It was a misty but warm October day, and a pleasant veiled light lay
on the pillared front of Chetworth House, designed in the best taste
of a fastidious school. The surroundings of the house, too, were as
perfect as those of Mannering were slatternly and neglected. All the
young men had long since gone from the gardens, but the old
labourers and the girls in overalls who had taken their places,
under the eye of a white-haired gardener, had been wonderfully
efficient so far. Sir Henry supposed he ought to have let the lawns
stand for hay, and the hedges go unclipped; but as a matter of fact
the lawns had never been smoother, or the creepers and yew hedges
more beautifully in order, so that even the greatest patriot fails
somewhere.
Beryl Chicksands was walking along a stone-flagged path under a yew
hedge, from which she commanded the drive and a bit of the road
outside. Every now and then she stopped to peer into the sunlit haze
that marked the lower slopes of the park, and the delicate hand that
shaded her eyes shook a little.
Aubrey was coming--and she was going seriously to offer to give him
up--to try to persuade him indeed to break it off. Since her first
agitated letter to him begging him not to think of her, but to
decide only what was best for his own future, she had received a few
words from him.
'DEAREST BERYL--Nothing has happened to interfere with what we
promised each other last summer--nothing at all! My poor father
seems to be half out of his mind under the stress of war. If he
does what he threatens, it will matter very little to me; but
of course _you_ must consider it carefully, for I shall have
uncommonly little in the worldly way to offer you. Your father
has written very kindly, and your dear little note is just like
you. But you must consider.
'I sometimes doubt whether my father _will_ do what he
threatens, but we should have to take the risk. Anyway we shall
meet directly, and I am always, and unalterably, your devoted
'AUBREY.'
That had been followed by a boyish note from Desmond--dear, jolly
fellow!
'My father's clean daft! Don't bother, my dear Beryl. If he
tries to leave me this funny old place, instead of Aubrey,
well, there are two can play at that game. I wouldn't touch it
with a barge-pole. You and A. have only got to stick it a
little, and it'll be all right.
'I've given him a bit of my mind about the park and the farm.
He stands it from me and only chaffs. That's because he always
treats me like a baby.
'Very sorry I can't come on Tuesday with Aubrey, but there's
some good-bye calls I must pay. Hope Arthur will be about. I
want awfully to see him. Hard luck his being hit like that,
after all the rest. Snipers are beasts!
'_P.S._--You can't think what a brainy young woman father's got
for his new secretary. And she's not half bad either. Pamela's
rather silly about her, but she'll come round.'
Beryl paid small attention to the postscript. She had heard a good
deal from Pamela about the newcomer, but it did not concern her. As
to the business aspect of the Squire's behaviour, Beryl was well
aware that she was an heiress. Aubrey would lose nothing financially
by giving up the Mannering estate to marry her. Personally she cared
nothing about Mannering, and she had enough for both. But still
there was the old name and place. How much did he care about it? how
much would he regret it? Supposing his extraordinary father really
cut him off?
Beryl felt she did not know. And therewith came the recurrent
pang--how little she really knew about the man to whom she was
engaged! She adored him. Every fibre in her slight sensitive body
still remembered the moment when he first kissed her, when she first
felt his arm about her. But since--how often there had been moments
when she had been conscious of a great distance between them--of
something that did not fit--that jarred!
For herself, she could never remember a time since she was seventeen
when Aubrey Mannering had not meant more to her than any one else in
the world. On his first departure to France, she had said good-bye
to him with secret agonies of spirit, which no one guessed but her
mother, a colourless, silent woman, who had a way of knowing
unexpectedly much of the people about her. Then when he was badly
wounded in some fighting near Festubert, in May 1915, and came home
for two months' leave, he seemed like a stranger, and Beryl had not
known what to be at with him. She was told that he had suffered
very much--it had been a severe thigh wound implicating the sciatic
nerve--and that he had been once, at least, very near to death. But
when she tried to express sympathy with what he had gone through, or
timidly to question him about it, her courage fled, her voice died
in her throat. There was something unapproachable in her old
playfellow, something that held her, and indeed every one else, at
bay.
