examined it. Far too many
cakes--too much sugar, too much butter, too much everything! And all
because the Squire, who seemed to have as great a need of economy as
anybody else, if not more, to judge from what she was beginning to
know about his affairs, was determined to flout the Food
Controller, and public opinion! What about the servants? she
wondered.
Perceiving a little silver bell on the table she rang it and waited.
Within a couple of minutes Forest emerged from the house. Elizabeth
hesitated, then plunged.
'Take away the tea, please, Forest. And--and I should like to
consult you. Do you think anybody wants as much tea and cakes in
war-time?' She pointed to the table.
Forest paused as he was lifting the silver tray, and put it down
again. He looked at the table; then he looked at the lady opposite.
'We servants, Miss, have never been asked what _we_ think. Mr.
Mannering--that's not his way.'
'But I may ask it, mayn't I, Forest?'
Forest's intelligent face flamed.
'Well, if we've really to speak out what we think, Miss--that's Cook
and me--why, of course, the feeding here--well, it's a scandal!
that's what it is. The Master will have it. No change, he says, from
what it used to be. And the waste--well, you ask Cook! _She_ can't
help it!'
'Has she been here long, Forest?'
'Fifteen years.'
'And you?'
'Twenty-two, Miss.'
'Well, Forest,' Miss Bremerton approached him confidingly, 'don't
you think that you, and Cook, and I--you know Mr. Mannering wishes
me to do the housekeeping--well, that between us we could do
something?'
Forest considered it.
'I don't see why not, Miss,' he said at last, with caution. 'You can
reckon on me, that's certain, and on Cook, that's certain too. As
for the young uns, we can get round them! They'll eat what they're
given. But you'll have to go careful with the Squire.'
Miss Bremerton smiled and nodded. They stood colloguing in the
twilight for ten minutes more.