"How did you think he knew, then, that the men had been paid off? You haven't done my poor old Edmund quite justice, you know, Eleanor—but I don't want to begin on that again. He was naturally upset at hearing of it first from Coombe, and yet he was going to wire to William. In fact, he was going to climb down."
Lady Eldridge passed this by with a slight contraction of the brows. "What prevented him from writing?" she asked.
"Oh, I haven't told you that. The labourers who had been dismissed came to him, and said they wouldn't go on working under Coombe. I'm afraid William will have to get rid of that man, Eleanor. The way he has behaved is perfectly outrageous. In fact, but for him, the garden might have been half finished by this time."
There was a moment's pause. Then Lady Eldridge said: "This is something quite new again. You must tell me everything, please, Cynthia."
"I don't know that there's much more to tell, dear. Coombe quite obviously came to Edmund to crow over him, though of course he pretended to be respectful. But when Edmund told him that there had been a mistake and that the work was to go on, he said he had had his orders and must abide by them. So what else could he have come for?"
"What did he say he had come for? I'm not defending him, but this is serious. I want to know exactly what happened."
"Oh, he pretended that the men who had been dismissed might make a disturbance in the village. So ridiculous! Two of them are Edmund's own tenants, and the other two are most respectable men, and one of them is a teetotaller. Edmund says he has seldom had work better done than they are doing it now."
"I wish William were here. Coombe has never given us any cause for dissatisfaction, and this is quite a new light on him."
"And afterwards it came out that he had spoken in the most impertinent way about Edmund to these very men; so much so, that old Jackson wouldn't put up with it, and all of them would have refused to go on working under him if he had been told to go on—by William, I mean, for he had been told to go on by Edmund and had refused to do so. The fact is, I suppose he had got into a mess with his men, and thought he could shift the blame on to Edmund. You see, dear,—take it all round—it was really impossible that the work should be taken up again. Still, I quite hope that it may be, later, and be finished in time for the autumn planting. There isn't any violent hurry, is there?"