One gorgeous evening of gold and purple she was sitting by a highland stream with a lad of twenty, throwing ducks and drakes into the water. She was not at all in love with him; but, immature as she was, she could not help seeing that he was a good deal in love with her. He had been in uproarious spirits all the afternoon, and then somehow he had contrived to find this moment alone with her.
'Well, it'll be good-bye to-morrow, or perhaps to-night,' he had said, as he flung yet another stone into the river, and she clapped her hands as she counted no less than six skips along the smooth water.
'And then no leave for a long time?'
'Well, I'd been ten months without any before.'
'Perhaps we'll meet here again—next year.'
'I don't expect it,' he said quietly.
Her startled eyes met his full.
'It'll be worse fighting this winter than last—it'll go on getting worse till the end. I don't look to coming back.'
His tone was so cheerful and matter-of-fact that it confused her.
'Oh, Basil, don't talk like that!' was all she could find to say.
'Why not? Of course it's better not to talk about it. Nobody does. But just this afternoon—when it's been so jolly—here with you, I thought I'd like to say a word. Perhaps you'll remember—'
He threw another stone, and on the moor beyond the stream she heard the grouse calling.
'Remember what?'
'That I was quite willing,' he said simply. 'That's all. It's worth it.'
She could say nothing, but presently her hand dropped its pebble and found its way into his, and he had held it without saying a word for a little while. Then after dinner, with no good-bye to her, he had disappeared by the night train to the south.
And that had been the spirit of all of them, those jolly, rampagious lads, plain or handsome, clever or slow. Two of them were dead already. But the one who had thrown ducks and drakes was still, so far as she knew, somewhere in the Ypres salient, unscathed.
And after that she had come home to the atmosphere created by her father's life and character, in this old house where she was born, and in the estate round about it. It was as though she had only just realized—begun to realize—her father's strangeness. His eccentricities and unpopularity had meant little to her before. Her own real interests had lain elsewhere; and her mind had been too slow in developing to let her appreciate his fundamental difference from other people.
At any rate her father's unpopularity had been lately acute, and Pamela herself felt it bitterly, and shrank from her neighbours and the cottage people. When Desmond came home with a D.S.O., or a Victoria Cross, as of course he would, she supposed it would be all right. But meanwhile not a single thing done for the war!—not asouto the Red Cross, or to any war funds! And hundreds spent on antiquities—thousands perhaps—getting them deeper and deeper into debt. For she was quite aware that they were in debt; and her own allowance was of the smallest. Two hundred and fifty a year, too, for Miss Bremerton!—when they could barely afford to keep up the garden decently, or repair the house. She knew it was two hundred and fifty pounds. Her father was never reticent about such things, and had named the figure at once.
'Why wasn't Miss Bremerton doing something for the war?Greekindeed! when there was this fearful thing going on!' And in the evening air, as the girl turned her face towards the moonrise, she seemed to hear the booming of the Flanders guns.
And now Miss Bremerton was to do the housekeeping, and to play tutor and chaperon to her. Pamela resented both. If she was not to be allowed to scrub in a hospital, she might at least have learnt some housekeeping at home, for future use. As for the Greek lessons, it was not easy for her to be positively rude to any one, but she promised herself a good deal of passive resistance on that side. For if nothing else was possible, she could always sew and knit for the soldiers. Pamela was not very good at either, but they did something to lessen the moral thirst in her.
Ah, there was the library door. Miss Bremerton coming out—perhaps to propose a lesson! Pamela took to flight—noiseless and rapid—among the bosky corners and walks of the old garden.
Elizabeth emerged, clearly perceiving a gleam of vanishing white in the far distance. She sighed, but not at all sentimentally. 'It's silly how she dislikes me,' she thought. 'I wonder what I can do!'
Then her eye was caught by the tea-table still standing out in the golden dusk, which had now turned damp and chilly. Careless of Pamela not to have sent it away! Elizabeth examined it. Far too many cakes—too much sugar, too much butter, too much everything! And all because the Squire, who seemed to have as great a need of economy as anybody else, if not more, to judge from what she was beginning to know about his affairs, was determined to flout the Food Controller, and public opinion! What about the servants? she wondered.
Perceiving a little silver bell on the table she rang it and waited. Within a couple of minutes Forest emerged from the house. Elizabeth hesitated, then plunged.
'Take away the tea, please, Forest. And—and I should like to consult you. Do you think anybody wants as much tea and cakes in war-time?' She pointed to the table.
Forest paused as he was lifting the silver tray, and put it down again. He looked at the table; then he looked at the lady opposite.
'We servants, Miss, have never been asked whatwethink. Mr. Mannering—that's not his way.'
'But I may ask it, mayn't I, Forest?'
Forest's intelligent face flamed.
'Well, if we've really to speak out what we think, Miss—that's Cook and me—why, of course, the feeding here—well, it's a scandal! that's what it is. The Master will have it. No change, he says, from what it used to be. And the waste—well, you ask Cook!Shecan't help it!'
'Has she been here long, Forest?'
'Fifteen years.'
'And you?'
'Twenty-two, Miss.'
'Well, Forest,' Miss Bremerton approached him confidingly, 'don't you think that you, and Cook, and I—you know Mr. Mannering wishes me to do the housekeeping—well, that between us we could do something?'
Forest considered it.
'I don't see why not, Miss,' he said at last, with caution. 'You can reckon on me, that's certain, and on Cook, that's certain too. As for the young uns, we can get round them! They'll eat what they're given. But you'll have to go careful with the Squire.'
Miss Bremerton smiled and nodded. They stood colloguing in the twilight for ten minutes more.
'I say, Pamela, whoisthis female, and why has she descended on us?'
The speaker was Desmond Mannering. He was sitting on the edge of a much dilapidated arm-chair in the room which had been the twins' "den" from their childhood, in which Pamela's governess even, before the girl's school years, was allowed only on occasional and precarious footing. Here Pamela dabbed in photography, made triumphant piles of the socks and mittens she kept from her father's eye, read history, novels, and poetry, and wrote to her school friends and the boys she had met in Scotland. Ranged along the mantelpiece were numbers of snapshots—groups and single figures—taken by her, with results that showed her no great performer.
At the moment, however, Pamela was engaged in marking Desmond's socks. She was very jealous of her sisterly prerogative in the matter of Desmond's kit, and personal affairs generally. Forest was the only person she would allow to advise her, and one or two innocent suggestions made that morning by her new chaperon had produced a good deal of irritation.
Pamela looked up with a flushed countenance.
'I believe father did it specially that he might be able to tell Alice and Margaret that he hadn't a farthing for their war charities.'
'You mean because she costs so much?'
