It was a bright January day. Lunch was just over at Mannering, and
the luncheon-party had dispersed--attracted to the garden and the
park by the lure of the sunshine after dark days of storm and wind.
Mrs. Gaddesden alone was left sitting by the fire in the hall. There
was a cold wind, and she did not feel equal to facing it. She was
one of those women, rare in these days, who, though still young,
prefer to be prematurely old; in whom their great-grandmothers, and
the 'elegant' lackadaisical ways of a generation that knew nothing
of exercise, thick boots and short skirts, seem to become once more
incarnate. Though Mannering was not ill-warmed, Alice moved about it
in winter wrapped in a picturesque coat of black velvet trimmed with
chinchilla, her head wreathed in white lace. From this rather
pompous setting her fair hair, small person, and pinched pale face
looked out perhaps with greater dignity than they could have
achieved unadorned. Her chilliness, her small self-indulgences,
including an inordinate love of cakes and all sweet things, were the
standing joke of the twins when they discussed the family freely
behind the closed doors of the 'Den.' But no one disliked Alice
Gaddesden, though it was hard to be actively fond of her. She and
her husband were quite good friends; but they were no longer of any
real importance to each other. He was a good deal older than she;
and was often away from London on 'war work' in the Midlands. On
these occasions Alice generally invited herself to Mannering. She
thus got rid of housekeeping, which in these days of rations worried
her to death. Moreover, food at Mannering was much more plentiful
than food in town--especially since the advent of Elizabeth
Bremerton.
It was of Elizabeth that Mrs. Gaddesden was thinking as she sat
alone in the hall. From her seat she could perceive a shrubbery walk
in the garden outside, along which two figures were pacing--Miss
Bremerton and the new agent. Beyond, at some distance, she was aware
of another group disappearing among the trees of the park--Pamela
with Captain Chicksands and Beryl.
This was the first time that any member of the Chicksands family had
been a guest at Mannering since the quarrel in the autumn. The
Squire had not yet brought himself to shake hands with Sir Henry.
But Beryl on the one side, and Pamela on the other--aided and
abetted always by Elizabeth Bremerton--had been gradually breaking
down the embargo; and when, hearing from Beryl that her brother
Arthur was with them for a few days, Pamela had openly proposed in
her father's presence to ask them both to luncheon, the Squire had
pretended not to hear, but had at any rate raised no objection. And
when the brother and sister arrived, he had received them as though
nothing had happened. His manners were always brusque and
ungracious, except in the case of persons who specially mattered to
his own pursuits, such as archæologists and Greek professors. But
the Chetworth family were almost as well acquainted with his ways as
his own, and his visitors took them philosophically. Arthur
Chicksands had kept the table alive at luncheon with soldier
stories, and the Squire's sulky or sarcastic silence had passed
unnoticed.
Mrs. Gaddesden's mind was very full of the Captain's good looks and
distinction. He was now in London, at the War Office, it seemed, for
a short time, on a special mission; hence his occasional weekends
with his family. When the mission was over--so Beryl told Pamela--he
was probably going out to an important appointment in the
Intelligence Department at G.H.Q. 'Arthur's a great swell,' said
Beryl, 'though as to what he's done, or what people think of him,
you have to dig it out of him--if you can!'
Mrs. Gaddesden did not very much like him. His brusque sincerity
made people of her sort uncomfortable. But she would have liked very
much to know whether there was anything up between him and Pamela.
Really, Miss Bremerton's discretion about such things was too
tiresome--ridiculous--almost rude! It was no good trying, even, to
discuss them with her.
As to the disinheriting of Aubrey, no more had been heard of it.
Miss Bremerton had told Aubrey when he was at home for twenty-four
hours at Christmas that, as far as she knew, the codicil was still
unsigned. But Aubrey didn't seem to care the least whether it was or
no. If Beryl wished him to raise the question again with his father,
of course he would; otherwise he greatly preferred to leave it
alone. And as Beryl had no will or wishes but his, and was, in
Alice's opinion, only too absurdly and dependently in love, the
sleeping dogs were very much asleep; and the secret of Mannering's
future disposal lay hid impenetrably in the Squire's own breast.
At the same time, Mrs. Gaddesden was firmly persuaded that whatever
Elizabeth Bremerton wished or advised would ultimately be done.
