Everybody in Mannering had gone to bed but Desmond and Pamela. It was not certain indeed that the Squire had gone to bed, but as there was a staircase beside one of the doors of the library leading direct to his room, it was not likely that he would cross the hall again. The twins felt themselves alone.
'I daresay there'll be a raid to-night,' said Desmond, 'it's so bright and still. Put down that lamp a moment, Pamela.'
She obeyed, and he threw away his cigarette, went to one of the windows, and drew up the blinds.
'Listen!' he said, holding up his hand. Pamela came to his side, and they both heard through the stillness that sound of distant guns which no English ear had heard—till now—since the Civil War.
'And there are the searchlights!'
For over London, some forty miles away behind a low range of hills, faint fingers of light were searching the sky.
'At this very moment, perhaps,'—said the boy between his teeth—'those demons are blowing women and children to pieces—over there!'
Pamela shivered and laid her cheek against his shoulder. But both he and she were aware of that strange numbness which in the fourth year of the war has been creeping over all the belligerent nations, so that horror has lost its first edge, and the minds, whether of soldiers in the field, or of civilians at home, have become hardened to facts or ideas which would once have stirred in them wild ferments of rage and terror.
'Shall we win, this year, Desmond?' said Pamela, as they stood gazing out into the park, where, above a light silvery mist a young moon was riding in a clear blue. Not a branch stirred in the great leafless trees; only an owl's plaintive cry seemed to keep in rhythm with that sinister murmur on the horizon.
'Win?—this year?' said the boy, with a shrug. 'Don't reckon on it, Pam. Those Russian fools have dished it all for months!'
'But the Americans will make up?'
Desmond assented eagerly. And in the minds of the English boy and girl there rose a kind of vague vision of an endless procession of great ships, on a boundless ocean, carrying men, and men, and more men—guns, and aeroplanes, and shining piles of shells—bringing the New World to the help of the Old.
Desmond turned to his sister.
'Look here, Pam, this time next week I shall be in the line. Well, I daresay I shan't be at the actual front for a week or two—but it won't be long. We shall want every battery we've got. Now—suppose I don't come back?'
'Desmond!'
'For goodness' sake, don't be silly, old girl. We've got to look at it, you know. The death-rate of men of my age' (men!—Desmond, a man!) 'has gone up to about four times what it was before the war. I saw that in one of the papers this morning. I've only got a precious small chance. And if I don't come back, I want to know what you're going to do with yourself.'
'I don't care what happens to me if you don't come back!' said the girl passionately. She was leaning with folded arms against the side of the window, the moonlight, or something else, blanching the face and her fair hair.
Desmond looked at her with a troubled expression. For two or three years past he had felt a special responsibility towards this twin-sister of his. Who was there to look after her but he? He saw that his father never gave her a serious thought, and as to Aubrey—well, he too seemed to have no room in his mind for Pam—poor old Pam!
'How are you getting on with Broomie?' he asked suddenly.
'I don't like her!' said Pamela fiercely. 'I shall never like her!'
'Well, that's awkward,'—said the boy slowly, 'because—'
'Because what?'
'Because I believe she means to marry father!'
Pamela laughed angrily.
'Ah, you've found that out too!'
Desmond pulled down the blind again, and they went back to the fire, sitting on the floor beside it, with their arms round each other, as they had been used to do as children. And then in a low voice, lest any ears in the sleeping house should be, after all, on the alert, he told her what he had seen in the library. He was rather ashamed of telling her; only there was this queer sense of last words—of responsibility—for his sister, which excused it.
Pamela listened despondently.
'Perhaps they're engaged already! Well,—I can tell you this—if father does marry her, she'll rule him, and me—if I give her the chance—and everybody on the place, with a rod of iron.'
Desmond at first remonstrated. He had been taken aback by the sudden vision in the library; and Pamela's letters for some time past had tended to alter his first liking for 'Broomie' into a feeling more distrustful and uncertain. But, after all, Broomie's record must be remembered. 'She wouldn't sign that codicil thing—she made father climb down about the gates—and Sir Henry says she's begun to pull the estate together like anything, and if father will only let her alone for a year or two she'll make him a rich man.'
'Oh, I know,' said Pamela gloomily, 'she's paid most of the bills already. When I go into Fallerton now—everybody—all the tradesmen are as sweet as sugar.'
'Well, that's something to the good, isn't it? Don't be unfair!'
'I'm not unfair!' cried Pamela. 'Don't you see how she just swallows up everybody's attention—how nobody else matters when she's there! How, can you expectmeto like that—if she were an archangel—which she isn't!'
'But has she done anything nasty—anything to bother you?'
'Well, of course, I'm just a cypher when she's there. I'm afraid I oughtn't to mind—but I do!'
And Pamela, with her hands round her knees, stared into the fire in bitterness of spirit. She couldn't explain, even to Desmond, that the inward eye all the time was tormented by two kindred visions—Arthur in the hall that afternoon, talking war work with Elizabeth with such warm and eager deference, and Arthur on Holme Hill, stretched at Elizabeth's feet, and bandying classical chaff with her. And there was a third, still more poignant, of a future in which Elizabeth would be always there, the centre of the picture, mistress of the house, the clever and charming woman, beside whom girls in their teens had no chance.
She was startled out of these reflections by a remark from Desmond.
'You know, Pam, you ought to get married soon.'
The boy spoke shyly—but gravely and decidedly. Pam thought with a sudden anguish—'He would never have said that, unless—'
She laid her head on his shoulder, clinging to him.
'I shan't get married, old boy.'
'Oh, that's nonsense! Look here, Pam—you mustn't mind my poking my nose into things where I've no business. You see, it's because—Well, I've sometimes thought—punch my head, if you like!—that you had a fancy for Arthur Chicksands.'
Pamela laughed.
'Well, as he hasn't got any fancy for me, you needn't take that into your dear old head!'
'Why, he was always very fond of you, Pam.'
'Oh, yes, he liked ragging me when I was a child. I'm not good enough for him now.'
