CHAPTER XIII
These questions—'Why did I come back?—What am I going to do?' were still ringing through Elizabeth's mind when, on the evening of her return, she entered the library to find the Squire eagerly waiting for her.
But the spectacle presented by the room quickly drove out other matters. She stood aghast at the disorder which three weeks of the Squire's management had brought about. Books on the floor and piled on the chairs—a dusty confusion of papers everywhere—drawers open and untidy—her reign of law seemed to have been wiped out.
'Oh, what a dreadful muddle!'
The Squire looked about him—abashed.
'Yes, it's awful—it's all that fellow Levasseur. I ought to have turned him out sooner. He's the most helpless, incompetent idiot. But it won't take you very long to get straight? I'll do anything you tell me.'
He watched her face appealingly, like a boy in a scrape. Elizabeth shook her head.
'It'll take me a full day. But never mind; we need not begin to-night.'
'No, we won't begin to-night!' said the Squire emphatically. 'There!—I've found a chair for you. Is that fire as you like it?'
What astonishing amiability! The attack of nerves which had assailed Elizabeth upstairs began to disappear. She took the chair the Squire offered her, cleared a small table, and produced from the despatch-box she had brought into the room with her a writing-block and a fountain-pen.
'Do you want to dictate anything?'
'Not at all!' said the Squire. 'I've got nothing ready for dictating. The work I have done during your absence I shall probably tear up.'
'But I thought—'
'Well, I daresay—but can't a man change his mind? Greek be hanged!' thundered the impatient voice. 'I want some conversation with you—if you will allow me?'
The last words slipped awkwardly into another note. It was as though a man should exchange the trombone for the flute. Elizabeth held her peace; but her pulse was beginning to quicken.
'The fact is,' said the Squire, 'I have been thinking over a good many things—in the last hour.' Then he turned upon her abruptly. 'What was that you were saying to Alice in the hall just now, about moving your mother into better rooms?'
Elizabeth's parted lips showed her surprise.
'We do want better rooms for her,' she said hesitatingly, after a moment. 'My sister Joan, who is at home just now, is looking out. But they are not easy to find.'
'Don't look out!' said the Squire impetuously. 'I have a better plan to propose to you. In these horrible days people must co-operate and combine. I know many instances of families sharing a house—and servants. Beastly, I admit, in the case of a small house. One runs up against people—and then one hates them. I do! But in the case of a large house it is different. Now, what do you say to this? Bring your mother here!'
'Bring—my mother—here?' repeated Elizabeth stupidly. 'I don't understand.'
'It's very simple.' The Squire stood over her, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, his eyes all vivacity. 'This is a big house—an old barn, if you like, but big enough. Your mother might have the whole of the east wing—which looks south—if she pleased; and neither she nor I need ever come in each other's way, any more than people who have flats in the same building. I heard you say she had a nurse. Well, there would be the nurse—and another servant perhaps. And the housekeeping could be in common. Now do consider it. Be reasonable! Don't mock at it, because it isn't your own plan,' said the Squire severely, perceiving the smile, which she could not repress, spreading over Elizabeth's countenance.
'It's awfully good of you!' she began warmly—'but—'
'But what?'
Then Elizabeth's smile vanished, and instead he saw a dimness in the clear blue eyes.
'My poor little mother is too ill—much too ill—' she said in a low voice. 'She may live a good while yet; but her mind is no longer clear.'
The Squire was checked. This possible aspect of the case had not occurred to him. But he was not to be defeated.
'If you can move her from one house to another, surely you could move her here—in an invalid motor? It would only take an hour and a half.'
Elizabeth shook her head quietly, but decidedly.
'Thank you, but I am afraid it is impossible. She couldn't take the journey, and—no, indeed, it is out of the question!'
'Will you ask your doctor?' said the Squire obstinately.
'I know what he would say. Please don't think of it, Mr. Mannering. It's very, very good of you.'
