“She isn’t.”
“You have the impudence to contradict me?”
“I thought we were speaking as man to man, as friends.”
“So we are, so we are. But it was a slap in the face all the same. And, damn it, sir, any pretty girl can twist you round her finger. Keep your temper, Ben! Between you all my morning has been wrecked. I shall go and hearten myself up with a squint at the new litter of pigs—fifteen little darlings. That old sow does her duty, b’ Jove!”
He clapped his hat upon his head and strode to the door. There he stood still for a moment, pulling himself together. His voice had quite recovered its geniality as he said in parting:
“With your hasty temper, old friend, you oughtn’t to touch port.”
Fishpingle heard his voice once more in the courtyard, Sir Geoffrey was speaking to his retriever.
“Good dog! Fine handsome doggie! Best dog in England, what? Come and look at the piggy-wiggies with master.”
Fishpingle crossed to the bookcase, and took out a well-used Peerage. Then he put on his spectacles. He sat down at the table and opened the ponderous tome. His fingers turned a few pages. He found “Beaumanoir” and read on.
CHAPTER IV
The few weeks before Lionel’s arrival passed pleasantly and without incident. Prudence may have sat on Alfred’s knee, or wandered with him on Sunday afternoon’s but the Squire was unaware of such doings. He remained engrossed in his preparations to provide entertainment for his son and heir, in Sir Geoffrey’s eyes a dual personality. His son he regarded as a jolly boy, a st’un or two below right weight; his heir bulked larger above the horizon. Like all men of his kidney, he thought pessimistically of the future. We are writing of pre-war days, at a time when a now famous statesman was attacking the dukes, who, perhaps, of all men in exalted positions, least deserved such assaults. The Squire was keenly aware that the greater included the less, and that he, too, was assailed. How could he answer such attacks? He, and thousands in his position, writhed in secret because pride prohibited a recital of what had been done, the innumerable sacrifices, the paring down and remitting of rents, the private charities, the cheerful renunciation of luxuries, as a “set off” against much left undone through want of means. Could a gentleman of unblemished lineage toot any horn other than that carried by him as M.F.H.? Could he touch the pitch of public controversy and not be defiled?
Nevertheless Sir Geoffrey carried a high head and a conviction that things would mend. Almost furtively, he would steal into his dining-room to stare with melancholy eyes at the Reynolds’ beauty. A neighbouring county magnate had sold just such a masterpiece, and in its honoured place hung a copy of the original. “No copy for me,” growled Sir Geoffrey to himself, thinking of awkward questions put by unsophisticated guests.
Fishpingle and he overhauled the estate accounts. The Squire employed no expert land agent. Possibly, what he gained in a saved salary was lost twice over owing to the management of an amateur. He employed his own people, a phrase ever in his mouth, and the Wiltshire peasant in the more remote districts is a blunted tool, quite unfit for the finer uses of high farming. Bonsor had no executive ability whatever. Fishpingle, on the other hand, had an instinct, almost infallible, about stock-breeding. His heart and soul were in it, like the Squire’s. Fishpingle may have known what he had saved and made for his friend and master. The Squire, serenely unconscious of his debt, took the crediten blocand whistled complacently.
We get a further glimpse of this honest gentleman, when we mentioned the fact that he stood out valiantly against motor cars till the last gasp from his wife. To please her, he bought a limousine, and forthwith extolled it, because it was his, as the best car on the market, which it wasn’t.
Night and day his thoughts wandered, in happy vagabondage, to Lady Margot Maltravers.
She spent a flying week-end before Lionel arrived.
Some description of the young lady must be attempted. The late Lord Beaumanoir had left his only child the freehold of a handsome house in London, some valuable town property, and a round sum securely invested in gilt-edged securities. The Beaumanoir estates and title passed to a distant kinsman. When she came of age, Lady Margot announced her intention of going “on her own.” Having plenty to “go on,” this announcement was acclaimed by poorer relations as indicating spirit and intelligence. Under cover of this chorus of praise, a few private loans were impetrated. Lady Margot lavishedlargessewith amusing cynicism. “I must pay for my whistle,” she remarked to her intimates. “If I whistle the wrong tune, the poor dears will hold their tongues.”
However, despite predictions to the contrary, she conducted herself circumspectly. It was true that minor poets were to be seen in her drawing-room and about her dining-table, with a sprinkling of artists, politicians, barristers, musicians, and novelists. She said that she liked to be amused. She had more than one flirtation. The “poor dears” feared that she had not treated her lovers well. She was accused of luring them on and then laughing at them. When reproached she replied modestly: “Really, you know, they are hunting comfortable board and lodging rather than little me.”
Little she was, althoughmignonneis a happier word. Her feet and hands were exquisite. It was said—perhaps truly—that Lady Margot bought her footwear from that mysterious personage who lives in Paris, and who has the effrontery to demand from his clients a big premium, cash on the nail, before he consents to supply them with shoes at a fabulous price. Her frocks were beyond compare, and she especially affected, in the evening, a vivid translucent emerald green that set off admirably the dead white of her complexion and her dark sparkling eyes and hair. Her portrait, by one of her admirers, was hung upon the line in the Royal Academy, and made the artist’s reputation while enhancing hers.
About the time when she encountered our Wiltshire squire, Lady Margot was getting “fed up” with clever young men consumed by their own ambitions. In fine, they had ceased to amuse her. They ground their little axes too persistently. Indeed, she had captivated Sir Geoffrey at once by saying candidly: “You know, they wouldn’t be missed. The real world would wag on without them.”