'Two hundred and fifty,' said Pamela drily.
'My hat!—and her keep! I call that mean of father,' said Desmond indignantly. 'You can't go tick with a secretary. It means cash. There'll never be anything for you, Pam, and nothing for the garden. The two old fellows that were here last week have been turned off, Forest tells me?'
'Father expects me to do the garden,' said Pamela, with rather pinched lips.
'Well, jolly good thing,' laughed her brother. 'Do you a lot of good, Pam. You never get half enough exercise.'
'I wouldn't mind if I were paid wages and could spend the money as I liked.'
'Poor old Pam! It is hard lines. I heard father tell the Rector he'd spent eighteen hundred at that sale.'
'And I'm ashamed to face any of the tradesmen,' said Pamela fiercely. 'Why they go on trusting us I don't know.'
Desmond looked out of the window with a puckered brow—a slim figure in his cadet's uniform. To judge from a picture on the wall behind his head, an enlarged photograph of the late Mrs. Mannering taken a year before the birth of the twins—an event which had cost the mother her life—Desmond resembled her rather than his father. In both faces there was the same smiling youthfulness, combined—as indeed also in Pamela—with something that entirely banished any suggestion of insipidity—something that seemed to say, 'There is a soul here—and a brain.' It had sometimes occurred, in a dreamy way to Pamela, to connect that smile on her mother's face with a line in a poem of Browning's, which she had learnt for recitation at school:
This grew; I gave commands;Then all smiles stopped together.
Had her mother been happy? That her children could never know.
Desmond's countenance, however, soon cleared. It was impossible for him to frown for long on any subject. He was very sorry for 'old Pam.' His father's opinions and behaviour were too queer for words. He would be jolly worried if he had to stay long at home, like Pamela. But then he wasn't going to be long at home. He was going off to his artillery camp in two days, and the thought filled him with a restless and impatient delight. At the same time he was more tolerant of his father than Pamela was, though he could not have told why.
'Desmond, give me your foot,' Pamela presently commanded.
The boy bared his foot obediently, and held it out while Pamela tried on a sock she had just finished knitting on a new pattern.
'I'm not very good at it,' sighed Pamela. 'Are you sure you can wear them, Dezzy?'
'Wear them? Ripping!' said the boy, surveying his foot at different angles. 'But you know, Pam, I can't take half the things you want me to take. What on earth did you get me a Gieve waistcoat for?'
'How do you know you won't be going to Mesopotamia?'
'Well, I don't know; but I don't somehow think it's very likely. They get their drafts from Egypt, and there's lots of artillery there.'
Pamela remembered with annoyance that Miss Bremerton had gently hinted the same thing when the Gieve waistcoat had been unpacked in her presence. It was true, of course, that she had a brother fighting under General Maude. That, no doubt, did give her a modest right to speak.
'How old do you think she is?' said Desmond, nodding in the direction of the library.
'Well, she's over thirty.'
'She doesn't look it.'
'Oh, Desmond, she does!'
'Let's call her the New Broom—Broomie for short,' said Desmond. 'Look here, Pam, I wish you'd try and like her. I shall have a dreadful hump when I get to camp if I think she's going to make you miserable.'
'Oh, I'll try,' said the girl with dreary resignation. 'You know I'm not to see Beryl again?' She looked up.
Her brother laughed.
'Don't I see you keeping to that! If Aubrey's any good he'll marry her straight away. And then how can father boycott her after that?'
'He will,' said Pamela decisively.
'And if father thinks I'm going to give up Arthur, he's jolly well mistaken,' said the boy with energy. 'Arthur's the best fellow I know, and he's been just ripping to me.'
The young face softened and glowed as though under the stress of some guarded memory. Pamela, looking up, caught her brother's expression and glowed too.
'Beryl says he isn't a bit strong yet. But he's moving heaven and earth to get back to the front.'
'Well, if they don't give him enough to do he'll be pretty sick. He's no good at loafing.'
There was silence a little. Outside a misty sunshine lay on the garden and the park and in it the changing trees were beginning to assume the individuality and separateness of autumn after the levelling promiscuity of the summer. The scene was very English and peaceful; and between it and the two young creatures looking out upon it there were a thousand links of memory and association. Suddenly Desmond said:
'Do you remember that bother I got into at Eton, Pam?'
Pamela nodded. Didn't she remember it? A long feud with another boy—ending in a highly organized fight—absolute defiance of tutor and housemaster on Desmond's part—and threatened expulsion. The Squire's irritable pride had made him side ostentatiously with his son, and Pamela could only be miserable and expect the worst. Then suddenly the whole convulsion had quieted down, and Desmond's last year at Eton had been a very happy one. Why? What had happened? Pamela had never known.
'Well, Arthur heard of it from "my tutor." He and Arthur were at Trinity together. And Arthur came over from Cambridge and had me out for a walk, and jawed me, jawed "my tutor," jawed the Head, jawed everybody. Oh, well no good going into the rotten thing,' said Desmond, flushing, 'but Arthur was awfully decent anyway.'
Pamela assented mutely. She did not want to talk about Arthur Chicksands. There was in her a queer foreboding sense about him. She did not in the least expect him to fall in love with her; yet there was a dim, intermittent fear in her lest he might become too important to her, together with a sharp shrinking from the news, which of course might come any day, that he was going to be married. She had known him from her childhood, had romped and sparred with him. He was the gayest, most charming companion; yet he carried with him, quite unconsciously, something that made it delightful to be smiled at or praised by him, and a distress when you did not get on with him, and were quite certain that he thought you silly or selfish. There was a rumour which reached Mannering after the second battle of Ypres that he had been killed. The Chicksands' household believed it for twenty-four hours.
Then he was discovered—gassed and stunned—in a shell-hole, and there had been a long illness and convalescence. During the twenty-four hours when he was believed to be dead, Pamela had spent the April daylight in the depths of the Mannering woods, in tangled hiding-places that only she knew. It was in the Easter holidays. She was alone at Mannering with an old governess, while her father was in London. The little wrinkled Frenchwoman watched her in silence, whenever she was allowed to see her. Then when on the second morning there came a telegram from Chetworth, and Pamela tore it open, flying with it before she read it to the secrecy of her own room, the Frenchwoman smiled and sighed. 'Ca, c'est l'amour!' she said to herself, 'assurément c'est l'amour!' And when Pamela came down again, radiant as a young seraph, and ready to kiss the apple-red cheek of the Frenchwoman—the rarest concession!—Madame Guérin did not need to be told that Arthur Chicksands was safe and likely to be sound.