'It's not the least good,' said the Squire roughly. 'It's sheer, naked self-interest. If you're not at ease about your mother, you'll be throwing up your work here again some day, for good, and that'll be death and damnation!'
He turned frowning away, and threw himself into a chair by the fire.
So the murder was out. Elizabeth must needs laugh. But this clumsy way of showing her that she was indispensable not only touched her feeling, but roused up the swarm of perplexities which had buzzed around her ever since her summons to her mother's bedside on the morning after her scene with Pamela. And again she asked herself, 'Why did I come back? And what am I going to do?'
She looked in doubt at the fuming gentleman by the fire, and suddenly conscience bade her be frank.
'I would like to stay here, Mr. Mannering, and go on with my work. I have told you so before. I will stay—as long as I can. But I mustn't burn my boats. I mustn't stay indefinitely. I have come to see that would not be fair—'
'To whom?' cried the Squire, raising himself—'to whom?'
'To Pamela,' said Elizabeth firmly.
'Pamela!' The Squire leapt from his seat. 'What on earth has Pamela got to do with it!'
'A very great deal. She is the natural head of your house, and it would be very difficult for me to go on living here—after—perhaps—I have just put a few things straight for you, and catalogued the pots—without getting in her way, and infringing her rights!'
Elizabeth was sitting very erect and bright-eyed. It seemed to her that some subliminal self for which she was hardly responsible had suddenly got the better of a hair-splitting casuistical self, which had lately been in command of her, and that the subliminal self had spoken words of truth and soberness.
But instead of storming, the Squire laughed contemptuously.
'Pamela's rights? Well, I'll discuss them when she remembers her duties! I remonstrated with her one morning when the servants were all giving warning—and there was nothing to eat—and she had made a hideous mess of some instructions of mine about a letter to the County Council—and I pointed out to her that none of these things would have happened if you had been here.'
'Oh, poor Pamela!' exclaimed Elizabeth—'but still more, poor me!'
'"Poor me"?' said the Squire. 'What does that mean?'
'You see, I have a weakness for being liked!' said Elizabeth after a moment. 'And how can Pamela like anybody that is being thrown at her head like that?' She looked at her companion reproachfully. But the Squire was not to be put down.
'Besides,' he continued, without noticing her interruption, 'Pamela writes to me this morning that she wants my consent to her training as an Army nurse.'
'Oh no,' cried Elizabeth—'not yet. She is too young!'
Her face showed her distress. So she was really driving this poor child, whom she would so easily have loved had it been allowed her, out of her home! No doubt Pamela had seized on the pretext of her 'row' with her father to carry out her threat to Elizabeth of 'running away,' and before Elizabeth's return to Mannering, so that neither the Squire nor any one else should guess at the real reason. But how could Elizabeth acquiesce?
Yet if she revealed the story of Pamela's attack upon her to the Squire, what would happen? Only a widening of the breach between him and his daughter. Elizabeth, of course, might depart, but Pamela would be none the more likely to return to face her father's wrath. And again for the hundredth time Elizabeth said to herself, in mingled pain and exasperation—'What did she mean?—and what have I ever done that she should behave so?'
Then she raised her eyes. Something impelled her—as it were a strong telepathic influence. The Squire was gazing at her. His expression was extraordinarily animated. It seemed to her that words were already on his lips, and that at all costs she must stop them there.
But fortune favoured her. There was a knock at the library door. The Squire irritably said, 'Come in!' and Forest announced, 'Captain Dell.' The Squire, with some muttered remark, walked across to his own table.
The agent entered with a beaming countenance. All that he knew was that the only competent person in a rather crazy household had returned to it, and that business was now likely to go forward. He had brought some important letters, and he laid them nominally before his employer, but really before Elizabeth. He and she talked; the Squire smoked and listened, morosely aloof. Yet by the end of the agent's visit a grudging but definite consent had been given to the great timber deal; and Elizabeth hurried off as Captain Dell departed—thankful for the distant sound of the first bell for dinner.
