Three days afterwards he was shot through the head, when carrying despatches, and died instantly.
Cicely was summoned home. Lady Selina met her upon the threshold of the great hall. Stimson hurried away, leaving mother and daughter alone. Outwardly, Lady Selina remained calm. To Cicely she seemed to have become suddenly an old woman. Her face was white and lined, but she held her head erect. Her voice never faltered. When Cicely gripped her convulsively, she took the girl’s face between her hands and gazed at it mournfully.
“I want you, child; I want you—desperately.”
CHAPTER VI
GRIMSHAW RETURNS
I
Great events took place during this summer of 1915. Italy joined the Allies; and the Hun advance was stopped. Once again wise men said that the war was coming to an end; and wiser than they contended stubbornly that it wasn’t. Cicely remained at the Manor with Lady Selina. After the first fortnight, they went for a month to Danecourt Abbey, where they listened, not without impatience on Cicely’s part, to long jeremiads from Lord Saltaire, who predicted the end of the world, and quoted the Book of Revelation to prove that the All-Highest was the Beast. Expenses at the Abbey had indeed been reduced to the minimum. The family butler, accustomed to three tall footmen, whose places were filled by one boy, gave notice. He had been with Lord Saltaire for many years.
“Why are you leaving me?” asked his master, fretfully.
“Because, my lord, if you will be good enough to pardon the expression, I can’t stick it any longer.”
Lord Saltaire, as he confessed afterwards, was stupefied into silence. The butler departed.
Cicely told herself that she, too, couldn’t stay on beyond the appointed month. She beheld her uncle’s domains with uneasy eyes, sharpened to critical detachment after six months at Wilverley. The same obsolete system of estate management that howled for reform at Upworthy was even more vocal at Danecourt. But Lady Selina, like her brother, remained blind and deaf to signs and sounds that ate ravagingly into Cicely’s sensibilities. Wages all over the vast property remained low, although prices had risen. Old men in the gardens and stables followed the butler into a more generous world, because they were unable to “stick it.” Farmers were waxing fat and prosperous, whilst their labourers were sweated. Spurred to speech, Cicely said one day to her mother: