CHAPTER XV
Sir Geoffrey stood still for a moment after his son had left the room. Then he sat down in the big armchair, staring vacantly at the hearth. His premonition had come true—the boy had stuck a knife into him. Almost in a whisper he murmured hoarsely, “Lionel!”
Fishpingle turned. “Shall I call Master Lionel back?”
“No,” said the Squire.
He spoke drearily. The bloom of his fine maturity seemed to fade. He looked pale and haggard. Fishpingle had a disconcerting glimpse of old age, of old age in its most sorrowful and touching manifestation, solitary, disconsolate, apathetic. The Squire leaned his head upon his hand, as if the weight of thoughts were insupportable.
Outside a bird twittered monotonously—some house sparrow bent upon disturbing the peace of the swallows, migrants whom he regarded as trespassers.
“Damn that sparrow!” exclaimed Sir Geoffrey.
He sat upright; the sanguine colour flowed back into his clean-shaven cheeks. Perhaps the consoling reflection stole into his mind that matters might be worse: the boy might have married the Parson’s daughter secretly. He said testily to Fishpingle:
“Don’t gape at me like that! Keep your pity for those who may need it.”
Fishpingle obeyed. His face slowly hardened into the impassive mask of the well-trained servant. The Squire continued less testily but with reproachful mockery:
“So you, you, the man I have trusted for fifty years, were chosen by my son to plead a cause which he hadn’t the pluck to plead for himself.”
“Nothing was settled about that, Sir Geoffrey.”
“Tchah! He went to you, not to his mother—I lay my life on it—nor to me. Why? Because, obviously, you were on his side, siding, b’ Jove! against—me.”
“I side with Master Lionel, Sir Geoffrey.”
“That’s honest, at any rate. We know where we are. Now, Ben, you shall plead his case in his absence. I will listen as patiently as may be. Begin!” Fishpingle opened his lips and closed them. “Ha! You are silent because there is nothing to say.”
“No. Because there is so much—all, all that I have learnt during those fifty years, all that I hold most dear, most sacred——”
His voice died away. The Squire was not unmoved. He cleared his throat vigorously and said kindly:
“Take your time. This shall be threshed out fairly between us. Sit down! Keep your hands quiet, Ben. When you fidget, it distracts me.”
“I would rather stand, Sir Geoffrey.”
“Do as you please.” With indulgent irony he added, “The counsel for the defence addresses the Court standing.”
Fishpingle moved a little nearer. He spoke very slowly, as a man speaks who has some long-considered message to deliver.
“Master Lionel, before he went to India, did not expect to survive you.”
The Squire moved uneasily. Fishpingle had recalled cruel anxieties never quite forgotten, what may be termed the unpaid bills of life pigeon-holed, put aside for Fate and Fortune to settle. He replied, however, with decision:
“He has grown into a strong man.”
“Has he? Are you quite sure of that? I would give my life to be sure. He may live long if he marries the right woman. Is Lady Margot the right woman, Sir Geoffrey?”
“Yes.”
“I wish with all my heart I could think so.”
“How can you know all that such a marriage would mean to me, and this big property, and him?”
“I have thought of all that, Sir Geoffrey. Indeed, indeed, I have thought of little else since her ladyship first came here. She is a lady of quality——”
“Every inch of her.”
“And very clever. She would push the fortunes of her husband. There is a barony in abeyance which could be terminated in favour of her son, if she had a son. Her money would lift the mortgage which cripples the estate. Her money would build new cottages, fertilise our thin soil, put farming upon a higher plane, transform Nether-Applewhite into what has been the dream of your life—and mine—a model village.”
The Squire stared at him. Fishpingle’s powers of speech had affected him before, but never so convincingly. He said curtly:
“You have the gift of the gab, Ben. God knows where you get it from. More, you have the knack of reading my mind, of echoing my thoughts, using the very phrases that are mine.”
“Everything I have said is so obvious.”
