Peter’s wife possessed all the town-dweller’s illusions about living in “the country”: one took a “little place”—and banished care automatically; one’s servants smiled and sang about their deft work; one’s garden grew by itself (“the man does everything, my dear”), provided vegetables, eggs, fruit and flowers as a department-store provides groceries; while one wandered about in a floppy hat with a pair of scissors, or went for long walks in green lanes where one met the most attractive people—the Squire, the sporting parson, peasant women who curtsied and farmers’ boys who touched their hats. And in this paradise—chiefly owing to the honesty of the country-folk as compared with the rascality of town—one spent literally nothing at all!
Strong in that last belief, Patricia came like a godsend to the hungry village of Arlsfield: and Arlsfield robbed her as the country mouse robs the town mouse—with effective simplicity. Roger Fry the gardener,—a hulking fellow with a sly smile—acted principal go-between. “The Grounds,” said Roger Fry, “needed a lot of seeing to.” Patricia agreed. Roger Fry saw to them: he made her a sunk lawn at the foot of the paddock, near the walnut tree—and pouched a week’s extra wages over the price of turf; he regravelled the “drive” and extracted 5/-a load commission from the gravel-supplier; he re-fenced the orchard—on the same financial basis.
Then she desired chickens—and Roger Fry found them for her, (“ten and sixpence each, Madam, and the best little lot I’ve seen for a long time”). Also, Roger Fry arranged with a friend of his for the supply of chicken-corn—and by a judicious admixture of maize contrived to keep the four-year-old birds in lay for nearly six weeks.
Grocer, greengrocer (she had arrived too late to plant her summer vegetables), butcher and baker, ironmonger and laundrywoman—all joined the league of plunder: keeping back their accounts till such time as memory would find it impossible to check them.
Still it was a joyous conspiracy, a conspiracy of smiles and “Thank you, Madams”—and, at the outset, none of the conspirators enjoyed it half so much as their victim.
For nearly two months Patricia was happy as husbandless woman can be. She had her disappointments, of course: the servants who made her long for the efficient Smith of Lowndes Square days, the Vicar’s oleaginous questing after charity subscriptions, the persistence of callers when she wanted to be by herself: but these were very minor flies in the ointment of a sunlit existence. . . .
She began the re-education of her children; finding them hopelessly backward in everything except parrot-knowledge. She gossiped with old man Tebbits, who sold her a piglet at the exact market-price of the day, provided her with milk and butter; but kept shut mouth about the delinquencies of “the Arlsfielders.” She entertained her father for a week-end, and her brother Jack—still only a Gunner Captain and rather disgruntled at having been transferred to a Kitchener battery—for half his leave. She superintended Fry’s greasing and oiling of the Crossley, which the Standard Oil Company’s price for petrol had put out of commission till “after the war”; and explored the country afoot.
She got up at seven and went to bed at ten, living every minute of the fifteen wonderful hours.
Towards the end of August, Francis Gordon arrived to stay for a week, while Prout engaged what he called a “female,” and got Glen Cottage ready for occupation. Patricia had not seen her cousin for two months; and the first sight of him, stepping carefully down from the hired trap, shocked her. It was not his physical infirmities she noticed at that first meeting, but his face. She remembered him a smooth-faced boy, she saw him now a middle-aged man. His hair had grayed at the temples; his eyes had lost their laughter. He walked easily enough, using only one stick; but he no longer held himself upright; his shoulders drooped as though he carried a burden on them.
She led him to a deep chair in the hall; brought him tea; began to question him.