had gone home. “He was a good father to us all,” said Harry, unbuckling
the traces with firm fingers. “I’m making no complaint about him.” Sid
Dyson, the carter—a heavy-footed shaggy man with grizzled beard—led
the mare to her stable. William, a big bent fellow who lived with his
mother at Little Arlsfield, came wheeling his mud-encrusted bike from
the cowhouse. “Good-night, Mr. Harry,” called William. “Good-night to
you.” The “boy”—(“never keep more than one boy—two _talks_,” had been
one of old man Tebbits’ aphorisms)—stood about, now on one leg, now on
the other, uncertain of his duty.
“You’d better be off,” ordered Harry. The blond giant turned to Peter.
“Would you care to see him, sir? . . .”
They had carried the old man as far as the kitchen sofa; spread a
patchwork quilt over his limbs. In the scullery, Miss Tebbits was
washing up: Peter could hear the trickle of water, the clink of
crockery, as he stood gazing down on the gnarled happy face. “Thus, men
should die,” thought Peter “not. . . .” Old pictures came crowding on
his mind; he saw other faces, dreadful faces, faces of young men who
should have been alive. . . .
Charlie Tebbits, summoned from Arlsfield, stalked hatless into the room.
“He was a good father,” said Charlie, “I’ve no complaint to make about
him.”
Peter wanted to get away, to leave these two alone with their dead. He
held out his hand to Charlie. “I’m sorry.” The man gripped it. “He
always liked you, sir.” Harry followed him out of the kitchen. They
walked slowly down the flag-path to the gate.
Peter held out his hand again. “See you tomorrow Harry.” The giant
fidgeted for a moment; his blue eyes under the golden brows gazed
straight into Peter’s.
“Father said,” began Harry, “that if anything happened to him we was to
tell you about that lease.”
“What about it?” asked Peter wonderingly.
“Father didn’t like signing that lease,” went on Harry. “He didn’t ought
to have signed it neither. That Henley solicitor fellow, he was
altogether too sharp. And father got angry with him.”
It took half-an-hour before Peter got to the bottom of matters.
Apparently, the trouble lay not in the house itself, but in the paddock.
House and orchard stood on a little patch of freehold ground—Tebbits’
property: but the paddock, like most of Tebbits’ land, was
leasehold—and Tebbits’ lease (an old-fashioned contract) expired with
old man Tebbits.
“Well, I don’t see it matters,” said Peter finally. “You’ll keep the
farm on, I suppose.”
“If we can,” said Harry, pulling at his great moustache. “If we can,
sir.” He clumped heavily back to the house.
PART THIRTY-TWO
END—OR BEGINNING?
§ 1
Rightly to understand what follows—which is the ending (or the
beginning, according to standpoint) of romance—you must recall to
memory that Peter the First, grandfather of our Mr. Jameson, who left
the country for the town at the commencement of the great English
manufacturing era about eighteen hundred and forty, tried his luck in
the City of London, and ended his days on the tobacco-farm in
Guanabacoa, Cuba; also Peter the Second, father of our Mr. Jameson, and
founder of Jameson & Co., Lime Street. Nor must you quite forget Captain
“Chips” Bradley, Tessa Bradley, and the exotic Hebraic strain of the
Miraflores. For all these played their ghostly parts in the mind of
their descendant as he walked that debatable paddock in the warm
sunshine of a late May morning ten days after the death of old man
Tebbits. . . .
Fry had dug up half-an-acre of that paddock; and already the mauve
potato-flower was in bloom above its dark leaves. “Confound it,” thought
Peter, “I’m not going to be done out of this paddock. I paid to have it
dug up, didn’t I?”
He looked at the two chicken-houses. They would have to be moved. It
would take Fry half-a-day to move them. Half-a-day at thirty shillings a
week. . . .
