THE HAZLEWOODS
In the quiet country town obvious changes had taken place during the
eight years of Stella's absence. They were not changes of importance,
however, and one sentence can symbolize them all--there was now tarmac
upon its roads. But in the cluster of houses a mile away at the end of
the deep lane the case was different. Mr. Harold Hazlewood had come to
Little Beeding. He now lived in the big house to which the village owed
its name and indeed its existence. He lived--and spread consternation
amongst the gentry for miles round.
"Lord, how I wish poor Arthur hadn't died!" old John Chubble used to
cry. He had hunted the West Sussex hounds for thirty years and the very
name of Little Beeding turned his red face purple. "There was a man. But
this fellow! And to think he's got that beautiful house! Do you know
there's hardly a pheasant on the place. And I've hashed them down out of
the sky in the old days there by the dozen. Well, he's got a son in the
Coldstream, Dick Hazlewood, who's not so bad. But Harold! Oh, pass me
the port!"
Harold indeed had inherited Little Beeding by an accident during the
first summer after Stella had gone out to India. Arthur Hazlewood, the
owner and Harold's nephew, had been lost with his yacht in a gale of wind
off the coast of Portugal. Arthur was a bachelor and thus Harold
Hazlewood came quite unexpectedly into the position of a country squire
when he was already well on in middle age. He was a widower and a man of
a noticeable aspect. At the first glance you knew that he was not as
other men; at the second you suspected that he took a pride in his
dissimilarity. He was long, rather shambling in his gait, with a mild
blue eye and fair thin hair now growing grey. But length was the chief
impression left by his physical appearance. His legs, his arms, his face,
even his hair, unless his son in the Coldstream happened to be at home at
the time, were long.
"Is your father mad?" Mr. Chubble once asked of Dick Hazlewood. The two
men had met in the broad street of Great Beeding at midday, and the elder
one, bubbling with indignation, had planted himself in front of Dick.
"Mad?" Dick repeated reflectively. "No, I shouldn't go as far as that. Oh
no! What has he done now?"
"He has paid out of his own pocket the fines of all the people in Great
Beeding who have just been convicted for not having their babies
vaccinated."
Dick Hazlewood stared in surprise at his companion's indignant face.
"But of course he'd do that, Mr. Chubble," he answered cheerfully. "He's
anti-everything--everything, I mean, which experience has established or
prudence could suggest."
"In addition he wants to sell the navy for old iron and abolish
the army."
"Yes," said Dick, nodding his head amicably. "He's like that. He
thinks that without an army and a navy we should be less aggressive. I
can't deny it."
"I should think not indeed," cried Mr. Chubble. "Are you walking home?"
"Yes."
"Let us walk together." Mr. Chubble took Dick Hazlewood by the arm and as
they went filled the lane with his plaints.
"I should think you can't deny it. Why, he has actually written a
pamphlet to enforce his views upon the subject."
"You should bless your stars, Mr. Chubble, that there is only one. He
suffers from pamphlets. He writes 'em and prints 'em and every member of
Parliament gets one of 'em for nothing. Pamphlets do for him what the
gout does for other old gentlemen--they carry off from his system a great
number of disquieting ailments. He's at prison reform now," said Dick
with a smile of thorough enjoyment. "Have you heard him on it?"
"No, and I don't want to," Mr. Chubble exploded.
He struck viciously at an overhanging bough, as though it was the head
of Harold Hazlewood, and went on with the catalogue of crimes. "He made a
speech last week in the town-hall," and he jerked his thumb backwards
towards the town they had left. "Intolerable I call it. He actually
denounced his own countrymen as a race of oppressors."
"He would," answered Dick calmly. "What did I say to you a minute ago?
He's advanced, you know."
"Advanced!" sneered Mr. Chubble, and then Dick Hazlewood stopped and
contemplated his companion with a thoughtful eye.
"I really don't think you understand my father, Mr. Chubble," said Dick
with a gentle remonstrance in his voice which Mr. Chubble was at a loss
whether to take seriously or no.
"Can you give me the key to him?" he cried.
"I can."
"Then out with it, my lad."
Mr. Chubble disposed himself to listen but with so bristling an
expression that it was clear no explanation could satisfy him. Dick,
however, took no heed of that. He spoke slowly as one lecturing to an
obtuse class of scholars.
