Bertram had just read his first newspaper article, entitled “The Mind of
the Men”—Bernard Hall’s title—in that week’s issue of _The New World_,
when he heard his name called from the next room by Joyce. There was a
note of emotion in the sound of that call, and he went to her quickly,
wondering if she had hurt herself.
She was standing by the side of her writing desk, holding an illustrated
paper—_Country Life_—with a look of amazement and alarm.
“What’s the matter, Joyce?”
She pointed to a photograph, and said, “It can’t be true!” He saw at a
glance that it was a view of Holme Ottery from the west wing, with its
stone, ivy-covered terraces, and broad flight of steps leading down to
the tennis lawn and rose-garden. It was just there, coming up from the
tennis court, that he had heard of Rudy’s death, when Ottery had handed
the telegram to his wife, fingering his red beard and staring across the
grounds with watery eyes. There was the Venus with her broken nose, and
the copy of the Goose Boy of Pompeii.
“Holme Ottery,” said Bertram. “Why not?”
It was always being photographed for the magazines.
Joyce pointed to some words above the picture, and said, “Can’t you
see?”
The words were—“Historic House for Sale.”
Holme Ottery for sale? No, impossible! It had been in the Bellairs
family for four hundred years or more. It was a part of English history.
Its beauty, its tradition, its ghosts, its very soil, belonged to the
spirit of the family that had played some part, not insignificant, in
the making of England—as soldiers, courtiers, statesmen. It was Alban
Bellairs, Earl of Ottery, who had been one of Elizabeth’s favourites
before he died with Essex on the scaffold. Rupert Bellairs, fifth Earl,
had been an exile in Holland with Charles II., and afterwards Master of
the Horse at Whitehall. Joyce Bellairs, the great-great-grandmother of
this Joyce, was the famous beauty to whom Steele wrote some of his
sonnets. Holme Ottery was in the history books. It meant all that and
more to this girl, his wife. Every fibre of her body belonged to that
heritage. The tradition of her house was the corner-stone of her own
spirit. In pride and faith she was a Bellairs of Ottery, this girl whom
he—a young officer “without a bean”—had married when War had broken
down for a time the strongest thing in English life, which was caste.
“Some mistake—” he said.
Joyce was weeping passionately. He had never seen her weep before, and
it hurt him poignantly. He put his arms about her, trying to say words
of comfort, but she shook herself away from him, and paced up and down
the room like an angry boy. It was anger which dried her tears.
“Father’s done this without saying a word to me! Even Mother hasn’t
written! It’s treachery to the whole family. I won’t allow it.”
Bertram was silent. He remembered what his father-in-law had said to him
outside the House of Lords—something about Holme Ottery bleeding him to
death.
“Do you think Alban knows?” he asked.
As the eldest son, Bellairs must have been consulted, must have given
his consent to sell.
“Alban is weak as water! Father may have talked him over. I’ll go down
this very day, and let ’em know what _I_ have to say on the subject!”
Later she rang the bell, and told Edith to pack her bag.
“I’ll come with you,” said Bertram.
Joyce didn’t seem to think there was any need for him to come.
“It’s a family affair,” she said, coldly.
A family affair? Oh, yes, he was outside the family. Merely the
insignificant husband of a Bellairs. His voice would have no weight in
the family councils. He was just a damned outsider, tolerated as an
unfortunate _mésalliance_—Joyce’s mistake. Perhaps Joyce guessed a
little at those thoughts of his, as he stood silent, with flushed face,
raging inwardly at the humiliation which her words made him feel.
“I didn’t want to drag you into a family row,” she said. “But you’d
better come, after all.”
It was in his mind to say that he would be damned if he went, that he
had no intention of being patronised by the supercilious Alban, his
detestable brother-in-law, or bullied by Lady Ottery, his exalted
Mother-in-law. But the sight of Joyce’s tear-stained face restrained
him. The news that Holme Ottery was up for sale was a blow at her heart,
as he could see by her unusual pallor. He would be a cad to quarrel with
her now, and thrust his own personality forward in the family tragedy.
When she went upstairs, he turned over the pages of _Country Life_.
