'I am glad,' she repeated steadily, 'very glad—especially—for Mr. Desmond.'

'Oh, Desmond!' the Squire threw out impatiently, beginning again to walk up and down.

'He would have minded so dreadfully,' she said, still in a lower key. 'It was really him I was thinking of. Of course I had no right to interfere with your affairs—'

The Squire turned, the tyrant in him reviving fast.

'Well, you did interfere—and to some purpose! Now then—yes or no—is your notice withdrawn?'

Elizabeth hesitated.

'I would willingly stay with you,' she said, 'if—'

'If what?'

She looked up with a sudden flash of laughter.

'If we can really get on!'

'Name your terms!' He returned, frowning and excited, to the neighbourhood of the Roman emperor.

'Oh no—I have no terms,' she said hurriedly. 'Only—if you ask me to help you with the land, I should want to obey the Government—and—and do the best for the war.'

'Condition No. 1,' said the Squire grimly, checking it off. 'Go on!'

'And—I should—perhaps—beg you to let Pamela do some V.A.D. work, if she wants to.'

'Pamela is your affair!' said the Squire impatiently. 'If you stay here, you are her chaperon, and, for the present, head of the household.'

'Only just for the present—till Pamela can do it!' put in Elizabeth hastily. 'But she's nineteen—she ought to take a part.'

'Well, don't bother me about that. You are responsible. I wash my hands of her. Anything else?'

It did not do to think of Pamela's feelings, should she ever become aware of how she was being handed over. But the mention of her, on a sudden impulse, had been pure sympathy on Elizabeth's part; a wish to strike on the girl's behalf while the iron was so very hot. She looked up quietly.

'No, indeed there is nothing else—except indeed—that you won't expect me to hide what I feel about the war—and the little we at home can do to help—'

Her voice failed a little. The Squire said nothing. She went on, with a clearing countenance.

'So—if you really wish it—I will stay, Mr. Mannering—and try to help you all I can. It was splendid of you—to give up your plans. I'm sure you won't regret it.'

'I'm not sure at all—but it's done. Now, then, let us understand. You take over my estate correspondence. You'll want a clerk—I'll find one. You can appoint a new agent if you like. You can do what you like, in fact. I was never meant to be a landowner, and I hate the whole business. You can harry the farmers as you please—I shan't interfere.'

'Allow me to point out,' said Elizabeth firmly, 'that at college I was not trained in land-agency—but in Greek!'

'What does that matter? If women can build Dreadnoughts, as they say they can, they can manage estates. Now, then, as to my conditions. Do what you like—but my book and the catalogue come first!' He looked at her with an exacting eye.

'Certainly,' said Elizabeth.

'But I know what you'll do—you'll go and break down! You are not to break down.'

'Certainly!' said Elizabeth.

'But you have once broken down.'

Her start was perceptible, but she answered quietly.

'I was ill a year ago—partly from overwork. But I am normally quite strong.'

The Squire observed her. It was very pleasant to him to see her sitting there, in her trim serge dress, with its broad white collar and cuffs—the sheen of her hair against the dark wall—her shapely hands ready for work upon his table. He felt as if he had with enormous difficulty captured—recaptured—something of exceptional value; like one of those women 'skilled in beautiful arts' whom the Greek slave-raiders used to carry off from a conquered city, and sell for large sums to the wives of wealthy Greek chieftains. Till now he had scarcely thought of her as a woman, but rather as a fine-edged but most serviceable tool which he had had the extraordinary good luck to find. Now, with his mere selfish feeling of relief there mingled something rather warmer and more human. If only she would stay, he would honestly try and make life agreeable to her.

'Well now, that's settled,' he said, drawing a long breath—'Oh—except one thing—you will of course want a larger salary?'

'Not at all,' said Elizabeth decidedly. 'You pay me quite enough.'

'You are not offended with me for asking?' His tone had become astonishingly deferential.

'Not the least. I am a business woman. If I thought myself entitled to more I should say so. But it is extremely doubtful whether I can really be of any use whatever to you.'

'All right,' said the Squire, returning to his own table. 'Now, then, let us go on with No. 190.'

'Is it necessary now to put in—well, quite so much about Penelope?' asked Elizabeth, as she took up her pen.

'What do you think?'

'It seems a little long and dragged in.' Elizabeth looked critically at the paragraph.

'And we have now unravelled the web?—we can do without her? Yes—let her go!' said the Squire, in a tone of excessive complaisance.

* * * * *

When the morning's work was done, and luncheon over, Elizabeth carried off Pamela to her room. When Pamela emerged, she went in search of Forest, interviewed him in the gun-room, and then shutting herself up in the 'den' she wrote to Desmond.

'MY DEAR DEZZY—There are such queer things going on in this queer house! Yesterday Broomie gave warning, and father barricaded the park gates, and was perfectly mad, and determined not to listen to anybody. In the middle of the night he and Forest took the barricade down, and to-day, Broomie is to be not only secretary, but land-agent, and anything else she pleases—queen, in fact, of all she surveys—including me. But I am bound to say she had been very decent to me over it all. She wants me to do some of the housekeeping—and she has actually made father consent to my helping at the hospital every afternoon. Of course I am awfully glad about that. I shall bicycle over.

'But all the same it is very odd, and perhaps you and I had better consider what it may mean. I know from Broomie herself that she gave notice yesterday—and now she is going to stay. And I know from Forest that father called him up when it was quite dark, between three and four in the morning—Mrs. Forest thought the Germans had come when she heard the knocking—and asked him to come with him and undo the gates. Forest told me that he would have had nothing whatever to do with closing them, nor with anything 'agin the Government! He's a staunch old soul, is Forest. So when father told him what he wanted, he didn't know what to make of it. However, they both groped their way through the fog, which was thick on the other side of the park, and set to at the gates. Forest says it was an awful business to get everything cleared away. Father and Gregson had made an uncommonly good job of it. If Gregson had put in work like that on his own hedges and gates, Forest says he mightn't have been kicked out! It took them ages getting the barbed wire cleared away, because they hadn't any proper nippers. Father took off his coat, and worked like a navvy, and Forest hoisted him up to get at the wire along the wall. Forest says he was determined to leave nothing! "And I believe, Miss, the Squire was very glad of the fog—because there couldn't be any one prying around."

'For it seems to be really true that the village has been in a state of ferment, and that they had determined to free the gates and let in the Council plough. Perley was seen talking to a lot of men on the green last night. I met him myself this morning after breakfast near the gates, and he confessed he had been there already—early. I expect he came to reconnoitre and take back the news. Rather calm, for one of father's own men! But that's the new spirit, Dezzy. We're not going to be allowed to have it all our own way any more. Well, thank goodness, I don't mind. At least, there is something in me that minds. I suppose it's one's forbears. But the greater part of me wants a lot of change—and there are often and often times when I wish I'd been born in the working-class and was just struggling upwards with them, and sharing all their hopes and dreams for "after the war." Well, why shouldn't I? I'm going to set Broomie on to some of the cottages in the village—not that she'll want setting on—but after all, it's I who know the people.