"My father was born predestined to believe that all the people whom he
knows are invariably wrong, and all the people he doesn't know are
invariably right. And when I feel inclined to deplore his abuse of his
own country I console myself with the reflection that he would be the
staunchest friend of England that England ever had--if only he had been
born in Germany."
Mr. Chubble grunted and turned the speech suspiciously over in his mind.
Was Dick poking fun at him or at his father?
"That's bookish," he said.
"I am afraid it is," Dick Hazlewood agreed humbly. "The fact is I am now
an Instructor at the Staff College and much is expected of me."
They had reached the gate of Little Beeding House. It was summer time.
A yellow drive of gravel ran straight between long broad flower-beds
to the door.
"Won't you come in and see my father?" Dick asked innocently.
"He's at home."
"No, my lad, no." Mr. Chubble hastened to add: "I haven't the time. But I
am very glad to have met you. You are here for long?"
"No. Only just for luncheon," said Dick, and he walked along the drive
into the house. He was met in the hall by Hubbard the butler, an old
colourless man of genteel movements which seemed slow and were
astonishingly quick. He spoke in gentle purring tones and was the very
butler for Mr. Harold Hazlewood.
"Your father has been asking for you, sir," said Hubbard. "He seems a
little anxious. He is in the big room."
"Very well," said Dick, and he crossed the hall and the drawing-room,
wondering what new plan for the regeneration of the world was being
hatched in his father's sedulous brains. He had received a telegram at
Camberley the day before urgently calling upon him to arrive at Little
Beeding in time for luncheon. He went into the library as it was called,
but in reality it was the room used by everybody except upon ceremonial
occasions. It was a big room; half of it held a billiard table, the other
half had writing-tables, lounges, comfortable chairs and a table for
bridge. The carpet was laid over a parquet floor so that young people,
when they stayed there, rolled it up and danced. There were windows upon
two sides of the room. Here a row of them looked down the slope of the
lawn to the cedar-trees and the river, the other, a great bay which
opened to the ground, gave a view of a corner of the high churchyard wall
and of a meadow and a thatched cottage beyond. In this bay Mr. Hazlewood
was standing when Dick entered the room.
"I got your telegram, father, and here I am."
Mr. Hazlewood turned back from the window with a smile upon his face.
"It is good of you, Richard. I wanted you to-day."
A very genuine affection existed between these two, dissimilar as they
were in physique and mind. Dick Hazlewood was at this time thirty-four
years old, an officer of hard work and distinction, one of the younger
men to whom the generals look to provide the brains in the next great
war. He had the religion of his type. To keep physically fit for the
hardest campaigning and mentally fit for the highest problems of modern
strategy and to boast about neither the one qualification nor the
other--these were the articles of his creed. In appearance he was a
little younger than his years, lithe, long in the leg, with a thin brown
face and grey eyes which twinkled with humour. Harold Hazlewood was
intensely proud of him, though he professed to detest his profession. And
no doubt he found at times that the mere healthful, well-groomed look of
his son was irritatingly conventional. What was quite wholesome could
never be quite right in the older man's philosophy. To Dick, on the other
hand, his father was an intense enjoyment. Here was a lovable innocent
with the most delightful illusion that he understood the world. Dick
would draw out his father by the hour, but, as he put it, he wouldn't let
the old boy down. He stopped his chaff before it could begin to hurt.
"Well, I am here," he said. "What scrape have you got into now?"
"I am in no scrape, Richard. I don't get into scrapes," replied his
father. He shifted from one foot to the other uneasily. "I was wondering,
Richard--you have been away all this last year, haven't you?--I was
wondering whether you could give me any of your summer."
Dick looked at his father. What in the world was the old boy up to now?
he asked himself.
"Of course I can. I shall get my leave in a day or two. I thought of
playing some polo here and there. There are a few matches arranged. Then
no doubt--" He broke off. "But look here, sir! You didn't send me an
urgent telegram merely to ask me that."
"No, Richard, no." Everybody else called his son Dick, but Harold
Hazlewood never. He was Richard. From Richard you might expect much, the
awakening of a higher nature, a devotion to the regeneration of the
world, humanitarianism, even the cult of all the "antis." From Dick you
could expect nothing but health and cleanliness and robustious
conventionality. Therefore Richard Captain Hazlewood of the Coldstream
and the Staff Corps remained. "No, there was something else."
Mr. Hazlewood took his son by the arm and led him into the bay window. He
pointed across the field to the thatched cottage.
"You know who lives there?"
"No."
"Mrs. Ballantyne."
