A DULL February day, clouds level and low, mist lying in hollows, mud
thick upon the ground, trees bare; but upon the hedges and bushes a
faint suggestion of new life dawning.
Winter in the country may have a forlornness of its own, but for those
who can see, it has its own loveliness. And Dulcie, as she stood in the
small porch of Ivy Cottage, realized this to the full.
Grey the day was, but how soft and mild the air, clean-washed by
recent rain; how different from the dank penetrating wet of such a day
in London! Cloudy—yes, but she contrasted the gentle mistiness with
a yellow City fog. Bare boughs—yes, but she studied with admiration
a tree opposite, its solid trunk spreading into huge arms, the arms
sub-divided into strong boughs, and the boughs into branches great and
small, with countless ramifications which ended in twigs innumerable,
the whole forming a delicate and finished tracery, the wonderful
complexity of which enchained her eyes; while she pictured how in a few
weeks each bough and branch and twig would be laden with young green
leaves, and how she would joyously watch their daily growth.
She was waiting for Norman, who usually returned to early dinner. It
was nearly an hour past the time; and still she waited, and still he
remained absent.
As she stood, a man strode past, and in a moment, she recognized the
ex-agent Dewsbury. He walked steadily and fast, looking straight ahead,
declining to vouchsafe a single glance towards the cottage, but Dulcie
went to the garden-gate, and said cheerfully, "How do you do, Mr.
Dewsbury?"
He wheeled half round, and responded curtly in the same phrase.
"You don't happen to have come across my brother this morning?"
"No."
"He is late. I don't know what can have kept him."
"Sorry I can't help you." The ex-agent strode on.
"If only Norman had taken some trouble in that quarter!" she thought
regretfully.
[Illustration: "You don't happen to have come across
my brother this morning?"]
She had done her best to bring about a different state of things. On
their first arrival, she had hoped to transmute the retiring agent
into their friend, for she was grateful to him for his kindness at the
time of the accident, and she felt that he had been rather hardly used
by the new owner of the property, even though that owner was George
Kennedy. It would have been good policy also, apart from worthier
reasons, since Dewsbury, though not a man beloved, was a man highly
respected, and he ranked as a power in the place.
But Norman saw matters from another point of view. "Nothing of the
sort," he replied, when she suggested taking advice from the former
agent on a knotty point. "If once I begin going to 'him,' I shall have
no freedom. He will meddle whenever he gets a chance."
This happened early in their Apthorne experience. And though Dulcie did
not give in with one attempt, she failed.
"I tell you, I'm not going to do it," he said with unusual roughness,
when she pressed the point. "Dewsbury is out of the concern now, and
I mean to keep him out. Kennedy made a mistake in letting him stay on
in the Agent's house; and I've got to hold my own. I'm not going to
be a mere cipher. And I won't have you consulting the man either. You
understand?"
"Yes, I understand," she said in her quietest tone. "I think it is you
who are making a mistake now. Still, of course it must be as you wish."
So Norman lost his opportunity of conciliating the man whom he had
displaced; a disappointed and hurt man, who yet could have been won;
for at first sight he had liked Dulcie, in spite of himself, and she
would have made him like her more.
She was loyal to her brother, and would not oppose him; nevertheless
she was sensible of his lack of wisdom, when Mr. Dewsbury strode grimly
away, refusing to be agreeable.
Left in the background, to sit in dudgeon and nurse his wrongs, the
ex-agent naturally kept a sharp look-out over the doings of his
successor, whose inexperience became early manifest. Nor was it a
matter for surprise that, finding himself thus ignored, his advice not
asked, his wisdom never appealed to, Dewsbury should indulge in some
gratification over the new agent's blunders, knowing as he did how much
better he would have managed in Hurst's place.
Somebody else was trudging along the road; this time a farmer in
gaiters and heavy boots, encrusted with mud. He paused outside the
gate, spoke a civil word or two, and than remarked—
"Mr. Hurst not back yet, I suppose?"