“Obvious? Um! Is that another stab in the back? Well, I am obvious. I despise twisting and wriggling. You have left out the most obvious thing. And I dislike mentioning it. Her little ladyship cottoned to the boy. She wants him, or she did want him, b’ Jove! And now, this girl, this Radical parson’s daughter without a bob, without any breeding, not much better than any blooming, red-cheeked milk-maid, has undone all my work. What cursed spell has she cast?”
“Nature cast the spell, Sir Geoffrey.”
The Squire began to fume again, frowning and pulling at his ample chin.
“Nature——! Aided and abetted by you. Rank sentimentalist you are, and always were. I have the obvious” (the word had rankled) “common sense to scrap sentiment. Do you remember those cows, that half-bred herd I inherited with other disabilities? My lady wanted me to keep them.”
“Bless her!”
“And you sided with her.”
“Did I?”
“Of course you did.”
Fishpingle smiled faintly. He crossed to one of the tallboys standing in an alcove and pulled open a drawer. The Squire growled.
“What are you up to now?”
“I want to look at an old diary.”
He pulled out half a dozen thin books, selected one, and turned over the pages. The Squire watched him with exasperation.
“What dawdling ways!”
“Here we are, Sir Geoffrey. Five and twenty years ago, when Master Lionel was short-coated.”
“Get forrard, you skirter!”
Fishpingle put on his spectacles, and read aloud: “‘Heated argument with the Squire. He and my lady insisted upon keeping our dairy cows. I floored him with the milk returns——’”
“Floored me?”
Fishpingle continued placidly:
“‘—and enjoyed a small triumph. The cows are to be fattened for the butcher, and the dairy will show a profit instead of a loss.’”
He replaced the diary and removed his spectacles. The Squire muttered protest:
“As usual, Ben, you wander from the point, you shifty old fox. Why jaw about cows? Now—what have you against Lady Margot?”
“Will she be happy here in this quiet back-water?”
“Tchah! My son’s wife—when I’m gone—will live where it’s her duty to live—amongst her husband’s people.”
“Perhaps. Master Lionel takes after my lady. He’s incapable of unkindness or selfishness.”
“Thank you, Ben. I’m allowing you great latitude. Go on! Take advantage of it!”
“If Master Lionel married Lady Margot, he would try to make her happy. He would live most of the year in London. He would share her life, and that life is one of constant excitement and change. She has been happy here for three weeks, because this is a change. Would she ever take my lady’s place? Never!”
He spoke with fire. The Squire lay back in his chair, gently twiddling his thumbs. In his opinion no woman could take his wife’s place, but what of that? None the less, mention of Lady Pomfret smoothed out some wrinkles. He smiled beatifically, lifted above himself.
“Who could? My lady is unique. Why make these foolish comparisons? As for London——Well, well, I should like to see the boy in Parliament. Let him march with these cursed democratic times, and strike a shrewd blow for his order, a blow for the next generation.”
Fishpingle played his trump card.
“The next generation? Lady Margot has no love of children.”
“What d’ye mean? How dare you say that? How on earth do you know?”
“We have talked together.”
“About her children——!” He held up his hands.
“What are we coming to? I ask Heaven the question.”
“I can answer it, Sir Geoffrey. I know my place, and her ladyship knows hers—none better. I did take the liberty of trying to interest her in Nether-Applewhite children. And then she told me quite frankly that children bored her. I remember her words—yes. ‘I can endure a clean child for ten minutes. Babies in the mass make me think kindly of Herod.’”
“Her ladyship, Ben, likes a joke with an edge to it. You wait till she has babies of her own.”
“One might have to wait long for that. Lady Margot’s family is almost extinct. A great-uncle died in a private asylum.”
“I see you’ve been nosin’ about. Just like you. All old families have their skeletons.”
Fishpingle, carried out of himself for a moment, like the hapless Alfred, forgot his place, as he muttered:
“Yes, yes, her ladyship is very thin.”
The Squire jumped up.
“Damn you, Ben, that is the last straw. I have sat here listening to your mumbling with a patience and good temper wasted upon a very thankless fellow. You know best what you owe me and mine.”
He paused. Fishpingle bowed superbly.
“I do, Sir Geoffrey.”