Dick put his head on one side and whistled softly. He knew the general
tenor of that _cause celebre_.
Mr. Hazlewood raised remonstrating hands.
"There! You are like the rest, Richard. You take the worst view. Here is
a good woman maligned and slandered. There is nothing against her. She
was acquitted in open trial by a jury of responsible citizens under a
judge of the Highest Court in India. Yet she is left alone--like a leper.
She is the victim of gossip and _such_ gossip. Richard," said the old man
solemnly, "for uncharitableness, ill-nature and stupid malice the gossip
of a Sussex village leaves the most deplorable efforts of Voltaire and
Swift entirely behind."
"Father, you _are_ going it," said Dick with a chuckle. "Do you mean to
give me a step-mother?"
"I do not, Richard. Such a monstrous idea never entered my thoughts. But,
my boy, I have called upon her."
"Oh, you have!"
"Yes. I have seen her too. I left a card. She left one upon me. I called
again. I was fortunate."
"She was in?"
"She gave me tea, Richard."
Richard cocked his head on one side.
"What's she like, father? Topping?"
"Richard, she gave me tea," said the old man, dwelling insistently upon
his repetition.
"So you said, sir, and it was most kind of her to be sure. But that fact
won't help me to form even the vaguest picture of her looks."
"But it will, Richard," Mr. Hazlewood protested with a nervousness which
set Dick wondering again. "She gave me tea. Therefore, don't you see, I
must return the hospitality, which I do with the utmost eagerness.
Richard, I look to you to help me. We must champion that slandered lady.
You will see her for yourself. She is coming here to luncheon."
The truth was out at last. Yet Dick was aware that he might very easily
have guessed it. This was just the quixotic line his father could have
been foreseen to take.
"Well, we must just keep our eyes open and see that she doesn't slip
anything into the decanters while our heads are turned," said Dick with a
chuckle. Old Mr. Hazlewood laid a hand upon his son's shoulder.
"That's the sort of thing they say. Only you don't mean it, Richard, and
they do," he remarked with a mild and reproachful shake of the head. "Ah,
some day, my boy, your better nature will awaken."
Dick expressed no anxiety for the quick advent of that day.
"How many are there of us to be at luncheon?" asked Dick.
"Only the two of us."
"I see. We are to keep the danger in the family. Very wise, sir,
upon my word."
"Richard, you pervert my meaning," said Mr. Hazlewood. "The
neighbourhood has not been kind to Mrs. Ballantyne. She has been made to
suffer. The Vicar's wife, for instance--a most uncharitable person. And
my sister, your Aunt Margaret, too, in Great Beeding--she is what you
would call--"
"Hot stuff," murmured Dick.
"Quite so," replied Mr. Hazlewood, and he turned to his son with a look
of keen interest upon his face. "I am not familiar with the phrase,
Richard, but not for the first time I notice that the crude and
inelegant vulgarisms in which you abound and which you no doubt pick up
in the barrack squares compress a great deal of forcible meaning into
very few words."
"That is indeed true, sir," replied Dick with an admirable gravity, "and
if I might be allowed to suggest it, a pamphlet upon that interesting
subject would be less dangerous work than coquetting with the latest
edition of the Marquise de Brinvilliers."
The word pamphlet was a bugle-call to Mr. Hazlewood.
"Ah! Speaking of pamphlets, my boy," he began, and walked over to a desk
which was littered with papers.
"We have not the time, sir," Dick interrupted from the bay of the window.
A woman had come out from the cottage. She unlatched a little gate in her
garden which opened on to the meadow. She crossed it. Yet another gate
gave her entrance to the garden of Little Beeding. In a moment Hubbard
announced:
"Mrs. Ballantyne"; and Stella came into the room and stood near to the
door with a certain constraint in her attitude and a timid watchfulness
in her big eyes. She had the look of a deer. It seemed to Dick that at
one abrupt movement she would turn and run.
Mr. Hazlewood pressed forward to greet her and she smiled with a warmth
of gratitude. Dick, watching her from the bay window, was surprised by
the delicacy of her face, by a look of fragility. She was dressed very
simply in a coat and short skirt of white, her shoes and her gloves were
of white suede, her hat was small.
"And this is my son Richard," said Mr. Hazlewood; and Dick came forward
out of the bay. Stella Ballantyne bowed to him but said no word. She
was taking no risks even at the hands of the son of her friend. If
advances of friendliness were to be made they must be made by him, not
her. There was just one awkward moment of hesitation. Then Dick
Hazlewood held out his hand.