Sitting up in bed that night, with her hands behind her head, while a westerly wind blew about the house, Elizabeth again did her best to examine both her conscience and her situation.
The summons which had taken her home had been a peremptory one. Her mother, who had been ill for a good many months, had suddenly suffered some brain injury, which had reduced her to a childish helplessness. She did not recognize Elizabeth, and though she was very soon out of physical danger, the mental disaster remained. A good nurse was now more to her than the daughter to whom she had been devoted. A good nurse was in charge, and Elizabeth had persuaded an elderly cousin, living on a small annuity, to come and share her mother's rooms. Now what was more necessary than ever was—money! Elizabeth's salary was indispensable.
Was she to allow fine feelings about Pamela to drive her out of her post and her earnings—to the jeopardy not only of her mother's comfort, but of the good—the national—work open to her at Mannering?
But there was a much more agitating question behind. She had only trifled with it till now. But on the night of her return it pressed. And as a reasonable woman, thirty years of age, she proceeded to look it in the face.
When Captain Dell so opportunely—or inconveniently—knocked at the library door, Mr. Mannering was on the point of asking his secretary to marry him. Of that Elizabeth was sure.
She had just escaped, but the siege would be renewed. How was she going to meet it?
Why shouldn't she marry the Squire? She was poor, but she had qualities much more valuable to the Squire than money. She could rescue him from debt, put his estate on a paying footing, restore Mannering, rebuild the village, and all the time keep him happy by her sympathy with and understanding of his classical studies and hobbies.
And thereby she would be doing not only a private but a public service. The Mannering estate and its owner had been an offence to the patriotism of a whole neighbourhood. Elizabeth could and would put an end to that. She had already done much to modify it. In her Greek scholarship, and her ready wits, she possessed all the spells that were wanted for the taming of the Squire.
As to the Squire himself? She examined the matter dispassionately. He was fifty-two—sound in wind and limb—a gentleman in spite of all his oddities and tempers—and one of the best Greek scholars of his day. She could make her own terms. 'I would take his name—give him my time, my brains, my friendship—in time, no doubt, my affection.' He would not ask for more. The modern woman, no longer young, an intellectual, with a man's work to do, can make of marriage what she pleases. The possibilities of the relations between men and women in the future are many, and the psychology of them unexplored. Elizabeth was beginning to think her own case out, when, suddenly, she felt the tears running over her cheeks.
She was back in past days. Mannering had vanished. Oh—for love!—for youth!—for the broken faith and the wounded trust!—for the first fresh wine of life that, once dashed from the lips, the gods offer no more! She found herself sobbing helplessly, not for her actual lost lover, who had passed out of her life, but for those beautiful ghosts at whose skirts she seemed to be clutching—youth itself, love itself.
Had she done with them for good and all? That was what marrying the Squire meant.
A business marriage—on her side, for an income, a home, a career; on his, for a companion, a secretary, an agent. Well, she said to herself as she calmed down, that she could face; but supposing, after all, that the Squire was putting more into the scales than she? A sudden fear grew strong in her—fear lest this man should have more heart, more romance in him than she had imagined possible—that while she was thinking of a business partnership, the Squire was expecting, was about to offer, something quite different.
The thought scared and repelled her. If that were indeed the case, she would bid Mannering a long and final farewell.
But no!—she reassured herself; she recalled the Squire's passionate absorption in his archæological pursuits; how his dependence upon her, his gratitude to her, his surprising fits of docility, were all due to the fact that she helped him to pursue them—that his mind sharpened itself against hers—that her hand and brain were the slaves of his restless intelligence.
That was all—that must, that should be all. She thought vigorously of the intellectual comradeships of history—beginning with Michael Angelo and Vittoria Colonna. They were not certainly quite on all fours with her own situation—but give modern life and the new woman time!
Suppose, then, these anxieties set at rest, and that immediately, within twenty-four hours, or a week, the Squire were to ask her to marry him and were ready to understand the matter as she did—what else stood in the way?