What an extraordinary position that young woman now held among them!
Nearly three months had now elapsed since Mrs. Gaddesden's autumn
visit--since Desmond had gone into training at his artillery
camp--since a third of the park had been ploughed up, and since
Elizabeth Bremerton had thrown up her post only to come back next
day as dictator.
Yes--_dictator_! Mrs. Gaddesden was never tired of thinking about
it, and was excitedly conscious that all the neighbourhood, and all
their friends and kinsfolk were thinking and speculating with her.
At the beginning of November, before she and Margaret Strang went
back to town, the Squire had announced to all of them that Miss
Bremerton had become his 'business secretary,' as well as his
classical assistant. And now, after three months, the meaning of
this notice was becoming very clear. The old agent, Mr. Hull, had
been dismissed, and moderately--very moderately--pensioned. It was
said that Miss Bremerton, on looking into his accounts, saw no
reason at all for any special indulgence. For, in addition to
everything else, she turned out to be a trained accountant!--and
money matters connected with the estate were being probed to the
bottom that had never been probed before. Mrs. Gaddesden's own
allowance--for the Squire had always obstinately declined to settle
any capital on his married daughters--had been, for the first time,
paid at the proper date--by Elizabeth Bremerton! At least, if the
Squire had signed it, she had written the cheque. And she might
perfectly well have signed it. For, as Pamela had long since
reported to her sisters, Elizabeth paid all the house and estate
accounts over her own signature, and seemed to have much more
accurate knowledge than the Squire himself of the state of his bank
balance, and his money affairs generally.
Not that she ever paraded these things in the least. But neither did
she make any unnecessary mystery about it with the Squire's family.
And indeed they were quite evident to any one living in the house.
At times she would make little, laughing, apologetic remarks to one
of the daughters--'I hope you don't mind!--the Squire wants me to
get things straight.' But in general, her authority by now had
become a matter of course.
Her position in the Mannering household, however, was as nothing to
her position in the estate and the neighbourhood. That was the
amazing thing which had by now begun to set all tongues wagging. Sir
Henry Chicksands, meeting Mrs. Gaddesden at the station, had poured
himself out to her. 'That extraordinary young woman your father has
got hold of, is simply transforming the whole place. The farmers on
the whole like her very much. But if they don't like her, they're
_afraid of her_! For Heaven's sake don't let her kill herself with
over-work. She'll soon be leading the county.'
Yes. Work indeed! How on earth did she get through it? In
the mornings there she was in the library, absorbed in the
catalogue, writing to the Squire's dictation, transcribing or
translating Greek--his docile and obedient slave. Then in the
afternoon--bicycling all over the estate, and from dark onwards,
till late at night, busy with correspondence and office work, except
just for dinner and an hour afterwards.
* * * * *
The door of the outer hall opened and shut. Elizabeth and a young
man--the new agent--entered the inner hall, where Mrs. Gaddesden was
sitting, Elizabeth acknowledging her presence with a pleasant nod
and smile. But they passed quickly through to the room at the
further end of the hall, which was now an estate office where
Elizabeth spent the latter part of her day. It was connected both
with the main living-rooms of the house, and with a side entrance
from the park, by which visitors on estate matters were admitted.
A man was sitting waiting for Miss Bremerton. He was the new tenant
of the derelict farm, on the Holme Wood side of the estate, and he
had come to report on the progress which had been made in clearing
and ploughing the land, and repairing the farm-buildings. He was a
youngish man, a sergeant in a Warwickshire regiment, who had been
twice wounded in the war, and was now discharged. As the son of an
intelligent farmer, he had had a good agricultural training, and it
was evident that his enthusiasms and those of the Squire's new
'business-secretary' were running in harness.
The new agent, Captain Dell, also a discharged Territorial, who had
lost an arm in the war, watched the scene between the incoming
tenant and Elizabeth, with a shrewd pair of eyes, through which
there passed occasional gleams of amusement or surprise. He was
every day making further acquaintance with the lady who was
apparently to be his chief, but he was well aware that he was only
at the beginning of his lesson. Astonishing, to see a woman taking
this kind of lead!--asking these technical questions--as to land,
crops, repairs, food production, and the rest--looking every now and
then at the note-book beside her, full of her own notes made on the
spot, or again, setting down with a quick hand something that was
said to her. And all through he was struck with her tone of quiet
authority--without a touch of boasting or 'side,' but also without a
touch of any mere feminine deference to the male. She was there in
the Squire's place, and she never let it be forgotten. Heavens,
women had come on during this war! Through the young man's mind
there ran a vague and whirling sense of change.
