He was alone; they had gone, Stanforth striding off across the park in
his rather ostentatious suit of large checks and baggy knickerbockers,
the two solicitors, with their black leather hand-bags, trundling down
the avenue in the station cab. They had gone, they and their talk of
mortgages, rents, acreage, tenants, possible buyers, building lots, and
sales by auction or private treaty! Chase stood on the bridge above the
moat, watching their departure. He was still a little confused in his
mind, not having had time to turn round and think since Stanforth’s
telegram had summoned him that morning. Arrived at Blackboys, he had
been immediately commandeered by Nutley, had had wishes and opinions put
into his mouth, and had found a complete set of intentions ready-made
for him to assume as his own. That had all saved him a lot of trouble,
undoubtedly; but nevertheless he was glad of a breathing-space; there
were things he wanted to think over; ideas he wanted to get used to....
He was poor; and hard-working in a cheerless fashion; he managed a
branch of a small insurance company in Wolverhampton, and expected
nothing further of life. Not very robust, his days in an office left him
with little energy after he had conscientiously carried out his
business. He lived in lodgings in Wolverhampton, smoking rather too much
and eating rather too little. He had neither loved nor married. He had
always known that some day, when his surviving aunt was dead, he would
inherit Blackboys, but Blackboys was only a name to him, and he had
gauged that the inheritance would mean for him nothing but trouble and
interruption, and that once the whole affair was wound up he would
resume his habitual existence just where he had dropped it.
His occupations and outlook might thus be comprehensively summarized.
He turned to look back at the house. Any man brighter-hearted and more
optimistic might have rejoiced in this enforced expedition as a holiday,
but Chase was neither optimistic nor bright-hearted. He took life with a
dreary and rather petulant seriousness, and, full of resentment against
this whole unprofitable errand, was dwelling now upon the probable, the
almost certain, inefficiencies of his subordinates in Wolverhampton,
because he had in him an old-maidish trait that could not endure the
thought of other people interfering with his business or his
possessions. He worried, in his small anæmic mind that was too
restricted to be contemptuous, and too diffident to be really
bad-tempered.... The house looked down at him, grave and mellow. Its
façade of old, plum-coloured bricks, the inverted V of the two gables,
the rectangles of the windows, and the creamy stucco of the little
colonnade that joined the two projecting wings, all reflected unbroken
in the green stillness of the moat. It was not a large house; it
consisted only of the two wings and the central block, but it was
complete and perfect; so perfect, that Chase, who knew and cared nothing
about architecture, and whose mind was really absent, worrying, in
Wolverhampton, was gradually softened into a comfortable satisfaction.
The house was indeed small, sweet, and satisfying. There was no fault to
be found with the house. It was lovely in colour and design. It carried
off, in its perfect proportions, the grandeur of its manner with an easy
dignity. It was quiet, the evening was quiet, the country was quiet; it
was part of the evening and the country. The country was almost unknown
to Chase, whose life had been spent in towns—factory towns. Here he was
on the borders of Kent and Sussex where the nearest town was a village,
a jumble of cottages round a green, at his own park gates. The house
seemed to lie at the very heart of peace.
A little wooden gate, moss-grown and slightly dilapidated, cut off the
bridge from the gravelled entrance-space; he shut and latched it, and
stood on the island that the moat surrounded. Swallows were swooping
along the water, for the air was full of insects in the golden haze of
the May evening. Faint clouds of haze hung about, blue and gold,
deepening the mystery of the park, shrouding the recesses of the garden.
The place was veiled. Chase put out his hand as though to push aside a
veil....
He detected himself in the gesture, and glanced round guiltily to see
whether he was observed. But he was alone; even the curtains behind the
windows were drawn. He felt a desire to explore the garden, but
hesitated, timorous and apologetic. Hitherto in his life he had explored
only other people’s gardens on the rare days when they were opened to
the public; he remembered with what pained incredulity he had watched
the public helping itself to the flowers out of the borders, for he
could not help being a great respecter of property. He prided himself,
of course, on being a Socialist; that was the fashion amongst the young
men he occasionally frequented in Wolverhampton; but unlike them he was
a Socialist whose sense of veneration was deeper and more instinctive
than his socialism. He had thought at the time that he would be very
indignant if he were the owner of the garden. Now that he actually was
the owner, he hesitated before entering the garden, with a sense of
intrusion. Had he caught sight of a servant he would certainly have
turned and strolled off in the opposite direction.
The house lay in the hollow at the bottom of a ridge of wooded hills
that sheltered it from the north, but the garden was upon the slope of
the hill, in design quite simple: a central walk divided the square
garden into halves, eased into very flat, shallow steps, and outlined by
a low stone coping. A wall surrounded the whole garden. To reach the
garden from the house, you crossed a little footbridge over the moat, at
the bottom of the central walk. This simplicity, so obvious, yet, like
the house, so satisfying, could not possibly have been otherwise
ordered; it was married to the lie of the land. It flattered Chase with
the delectable suggestion that he, a simple fellow, could have conceived
and carried out the scheme as well as had the architect.
He was bound to admit that a simple fellow would not have thought of the
peacocks. They were the royal touch that redeemed the gentle
friendliness of the house and garden from all danger of complacency. He
paused in amazement now at his first real sight of them. All the way up
the low stone wall on either side of the central walk they sat, thirty
or forty of them, their long tails sweeping down almost to the ground,
the delicate crowns upon their heads erect in a feathery line of
perspective, and the blue of their breasts rich above the grey stone
coping. Half way up the walk, the coping was broken by two big stone
balls, and upon one of these a peacock stood with his tail fully spread
behind him, and uttered his discordant cry as though in the triumph and
pride of his beauty.
Chase paused. He was too shy even to disturb those regal birds. He
imagined the swirl of colour and the screech of indignation that would
accompany his advance, and before their arrogance his timidity was
abashed. But he stood there for a very long while, looking at them,
until the garden became swathed in the shrouds of the blue evening, very
dusky and venerable. He did not pass over the moat, but stood on the
little bridge, between the house and the garden, while those shrouds of
evening settled with the hush of vespers round him, and as he looked he
kept saying to himself “Mine? _mine?_” in a puzzled and deprecatory way.