Holme Ottery was not the only house for sale, as well he knew. Page
after page was filled with the usual announcements of “Noble Estates,”
“Fine Old Country Mansions,” “Historic Residences.” Some of them
belonged to people he knew, as he had seen many times before.
He remembered other words spoken by Lord Ottery. “Our day is done,” he’d
said. “The War and its costs have finished us.”
These advertisements were only one more proof of the change that was
happening in England, where the Old Order was gassing, giving place
to—what?
It was no new revelation to him. He’d seen the boards up outside many
old houses. Some of his own friends had abandoned their old places and
come to live in the Albany, Belgravia, Knightsbridge, the Kensingtons,
and other districts not immensely far from Mayfair, but outside its
former sanctuary, now delivered over to the New Rich. They were not
distressingly poor. They were carrying on rather well! But they’d lost
the family roof-trees, the quiet parklands, something of their state in
England. Profiteers, American millionaires, Jews, were taking over some
of the old houses, though many remained unsold. . . . This news about
Holme Ottery for sale brought sharply home to Bertram that silent,
social, bloodless revolution which was happening in England. Well, it
didn’t matter very much to him. It mattered very much to Joyce.
She was silent going down in the train to Sussex, and seemed to have a
chill. He wrapped his overcoat about her in the corner of the
first-class carriage where she sat smoking cigarettes through a long
amber tube. She wore her country clothes of rough tweed, and looked, he
thought, “patrician” to her polished finger-tips. But amazingly young,
and child-like, in a white Tam-o’-shanter, with a gleam of gold where
her bobbed hair curled above her neck. He would have liked to kiss her
neck, so delicate and white, so inviting, as she bent her head over the
morning paper. He sat close to her for a while, and put his arm about
her waist, which she suffered impatiently, until she asked him to give
her elbow room and not to get into one of his “soppy moods.”
That sent him to the other side of the carriage, moodily, and he sat
staring out of the train at the passing meadows, all silver and gold and
green, on this day of Eastertide. The sunlight of an April sky chased
across the thatched roofs of little old cottages, touched their tall
twisted chimneys, gleamed on church spires, chased the shadows in
feathery woods. Little old England! So snug, and ancient, and sheltered,
and peaceful. He’d only learnt to love England properly when he was out
of it, fighting for it,—with only a thin chance of getting back to it.
Ireland was his father’s country, his own birthplace. England was his
mother’s land, and it was England, not Ireland to which his soul gave
allegiance.
Lying in the earth of France, he had thought back to England, yearned
for it. Not only and always for London, its mighty heart, which he’d
loved, but for the smell of fields like this, for the sight again—once
again—of an old village like one of those, with a square church tower,
and walled gardens, and orchards white, as now, with blossom. He had
tried to get something of that into his book—the inarticulate,
half-conscious love of England which had come to country boys, Cockneys,
young louts in khaki, so that some instinct in them, some strain of
blood, some heritage of spirit, had steeled them to stand fast in the
dirty ditches of death, whatever their fear.
Perhaps in a few days the safety of England would be threatened again by
social conflict. As the train crawled slowly through Robertsbridge, he
saw the newspaper placards, “Strike Certain. Notices Issued.” Bad, that.
Perhaps the railways might close down. They’d have to motor back from
Holme Ottery. Christy had just got away in time. He wondered if his
article on “The Mind of the Men” would attract any kind of notice. It
might do some good. He’d been fair to the men, tried to make people
understand their point of view, their reasonable claim for a living
wage.
Joyce spoke for the first time from her corner.
“I’m going to give father hell. He ought to have consulted me.”
Bertram suggested that perhaps his father-in-law had wanted to save her
from the worry of it, while she was unwell.
“Nonsense!” she said, impatiently. “It was just cowardice. He hadn’t the
pluck to tell me.”
Probably Joyce was right. So Bertram thought when they met Lord Ottery,
beyond the lodge gates, strolling towards them, with a little white dog
at his heels. He’d come to meet his daughter in answer to a telegram she
had sent from Victoria station.
“Well, Joyce!” he said, holding out his hairy cheek for her to kiss.
“Glad to see you looking so strong again.”