But the Frenchwoman's inference was premature. During the two years she had been at school, Pamela had thought very little of Arthur Chicksands. She was absorbed in one of those devotions to a woman—her schoolmistress—very common among girls of strong character, and sometimes disastrous. In her case it had worked well. And now the period of extravagant devotion was over, and the girl's mind and heart set free. She thought she had forgotten Arthur Chicksands, and was certain he must have forgotten her. As it happened they had never met since his return to the front in the autumn of 1915—Pamela was then seventeen and a schoolgirl—or, as she now put it, a baby. She remembered the child who had hidden herself in the woods as something very far away.
And yet she did not want to talk about 'Arthur,' as she had always called him, and there was a certain tremor and excitement in her mind about him. The idea of being prevented from seeing him was absurd—intolerable. She was already devising ways and means of doing it. It was really not to be expected that filial obedience should reign at Mannering.
The twins had long left the subject of the embargo on Chetworth, and were wrangling and chaffing over the details of Desmond's packing, when there was a knock at the door.
Pamela stiffened at once.
'Come in!'
Miss Bremerton entered.
'Are you very busy?'
'Not at all!' said Desmond politely, scurrying with his best Eton manners to find a chair for the newcomer. 'It's an awful muddle, but that's Pamela!'
Pamela aimed a sponge-bag at him, which he dodged, and Elizabeth Bremerton sat down.
'I want to hold a council with you,' she said, turning a face just touched with laughter from one to the other. 'Do you mind?'
'Certainly not,' said Desmond, sitting on the floor with his hands round his knees. 'What's it about?' And he gave Pamela's right foot a nudge with his left by way of conveying to her that he thought her behaviour ungracious. Pamela hurriedly murmured, 'Delighted.'
'I want to tell you about the servants,' said Elizabeth. 'I can't do anything unless you help me.'
'Help you in what?' said Desmond, wondering.
'Well, you know, it's simply scandalous what you're all eating in this house!' exclaimed Elizabeth, with sudden energy. 'You ought to be fined.' She frowned, and her fair Dutch complexion became a bright pink.
'It's quite true,' said Pamela, startled. 'I told father, and he laughed at me.'
'But now even the servants are on strike,' said Elizabeth. 'It's Forest that's been preaching to them. He and Cook have been drawing up a week'smenu, according to the proper scale. But—'
'Father won't have it,' said Pamela decidedly.
'An idea has occurred to me,' was Elizabeth's apologetic reply. 'Your father doesn't come in to lunch?'
'Happy thought!' cried Desmond. 'Send him in a Ritz luncheon, while the rest of you starve. Easy enough for me to say as I'm off—and soldiers aren't rationed! We may be as greedy pigs as we like.'
'What do you say?' Elizabeth looked at Pamela. The girl was flattered by the deference shown her, and gradually threw herself into the little plot. How to set up a meatless day for the household, minus the Squire, and not be found out; how to restrict the bread and porridge allowance, while apparently outrunning it—knotty problems! into which the twins plunged with much laughter and ingenuity. At the end of the discussion, Elizabeth said with hesitation, 'I don't like not telling Mr. Mannering, but—'
'Oh no, you can't tell him' said Pamela, in her most resolute tone. 'Besides, it's for the country!'
'Yes, it's the country!' echoed Elizabeth. 'Oh, I'm so glad you agree with me. Forest's splendid!'
'I say, Broomie's not bad,' thought Desmond. Aloud he said, 'Forest's a regular Turk in the servants' hall—rules them all with a rod of iron.'
Elizabeth laughed. 'He tells me there was a joint of cold beef last night for supper, and he carried it away bodily back into the larder. And they all supped on fried potatoes, cheese, oatcake and jam! So then I asked him whether anybody minded, and he said the little kitchen-maid cried a bit, and said she "was used to her vittles and her mother would be dreadfully put out." "'Mother!' says I, 'haven't you gota young man!' And then I give her a real talking to about the war. 'You back your young man,' I said, 'and there's only one way as females can do it—barring them as is in munitions. Every bit of bread you don't eat is helping to kill Boches. And what else is your young man doin'? Where do you say he is? Wipers? You ask him. He'll tell you!' So then we were all nice and comfortable—and you needn't bother about us downstairs.We'reall right!"'
'Good old Forest!' laughed Desmond, delighted. 'I always knew he was the real boss here. Father thinks he is, but he can't do without Forest, and the old boy knows it.'
'Well, so that's agreed,' said Elizabeth demurely, as she rose. 'I naturally couldn't do anything without you, but so long as your father gets everything that he's accustomed to—'
'I don't see quite what you're going to do about dinner—late dinner, I mean?' said Pamela pensively.
Elizabeth beamed at her.
'Well, I became a vegetarian last week, except for very occasional break-outs. Fish is a vegetable!'
'I see,' reflected Pamela. 'We can break out now and then at dinner, when father's got his eye on us—'
'And be pure patriots at lunch,' laughed Miss Bremerton, as she opened the door. 'Au revoir! I must go back to work.'
She vanished. The brother and sister looked at each other.
Desmond gave his opinion.
'I believe she's a good sort!'
'"Wait and see,"' said Pamela pompously, and returned to her packing.
The preceding conversation took place during a break in Elizabeth's morning occupations. She had been busily occupied in collecting and copying out some references from Pausanias, under the Squire's direction. He meanwhile had been cataloguing and noting his new possessions, which, thanks to the aid of his henchman Levasseur, had been already arranged. And they made indeed a marvellous addition to the Mannering library and its collections. At the end of the room stood now a huge archaic Nikê, with outstretched peplum and soaring wings. To her left was the small figure, archaic also, of a charioteer, from the excavations at Delphi, amazingly full of life in spite of hieratic and traditional execution. But the most conspicuous thing of all was a mutilated Erôs, by a late Rhodian artist—subtle, thievish, lovely, breathing an evil and daemonic charm. It stood opposite the Nikê, 'on tiptoe for a flight.' And there was that in it which seemed at moments to disorganize the room, and lay violent and exclusive hold on the spectator.
Elizabeth on returning to her table found the library empty. The Squire had been called away by his agent and one of the new officials of the county, and had not yet returned. She expected him to return in a bad—possibly an outrageous temper. For she gathered that the summons had something to do with the decree of the County War Agricultural Committee that fifty acres, at least, of Mannering Park were to be given back to the plough, which, indeed, had only ceased to possess them some sixty years before. The Squire had gone out pale with fury, and she looked anxiously at her work, to see what there might be in it to form an excuse for a hurricane.
She could find nothing, however, likely to displease a sane man. And as she was at a standstill till he came back, she slipped an unfinished letter out of her notebook, and went on with it. It was to a person whom she addressed as 'my darling Dick.'