'What do you mean—not good enough?'
'Not clever enough, you silly old boy. He'll marry somebody much older than me.'
Desmond ruminated.
'He seemed to be getting on with Broomie this afternoon?'
'Magnificently. He always does. She's his sort. She writes to him.'
'Oh, does she?' The boy's voice was dry and hostile. He began to understand, or thought he did. Miss Bremerton was not only plotting to marry his father—had perhaps been plotting for it from the beginning—but was besides playing an unfair game with Pam—spoiling Pam's chances—cutting in where she wasn't wanted—grabbing, in fact. Anger was mounting in him. Why should his father be mopped up like this?—and Pamela made unhappy?
'I'd jolly well like to stop it all!' he said, under his breath.
'Stop what? You dear, foolish old man! You can't stop it, Dezzy.'
'Well, if she'll only make him happy—!'
'Oh, she'll be quite decent to him,' said Pamela, with a shrug, 'but she'll despise him!'
'What the deuce do you mean, Pam?'
Whereupon, quite conscious that she was obeying an evil and feverish impulse, but unable to control it, Pamela went into a long and passionate justification of what she had said. A number of small incidents—trifling acts and sayings of Elizabeth's—misinterpreted and twisted by the girl's jealous pain, were poured into Desmond's ears.
'All the servants know that she treats father like a baby. She and Forest manage him in little things—in the house—just as she runs the estate. For instance, she does just what she likes with the fruit and the flowers—'
'Why,youought to do all that, Pam!'
'I tried when I came home from school. Father wouldn't let me do a thing. Butshedoes just what she pleases. You can hear her and Forest laughing over it. Oh, it's all right, of course. She sends things to hospitals every week.'
'That was what you used to want.'
'I do want it—but—'
'You ought to have the doing of it?'
'Oh, I don't know. I'm away all day. But she might at leastpretendto refer to him—or me—sometimes. It's the same in everything. She twists father round her little finger; and you can see all the time what she thinks—that there never was such a bad landlord, or such a miserable, feckless crew as the rest of us, before she came to put us straight!'
Desmond listened—partly resisting—but finally carried away. By the time their talk was over he felt that he too hated Elizabeth Bremerton, and that it was horrid to have to leave Pamela with her.
When they said good-night Pamela threw herself on her bed face downwards, more wretched than she had ever been—wretched because Desmond was going, and might be killed, wretched, too, because her conscience told her that she had spoilt his last evening, and made him exceedingly unhappy, by a lot of exaggerated complaints. She was degenerating—she knew it. 'I am a little beast, compared to what I was when I left school,' she confessed to herself with tears, and did not know how to get rid of this fiery plague that was eating at her heart. She seemed to look back to a time—only yesterday!—when poetry and high ideals, friendships and religion filled her mind; and now nothing—nothing!—was of any importance, but the look, the voice, the touch of a man.
The next day, Desmond's last day at home, for he was due in London by the evening, was gloomy and embarrassed for all concerned. Elizabeth, pre-occupied and shrinking from her own thoughts, could not imagine what had happened. She had put off all her engagements for the day, that she might help in any last arrangements that might have to be made for Desmond.
But Desmond declined to be helped, not rudely, but with a decision, which took Elizabeth aback.
'Mayn't I look out some books for you? I have found some more pocket classics,' she had said to him with a smile, remembering his application to her in the autumn.
'No, thank you. I shall have no time.' And with that, a prompt retreat to Pamela and the Den. Elizabeth, indeed, who was all eagerness to serve him, found herself rebuffed at every turn.
Nor were matters any better with Pamela, who had cried off her hospital work in order to pack for Desmond. Elizabeth, seeing her come downstairs with an armful of khaki shirts to be marked, offered assistance—almost timidly. But Pamela's 'Thank you, but I'd rather not trouble you—I can do it quite well'—was so frosty that Elizabeth could only retire—bewildered—to the library, where she and the Squire gave a morning's work to the catalogue, and never said a word of farm or timber.
But the Squire worked irritably, finding fault with a number of small matters, and often wandering away into the house to see what Desmond was doing. During these intervals Elizabeth would sit, pen in hand, staring absently into the dripping garden and the park beaten by a cold rain. The future began to seem to her big with events and perplexity.
Then with the evening came the boy's leave-taking; full of affection towards his father and sister, and markedly chilly in the case of Elizabeth. When the station taxi had driven off, Elizabeth—with that cold touch of the boy's fingers still tingling on her hand—turned from the front door to see Pamela disappearing to the schoolroom, and the Squire fidgeting with an evening paper which the taxi had brought him from the station.
Elizabeth suddenly noticed the shaking of the paper, over which only the crest of white hair showed. Too bad of Pamela to have gone off without a word to her father! Was it sympathy with the Squire, or resentment on her own account, that made Elizabeth go up to him?—though at a respectful distance.
'Shall we finish the bit of translation we began this morning, if you're not busy?' she said gently. It was very rarely now that she was able to do any classical work after the mornings.
The Squire threw down the newspaper, and strode on before her to the library without a word. Elizabeth followed. Rain and darkness had been shut out. The wood fire glowed on the hearth, and its ruddy light was on the face of the Nikê, and its solemn outstretched wings. All the apparatus of their common work was ready, the work that both loved. Elizabeth felt a sudden, passionate drawing towards this man twenty years older than herself, which seemed to correspond to the new and smarting sense of alienation from the twins and their raw, unjust youth. What had been the reason for their behaviour to her that day?—what had she done? She was conscious of long weeks of effort, in Pamela's case,—trying to please and win her; and of a constant tender interest in Desmond, which had never missed an opportunity of doing or suggesting something he might like—all for this! She must have offended them she supposed in some way; how, she could not imagine. But her mood was sore; and, self-controlled as she was, her pulse raced.
