Stanley Freeland's country house, Becket, was almost a show place.
It stood in its park and pastures two miles from the little town of
Transham and the Morton Plough Works; close to the ancestral home of the
Moretons, his mother's family—that home burned down by Roundheads in
the Civil War. The site—certain vagaries in the ground—Mrs. Stanley
had caused to be walled round, and consecrated so to speak with a
stone medallion on which were engraved the aged Moreton arms—arrows
and crescent moons in proper juxtaposition. Peacocks, too—that bird
'parlant,' from the old Moreton crest—were encouraged to dwell there
and utter their cries, as of passionate souls lost in too comfortable
surroundings.
By one of those freaks of which Nature is so prodigal, Stanley—owner of
this native Moreton soil—least of all four Freeland brothers, had the
Moreton cast of mind and body. That was why he made so much more money
than the other three put together, and had been able, with the aid of
Clara's undoubted genius for rank and station, to restore a strain of
Moreton blood to its rightful position among the county families of
Worcestershire. Bluff and without sentiment, he himself set little store
by that, smiling up his sleeve—for he was both kindly and prudent—at
his wife who had been a Tomson. It was not in Stanley to appreciate the
peculiar flavor of the Moretons, that something which in spite of
their naivete and narrowness, had really been rather fine. To him, such
Moretons as were left were 'dry enough sticks, clean out of it.' They
were of a breed that was already gone, the simplest of all country
gentlemen, dating back to the Conquest, without one solitary conspicuous
ancestor, save the one who had been physician to a king and perished
without issue—marrying from generation to generation exactly their own
equals; living simple, pious, parochial lives; never in trade, never
making money, having a tradition and a practice of gentility more
punctilious than the so-called aristocracy; constitutionally paternal
and maternal to their dependents, constitutionally so convinced that
those dependents and all indeed who were not 'gentry,' were of different
clay, that they were entirely simple and entirely without arrogance,
carrying with them even now a sort of Early atmosphere of archery and
home-made cordials, lavender and love of clergy, together with frequent
use of the word 'nice,' a peculiar regularity of feature, and a
complexion that was rather parchmenty. High Church people and Tories,
naturally, to a man and woman, by sheer inbred absence of ideas, and
sheer inbred conviction that nothing else was nice; but withal very
considerate of others, really plucky in bearing their own ills; not
greedy, and not wasteful.
Of Becket, as it now was, they would not have approved at all. By what
chance Edmund Moreton (Stanley's mother's grandfather), in the middle
of the eighteenth century, had suddenly diverged from family feeling and
ideals, and taken that 'not quite nice' resolution to make ploughs and
money, would never now be known. The fact remained, together with
the plough works. A man apparently of curious energy and character,
considering his origin, he had dropped the E from his name, and—though
he continued the family tradition so far as to marry a Fleeming of
Worcestershire, to be paternal to his workmen, to be known as Squire,
and to bring his children up in the older Moreton 'niceness'—he had yet
managed to make his ploughs quite celebrated, to found a little town,
and die still handsome and clean-shaved at the age of sixty-six. Of his
four sons, only two could be found sufficiently without the E to go on
making ploughs. Stanley's grandfather, Stuart Morton, indeed, had tried
hard, but in the end had reverted to the congenital instinct for being
just a Moreton. An extremely amiable man, he took to wandering with
his family, and died in France, leaving one daughter—Frances, Stanley's
mother—and three sons, one of whom, absorbed in horses, wandered to
Australia and was killed by falling from them; one of whom, a soldier,
wandered to India, and the embraces of a snake; and one of whom wandered
into the embraces of the Holy Roman Church.
The Morton Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's father,
seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into them. From that
moment they had never looked back, and now brought Stanley, the sole
proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand pounds a year. He wanted
it. For Clara, his wife, had that energy of aspiration which before now
has raised women to positions of importance in the counties which
are not their own, and caused, incidentally, many acres to go out of
cultivation. Not one plough was used on the whole of Becket, not even a
Morton plough—these indeed were unsuitable to English soil and were all
sent abroad. It was the corner-stone of his success that Stanley had
completely seen through the talked-of revival of English agriculture,
and sedulously cultivated the foreign market. This was why the Becket
dining-room could contain without straining itself large quantities of
local magnates and celebrities from London, all deploring the condition
of 'the Land,' and discussing without end the regrettable position of
the agricultural laborer. Except for literary men and painters, present
in small quantities to leaven the lump, Becket was, in fact, a rallying
point for the advanced spirits of Land Reform—one of those places where
they were sure of being well done at week-ends, and of congenial and
even stimulating talk about the undoubted need for doing something,
and the designs which were being entertained upon 'the Land' by either
party. This very heart of English country that the old Moretons in their
paternal way had so religiously farmed, making out of its lush grass and
waving corn a simple and by no means selfish or ungenerous subsistence,
was now entirely lawns, park, coverts, and private golf course, together
with enough grass to support the kine which yielded that continual
stream of milk necessary to Clara's entertainments and children, all
female, save little Francis, and still of tender years. Of gardeners,
keepers, cow-men, chauffeurs, footmen, stablemen—full twenty were
supported on those fifteen hundred acres that formed the little Becket
demesne. Of agricultural laborers proper—that vexed individual so much
in the air, so reluctant to stay on 'the Land,' and so difficult to
house when he was there, there were fortunately none, so that it was
possible for Stanley, whose wife meant him to 'put up' for the Division,
and his guests, who were frequently in Parliament, to hold entirely
unbiassed and impersonal views upon the whole question so long as they
were at Becket.