Then, slowly, in the darkness of the room, there rose before her the young figures of the twins, with their arms round each other's necks, as she had often seen them—Desmond and Pamela. And they looked at her with hostile eyes!
'Cuckoo!—intriguer!—we don't want you!—we won't accept you!'
But after all, as Elizabeth reflected not without a natural exasperation, she was not—consciously—a cuckoo; she was not an intriguer; there was nothing of the Becky Sharp about her at all; it would have been so very much simpler if there had been! To swallow the Squire and Mannering at one gulp, to turn out the twins, to put Mrs. Gaddesden—who, as Elizabeth had already discovered, was constantly making rather greedy demands upon her father—on rations according to her behaviour, to bring in her own poor mother and all her needy relations—to reign supreme, in fact, over Mannering and the county—nothing would be easier.
The only thing that stood in the way was that the Squire's secretary happened to be a nice woman—and not an adventuress. Elizabeth's sense of humour showed her the kind of lurid drama that Pamela no doubt was concocting about her—perhaps with the help of Beryl—the two little innocents! Elizabeth recalled the intriguing French 'companion' in War and Peace who inveigles the old Squire. And as for the mean and mercenary stepmothers of fiction, they can be collected by the score. That, no doubt, was how Pamela thought of her. So that, after her involuntary tears, Elizabeth ended in a laughter that was half angry, half affectionate.
Poor children! She was not going to turn them out of their home. She had written to Pamela during her absence with her mother, asking again for an explanation of the wild and whirling things that Pamela had said to her that night in the hall, and in return not a single frank or penitent word!—only a few perfunctory enquiries after Mrs. Bremerton, and half a page about an air-raid. It left Elizabeth sorer and more puzzled than before.
Desmond too! She had written to him also from London a long chat about all the things he cared about at Mannering—the animals, Pamela's pony, the old keeper, the few pheasants still left in the woods, and what Perley said of the promise of a fair partridge season. And the boy had replied immediately. Desmond's Eton manners were rarely caught napping; but the polite little note—stiff and frosty—might have been written to a complete stranger.
What was in their minds? How could she put it right? Well, anyhow, Desmond could not at that moment be wasting time or thought on home worries, or her own supposed misdemeanours. Where was the radiant boy now? In some artillery camp, she supposed, behind the lines, waiting for his ordeal of blood and fire. Waiting with the whole Army—the whole Empire—for that leap of the German monster which must be met and parried and struck down before England could breathe again. And as she thought of him, her woman's soul, winged by its passion of patriotism, seemed to pass out into the night across the sea, till it stood beside the English hosts.
'Forces and Powers of the Universe, be with them!—strengthen the strong, uphold the weak, comfort the dying!—for in them lies the hope of the world.'
Her life hung on the prayer. The irresponsive quiet of the night over the Mannering woods and park, with nothing but the wind for voice, seemed to her unbearable. And it only answered to the apathy within doors. Why, the Squire had scarcely mentioned the war since her return! Neither he nor Mrs. Gaddesden had asked her for an evening paper, though there had been a bad London raid the night before. She had seen a letter 'on active service,' and addressed, she thought, in Desmond's handwriting, lying on the library table; and it seemed to her there was a French ordnance map near it. But in answer to her enquiries about the boy, the Squire had vouchsafed only a few irritable words, 'Well—he's not killed yet! The devil's business over there seems to be working up to a greater hell than ever!' Nothing more.
Well, she would see to that! Mannering should feel the war, if she were to live in it. She straightened her shoulders, her will stiffening to its task.
Yes, and while that dear boy was out there, in that grim fighting line, no action of hers, if she could help it, should cause him a moment's anger or trouble. Her resolution was taken. If the Squire did mean to ask her to marry him she would try and stop him in mid-career. If she couldn't stop him, well, then, she would give him his choice—either to keep her, as secretary and friend, and hold his peace, or to lose her. She felt certain of her power to contain the Squire's 'offensive,' if it were really threatened.