Here, however, she was welcome, she was needed; she could distract and soothe a bitterness of soul best measured by the Squire's most unusual taciturnity. No railing at the Government or the war, not a fling even at the 'd——d pedant, Chicksands!' or 'The Bubbly-jocks,' as he liked to call the members of the County War Committee. Elizabeth put a text of Aristophanes—thePax—into his hands, and drew her table near to him, waiting his pleasure. There was a lamp behind him which fell on her broad, white brow, her waiting eyes and hand, and all the friendly intelligence of her face. The Squire began haltingly, lost his place, almost threw the book away; but she cheered him on, admired this phrase, delicately amended that, till the latent passion had gripped him, and he was soon in full swing, revelling in all the jests and topicalities of the play, where the strikers and pacifists, the profiteers, the soldiers and munition workers of two thousand odd years ago, fight and toil, prate and wrangle and scheme, as eager and as alive as their descendants of to-day. Soon his high, tempestuous laugh rang out; Elizabeth's gentler mirth answering. Sometimes there was a dispute about a word or a rendering; she would put up her own view, with obstinacy, so that he might have the pleasure of knocking it down. And all through there was the growing sense of comradeship, of mutual understanding, which, in their classical work at least, had been always present for Elizabeth, since her first acquaintance with her strange employer.
When she rose, reluctantly, at the sound of the dressing-bell, the Squire paced up and down while she put her books and papers away. Then as she was going, he turned abruptly—
'I told Forest to order theTimes—will you see he does it?'
'Certainly.'
'I loathe all newspapers,' he said sombrely. 'If we must go to the devil, I don't want to know too much about it. But still—'
She waited a moment, but as nothing more came she was leaving the room, when he added—
'And don't forget the timber business to-morrow afternoon. Tell Dell to meet us in Cross Wood.'
When she had gone, the Squire still continued pacing, absorbed in meeting the attack of new and strange ideas. He had always been a man with a singularly small reflective gift. Self-examination—introspection of any sort—were odious to him. He lived on stimulus from outside, attracted or repelled, amused or interested, bored or angry, as the succession of events or impressions might dictate. To collect beautiful things was a passion with him, and he was proud of the natural taste and instinct, which generally led him right. But for 'aesthetics'—the philosophy of art—he had nothing but contempt. The volatile, restless mind escaped at once from the concentration asked of it; and fell back on what the Buddhist calls 'Maia,' the gay and changing appearances of things, which were all he wanted. And it was because the war had interfered with this pleasant and perpetual challenge to the senses of the outer world, because it forced a man back on general ideas that he did not want to consider—God, Country, Citizenship—that the Squire had hated the war.
But this woman who had become an inmate of his house, while she ministered to all the tastes that the Squire had built up as a screen between himself and either the tragic facts of contemporary life, or any troublesome philosophizing about them, was yet gradually, imperceptibly, drawing the screen aside. Her humanity was developing the feeble shoots of sympathy and conscience in himself. What she felt, he was beginning to feel; and when she hated anything he must at least uncomfortably consider why.
But all this she did and achieved through her mere fitness and delightfulness as a companion. He had never imagined that life would bring him anybody—least of all a woman—who would both give him so much, and save him so much. Selfish, exacting, irritable—he knew very well that he was all three. But it had not prevented this capable, kind, clever creature from devoting herself to him, from doing her utmost, not only to save his estate and his income, but to make his life once more agreeable to him, in spite of the war and all the rancour and resentments it had stirred up in him.
How patient she had been with these last! He was actually beginning to be ashamed of some of them. And now to-night—what made her come and give him the extra pleasure of her company these two hours? Sympathy, he supposed, about Desmond.
Well, he was grateful; and for the first time his heart reached out for pity—almost humbled itself—accepted the human lot. If Desmond were killed, he would never choose to go on living. Did she know that? Was it because she guessed at the feelings he had always done his best to hide that she had been so good to him that evening?
What as to that love-story of hers—her family?—her brother in Mesopotamia? He began to feel a hundred curiosities about her, and a strong wish to make life easy for her, as she had been making it easy for him. But she was excessively proud and scrupulous—that he had long since found out. No use offering to double her salary, now that she had saved him all this money! His first advance in that direction had merely offended her. The Squire thought vaguely of the brother—no doubt a young lieutenant. Could interest be made for him?—with some of the bigwigs. Then his—very intermittent—sense of humour asserted itself. He to make interest with anybody—for anybody—in connection with the war! He, who had broken with every soldier-friend he ever had, because of his opinions about the war!—and was anathema throughout the country for the same reason. Like all members of old families in this country he had a number of aristocratic and wealthy kinsfolk, the result of Mannering marriages in the past. But he had never cared for any of them, except to a mild degree for his sister, Lady Cassiobury, who was ten years older than himself, and still paid long visits to Mannering, which bored him hugely. On the last occasion, he was quite aware that he had behaved badly, and was now in her black-books.
No—there was nothing to be done, except to let this wonderful woman have her own way! If she wanted to cut down the woods, let her!—if she wanted to amuse herself by rebuilding the village, and could find the money out of the estate, let her!—it would occupy her, attach her to the place, and do him no harm.
Yes, attach her to the place; bind her! hold her!—that was what he wanted. Otherwise, how hideously uncertain it all was! She might go at any time. Her mother might be ill—old ladies have a way of being ill. Her brother might be wounded—or killed. Either of those events would carry her off—out of his ken. But if she were engaged deeply enough in the estate affairs she would surely come back. He knew her!—she hated to leave things unfinished. He was eager now to heap all kinds of responsibilities upon her. He would be meek and pliable; he would put no sort of obstacles in her way. She would have no excuse for giving him notice again. He would put up with all her silly Jingoism—if only she would stay!
But at this point the Squire suddenly pulled up short in his pacing and excitedly asked himself the question, which half the people about him were already beginning to ask.
'Why shouldn't I marry her?'
He stood transfixed—the colour rising in his thin cheeks.