He was always courteous, and mostly cheerful. But his face in repose
had an absent, haunted look, the eyes alert but fixed on vacancy,
the brow overcast and frowning. In the old days Aubrey's smile had
been his best natural gift. To win a smile from him in her
childhood, Beryl would have done anything--have gone on her knees up
the drive, or offered up the only doll she cared for, or gone
without jam for a week. Now when he came home invalided, she had the
same craving; but what she craved for came her way very rarely. He
would laugh and talk with her as with other people. But that
exquisite brightness of eye and lip, which seemed to be for one
person only, and, when it came, to lift that person to the seventh
heaven, she waited for in vain.
Then he went back to France, and in due course came the Somme.
Aubrey Mannering went through the whole five months without a
scratch. He came back with a D.S.O. and a Staff appointment for a
short Christmas leave, everybody, except his father, turning out to
welcome him as the local hero. Then, for a time, he went to
Aldershot as the head of an Officers' School there, and was able to
come down occasionally to Chetworth or Mannering.
During that first Christmas leave he paid several visits to
Chetworth, and evidently felt at home there. To Lady Chicksands,
whom most people regarded as a tiresome nonentity, he was
particularly kind and courteous. It seemed to give him positive
pleasure to listen to her garrulous housekeeping talk, or to hold
her wool for her while she wound it. And as she, poor lady, was not
accustomed to such attention from brilliant young men, his three
days' visit was to her a red-letter time. With Sir Henry also he was
on excellent terms, and made just as good a listener to the details
of country business as to Lady Chicksands' domestic tales.
And yet to Beryl he was in some ways more of a riddle than ever. He
talked curiously little about the war--at least to her. He had a way
of finding out, both at Chicksands and Mannering, men who had lost
sons in France, and when he and Beryl took a walk, it seemed to
Beryl as though they were constantly followed by friendly furtive
looks from old labourers who passed them on the road, and nodded as
they went by. But when the daily war news was being discussed he had
a way of sitting quite silent, unless his opinion was definitely
asked. When it was, he would answer, generally in a rather
pessimistic spirit, and escape the conversation as soon as he could.
And the one thing that roused him and put him out of temper was the
easy complacent talk of people who were sure of speedy victory and
talked of 'knock-out' blows.
Then six months later, after the capture of the Messines Ridge, in
which he took part, he reappeared, and finding his father,
apparently, almost intolerable, and Pamela and Desmond away, he
migrated to Chetworth. And there he and Beryl were constantly
thrown together. He never talked to her with much intimacy; he
certainly never made love to her. But suddenly she became aware that
she had grown very necessary to him, that he missed her when she was
away, that his eyes lit up when she came back. A special relation
was growing up between them. Her father perceived it; so did her
brother Arthur; and they had both done their best to help it on.
They were both very fond of Aubrey; and nothing could be more
natural than that she should marry one who had been her neighbour
and playmate from childhood.
The thing drifted on, and one day, in the depths of a summer
beechwood, some look in the girl's eyes, some note of tremulous and
passionate sweetness, beyond her control, in her deep quiet voice,
touched something irrepressible in him, and he turned to her with a
face of intense, almost hungry yearning, and caught her
hands--'Dear--dearest Beryl, could you--?'
The words broke off, but her eyes spoke in reply to his, and her
sudden whiteness. He drew her to him, and folded her close.
'I don't think I ought'--the faltering, broken voice startled
her--'I don't know whether I can make you happy. Dear, dear little
Beryl!'
At that she put up her mouth instinctively, only to shrink back
under the energy of his kiss. Then they had walked on together, hand
in hand; but she remembered that, even before they left the wood,
something seemed to have dimmed the extraordinary bliss of the first
moment--some restlessness in him--some touch of absent-mindedness,
as though he grudged himself his own happiness.