'But that's by the way. The point is why did father give in? Evidently because Broomie gave notice, and he couldn't bear the idea of parting with her. Of course Alice—and Margaret too, to some extent—are convinced it all means that father wants to marry her. Only Alice thinks that Miss Bremerton has been intriguing for it since the first week she set foot in the house; while Margaret is certain that she wouldn't marry father if he asked her. She thinks that Miss B. is just the new woman, who wants to do things, and isn't always thinking about getting married. Well, Dezzy, old boy—I don't know what to think. I'll keep my eyes open, and report to you. I don't—altogether—like her. No, I don't—that's flat. I wish, on the whole, she'd taken her departure! And yet I feel rather a toad for saying so. She is splendid in some things—yes, she is! And the Rectory people take the most rose-coloured view of her—it's too late to tell you why, for the postman is just coming.

'Good-bye, Dezzy—dear Dezzy! I know how glad you'll be about the gates. Write to me as often as you can. By the way, Miss Bremerton has got a brother in the war—with General Maude. That ought to make me like her. But why did she leave us to find it out through the Rectory? She never says anything about herself that she can help. Do you think you'll really get to France in January? Ever your loving

'PAM.'



CHAPTER X

It was a bright January day. Lunch was just over at Mannering, and the luncheon-party had dispersed—attracted to the garden and the park by the lure of the sunshine after dark days of storm and wind. Mrs. Gaddesden alone was left sitting by the fire in the hall. There was a cold wind, and she did not feel equal to facing it. She was one of those women, rare in these days, who, though still young, prefer to be prematurely old; in whom their great-grandmothers, and the 'elegant' lackadaisical ways of a generation that knew nothing of exercise, thick boots and short skirts, seem to become once more incarnate. Though Mannering was not ill-warmed, Alice moved about it in winter wrapped in a picturesque coat of black velvet trimmed with chinchilla, her head wreathed in white lace. From this rather pompous setting her fair hair, small person, and pinched pale face looked out perhaps with greater dignity than they could have achieved unadorned. Her chilliness, her small self-indulgences, including an inordinate love of cakes and all sweet things, were the standing joke of the twins when they discussed the family freely behind the closed doors of the 'Den.' But no one disliked Alice Gaddesden, though it was hard to be actively fond of her. She and her husband were quite good friends; but they were no longer of any real importance to each other. He was a good deal older than she; and was often away from London on 'war work' in the Midlands. On these occasions Alice generally invited herself to Mannering. She thus got rid of housekeeping, which in these days of rations worried her to death. Moreover, food at Mannering was much more plentiful than food in town—especially since the advent of Elizabeth Bremerton.

It was of Elizabeth that Mrs. Gaddesden was thinking as she sat alone in the hall. From her seat she could perceive a shrubbery walk in the garden outside, along which two figures were pacing—Miss Bremerton and the new agent. Beyond, at some distance, she was aware of another group disappearing among the trees of the park—Pamela with Captain Chicksands and Beryl.

This was the first time that any member of the Chicksands family had been a guest at Mannering since the quarrel in the autumn. The Squire had not yet brought himself to shake hands with Sir Henry. But Beryl on the one side, and Pamela on the other—aided and abetted always by Elizabeth Bremerton—had been gradually breaking down the embargo; and when, hearing from Beryl that her brother Arthur was with them for a few days, Pamela had openly proposed in her father's presence to ask them both to luncheon, the Squire had pretended not to hear, but had at any rate raised no objection. And when the brother and sister arrived, he had received them as though nothing had happened. His manners were always brusque and ungracious, except in the case of persons who specially mattered to his own pursuits, such as archaeologists and Greek professors. But the Chetworth family were almost as well acquainted with his ways as his own, and his visitors took them philosophically. Arthur Chicksands had kept the table alive at luncheon with soldier stories, and the Squire's sulky or sarcastic silence had passed unnoticed.

Mrs. Gaddesden's mind was very full of the Captain's good looks and distinction. He was now in London, at the War Office, it seemed, for a short time, on a special mission; hence his occasional weekends with his family. When the mission was over—so Beryl told Pamela—he was probably going out to an important appointment in the Intelligence Department at G.H.Q. 'Arthur's a great swell,' said Beryl, 'though as to what he's done, or what people think of him, you have to dig it out of him—if you can!'

Mrs. Gaddesden did not very much like him. His brusque sincerity made people of her sort uncomfortable. But she would have liked very much to know whether there was anything up between him and Pamela. Really, Miss Bremerton's discretion about such things was too tiresome—ridiculous—almost rude! It was no good trying, even, to discuss them with her.

As to the disinheriting of Aubrey, no more had been heard of it. Miss Bremerton had told Aubrey when he was at home for twenty-four hours at Christmas that, as far as she knew, the codicil was still unsigned. But Aubrey didn't seem to care the least whether it was or no. If Beryl wished him to raise the question again with his father, of course he would; otherwise he greatly preferred to leave it alone. And as Beryl had no will or wishes but his, and was, in Alice's opinion, only too absurdly and dependently in love, the sleeping dogs were very much asleep; and the secret of Mannering's future disposal lay hid impenetrably in the Squire's own breast.

At the same time, Mrs. Gaddesden was firmly persuaded that whatever Elizabeth Bremerton wished or advised would ultimately be done.

What an extraordinary position that young woman now held among them! Nearly three months had now elapsed since Mrs. Gaddesden's autumn visit—since Desmond had gone into training at his artillery camp—since a third of the park had been ploughed up, and since Elizabeth Bremerton had thrown up her post only to come back next day as dictator.

Yes—dictator! Mrs. Gaddesden was never tired of thinking about it, and was excitedly conscious that all the neighbourhood, and all their friends and kinsfolk were thinking and speculating with her. At the beginning of November, before she and Margaret Strang went back to town, the Squire had announced to all of them that Miss Bremerton had become his 'business secretary,' as well as his classical assistant. And now, after three months, the meaning of this notice was becoming very clear. The old agent, Mr. Hull, had been dismissed, and moderately—very moderately—pensioned. It was said that Miss Bremerton, on looking into his accounts, saw no reason at all for any special indulgence. For, in addition to everything else, she turned out to be a trained accountant!—and money matters connected with the estate were being probed to the bottom that had never been probed before. Mrs. Gaddesden's own allowance—for the Squire had always obstinately declined to settle any capital on his married daughters—had been, for the first time, paid at the proper date—by Elizabeth Bremerton! At least, if the Squire had signed it, she had written the cheque. And she might perfectly well have signed it. For, as Pamela had long since reported to her sisters, Elizabeth paid all the house and estate accounts over her own signature, and seemed to have much more accurate knowledge than the Squire himself of the state of his bank balance, and his money affairs generally.

Not that she ever paraded these things in the least. But neither did she make any unnecessary mystery about it with the Squire's family. And indeed they were quite evident to any one living in the house. At times she would make little, laughing, apologetic remarks to one of the daughters—'I hope you don't mind!—the Squire wants me to get things straight.' But in general, her authority by now had become a matter of course.