Sir Geoffrey was quite of her opinion.
“Popinjays, my dear young lady, popinjays.”
This queerly contrasted pair, the reactionary squire and the twentieth-century maiden, met at a big Hampshire house, where the partridge driving is superlatively good. Sir Geoffrey happened to be a fine performer, a little slow with his second gun, but quick enough to shoot in the best company. To the humiliation of the younger men, Lady Margot accompanied the veteran, and highly recommended his performance and his retriever’s. He amused her more than the young men, because he was absolutely sincere. And she succumbed instantly to the gracious personality of Lady Pomfret, accepting with alacrity an invitation to visit Pomfret Court, openly chagrined when no early date was set.
She arrived in May, driving her Rolls-Royce, and accompanied by a chauffeur and a French maid.
Sir Geoffrey, as was his wont, received her at the front door. The warmth of the reception rather astonished her. But it was quite in keeping, so she reflected, with the hospitable air of the house, a fine specimen of late Elizabethan architecture. To luxury in its myriad phases she was accustomed; comfort, as the Pomfrets interpreted the word, might be more restful. She promised herself fresh and diverting experiences in studying types which she had supposed to be extinct.
This first visit was an enormous success.
She beheld, of course, half a dozen different photographs of the Rifleman, and asked many questions concerning him.
“He is no popinjay,” affirmed Sir Geoffrey.
“Do you call him clever?” she asked the proud father.
“Clever! Now, my dear, what the doose d’ye mean by ‘clever’?”
“Quite frankly, Sir Geoffrey, I ask for information.”
“Am I clever?” demanded the Squire.
“Oh no, dear Geoffrey,” said his wife, tranquilly.
The three persons were at tea in what was known as the Long Saloon, a charming room with two great oriel windows, similar to those at Montacute, embellished by innumerable achievements,escutcheons setting forth in stained glass the armorial bearings of the families that had intermarried with the Pomfrets. The walls were panelled in oak palely golden with age. Against these walls stood cabinets of Queen Anne and the Georges filled with English porcelain. There were lovely bits of Chinese lacquer, many chintz-covered sofas and chairs, two well-worn Persian carpets, and tables of all sizes and shapes. Every article looked as if it had stood still for generations. Lady Margot said happily that here was exactly the right setting for her hosts. The room shone with the same soft lustre that gleamed from the silver of the tea equipage two centuries old.
Sir Geoffrey laughed.
“Areyouclever, Mary?”
“Here and there, Geoffrey, where my own interests are vitally concerned.”
Lady Margot stuck to her point.
“Is your son interested in art and literature?”
Her listeners failed to detect a slight accent of derision.
“Um! He’s an outdoor man, as I am. I can tell you this. He is interested in persons. He is the most popular fellow in Nether-Applewhite.”
“Really? I look forward to making his acquaintance.”
At this the Squire chuckled.
He would have laughed aloud, had he realised that his guest was indeed more interested in his son than she was prepared to admit, even to herself. The photographs captivated her. She made certain that Lionel Pomfret was utterly different from the young men who frequented her own house. She recognised in him thepreux chevalier. With such parents could he be anything else? Leaping to quite unjustifiable conclusions, she decided, also, that this only son must have taken from father and mother what was best in each. Perhaps, for the first time in her variegated life, she became romantic. Nobody, as yet, had whetted her imagination.
If Sir Geoffrey had divined all this!
Presently, when many of Prudence’s fancy cakes had been eaten, Sir Geoffrey led his guest to the farther window.
“Do you see anything familiar?” he asked.
“Of course. How exciting! Our coat. Have our families intermarried?”
“In 1625, when Charles the First ascended his throne.”
“I must look that up.”
“We will do so together.”
Upon the following Monday morning she whirled away, leaving a gap behind her. Sir Geoffrey waxed a thought too enthusiastic. Lady Pomfret admitted her intelligence and good-breeding.
“Mary, you are lukewarm.”
“I suspend judgment. What does Ben say?”
“Ben—Ben? I haven’t asked Ben. I needn’t ask him. Quality is everything with the old fellow. He will bore me stiff raving about her. She was uncommonly civil to him. A witch, my dear, a witch.”
“You burn her alive with this excess of praise.”
Fishpingle, however, who went fishing with the Squire that same Monday afternoon, did not rave about Lady Margot Maltravers. The Squire did so for him, and believed that what he said had been said by his faithful henchman. He caught more trout than Fishpingle, and returned home in exuberant spirits.
Whether by accident or design, Joyce Hamlin was not asked to meet the “dasher.”
The problem of ways and means for an heir’s suitable entertainment was solved triumphantly by the Squire, without a hint from either my lady or old Ben. Sir Geoffrey went to town alone. He returned, next day, inflated with a sense of his own cleverness and craft. He had let the shooting! Fishpingle was visibly impressed and touched. In the memory of man the Pomfret shootings had been rigorously preserved by and for the Pomfret squires. The sacrifice almost matched that of Abraham. And—unlike the Patriarch—the Squire had measured what that sacrifice meant to his son—practically nothing.
“Our partridges are never driven till early November, and by that time Lionel will be in the Red Sea. Well, well, I hope my old pals will keep my guns warm.”
Lady Pomfret kissed him. He had brought her a trinket from Cartier’s, a tiny brooch as dainty as herself. As he was pinning it into a lace jabot, she asked anxiously:
“Oh, Geoffrey, did you remember to order a new dress suit?”
“I remembered not to order it. I prefer old togs.”