And so it had been ever since. He had resumed his work at
Aldershot, and owing to certain consequences of the wound in 1915
was not likely, in spite of desperate efforts on his own part, to be
sent back to the front. His letters varied just as his presence did.
Something always seemed to be kept back from her--was always beyond
her reach. Sometimes she supposed she was not clever enough, that he
found her inadequate and irresponsive. Sometimes, with a sudden,
half-guilty sense of disloyalty to him, she vaguely wondered whether
there was some secret in his life--some past of which she knew
nothing. How could there be? A man of stainless and brilliant
reputation--modest, able, foolhardily brave, of whom all men spoke
warmly; of a sensitive refinement too, which made it impossible to
think of any ordinary vulgar skeleton in the background of his life.
Yet her misgivings had grown and grown upon her, till now they were
morbidly strong. She did not satisfy him; she was not making him
happy; it would be better for her to set him free. This action of
his father's offered the opportunity. But as she thought of doing
it--_how_ she would do it, and how he might possibly accept it--she
was torn with misery.
She and her girl-friend Pamela were very different. She was the
elder by a couple of years, and much more mature. But Pamela's
undeveloped powers, the flashes of daring, of romance, in the
awkward reserved girl, the suggestion in her of a big and splendid
flowering, fascinated Beryl, and in her humility she never dreamt
that she, with her delicate pensiveness, the mingled subtlety and
purity of her nature, was no less exceptional. She had been brought
up very much alone. Her mother was no companion for her, and the
brother nearest her own age and nearest her heart had been killed at
the opening of the war. Arthur and she were very good friends, but
not altogether congenial. She was rather afraid of him--of his
critical temper, and his abrupt intolerant way, with people or
opinions he disliked. Beryl was quite aware of his effect on Pamela
Mannering, and it made her anxious. For she saw little chance for
Pamela. Before the war, Arthur in London had been very much sought
after, in a world where women are generally good-looking, and
skilled besides in all the arts of pursuit. His standards were
ridiculously high. His women friends were many and of the best. Why
should he be attracted by anything so young and immature as Pamela?
* * * * *
At last! A pony-cart coming up from the lodge, with two figures in
it--Aubrey and Pamela. So poor Pam had at last got hold of something
in the nature of an animal!
Beryl gripped the balustrading which bordered one side of the path,
and stood watching intently--a slender creature, in a broad purple
hat, shading her small, distinguished face.
Presently, as the visitors approached the house, she waved to them,
and they to her. They disappeared from view for a minute. Then a
man's figure emerged alone from a garden door opening on the flagged
path.
He came towards her with outstretched hands, looked round him
smiling to see that no one was in sight, and then kissed her. Beryl
knew she ought to have resisted the kiss; she had meant to do it;
but all the same she submitted.
'Your father met us at the door. Arthur has carried Pamela off
somewhere. Very sporting of them, wasn't it? So I've got you alone!
How nice you look! And what a jolly place this is!'
He first looked her up and down with admiring eyes, and then made a
gesture towards the beautiful modern house, and the equally
beautiful and modern gardens in which it stood, with their still
unspoilt autumn flowers, their cunning devices in steps and
fountains and pergolas.
'How on earth do you keep it so trim?' He put a hand through her
arm, and drew her on towards the wood-walk which opened beyond the
formal garden and the lawn.
'With two or three old men, and two girls from the village,' said
Beryl. 'Father doesn't mind what he gives up so long as it isn't the
garden.'
'It's his pet vice!' laughed Aubrey--'his public-house, like my
father's Greek pots. I say--you've heard of the secretary?'
It seemed to Beryl that he was fencing with her--delaying their real
talk. But she accepted his lead.
'Yes, Desmond seems to like her. I don't gather that Pamela cares
very much about her.'
'Oh, Pamela takes time. But what do you think the secretary did last
night?'
'What?' They had paused under a group of limes clad in a glory of
yellow leaf, and she was looking up in surprise at the unusual
animation playing over the features of the man beside her.