Her position in the Mannering household, however, was as nothing to her position in the estate and the neighbourhood. That was the amazing thing which had by now begun to set all tongues wagging. Sir Henry Chicksands, meeting Mrs. Gaddesden at the station, had poured himself out to her. 'That extraordinary young woman your father has got hold of, is simply transforming the whole place. The farmers on the whole like her very much. But if they don't like her, they're afraid of her! For Heaven's sake don't let her kill herself with over-work. She'll soon be leading the county.'

Yes. Work indeed! How on earth did she get through it? In the mornings there she was in the library, absorbed in the catalogue, writing to the Squire's dictation, transcribing or translating Greek—his docile and obedient slave. Then in the afternoon—bicycling all over the estate, and from dark onwards, till late at night, busy with correspondence and office work, except just for dinner and an hour afterwards.

* * * * *

The door of the outer hall opened and shut. Elizabeth and a young man—the new agent—entered the inner hall, where Mrs. Gaddesden was sitting, Elizabeth acknowledging her presence with a pleasant nod and smile. But they passed quickly through to the room at the further end of the hall, which was now an estate office where Elizabeth spent the latter part of her day. It was connected both with the main living-rooms of the house, and with a side entrance from the park, by which visitors on estate matters were admitted.

A man was sitting waiting for Miss Bremerton. He was the new tenant of the derelict farm, on the Holme Wood side of the estate, and he had come to report on the progress which had been made in clearing and ploughing the land, and repairing the farm-buildings. He was a youngish man, a sergeant in a Warwickshire regiment, who had been twice wounded in the war, and was now discharged. As the son of an intelligent farmer, he had had a good agricultural training, and it was evident that his enthusiasms and those of the Squire's new 'business-secretary' were running in harness.

The new agent, Captain Dell, also a discharged Territorial, who had lost an arm in the war, watched the scene between the incoming tenant and Elizabeth, with a shrewd pair of eyes, through which there passed occasional gleams of amusement or surprise. He was every day making further acquaintance with the lady who was apparently to be his chief, but he was well aware that he was only at the beginning of his lesson. Astonishing, to see a woman taking this kind of lead!—asking these technical questions—as to land, crops, repairs, food production, and the rest—looking every now and then at the note-book beside her, full of her own notes made on the spot, or again, setting down with a quick hand something that was said to her. And all through he was struck with her tone of quiet authority—without a touch of boasting or 'side,' but also without a touch of any mere feminine deference to the male. She was there in the Squire's place, and she never let it be forgotten. Heavens, women had come on during this war! Through the young man's mind there ran a vague and whirling sense of change.

'Well, Mr. Denman, that all sounds splendid!' said Elizabeth, at last, as she rose from her table. 'The country won't starve, if you can help it! I shall tell the County Committee all about you on Tuesday. You don't want another tractor?'

'Oh, no, thank you! The two at work are enough. I hope you'll be over soon. I should like to show you what we've been after.' The man's tone was one of eager good will.

'Oh yes, I shall be over before long,' said Elizabeth cheerfully. 'It's so tremendously interesting what you're doing. And if you want anything I can help you in, you can always telephone.'

And she pointed smiling to the instrument on the table—the first that had ever been allowed within the walls of Mannering. And that the Squire might not be teased with it, Elizabeth had long since fitted an extra inner door, covered with green baize, to the door of the office.

The new tenant departed, and Elizabeth turned to the agent.

'I really think we've caught a good man there,' she said, with a smile. 'Now will you tell me, please, about those timber proposals? I hope to get a few words with the Squire to-night.'

And leaning back in her chair, she listened intently while Captain Dell, bringing a roll of papers out of his pocket, read her the draft proposals of a well-known firm of timber merchants, for the purchase of some of the Squire's outlying woods of oak and beech. Lights had been brought in, and Elizabeth sat shading her eyes from the lamp before her,—a strong and yet agreeable figure. Was it the consciousness of successful work—of opening horizons, and satisfied ambitions, that had made a physical presence, always attractive, so much more attractive than before—that had given it a magnetism and fire it had never yet possessed? Pamela, who was developing fast, and was acutely conscious of Elizabeth, asked herself the question, or something like it, about once a week. And during a short Christmas visit that Elizabeth had paid her own people, her gentle mother, much puzzled and a little dazzled by her daughter, had necessarily pondered the why and wherefore of a change she felt, but could not analyse. One thing the mother's insight had been clear about. Elizabeth was not in love. On the contrary, the one love-affair of her life seemed to be at last forgotten and put aside. Elizabeth was now in love with efficiency; with a great task given into her hand. As to the Squire, the owner of Mannering, who had provided her with the task, Mrs. Bremerton could not imagine him or envisage him at all. Elizabeth's accounts of him were so reticent and so contradictory.... 'Well, that's very interesting'—said Elizabeth thoughtfully, when Captain Dell laid down his papers—'I wonder what Mr. Mannering will say to it? As you know, I got his express permission for you to make these enquiries. But he hates cutting down a single tree, and this will mean a wide clearance!'

'So it will—but the country wants every stick of it. And as to not cutting, one sees that from the woods—the tragedy of the woods!'—said the young man with emphasis. 'There has been no decent forestry on this estate for half a century. I hope you will be able to persuade him, Miss Bremerton. I expect, indeed, it's Hobson's choice.'

'You mean the timber will be commandeered?'

'Probably. The Government have just come down on some of Lord Radley's woods just beyond our borders—with scarcely a week's warning. No "With your leave" or "By your leave"! The price fixed, Canadians sent down to cut, and a light railway built from the woods to the station to carry the timber, before you could say "Jack Robinson."'

'You think the price these people offer is a fair one?' She pointed to the draft contract.

'Excellent! The Squire won't get nearly as much from the Government.'

'What one might do with some of it for the estate!' said Elizabeth, looking up, her blue eyes dancing in the lamplight.

'Rebuild half the cottages?' said the other, smiling, as he rose. 'A village club-house, a communal kitchen, a small holdings scheme—all the things we've talked about? Oh yes, you could do all that and more. The Squire doesn't know what he possesses.'

'Well, I'll take the papers to him,' said Elizabeth, holding out her hands for them. 'I may perhaps catch him to-night'

A little more business talk, and the agent departed. Then Elizabeth dreamily—still cogitating a hundred things—touched an electric bell. A girl typist, who acted as her clerk, came in from an adjoining room. Elizabeth rapidly dictated a number of letters, stayed for a little friendly gossip with the girl about her father in the Army Service Corps, who had been in hospital at Rouen, and had just finished, when the gong rang for afternoon tea.