'I have now been rather more than a month here. You can't imagine what a queer place it is, nor what a queer employer I have struck. There might be no war—as far as Mannering is concerned. The Squire is always engaged in mopping it out, like Mrs. Partington. He takes no newspaper, except a rag called theLanchester Mail, which attacks the Government, the Army—as far as it dare—and "secret diplomacy." It comes out about once a week with a black page, because the Censor has been sitting on it. Desmond Mannering—that's the gunner-son who came on leave a week ago and is just going off to an artillery camp—and I, conspire through the butler—who is a dear, and a patriot—to get theTimes; but the Squire never sees it. Desmond reads it in bed in the morning, I read it in bed in the evening, and Pamela Mannering, Mr. Desmond's twin, comes in last thing, in her dressing-gown, and steals it.
'I seem indeed to be living in the heart of a whirlwind, for the Squire is fighting everybody all round, and as he is the least reticent of men, and I have to write his letters, I naturally, even by now, know a good deal about him. Shortly put, he is in a great mess. The estate is riddled with mortgages, which it would be quite easy to reduce. For instance, there are masses of timber, crying to be cut. He consults me often in the naïvest way. You remember that I trained for six months as an accountant. I assure you that it comes in extremely useful now! I can see my way a little where he can't see it at all. He glories in the fact that he was never any good at arithmetic or figures of any kind, and never looked at either after "Smalls." The estate of course used to be looked after in the good old-fashioned way by the family lawyers. But a few years ago the Squire quarrelled with these gentlemen, recovered all his papers, which no doubt went back to King Alfred, and resolved to deal with things himself. There is an office here, and a small attorney from Fallerton comes over twice or three times a week. But the Squire bosses it. And you never saw anything like his accounts! I have been trying to put some of them straight—just those that concern the house and garden—after six weeks' acquaintance! Odd, isn't it? He is like an irritable child with them. And his agent, who is seventy, and bronchitic, is the greatest fool I ever saw. He neglects everything.Hisaccounts too, as far as I have inspected them, are disgraceful. He does nothing for the farmers, and the farmers do exactly as they please with the land.
'Or did! For now comes the rub. Government is interfering, through the County Committee. They are turning out three of Mr. Mannering's farmers by force, because he won't do it himself, and ploughing up the park. I believe the steam tractor comes next week. The Squire has been employing some new lawyers to find out if he can't stop it somehow. And each time he sees them he comes home madder than before.
'Of course it all comes from a passionate antagonism to the war. He is not a pacifist exactly—he is not a conscientious objector. He is just an individualist gone mad—an egotistical, hot-tempered man, with all the ideas of the oldrégime, who thinks he can fight the world. I am often really sorry for him—he is so preposterous. But the muddle and waste of it all drives me crazy—you know I always was a managing creature.
'But one thing is certain—that he is a most excellent scholar. I knew I had got rusty, but I didn't know how rusty till I came to work for him. He has a wonderful memory—seems to know every Greek author by heart—and a most delicate and unerring taste. I thought I should find a mere dabbler—an amateur. And it takes all I know to do the drudgery work he gives me. And then he is always coming down upon me. It delights him to find me out in a howler—makes him, in fact, quite good-tempered for twenty minutes.
'As to the rest of the family, there is a charming boy and girl—twins of nineteen, the boy just off to an artillery camp after his cadet training; the girl extremely pretty and distinguished, and so far inclined to think me an intruder and a nuisance. How to get round her I don't exactly know, but I daresay I shall manage it somehow. If she would only set up a love-affair I could soon get the whip-hand of her!
'Then there is the priceless butler, with whom I have already made friends. I seem to have a taste for butlers, though I've never lived with one. He is fifty-two and a volunteer, in stark opposition to the Squire, who jeers at him perpetually. Forest takes it calmly, seems even in a queer way to be attached to his queer master. But he never misses a drill for anybody or any weather, and when he's out, the under-housemaid "buttles" for him like a lamb. The fact is, of course, that he's been here for twenty years, and the Squire couldn't get on for a day without him, or thinks he couldn't. So that his position is, as you may say, strongly entrenched, and counter-attacks are useless.
'The married daughters—Mrs. Gaddesden, who, I think, is an Honourable, and Mrs. Strang—are coming to-morrow to see their brother before he goes into camp. The Squire doesn't want them at all. Ah, there he comes! I'll finish later...'
The Squire came in—to use one of the Homeric similes of which he was so fond—'like a lion fresh from a slain bull, bespattered with blood and mire.' He had gone out pale, he returned crimson, rubbing his hands and in great excitement. And it was evident that he had by now formed the habit of talking freely to his secretary. For he went up to her at once.
'Well, now they know what to expect!' he said, his eyes glittering, and all his thick hair on his small peaked head standing up in a high ridge, like the crest of a battle-helmet.
'Who are "they"?' asked Elizabeth, smiling, as she quietly pushed her letter a little further under the blotting-paper.
'The County Council idiots—no, the Inspector fellow they're sending round.'
'And what did you tell him?'
'That I should resist their entry. The gates of the park will be locked. And my lawyers are already preparing a case for the High Court. Well—eh!—what?'—the speaker wound up impatiently, as though waiting for an immediate and applauding response.
Elizabeth was silent. She bent over the Greek book in front of her, as though looking for her place.
'You didn't think I was going to take it lying down!' asked the Squire, in a raised voice. Her silence suggested to him afresh all the odious and tyrannical forces by which he felt himself surrounded.
Elizabeth turned to him with a cheerful countenance.
'I don't quite understand what "it" means,' she said politely.
'Nonsense, you do!' was the angry reply. 'That's so like a woman. They always want to catch you out; they never see things simply and broadly. You'd like to make yourself out a fool—νηπια—and you're not a fool!'
And with his hands in his pockets he made two or three long strides up to the Nikê, at the further end of the room, and back, pulling up beside her again, as though challenging her reply.
'I assure you, sir, I wasn't trying to catch you out,' Elizabeth began in her gentlest voice.
'Don't call me "sir." I won't have it!' cried the Squire, almost stamping.
Then Elizabeth laughed outright.
'I'm sorry, but when I was working in the War Trade Department I always called the head of my room "sir."'
'That's because womenlikekow-towing—δουλοσυνην ανεχεσθαι!' said the Squire. Then he threw himself into a chair. 'Now let's talk sense a little.'
Elizabeth's attentive look, and lips quivering with amusement which she tried in vain to suppress, and he was determined not to see, showed her more than willing.
'I suppose you think—like that fellow I've just routed—that it's a uestion of food production. It isn't! It's a question ofliberty—versusbondage. If we can only survive as slaves, then wipe us out! That's my view.'
'Wasn't there a bishop once who said he would rather have England free than sober?' asked Elizabeth.