And immediately the word “business” formed itself in Peter’s brain. He
had never before considered the country in the light of business: the
country had been for him a place where town-people made holiday; a
rather jolly picturesque kind of place—scenery among which one rode, or
killed pheasants, or drove golf-balls. Now he saw the country as the
peasant sees it—but the peasant in Peter had been sharpened by a
half-a-generation among townsfolk.
“It isn’t just _a_ business,” he thought. “It’s _the_ business. The
greatest business in the world. And I’ve been living right in the middle
of it for six months without grasping that simple fact.”
Then the Jew in Peter said, quite distinctly, “My boy, there’s money in
this.”
Prudence the pig grunted a hint of feeding-time. But to Peter she was
Prudence the pig no longer: she was Prudence the breeding sow, and the
sooner she went to the boar the better. Pigs! “Little pigs pays all
right,” he seemed to hear old man Tebbits speaking. Then imagination
outran Tebbits; if little pigs paid to sell, big hogs paid to rear.
“Question of feeding cost,” remarked the ghost of Peter the First. . . .
The man in the white flannel trousers, with the belted shooting-coat and
the Old Etonian tie, looked at the woods beyond the paddock. Beeches!
There were beeches in those woods; beech-mast, roots, all sorts of
pig-fodder. He saw an endless procession of hogs, running through the
paddock to feed in those woods.
“Damn it,” said Peter, “I’ve got to have the paddock. . . .”
Three hens fluttered up onto the wire-netting round the potato-patch;
swayed there a moment; dropped over among the potato-plants. Patricia
couldn’t make hens pay. Of course she couldn’t. They were bad hens. And
chicken food was too dear. But if one grew one’s own corn. . . .
“Self-supporting,” thought Peter suddenly. “Cut the middle-man’s
profit.”
A cow lowed from across the road. Thought process went on. Peasant,
soldier, Jew and business-man met round the board-room table of Peter’s
brain. First the land; then the men to work the land. “Don’t pay rent.
Buy outright,” said Business. “Keep ’em in order,” rasped the soldier.
“Crops and stock,” said the peasant, “crops and stock, stock and crops.”
“And your markets,” whispered the Jew, “never forget your markets. Work
to your markets—supply and demand, demand and supply.” . . . All of
which counsels the old Etonian crystallized into the words, “Why not
become a gentleman-farmer?”
“Snobbish idea”—this time Peter spoke aloud. “Gentleman
farmer—gentleman business-man—discharged officer would like to sell
wine and cigars on commission. Rubbish! A job’s a job. The man who does
his job is a gentleman: the man who plays with his job is. . . .” The
Expeditionary Force epithet sailed bluely into the country air.
From abstract ideas, thought switched automatically to Tebbits’ Farm.
The position, as far as he could gather from Harry, was this: the
Colonel (“damn that Colonel,” thought Peter, “why hasn’t his wife called
on Pat?”) did not want to renew old man Tebbits’ lease; the Colonel
wanted to sell his land; Harry Tebbits couldn’t afford to buy it. But
he, Peter, could afford to buy it; and if he didn’t—here the peasant in
Peter grew very angry—somebody else might do him out of this very
paddock. “Then sue Tebbits’ estate for damage,” counselled the Jew. “You
don’t know anything about farming. You’ll make a hash of it like your
brother Arthur. Farming’s a difficult business, my boy. Why not lend
Harry the money? Six per cent and no risk. If he can’t make it pay, you
foreclose. . . .”
Peter walked slowly back to the house; but the next morning, and the
next, and the morning after that, he spent in the paddock. The more he
considered this business of farming, the wider its scope appeared. It
embraced everything he needed: plenty of work, limitless opportunities,
a bit of a fight, a bit of a gamble, men to boss, horses to ride. And if
one could learn to be a gunner in six months, surely one could learn to
be a farmer. . . . “In how long?” asked Reason: and Peter realized for
the first time his utter practical ignorance. . . .