* * * * *

When Elizabeth entered, the hall was crowded. It was the principal sitting-room of the house, now that for reasons of economy fires were seldom lit in the drawing-rooms. Before Elizabeth's advent it had been a dingy, uncomfortable place, but she and Pamela had entirely transformed it. As in the estate so in the house, the Squire did not know what he possessed. In all old houses with a continuous life, there are accumulations of furniture and stores, discarded by the generation of one day, and brought back by the fashion of the next. A little routing in attics and forgotten cupboards and chests had produced astonishing results. Chippendale chairs and settees had been brought down from the servants' bedrooms; two fine Dutch cabinets had been discovered amid a mass of lumber in an outhouse; a tall Japanese screen, dating from the end of the eighteenth century, and many pairs of linen curtains embroidered about the same time in branching oriental patterns by the hands of Mannering ladies, had been unearthed, and Pamela—for Elizabeth having started the search had interfered very little with its results—had spent some of her now scanty leisure in making the best of the finds. The hall was now a charming place, scented, moreover, on this January evening by the freesias and narcissus that Elizabeth had managed to rear in the house itself, and Pamela, who had always been ashamed of her own ill-kept and out-at-elbows home, as compared with the perfections of Chetworth, had been showing Arthur and Beryl Chicksands what had been done to renovate the old house since they were last in it—'and all without spending a penny!'—with a girlish pleasure which in the Captain's opinion became her greatly. Pamela needed indeed a good deal of animation to be as handsome as she deserved to be! A very critical observer took note that her stock of it was rapidly rising. It was the same with the letters, too, which for a month or so past, she had condescended to write him, after treating him most uncivilly in the autumn, and never answering a long screed—'and a jolly good one!'—which he had written her from Paris in November.

As Elizabeth came in, Pamela was reading aloud a telegram just received, and Miss Bremerton was greeted with the news—'Desmond's coming to-night, instead of to-morrow! They've given him forty-eight hours' leave, and he goes to France on Thursday.'

'That's very short!' said Elizabeth, as she took her place beside Pamela, who was making tea. 'Does your father know?'

Forest, it appeared, had gone to tell him. Meanwhile Captain Chicksands was watching with a keen eye the relation between Miss Bremerton and Pamela. He saw that the Squire's secretary was scrupulously careful to give Pamela her place as daughter of the house; but Pamela's manner hardly showed any real intimacy between them. And it was easy to see where the real authority lay. As for himself he had lately begun to ask himself seriously how much he was interested in Pamela. For in truth, though he was no coxcomb, he could not help seeing—all the more because of Pamela's variable moods towards him—that she was at least incipiently interested in him. If so, was it fair to her that they should correspond?—and that he should come to Mannering whenever he was asked and military duty allowed, now that the Squire's embargo was at least partially removed?

He confessed to himself that he was glad to come, that Pamela attracted him. At the same time there was in him a stern sense that the time was no time for love-making. The German hosts were gathering; the vast breakdown in Russia was freeing more and more of them for the Western assault. He himself was for the moment doing some important intelligence work, in close contact with the High Command. No one outside a very small circle knew better than he what lay in front of England—the fierce death-struggle over a thousand miles of front. And were men and women to be kissing and marrying while these storm-clouds of war—this rain of blood—were gathering overhead?

Involuntarily he moved further from Pamela. His fine face with the rather high cheek-bones, strong mouth, and lined brow, seemed to put softness away. He approached Elizabeth.

'What is the Squire doing about his wood, Miss Bremerton? The Government's desperately in want of ash!'

He spoke almost as one official might speak to another—comrade to comrade. What he had heard about her doings from his father had filled his soldier's mind with an eager admiration for her. That was how women should bear themselves in this war—as the practical helpers of men.

He fell into the chair beside her, and Elizabeth was soon deep in conversation with him, a conversation that any one might overhear who would. It turned partly on the armies abroad—partly on the effort at home. There was warmth—even passion—in it, studiously restrained. But it was the passion of two patriots, conscious through every pulse of their country's strait.

The others listened. Pamela became silent and pale. All the old jealousy and misery of the autumn were alive in her once more. She had looked forward for weeks to this meeting with Arthur Chicksands. And for the first part of his visit she had been happy—before Elizabeth came on the scene. Why should Elizabeth have all the homage and the attention? She, too, was doing her best! She was drudging every day as a V.A.D., washing crockery and scrubbing floors; and this was the first afternoon off she had had for weeks. Her limbs were dog-tired. But Arthur Chicksands never talked to her—Pamela—in this tone of freedom and equality—with the whole and not the half of his mind. 'I could hold my own,' she thought bitterly, 'but he never gives me the chance! I suppose he despises girls.'

As the hall clock struck half-past five, however, Elizabeth rose from her seat, gathering up the papers she had brought in from the office, and disappeared.

Arthur Chicksands looked at his watch. Beryl exclaimed:

'Oh, no, Arthur, not yet! Let's wait for Desmond!'

Pamela said perfunctorily—'No, please don't go! He'll be here directly.'

But as they gathered round the fire, expecting the young gunner, she hardly opened her lips again. Arthur Chicksands was quite conscious that he had wounded her. She appeared to him, as she sat there in the firelight, in all the first fairness and freshness of her youth, as an embodied temptation. Again he said to himself that other men might love and marry on the threshold of battle; he could not bring himself to think it justifiable—whether for the woman or the man. In a few weeks' time he would be back in France and in the very thick, perhaps, of the final struggle—of its preparatory stages, at any rate. Could one make love to a beautiful creature like that at such a moment, and then leave her, with a whole mind?—the mind and the nerve that were the country's due?

All the same he had never been so aware of her before. And simultaneously his mind was invaded by the mute, haunting certainty that her life was reaching out towards his, and that he was repelling and hurting her.

Suddenly—into the midst of them, while Mrs. Gaddesden was talking endlessly in her small plaintive voice about rations and queues—there dropped the sound of a car passing the windows, and a boy's clear voice.

'Desmond!' cried Pamela, with almost a sob of relief, and like one escaping from a nightmare she sprang up and ran to greet her brother.

* * * * *

Meanwhile Elizabeth had found the Squire waiting for her, and, as she saw at once, in a state of tension.

'What was that you were saying to me about timber last week?' he demanded imperiously as she entered, without giving her time to speak. 'I hear this intolerable Government are behaving like madmen, cutting down everything they can lay hands on. They shan't have my trees—I would burn them first!'

Elizabeth paused in some dismay.

'You remember—' she began.

'Remember what?' It was long since she had heard so snappish a tone.

'That you authorized me—'

'Oh, I daresay, I gave myself away—I'm always doing so. I don't mean half I say. You're too full of business—you take me up too quick. What are those papers you've got there?'

Elizabeth's red cheeks showed her taken aback. It was the first time for weeks that her employer had turned upon her so. She had grown so accustomed to managing him, to taming the irritable temper that no one else but she could cope with, and, unconsciously, so proud of her success, that she was not prepared for this attack. She met it meekly.

'I have a proposal here to submit to you, from —— & Co.' (she named a firm of timber-merchants famous throughout the Midlands). 'There is nothing in it—Captain Dell is certain—that would injure the estate. You have such masses of timber! And, if you don't sell, you may find it commandeered. You know what's happened to Lord Radley?'