'And a very sensible man,' growled the Squire, 'though in general I've no use for bishops. Now you understand, I hope? This is going to be a test case. I'll make England ring.'
'Are you sure they can't settle it at once, under the Defence of the Realm Act?'
'Not they!' said the Squire triumphantly. 'Of course, I'm not putting up a frontal defence. I'm outflanking them. I'm proving that this is the worst land they could possibly choose. I'm offering them something else that they don't want. Meanwhile the gates shall be locked, and if any one or anything breaks them down—my lawyers are ready—we apply for an injunction at once.'
'And you're not—well, nervous?' asked Miss Bremerton, with a charming air of presenting something that might have been overlooked.
'Nervous of what?'
'Isn't the law—the new law—rather dreadfully strong?'
'Oh, you think I shall end in the county gaol?' said the Squire abruptly. 'Well, of course'—he took a reflective turn up and down—'I've no particular wish just now for the county gaol. It would be an infernal nuisance—in the middle of this book. But I mean to give them as much trouble as I can. I'm all right so far.'
He looked up suddenly, and caught an expression on his secretary's face which called him to order at once, though he was not meant to see it. Contempt?—cold contempt? Something like it.
The Squire drew himself up.
'You've made the arrangements, I suppose, for to-morrow?'
He spoke curtly, as the master of the house to a dependent.
Elizabeth meekly replied that she had done everything according to his directions. Mrs. Gaddesden was to have the South rooms.
'I said the East rooms!'
'But I thought—' Elizabeth began, in consternation.
'You thought wrong,' said the Squire cuttingly. 'Do not trouble yourself. I will tell Forest'
Elizabeth coloured crimson, and went on with her work. The Squire rang the bell. But before Forest could answer it, there was a quick step in the passage, and Desmond came bursting in.
'Pater, I say! it's too fine! You can't frowst all day at this nonsense. Come out, and let's shoot those roots of Milsom's. He told me yesterday there were five or six coveys in his big field alone. Of course everybody's been poaching for all they're worth. But there's some left. Forest'll get us some sandwiches. He says he'll come and load for you. His boy and the garden boy'll do for beaters.'
The Squire stood glumly hesitating, but with his eye on his son.
'Look here,' said Desmond, 'I've only got two days!'
Elizabeth could not help watching the boy—his look at his father, the physical beauty and perfection of him. The great Victory at the end of the room with her outstretched wings seemed to be hovering above him.
'Well, I don't mind,' said the Squire slowly.
Desmond gave a laugh of triumph, twined his arm in that of his father, and dragged him away.
'DEAR BELOVEDDICK—I must just finish this before dinner. Oh, how I like to think of you at Baghdad, with trees and shade, and civilized quarters again, after all you've gone through. Have you got my letters, and those gauze things I sent you for the hot weather? They tell me here they're right. But how's one to know? Meanwhile, my dear, here are your mother and sister on their knees to you, just to be told what you want. Try and want something!—there's a dear.
'Mother's fairly well—I mean as well as we can expect after such an illness. My salary here enables me to give her a proper trained nurse, and to send Jean to school. As to the rest, don't trouble about me, old man. Sometimes I think it was my pride more than anything else that was hurt a year ago. Anyway I find in myself a tremendous appetite for work. In spite of his oddities, Mr. Mannering is a most stimulating critic and companion. My work is interesting, and I find myself steeped once more in the most fascinating, the most wonderful of all literatures! What remains unsatisfied in me is the passion which you know I have always had for setting things straight—organizing, tidying up! Not to speak of other passions—for work directly connected with the war, for instance—which have had to be scrapped for a time. I can't bear the muddle and waste of this place. It gets on my nerves. Perhaps, if I stay, I may get a chance. I have made a small beginning—with the food. But I won't bother you with it.
'Above all, I must try and make friends with the twins. Desmond would be easy, but he's going. Pamela will be more difficult. However, I shall do my best. As I have already said, if she would only set up a flirtation—a nice one—that I could aid and abet!
'What will the married sisters be like? Desmond and Pamela say very little. All I know is that Alice—that's Mrs. Gaddesden—is to have a fire in her room all day, though the weather now is like July. To judge from her photographs, she is fair, rather pretty, stout and lethargic. Whereas Margaret is as thin almost as her father, and head-over-ears in war charities. She lives, says Pamela, on arrowroot and oatcake, to set an example, and her servants leave her regularly every month.
'Well, we shall see. I run on like this, because you say you like to be gossipped to; and I am just a little lonely here—sometimes. Good-night, and good-bye.—Your devoted sister,
'ELIZABETH.'
'Come in!' said Alice Gaddesden in a languid tone. From the knock, sharp and loud, on her bedroom door, she guessed that it was her sister Margaret who wished to see her. She did not wish, however, to see Margaret at all. Margaret, who was slightly the elder, tired and coerced her. But she had no choice.
Mrs. Strang entered briskly.
'My dear Alice! what a time of day to be in bed! Are you really ill?'
Mrs. Gaddesden grew red with annoyance.
'I thought I had told you, Margaret, that Dr. Crother advised me more than a year ago not to come down till the middle of the morning. It rests my heart.'
Mrs. Strang, who had come up to the bedside, looked down upon her sister with amused eyes. She herself was curiously like the Squire, even as to her hair, which was thick and fair, and already whitening, though she was not yet thirty. Human thinness could hardly have been carried further than she and the Squire achieved it. She had her father's nose also. But the rest of her features were delicately regular, and her quick blue eyes were those of a woman who told no falsehoods herself, and had little patience with other people's.
'My dear Alice, why do you believe doctors? They always tell you what you want to hear. I am sure you told Dr. Crother exactly what to say,' said Margaret, laughing, as she placed a chair by the bedside.
'Oh, of course I know you think everybody's a sham who isn't as strong as yourself!' said Mrs. Gaddesden, sinking back on her pillows with a soft sigh of resignation. 'Though I think youmighthave remembered the horribly hard work I've been doing lately.'
'Have you?' Mrs. Strang wrinkled her brow, as though in an effort to recollect. 'Oh, yes, I know. I have always been getting notices lately with your name on them, at the end of a long tail beginning with a Duchess, and stuffed with Countesses. And I always think—there's Alice doing the work, and the Countesses getting the glory. Do you really do the work?'
And Margaret, who did not often see her sister, and was of a genuinely inquiring turn of mind, turned upon her a penetrating look.
'Well, of course,' said Mrs. Gaddesden, a little confused, 'there are always the secretaries.'
'Ah-ha!' Mrs. Strang laughed—one might almost say crowed. 'Yes, indeed, if it weren't for the secretaries! By the way, what do you think about the specimen here?'