'She refused to sign a codicil to my father's will, disinheriting
me, and came to tell me so this morning! You should have heard her!
Very formal and ceremonious--very much on her dignity! But such a
brick!'
Mannering's deep-set eyes under his lined thinker's brow shone with
amusement. Beryl, with the instinctive jealousy of a girl in love,
was conscious of a sudden annoyance that Miss Bremerton should have
been mixed up in Aubrey's personal affairs.
'What _do_ you mean?'
Aubrey put an arm round her shoulder. She knew she ought to shake it
off, but the pressure of it was too welcome. They strolled on.
'I had my talk with father last night. I told him he was absurd, and
I was my own master. That you were perfectly free to give me
up--that I had begged you to consider it--but I didn't think you
would,' he smiled down upon her, but more gravely; 'and failing
dismissal from you, we should be married as soon as it was
reasonably possible. Was that right, darling?'
She evaded the question.
'Well--and then?'
'Then he broke out. Sir Henry of course was the _bête noire_. You
can imagine the kind of things he said, I needn't repeat them. He is
in a mood of perfectly mad opposition to all this war legislation,
and it is not the least good arguing with him. Finally he told me
that my allowance would be stopped, and Mannering would be left to
Desmond, if we married. "All right!" I said, "I daresay, if he and I
survive you, Desmond will let me look round sometimes." Not very
respectful, perhaps, but by that time I was fed up. So then I wished
him good-night, and went back to the drawing-room. In a few minutes
he sent for Miss Bremerton--nobody knew why. I was dog-tired, and
went to bed, and didn't I sleep!--nine good hours. Then this
morning, just after breakfast, when I was strolling in the garden
with a cigarette waiting for Pamela, who should come out but Miss
Bremerton! Have you seen her?'
'Only in the distance.'
'Well, she's really a very fine creature, not pretty exactly--oh,
not pretty at all--but wonderfully well set up, with beautiful hair,
and a general look of--what shall I say?--dignity, refinement,
knowing her own mind. You feel she would set you down in a moment if
you took the smallest liberty. I could not think what she wanted.
But she came up to me--of course we had made acquaintance the night
before--"May I speak to you, Major Mannering? I wish to say
something private. Shall we walk down to the kitchen garden?" So we
walked down to the kitchen garden, and then she told me what had
happened after dinner, when my father sent for her. She told it very
stiffly, rather curtly in fact, as though she were annoyed to have
to bother about such unprofessional things, and hated to waste her
time. "But I don't wish, I don't intend," she said, "to have the
smallest responsibility in the matter. So after thinking it over, I
decided to inform you--and Mr. Desmond too, if you will kindly tell
him--as to what I had done. That is all I have to say," with her
chin very much in the air! "I did it, of course, because I did not
care to be mixed up in _any_ private or family affairs. That is not
my business." I was taken aback, as you can imagine! But, of course,
I thanked her--'
'Why, she couldn't have done anything else!' said Beryl with
vivacity.
'I don't know that. Anybody may witness anything. But she seems to
have guessed. Of course my father never keeps anything to himself.
Anyway she didn't like being thanked at all. She turned back to the
house at once. So then I asked her if she knew what had happened to
the precious codicil. And she flushed up and said, with the manner
of an icicle, "Mr. Mannering sent me to the drawer this morning,
where he had put it away. It was lying on the top, and I saw it."
"Signed?" I said. "No, not signed." Then she began to hurry, and I
thought I had offended her in some way. But it dawned upon me,
presently, that she was really torn between her feeling of chivalry
towards me--she seems to have a kindness for soldiers! her brother
is fighting somewhere--and her professional obligations towards my
father. Wasn't it odd? She hated to be indiscreet, to give him away,
and yet she could not help it! I believe she had been awake half the
night. Her eyes looked like it. I must say I liked her very much. A
woman of a great deal of character! I expect she has a rough time of
it!'
'But of course,' said Beryl, 'it may be all signed and witnessed by
now!'