'Well, Mr. Denman, that all sounds splendid!' said Elizabeth, at
last, as she rose from her table. 'The country won't starve, if you
can help it! I shall tell the County Committee all about you on
Tuesday. You don't want another tractor?'
'Oh, no, thank you! The two at work are enough. I hope you'll be
over soon. I should like to show you what we've been after.' The
man's tone was one of eager good will.
'Oh yes, I shall be over before long,' said Elizabeth cheerfully.
'It's so tremendously interesting what you're doing. And if you want
anything I can help you in, you can always telephone.'
And she pointed smiling to the instrument on the table--the first
that had ever been allowed within the walls of Mannering. And that
the Squire might not be teased with it, Elizabeth had long since
fitted an extra inner door, covered with green baize, to the door of
the office.
The new tenant departed, and Elizabeth turned to the agent.
'I really think we've caught a good man there,' she said, with a
smile. 'Now will you tell me, please, about those timber proposals?
I hope to get a few words with the Squire to-night.'
And leaning back in her chair, she listened intently while Captain
Dell, bringing a roll of papers out of his pocket, read her the
draft proposals of a well-known firm of timber merchants, for the
purchase of some of the Squire's outlying woods of oak and beech.
Lights had been brought in, and Elizabeth sat shading her eyes from
the lamp before her,--a strong and yet agreeable figure. Was it the
consciousness of successful work--of opening horizons, and satisfied
ambitions, that had made a physical presence, always attractive, so
much more attractive than before--that had given it a magnetism and
fire it had never yet possessed? Pamela, who was developing fast,
and was acutely conscious of Elizabeth, asked herself the question,
or something like it, about once a week. And during a short
Christmas visit that Elizabeth had paid her own people, her gentle
mother, much puzzled and a little dazzled by her daughter, had
necessarily pondered the why and wherefore of a change she felt, but
could not analyse. One thing the mother's insight had been clear
about. Elizabeth was not in love. On the contrary, the one
love-affair of her life seemed to be at last forgotten and put
aside. Elizabeth was now in love with _efficiency_; with a great
task given into her hand. As to the Squire, the owner of Mannering,
who had provided her with the task, Mrs. Bremerton could not
imagine him or envisage him at all. Elizabeth's accounts of him
were so reticent and so contradictory.... 'Well, that's very
interesting'--said Elizabeth thoughtfully, when Captain Dell laid
down his papers--'I wonder what Mr. Mannering will say to it? As you
know, I got his express permission for you to make these enquiries.
But he hates cutting down a single tree, and this will mean a wide
clearance!'
'So it will--but the country wants every stick of it. And as to not
cutting, one sees that from the woods--the tragedy of the
woods!'--said the young man with emphasis. 'There has been no decent
forestry on this estate for half a century. I hope you will be able
to persuade him, Miss Bremerton. I expect, indeed, it's Hobson's
choice.'
'You mean the timber will be commandeered?'
'Probably. The Government have just come down on some of Lord
Radley's woods just beyond our borders--with scarcely a week's
warning. No "With your leave" or "By your leave"! The price fixed,
Canadians sent down to cut, and a light railway built from the woods
to the station to carry the timber, before you could say "Jack
Robinson."'
'You think the price these people offer is a fair one?' She pointed
to the draft contract.
'Excellent! The Squire won't get nearly as much from the
Government.'
'What one might do with some of it for the estate!' said Elizabeth,
looking up, her blue eyes dancing in the lamplight.
'Rebuild half the cottages?' said the other, smiling, as he rose. 'A
village club-house, a communal kitchen, a small holdings scheme--all
the things we've talked about? Oh yes, you could do all that and
more. The Squire doesn't know what he possesses.'