But, on the other hand, she was not going to give up her post because the twins had taken some unjust prejudice against her! Nothing of the kind. She had those ash trees to look after! She was tolerably sure that a thorough search would comb out a good many more for the Air Board from the Squire's woods than had yet been discovered. The Fallerton hospital wanted more accommodation. There was an empty house belonging to the Squire, which she had already begun, before her absence, with his grudging permission, to get ready for the purpose. That had to be finished. The war workroom in the village, which she had started, must have another Superintendent, the first having turned out a useless chatterbox. Elizabeth had her successor already in mind. There were three or four applications waiting for the two other neglected farms. Captain Dell was hurrying on the repairs; but there was more money wanted—she must get it out of the Squire. Then as to labour—German prisoners?—or women?
Her brain began to teem with a score of projects. But after lying awake another hour, she pulled herself up. 'This won't do. I must have six hours' sleep.' And she resolutely set herself to repeat one of the nursery poems of her childhood, till, wooed by its silly monotony, sleep came.
It was a bright March day in the Mannering woods, where the Squire, Elizabeth, and Captain Dell were hanging about waiting for Sir Henry Chicksands. The astonishing warmth and sunshine of the month had brought out a shimmer of spring everywhere, reddened the great heads of the oaks, and set the sycamore buds shining like jewels in the pale blue. There was an endless chatter and whirr of wood-pigeons in the high tree-tops, and underfoot the anemones and violets were busy pushing their gentle way through the dead leaves of autumn. The Squire's beechwoods were famous in the neighbourhood, and he was still proud of them; though for many years past they had gone unnoticed to decay, and were in some places badly diseased.
To Elizabeth, in an artistic mood—the mood which took her in town to see exhibitions of Brabazon or Steer—the woods were fairyland. The high slender oak of the middle wood, the spreading oak that lived on its borders, the tall columnar beech feathering into the sky, its grey stem shining as though by some magic property in the beautiful forest twilight—the gleams and the shadows, the sounds and scents of the woodland world—she could talk or write about these things as poetically, and as sincerely, as any other educated person when put to it; but on this occasion, it has to be said frankly, she was thinking of nothing but aeroplanes and artillery waggons. And she had by now developed a kind of flair in the woods, which was the astonishment of Captain Dell, himself no mean forester. As far as ash was concerned, she was a hunter on the trail. She could distinguish an ash tree yards ahead through a mixed or tangled wood, and track it unerringly. The thousand ash that she, and the old park-keepers set on by her, had already found for the Government, were nothing to what she meant to find. The Squire's woods, some of which she had not yet explored at all, were as mines to her in which she dug for treasure—for the timber that might save her country.
Captain Dell delighted in her. He had already taught her a great deal, and was now drilling her in the skilled arts of measurement and valuation. The Squire, in stupefaction, watched her at work with pole and tape, measuring, noting, comparing. Had it been any one else he would have been bored and contemptuous. But the novelty of the thing and the curious fact that the lady who looked up his Greek references was also the lady who was measuring the trees, kept him a half-unwilling but still fascinated spectator of her proceedings.
In the midst of them Sir Henry Chicksands appeared, making his way through the thick undergrowth. Elizabeth threw a hasty look at the Squire. This was the first time the two neighbours had met since the quarrel. The Squire had actually written first—and to please her. Very touching, and very embarrassing! She hoped for the best.
Sir Henry Chicksands advanced as though nothing had happened—solid, ruddy, benevolent, and well dressed, as usual.
He bowed with marked deference to Elizabeth, and then offered a hand to the Squire, which was limply accepted.
'Well, Mannering, very glad to see you. Like every one else, you seem to be selling your woods.'
'Under threat of being shot if I don't!' said the Squire grimly.
'What? They're commandeered?'
'The Government spies are all about. I preferred to anticipate them. Well, what about your ploughed-up grass-lands, Chicksands? I hear they are full of wire-worms, and the crops a very poor show.'