'Most probably!' The Major laughed. 'But _she_ did her best anyway,
and I shan't ask her any more questions. We had better take it for
granted. My father is as obstinate as they make 'em. Well now, dear
Beryl, have you--have you thought it over?'
He pointed to a seat, and sat down by her. The brightness of his
look had passed away. The thin, intellectual face and lined brow had
resumed the expression that was familiar to Beryl. It was an
expression of fatigue--not physical now, for he had clearly
recovered his health, but moral; as though the man behind it were
worn out by some hidden debate with his own mind, into which he fell
perpetually, when left to himself. It was the look which divided him
from her.
'Yes,' she said slowly, 'I've been thinking a great deal.' She
stopped; then lifting her eyes, which were grey and fringed with
dark lashes--beautiful eyes, timid yet passionately honest--she
said, 'You'd better give me up, Aubrey!'
He made a restless movement, then took her hands and raised them to
his lips.
'I don't feel like it!' he said, smiling. 'Tell me what you mean.'
She looked down, plucking at the fringed belt of her sports coat.
Her lips trembled a little.
'I don't think, Aubrey, I can make you happy! I've been feeling
often--that I don't seem to make much difference to you. And now
this is very serious--giving up Mannering. _You_ may mind it much
more than you think. And if--'
'If what? Go on!'
She raised her eyes again and looked at him straight.
'If I can't make up?'
The colour flooded into his face, as though, far within, something
stirred 'like a guilty thing surprised.' But he said tenderly:
'I don't care _that_, Beryl'--he snapped his fingers--'for Mannering
in comparison with you.'
Her breath fluttered a little, but she went on resolutely. 'But I
must say it--I must tell you what I feel. It seems the right
opportunity. So often, Aubrey, I don't seem to understand you! I say
the wrong thing. I'm not clever. I haven't any deep thoughts--like
you or Arthur. It would be terrible if you married me, and then--I
felt you were disappointed.'
He moved a little away from her and, propping his chin on his hands,
looked gravely through the thinning branches of the wood.
'I wonder why you say that--I wonder what I've done!'
'Oh, you've done nothing!' cried Beryl. 'It's only I
feel--sometimes--that--that you don't let me know things--share
things. You seem sometimes so sad--and I can't be any help--you
won't let me! That's what I mind so much--so dreadfully!'
He was silent a moment. Then without any attempt at caresses, he
said, 'I wonder, Beryl, whether you--whether you--ever realize--what
we soldiers have _seen_? No!--thank God!--you don't--you can't.'
She pressed her hands to her eyes, and shuddered.
'No, of course I can't--of course I can't!' she said passionately.
Then, while her eyes were still hidden, there passed through
his worn features a sharp spasm, as of some uncontrollable
anguish--passed and was gone.
He turned towards her, and she looked up. If ever love, all-giving,
self-forgetting, was written on a girl's face, it was written on
Beryl's then. Her wild-rose colour came and went; her eyes were full
of tears. She had honestly made her attempt, but she could not carry
it through, and he saw it. Some vague hope--of which he was
ashamed--died away. Profoundly touched, he put out his arms, and
making nothing of her slight resistance, gathered her close to him.
'Did you ever read _Sintram_, Beryl?'
'Yes, years ago.'
'Do you remember his black fits--how they came upon him
unexpectedly--and only Verena could help him? It's like that with me
sometimes. Things I've seen--horrible sufferings and death--come
back on me. I can't get over it--at least not yet. But I'll never
let it come really between us. And perhaps--some day'--he hesitated
and his voice dropped--'you shall help me--like Verena!'
She clung to him, not knowing what he meant, but fascinated by his
deep voice, and the warm shelter of his arms. He bent down to kiss
her, in the most passionate embrace he had ever given her.
Then he released her, and they both looked at each other with a new
shyness.
'So that's all right!' he said, smiling. 'You see you can't drop me
as easily as you think. I stick! Well, now, you take me as a
pauper--not exactly a pauper--but still--I've got to settle things
with your father, though!'