"No; I am expecting him every moment."
The farmer glanced at her, looked round about, examined his
old-fashioned turnip-watch, and deliberated. "No—not likely," he said.
"Couldn't catch that train, without he was most uncommon quick. No—he
wouldn't."
Dulcie controlled her surprise. She was far too much "all there" to
betray that she knew less of Norman's movements than Farmer Jones
appeared to do. "Can you wait?" she asked pleasantly. "Won't you come
indoors?"
"No use, thank you all the same, Miss Hurst. Next train don't get in
for two hours and more, even if he catches that. And he promised he'd
give this morning up to 'me.'" There was an under-growl of displeasure.
"Said he'd be with me by eleven, sure, and not a word did he send to
say he couldn't. If my boy hadn't come across him at the station,
starting for London, I'd have been waiting all day. That's the third
time he has failed me."
"I'm sorry. He ought to have sent you word."
"Yes, he ought, and that's a fact. P'rhaps you'd tell him from me,
Miss Hurst, that I can't go on shilly-shallying like this much longer.
I've got to know where I stand; and it ain't what I've been used to.
We're used to business-ways here. All the years I've had to do with Mr.
Dewsbury, he's never once forgot if he's made an appointment. Never
once he hasn't. There's no getting Mr. Hurst to the point, begging your
pardon for saying it to you! The third time he's failed me this is."
"I'll be sure to tell him what you say. I'm so sorry you have been
inconvenienced," she said, with a smile which more than half mollified
the old farmer.
As he trudged on, she went indoors, and, standing before the fire,
asked aloud—"Now, what is it for? London again! Why did he not tell me?"
She could guess why. He had been one day the week before, and another
day the week before that; and she had remonstrated. By a quick train,
London could be reached in less than two hours; but the expense of
going so often mounted up considerably, and she failed to see the need.
They had now been some time in Apthorne, first in rooms, then in this
cottage, which was sufficiently furnished for use; more furnished than
Dulcie had thought right, less than Norman wished. He loved spending,
and he thought a great deal of his own personal comfort.
Dulcie found him increasingly difficult to deal with. In years long
gone by, he was usually amenable to reason; but things had changed, and
he was now far otherwise.
For several weeks after entering on his new work, he had been in gay
spirits, pleased with the post, and enjoying the variety. People had
given to the brother and sister a kind welcome. Dulcie could always
make herself liked, and Norman was accepted, not only as Kennedy's
agent, but as being his friend. Indeed, he began to look upon himself
as, for the time, lord of all he surveyed. Although lacking in
experience, he was not lacking in self-confidence, and mistakes in
judgment were by no means few. Still, he was so genial and pleasant in
manner, that for a while, he won golden opinions.
"He's new to the life, and he'll learn," people said indulgently, as
they contrasted his smiling ways with the grim air of the old agent.
But the tide was turning. Smiles alone do not manage a large property;
and the close attention needed, the incessant calls upon his time,
the frequent appeals and complaints, the interviews that had to be
arranged, the letters that had to be written, were not to Norman's
liking. At first, his lame arm won sympathy and served as an excuse for
dilatory ways. But the arm now was practically well, and he did not
grow less dilatory. On the contrary, he became more slack, he failed to
keep appointments, he forgot requests, he neglected to answer letters,
he put off attending to matters which required immediate settlement.
The biggest farmer on the estate, an important person in his own eyes,
arriving one day at Ivy Cottage, for a talk previously arranged, was
irate to find that the agent had calmly taken himself off for a day
in London. Another farmer, second to the above in consequence, having
stayed in all the morning for a call from the agent, promised at ten,
was disgusted to see him walk in at twelve, with a bland confession
that he had "somehow managed to oversleep himself" and was consequently
"rather late."
The old agent had never overslept himself, had never been behindhand.
Smiles on these occasions carried little weight. The worst of the
matter was that he did not care, did not see that he was wasting
valuable time for others as well as for himself.