“You are never so irritating as when you force me to say things intensely disagreeable. I hate to rub it in, but I am Squire of Nether-Applewhite and you are my butler. As my butler I expect you to consider my wishes, and to carry them out to the best of your ability.”
“I have tried to do so, Sir Geoffrey.”
“Up to a point—up to a point. I admit it. Let us have the facts, say I! And then deliver judgment on them. You have aided and abetted two servants in this establishment who are flagrantly disobeying me. And you have aided and abetted Master Lionel, with the knowledge and therefore with the deliberate intention of upsetting other plans which I had confided to you. If I am wrong, pray correct me.”
Thus the magistrate, using the words and gestures of authority. As he spoke a quaint benevolent despotism illuminated his sturdy face. How kind he could be to his dependents when they kow-towed to his rule both wife and butler knew. And the memory of countless petty sacrifices which had truly endeared him to “his people” moved Fishpingle profoundly. But his own intimate knowledge of those people, a knowledge so seldom gleaned by the Overlord, the vivid, intimate experience of fifty years, had taught him inexorably that such powers as the Squire and his like exercised were a wastage of vital force, misdirected energy which, in the fullness of time, must defeat its own purposes. And this, he had slowly come to realise, was the underlying tragedy of the countryside. With this realisation marched its corollary. The authority of the squire, vested by immemorial custom in him, was, in turn, passed on by him to the farmers who used it or abused it according to their lights. And the farmers, with rarest exceptions, united energies to maintain ever-weakening positions against those beneath them. If prosperity followed a generous use of such power, the result, even then, was disastrous to the labourer and his family. He lost initiative, foresight, any desire to rise and better his humble condition. When he rebelled, when he decided to tear himself loose from emasculating influences, what could he do? Emigrate. And England loses a Man.
Fishpingle had studied carefully the books and pamphlets lent to Lionel. As he admitted, they were one-sided, a compilation of hideous grievances, valuable as such, almost valueless from the point of view of reconstruction. The “three acres and a cow” school filled this wise old man with derisive contempt. To divide great estates into small holdings of individual ownership might seem a sound solution to economists who wrote incisive articles in rooms littered with works of reference. The man on the spot was not so optimistic. He had seen the experiment tried with allotments. The labourer lacked knowledge; he muddled about with soils, just as his wife muddled about in the kitchen, spoiling good food. No reform, so Fishpingle believed, could come from below. Light must shine from above.
If the Squire could be led to see clearly the issues he had raised.
If Authority, in fine, could impose its own limitations?
Was it possible to answer the stem indictment brought against himself, as steward and butler? Obviously, the Squire considerd his own position to be impregnable. And yet, alas! it was built upon foundations now crumbling away. If such foundations could not be replaced with sound masonry, the great fabric reared upon them would fall in irretrievable ruins, serving, like the feudal castles, as a landmark of the past.
He said with dignity:
“You are not wrong in that, Sir Geoffrey. I don’t deny these charges.”
“Good! You are an honest man, Ben. Acknowledge frankly that your sentiment, your affection for these young people—I include Master Lionel—have warped your judgment and seduced you from your duty and loyalty to me, and, dammy! I’ll wipe out the offence. Come, come!”
His tone was genial and persuasive, so kindly that Fishpingle wrestled with the temptation to “creep” and “crane.” Perhaps the thought of Lionel’s “lead” over a stone wall fortified him. He drew back from the proffered right hand of a fellowship he prized inordinately.
“What? You refuse?”
“You called me honest, Sir Geoffrey. I hope humbly that I am so. I am your butler, but my conscience is my own. I hold firmly to the conviction that you have no right, granting that you possess the power, to interfere with these young lives. I say less than I feel out of the respect and affection I bear you.”