Hitherto the notion, if it had ever knocked at the outer door of the brain, had been chased away with mockery. And he had no sooner admitted it now than he drove it out again. He was simply afraid of it—in terror lest any suspicion of it should reach Elizabeth. Her loyalty, her single-mindedness, her freedom from the smallest taint of intrigue—he would have answered for them with all he possessed. If, for a moment, she chose to think that he had misinterpreted her kindness, her services in any vile and vulgar way, why, he might lose her on the instant! Let him walk warily—do nothing at least to destroy the friend in her, before he grasped at anything more.
Besides, how could she put up with him? 'I am the dried husk of a man!' thought the Squire, with vehemence. 'I couldn't learn her ways now, nor she mine. No; let us be as we are—only more so!'
But he was shaken through and through; first by that vanishing of his boy into the furnace of the war, which had brought him at last within the grip of the common grief, the common fear, and now by this strange thought which had invaded him.
After dinner, Elizabeth, who was rather pale, but as cheerful and self-possessed as usual, put Mrs. Gaddesden's knitting to rights at least three times, and held the wool for that lady to wind till her arm ached. Then Mrs. Gaddesden retired to bed; the Squire, who with only occasional mutterings and mumblings had been deep in Elizabeth's copy of theTimes, which she had at last ventured to produce in public, went off to the library, and Elizabeth and Pamela were left in the hall alone.
Elizabeth lingered over the fire; while Pamela wondered impatiently why she did not go to her office work as she generally did about nine o'clock. Pamela's mood was more thorny than ever. Had she not seen a letter in Elizabeth's handwriting lying that very afternoon on the hall-table for post—addressed to Captain Chicksands, D.S.O., War Office, Whitehall? Common sense told her that it probably contained nothing but an answer to some questions Arthur had put to the Squire's 'business secretary' as to the amount of ash in the Squire's woods—Arthur's Intelligence appointment having something to do with the Air Board. But the mere fact that Elizabeth should be writing to him stirred intolerable resentment in the girl's passionate heart. She knew very well that it was foolish, unreasonable, but could no more help it than a love-smitten maiden of old Sicily. It was her hour of possession, and she was struggling with it blindly.
And Elizabeth, the shrewd and clever Elizabeth, saw nothing, and knew nothing. If she had ever for a passing moment suspected the possibility of 'an affair' between Arthur Chicksands and Pamela, she had ceased to think of it. The eager projects with which her own thoughts were teeming, had driven out the ordinary preoccupations of womankind. Derelict farms, the food-production of the county, timber, village reconstruction, war-work of various kinds, what time was there left?—what room?—in a mind wrestling with a hundred new experiences, for the guessing of a girl's riddle?
Yet all the same she remained her just and kindly self. She was troubled—much troubled—by the twins' behaviour. She must somehow get to the bottom of it.
So that when only she and Pamela were left in the hall she went up to the girl, not without agitation.
'Pamela—won't you tell me?—have I done anything to offend you and Desmond?'
She spoke very quietly, but her tone showed her wounded. Pamela started and looked up.
'I don't know what you mean,' she said coldly. 'Did you think we had been rude to you?'
It was the first hostile word they had ever exchanged.
Elizabeth grew pale.
'I didn't say anything about your being rude. I asked you if you were cross with me.'
'Oh—cross!' said Pamela, suddenly conscious of a suffocating excitement. 'What's the good of being cross? It's you who are mistress here.'
Elizabeth fell back a step in dismay.
'I do think you ought to explain,' she said after a moment. 'If I had done anything you didn't like—anything you thought unkind, I should be very very sorry.'
Pamela rose from her seat. Elizabeth's tone seemed to her pure hypocrisy. All the bitter, poisonous stuff she had poured out to Desmond the night before was let loose again. Stammering and panting, she broke into the vaguest and falsest accusations.
She was ignored—she was a nobody in her own home—everybody knew it and talked of it. She wasn't jealous—oh no!—she was simply miserable! 'Oh, I daresay you can no more help it than I can. You, of course, are twenty times more use here than I am. I don't dispute that. But I am the daughter of the house after all, and it is a little hard to be so shelved—so absolutely put in the background!—as I am—'
'Don't I consult you whenever I can? haven't I done my best to—' interrupted Elizabeth, only to be interrupted in her turn.
—'to persuade father to let me do things? Yes, that's just it!—youpersuade father, you manage everything. It's just that that's intolerable!'
And flushed with passion, extraordinarily handsome, Pamela stood tremulously silent, her eyes fixed on Elizabeth. Elizabeth, too, was silent for a moment. Then she said with steady emphasis:
'Of course there can only be one end to this. I can't possibly stay here.'
'Oh, very well, go!' cried Pamela. 'Go, and tell father that I've made you. But if you do, neither you nor he will see me again for a good while.'
'What do you mean?'
'What I say. If you suppose thatI'mgoing to stay on here to bear the brunt of father's temper after he knows that I've made you throw up, you're entirely mistaken.'
'Then what do you propose?'
'I don't know what I propose,' said Pamela, shaking from head to foot, 'but if you say a word to father about it I shall simply disappear. I shall be able to earn my own living somehow.'
The two confronted each other.
'And you really think I can go on after this as if nothing had happened?' said Elizabeth, in a low voice.
Pangs of remorse were seizing on Pamela, but she stifled them.
'There's a way out!' she said presently, her colour coming and going. 'I'll go and stay with Margaret in town for a bit. Why should there be any fuss? She's asked me often to help with her war-workroom and the canteen. Father won't mind. He doesn't care in the least what I do! And nobody will think it a bit odd—if you and I don't talk.'
Elizabeth turned away. The touch of scorn in her bearing was not lost on Pamela.
'And if I refuse to stay on, without saying or doing anything—to put myself right—you threaten to run away?'
'I do—I mean it,' said Pamela firmly. She had not only hardened again under the sting of that contempt she detected in Elizabeth, but there was rising up in her a sudden and rapturous vision of London:—Arthur at the War Office—herself on open ground—no longer interfered with and over-shadowed. He would come to see her—take her out, perhaps, sometimes to an exhibition, or for a walk. The suggestion of going to Margaret had been made on the spur of the moment without after-thought. She was now wedded to it, divining in it a hundred possibilities.