'Well, I'll take the papers to him,' said Elizabeth, holding out her
hands for them. 'I may perhaps catch him to-night'
A little more business talk, and the agent departed. Then Elizabeth
dreamily--still cogitating a hundred things--touched an electric
bell. A girl typist, who acted as her clerk, came in from an
adjoining room. Elizabeth rapidly dictated a number of letters,
stayed for a little friendly gossip with the girl about her father
in the Army Service Corps, who had been in hospital at Rouen, and
had just finished, when the gong rang for afternoon tea.
* * * * *
When Elizabeth entered, the hall was crowded. It was the principal
sitting-room of the house, now that for reasons of economy fires
were seldom lit in the drawing-rooms. Before Elizabeth's advent it
had been a dingy, uncomfortable place, but she and Pamela had
entirely transformed it. As in the estate so in the house, the
Squire did not know what he possessed. In all old houses with a
continuous life, there are accumulations of furniture and stores,
discarded by the generation of one day, and brought back by the
fashion of the next. A little routing in attics and forgotten
cupboards and chests had produced astonishing results. Chippendale
chairs and settees had been brought down from the servants'
bedrooms; two fine Dutch cabinets had been discovered amid a mass of
lumber in an outhouse; a tall Japanese screen, dating from the end
of the eighteenth century, and many pairs of linen curtains
embroidered about the same time in branching oriental patterns by
the hands of Mannering ladies, had been unearthed, and Pamela--for
Elizabeth having started the search had interfered very little with
its results--had spent some of her now scanty leisure in making the
best of the finds. The hall was now a charming place, scented,
moreover, on this January evening by the freesias and narcissus that
Elizabeth had managed to rear in the house itself, and Pamela, who
had always been ashamed of her own ill-kept and out-at-elbows home,
as compared with the perfections of Chetworth, had been showing
Arthur and Beryl Chicksands what had been done to renovate the old
house since they were last in it--'and all without spending a
penny!'--with a girlish pleasure which in the Captain's opinion
became her greatly. Pamela needed indeed a good deal of animation to
be as handsome as she deserved to be! A very critical observer took
note that her stock of it was rapidly rising. It was the same with
the letters, too, which for a month or so past, she had condescended
to write him, after treating him most uncivilly in the autumn, and
never answering a long screed--'and a jolly good one!'--which he had
written her from Paris in November.
As Elizabeth came in, Pamela was reading aloud a telegram just
received, and Miss Bremerton was greeted with the news--'Desmond's
coming to-night, instead of to-morrow! They've given him forty-eight
hours' leave, and he goes to France on Thursday.'
'That's very short!' said Elizabeth, as she took her place beside
Pamela, who was making tea. 'Does your father know?'
Forest, it appeared, had gone to tell him. Meanwhile Captain
Chicksands was watching with a keen eye the relation between Miss
Bremerton and Pamela. He saw that the Squire's secretary was
scrupulously careful to give Pamela her place as daughter of the
house; but Pamela's manner hardly showed any real intimacy between
them. And it was easy to see where the real authority lay. As for
himself he had lately begun to ask himself seriously how much he was
interested in Pamela. For in truth, though he was no coxcomb, he
could not help seeing--all the more because of Pamela's variable
moods towards him--that she was at least incipiently interested in
him. If so, was it fair to her that they should correspond?--and
that he should come to Mannering whenever he was asked and military
duty allowed, now that the Squire's embargo was at least partially
removed?
He confessed to himself that he was glad to come, that Pamela
attracted him. At the same time there was in him a stern sense that
the time was no time for love-making. The German hosts were
gathering; the vast breakdown in Russia was freeing more and more of
them for the Western assault. He himself was for the moment doing
some important intelligence work, in close contact with the High
Command. No one outside a very small circle knew better than he what
lay in front of England--the fierce death-struggle over a thousand
miles of front. And were men and women to be kissing and marrying
while these storm-clouds of war--this rain of blood--were gathering
overhead?
Involuntarily he moved further from Pamela. His fine face with the
rather high cheek-bones, strong mouth, and lined brow, seemed to put
softness away. He approached Elizabeth.
'What is the Squire doing about his wood, Miss Bremerton? The
Government's desperately in want of ash!'
He spoke almost as one official might speak to another--comrade to
comrade. What he had heard about her doings from his father had
filled his soldier's mind with an eager admiration for her. That was
how women should bear themselves in this war--as the practical
helpers of men.