Beryl proposed that they should go and look for the others.
They went hand in hand.
* * * * *
Sir Henry meanwhile was engaged in the congenial occupation of
inspecting and showing his kitchen gardens. His son Arthur and
Pamela Mannering were following him round the greenhouses, finding
more amusement in the perplexities of Sir Henry's conscience than
interest in the show itself.
'You see they've brought in the chrysanthemums. Just in time! There
was a frost last night,' said Sir Henry, throwing open a door, and
disclosing a greenhouse packed with chrysanthemums in bud.
'My hat--what a show!' said his son.
'Not at all, Arthur, not at all,' said his father, annoyed. 'Not a
third of what we had last year.'
Arthur raised his eyebrows, and behind his father's back he and
Pamela exchanged smiles. The next house showed a couple of elderly
men at work pruning roses intended to flower in February and March.
'This is almost my favourite house,' exclaimed Sir Henry. 'Such a
wonderful result for so little labour!' He strolled on complacently.
'How long does this take you, Grimes?' Arthur inquired discreetly of
one of the gardeners.
'Oh, a good while, Mr. Arthur--what with the pruning, and the
syringing, and the manuring,' said the man addressed, stopping to
wipe his brow, for the day was mild.
Arthur's look darkened a little. He fell into a reverie, while
Pamela was conscious at every step of his tall commanding presence,
of the Military Cross on his khaki breast, and the pleasant,
penetrating eyes under his staff cap. Arthur, she thought, must be
now over thirty. Before his recent wound he had been doing some
special artillery work on the Staff of an Army Corps, and was a very
rising soldier. He was now chafing hotly against the ruling of his
Medical Board, who were insisting that he was not yet fit to go back
to France.
Pamela meanwhile was going through moments of disillusion. After
these two years she had looked forward to the meeting with such
eagerness, such hidden emotion! And now--what was there to have been
eager about? They seemed to be talking almost as strangers. The
soreness of it bewildered her.
Presently, as they were walking back to the house, leaving Sir
Henry in anxious consultation over the mushroom-house with the
grey-haired head gardener, her companion turned to her abruptly.
'I suppose _that's_ all right!' He pointed to some distant figures
on the fringe of a wood.
'Beryl and Aubrey? Yes--if Aubrey can make her see that she isn't
doing him any harm by letting him go on.'
'Good heavens! how could she do him any harm?'
'Well, there's Mannering. As if that mattered!' said the girl
scornfully. 'And then--Beryl's too dreadfully humble!'
'Humble! About what? No girl ought to be humble--ever!'
Pamela's eyes recovered their natural brilliance under his
peremptory look. And he, who had begun the walk with no particular
consciousness at all about his companion, except that she was a
nice, good-looking child, whom he had known from a baby, with equal
suddenness became aware of her in a new way.
'Why shouldn't we be humble, please?' she said, with a laugh.
'Because it's monstrous that you should. Leave that to us!'
'There wouldn't be much of it about, if we did!' The red danced in
her cheek.
'Much humility? Oh, you're quite mistaken. Men are much more humble
than you think. But we're human, of course. If you tempt us, you
soon put the starch into us.'
'Well, you must starch Beryl!' said Pamela, with emphasis. 'She will
think and say that she's not worthy of Aubrey, that she knows
she'll disappoint him, that she wouldn't mind his giving up
Mannering if only she were sure she could make him happy--and heaps
of things like that! I'm sure she's saying them now!'
'I never heard such nonsense in my life!' The masculine face beside
her was all impatience. 'One can't exactly boast about one's sister,
but you and I know very well what Beryl is worth!'
Pamela agreed fervently. 'Besides, Desmond would give it back.'
'Hm--' her companion demurred. 'Giving back isn't always easy. As to
pounds, shillings, and pence, if one must talk of them, it's lucky
that Beryl has her "bit." But I shouldn't wonder if your father
thought better of it after all.'
Pamela flushed indignantly.