For two days he abandoned the scheme. Then a milking-time visit to
Tebbits’ brought the whole business back. He might not know much about
farming; but any ass could see _this_ wasn’t right. “Filthy,” said the
soldier in Peter, “filthy! Flies and filth and a dung-heap round the
corner. That milk would poison a regiment.”
Finally, he decided to talk the whole thing out with Harry. If Harry
would come into partnership; if Harry would listen to reason. . . . For
already the business-man in Peter had realized that farming on Tebbits
lines was a thing of the past; a picturesque anachronism.
“Farming”—Peter must have said this to himself at least a hundred times
during those few days—“isn’t just _a_ business. It’s _the_ business.
And like all businesses it’s got to be big. All this talk about small
holdings is blather. The small-holder works himself to death for less
wages than a dock-labourer.” . . .
It must be admitted that Peter’s first talk with Harry Tebbits
frightened that worthy almost as much as “our Mr. Jameson” had
frightened Turkovitch in Nirvana days. Still, Harry listened. “Yes, I
know we don’t produce as cheap as we might, nor sell as dear as we
could,” admitted Harry. “’Tis the Government’s fault, I’m thinking.”
Peter laughed. “They don’t grow much hay in Westminster, Harry. No
English Government ever helped a business-man yet. We’ve got to help
ourselves. Now about the milk. Sealed bottles _and_ our own deliveries,
‘guaranteed pure,’ ‘from the cow to the kid.’ Ford cars to Reading and
Henley. Eggs too, _and_ vegetables. Bacon. . . .”
“Bacon!” ejaculated Harry.
“Of course. If little pigs pay, big hogs pay; if it pays people to buy
big hogs, it will pay us to kill, cure, smoke _and_ retail ’em.”
“We can’t do anything this side of Michaelmas. Lease isn’t up till
then,” said Harry, hardly convinced.
“No; but we can do an awful lot of _thinking_.” . . .
. . . And, thinking, thought expanded. With fourteen thousand pounds of
capital; and the key-industry of life—what couldn’t a man accomplish?
Peter sent for books, pamphlets; buried himself in statistics;—and the
more he read the more he convinced himself that the secret of farming
was no secret at all. Farming was just like any other business: it
depended on two questions—“How cheaply can I produce? How dearly can I
sell?”
“Machinery and marketing,” said Peter. “Same old problem.”
The spectre of “labour” did not frighten him. Eliminate the middle-man,
and there would be enough surplus profits, in the particular business of
farming, to give “labour” all it wanted. “Provided,” added Peter, “that
‘labour’ will do its job.” Besides, the Tebbits-Jameson farm would be
run on co-partnership lines, as the Nirvana factory was to have been.
“Share and share,” said our Mr. Jameson, “I’ll do my job if they’ll do
theirs. . . .”
At which exact point in his schemes for the future—Peter Jameson fell
head over ears in love with his own wife!
How the thing happened: whether he had always been “in love” with her
and only just discovered the fact; whether the example of Francis and
Beatrice, emerging from the seclusion of honeymoon, influenced him;
whether leisure, returning health, heredity, environment, or his growing
affection for Sunflowers first started the wheels of passion—it is
impossible to say. Remains the fact that he did fall in love with her,
head over heels, madly, crazily and unreasonably in love. To elaborate a
slang expression much in vogue at the time, “he dived in at the deep
end.”
§ 2
Peter “dived in” at exactly five o’clock on a gorgeous afternoon in
earliest June. They were having tea on the sunk lawn—she, he, Francis,
Beatrice, and the two children. And quite suddenly, watching her as she
bent over the table, he knew an insane impulse. He wanted to cuddle his
own wife, in full sunshine, shamelessly; he wanted “these people” out of
the way. Instead, he asked her for another cup of tea!
But this “insane impulse” (so he phrased it to himself) refused to be
suppressed. It recurred constantly that day, the next day and the day
after. It became an obsession. He argued with it: “Don’t be a fool, P.J.
She’ll think you’ve gone crazy. You _have_ gone crazy. . . .”