He fell into the chair beside her, and Elizabeth was soon deep in
conversation with him, a conversation that any one might overhear
who would. It turned partly on the armies abroad--partly on the
effort at home. There was warmth--even passion--in it, studiously
restrained. But it was the passion of two patriots, conscious
through every pulse of their country's strait.
The others listened. Pamela became silent and pale. All the old
jealousy and misery of the autumn were alive in her once more. She
had looked forward for weeks to this meeting with Arthur Chicksands.
And for the first part of his visit she had been happy--before
Elizabeth came on the scene. Why should Elizabeth have all the
homage and the attention? She, too, was doing her best! She was
drudging every day as a V.A.D., washing crockery and scrubbing
floors; and this was the first afternoon off she had had for weeks.
Her limbs were dog-tired. But Arthur Chicksands never talked to
_her_--Pamela--in this tone of freedom and equality--with the whole
and not the half of his mind. 'I could hold my own,' she thought
bitterly, 'but he never gives me the chance! I suppose he despises
girls.'
As the hall clock struck half-past five, however, Elizabeth rose
from her seat, gathering up the papers she had brought in from the
office, and disappeared.
Arthur Chicksands looked at his watch. Beryl exclaimed:
'Oh, no, Arthur, not yet! Let's wait for Desmond!'
Pamela said perfunctorily--'No, please don't go! He'll be here
directly.'
But as they gathered round the fire, expecting the young gunner, she
hardly opened her lips again. Arthur Chicksands was quite conscious
that he had wounded her. She appeared to him, as she sat there in
the firelight, in all the first fairness and freshness of her youth,
as an embodied temptation. Again he said to himself that other men
might love and marry on the threshold of battle; he could not bring
himself to think it justifiable--whether for the woman or the man.
In a few weeks' time he would be back in France and in the very
thick, perhaps, of the final struggle--of its preparatory stages, at
any rate. Could one make love to a beautiful creature like that at
such a moment, and then leave her, with a whole mind?--the mind and
the nerve that were the country's due?
All the same he had never been so aware of her before. And
simultaneously his mind was invaded by the mute, haunting certainty
that her life was reaching out towards his, and that he was
repelling and hurting her.
Suddenly--into the midst of them, while Mrs. Gaddesden was talking
endlessly in her small plaintive voice about rations and
queues--there dropped the sound of a car passing the windows, and a
boy's clear voice.
'Desmond!' cried Pamela, with almost a sob of relief, and like one
escaping from a nightmare she sprang up and ran to greet her
brother.
* * * * *
Meanwhile Elizabeth had found the Squire waiting for her, and, as
she saw at once, in a state of tension.
'What was that you were saying to me about timber last week?' he
demanded imperiously as she entered, without giving her time to
speak. 'I hear this intolerable Government are behaving like
madmen, cutting down everything they can lay hands on. They shan't
have my trees--I would burn them first!'
Elizabeth paused in some dismay.
'You remember--' she began.
'Remember what?' It was long since she had heard so snappish a tone.
'That you authorized me--'
'Oh, I daresay, I gave myself away--I'm always doing so. I don't
mean half I say. You're too full of business--you take me up too
quick. What are those papers you've got there?'
Elizabeth's red cheeks showed her taken aback. It was the first time
for weeks that her employer had turned upon her so. She had grown so
accustomed to managing him, to taming the irritable temper that no
one else but she could cope with, and, unconsciously, so proud of
her success, that she was not prepared for this attack. She met it
meekly.
'I have a proposal here to submit to you, from ---- & Co.' (she
named a firm of timber-merchants famous throughout the Midlands).
'There is nothing in it--Captain Dell is certain--that would injure
the estate. You have such masses of timber! And, if you don't sell,
you may find it commandeered. You know what's happened to Lord
Radley?'
The Squire sulkily demanded to be informed. Elizabeth told the
story, standing at his desk, like a clerk making a report. It seemed
to enrage her auditor.