All such incidents reached the ears of Dewsbury; for in a country
village, everybody knows what everybody does.
Norman had never been a lover of the country. He had no eye for its
beauties, no ear for its harmonies. That which to Dulcie meant joy and
delight, to him meant dull monotony.
He hated work of all kinds; he hated solitude; he loathed early rising;
he detested being tied; he wanted only to be free to amuse himself.
But opportunities for such amusements as suited his taste were few in
village-life; and he soon began to seize on every possible excuse for
a day in town. This meant expense; and though he often contrived to
include something on behalf of the estate, which made it possible for a
loose conscience to charge the return-ticket to his employer, he could
not always do it.
Something else, besides the craving for amusement, took him to London.
He was all agog to make money in haste; and five hundred pounds lay,
or had recently lain, at his command. Some amount of outlay on the
property was inevitable; but less need to spend existed than Kennedy
had anticipated.
Norman's desire perhaps hardly suited in plain words even to himself
was, not to spend on the estate, but to use the money in making some
for himself.
He would "borrow" two or three hundred pounds temporarily, would invest
that amount with wisdom, would sell out at the crucial moment of some
sudden rise, and then would devote to further efforts whatever he
succeeded in gaining by this transaction.
Supposing that he could thus make some three or four hundred pounds,
and in addition should still have the five hundred pounds, less only
such necessary payments as belonged to the care of Apthorne who could
say that he had not a right to retain for his own use the gain of his
speculations? Not even Dulcie need hear a word about it!
What he would do, if decrease in place of increase should be the result
of his speculations, was a matter on which he did not trouble his head.
He meant to succeed.
Night and day he dwelt upon these schemes. He studied incessantly the
Money-market; he corresponded perpetually with an acquaintance on the
Stock Exchange; he watched and waited, hoped and feared, exulted and
was depressed. No form of gambling is more exciting, more engrossing,
than that upon which he had entered; and especially it becomes
absorbing, if done with another's money, unknown to that person. He
lived in a fever of expectation. No wonder he had small interest and
little leisure to bestow on the humdrum management of the estate.
As a beginning, he had invested one hundred pounds; and he really did
sell out at an advantage, making fifteen pounds by the transaction,
which was all the worse for him, since the small success whetted his
appetite for more.
An acquaintance at that juncture further fired his imagination by
telling him of a "chap" who, to the speaker's knowledge, had recently
"made" a thousand pounds in a fortnight. He did not trouble himself to
explain how large a sum had been utilized for this result, nor did he
expatiate on the losses which had gone before and had followed the said
success.
But Norman was taken captive by the notion. Wherever he went, he saw
thousands of pounds before him, and conscience had almost ceased to
speak. He no longer reproached himself for the unauthorized use that
he was making of money entrusted to his care for other purposes, money
that was not his own.
Each of his recent trips to town had been for the purpose of seeing
after investments. The first small success had been followed as such
successes commonly are by a loss at least equal in amount; and for
days, he was worried and low-spirited.
But he had no thought of stopping. He would win next time. He only had
to try again, to choose his moment more carefully, to make everything
else in life work, duty, what not give way before any sudden call which
might mean a chance of selling out advantageously. His Stock Exchange
acquaintance was indeed ready to act for him, and a journey to London
could not be counted a necessity. But he was in the grip of excitement,
wild to see and know all that was passing without an hour's delay; and
nothing else seemed to be of the smallest consequence by comparison.
As for telling Dulcie, he would not on any account. Why should he? He
would ask himself, when thinking about the matter. She was a woman,
and women see things differently from men. That hers was a better
business-head than his was put aside as irrelevant. What he did not
say, though conscious of it, was that he could manage to hide from
himself the true issues in a cloud of argument, but that no argument
would shadow Dulcie's clear vision. He would never be able to persuade
"her" that wrong was right; therefore, he said nothing.