At the same moment she became more cautious, and more ashamed of herself. It would be better to apologize. But before she could speak Elizabeth said:
'Does Desmond agree with what you have been saying?'
Pamela staring at her adversary was a little frightened. She rushed into a falsehood.
'Desmond knows nothing about it! I don't want him dragged in.'
Elizabeth's eyes, with their bitter, wounded look; seemed to search the girl's inmost mind. Then she moved away.
'We had better go to bed. We shall both want to think it over. Good-night.'
And from the darkness of the hall, where fire and lamp were dying, Pamela half spell-bound, watched the tall figure of Elizabeth slowly mounting the broad staircase at the further end, the candle-light flickering on her bright hair, and on a bunch of snowdrops in her breast.
Then, for an hour, while the house sank into silence, Pamela sat crouched and shivering by the only log left in the grate. 'A little while ago,' she was thinking miserably, 'I had good feelings and ideas—I never hated anybody. I never told lies. I suppose—I shall get worse and worse.'
And when she had gone wearily to bed, it was to cry herself to sleep.
The following morning, an urgent telegram from her younger sister recalled Elizabeth Bremerton to London, where her mother's invalid condition had suddenly taken a disastrous turn for the worse.
'Hullo, Aubrey! what brings you here?' And with the words Arthur Chicksands, just emerging from the War Office, stopped to greet a brother officer, who was just entering it.
'Nothing much. I shan't be long. Can you wait a bit?'
'Right you are. I've got to leave a note at the Ministry of Munitions, but I'll be back in a few minutes.'
Arthur Chicksands went his way to Whitehall Gardens, while Major Mannering disappeared into the inner regions of that vast building where dwell the men on whom hang the fortunes of an Empire. Arthur walking fast up Whitehall was very little aware of the scene about him. His mind was occupied with the details of the interview in which he had just been engaged. His promotion had lately been rapid, and his work of extraordinary interest. He had been travelling a great deal, backwards and forwards between London and Versailles, charged with several special enquiries in which he had shown both steadiness andflair. Things were known to him that he could not share even with a friend so old and 'safe' as Aubrey Mannering. The grip of the coming crisis was upon him, and he seemed 'to carry the world in his breast'
'Next year—next February—where shall we all be?' The question was automatically suggested to him by the sight of the green buds of the lilac trees In front of Whitehall Terrace.
'Oh, my dear Susan!—do look at those trees!'
Chicksands, startled from his own meditations, looked up to see two old ladies gazing with an eager interest at a couple of plane trees, which had just shed a profusion of bark and stood white and almost naked in the grey London air. They were dear old ladies from some distant country-side, with bonnets and fronts, and reticules, as though they had just walked out ofCranford, and after gazing with close attention at the plane trees near them they turned and looked at all the other plane trees in Whitehall, which presented an equally plucked and peeled appearance.
Then the one addressed as Susan laughed out—a happy, chuckling laugh.
'Oh, I see! My dear Ellen, how clever people are now! They'recamouflaged—that's what it is—can't you see?—all the way down, because of the raids!'
The admiring fervour of the voice was too much for Chicksands. He hurried past them, head down, and ran up the steps of the Ministry of Munitions. From that point of vantage he turned, shaken with amusement, to see the pair advancing slowly towards Westminster, their old-fashioned skirts floating round them, still pointing eagerly at the barkless trees. Had they come from some piny region where the plane is not? Anyway the tension of the day was less.
He repeated the tale to Aubrey Mannering a few minutes later, when they had turned together into Birdcage Walk. But Aubrey scarcely gave it the ghost of a smile. As to his old friend's enquiries about his own work and plans, he answered them quite readily, but shortly, without any expansion; with the manner, indeed, of one for whom talk about himself had no sort of attraction. And as they passed along the front of the barracks, where a few men were drilling, Chicksands, struck by his companion's silence, turned a sudden look upon him. Mannering's eyes were absently and yet intently fixed on the small squads of drilling men. And it was sharply borne in on Chicksands that he was walking beside the mere image or phantom of a man, a man whose mind was far away—'voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.' Mannering's eyes were wide open; but they made the weird impression on the spectator of a double seeing—of some object of vision beyond and behind the actual scene of the barracks and the recruits, and that an object producing terror or pain. Chicksands made a remark and it was not answered.
It was not the first time that Arthur had observed this trance-like state in the man who was to be his brother-in-law, and had been his 'chum' from childhood. Others had noticed it, and he had reason to think that Beryl was often distressed by it. He had never himself seen any signs of strangeness or depression in Aubrey before the Easter of 1915, when they met in Paris, for the first time after the battle of Neuve Chapelle, in which Mannering had lost his dearest friend, one Freddy Vivian, of the Worcesters. During the winter they had met fairly often in the neighbourhood of Ypres, and Aubrey was then the same eager, impulsive fellow that Chicksands had known at Eton and Cambridge, bubbling over with the exploits of his battalion, and adored by his own men. In April, in a raid near Festubert, Mannering was badly wounded. But the change in him was already evident when they were in Paris together. Chicksands could only suppose it represented the mental and nervous depression caused by Vivian's death, and would pass away. On the contrary, it had proved to be something permanent.
Yet it had never interfered with his efficiency as a soldier, nor his record for a dare-devil courage. There were many tales current of his exploits on the Somme, in which again and again he had singed the beard of Death, with an absolute recklessness of his own personal life, combined with the most anxious care for that of his men. Since the battle of Messines he had been the head of a remarkable Officers' School at Aldershot, mainly organized by himself. But now, it seemed, he was moving heaven and earth to get back to France and the front. Chicksands did not think he would achieve it. He was invaluable where he was, and his superiors, to Mannering's indignation, were inclined to regard him as a man who was physically fit rather for home service than the front.
When they reached the Buckingham Palace end of the Walk, Mannering paused.
