"We have just returned from our visit to Wellsbury, and fortunately Henry Vincent was staying there. I had a talk with him about the principle of the thing, and I think I may say that I put the right idea into his head, and that he will act on it generally. I told him that there was a personal application of it which I wouldn't trouble him with, and he told me the right man to go to, and said that I could say he had done so. I shall follow it up to-morrow, and I hope everything will be satisfactorily arranged. It is fortunate that I was able to talk it over with Vincent. I had never happened to meet him before, and it didn't do me any harm to come first into contact with him at Wellsbury."
That was that. Edmund would be pleased at the probability of this tiresome affair being settled, and perhaps impressed with the ease with which such settlements were arranged, when it was possible to approach the well-guarded head of a Department on equal terms.
And now for the other matter! which should be dealt with shortly but decisively, and cleared out of the way altogether as a source of complaint.
He considered it for a time. He was sincere in his desire to act generously in face of an unreasonable attack. But the offence was really considerable, pointed as it was by that disagreeable charge of vulgarity, and it was of no use to pretend it wasn't there. He would give way; but with a gesture. The gesture would be that it was not worth while bothering about so small an affair, which could best be expressed in a few lines. Edmund was not to suppose that he had given him annoyance; the annoyance was past—or nearly so. He clung to the idea of terseness, but lest it should be misunderstood, the atmosphere of friendliness might perhaps best be indicated by something more intimate coming before it.
So he added a paragraph or two about the visit to Wellsbury, the magnificence of the house, and the illustriousness of the party gathered there. There was something also about Lord Chippenham in his private relations. "I had worked with him for nearly four years," he wrote, "without really knowing him intimately. He is extraordinary in the way he keeps his public and private lives apart, and one feels it an honour, even after all this time, to have been accepted on terms of personal friendship with him."
The kernel of the letter immediately followed.
"I am sorry that I inadvertently went against your wishes in the matter of Barton's Close. I didn't understand you actually withheld your consent to the garden-making, or of course I should not have set it in hand. I have wired to Coombe to stop the work."
That was terse enough. The only thing was that it might settle it too completely. He didn't want to give up his garden if it could be avoided. Edmund ought not to be discouraged from asking that the work should go on, though he would not write anything to show that that was in his mind. He went on:
"I was rather keen on this addition to the garden, and think it would have improved the property, if anything. But where Hayslope is concerned, my chief desire is to work in with your ideas, even where they differ from mine."
Would Edmund recognize this note of large generosity? It was to be hoped so—and give way.