In the good old days before rents fell and prices rose, Sir Geoffrey had owned a small cutter, which lay in Southampton Water, and with which he had won several races. All that was left of this gallant craft might be found in a stout oak box under the stairs in the hall, a box full of flags, gay bunting wherewith the Squire decorated his house upon great occasions. You may be sure that all these little flags were strung out upon the afternoon of Lionel’s arrival. The father met his son at Salisbury; the mother, and a goodly number of the Squire’s “people,” assembled on the lawn. Perhaps the boy himself, after he had kissed his mother, said all that can be said on such delightful occasions. After an absence of four years, an absence that had turned him from a delicate stripling into a healthy man, he stood upon the steps of his old home and gazed affectionately at the honest, beaming faces upturned to his. The welcoming cheers died away. There was no sound save the cawing of the rooks in the beeches behind the house. Lionel said impulsively:
“I say, it is jolly to be at home again. It’s the jolliest moment of my life.”
That was all and quite enough. The Squire led the way into the dining-room, and his people followed to drink health and prosperity to the heir. The oldesttenant made a short speech, Lionel replied in a dozen words. The visitors soon drifted away. Father, mother, and son were left alone.
“He’s a man,” said the Squire.
The mother smiled happily, noting subtler changes than the merely physical. He had grown into a man, true. India had burnt him brown. Hard work and exercise had taken away a certain boyish immaturity, but in essentials he remained much the same—impulsive, affectionate, and ingenuous. His clear eyes met hers with no reservations. His laugh had the same joyous spontaneity. But in his voice were new inflections. He spoke with a crisper decision, with something of his sire’s authority. He carried himself with an air——! Lady Pomfret divined instantly that he had ceased to be an echo of family traditions and predictions. He would take his own line across any country. She decided, as quickly, that he was still heart-whole. No woman stood between mother and son.
That first evening became an imperishable memory. The two men she loved best were at their best. She sat silent, looking at them, listening to ancient family jokes, revelling in the present and yet conscious that her thoughts were straying into the future. Lionel just touched upon his health. The regimental doctor, a capital chap, pronounced him sound.
“He vetted me before I left. Clean bill.”
“Thank God!” exclaimed the Squire heartily.
Lionel talked much of soldiering. The Squire nodded portentously, not quite at his ease. He wanted his boy to be “keen.” At the same time, soldiering with Lionel was intended to be a means rather than an end. For five pleasant years Sir Geoffrey had served in the Brigade of Guards. Straitened fortunes had prevented the Squire from putting his son into his old regiment, but he had no regrets about that. Foreign service had done the trick. Nevertheless, the time was coming swiftly when the boy must take up other interests and responsibilities. An infusion of pipeclay was in his marrow. Pomfrets had served their sovereigns by land and sea, but the heir of the family—in his opinion—could render better service on his own land. For the moment he kept such thoughts to himself.
Lady Pomfret went upstairs at eleven. The Squire and Lionel sat together till after midnight. Alone with his son, the father—not a man of great perspicacity—became oddly sensible of the change which the mother had divined so quickly. Obviously, Lionel did not see eye to eye with his senior upon certain matters. To the Squire, need it be said, life generally, his life, was a cut-and-dried affair. He believed devoutly in his own order; he detested perplexing compromises; a thing b’ Jove! was right or wrong. Being an ardent fox-hunter, an ex-master of hounds, he pursued his objectives without much regard for obstacles, although he availed himself of gaps in stiff fences. And till very lately he had ridden first-class horses—which makes a tremendous difference to a man’s “going.” Lionel, he perceived, had a touch of the “trimmer” in him. When the Squire—as was inevitable—spoke of the increasing troubles of the landed gentry, Lionel was not disposed to take for granted, what the Squire did, that the landowners were the unhappy victims of circumstance and democratic tendency. The boy hinted unmistakably that even county potentates had something to learn about organisation and economy. He spoke incisively of his own profession, tactfully shifting the ground from Wiltshire to India.
“We have to work harder,” he remarked cheerfully. “But we don’t yet work hard enough. We shall find that out if there is a big row and we come up against fellows who work harder than we do.”
“Um!”
Lionel continued with more diffidence:
“It seems to me, father, that it is always a case of the survival of the fittest. If the landed gentry can’t hold their own, they’ll be scrapped.”
“Good God!”
“You can’t get away from it. There it is.”
“Scrapped! What a word!”
“Beastly. But, as I said just now, some neighbours of ours, your own intimate friends, are tackling jobs they don’t understand. You stick to the old acres. Do they? And take your own case and mine. Is life in a jolly regiment really the right training for a man who must make his land pay or go under?”
“Do you want to leave the Rifle Brigade and go to an Agricultural College?”
“Not much. I’ve had a topping time, thanks to your generosity, sir, but, I ask you, when you were in the Coldstream what did you and your pals talk about?”
The Squire exploded, not loudly.
“I tell you this, sir: we didn’t talk socialism.”
Lionel laughed.
“I’ll bet you didn’t. I know what you talked about.”
“We jaw on about the same good old subjects still, but half the fellows in our mess are in much the same position that I am. Their fathers, like you, own properties with decreasing rent-rolls. We have to talk about that sometimes.”
“I should like to hear your conclusions.”
“Right O! But they must be your own, more or less. The thing whittles itself down to efficiency. The very biggest men, the dukes, for instance, employ experts. The smaller men can’t afford that.”
“Go on,” growled Sir Geoffrey, half-pleased, half-resentful. He was agreeably surprised to find that his boy possessed opinions which at any rate challenged attention. He was disagreeably aware that those opinions might clash with his own.