Mrs. Gaddesden lost her languid air at once. She sat up among her pillows, a reasonably pretty woman, not without some likeness to Pamela, in points that did not matter.
'My dear Margaret,' she said, with emphasis, 'this has got to be watched!—watched, I tell you.'
Mrs. Strang opened her eyes wide.
'What on earth do you mean?'
Alice Gaddesden smiled.
'Well, of course, you're much cleverer than I am, but I really do see further in practical matters than you do. Haven't you noticed,' she bent forward, looking mysterious and intent, 'howalreadyfather depends upon her, how she's beginning to run the whole show—and she hasn't been here much more than six weeks? My dear Margaret, with a secretary like that younevercan tell!'
'Well,' said Mrs. Strang coolly, 'and what then?'
'Oh, well, of course, if you're prepared to see a person like that—in our mother's place!'
'"A person like that"—how dreadfully old-fashioned you are, Alice! She's a lady; she's much more highly educated than you or I, and if she gets her way, she'll perhaps keep father out of some of the scrapes he seems bent on. You know this business of the park is perfectly mad!'
For the first time in this conversation Margaret Strang's face was grave. And when it was grave, some people would have called it fine.
'And just think what it'll cost,' said Mrs. Gaddesden despondently, 'even if he had a case—which he probably hasn't—and if he were to win it. There'll be no money left for Aubrey or any of us soon.'
'But of course he hasn't a case, and of course he can't win!' cried Margaret Strang. 'It's not that I care about—or the money—it's the disgrace!'
'Yes,' murmured Alice doubtfully.
'When you think—'
Mrs. Strang paused; her bright blue eyes, alive with thoughts, were fixed absently on her sister. She seemed to see a number of shabby streets, where she was accustomed to work, with little shabby shops, and placards on them—'No butter,' 'No milk,' and apples marked 4d. each.
'Think what?' said Alice.
Mrs. Strang's mind returned to Alice, and Alice's very elaborate and becomingnegligée.
'Only that, in my opinion, it's the duty of every landowner to produce every ounce of food he can, and to do what he's told! And father not only sets a shocking example, but he picks this absurd quarrel with the Chicksands. What on earth is Aubrey to do? Or poor Beryl?'
'Well, he comes to-night,' said Alice, 'so I suppose we shall hear. I can't make Aubrey out,' she added reflectively.
'Nobody can. I was talking to a brother-officer of his last week, a man who's awfully fond of him. He told me Aubrey did his work very well. He was complimented by Headquarters on his School only last month. But he's like an automaton. Nobody really knows him, nobody gets any forwarder with him. He hardly speaks to anybody except on business. The mess regard him as a wet blanket, and his men don't care about him, though he's a capital officer. Isn't it strange, when one thinks of what Aubrey used to be five years ago?'
Alice agreed. Perhaps he was still suffering from the effects of his wound in 1915.
'Anyway he can't give Beryl up,' said Margaret with energy, 'if he's a man of honour!'
Alice shrugged her shoulders.
'Then he'll give up the estate, according to father.'
'Desmond would give it back to him, if there's anything left of it, or if he wants it.'
'Margaret!'
'You think I don't care about the family—that there should always be a Mannering of Mannering? Yes, I do care, but there are so many other things now to care about,' added Mrs. Strang slowly.
'Who's making me late now?' said Alice, looking at her watch.
Margaret took the hint and departed.
That same evening, in the September dusk, a dog-cart arrived at the Hall, bringing Major Mannering and a Gladstone bag.
Pamela and Desmond rushed out to meet him. Their elder sisters were dressing for dinner, and the Squire was in the library with Elizabeth. The twins dragged the newcomer into their own den, and shut the door upon him. There Desmond gave him a breathless survey of the situation, while Pamela sat on a stool at his feet, and put in explanatory words at intervals. Their father's extraordinary preparations for waging war against the County Committee; his violence on the subject of the Chicksands; Beryl's despairing letters to Pamela; a letter from Arthur Chicksands to Desmond,—all these various items were poured out on the newcomer, with an eagerness and heat which showed the extreme interest which the twins took in the situation.
Meanwhile Aubrey Mannering sat listening almost in silence. He was a delicately built, distinguished-looking man, who carried a large scar on his forehead, and had lost a finger of the left hand. The ribbons on his breast showed that he was both an M.C. and a D.S.O.—distinctions won at the second battle of Ypres and on the Somme. While the twins talked, his eyes travelled from one to the other, attentive, but curiously aloof.
He was saying to himself that Pamela was extremely pretty, and Desmond a splendid fellow. Then—in a moment—while he looked at his young brother, a vision, insistent, terrible, passed ghost-like between him and the boy. Again and again he tried to shake it off, and again and again it interposed.
'Oh, Aubrey, what will you do?' said Pamela despairingly, leaning her head against her brother's knee.
Her voice recalled him. He laid his hand upon her beautiful hair.
'Well, dear, there's only one thing, of course, for me to do—to stick to Beryl and let father do his worst.'
'Hurrah!' said Desmond. 'That's all right. And of course you know, Aubrey, that if father tries any hankey-pankey with the estate, and leaves it to me, I shall give it back to you next day.'
Aubrey smiled. 'Father'll live another twenty years, old man. Will there be any England then, or any law, or any estates to leave?'
The twins looked at him in amazement. Again he recovered himself quickly.
'I only meant that, in times like these, it's no good planning anything twenty years ahead. We've got to win the war, haven't we?—that's the first thing. Well, now, I must go and clean up. Who's here?'
'Alice and Margaret,' said Pamela. 'And father's new secretary.'
'You never told me about him,' said Aubrey indifferently, as he rose.
'"Him" indeed!' laughed Desmond. 'Nothing of the sort!'
Aubrey turned a puzzled look upon him.
'What! a lady?'
Desmond grinned.
'First Class in Mods, and an awful swell. Father can't let her out of his sight. Says he never had anybody so good.'
'And she'll end by bossing us all,' put in Pamela. 'She's begun it already. Now you really must go and dress.'
When the eldest son of the house entered the drawing-room, he found everybody gathered there but his father and the Rector, who was coming to dine. He was at once seized on by his married sisters, who saw him very rarely. Then Pamela led him up to a tall lady in pale blue.
'My eldest brother—Miss Bremerton.'