Then, he began to _think_ about her, as Heron Baynet had taught him to
think, in pictures. He saw her kneeling at the altar, on their
honeymoon, in Lowndes Square, at Brighton, in Harley Street. Always, she
had been his pal. Damn it, he didn’t want her for his pal—he wanted to
cuddle her. She became of a sudden so attractive that he could hardly
sit opposite to her at the dinner-table. . . .
He said to himself: “But what _more_ do you want of her? She’s yours,
isn’t she?” . . .
Followed self-reproach. What a wife she’d been to him! What a wife!! But
had he ever appreciated her? No, he had not. He’d been a perfect cad to
her. . . . What a wife! Had she ever grumbled? No, she had not. Had he
ever grumbled? Yes, he had. When he lost his money, did she complain?
No, she didn’t. Did he? Yes, he did . . . et caetera, et caetera. . . .
But the most amazing incident of those most amazing days was the
simultaneous recurrence of two mind-pictures. In one picture, he lay on
a bed, screens round it, and she looked down on him, love unmistakable
in her eyes. In the other—but the other was incredible. He refused to
believe that other. “I _have_ gone crazy,” he repeated, “perfectly
crazy.” . . .
He decided himself the victim of hallucinations; and went on with his
farming-plans. . . . But farming-plans could not exorcise the desire to
cuddle Patricia, to hold her hand, to tell her that she was the only
woman in the world, that he loved her madly. . . .
Finally, he determined to risk it. At the worst, she would only laugh.
He realized that if she laughed he would hit her. Courage braced to the
sticking-point, he waited his opportunity. . . .
And no opportunity came! They were never alone—except late at night,
and “late at night” wouldn’t do. It wasn’t a “late at night” mood. It
wasn’t a married mood at all. “Damn it!” said Peter Jameson, “can’t a
man cuddle his own wife in the middle of the day if he wants to?”
But he couldn’t! Something or somebody always interfered: servants,
children, visitors, Fry, the house. He began to hate “the house.” “The
house” spoiled everything. He must get her away from the house, from
Fanny and Elizabeth, from the children, from Fry and “those damn
chickens” and Prudence the pig. . . .
At last, the great idea came. To himself, he called it their “second
honeymoon”: to her, he said he wanted a “holiday.” The river in June and
July was “top-hole”; he’d always wanted to punt—nothing but a punt
seemed adequate—from Goring to Oxford, well not exactly Oxford, beyond
Oxford, say Godstone. They might punt to Godstone and see Arthur. They
might go further up Thames. It depended how he felt. He’d not been
feeling very well lately. He wanted a change.
She demurred: one couldn’t leave the children. He sulked—cannily. Then
he went to see Beatrice.
“You wouldn’t mind keeping an eye on things when we’re away?”
“But _why_ do you want to go?” asked Francis’ wife. She had installed
herself in the oak-panelled morning-room; looked like a _blonde cendrée_
lily in the mellow gloom of its beeswaxed walls.
“Just for a holiday,” prevaricated Peter; but he blushed faintly as he
spoke.
“Don’t English people ever tell the truth?” she said understandingly.
He hesitated the fraction of a second before answering: “Very
rarely—about that sort of thing.”
Two days later, perfectly unconscious of the web which had been woven
round her, Patricia yielded; and they started on the twelfth of June:
two very ordinary people with two very ordinary suit-cases and a large
luncheon-basket: he in white duck trousers, brogued buskin shoes, and
flannel blazer; she in shantung coat and skirt, remnant of Lodden Lodge
holidays—écru velours hat, Beatrice’s gift, shading her slumbrous
eyes. . . .