Lionel went on:
“If the smaller men can’t afford experts to run their estates, they must supply the necessary knowledge themselves. That means hard work and at best small pay.And—more intelligence in the working.”
“We’ll go to bed,” said the Squire.
He rose, looking affectionately at his son.
“By the way,” he said lightly, “I’ve let the shootin’ this year, but that won’t affect you.”
“Let the shooting?”
The Squire nodded. Lionel’s disconcerted face rather pleased him. The boy was a chip of the old block. He added curtly:
“I shan’t make a habit of it. The extra money comes in handy.”
Lionel hesitated and flushed.
“Are you really hard up?”
“Well—yes. Let’s leave it at that.” His voice became genial. “I told you to-night, because old Ben would be sure to blurt it out to you to-morrow morning. No complaints! You’re at home again, and as fit as a fiddle. Don’t worry! We shall pull through.”
Lionel’s expressive face remained pensive and distressed. An awful thought flitted into Sir Geoffrey’s head. To banish it was instinctive. He clutched his son’s arm.
“I take it, my boy, that you ain’t entangled with any woman or girl out there—what?”
Lionel laughed.
“Lord, no. What an idea!”
The Squire beamed at him.
“Well, well—these things happen. We must find you a nice little wife, old chap, with a bit o’ money—a bit o’ money. Yes, yes, God forbid that any son of mine should marry for money, but why not follow the Quaker’s advice to his son, and go where money is.”
“Why not?” said Lionel, smiling back at his father.
They went arm-in-arm through the hall, and then to bed.
When the Squire reached the big room in which Lionel had been born he found Lady Pomfret still up and wide awake. The Squire chided her, but confessed that he was not feeling sleepy himself.
“It’s been a day of great excitement. Mary, my dear, we have reason to be proud and grateful. The boy has turned into a fine young fellow. I wish you could have seen his face when I told him about the shootin’. He stared at me as if the heavens had fallen. And his concern, of course, was entirely on my account. Very gratifying—very. Another thing. No entanglements. I hinted at marriage, a nice little girl with a bit o’ money. He laughed and replied: ‘Why not?’ Of course, there must be no pressure, not a pennyweight. But I warn you, he has ideas. He marches—a—with the times.”
“Do you mean away from—us?”
“That remains to be seen. He is keen about his profession.”
“You regret that?”
“Yes, and no. Our grandchildren, Mary, will wean him from pipeclay.”
As he spoke, he kissed her tranquil face and whispered a compliment.
“You looked so young and pretty to-night. I hardly see you as a grandmother.”
She touched his arm softly.
“We won’t count those blessed chicks till they’re hatched.”
Something in her tone arrested the Squire’s attention. He said sharply:
“Why not, Mary? Anticipation in such a vital matter is a joy that I, most certainly, shall not renounce.”
“If—if there should be disappointment?”
“Why apprehend anything so unlikely?”
“Because Lady Margot—if your dreams come true—is the last of her branch of the family. I have never seen her inmydreams with a baby in her pretty arms.”
“Nonsense, Mary, nonsense. Sitting up late is always bad for you. To bed with you! I shall go to my dressing-room.”
He moved to the dressing-room door, and then came back, half-smiling, half-frowning.
“I see the fly in your ointment. Lady Margot ispetite. And what of it? Large women do not necessarily have large families. Mrs. Hamlin was no bigger than Lady Margot, and she presented Hamlin with four whoppin’ big boys. I have often wondered, my dear Mary, why the wives of poor parsons are so needlessly prolific.”
Lady Pomfret smiled ironically.
“The doctrine of Compensation, Geoffrey.”
“Perhaps. Now—pop into bed!”
In the bachelor’s wing Lionel was smoking the last cigarette before turning in. He stood at the widely open window, staring at the park, lying silver-white beneath a waning moon. Against the silvery spaces of turf the yews stood out sharply black—sableuponargent. The fallow deer were grazing just beyond the lawn. In the distance he could see the winding line of the river.
But he frowned as he looked out upon that goodly heritage which in the fullness of time would be his. The significant fact that the shooting had been let festered him. He remembered, going back to the old Eton days, that his father had always “groused” about lack of cash, other fellows’ fathers did the same. It had never occurred to him to take such grumblings too seriously. Indeed, comparing his comfortable, beautiful home with other homes, he had felt a little sore. To keep such an establishment as Pomfret, to entertain handsomely, to hunt and shoot, meant an income not far off five figures. It might have shrunk, no doubt, but enough and to spare was left.
But letting the shooting——!
“Damn!” he exclaimed.
Why had his father not confided in him? The question was easily answered. The Squire had old-fashioned ideas. Quite probably his own wife did not know the exact amount of his income. More—grouse as he could and did to neighbours and friends Sir Geoffrey’s cherished code prevented him from sharing money anxieties with his wife. She would know, of course, that money was not so plentiful, but he would be punctilious in keeping from her actual details.
And that hint about marrying a nice girl with money——
Lionel swore softly again, and again. He realised that his home-comingwas less joyous, and he had something to confess to his sire on the morrow which assuredly would detract from the merry-makings. He decided that he would talk things over with old Fishpingle first.
However, being young and healthy he went to bed and fell asleep within a few minutes. The Squire in his big four-poster slept as soundly. Lady Pomfret lay awake till the small hours.
