It was a few days later that Mr. Fothersley, as was his frequent custom, emerged from his front door at eleven o’clock, on his way to the post. In his left hand he carried a sheaf of letters for the twelve o’clock post out. As he often said, it made “an object for his morning stroll.” Not that Mr. Fothersley ever really strolled. It would have been a physical impossibility. His little plump legs always trotted. They trotted now along the immaculate gravel drive which curved between two wide strips of smooth mown sward. On the right hand the grass merged into a magnificent grove of beech-trees, on the left it was fenced by a neat iron railing, dividing it from what the house agent describes as finely timbered park-land. Behind him, with all its sun-blinds down, the grey old house slept serenely in the sunshine. The parterres were brilliant with calceolaria, geranium, and heliotrope. Mr. Fothersley rather prided himself on an early Victorian taste in gardening, and his herbaceous borders, very lovely though they were, dwelt in the kitchen garden region.
Leigh Manor had belonged to Mr. Fothersley from the day of his birth, which occurred two months after the death of his father. That gentleman had married late in life for the sole and avowed purpose of providing his estate with an heir, of which purpose his son most cordially approved. At the same time he had never seen his way to go so far himself. The Fothersleys were not a marrying family. His mother, a colourless person, of irreproachable lineage, and a view of life which contemplated only two aspects, the comfortable and the uncomfortable, had lived long enough to see him well into the forties, by which time he was as skillful as she had been in the management of an establishment. Everything continued to run in the same perfect order, and Mr. Fothersley felt no more inclined than during her lifetime to disturb the smooth current of his pleasant life by embarking on the very uncertain adventure of matrimony. On this particular morning he paused outside his own gate to look at the view—almost the same view that was obtainable from the “house on the wall” at Thorpe Farm. Ever since he was a small child, Mr. Fothersley could remember taking visitors to see “our view,” and he had, at an early age, esteemed it unfortunate that none so good was to be obtained from the grounds of Leigh Manor. He looked out over the quiet scene. The great beautiful valley, with the suggestion only of the sea beyond, the dotted farmsteads, with here and there some noble old mansion like his own secluded among its trees, and, at his feet, little Mentmore village, with its grey church tower, half hidden in the hollow. It was typical of all he held most dearly. A symbol of the well-ordered ease and superiority of his position, of the things which were indeed, though unconsciously, Mr. Fothersley’s religion.
In the grey church his forbears had, like himself, sat with their peers, in the front pews, while their dependents had herded discreetly at the back behind the pillars. In these eminently picturesque cottages, of two or three rooms, dwelt families who, he had always taken more or less for granted, regarded him and his with a mixture of respect and reverence, just touched—only touched—with awe. On the whole most worthy and respectable people. Mr. Fothersley was generous to them out of his superabundance. He was indeed attached to them; and although Mr. Fothersley prided himself on moving with the times, it was plain that any alteration in the admirable state of things existing in Mentmore would not only be a mistake, but absolutely wrong.
Therefore, on this fine June morning, Mr. Fothersley was perturbed. The knowledge that Mr. Pithey dwelt in the noble grey stone house on the opposite hill, in the place of his old friend, Helford Rose, spoilt “his view” for him. And, for the first time, too, one of Ruth Seer’s new cottages had become visible just below his own pasture fields. The workmen were putting on the roof. It was to Mr. Fothersley an unseemly sight in Mentmore. Ruth had done her best, she had spent both time and money in securing material that would not spoil the harmony or character of the little village, but as Mr. Fothersley had said, it was the thin end of the wedge.
What was to prevent Mr. Pithey from scattering some horrible epidemic of hideous utilitarian domiciles broadcast over his wide estate? Mr. Fothersley shuddered, and remembered with thankfulness that they were not at present a paying proposition.
Still, he wished Miss Seer had not these queer manias. Not that he disliked her—far from it. Indeed, the little basket of his special early strawberries, poised in his right hand, was on its way to her. And he had even traced a distant cousinship with her on the Courthope side. Since what was now familiarly known in his set as the Pithian Invasion he considered her a distinct asset at Thorpe.
“I would not have had old Dick’s place vulgarized for a good deal,” he said to himself as he descended the hill. “And I know even he did talk of building some cottages before the war, poor dear fellow.”
All the same, he did not feel in his usual spirits, and presently, to add to his discomfort, he passed the local sweep, window cleaner, and generally handy man, who, instead of touching his hat as of old, nodded a cheery, “Good-morning, Mr. Fothersley! Nice weather,” to him.
Mr. Fothersley did not like it. Most distinctly it annoyed him! It had been one thing to go and see Mankelow when he was wounded, and a patient in the local V.A.D., and make a considerable fuss over him, but that, as Mr. Pithey was fond of saying, “was different.” It was decidedly presuming on it for Mankelow to treat him in that “Hail fellow, well met” way.
This brought to Mr. Fothersley’s mind the threatening strikes among the miners, transport workers, and what Mr. Fothersley vaguely designated as “those sort of people.” He wondered what would happen if all the sweeps went on strike. It was a most dangerous thing to light fires with a large accumulation of soot up the chimney—most dangerous.