§ 3
If you take punt at Hobbs’ Wharf, which banks the mill-creek beside
Goring Lock; and glide out through some great morning of river-sunshine,
under the white willows of “Nun’s Acre,” past Cleeve Lock ablaze with
roses, into that long reach which runs lockless between oak and elm as
far as Wallingford: (you will find at Molesey ferry a pleasant hostelry
yclept “The Beetle and Wedge,” set a-purpose to hearten weary punters
ere they pass under the almost ugliness of a red-brick
railroad-causeway): and if, having rested at Wallingford, you pole on,
by the narrow cleft of Benson’s Lock; and on, over the broad
river-highway, through Shillingford; you will come in the fulness of
even-time, past over-arching woods, to the vaulted spans of Clifton
Hampden Bridge. . . .
Clifton Hampden’s self is a village of honeysuckled cottages, and quiet
lost housen of quiet lost gentlefolk who climb o’ Sundays to the belled
Church which looks down on Clifton Hampden’s Bridge and Clifton
Hampden’s “Barley Mow.” . . .
But if you love our Thames, who is the father of England even as the sea
is England’s great mother (and these twain mate in London Pool for all
the world to see), you will not rest overlong at the “Barley Mow.”
Father Thames will draw you on, against his own current, past Sutton
Courtney’s foaming weirs and Wittenham’s “Plough,” and the mouth of the
“Thame” (which is not the Thames, though it serpentines cunningly
through flat fields to Dorchester, where, in an Abbey of olden stone,
rest the bones of many a saint and many a Norman knight and dame); and
on past Dorchester to Abingdon. . . .
At Abingdon, rest you one night—even as Peter and Patricia rested—yet
rest not over-late. For beyond Abingdon (and this is a glory of wood and
waterland you shall scarce believe) Radley’s flag flaunts, bright as
colours at a girl’s bosom, among the bosoming downs of English
oak. . . . Yet even this glory, Father Thames—if he loves you—will bid
you leave behind. It shall dwindle astern as the steady pole dives from
your hand and the taut body presses you onwards. . . .
Thus, ere river-afternoon is river-evening, shall you raise the plumed
smoke-stack of Sandford Mills; and, lingering not, make Iffley, and the
meadow-banks beyond Iffley, and Magdalen Tower, and the mellow dome of
the Bodleian Library. And haply _you_ shall see the old-time Oxford of
dreaming spires and leisured youth—not Patricia’s khaki-haunted,
headstrong, hurrying town. . . .
Oxford passed (and this passing is a sadness, for sloven houses creep
down to Thames bank, and Victorian factories blacken the clear stream,
and children such as should not be in England dabble thin legs in the
mud), Father Thames hesitates among meadow-flats—as you will hesitate
between the “Perch” and the “Trout,” neither of which will allure you,
for the one is of the beanfeaster and the other (though it was a
guest-house in days when Fair Rosamond languished a bow-shot away at
Godstone) resounds all day to the drone of the circling ’plane. . . .
Wherefore, pole up beyond Godstone: and there, where Father Thames runs
young between flag-flower-stems and faded meadow-sweet and sharpening
bulrush-spears, may his river-nymphs be as benign for you as they were
for Peter and his Patricia on that windless evening of an English
June-time. . . .
It seemed to them that they had scarce left Sunflowers behind; and yet
it seemed to them as though not only Sunflowers but all their known life
lay so far behind them as to be almost out of memory. They had glided
out of life, over endless rippleless water, through endless sunshine,
into love’s own land. But no word of love had these two yet
spoken. . . .
The fog of the years still hid them, each from each: only now the fog
was all irradiated, a mist of sun-motes; and through the shimmering
radiance of that clearing mist, their souls, not yet full-visioned, came
peering and afraid. . . .
Many times, in those days of river-sunshine, their souls had caught
glimpses of each other; touched, even as their bodies touched in the
fragrance of the river-nights. But fulfilment and full-visioning had not
yet been given. A strange shy tenderness separated them; locking Peter’s
lips. . . .