CHAPTER V
Lionel awoke early. He was lying in his own bed—at home. For the moment nothing else mattered. Soon he would get up, and scurry round his old haunts before breakfast. He felt an Eton boy again, back for the holidays, with no confounded first school ahead of him. His eye rested upon certain framed photographs by Hills and Saunders. He had not distinguished himself very greatly at Eton, either in the classrooms or in the playing fields, but he had enjoyed himself and held his own. At Sandhurst, later on, he had been even happier, although his health had provoked anxieties.
He glanced out of the window. A capital morning for fishing! He knew that the Squire had duties, never neglected, upon the bench of magistrates. Old Fishpingle would be available as a companion. They would make a day of it. His mother would come down to the river for luncheon. Then his thoughts flitted to the Vicarage. What a jolly girl Joyce Hamlin was! No nonsense about her. Rosy as a Ribstone pippin and as sound at core. She might make a fourth at luncheon and square a charming circle. He had half expected to see her on the lawn to welcome him, but she was full of tact—bless her! She guessed, of course, that his father and mother would want him to themselves, and she couldn’t be dismissed like a tenant. He’d just nip in and shake her hand before breakfast.
With this happy thought percolating through his mind, he jumped out of bed, and rang for Alfred, who appeared grinning as usual. Lionel chaffed him, asking innumerable questions, amongst them this: “Had he secured a sweetheart?” Alfred, who bore to his young master something of the affection which had linked together the Squire and Fishpingle, unbosomed himself promptly. Yes; he and Prudence had made it up to get married, but the Squire was hostile. Lionel, much surprised, asked more questions, and elicited all the story.
“He’ll come round,” affirmed Lionel, alluding to his father. “And, perhaps, I can slip in a word. First cousins be damned! You and little Prue are the star couple of Nether-Applewhite.”
“Thank ’ee, Master Lionel. We be fair achin’ to earn money.”
“What d’ye mean, Alfred?”
“Sir Geoffrey, he give a pound for every child born in parish, an’ five pounds so be as God A’mighty sees fit to send twins.”
“I say, the sooner you earn that money, the better.” Half an hour afterwards, he was inhaling deep breaths of air fresh from the downs. The usual round engrossed him. A visit to the stables, a glance at the cricket pitch in the park, a squint at the river, and lastly—the Vicarage.
He found Joyce where he expected to find her, in the garden. No embarrassment showed itself on either side. They met, as they had parted, good friends, pals, as Lionel put it. He was as unaffectedly glad to see the maid, as she was to see him. But from her, without design on her part, came further corroboration of straitened means.
Lionel had said ingenuously: “I do hope, Joyce, that Squire and Parson pull together a little better than they did?”
Joyce answered as frankly: “As to that, Lionel, you can judge for yourself. Father thinks, as he always has thought, that if something is really wanted, he has only to ask for it, without”—she laughed not too mirthfully—“without any preliminary beating of bushes.”
“Your father is dead right about that. He’s the last man to ask for what isn’t really wanted.”
When Lionel insisted upon concrete information, Joyce told him the story of the chancel repairs, now in hand, thanks to Lady Pomfret’s promise. She ended dismally:
“Father, somehow, won’t realise that Sir Geoffrey is terribly cramped for ready money.”
Lionel muttered as dismally:
“Is it as bad as that?”
She nodded.
He went on excitedly: “This is a nasty jar, Joyce. I swear to you that it’s bad news for me. I never suspected it. He ought to have told me.”
A faint derision informed her next words.
“You ought to have guessed.”
“Ought I?”
He considered this, frowning. Then they talked of lighter matters, each enchanted to note the changes in the other. Betore they parted, after a half promise from Joyce that she might wander to the river, Lionel said abruptly:
“You are happy, Joyce? You look happy, but——”
“But?”
“There isn’t much to amuse you here.”
“I love the place and the people.”
This statement of fact was weighed and not found wanting as Lionel hastened back to the Hall. Joyce was now a woman of twenty, but she retained the freshness and bloom of a girl of seventeen. Lionel guessed that she had filled her mother’s place admirably. He compared her to his own mother. When a young man does this, he ought to see and recognise the road he is travelling. Lionel had no such sense of direction. He decided hastily that Joyce, being often in his mother’s company, had grown delightfully like her.
He whistled as he strode along.
At breakfast, he told the tale of his wanderings. At mention of the Vicarage, the Squire remarked irritably:
“Joyce is well enough, a good girl, but Hamlin is gettin’ impossible. He does a lot of mischief in the village.”
Lionel retorted warmly: “Father, he is incapable of that.”
Lady Pomfret winced. But she hastened to add:
“Your dear father doesn’t accuse Mr. Hamlin of making mischief deliberately.”
At that, the Squire “took the floor.” He spoke vehemently, with a feeling and emotion that surprised and confounded his son. Hamlin, first and last, was a Rad, with a Rad’s pestilent notions about property. He stuck his nose into every pie in the parish. He positively exuded Socialism. The fellow was of the people and with the people. All his ideas were impossible and Utopian. Did he do mischief deliberately? Perhaps not. But, unconsciously, he set class against class. He was importunate in his demands—demands, b’ Jove! which no landowner could grant without hostilising his farmers. Take wages. Concede, if you like, that wages were low in Wiltshire, about as low as the intelligence of the peasants. Concede, also, that in special cases a landowner might pay higher wages to his own outdoor servants, under-gardeners and the like. Concede all that, and then try it! And every farmer on your property would besiege you with protests, because they—poor devils!—couldn’t pay higher wages. Outsiders never understood these things. It was like arguing about sport with fellows who weren’t sportsmen. Hamlin had played cricket for his ’Varsity, but he wasn’t a sportsman. There you had it in a nutshell.