'Where are you lunching?'
'At Brooks', with my father.'
'Oh, then I'll walk there with you.'
They struck across the park, and talk fell on a recent small set-back which had happened to a regiment with which they were both well acquainted.
Chicksands shrugged his shoulders.
'I've heard some details at the War Office. Just ten minutes' rot! The Colonel stopped it with his revolver. Most of them splendid fellows. Two young subs gave way under a terrific shelling and their men with them. And in ten minutes they were all rushing forward again, straight through the barrage—and the two lieutenants were killed.'
'My God!—lucky fellows!' cried Mannering, under his breath, with a passion and suddenness that struck astonishment into his companion.
'Well, yes,' said Arthur, 'in a sense—but—nothing would have happened to them. They had wiped it out.'
Mannering shook his head. Then with a great and evident effort he changed the conversation.
'You know Pamela's in town?'
'Yes, with Margaret Strang. I'm going to dine there to-night. How's the new agent getting on?'
Aubrey smiled.
'Which?—the man—or the lady?'
'Miss Bremerton, of course. I got a most interesting letter from her a fortnight ago. Do you know that she herself has discovered nearly a thousand ash in the Squire's woods, after that old idiot Hull had told her she wouldn't find half-a-dozen? A thousand ash is not to be sneezed at in these days! I happen to know that the Air Board wrote the Squire a very civil letter.'
'"All along of Eliza!"' mused Mannering. 'She's been away from Mannering just lately. Her invalid mother became very seriously ill about three weeks ago, and she had to go home for a time. My father, of course, has been fussing and fuming to get her back.'
'Poor Squire! But how could Pamela be spared too?'
Mannering hesitated.
'Well, the fact is she and my father seem to have had a good old-fashioned row. She tried to fill Miss Bremerton's place, and of course it didn't answer. She's too young, and my father too exacting. Then when it broke down, and he took things out of her hands again, comparing her, of course, enormously to her disadvantage with Miss Bremerton, Pamela lost her temper and said foolish things of Miss Bremerton. Whereupon fury on my father's part—and sudden departure on Pamela's. She actually bicycled off to the railway station, sent a telegram for her things, and came up to Margaret. Alice Gaddesden is looking after father. But of course he and she don't get on a bit.'
The Captain looked much concerned.
'It's a pity Pamela takes that line—don't you think? I really don't see the conspirator in Miss Bremerton. I hoped when I saw her first she would make just all the difference to Pamela.'
'Yes, it's puzzling. I ran down to see my father, who was in a rabid state of mind, not knowing what to do with all the schemes and business this clever woman started—perfectly lost without her.'
'Ah, that's the worst of your Indispensable!' laughed Chicksands.
Mannering threw him a quick, scrutinizing look. Various items of information picked up at Mannering, mostly from his sister Alice, had made him wonder whether some jealousy of a more vital and intimate kind than appeared might not be at the root of Pamela's behaviour. He was not observant at this period of his life, except of things relating to his engagement to Beryl, his work, or those inner pre-occupations which held him. But it had once or twice crossed his mind that Pamela might be interested in Arthur; and there had been certain hints from Beryl, who was, however, he was certain, scarcely better informed than he was. Pamela was a most secretive and independent young woman. He doubted whether even Desmond, whom she adored, knew much about her.
Well, supposing she was jealous—jealous of her father's secretary, and on account of Arthur, was there the smallest cause for it? He understood that Arthur and Miss Bremerton had met occasionally, and he had himself heard Chicksands express the warmest admiration for her as the right sort of new woman, 'as straight as you make 'em'—and with 'a brain like a man'—which, from one who was always rather a critical spectator than a courtier of women, was high praise. But as for any spark of sex in it—Mannering laughed at the notion. No. If that really was Pamela's delusion, something must be done to rid his little sister of it if possible. He would talk to Beryl.
But—as always when any new responsibility presented itself to him—a deep inner weariness rebelled. In small things as in great, he was mentally like a man walking and working with a broken limb.
Arthur Chicksands stood some time that evening waiting on the doorstep of Mrs. Strang's small house, in one of the old streets of Westminster. 'No servants, I suppose,' he said to himself with resignation. But it was bitterly cold, and he was relieved to hear at last the sound of a voice and a girl's laugh inside. Pamela opened the door to him, pulling down the sleeves of a thin black dress over her shapely arms.
'Oh, come in. Margaret's cooking the dinner, and I've laid the table. Bernard's just bringing up some coals, and then we're ready.'
Mr. Bernard Strang, a distinguished Home Office official, appeared at that moment in his shirt-sleeves at the head of the kitchen stairs, bearing a scuttle of coal in each hand.
'Gracious! Give me one of them!' said the Captain, hurrying to the rescue.
But Mr. Strang, putting down the right-hand scuttle, to take breath, warned him off.
'Thank you, Chicksands—but no brass hats need apply! Many thanks—but you're too smart!' He pointed, panting, to the red tabs and to the bit of variegated ribbon on Chicksands' broad chest. 'Go and help Pamela bring in the dinner.'
The Captain obeyed with alacrity.
'All the servants left on Monday,' said Pamela. 'We had a charwoman this morning, but she's gone to-night, because there's a new moon.'
'What—raids?'
Pamela nodded as she gave him the soup, with instructions to carry it carefully and put it by the fire. She seemed to be in her gayest mood, and Chicksands' eyes followed her perpetually as she went backwards and forwards on her household tasks. Presently Mrs. Strang appeared, crimson from the fire, bearing the fishpie and vegetables that were to provide the rationed meal.
'To think,' said Mr. Strang, when they were at last at table, 'that there was a time when we were proud of our "little dinners," and that I never made myself unpleasant unless Margaret spent more than five pounds on the food alone. Shall I ever eat a good dinner again?'
He looked wistfully at the bare table.
'Will you ever want to?' said Arthur, quietly.
