“Probably not. Lalage isn’t the sort of girl who is dependent for her happiness on the accident of outward circumstance. You know, Canon, that our surroundings are not the things which really matter most. The philosophic mind——”
I had unthinkingly given the Canon his opportunity. I could see a well-known quotation actually trembling on his lips. I stopped him ruthlessly.
“I know that ode,” I said. “It’s one I learned at school, but it doesn’t apply to Lalage. She isn’t in the least content with things as she finds them. That’s her great charm. She’s more like Milton’s Satan.”
I can quote too, though only English poets, unless after special preparation beforehand. I intended to shoot off some lines out of “Paradise Lost” at the Canon, but he would not listen. He may not have liked the comparison suggested.
“I have to be off,” he said. “Lalage is waiting to hear what your mother has settled. I mustn’t keep her too long.”
“Did you tell her you were coming up here for advice?”
“Of course I did. She quite agreed with me that it was the best thing to do. She always says that your mother is the only person she knows who has any sense. Miss Battersby’s sudden resignation was rather a shock to her. She was in a curiously chastened mood this morning.”
“She’ll get over that all right,” I said. “She’ll be bringing out another number of the Anti-Cat in a couple of days.”
I spent two hours after the Canon left me watching the building of a new lodge at my back gate. My mother professes to believe that work of this kind, indeed of any kind, is better done if I go and look at it. In reality I think she is anxious to provide me with some sort of occupation and to interest me in the management of such property as recent legislation has left to an Irish landlord. But she may be right in supposing that the builders build better when I am watching them. They certainly build less rapidly. The foreman is a pleasant fellow, with a store of interesting anecdotes. I give him tobacco in some form and he narrates his experiences. The other workmen listen and grin appreciatively. Thus a certain sedateness of progress is ensured and all danger of hasty building, which is, I understand, called jerry building, is avoided.
At five o’clock, after I had heard some twenty or thirty stories and the builders had placed in position about the same number of stones, I went home in search of afternoon tea. My mother was in the drawing-room, and Miss Battersby was with her. She too, had come to ask advice. I am sure she needed it, poor woman. What she said about Lalage I do not know, for the subject was dropped when I entered the room, but Miss Battersby’s position evidently commanded my mother’s sympathy. Shortly after leaving the rectory she was established, on my mother’s recommendation, in Thormanby Park. Lord Thormanby, who is my uncle, has three daughters, all of them nice, well-disposed girls, not the least like Lalage. Miss Battersby got on well with them, taught them everything which well-educated girls in their position ought to know. She finally settled down as a sort of private secretary to Lord Thormanby. He needed some one of the sort, for as he grew older he became more and more addicted to public business. He is at present about sixty-five. If he lives to be seventy and goes on as he is going, Miss Battersby will have to retire in favour of some one who can write shorthand and manipulate a typewriter. She will then, I have no doubt, play a blameless part in life by settling flowers for Lady Thormanby. But all this is still a long way off.