Under the table, Lady Pomfret gently pressed her son’s foot. Wisely, he attempted no defence of the parson. The Squire recovered his good humour with a second rasher of home-cured bacon. As he rose from the table, he smiled genially at wife and son.
“I spoke my mind just now, the more strongly because I have to suppress such feelings. It comes to this, Lionel, when a fellow is making sacrifices, when he is paring down expenses right and left, when he is doing his damndest to ‘carry on,’ it is exasperating to be pestered for the extra inch when you have cheerfully given the ell.”
He blew his nose with violence and left the dining-room.
“Dear fellow!” murmured Lady Pomfret. “He has been horribly worried during the last four years.”
Lionel looked and felt dazed. He supposed that Lady Pomfret invariably sided with her husband. Not out of any insincerity or moral weakness, but because she was of his generation and shared his views which were in all honesty focussed upon his duties and responsibilities. As much could be said of Hamlin. Lionel’s mind remained quite clear on this point. What confused and distressed him was the sudden realisation of cheese-paring, of sacrifice, of anxieties which he had ignored till this moment.
“Then it is true,” he murmured.
“What is true, my dear?”
“That we are much less well off than I had ever suspected.”
“I am afraid that is true, Lionel.”
“Surely you know, mother?”
“Not everything.”
“Good Lord!”
“The mortgage has always eaten into his peace of mind.”
“The mortgage? I never knew there was a mortgage.”
“That is why I sit with my back to the portrait of your great-grandfather.”
She explained matters to a wondering son. He listened impatiently, tapping the carpet with his foot, irritated perhaps unduly because of his own ignorance and impotence. When Lady Pomfret had finished, he tried, for her sake, to speak lightly—
“If I had known all this, mother, I might have helped him.”
“How?”
“I could have worried along on a less generous allowance. As it is——!” He broke off, with a gesture. She reassured him gently:
“Your father put you into a good regiment, and he has allowed you what he decided was necessary. If you asked him to give you less, he would refuse.”
Lionel exhibited a trace of his father’s obstinacy.
“We shall see about that,” he muttered. Then he kissed her tenderly, stroking her delicate hand.
“It has been beastly for both of you. And you two have always looked so comfy and prosperous.”
Lady Pomfret laughed.
“Call us mummers, Lionel. We have been forced to keep up appearances. Most of our friends are in the same boat. I see the comic side of it all and the tragic.”
Lionel smoked an after-breakfast pipe alone. Tobacco, however, failed to soothe him.
At half-past ten, Fishpingle and he took the path leading to the river. Fishpingle, in a very sporting coat and knickerbockers (which had been discarded by the Squire), might have been mistaken at a short distance for that potentate. He was doubtful about the prospects. The sun had risen high above the clouds and the breeze was dying down. To his astonishment, Lionel displayed indifference, saying incisively:
“I want to have a long yarn with you, old chap. If the trout aren’t on the rise, so much the better.”
Fishpingle stared at him keenly.
“That doesn’t sound like you, Master Lionel.”
“I’m not myself this morning. I’ve a big load that I must get off my chest. We’ll sit under a willow while I do it.”
The trout were not feeding, as Fishpingle had predicted. There might be a nice “rise” later on. Lionel glanced up and down the stream. Joyce was not on the “rise” either. A clump of willows was found, and the men sat down, Lionel wasted no time.
“I’ve had a shock, Fishpingle. I never knew till this morning that there was a crippling mortgage on this property. I never knew that father was pinched and pinching. What did he get for the shooting, eh?”
Fishpingle, who knew the exact amount, answered cautiously:
“Several hundred pounds.”
“Now, sit tight! I’m going to give you a shock, I owe several hundred pounds, and I must tell father at the first decent opportunity.”
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Fishpingle. “Several hundred pounds!”
“No excuses to you, you dear old man! I raced a bit out there and backed losers. I played polo. And bridge. I spent last year’s leave in Kashmir. Between ourselves, I had no idea I was so dipped. The bets had to be settled on the nail; so I went to the natives. Before I started for home they dunned me. I had to tell my colonel. Before I go back these debts must be settled in full. Believing my father to be a comparatively rich man, I assured my chief that they would be. I’ve had a thumping good allowance and I feel this morning about as sick as they make ’em. Now—you’ve got it.”
“Several hundred pounds,” repeated Fishpingle.
“Call it five—a monkey.”
“Oh, dear—oh, dear!”
“Don’t look so miserable! I can get the monkey from Cox’s, my agents, but they insist upon a guarantee from my father. Of course I could go to the Jews!”
“No, no, Master Lionel. But this will upset the Squire terribly.”
“Don’t rub that in!”
Fishpingle got up, shaking his head dolorously and making gestures with his hands, a habit of his when distressed. At any other time, Lionel would have laughed, and with his powers of observation whetted to a finer edge in India might have deduced from these antics that here was an old friend of the family, who—by virtue of his relation to that family—had been constrained all his life to suppress speech which found expression in these very gestures. He not aware that a struggle against other habits was raging. But he knew—had he recalled it—that Fishpingle had the reputation of being what servants called “close.” He saved his money. Nobody guessed how much he had saved, or what he had done with his savings. Only Fishpingle himself realised that the habit of saving had taken a grip of him. He was curiously dependent, and yet independent of the Pomfrets.
He could not envisage life apart from the family whom he had served so devoutedly, but his mind could and did dwell with satisfaction upon the securely invested money which assured to him, in extremity, ease approximating to affluence. In a big way, he could be generous. He had helped the mother of Prudence Rockley and others, but he had never touched the ever-increasing main hoard.