The Squire sulkily demanded to be informed. Elizabeth told the story, standing at his desk, like a clerk making a report. It seemed to enrage her auditor.

'This accursed war!' he broke out, when she had finished—'it makes slaves and idiots of us all. It must—it shall end!' And marching tempestuously up and down, he went off into one of the pessimist and pacifist harangues to which she was more or less accustomed. Who would rid the country of a Government that could neither make peace nor make war?—that foresaw nothing—that was making life unbearable at home, by a network of senseless restrictions, while it wasted millions abroad, and in the military camps! The Labour Party were the only people with a grain of sense. They at least would try to make peace. Only, when they had made it, to be governed by them would be even worse than to be governed by Lloyd George. There was no possible life anywhere for decent quiet people. And as for the ravaging and ruin of the woods that was going on all over England—

'The submarine return is worse this week,' said Elizabeth in a low voice.

She had gone to her own table and was sitting there till the hurricane should pass over. There was in her a fresh and chafing sense of the obstacles laid in her path—the path of the scientific and successful organizer—by the Squire's perversities. It was not as though he were a pacifist by conviction, religious or other. She had seen him rout and trample on not a few genuine professors of the faith. His whole opposition to the war rested on the limitations and discomforts inflicted on his own life. It reminded her of certain fragments of dialogue she had overheard in the winter, where she had chanced to find herself alone in a railway carriage full of a group of disaffected workmen returning from a strike meeting at Leicester. 'If there are many like these, is the country worth saving?' she was saying to herself all the time, in a dumb passion.

Yet, after all, those men had done months and years of labour for the country. Saying 'I will not go!' they had yet gone. Without a spark of high feeling or conscious self-sacrifice to ease their toil, they had yet, week by week, made the guns and the shells which had saved the armies of England. When this temporary outbreak was over they would go back and make them again. And they were tired men—sallow-faced, and bowed before their time.

But what had this whimsical, accomplished man before her ever done for his country that he should rail like this? It was difficult after a tiring day to keep scorn and dissent concealed. They probably showed in her expression, for the Squire turned upon her as she made her remark about the submarines, examining her with a pair of keen eyes.

'Oh, I know very well what you and that fellow Chicksands think about persons like me who endeavour to see things as they are!'—he smote a chair before him—'and not as you and our war-party wish them to be. Well, well—now then to business. Who wants to cut my woods—and what do they offer for them?'

Elizabeth put the papers in front of him. He turned them over.

'H'm—they want the Cross Wood—one of the most beautiful woods in England. I have spent days there when I was young drawing the trees. And who's the idiot'—he pointed to some marginal notes—'who is always carping and girding? "Good forestry" would have done this and not done that. "Mismanagement"—"neglect"! Upon my word, who made this man a judge over me?'

And flushed with wrath, the Squire looked angrily at his secretary. 'Heavens!'—thought Elizabeth—'why didn't I edit the papers before I showed them?' But aloud she said with her good-tempered smile—

'I am afraid I took all those remarks as applying to Mr. Hull. He was responsible for the woods, wasn't he? He told me he was.'

'Nothing of the kind! In the end the owner is responsible. This fellow is attacking me!'

Elizabeth said nothing. She could only wait in hope to see how the large sums mentioned in the contract might work.

'"Maximum price"! What's this?—"Had Mr. Mannering been willing to enter into negotiations with us last year,"'—the Squire began to read a letter accompanying the draft contract—'"when we approached him, we should probably have been able to offer him a better price. But under the scale of prices now fixed by the Government—"'

The owner of Mannering bounded out of his seat.

'And you actually mean to say that I may not only be forced to sell my woods—but whether I am forced or not, I can only sell them at the Government price? Intolerable!—absolutely intolerable! Every day that Englishmen put up with these tyrannies is a disgrace to the country!'

'The country must have artillery waggons and aeroplanes,' said Elizabeth, softly. 'Where are we to get the wood? There are not ships enough to bring it overseas?'

'And suppose I grant you that—why am I not to get my fair price—like anybody else? Just tell me that!'

'Why, everybody's "controlled"!' cried Elizabeth.

'Pshaw! I am sorry to be uncivil'—a sarcastic bow in her direction—'but I really must point out that you talk nonsense. Look at the money in the banks—look at the shops and the advertisements—look at the money that people pay for pictures, and old books, and autographs. Somebody's making profits—that's clear. But a wretched landowner—with a few woods to sell—it is easy to victimize him!'

'It comes to a large sum,' said Elizabeth, looking down. At last she was conscious of a real exasperation with the Squire. For four months now she had been wrestling with him—for his own good and the country's, and everything had always to be begun again. Suddenly her spirits drooped.

The Squire observed her furtively out of the corners of his eyes. Then he turned to the last page of the contract, with its final figures. His eyebrows went up.

'The man's a fool!' he said vehemently. 'I know the value of my own timber a great deal better than he. They're not worth a third of what they put them at.'

'Even at the Government price?' Elizabeth ventured slyly. 'He'll be very glad to give it!'

'Then it's blackmailing the country,' said the Squire obstinately. 'I loathe the war, but I'm not a profiteer.'

Elizabeth was silent. If the Squire persisted in rejecting this deal, which he had himself invited in another mood, half her dreams for the future, the dreams of a woman just beginning to feel the intoxication of power, or, to put it better, the creative passion of the reformer, were undone. She had already saved the Squire much money. When all reasonable provision had been made for investment, replanting, and the rest, this sale would still leave enough to transform the estate and scores of human lives upon it. Her will chafed hotly under the curb imposed upon it by the caprices of a master for whom—save only as a Greek scholar—she had little respect. After a while, as the Squire was still turning over the contract with occasional grunts and mutterings, she asked—

'Will you please tell me what I am to reply?'

Her voice was cold and measured.

The Squire threw up his white head.

'What hurry is there?' he said testily.

'Oh, none—if you wish it delayed. Only—' she hesitated—'Captain Dell tells me the Government inspectors are already in the neighbourhood. He expects them here before long.'

'And if I make a stand—if I oppose you—well—it'll be the gates over again?' She shrugged her shoulders.

'We must try to find the money some other way. It is badly wanted. I thought—'

'You thought I had authorized this—and you've given all your work for nothing? You think I'm an impossible person?'

Suddenly she found him sitting beside her. Perforce she looked him in the face.

'Don't give notice again!' he said, almost with passion.

'It's not so easy now,' she said, with a rather uncertain voice.

'Because you've done so much for me?—because you've slaved and put your heart into it? That's true. Well now, look here. We'll put that beastly thing away to-night—perhaps I shall be in a better temper in a few days.'

There was a note in his voice he seemed unable to keep out of it. Elizabeth looking up caught the fire light on the sketch of Desmond. Had the Squire's eyes been on it too? Impossible to say—for he had already turned away.

'Oh, yes,—put it away!' she said hurriedly.

'And I'll go over the woods with you on—Friday,' said the Squire after a pause. 'Oh, I don't deny that the money is tempting. I'm not such a pauper as I once was, thanks to you. I seem to have some money in the bank—astonishing situation! And—there's a jolly good sale at Christie's coming on.'