'This _accursed_ war!' he broke out, when she had finished--'it
makes slaves and idiots of us all. It must--it shall end!' And
marching tempestuously up and down, he went off into one of the
pessimist and pacifist harangues to which she was more or less
accustomed. Who would rid the country of a Government that could
neither make peace nor make war?--that foresaw nothing--that was
making life unbearable at home, by a network of senseless
restrictions, while it wasted millions abroad, and in the military
camps! The Labour Party were the only people with a grain of sense.
They at least would try to make peace. Only, when they had made it,
to be governed by them would be even worse than to be governed by
Lloyd George. There was no possible life anywhere for decent quiet
people. And as for the ravaging and ruin of the woods that was going
on all over England--
'The submarine return is worse this week,' said Elizabeth in a low
voice.
She had gone to her own table and was sitting there till the
hurricane should pass over. There was in her a fresh and chafing
sense of the obstacles laid in her path--the path of the scientific
and successful organizer--by the Squire's perversities. It was not
as though he were a pacifist by conviction, religious or other. She
had seen him rout and trample on not a few genuine professors of the
faith. His whole opposition to the war rested on the limitations
and discomforts inflicted on his own life. It reminded her of
certain fragments of dialogue she had overheard in the winter, where
she had chanced to find herself alone in a railway carriage full of
a group of disaffected workmen returning from a strike meeting at
Leicester. 'If there are many like these, is the country worth
saving?' she was saying to herself all the time, in a dumb passion.
Yet, after all, those men had done months and years of labour for
the country. Saying 'I will not go!' they had yet gone. Without a
spark of high feeling or conscious self-sacrifice to ease their
toil, they had yet, week by week, made the guns and the shells which
had saved the armies of England. When this temporary outbreak was
over they would go back and make them again. And they were tired
men--sallow-faced, and bowed before their time.
But what had this whimsical, accomplished man before her ever done
for his country that he should rail like this? It was difficult
after a tiring day to keep scorn and dissent concealed. They
probably showed in her expression, for the Squire turned upon her as
she made her remark about the submarines, examining her with a pair
of keen eyes.
'Oh, I know very well what you and that fellow Chicksands think
about persons like me who endeavour to see things _as they
are_!'--he smote a chair before him--'and not as you and our
war-party _wish_ them to be. Well, well--now then to business. Who
wants to cut my woods--and what do they offer for them?'
Elizabeth put the papers in front of him. He turned them over.
'H'm--they want the Cross Wood--one of the most beautiful woods in
England. I have spent days there when I was young drawing the trees.
And who's the idiot'--he pointed to some marginal notes--'who is
always carping and girding? "Good forestry" would have done this and
not done that. "Mismanagement"--"neglect"! Upon my word, who made
this man a judge over me?'
And flushed with wrath, the Squire looked angrily at his secretary.
'Heavens!'--thought Elizabeth--'why didn't I edit the papers before
I showed them?' But aloud she said with her good-tempered smile--
'I am afraid I took all those remarks as applying to Mr. Hull. He
was responsible for the woods, wasn't he? He told me he was.'
'Nothing of the kind! In the end the owner is responsible. This
fellow is attacking _me_!'
Elizabeth said nothing. She could only wait in hope to see how the
large sums mentioned in the contract might work.
'"Maximum price"! What's this?--"Had Mr. Mannering been willing to
enter into negotiations with us last year,"'--the Squire began to
read a letter accompanying the draft contract--'"when we approached
him, we should probably have been able to offer him a better price.
But under the scale of prices now fixed by the Government--"'
The owner of Mannering bounded out of his seat.
'And you actually mean to say that I may not only be forced to sell
my woods--but whether I am forced or not, I can only sell them at
the Government price? Intolerable!--absolutely _intolerable_! Every
day that Englishmen put up with these tyrannies is a disgrace to the
country!'
'The country must have artillery waggons and aeroplanes,' said
Elizabeth, softly. 'Where are we to get the wood? There are not
ships enough to bring it overseas?'
'And suppose I grant you that--why am I not to get my fair
price--like anybody else? Just tell me that!'
'Why, everybody's "controlled"!' cried Elizabeth.
'Pshaw! I am sorry to be uncivil'--a sarcastic bow in her
direction--'but I really must point out that you talk nonsense.
Look at the money in the banks--look at the shops and the
advertisements--look at the money that people pay for pictures, and
old books, and autographs. _Somebody's_ making profits--that's
clear. But a wretched landowner--with a few woods to sell--it is
easy to victimize him!'