He said in a strangled voice:
“Don’t tell the Squire, Master Lionel. He has trouble enough. I—I will give you the money gladly.”
Lionel leapt up. Many surprises, during the past twenty-four hours, had prepared him for others, but this was the greatest.
“You dear old chap,” he gasped, “what are you saying? Give me five hundred pounds?”
“With all my heart.”
Volubly, he continued, protesting with uplifted finger against interruption. Lady Alicia Pomfret had left him a thousand pounds. He had never touched the interest on this nest egg, reinvesting it year after year. For a man in his position he was rich—rich! He wanted to help. It was his pleasure and his duty to help those to whom he owed everything. Lionel, for the second time that morning, felt dazed and stupid. He could understand, easily enough, Fishpingle’s wish to help, but his ability to do so involved other issues. If he were rich, if, for example, the nest egg were four times its original size, why, in the name of the Sphinx, had he remained in his present position? Why hadn’t he cut loose long ago, married, and set up a snug business of his own? These thoughts chased each other through his mind till Fishpingle stopped speaking. Lionel grasped his hand.
“I shall remember this all my life,” he began. “But I couldn’t take five hundred from you, Fishpingle, either as a gift or a loan. And, believe me, I shall have no difficulty in raising the money with a guarantee from my father. I made a clean breast of it to you, because I thought that together we might work out the best way of breaking beastly news to him. It is beastly to find out that he has been pinching while I have been squandering. He put the thing in a phrase at breakfast. Wait! Let me get his own words. They sunk in. I can promise you. Yes; I have ’em. ‘It is exasperating to be pestered for the extra inch, when you’ve given the ell cheerfully.’ Asking for his guarantee is just that extra inch clapped on to the ell of my allowance. Now—tackle him I must. Together we’ll settle the where and the when and the how. But you’re a topper, the very best in the world!”
He gripped his hand fiercely.
Fishpingle accepted the situation. He perceived that here was a point of honour and principle. No Pomfret could be swerved from that. So he said simply:
“If the Squire must be told, Master Lionel, tell him to-night, after dinner, when he is sipping his port.”
“Right! I will.”
“You made no excuse to me, make none to him.”
“Right again, you, you—sage.”
Fishpingle pointed to the river. “A trout is rising just beyond that stump. He lies under it, a whopper.”
“Is he? Do you know, Fishpingle, there are moments when sport seems to me a poor substitute for other and more exciting things. You’ve excited me. You have come up from under your stump, and you’re a whopper. And I want to throw my fly over you.”
Fishpingle betrayed slight uneasiness. The young man confronting him with keen sparkling eyes had lost his look of irresolution. His firm chin stuck out aggressively, he spoke with the authority of his father.
“As you please, Master Lionel.”
Lionel hesitated, picking his words, but joyously sensible that his mind had become clear again.
“I suppose,” he began tentatively, “that the truth is just this. I have changed, not you dear people. I used to take certain things and persons for granted, you, for instance. It seemed to me, before I went to India, that you were part of the general scheme, a sort of keystone to the arch. I really thought that you wallowed in being our butler and general factotum.”
“So I do.”
“Fishpingle—that’s a whopper, too. I’m not quite the innocent fool I was. Men serve others, cheerfully enough, if they’re the right sort, but they do it because they have to. I never met a fellow yet, old or young, who didn’t want to be his own, if he could manage it. I supposed that you couldn’t manage it. But you can. More, you could have managed it long ago. That’s as clear as our water is to-day.”
“I wanted to stay on.”
“But why—why?”
“This is my home, Master Lionel.”
“You’re a wily old trout, you are. But it isn’t your home. If anything happened to father and me, where would you be? You ought to have married and had some jolly kids. Nether-Applewhite is famous for its pretty girls.”
Fishpingle was cornered, but his humour rescued him. He said slyly:
“Pretty, yes; but not very highly educated, Master Lionel.”
“I see. We’re getting to grips now. My great-grandmother, so I have heard, made a bit of a pet of you. She saw to it that you got a better education than our girls. Obviously, she intended you to profit by that and cut loose. For some inscrutable reason you didn’t. If that education, old chap, made a bachelor of you, it was rather a questionable blessing, eh?”
“Perhaps.”
Fishpingle’s face had assumed the impenetrable mask of the highly trained English servant. Lionel glanced at him.
“Ah! You refuse to rise?”
“The trout, Master Lionel, are fairly on the feed now.”
He pointed to the river, with many rippling circles upon its surface. Lionel had tact enough to say no more. He picked up his rod, sticking out of the ground beside him.
“Try a May fly,” suggested Fishpingle.
Lionel did so. The pair separated, Fishpingle taking the upper reaches, above the village. Lionel fished diligently without much success, possibly because his heart was not in his work. From time to time he glanced down stream at a spot where the road shone white above the meadowsweet and rushes. Joyce Hamlin might float into sight at any minute, but she didn’t. Lionel felt slightly piqued as the sun rose to the zenith. Surely, upon his first day at home, she might have come. His Colonel, a man of the world, had impressed this maxim, upon his subaltern: “Women do what they like. Many of ’em undertake thankless jobs. That is because the spirit of self-sacrifice warms ’em to the core.”
Was Joyce that sort of woman?
He began to think of her as a woman. A pal, so he interpreted the word, would have joined another pal. And if some definite duty kept her from him, she would have mentioned it before breakfast. Deliberately, she had let him think that she would come. And she hadn’t. Some woman’s reason accounted for her absence.