The Squire swore to himself. If Fishpingle had beheld him, not as the friend of many years, not even as the kindly master, but as an abstraction, a sort of composite photograph of all overlords, so Sir Geoffrey beheld Fishpingle as the composite servant, the subordinate, the underling. To be quite candid, he regarded the Parson, his parson, in much the same light. There had been moments, few and far between, when the Squire had taken himself censoriously to task. As a rule, such disagreeable self-analysis forced itself upon him when he was dealing with matters outside his particular jurisdiction, county matters rather than parochial. He had marked the effect of power exercised misapprehendingly, with insufficient technical knowledge behind it. And if he happened to be a party to any such blundering, he felt very sore. Let it be remembered, also, that his father died when he was a boy. He had come into his kingdom upon his twenty-first birthday. Comparing him with neighbouring magnates, he shone conspicuous as a man who did his duty, and was comfortably warmed by the fire of self-righteousness. As a soldier, let it be added, he would have obeyed any order from his commanding officer. On Authority’s shoulders be the blame, if such order were contrary to the King’s Regulations. In this case he assumed full responsibility before God and man. From the pinnacle upon which, so he devoutly believed, God and man had placed him, he beheld Fishpingle as a faithful servant, a rank mutineer.
He said freezingly:
“Very well, sir. I shall deal with my son myself. I shall tell him to-night that under no circumstances will I consent to his marriage with an obscure girl whose father doesn’t even bear arms. Ha! I asked him, when he came here, what his coat was, and he replied, laughing in my face, ‘My coat, Sir Geoffrey, is sable, with collar and cuffs argent.’ Master Lionel can marry without my consent. Thanks to your encouragement he is quite likely to do so. He must come here after my death, but not before, sir, not before.”
Fishpingle said entreatingly:
“Sleep over it, Sir Geoffrey, I beg you. Miss Joyce is like my dear lady.”
“She isn’t.”
“As you said just now, nobody could be quite like her ladyship. But Miss Joyce has her lamp.”
The Squire tartly requested him to explain. Fishpingle allowed his glance to stray to the photographs upon the mantelshelf. As he spoke he saw his mistress as she had revealed herself to him during nearly thirty years. Her light streamed over the past.
“My lady’s lamp, Sir Geoffrey, has burned so steadily. I have never seen it flame or flicker. It throws its beams on others, never on herself. But one knows that she is there, behind her lamp, always the same sweet gracious lady, serene in all weathers; above us, shining down on us, and yet of us.”
Sir Geoffrey turned abruptly and went to the window. Fishpingle perceived that he was agitated, touched. He blew his nose with quite unnecessary violence. Then he turned.
“You have described my lady better—I admit it—than I could describe her myself. But Miss Joyce has not her lamp.” His voice hardened. “Now, Ben, mark me well. I propose to put down this mutiny with a firm hand.” He held it up. “These rioting servants must be brought to heel. You will discharge Alfred after dinner and pay him a month’s wages in lieu of notice. You will send Prudence back to her mother to-night. Alfred can leave to-morrow morning. You hear me?”
While he spoke, with increasing emphasis, he marked a subtle but unmistakable change in Fishpingle. The man revealed himself divested of a butler’s smug trappings. Any air of subserviency vanished. A stranger, seeing the two men together, facing each other, at issue with each other, would have marked a resemblance, the stronger because it was of the spirit, not the flesh. In height and build they were much alike, but Fishpingle’s head was incomparably the finer.
“I hear you. A hard, cruel man has spoken, not my old master and friend.”
“Silence, sir!”
“I thought, I believed, that I knew you. And I did know you once. But you have changed—changed. You are no longer my master. I am no longer your man. Discharge your own servants, Sir Geoffrey Pomfret!”
With shining eyes and features quivering with agitation, he ended upon a clarion note of defiance and wrath. Sir Geoffrey was infinitely the calmer.
“I take you at your word,” he said. “I discharge—you. For her ladyship’s sake, not mine, I ask you to wait upon us at dinner for the last time. To-morrow morning, at ten-thirty, you can bring your books and accounts to my room.”
Fishpingle bowed.
Sir Geoffrey waited one moment. Perhaps, at the last, he looked for an apology. None came. Fishpingle stood erect, but less rigid. His indignation passed swiftly. His glance lost its fire; his eyes, still smouldering, assumed a sorrowful expression.
Sir Geoffrey went out. The clock in the stable-yard chimed and then tolled the hour—seven. Upon the previous Saturday it had rung out with the same solemn note a delightful day.