He looked at her half-shamefaced, half-ready to resent it if she laughed at him.

Her eyes laughed.

'I thought you'd forgotten that. I saw you mark the catalogue.'

'Beech and oak between two and three hundred years old—in exchange for Greek gems, between two and three thousand. Well—I'll consider it. Now then, are you feeling better?'

And to her amazement he approached her with an outstretched hand. Elizabeth mechanically placed her own in it.

'I know what you want,' he said impetuously. 'You've got a head full of dreams. They're not my dreams—but you've a right to them—so long as you're kind to mine.'

'I try to be,' she said with a rather tremulous lip.

At that moment the library door opened. Neither perceived it. Desmond came in softly, lest his father should be at work. A carved oak screen round the door hid his entrance, and as he emerged into the light his eyes caught the two distant figures standing hand in hand.

Instinctively he stepped back a few paces and noisily opened the door. The Squire walked away.

'Why, Desmond!' said his father, as the boy emerged into the light, 'your train's punctual for once. Thank you, Miss Bremerton—that'll do. Kindly write to those people and say that I am considering the matter. I needn't keep you any longer....'

That night a demon came to Elizabeth and offered her a Faust-like bargain. Ambition—noble ambition on the one side—an 'elderly lunatic' on the other. And she began to consider it!



CHAPTER XI

Everybody in Mannering had gone to bed but Desmond and Pamela. It was not certain indeed that the Squire had gone to bed, but as there was a staircase beside one of the doors of the library leading direct to his room, it was not likely that he would cross the hall again. The twins felt themselves alone.

'I daresay there'll be a raid to-night,' said Desmond, 'it's so bright and still. Put down that lamp a moment, Pamela.'

She obeyed, and he threw away his cigarette, went to one of the windows, and drew up the blinds.

'Listen!' he said, holding up his hand. Pamela came to his side, and they both heard through the stillness that sound of distant guns which no English ear had heard—till now—since the Civil War.

'And there are the searchlights!'

For over London, some forty miles away behind a low range of hills, faint fingers of light were searching the sky.

'At this very moment, perhaps,'—said the boy between his teeth—'those demons are blowing women and children to pieces—over there!'

Pamela shivered and laid her cheek against his shoulder. But both he and she were aware of that strange numbness which in the fourth year of the war has been creeping over all the belligerent nations, so that horror has lost its first edge, and the minds, whether of soldiers in the field, or of civilians at home, have become hardened to facts or ideas which would once have stirred in them wild ferments of rage and terror.

'Shall we win, this year, Desmond?' said Pamela, as they stood gazing out into the park, where, above a light silvery mist a young moon was riding in a clear blue. Not a branch stirred in the great leafless trees; only an owl's plaintive cry seemed to keep in rhythm with that sinister murmur on the horizon.

'Win?—this year?' said the boy, with a shrug. 'Don't reckon on it, Pam. Those Russian fools have dished it all for months!'

'But the Americans will make up?'

Desmond assented eagerly. And in the minds of the English boy and girl there rose a kind of vague vision of an endless procession of great ships, on a boundless ocean, carrying men, and men, and more men—guns, and aeroplanes, and shining piles of shells—bringing the New World to the help of the Old.

Desmond turned to his sister.

'Look here, Pam, this time next week I shall be in the line. Well, I daresay I shan't be at the actual front for a week or two—but it won't be long. We shall want every battery we've got. Now—suppose I don't come back?'

'Desmond!'

'For goodness' sake, don't be silly, old girl. We've got to look at it, you know. The death-rate of men of my age' (men!—Desmond, a man!) 'has gone up to about four times what it was before the war. I saw that in one of the papers this morning. I've only got a precious small chance. And if I don't come back, I want to know what you're going to do with yourself.'

'I don't care what happens to me if you don't come back!' said the girl passionately. She was leaning with folded arms against the side of the window, the moonlight, or something else, blanching the face and her fair hair.

Desmond looked at her with a troubled expression. For two or three years past he had felt a special responsibility towards this twin-sister of his. Who was there to look after her but he? He saw that his father never gave her a serious thought, and as to Aubrey—well, he too seemed to have no room in his mind for Pam—poor old Pam!

'How are you getting on with Broomie?' he asked suddenly.

'I don't like her!' said Pamela fiercely. 'I shall never like her!'

'Well, that's awkward,'—said the boy slowly, 'because—'

'Because what?'

'Because I believe she means to marry father!'

Pamela laughed angrily.

'Ah, you've found that out too!'

Desmond pulled down the blind again, and they went back to the fire, sitting on the floor beside it, with their arms round each other, as they had been used to do as children. And then in a low voice, lest any ears in the sleeping house should be, after all, on the alert, he told her what he had seen in the library. He was rather ashamed of telling her; only there was this queer sense of last words—of responsibility—for his sister, which excused it.

Pamela listened despondently.

'Perhaps they're engaged already! Well,—I can tell you this—if father does marry her, she'll rule him, and me—if I give her the chance—and everybody on the place, with a rod of iron.'

Desmond at first remonstrated. He had been taken aback by the sudden vision in the library; and Pamela's letters for some time past had tended to alter his first liking for 'Broomie' into a feeling more distrustful and uncertain. But, after all, Broomie's record must be remembered. 'She wouldn't sign that codicil thing—she made father climb down about the gates—and Sir Henry says she's begun to pull the estate together like anything, and if father will only let her alone for a year or two she'll make him a rich man.'

'Oh, I know,' said Pamela gloomily, 'she's paid most of the bills already. When I go into Fallerton now—everybody—all the tradesmen are as sweet as sugar.'

'Well, that's something to the good, isn't it? Don't be unfair!'

'I'm not unfair!' cried Pamela. 'Don't you see how she just swallows up everybody's attention—how nobody else matters when she's there! How, can you expect me to like that—if she were an archangel—which she isn't!'

'But has she done anything nasty—anything to bother you?'

'Well, of course, I'm just a cypher when she's there. I'm afraid I oughtn't to mind—but I do!'

And Pamela, with her hands round her knees, stared into the fire in bitterness of spirit. She couldn't explain, even to Desmond, that the inward eye all the time was tormented by two kindred visions—Arthur in the hall that afternoon, talking war work with Elizabeth with such warm and eager deference, and Arthur on Holme Hill, stretched at Elizabeth's feet, and bandying classical chaff with her. And there was a third, still more poignant, of a future in which Elizabeth would be always there, the centre of the picture, mistress of the house, the clever and charming woman, beside whom girls in their teens had no chance.

She was startled out of these reflections by a remark from Desmond.

'You know, Pam, you ought to get married soon.'

The boy spoke shyly—but gravely and decidedly. Pam thought with a sudden anguish—'He would never have said that, unless—'

She laid her head on his shoulder, clinging to him.

'I shan't get married, old boy.'