At luncheon Lady Pomfret joined the anglers. Fishpingle had grassed two brace of fat trout. Lionel had only one fish. The luncheon was very jolly, the sort of thing you gloated over during hot, sleepless nights in India. Below the willows, where the lobster and other good things were spread upon a snowy cloth, gurgled the weirs to the north of the village. Lionel remembered a famous run of the buckhounds from Bramshaw Telegraph to Nether-Applewhite, an eight-mile point. The buck had swum the Avon and the big hounds followed. Half a dozen had just escaped drowning in the sluices. Lionel helped to rescue them. Behind the willows stretched the water-meadows, where he had learnt to hit snipe. He recalled the Squire’s injunction: “Say to yourself—Snipe on toast—before you pull trigger. That’ll steady your nerves.” On the rising ground bordering the park, just where hill met sky, was a low belt of firs, the best stand of that particular partridge beat, where the “guns” could take the birds as they topped the belt. Lionel had covered himself with glory at that stand, downing two in front and two behind, a notable performance in any company. And when his father had acclaimed this feat with proud insistence, Lionel had to confess that the two behind had fallen to one shot! Look, in fine, where he would, the young man could recall some happy or amusing incident of his youth, and never once, during those rosy hours, had he reflected that he was amazingly fortunate, that the lines of his life meandered, like the placid Avon, through pleasant places. As he put it to Fishpingle, he had taken things and persons for granted. He had ranked sport as a pursuit of the first magnitude.
Fishpingle, you may be sure, was asked to join the party at luncheon. Lionel, watching him, noted his good manners, or rather his unstudied ease of manner. He displayed, too, for Lady Pomfret’s benefit, a remarkable fund of Arcadian lore, that intimate knowledge of wild birds and beasts gained at first hand. Lionel decided that he talked better than the Squire, who prided himself upon his powers of speech.
Why had such a man been content to serve the Pomfrets?
After luncheon, at Fishpingle’s earnest request, the anglers changed beats. Lady Pomfret accompanied her son to the upper reaches. But he showed little keenness although more fly was on the water, and the prospects of good sport much better. The mother remarked this:
“Are you tired, my dear?”
His laugh allayed that anxiety.
“Tired? I’m consumed with curiosity—that’s all.”
“What is biting at you?”
“Fishpingle.”
“Oh!”
“Mother, read the riddle of Fishpingle to me.”
She shook her head. The riddle of her son challenged attention. How greatly he had changed, this boy who had been so absurdly boyish and cut to pattern, who had accepted everything and questioned nothing. Long after he had joined his regiment, she looked in vain for any shades of expression in him. If he liked a play or a book, it was “priceless” or “tophole.” If he disliked it, one word flew from his lips like a projectile—“Tosh!” She remembered taking him to a concert, where a famous virtuoso had entranced a large audience. Lionel announced presently that he was bored to tears. She had said gently, “Do you think, Lionel, that is your fault or the fault of Pachmann?” And he had stared at her, startled out of his complacency but utterly misapprehending the humour and purpose of her question.
She said tranquilly:
“I can’t read that riddle. I have always believed that poor Ben’s father was a gentleman. Your great-grandmother may have known who he was. If she did, she carried the secret to her grave. Anyway, she educated Ben, and left him some money. She was very fond of Ben’s mother, her maid. Ben became your father’s servant. You know, Lionel, that men and women run in grooves. And the longer you remain in a groove, the harder it is to get out of it. Above and beyond all this remains the fact of Ben’s affection for us. I have never doubted the enduring quality of that. For the rest, I know no more than you do.”
“It’s a mystery,” declared Lionel.
After this talk, fishing really engrossed him. He returned home to tea in high spirits with five good fish in his creel. Alone in his room, changing his clothes, he remembered that he had not spoken to his mother about Joyce. And he had intended to do so, to invite her judgment upon the riddle of sex. As he pulled off his wet boots, he thought with keen anticipation of many delightful talks with her. What a gift she had of inviting confidence! And withal, a woman of exasperating reserves. It was not easy to “get at her.” Her graciousness, her tranquillity, disarmed attack.
The Squire had returned from the Bench, when Lionel sauntered into the Long Saloon. He greeted his son boisterously and listened to a recital of the day’s sport. Each fish had to be hooked and played all over again. And then, as he proposed a stroll round the Home Farm, he said to Lady Pomfret:
“By the way, I have heard from Lady Margot. She will be happy to come to us after the Eton and Harrow match. That will be about three weeks from now.”
“And who is Lady Margot?” asked Lionel.
The Squire chuckled:
“You wait and see, my boy. She’s a dasher—a dasher.”
Lionel wondered whether this was the nice little girl with a bit of money.
“What does she dash at?” he asked.
Lady Pomfret answered him:
“Everything and everybody.”
The Squire, not quite satisfied, hastened to assure Lionel that the young lady was perfectly charming in face, figure, and intelligence.
Lionel’s eyes twinkled, but he asked gravely enough:
“Has she money, father?”
The Squire flushed, as he answered quickly: “A hatful.”
Presently, father and son took the road to the Home Farm. The Squire noticed that Lionel seemed slightly preoccupied, that he praised perfunctorily the Shorthorns and Suffolk Punches. Being an impassioned optimist—except upon the subject of estate management—the Squire hoped that his heir’s thoughts had flown away in the direction of Lady Margot. We may hazard the conjecture that Lionel was concerned rather with the difficulties of breaking “beastly” news to a generous but choleric sire.