But already, Patricia knew! The knowledge lay deep down in her
heart—maiden-knowledge. Her womanhood, her experience, the reasoning
powers on which she had prided herself so long, played no part in this
secret awareness of love. It seemed to her that she had never been his
wife; never borne his children nor tended his house; that she would come
to him virgin. And as virgins are aware, so she knew that she would be
aware of the time and place appointed for her bridal. . . .
§ 4
“I say, Pat, what about tea?”
Peter ran the long racing-punt skilfully to the slip-stage of Eynsham
Weir; stood balanced on slanting pole.
She looked up from the cushions. “If you like, dear. Are you feeling
tired?”
“A little,” he admitted.
The weir-man (there are few locks on the upper Thames) strolled down to
help them out; took the luncheon-basket.
“Have to take those bags out before we run her over, I’m afraid, sir.
She’ll be liable to break her back if we don’t.”
“Tie her up where she is for a bit. We’re not in any hurry.” Peter, coat
over arm, followed his wife up the slipway.
“Nice,” he said, eyes on the river.
To her it was more than “nice.” Thames flowed down to them, circling
willow-fringed through lush meadowlands, spanned in near distance by a
humped bridge of mellow stone. At bridge-end, below toll-house, a farm
nestled red among scant trees. Left of them, twin hillocks crested to
blue of sky. At their feet, Thames plunged in gurgling gold to the
weir-pool, foam-flecked under deep banks. Hitherside the stream, dyked
pasturage glowed in the sun. . . .
And not thirty yards from the weir-pool—flies rolled-up, flap
open—stood a tent: a perfectly good, apparently unoccupied tent!
All the time they were having their meal—the weir-man indicated a tiny
arbour; boiled them hot water on the stove in his one-roomed
cabin—thought of that tent obsessed their minds. To whom did that tent
belong? Why shouldn’t they use that tent? River-inns were hot stuffy
places, whereas a tent. . . .
Peter, balancing his third cup of tea on white-flannelled leg,
approached the subject diffidently. “I say, Pat,” he began, “have you
ever thought of camping-out? Rather jolly—camping-out. That tent
reminded me. . . .”
“Oh, but we couldn’t possibly use _that_ tent”—Patricia started
packing-up the tea-things—“it’s sure to belong to somebody.”
“One might as well find out.” He rose from the rough bench of the tiny
arbour; lounged away; came back in a few minutes, face a little flushed,
eyes twinkling.
“The weir-man says that we can use it if we like. ‘The gentleman isn’t
coming down till tomorrow evening.’”
“What gentleman?” asked Patricia.
“The gentleman who owns the tent, I suppose. I say, Pat, do let’s! It’d
be a fearful lark. We could go into the town and buy our rations. . . .”
There and then, they settled the matter. The weir-man produced
mattresses, blankets, a rug; unpacked the punt; directed them across the
dyked pasturage towards Eynsham. And at Eynsham—which is the least
interesting, ugliest village between Gravesend and Cricklade—they
bought them eggs, and tinned foods, and a loaf of bread, and butter, and
candles, and a huge basket of strawberries which Peter discovered hidden
away in the dark of a greengrocer’s shop.
Evening began as they dawdled back, parcel-laden, along the high road;
turned off from high road across the dyked pasturage. Now, willows
screened the ugly village behind. They could see only the bridge, and
the two hillocks beyond, and their tent—their very own tent—marking
the river-bank. . . .
“It’ll be a frightful lark,” said Peter.
“Won’t it?” she answered.
Of the thing each had at heart, neither dared speech. . . .
§ 5
Twilight had come in gold and gone in crimson: only faintest hints of
greens and lilacs still lingered low down on the horizon. Eynsham Bridge
was a humped black shadow across the dulled silver of the stream.
Eynsham hills stood out in clear sepia against a turquoise sky.
“Good-night,” called the weir-man.
“Good-night,” they called back to him.
Now, they were utterly alone. The weir plunged and gurgled; a fish
leaped in the pool. Darker it grew, and darker.
They could hardly see each other across the rug which had served them
for dinner-table.