A momentary silence fell upon the little party. Bernard Strang had lost two brothers in the war, and Chicksands had no sooner spoken than he reproached himself for a tactless brute. But, suddenly, the bells of the Abbey rang: out above their heads, playing with every stroke on the nerves of the listeners. For the voice of England was in them, speaking to that under-consciousness which the war has developed in us all.
'Any news?' said Strang, looking at Arthur.
'No. The Eastern business gets a little worse every day.'
'And the "Offensive"?
'Let them! Our men want nothing better.'
On which the dinner resolved itself into a device for making the Captain talk. The War Office crisis, the men gathered in conclave at Versailles, and that perpetual friction between the politician and the soldier, which every war, big or little, brings to the front, and which will only end when war ends—those were the topics of it, with other talk such as women like to listen to of men about individual men, shrewd, careless, critical, strangely damning here, strangely indulgent there, constant only in one quality—that it is the talk of men and even if one heard it behind a curtain and strained through distance, could never by any chance be mistaken for the talk of women.
At intervals Pamela got up to change the plates and the dishes, quieting with a peremptory gesture the two males, who would spring to their feet. 'Haven't I done parlour-work for six months?—no amateurs, please!' And again, even while he talked on, Arthur's eyes would stray after the young full figure, the white neck and throat, the head with the soft hair folded close around it in wavy bands that followed all its lines—as it might have been the head of one of those terra-cottas that her father had stolen from the Greek tombs in his youth.
But unfortunately, after dinner, in a corner of the dark drawing-room, he must needs try and play the schoolmaster a little, for her good of course; and then all went to pieces.
'I hear you ran away!'
The voice that threw out this sudden challenge was half ironical, half affectionate; the grey eyes under their strong black brows looked at her with amusement.
Pamela flushed at once.
'Aubrey told you, I suppose? What was the good of staying? I couldn't do anything right. I was only making things worse.'
'I can hardly believe that! Couldn't you just have kept Miss Bremerton's work going till she came back?'
'I tried,' said Pamela stiffly, 'and it didn't do.'
'Perhaps she attempts too much. But she seemed to me to be very sensible and human. And—did you hear about the ash trees?'
'No,' said Pamela shortly, her foot nervously beating the ground. 'It doesn't matter. Of course I know she's the cleverest person going. But I can't get on with her—that's all! I'm going to take up nursing—properly. I'm making enquiries about the London Hospital. I want to be a real Army nurse.'
'Will your father consent?'
'Fathers can't stop their daughters from doing things—as they used to do!' said Pamela, with her chin in the air.
She had moved away from him; her soft gaiety had disappeared; he felt her all thorns. Yet some perversity made him try to argue with her. The war—pray the Lord!—might be over before her training as an Army nurse was half done. Meanwhile, her V.A.D. work at Mannering was just what was wanted at the moment from girls of her age—hadn't she seen the appeals for V.A.D.'s? And also, if by anything she did at home—or set others free for doing—she could help Captain Dell and Miss Bremerton to pull the estate round, and get the maximum amount of food out of it, she would be serving the country in the best way possible.
'The last ounce of food, mind!—that's what it depends on,' he said, smiling at her, 'which can stick it longest—they or we. You belong to the land—ought you desert it?'
Pamela sat unmoved. She knew nothing about the land. Her father had the new agent—and Miss Bremerton.
'Your sister there,' said Chicksands, nodding towards the front drawing-room, where Strang and his wife were sitting Darby and Joan over the fire discussing rations and food prices, 'thinks Miss Bremerton already overdone.'
'I never saw the least sign of it!'
'But think!—your father never slackens his Greek work—and there is all the rest.'
'I suppose if it's too much for her she'll give it up,' said Pamela in her most obstinate voice.
But even then a normally tactful man still held on.
Never was anything more maladroit. It was the stupidity of a clever fellow, deluding himself with the notion that having refused the rôle of lover, he could at least play that of guardian and adviser; whose conscience, moreover, was so absolutely clear on the subject of Elizabeth Bremerton that he did not even begin to suspect what was rankling In the girl's morbid sense.
The relation between them accordingly went from bad to worse; and when Pamela rose and sharply put an end to their private conversation, the evening would have practically ended in a quarrel but for some final saving instinct on Chicksands' part, which made him mention Desmond as he bade her good-night.
'I could tell you where he is,' he said gravely. 'Only I mustn't. I had a note from him yesterday—the dear old boy! He wrote in the highest spirits. His colonel was "ripping," and his men, of course, the best in the whole battery.'
'If you get any news—ever—before we do,' said Pamela, suddenly choking, 'you'll tell us at once?'
'Trust me. He's never out of my mind.'
On that her good-night was less cold than it would have been five minutes before. But he walked home through the moonlit streets both puzzled and distressed—till he reached his club in Pall Mall, where the news coming through on the tape quickly drove everything out of his soldier's mind but the war.
Mrs. Gaddesden was sitting as usual in the hall at Mannering. A mild February was nearly out. It would be the first of March on the morrow.
Every moment she expected to hear the Fallerton taxi draw up at the front door—bringing Elizabeth Bremerton back to Mannering. She had been away more than a month. Mrs. Gaddesden went back in thought to the morning when it had been announced to the Squire by his pale and anxious secretary that she had had bad news of her invalid mother, and must go home at once. The Squire—his daughter could not deny it—had behaved abominably. But of all of his fume and fret, his unreasonable complaints and selfish attempts to make her fix the very day and hour of her return, Elizabeth had taken no notice. Go she would, at once; and she would make no promises as to the exact date of her return. But on the morning before she went she had worked superhumanly to put things in order, whether for her typist, or Captain Dell, or Pamela, who must at least take over the housekeeping. The relations between her and Miss Bremerton that morning had struck Mrs. Gaddesden as odd—certainly not cordial. But there was nothing to complain of in Pamela's conduct. She would do her best, she said, and sat listening while Elizabeth gave her instructions about food cards, and servants, and the rest.