He was obviously ill at ease. He pretended not to be aware that Joyce
had failed to kiss him, and that her answer of “Well, father!” to his
“Well, Joyce,” was decidedly hostile and challenging.
“Your Mother’s not very bobbish this morning,” he said. “Sick headache,
or something of the sort.”
“I’m not surprised,” answered Joyce, with a little sarcastic laugh which
plainly suggested that Lord Ottery was the cause of her mother’s
ill-health. She walked with a long, swinging stride up the avenue of
elms which led towards the old house, so that her father lagged a little
behind her.
He remarked that the crops were coming along well, in spite of the dry
weather. He also expressed annoyance because the villagers had been
breaking down some of the fences on the south side of the park.
“The spirit of Bolshevism,” he said. “All those young fellows back from
the war are socialists and lawbreakers. I can’t understand it. They
weren’t like that after the South African War.”
Joyce continued walking in silence. Bertram, stealing a glance at her,
saw that there was a bright spot of colour on each cheek—danger
signals. It was when she reached the lawns outside the house, and saw
its old grey walls and mullion windows close to the terrace, and the
sloping banks with their clipped hedges, that she turned on her father
and revealed her anger and her anguish.
“Father! I can’t believe it’s true! You couldn’t bring yourself to do
it!”
“Do what, my dear?”
Lord Ottery put on his vacant look, and opened his mouth a little, like
a stupid rustic.
“Put the house up for sale!”
“Oh, the house! Oh, Lord! Who told you that? _Have_ they put it up for
sale? I’ve seen nothing about it in the Press.”
Joyce clutched her father’s arm, and shook him a little.
“Father! Tell me the truth. You’re not going to sell Holme Ottery?”
“Sell it, my dear? Who would buy it? It’s most unlikely that any one in
the world would buy it. It costs a fearful lot of money to keep up. Look
at it now—going to rack and ruin. A white elephant, Joyce. What with
income tax, land tax, death duties, price of labour—”
“Have you put it up for sale?”
Joyce stamped her foot, and her blue eyes looked piercingly into her
father’s grey ones. His were less courageous. He looked sheepishly at
Bertram, of whose presence he had previously taken no notice at all.
“My dear Joyce,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t be so imperious! I’m an
old man now. I’m getting devilish hard-pressed in my old age, and I have
the right to a little domestic peace.”
“Father, have you put it up for sale?”
He hesitated, shifted a little from one foot to the other, and poked up
a stone in the path with his thick cudgel.
“Well, my dear, I suggested to those damn fellows, Huxted and Wells,
that they might get an offer some time.”
It was the confession that Holme Ottery had been put up for sale. Joyce
accepted it as such.
“It’s a treachery!” she cried; “a treachery to Alban and all of us. We
won’t allow it. We ought to starve rather than let the house go. All our
history is there. It’s what we mean and are. Without that we’re
nothing.”
“It will be a great sacrifice, my dear,” said the tenth Earl of Ottery.
He, too, looked up at the old house which his forefathers had built, in
which they had lived and died and played their part in English history.
There was a little mist before his eyes.
“A great sacrifice!” he said in a broken way.
“I’ll talk to Mother about this!” said Joyce, savagely.
Lord Ottery smiled at her, and patted her hand.
“Yes, go and talk it out with your Mother. She’s in her room reading
_The Times_.”
Joyce ran up the terrace steps, without waiting for Bertram, and the two
men watched her slim, boyish figure disappear through the doorway of the
west turret.
“Women like talking,” said Ottery. “It doesn’t alter things, though.
Talking never did.”
He thrust his fingers through his red beard, and then put his hand
through Bertram’s arm, leaning on him a little heavily. It was the first
time he had ever done so, and Bertram thought it was a sign of weakness.
“No amount of talk will bring back England to its old state,” said Lord
Ottery, gravely. “Only hard work and good will, and honest government,
and wise leadership, can help towards that. The war has robbed us of our
old prosperity. We’re going to be poor. We must steel ourselves to
poverty.”
He whistled to his little white dog.
“Hi, Clincher!”
Then he asked Bertram whether he was an authority on the Black Death. He
found that subject wonderfully interesting. It threw a great deal of
light on the wage-system in the Middle Ages.