'Ah, it was an enemy said that,' laughed Sir Henry, submitting with a good grace to some more remarks of the same kind, and escaping from them as soon as he could.
'I heard of your haul of ash,' he said. 'A man in the Air Board told me. Magnificent!'
'You may thank her.' The Squire indicated his secretary. 'I knew nothing about it.'
'And you're still hunting?' Sir Henry turned to Elizabeth. 'May I join your walk if you're going through the woods?' Captain Dell was introduced. 'You want my opinion on your deal? Well, I'm an old forester, and I'll give it you with pleasure. I used to shoot here, year after year, with the Squire, in our young days—isn't that so, Mannering? I know this bit of country by heart, and I think I could help you to bag a few more ash.'
Elizabeth's blue eyes appealed with all proper deference to the Squire.
'Won't you come?'
He shook his head.
'I'm tired of timber. Do what you like. I'll sit here and read till you come back.'
Sir Henry's shrug was perceptible, but he held his peace, and the three walked away. The Squire, finding a seat on a fallen tree, took a book out of his pocket and pretended to read it.
'Nobody can be as important as Chicksands looks!' he said to himself angrily. Even the smiling manner which ignored their six months' quarrel had annoyed him hugely. It was a piece of condescension—an impertinence. Oh, of course Chicksands was the popular man, the greatest power in the county, looked up to, and listened to by everybody. The Squire knew very well that he himself was ostracized, even hated; that there had been general chuckling in the neighbourhood over his rough handling by the County Committee, and that it would please a good many people to see all his woods commandeered and 'cut clean.'
Six months before, his inborn pugnacity would only have amused itself with the situation. He was a rebel and a litigant by nature. Smooth waters had never attracted him.
Yet now—though he would never have admitted it—he was often conscious of a flagging will and a depressed spirit. The loneliness of his life, due entirely to himself, had, during Elizabeth Bremerton's absence, begun sharply to find him out. He had no true fatherly relation with any of his children. Desmond loved him—why, he didn't know. He didn't believe any of the others cared anything at all about him. Why should they?
The Squire's eyes followed the three distant walkers, Elizabeth, graceful and vigorous, between the other two. And the conviction gripped him that all the pleasure, the liveableness of life—such as still remained possible—depended for him on that central figure. He looked back on his existence before her arrival at Mannering, and on what it had been since. Why, she had transformed it!
How could he cage and keep her?—the clever, gracious creature! For the first time in his life he was desperately, tremulously humble. He placed no dependence at all on his name or his possessions. Elizabeth was not to be bought.
But management—power—for the things she believed in—they might tempt her. He would give them to her with both hands, if only she would settle down beside him, take a freehold of that chair and table in the library, for life!
He looked back gloomily to his clumsy proposal about her mother, and to her remarks about Pamela. It would be indeed intolerable if his children got in his way! The very notion put him in a fever.
If that tiresome fellow, Dell, had not interrupted them the night before, what would have happened?
He had all the consciousness of a man still in the prime of life, in spite of his white hair; for he had married at twenty-one, and had never—since they grew up—seemed to himself very much older than his elder children. He had but a very dim memory of his wife. Sometimes he felt as if, notwithstanding the heat of boyish passion which had led him to marry her, he had never really known her. There were moments when he had an uncomfortable suspicion that for some years before her death she had silently but irrevocably passed judgment upon him, and had withdrawn her inner life from him. Friends of hers had written to him after her death of beautiful traits and qualities in her of which he himself had known nothing. In any case they were not traits and qualities which appealed in the long run to a man of his pursuits and temperament. He was told that Pamela had inherited some of them.
A light rustling sound in the wood. He looked up to see Elizabeth coming back towards him unaccompanied. Captain Dell and Sir Henry seemed to have left her.
A thrill of excitement ran through him. They were alone in the depths of the spring woodland. What better opportunity would he ever have?