"She's a bit wandery in her mind, sir," said the nurse. "Don't pay any attention to what she's a saying. She's mistook your name. Several times since the baby was born she's seemed to be talking with a John, but it was you she was a thinkin' about, I'll be bound. She wants keeping very quiet...."
Once Captain Brentham took up the affairs of the Silchester estates—which he did definitely in October, 1889, he went very thoroughly into their condition and their possibilities of development. He was not, of course, a trained, professional land agent, which was why his shrewd and original ideas of enhancing the value and productivity of land made the Institute of Land Agents so angry. But he knew something of surveying, and had been accustomed to value countries by the eye, to judge of soils, espy defects in farming, by his boyish life at Farleigh and his experiences in India and Africa.
Lord Silchester in his fondness for landscape beauty had preferred a lovely, unkempt, autumn-wistful wilderness to a possible brick-field, though to a geologist the clay was almost crying out to be turned to the service of man. He liked great spaces without a sign of man's habitation to mar the poem. Roger, though he had a strongly developed sense of the beautiful in Nature, yet combined with it a realization that much waste land in the England of latter days, and even in Scotland, is an offence and a temptation to discontent on the part of the landless. Another charm can be contributed to landscapes by the handiwork of man, provided the cottage is tastefully and soundly built, the manufactory—even the brick-kilns and chimneys—are of the right material for the neighbourhood, of harmonious colour and appropriate design.
In the Berkshire and Hampshire estates woodlands required thinning, cattle wanted new blood and better breeding. The lobster fishery at Sporran Bay should certainly be developed. A proportion of the deer in Scotland and at Engledene might with advantage be sold. The farmer tenants generally wanted shaking up. Some of them could well afford to pay twice their present rent and let him out of the increased rent-roll rebuild their houses, barns, granaries, pigsties and cow-sheds. Why, the dairy business alone might be trebled in value with this proximity of a milk-hungry London. Farmer Josling, a right-down superior man with much self-given education, should help him in this. Incidentally, with Sibyl's consent, he had given his father-in-law a life-lease of his farm as some acknowledgment of his excellent use of it, and his progressive influence on the other farmers.
The bracing outdoor life and constant riding, the hunting and shooting did his health a world of good. He had never looked so well, so set up and robust as he did at the age of thirty-two, as Sibyl's factotum. The worst of this was that he seemed more desirable than ever in Sibyl's eyes, as she admitted with her disarming frankness. "What a pity it is, Roger, the silly laws of this sanctimonious country will not permit polygamy. We are just in the prime of life, you and I. I am much better looking than I was ten years ago—I shudder at my old photographs—I wore a fringe then and a bustle, and a lot of hair down my back, and a terrible simper when I faced the camera. It's a crime against Nature that we can't marry. We should have the handsomest children and we could easily arrange matters with Lucy. She's not exacting."
Roger laughed at these speeches, but they made him a little uncomfortable. Had Sibyl been a complete stranger to him he might have succumbed long before to her wiles; few men of his build, his time, his complexion were Josephs. But the slight relationship between them acted as a barrier to concupiscence. It permitted a familiarity in speech and address which made any closer intimacy repellent to his sense of decency....
Sibyl it must be admitted, was shameless when they were together. She would study his features attentively; admire the curl of his eyelashes, the outline of his profile, even the not quite classical prominence of the cheek bones, the virile twist upwards of his moustache, the firm chin and strong white teeth, the well-set ear and close-cropped hair at the back of his head: the while she pretended, pen in hand, to be considering his propositions. Thought-transference told him what this scrutiny meant, and he would colour a little in shame and become abrupt in manner—even say to himself, "This can't go on—I wish she'd think of something else...."
He was conscientiously attentive to Lucy at this time and she was really happy during this phase in Roger's life. In the spring she took up her residence in the Lodge at Englefield and made a comfortable home for her devoted husband, who seemed resolved to show her how happy he was in his marriage. Maud, from Farleigh, was a constant visitor, stayed weeks together with Lucy and Roger and served as a trait d'union with Sibyl, who allowed Maud to chaff her and scold her as she would no one else. Sibyl was quite civil to Lucy, did not bother her, left her alone except for an occasional greeting and the showing of some curiosity as to little John. "You may call him John as much as you like, but he's certainly Roger's child."
Clithy and his nurse were often sent down to the Lodge to be with Lucy; Sibyl deigning to say that her influence over children was a good one and Clithy was never fretful with her. In her mocking moods she called her little son "The Prince with the Nose" and declared he was under an enchantment. He had for a child of three a preternaturally large nose, and as she said to Roger, there could be no doubt as to his paternity. "How pleased Francis would have been! He was always so proud of the Mallard nose. Said it could be traced back in pictures to Charles I's reign—Anne of Denmark, who was rather larky after she had been married ten years, had a side-slip—you know what a tipsy court they were!—and bore a daughter to the Lord Chamberlain, who was particularly active in the revels. James overlooked her breach of good manners and ultimately gave the large-nosed little girl in marriage with Silchester Manor to a favourite, who founded the House of Mallard. Francis was going to have put this into his Memoirs, but he died, poor dear, leaving them three-quarters finished. I think I shall finish them for a lark. Will you help me?"
One reason why Lucy was dreamily happy at Englefield Lodge was that she seemed there to link up with the life of her girlhood. She had so often strolled round the precincts of Engledene with John Tilehurst, she dared not revisit for fear of meeting Mrs. Barnes. But she would sometimes walk over the same path she had traced with John on that Sunday in June, 1886. She would sit on the seat at The View and go over once more in memory, and with a sad little smile her naïve and petulant questions and answers on that Sunday walk. How she had told John her desire to encounter lions, and yet when a lion had visited their camp, what abject terror she had shown! Hangodi! That name was first uttered to her in Engledene Park and she remembered John saying it meant "The Place of Firewood."