'He all but signed a codicil to his will last night! He's in a
tearing hurry about it. He called in Miss Bremerton and wanted her
to witness it. And she refused. So father threw it into a drawer,
and nobody knows what has happened.'
'Miss Bremerton? The new secretary?' The tone expressed both
amusement and curiosity. 'Ah! I hear all sorts of interesting things
about her.'
Pamela straightened her shoulders defiantly.
'Of course she's interesting. She's terribly clever and up to date,
and all the rest of it. She's beginning to boss father, and very
soon she'll boss all the rest of us.'
'Perhaps you wanted it!' said Captain Chicksands, smiling.
'Perhaps we did,' Pamela admitted. 'But one needn't like it all the
same. Well, she's rationed us--that's one good thing--and father
really doesn't guess! And now she's begun to take an interest in
the farms! I believe she's walked over to the Holme Wood farm
to-day, to see for herself what state it's in. Father's in town. And
she's trying hard to keep father out of a horrible row with the
County Committee.'
'About ploughing up the park?'
Pamela nodded.
'Plucky woman!' said Arthur Chicksands heartily. 'I'm sure you help
her, Pamela, all you can?'
'I don't like being managed,' said the girl stubbornly, rather
resenting his tone.
A slight shade of sternness crossed the soldier's face.
'You know it's no good playing with this war,' he said drily. 'It's
as much to be won here as it is over seas. _Food_!--that'll be the
last word for everybody. And it's women's work as much as men's.'
She saw that she had jarred on him. But an odd jealousy--or perhaps
her hidden disappointment--drove her on.
'Yes, but one doesn't like strangers interfering,' she said
childishly.
The soldier threw her a side-glance, while his lip twitched a
little. So this was Pamela--grown-up. She seemed to him rather
foolish--and very lovely. There was no doubt about that! She was
going to be a beauty, and of a remarkable type. He himself was a
strong, high-minded, capable fellow, with an instinctive interest in
women, and a natural aptitude for making friends with them. He was
inclined, always, to try and set them in the right way; to help them
to some of the mental training which men got in a hundred ways, and
women, as it seemed to him, were often so deplorably without. But
this schoolmaster function only attracted him when there was
opposition. He had been quite sincere in denouncing humility in
women. It never failed to warn him off.
'Do you think she really wants to interfere?' he asked, smiling. 'I
expect it's only that she's got a bit of an organizing gift--like
the women who have been doing such fine things in the war.'
'There's no chance for me to do fine things in the war,' said Pamela
bitterly.
'Take up the land, and see! Suppose you and Miss Bremerton could
pull the estate together!'
Pamela's eyes scoffed.
'Father would never let me. No, I think sometimes I shall run away!'
He lifted his eyebrows, and she was annoyed with him for taking her
remark as mere bluff.
'You'll see,' she insisted. 'I shall do something desperate.'
'I wouldn't,' he said, quietly. 'Make friends with Miss Bremerton
and help her.'
'I don't like her enough,' she said, drawing quick breath.
He saw now she was in a mood to quarrel with him outright. But he
didn't mean to let her. With those eyes--in such a fire--she was
really splendid. How she had come on!
'I'm sorry,' he said mildly. 'Because, you know--if you don't mind
my saying so--it'll really take the two of you to keep your father
out of gaol. The Government's absolutely determined about this
thing--they can't afford to be anything else. _We're_ being
hammered, and gassed, and blown to pieces over there'--he pointed
eastward. 'It's the least the people over here can do--to play
up--isn't it?' Then he laughed. 'But I mustn't be setting you
against your father. I didn't mean to.'
Pamela shrugged her shoulders, in silence. She really longed to ask
him about his wound, his staff work, a thousand things; but they
didn't seem, somehow, to be intimate enough, to be hitting it off
enough. This meeting, which had been to her a point of romance
in the distance, was turning out to be just nothing--only
disappointment. She was glad to see how quickly the other pair were
coming towards them, and at the same time bitterly vexed that her
_tête-à-tête_ with Arthur was at an end.