Then, when the taxi had driven away with the Dictator, what temper on the Squire's part! Mrs. Gaddesden had very nearly gone home to London—but for the fact of raids, and the fact that two of her most necessary servants had joined the W.A.A.C.'s. Pamela, on the other hand, had gone singing about the house. And really the child had done her best. But how could any one expect her to manage her father and the house, especially on the scraps of time left her by her V.A.D. work? The Squire had been like a fractious child over the compulsory rations. Nobody was less of a glutton—he pecked like a bird; but the proper food to peck at must be always there, or his temper was unbearable. Pamela made various blunders; the household knew hunger for the first time; and the servants began to give warning. Captain Dell could do nothing with his employer, and the timber business was hung up.
Then came Pamela's outbreak after a tirade from the Squire bitterly contrasting his lost secretary's performances, in every particular, with those of his daughter. The child had disappeared, and a message from the station was all that remained of her. Well, who could wonder? Mrs. Gaddesden reflected, with some complacency, that even she had spoken her mind to her father that night, conveniently forgetting some annoying retorts of his about herself, and the custom she had developed of sitting for hours over the fire pretending to knit, but really doing nothing. After her enormous exertions in the cause of the war—she was accustomed to say—of the year before, she was in need of a rest. She was certainly taking it. Since Pamela left, indeed, she had been obliged to do the housekeeping, and considered it very hard work. She had never yet been able to calculate the food coupons correctly.
So she, like all the rest, was looking eagerly for Elizabeth.
Yes!—that was the cracked horn of the village taxi. Mrs. Gaddesden poked the fire with energy and rang for Forest. But his quick ears had heard the signal before hers, and he was already hurrying through the hall to the front door.
And there was the library door opening, so her father too had been on the watch. Voices in the vestibule, and as the outer door of the hall opened, the Squire appeared at the further end. Alice Gaddesden had an odd feeling that something important—decisive—was going to happen.
Yet nothing could have been more unassuming than Elizabeth's entry. It was evident, indeed, that Forest was overjoyed to see her. He shouldered her modest boxes and bags with a will, and a housemaid, all smiles, came running half way downstairs to take some of his burden from him. Elizabeth followed the butler and took Mrs. Gaddesden's hand.
'My train was late. I hope you've not waited tea?'
'Why, of course we have,' said the Squire's voice. 'Forest!—tea at once.'
Elizabeth, not having perceived his approach in the dimness of the February twilight, turned with a start to greet the Squire. He looked, to her eyes, lankier and thinner and queerer than ever. But it was a distinguished queerness. Elizabeth had forgotten that the brow and eyes were so fine, and the hair so glistening white. The large nose and small captious chin passed unnoticed. She was astonished at her own throb of pleasure in seeing her employer again.
His pleasure was boisterously evident, though presently he showed it in his usual way by attacking her. But first Mrs. Gaddesden made the proper enquiries after Elizabeth's invalid mother.
Elizabeth, looking extremely tired as she sat by the fire, in the chair which the Squire—most unwonted attention!—had drawn up for her, said that her mother was better, and volunteered nothing further. The Squire, meanwhile, had observed her looks, and was chafing inwardly against invalid relations who made unjust claims upon their kith and kin and monstrously insisted on being nursed by them. But he had the sense to hold his tongue, and even to profess a decent sympathy.
Then, without any further preamble, he plunged into his own affairs.
'Everything's gone to rack and ruin since you left,' he said vehemently. 'Of course you knew it would!'
Elizabeth's eyebrows lifted. The look, half tolerant, half amused, with which she greeted sallies of this kind was one of her attractions for the Squire.
'What's Captain Dell been doing?' she inquired.
'Marking time!' was the testy reply. 'He's been no good by himself—I knew he wouldn't be—no more use than old Hull.'
Elizabeth's expression showed her sceptical.
'And the timber?'
'Just where you left it. The rascally fellows want all sorts of conditions. You may accept them if you like—I won't. But I told them we'd meet them in the woods to-morrow—you, and Dell and I. And Chicksands, who likes poking his nose into everything, is coming too.'
'Sir Henry?' asked Elizabeth in astonishment.
'Well, I thought you might like the old boy's opinion, so I rang him up on that horrid thing you've put into the office. I don't care about his opinion in the least!'
A treat arranged for her return! Elizabeth felt as if she were being offered Sir Henry's head on a charger.
'That will be a great help!' she said with rather artificial enthusiasm, at which the Squire only shrugged his shoulders. 'Has Sir Henry been over here—'
'While you've been away? Nothing of the sort. He's not crossed the threshold since I turned him out six months ago. But he's coming all the same—as mild as milk.'
'Very good of him!' said Elizabeth with spirit.
'That's as you choose to look at it. And as to everything else—'
'The catalogue?'
'Gone to the crows!' said the Squire gloomily. 'Levasseur took some references to look out last week, and made twenty mistakes in as many lines. He's off!'
Elizabeth removed her hat and pressed her hands to her eyes, half laughing, half aghast. Never had anything been more welcome to the Squire than the sheen of her hair in the semi-darkness. Mrs. Gaddesden had once annoyed him by calling it red.
'And the farms?'
'Oh, that I leave you to find out. I shovelled all the letters on to your table, just as Pamela left them.'
'Pamela!' said Elizabeth, looking up. 'But where is she?'
The Squire held his peace. Mrs. Gaddesden drily observed that she was staying with Mrs. Strang in town. A bright colour spread in Elizabeth's cheeks and she fell silent, staring into the fire.
'Hadn't you better take your things off?' said Mrs. Gaddesden.
Elizabeth rose. As she passed the Squire, he said gruffly:
'Of course you're not ready for any Greek before dinner?'
She smiled. 'But of course I am. I'll be down directly.'
In a few more minutes she was standing alone in her room. The housemaid, of her own accord, had lit a fire, and had gathered some snowdrops for the dressing table. Elizabeth's bags had been already unpacked, and all her small possessions had been arranged just as she liked them.
'They spoil me,' she thought, half pleased, half shrinking. 'But why am I here? Why have I come back? And what do I mean to do?'