'It comes to a large sum,' said Elizabeth, looking down. At last she
was conscious of a real exasperation with the Squire. For four
months now she had been wrestling with him--for his own good and the
country's, and everything had always to be begun again. Suddenly her
spirits drooped.
The Squire observed her furtively out of the corners of his eyes.
Then he turned to the last page of the contract, with its final
figures. His eyebrows went up.
'The man's a _fool_!' he said vehemently. 'I know the value of my
own timber a great deal better than he. They're not worth a third of
what they put them at.'
'Even at the Government price?' Elizabeth ventured slyly. 'He'll be
very glad to give it!'
'Then it's blackmailing the country,' said the Squire obstinately.
'I loathe the war, but I'm not a profiteer.'
Elizabeth was silent. If the Squire persisted in rejecting this
deal, which he had himself invited in another mood, half her dreams
for the future, the dreams of a woman just beginning to feel the
intoxication of power, or, to put it better, the creative passion of
the reformer, were undone. She had already saved the Squire much
money. When all reasonable provision had been made for investment,
replanting, and the rest, this sale would still leave enough to
transform the estate and scores of human lives upon it. Her will
chafed hotly under the curb imposed upon it by the caprices of a
master for whom--save only as a Greek scholar--she had little
respect. After a while, as the Squire was still turning over the
contract with occasional grunts and mutterings, she asked--
'Will you please tell me what I am to reply?'
Her voice was cold and measured.
The Squire threw up his white head.
'What hurry is there?' he said testily.
'Oh, none--if you wish it delayed. Only--' she hesitated--'Captain
Dell tells me the Government inspectors are already in the
neighbourhood. He expects them here before long.'
'And if I make a stand--if I oppose you--well--it'll be the gates
over again?' She shrugged her shoulders.
'We must try to find the money some other way. It is badly wanted. I
thought--'
'You thought I had authorized this--and you've given all your work
for nothing? You think I'm an impossible person?'
Suddenly she found him sitting beside her. Perforce she looked him
in the face.
'Don't give notice again!' he said, almost with passion.
'It's not so easy now,' she said, with a rather uncertain voice.
'Because you've done so much for me?--because you've slaved and put
your heart into it? That's true. Well now, look here. We'll put that
beastly thing away to-night--perhaps I shall be in a better temper
in a few days.'
There was a note in his voice he seemed unable to keep out of it.
Elizabeth looking up caught the fire light on the sketch of Desmond.
Had the Squire's eyes been on it too? Impossible to say--for he had
already turned away.
'Oh, yes,--put it away!' she said hurriedly.
'And I'll go over the woods with you on--Friday,' said the Squire
after a pause. 'Oh, I don't deny that the money is tempting. I'm not
such a pauper as I once was, thanks to you. I seem to have some
money in the bank--astonishing situation! And--there's a jolly good
sale at Christie's coming on.'
He looked at her half-shamefaced, half-ready to resent it if she
laughed at him.
Her eyes laughed.
'I thought you'd forgotten that. I saw you mark the catalogue.'
'Beech and oak between two and three hundred years old--in exchange
for Greek gems, between two and three thousand. Well--I'll consider
it. Now then, are you feeling better?'
And to her amazement he approached her with an outstretched hand.
Elizabeth mechanically placed her own in it.
'I know what you want,' he said impetuously. 'You've got a head full
of dreams. They're not my dreams--but you've a right to them--so
long as you're kind to mine.'
'I try to be,' she said with a rather tremulous lip.
At that moment the library door opened. Neither perceived it.
Desmond came in softly, lest his father should be at work. A carved
oak screen round the door hid his entrance, and as he emerged into
the light his eyes caught the two distant figures standing hand in
hand.
Instinctively he stepped back a few paces and noisily opened the
door. The Squire walked away.
'Why, Desmond!' said his father, as the boy emerged into the light,
'your train's punctual for once. Thank you, Miss Bremerton--that'll
do. Kindly write to those people and say that I am considering the
matter. I needn't keep you any longer....'
That night a demon came to Elizabeth and offered her a Faust-like
bargain. Ambition--noble ambition on the one side--an 'elderly
lunatic' on the other. And she began to consider it!