It was beautiful there, too, with the bright open fields hedged with
great elms, and that ever-rich serenity of its grass and trees. The
white house, timbered with dark beams in true Worcestershire fashion,
and added-to from time to time, had preserved, thanks to a fine
architect, an old-fashioned air of spacious presidency above its gardens
and lawns. On the long artificial lake, with innumerable rushy nooks
and water-lilies and coverture of leaves floating flat and bright in
the sun, the half-tame wild duck and shy water-hens had remote little
worlds, and flew and splashed when all Becket was abed, quite as if the
human spirit, with its monkey-tricks and its little divine flame, had
not yet been born.
Under the shade of a copper-beech, just where the drive cut through into
its circle before the house, an old lady was sitting that afternoon on
a campstool. She was dressed in gray alpaca, light and cool, and had on
her iron-gray hair a piece of black lace. A number of Hearth and Home
and a little pair of scissors, suspended by an inexpensive chain from
her waist, rested on her knee, for she had been meaning to cut out for
dear Felix a certain recipe for keeping the head cool; but, as a fact,
she sat without doing so, very still, save that, now and then, she
compressed her pale fine lips, and continually moved her pale fine
hands. She was evidently waiting for something that promised excitement,
even pleasure, for a little rose-leaf flush had quavered up into a face
that was colored like parchment; and her gray eyes under regular and
still-dark brows, very far apart, between which there was no semblance
of a wrinkle, seemed noting little definite things about her, almost
unwillingly, as an Arab's or a Red Indian's eyes will continue to note
things in the present, however their minds may be set on the future. So
sat Frances Fleeming Freeland (nee Morton) waiting for the arrival of
her son Felix and her grandchildren Alan and Nedda.
She marked presently an old man limping slowly on a stick toward where
the drive debouched, and thought at once: “He oughtn't to be coming this
way. I expect he doesn't know the way round to the back. Poor man, he's
very lame. He looks respectable, too.” She got up and went toward
him, remarking that his face with nice gray moustaches was wonderfully
regular, almost like a gentleman's, and that he touched his dusty hat
with quite old-fashioned courtesy. And smiling—her smile was sweet
but critical—she said: “You'll find the best way is to go back to that
little path, and past the greenhouses. Have you hurt your leg?”
“My leg's been like that, m'm, fifteen year come Michaelmas.”
“How did it happen?”
“Ploughin'. The bone was injured; an' now they say the muscle's dried up
in a manner of speakin'.”
“What do you do for it? The very best thing is this.”
From the recesses of a deep pocket, placed where no one else wore such a
thing, she brought out a little pot.
“You must let me give it you. Put it on when you go to bed, and rub it
well in; you'll find it act splendidly.”
The old man took the little pot with dubious reverence.
“Yes, m'm,” he said; “thank you, m'm.”
“What is your name?”
“Gaunt.”
“And where do you live?”
“Over to Joyfields, m'm.”
“Joyfields—another of my sons lives there—Mr. Morton Freeland. But it's
seven miles.”
“I got a lift half-way.”
“And have you business at the house?” The old man was silent; the
downcast, rather cynical look of his lined face deepened. And Frances
Freeland thought: 'He's overtired. They must give him some tea and
an egg. What can he want, coming all this way? He's evidently not a
beggar.'
The old man who was not a beggar spoke suddenly:
“I know the Mr. Freeland at Joyfields. He's a good gentleman, too.”
“Yes, he is. I wonder I don't know you.”
“I'm not much about, owin' to my leg. It's my grand-daughter in service
here, I come to see.”
“Oh, yes! What is her name?”
“Gaunt her name is.”
“I shouldn't know her by her surname.”
“Alice.”
“Ah! in the kitchen; a nice, pretty girl. I hope you're not in trouble.”
Again the old man was silent, and again spoke suddenly:
“That's as you look at it, m'm,” he said. “I've got a matter of a few
words to have with her about the family. Her father he couldn't come, so
I come instead.”
“And how are you going to get back?”
“I'll have to walk, I expect, without I can pick up with a cart.”
Frances Freeland compressed her lips. “With that leg you should have
come by train.”
The old man smiled.
“I hadn't the fare like,” he said. “I only gets five shillin's a week,
from the council, and two o' that I pays over to my son.”
Frances Freeland thrust her hand once more into that deep pocket, and as
she did so she noticed that the old man's left boot was flapping open,
and that there were two buttons off his coat. Her mind was swiftly
calculating: “It is more than seven weeks to quarter day. Of course I
can't afford it, but I must just give him a sovereign.”
She withdrew her hand from the recesses of her pocket and looked at
the old man's nose. It was finely chiselled, and the same yellow as his
face. “It looks nice, and quite sober,” she thought. In her hand was her
purse and a boot-lace. She took out a sovereign.
“Now, if I give you this,” she said, “you must promise me not to spend
any of it in the public-house. And this is for your boot. And you must
go back by train. And get those buttons sewn on your coat. And tell
cook, from me, please, to give you some tea and an egg.” And noticing
that he took the sovereign and the boot-lace very respectfully,
and seemed altogether very respectable, and not at all coarse or
beery-looking, she said:
“Good-by; don't forget to rub what I gave you into your leg every night
and every morning,” and went back to her camp-stool. Sitting down on it
with the scissors in her hand, she still did not cut out that recipe,
but remained as before, taking in small, definite things, and feeling
with an inner trembling that dear Felix and Alan and Nedda would soon be
here; and the little flush rose again in her cheeks, and again her lips
and hands moved, expressing and compressing what was in her heart. And
close behind her, a peacock, straying from the foundations of the old
Moreton house, uttered a cry, and moved slowly, spreading its tail under
the low-hanging boughs of the copper-beeches, as though it knew
those dark burnished leaves were the proper setting for its 'parlant'
magnificence.