'Oh, that's nonsense! Look here, Pam—you mustn't mind my poking my nose into things where I've no business. You see, it's because—Well, I've sometimes thought—punch my head, if you like!—that you had a fancy for Arthur Chicksands.'

Pamela laughed.

'Well, as he hasn't got any fancy for me, you needn't take that into your dear old head!'

'Why, he was always very fond of you, Pam.'

'Oh, yes, he liked ragging me when I was a child. I'm not good enough for him now.'

'What do you mean—not good enough?'

'Not clever enough, you silly old boy. He'll marry somebody much older than me.'

Desmond ruminated.

'He seemed to be getting on with Broomie this afternoon?'

'Magnificently. He always does. She's his sort. She writes to him.'

'Oh, does she?' The boy's voice was dry and hostile. He began to understand, or thought he did. Miss Bremerton was not only plotting to marry his father—had perhaps been plotting for it from the beginning—but was besides playing an unfair game with Pam—spoiling Pam's chances—cutting in where she wasn't wanted—grabbing, in fact. Anger was mounting in him. Why should his father be mopped up like this?—and Pamela made unhappy?

'I'd jolly well like to stop it all!' he said, under his breath.

'Stop what? You dear, foolish old man! You can't stop it, Dezzy.'

'Well, if she'll only make him happy—!'

'Oh, she'll be quite decent to him,' said Pamela, with a shrug, 'but she'll despise him!'

'What the deuce do you mean, Pam?'

Whereupon, quite conscious that she was obeying an evil and feverish impulse, but unable to control it, Pamela went into a long and passionate justification of what she had said. A number of small incidents—trifling acts and sayings of Elizabeth's—misinterpreted and twisted by the girl's jealous pain, were poured into Desmond's ears.

'All the servants know that she treats father like a baby. She and Forest manage him in little things—in the house—just as she runs the estate. For instance, she does just what she likes with the fruit and the flowers—'

'Why, you ought to do all that, Pam!'

'I tried when I came home from school. Father wouldn't let me do a thing. But she does just what she pleases. You can hear her and Forest laughing over it. Oh, it's all right, of course. She sends things to hospitals every week.'

'That was what you used to want.'

'I do want it—but—'

'You ought to have the doing of it?'

'Oh, I don't know. I'm away all day. But she might at least pretend to refer to him—or me—sometimes. It's the same in everything. She twists father round her little finger; and you can see all the time what she thinks—that there never was such a bad landlord, or such a miserable, feckless crew as the rest of us, before she came to put us straight!'

Desmond listened—partly resisting—but finally carried away. By the time their talk was over he felt that he too hated Elizabeth Bremerton, and that it was horrid to have to leave Pamela with her.

When they said good-night Pamela threw herself on her bed face downwards, more wretched than she had ever been—wretched because Desmond was going, and might be killed, wretched, too, because her conscience told her that she had spoilt his last evening, and made him exceedingly unhappy, by a lot of exaggerated complaints. She was degenerating—she knew it. 'I am a little beast, compared to what I was when I left school,' she confessed to herself with tears, and did not know how to get rid of this fiery plague that was eating at her heart. She seemed to look back to a time—only yesterday!—when poetry and high ideals, friendships and religion filled her mind; and now nothing—nothing!—was of any importance, but the look, the voice, the touch of a man.

The next day, Desmond's last day at home, for he was due in London by the evening, was gloomy and embarrassed for all concerned. Elizabeth, pre-occupied and shrinking from her own thoughts, could not imagine what had happened. She had put off all her engagements for the day, that she might help in any last arrangements that might have to be made for Desmond.

But Desmond declined to be helped, not rudely, but with a decision, which took Elizabeth aback.

'Mayn't I look out some books for you? I have found some more pocket classics,' she had said to him with a smile, remembering his application to her in the autumn.

'No, thank you. I shall have no time.' And with that, a prompt retreat to Pamela and the Den. Elizabeth, indeed, who was all eagerness to serve him, found herself rebuffed at every turn.

Nor were matters any better with Pamela, who had cried off her hospital work in order to pack for Desmond. Elizabeth, seeing her come downstairs with an armful of khaki shirts to be marked, offered assistance—almost timidly. But Pamela's 'Thank you, but I'd rather not trouble you—I can do it quite well'—was so frosty that Elizabeth could only retire—bewildered—to the library, where she and the Squire gave a morning's work to the catalogue, and never said a word of farm or timber.

But the Squire worked irritably, finding fault with a number of small matters, and often wandering away into the house to see what Desmond was doing. During these intervals Elizabeth would sit, pen in hand, staring absently into the dripping garden and the park beaten by a cold rain. The future began to seem to her big with events and perplexity.

Then with the evening came the boy's leave-taking; full of affection towards his father and sister, and markedly chilly in the case of Elizabeth. When the station taxi had driven off, Elizabeth—with that cold touch of the boy's fingers still tingling on her hand—turned from the front door to see Pamela disappearing to the schoolroom, and the Squire fidgeting with an evening paper which the taxi had brought him from the station.

Elizabeth suddenly noticed the shaking of the paper, over which only the crest of white hair showed. Too bad of Pamela to have gone off without a word to her father! Was it sympathy with the Squire, or resentment on her own account, that made Elizabeth go up to him?—though at a respectful distance.

'Shall we finish the bit of translation we began this morning, if you're not busy?' she said gently. It was very rarely now that she was able to do any classical work after the mornings.

The Squire threw down the newspaper, and strode on before her to the library without a word. Elizabeth followed. Rain and darkness had been shut out. The wood fire glowed on the hearth, and its ruddy light was on the face of the Nike, and its solemn outstretched wings. All the apparatus of their common work was ready, the work that both loved. Elizabeth felt a sudden, passionate drawing towards this man twenty years older than herself, which seemed to correspond to the new and smarting sense of alienation from the twins and their raw, unjust youth. What had been the reason for their behaviour to her that day?—what had she done? She was conscious of long weeks of effort, in Pamela's case,—trying to please and win her; and of a constant tender interest in Desmond, which had never missed an opportunity of doing or suggesting something he might like—all for this! She must have offended them she supposed in some way; how, she could not imagine. But her mood was sore; and, self-controlled as she was, her pulse raced.

Here, however, she was welcome, she was needed; she could distract and soothe a bitterness of soul best measured by the Squire's most unusual taciturnity. No railing at the Government or the war, not a fling even at the 'd——d pedant, Chicksands!' or 'The Bubbly-jocks,' as he liked to call the members of the County War Committee. Elizabeth put a text of Aristophanes—the Pax—into his hands, and drew her table near to him, waiting his pleasure. There was a lamp behind him which fell on her broad, white brow, her waiting eyes and hand, and all the friendly intelligence of her face. The Squire began haltingly, lost his place, almost threw the book away; but she cheered him on, admired this phrase, delicately amended that, till the latent passion had gripped him, and he was soon in full swing, revelling in all the jests and topicalities of the play, where the strikers and pacifists, the profiteers, the soldiers and munition workers of two thousand odd years ago, fight and toil, prate and wrangle and scheme, as eager and as alive as their descendants of to-day. Soon his high, tempestuous laugh rang out; Elizabeth's gentler mirth answering. Sometimes there was a dispute about a word or a rendering; she would put up her own view, with obstinacy, so that he might have the pleasure of knocking it down. And all through there was the growing sense of comradeship, of mutual understanding, which, in their classical work at least, had been always present for Elizabeth, since her first acquaintance with her strange employer.