He looked at her with curiosity, and was glad when, after the arrival of his father and the Rector, it fell to him to take the new secretary in to dinner. His father's greeting to him had been decidedly cool—the greeting of a man who sees a fight impending and wishes to give away nothing to his opponent. In fact the two men had never been on really cordial terms since August 1914, when Aubrey had thrown up his post in the Foreign Office to apply for one of the first temporary commissions in the New Army. The news came at a moment when the Squire was smarting under the breakdown of a long-cherished scheme of exploration in the Greek islands, which was to have been realized that very autumn—a scheme towards which his whole narrow impetuous mind had been turned for years. No more Hellenic or Asia Minor excavations! no more cosmopolitanWissenschaft! On that fatal August 4 a whole world went down submerged beneath the waves of war, and the Squire cared for no other. His personal chagrin showed itself in abuse of the bungling diplomats and 'swashbuckler' politicians who, according to him, had brought us into war. So that when Aubrey applied for a commission, the Squire, mainly to relieve his own general irritation, had quarrelled with him for some months, and was only outwardly reconciled when his son came home invalided in 1915.
During the summer of 1917, Aubrey, after spending three days' leave at Mannering, had gone on to stay at Chetworth with the Chicksands for a week. The result of that visit was a letter to his father in which he announced his engagement to Beryl. The Squire could make then no open opposition, since he was still on friendly terms with Sir Henry, who had indeed done him more than one good turn. But in reply to his son's letter, he stood entirely on the defensive, lest any claim should be made upon him which might further interfere with the passion of his life. He was not, he said, in a position to increase Aubrey's allowance—the Government robbers had seen to that—and unless Beryl was prepared to be a poor man's wife he advised them to wait till after the war. Then Sir Henry had ridden over to Mannering with a statement of what he was prepared to do for his daughter, and the Squire had given ungracious consent to a marriage in the spring. Chicksands knew his man too well to take offence at the Squire's manners, and Beryl was for a time too timidly and blissfully happy to be troubled by them.
'You have been here a few weeks,' said the newcomer to Elizabeth, when the party had settled down at table.
'About six weeks. It seems longer!' smiled Elizabeth.
'You are doing some work for my father?'
Elizabeth explained herself. Major Mannering listened attentively.
'So what you do for him is literary—and historical?'
'Oh no—I do accounts, and write letters too.'
'Accounts? I thought there was a housekeeper?'
'She went a month ago to the W.A.A.C.'s. Please!—do you mind?' And to his amazement, as he was putting out his hand automatically to a piece of bread lying on his left, Miss Bremerton's hand holding a fork neatly intercepted him, and moved the bread away.
'It's our "Self-denying Ordinance,"' explained the lady, colouring a little. 'The bread appears because—because your father doesn't think rations necessary. But no one touches it, and Forest collects it afterwards—for breakfast.'
A smile broke on Aubrey's grave and pensive face.
'I see. Mayn't I really have any?'
Elizabeth hesitated.
'Well, perhaps, as a guest, and a soldier. Yes, I think you may.' And she would have restored her prey had not her neighbour stopped her.
'Not at all. As a soldier I obey orders. My hat! how you've drilled them all!' For, looking round the table, he saw that not a single guest had touched the bread lying to their left.
'That's Pamela and Mr. Desmond! They've given everybody amenufor three days.'
'Good heavens—not my father!'
'Oh no,no! We don't think he suspects anything, and he has everything he likes.'
'And my married sisters?' Elizabeth hesitated again.
'Well, Mrs. Gaddesden is rather afraid of being starved. Mrs. Strang, on the other hand, thinks we're wickedly extravagant!'
Her neighbour was so much amused that conversation flowed on easily thenceforward; and Desmond opposite whispered to Pamela:
'Just look at Broomie! She's actually making Aubrey talk.'
The Major's rôle, however, was on the whole that of listener. For Elizabeth meant to talk—meant to explain herself to the son and heir, and, if she could, to drive him to an interest in the family affairs. To her trained, practical mind the whole clan seemed by now criminally careless and happy-go-lucky. The gardens were neglected; so was the house; so was the estate. The gardens ought to have been made self-supporting; there were at least a third too many servants in the house; and as for the estate, instead of being a profit-making and food-producing concern, as it should have been, it was a bye-word for bad management and neglected land. She did not pretend to know much about it yet; but what she did know roused her. England was at grips with a brutal foe. The only weapon that could defeat her was famine—the sloth and waste of her own sons. This woman, able, energetic, a lover of her country, could not conceal her scorn for such a fatal incompetence. Naturally, in talking to the eldest son, she made the agent her scapegoat for the sins of the owner. The Squire's responsibility was carefully masked. But Aubrey Mannering perfectly understood what she would be at. She was a clever woman who wanted things improved. Well, let her improve them. It did not matter to him.
But she appeared to him as a somewhat special type of the modern woman, with her advanced education and her clear brain; and for a time he observed her curiously. The graceful dress, pale blue with touches of black, which exactly became her fair skin, the bright gold of her hair, and the pleasant homeliness of her face—her general aspect indeed—attracted him greatly. She might know Greek; at heart, he believed, she was a good housewife; and when she incidentally mentioned Dutch relations, he seemed to see her with a background of bright pots and pans, mopping tiled floors.
But presently he ceased to pay much attention to her. His dreamy sense became aware of the scene as a whole; the long table; his father's fantastic figure at the head of it; Alice Gaddesden elaborately dressed and much made up on the one side, his sister Margaret in a high black gown, erect and honest, on the other; Desmond and Pamela together, chatting and chaffing with the Rector. It was the room so familiar to his childhood and youth, with the family pictures, the Gainsborough full-length of his very plain great-grandmother in white satin at the end, two or three Vandyck school-portraits of seventeenth-century Mannerings, and the beautiful Hogarth head—their best possession—that was so like Pamela. The furniture of the room was of many different dates—incongruous, shabby, and on the whole ugly. The Mannerings of the past had not been an artistic lot.
Nor had the room—the house indeed—many tender associations for him. His childhood had not been very happy. He had never got on with his father, and his mother, who had been the victim of various long illnesses during his boyhood, had never, unluckily, meant much to him. He knew that he was of a very old stock, which had played a long and considerable part in the world; but the fact brought him no thrill. 'That kind of thing is played out,' he thought. Let his father disinherit him—he was quite indifferent.
Then, as he fell silent beside his father's new secretary, the table vanished. He saw instead the wide Picardy flats, a group of poplars, a distant wood, and in front a certain hollow strewn with dead and dying men—one figure, in front of the rest, lying face downwards. The queer twisted forms, the blasted trees, the inexorable horror—the whole vision swept over him again, as it had done in the schoolroom. His nerves shrank and trembled under it.
Beryl—poor little Beryl! What a wretch he had been to propose to her—in a moment of moral and physical weakness, when it had seemed a simple thing to accept her affection and to pledge his own! But if she stood by him, he must stand by her. And he had had the kindest letter from Sir Henry, and some sweet tremulous words from her. Suppose she offered to release him? His heart leapt guiltily at the thought. What, indeed, had a man so haunted and paralysed to give to a girl like Beryl? It was an outrage—it ought to cease.
But as to his father, that was simple enough.
The Squire and his eldest son retreated to the library after dinner, and all the rest of the party waited uneasily to see what would happen. Elizabeth did her best to keep things going. It might have been noticed—it was noticed by at least two of the persons present—that quite unobtrusively, she was already the mistress of the house. She found a stool and a fire-screen for Mrs. Gaddesden; she held some wool for Mrs. Strang to wind; and a backgammon board was made ready for the Squire, in case he returned.
But he did not return. Aubrey came back alone, and found them all hanging on his entrance. Pamela put down her knitting and looked at him anxiously; so did the elder sisters. He went up absently to the chimney-piece, and stood leaning against it.
'Well?' said Pamela in a low voice, as she came to sit on a stool near him.
He smiled, but she saw that he was pale.
'Can you take me over to Chetworth to-morrow—early—in the pony-cart?'
'Yes, certainly.'
'Half-past ten?'
'Right you are.'
No more was said. Aubrey turned at once to Alice Gaddesden and proposed a round game. He played it with much more spirit than usual, and Desmond's antics in 'Animal Grab' put all serious notions to flight.
But when the game was over, and Forest brought in the candles, Margaret tried to get some information.
'You found the father reasonable?' she said to her brother in an undertone, as they stood together by the fire.
'Oh, yes,' was the indifferent answer, 'from his own point of view.'
And when he had lit their candles for his sisters, he excused himself at once on the ground of being dog-tired after a long day. The door closed upon him.
The family gathered together in a group, while the Rector and Elizabeth talked about the village at the further end of the room.
'They've quarrelled!' said Margaret decisively.
Alice Gaddesden, because it was Margaret's opinion, disagreed. There was nothing to show it, she said. Aubrey had been quite calm. Desmond broke out, 'Did you ever see Aubrey anything else?' Pamela said nothing, but she slipped out to tell Forest about the pony-cart.
Meanwhile the Rector had looked at his watch, and came up to take his leave.
'Has the Squire gone to bed?' he said cheerfully. 'I daresay. He works so hard. Give him my fare-wells.'
And he went off, quite aware, both from his knowledge of the family and of the Squire's recent actions, that there were storms brewing in the old house, but on the whole thinking more of the new secretary than of his old friends. A charming woman!—most capable! For the first time he might get some attention paid to the village people. That child with the shocking bow-legs. Poor little Pamela had tried to do her best. But this woman would see to it; she knew how to get things done.
Meanwhile, as the rest of the party dispersed, Forest brought a message to Elizabeth. 'The Squire would be glad if you would spare him a few minutes, Miss, in the library. He won't keep you long.'
Elizabeth went unwillingly.
The library was in darkness, except for one small lamp at the further end, and the Squire was walking up and down. He stopped abruptly as he saw his secretary.
'I won't keep you, Miss Bremerton, but do you happen to know at all where my will is?'
'Your will, Mr. Mannering?' said Elizabeth in amazement. 'No, indeed! I have never seen it.'
'Well, it's somewhere here,' said the Squire impatiently. 'I should have thought in all your rummagings lately you must have come across it. I took it away from those robbers, my old solicitors, and I wasn't going to give it to the new man—don't trust him particularly not to talk. So I locked it up here—somewhere. And I can't find it.' And he began restlessly to open drawer after drawer, which already contained piles of letters and documents, neatly and systematically arranged, with the proper dockets and sub-headings, by Elizabeth.
'Oh, it can't be there!' cried Elizabeth. 'I know everything in those drawers. Surely it must be in the office?' By which she meant the small and hideously untidy room on the ground floor into which masses of papers of all dates, still unsorted, had been carted down from London.
'It isn't in the office!' He was, she saw, on the brink of an outburst. 'I put it somewhere in this room my own self! And I should have thought by now you knew the geography of this place as well as I do!'
Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, but said nothing. The big room indeed was still full to her of unexplored territory, withcachesof all kinds in it, new and ancient, waiting to be discovered. She looked round her in perplexity, not knowing where to begin. A large part of the room was walled with glass cases, holding vases, bronzes, and other small antiquities, down to about a yard from the floor, and the space below being filled by cupboards and drawers. Elizabeth made a vague movement towards a particular set of cupboards which she knew she had not yet touched, but the Squire irritably stopped her.
'It's certainly not there. That bit of the room hasn't been disturbed since the Flood! Now those drawers'—he pointed—'might be worth looking at.'
She hurried towards them. But the Squire, instead of helping her in her search, resumed his walk up and down, muttering to himself. As for her, she was on the verge of laughter, the laughter that comes from nerves and fatigue; for she had had a long day's work and was really tired. The first drawer she opened was packed with papers, a few arranged in something like order by her predecessor, the London University B.A., but the greater part of them in confusion. They mostly related to a violent controversy between the Squire and various archæological experts with regard to some finds in the Troad a year or two before the war, in which the Squire had only just escaped a serious libel suit, whereof indeed all the preliminaries were in the drawer.
On the very top of the drawer, however, was a conveyance of a small outlying portion of the Mannering estate, which the Squire had sold to a neighbour only a year before this date. Hopeless! If that was there, anything might be anywhere!
Was she to spend the night searching for the needle in this bottle of hay? Elizabeth's face began to twitch with uncomfortable merriment. Should she go and knock up the housekeeper and instal her as chaperon, or take a stand, and insist on going to bed like a reasonable woman?
She hunted through three drawers. The Squire meanwhile paced incessantly, sometimes muttering to himself. Every time he came within the circle of lamplight his face was visible to Elizabeth, wrinkled and set, with angry eyes; and she saw him as a person possessed by a stubborn demon of self-will. Once, as he passed her, she heard him say to himself, 'Of course I can write another at once—half a sheet will do.'
She replaced the third drawer. Was the Squire to have a monopoly of stubbornness? She thought not. Waves of indefinite but strong indignation were beginning to sweep through her. Why was the Squire hunting for his will? What had he been saying to his son—his son who bore on his breast and on his body the marks of his country's service?
She rose to her feet.
'I can't find anything, Mr. Mannering. And I think, if you will allow me, I will go to bed.'
He looked at her darkly.
'I see. You are a person who stickles for your hours—you won't do anything extra for me.' There was a sneer in his tone.
Elizabeth felt her cheeks suddenly burn. In the dim light she looked amazingly tall, as she stood straightened to her full height, confronting this man who really seemed to her to be only half sane.
'I think I have done a great deal for you, Mr. Mannering. But if you don't think so we had better end my engagement!'