"I am very glad to meet you, Mrs. Ballantyne," he said cordially, and he
saw the blood rush into her face and the fear die out in her eyes.
The neighbourhood, to quote Mr. Hazlewood, had not been kind to Stella
Ballantyne. She had stood in the dock and the fact tarnished her.
Moreover here and there letters had come from India. The verdict was
inevitable, but--but--there was a doubt about its justice. The full
penalty--no. No one desired or would have thought it right, but something
betwixt and between in the proper spirit of British compromise would not
have been amiss. Thus gossip ran. More-over Stella Ballantyne was too
good-looking, and she wore her neat and simple clothes too well. To some
of the women it was an added offence when they considered what she might
be wearing if only the verdict had been different. Thus for a year Stella
had been left to her own company except for a couple of visits which the
Reptons had paid to her. At the first she had welcomed the silence, the
peace of her loneliness. It was a balm to her. She recovered like a
flower in the night. But she was young--she was twenty-eight this
year--and as her limbs ceased to be things of lead and became once more
aglow with life there came to her a need of companionship. She tried to
tramp the need away on the turf of her well-loved downs, but she failed.
A friend to share with her the joy of these summer days! Her blood
clamoured for one. But she was an outcast. Friends did not come her way.
Therefore she had gratefully received old Mr. Hazlewood in her house, and
had accepted, though with some fear, his proposal that she should lunch
at the big house and make the acquaintance of his son.
She was nervous at the beginning of that meal, but both father and son
were at the pains to put her at her ease; and soon she was talking
naturally, with a colour in her cheeks, and now and then a note of
laughter in her voice. Dick worked for the recurrence of that laughter.
He liked the clear sound of it and the melting of all her face into
sweetness and tender humour which came with it. And for another thing he
had a thought, and a true one, that it was very long since she had known
the pleasure of good laughter.
They took their coffee out on the lawn under the shade of a huge
cedar-tree. The river ran at their feet and a Canadian canoe and a
rowing-boat were tethered close by in a little dock. The house, a place
of grey stone with grey weathered and lichen-coloured slates, raised its
great oblong chimneys into a pellucid air. The sunlight flashed upon its
rows of tall windows--they were all flat to the house, except the one
great bay on the ground floor in the library--and birds called from all
the trees. The time slipped away. Dick Hazlewood found himself talking of
his work, a practice into which he seldom fell, and was surprised that
she could talk of it with him. He realised with a start how it was that
she knew. But she talked naturally and openly, as though he must know her
history. Once even some jargon of the Staff College slipped from her.
"You were doing let us pretend at Box Hill last week, weren't you?" she
said, and when he started at the phrase she imagined that he started at
the extent of her information. "It was in the papers," she said. "I read
every word of them," and then for a second her face clouded, and she
added: "I have time, you see."
She looked at her watch and sprang to her feet.
"I must go," she said. "I didn't know it was so late. I have enjoyed
myself very much." She did not hesitate now to offer her hand. "Goodbye."
Dick Hazlewood went with her as far as the gate and came back to
his father.
"You were asking me," he said carelessly, "if I could give you some part
of the summer. I don't see why I shouldn't come here in a day or two. The
polo matches aren't so important."
The old man's eyes brightened.
"I shall be delighted, Richard, if you will." He looked at his son with
something really ecstatic in his expression. At last then his better
nature was awakening. "I really believe--" he exclaimed and Dick cut
him short.
"Yes, it may be that, sir. On the other hand it may not. What is quite
clear is that I must catch my train. So if I might order the car?"
"Of course, of course."
He came out with his son into the porch of the house.
"We have done a fine thing to-day, Richard," he said with enthusiasm and
a nod towards the cottage beyond the meadow.
"We have indeed, sir," returned Dick cheerily. "Did you ever see such a
pair of ankles?"
"She lost the tragic look this afternoon, Richard. We must be her
champions."
"We will put in the summer that way, father," said Dick, and waving his
hand was driven off to the station.
Mr. Hazlewood walked back to the library. But "walked" is a poor word. He
seemed to float on air. A great opportunity had come to him. He had
enlisted the services of his son. He saw Dick and himself as Toreadors
waving red flags in the face of a bull labelled Conventionality. He went
back to the pamphlet on which he was engaged with renewed ardour and
laboured diligently far into the night.