When she rose, reluctantly, at the sound of the dressing-bell, the Squire paced up and down while she put her books and papers away. Then as she was going, he turned abruptly—

'I told Forest to order the Times—will you see he does it?'

'Certainly.'

'I loathe all newspapers,' he said sombrely. 'If we must go to the devil, I don't want to know too much about it. But still—'

She waited a moment, but as nothing more came she was leaving the room, when he added—

'And don't forget the timber business to-morrow afternoon. Tell Dell to meet us in Cross Wood.'

* * * * *

When she had gone, the Squire still continued pacing, absorbed in meeting the attack of new and strange ideas. He had always been a man with a singularly small reflective gift. Self-examination—introspection of any sort—were odious to him. He lived on stimulus from outside, attracted or repelled, amused or interested, bored or angry, as the succession of events or impressions might dictate. To collect beautiful things was a passion with him, and he was proud of the natural taste and instinct, which generally led him right. But for 'aesthetics'—the philosophy of art—he had nothing but contempt. The volatile, restless mind escaped at once from the concentration asked of it; and fell back on what the Buddhist calls 'Maia,' the gay and changing appearances of things, which were all he wanted. And it was because the war had interfered with this pleasant and perpetual challenge to the senses of the outer world, because it forced a man back on general ideas that he did not want to consider—God, Country, Citizenship—that the Squire had hated the war.

But this woman who had become an inmate of his house, while she ministered to all the tastes that the Squire had built up as a screen between himself and either the tragic facts of contemporary life, or any troublesome philosophizing about them, was yet gradually, imperceptibly, drawing the screen aside. Her humanity was developing the feeble shoots of sympathy and conscience in himself. What she felt, he was beginning to feel; and when she hated anything he must at least uncomfortably consider why.

But all this she did and achieved through her mere fitness and delightfulness as a companion. He had never imagined that life would bring him anybody—least of all a woman—who would both give him so much, and save him so much. Selfish, exacting, irritable—he knew very well that he was all three. But it had not prevented this capable, kind, clever creature from devoting herself to him, from doing her utmost, not only to save his estate and his income, but to make his life once more agreeable to him, in spite of the war and all the rancour and resentments it had stirred up in him.

How patient she had been with these last! He was actually beginning to be ashamed of some of them. And now to-night—what made her come and give him the extra pleasure of her company these two hours? Sympathy, he supposed, about Desmond.

Well, he was grateful; and for the first time his heart reached out for pity—almost humbled itself—accepted the human lot. If Desmond were killed, he would never choose to go on living. Did she know that? Was it because she guessed at the feelings he had always done his best to hide that she had been so good to him that evening?

What as to that love-story of hers—her family?—her brother in Mesopotamia? He began to feel a hundred curiosities about her, and a strong wish to make life easy for her, as she had been making it easy for him. But she was excessively proud and scrupulous—that he had long since found out. No use offering to double her salary, now that she had saved him all this money! His first advance in that direction had merely offended her. The Squire thought vaguely of the brother—no doubt a young lieutenant. Could interest be made for him?—with some of the bigwigs. Then his—very intermittent—sense of humour asserted itself. He to make interest with anybody—for anybody—in connection with the war! He, who had broken with every soldier-friend he ever had, because of his opinions about the war!—and was anathema throughout the country for the same reason. Like all members of old families in this country he had a number of aristocratic and wealthy kinsfolk, the result of Mannering marriages in the past. But he had never cared for any of them, except to a mild degree for his sister, Lady Cassiobury, who was ten years older than himself, and still paid long visits to Mannering, which bored him hugely. On the last occasion, he was quite aware that he had behaved badly, and was now in her black-books.

No—there was nothing to be done, except to let this wonderful woman have her own way! If she wanted to cut down the woods, let her!—if she wanted to amuse herself by rebuilding the village, and could find the money out of the estate, let her!—it would occupy her, attach her to the place, and do him no harm.

Yes, attach her to the place; bind her! hold her!—that was what he wanted. Otherwise, how hideously uncertain it all was! She might go at any time. Her mother might be ill—old ladies have a way of being ill. Her brother might be wounded—or killed. Either of those events would carry her off—out of his ken. But if she were engaged deeply enough in the estate affairs she would surely come back. He knew her!—she hated to leave things unfinished. He was eager now to heap all kinds of responsibilities upon her. He would be meek and pliable; he would put no sort of obstacles in her way. She would have no excuse for giving him notice again. He would put up with all her silly Jingoism—if only she would stay!

But at this point the Squire suddenly pulled up short in his pacing and excitedly asked himself the question, which half the people about him were already beginning to ask.

'Why shouldn't I marry her?'

He stood transfixed—the colour rising in his thin cheeks.

Hitherto the notion, if it had ever knocked at the outer door of the brain, had been chased away with mockery. And he had no sooner admitted it now than he drove it out again. He was simply afraid of it—in terror lest any suspicion of it should reach Elizabeth. Her loyalty, her single-mindedness, her freedom from the smallest taint of intrigue—he would have answered for them with all he possessed. If, for a moment, she chose to think that he had misinterpreted her kindness, her services in any vile and vulgar way, why, he might lose her on the instant! Let him walk warily—do nothing at least to destroy the friend in her, before he grasped at anything more.

Besides, how could she put up with him? 'I am the dried husk of a man!' thought the Squire, with vehemence. 'I couldn't learn her ways now, nor she mine. No; let us be as we are—only more so!'

But he was shaken through and through; first by that vanishing of his boy into the furnace of the war, which had brought him at last within the grip of the common grief, the common fear, and now by this strange thought which had invaded him.

* * * * *

After dinner, Elizabeth, who was rather pale, but as cheerful and self-possessed as usual, put Mrs. Gaddesden's knitting to rights at least three times, and held the wool for that lady to wind till her arm ached. Then Mrs. Gaddesden retired to bed; the Squire, who with only occasional mutterings and mumblings had been deep in Elizabeth's copy of the Times, which she had at last ventured to produce in public, went off to the library, and Elizabeth and Pamela were left in the hall alone.

Elizabeth lingered over the fire; while Pamela wondered impatiently why she did not go to her office work as she generally did about nine o'clock. Pamela's mood was more thorny than ever. Had she not seen a letter in Elizabeth's handwriting lying that very afternoon on the hall-table for post—addressed to Captain Chicksands, D.S.O., War Office, Whitehall? Common sense told her that it probably contained nothing but an answer to some questions Arthur had put to the Squire's 'business secretary' as to the amount of ash in the Squire's woods—Arthur's Intelligence appointment having something to do with the Air Board. But the mere fact that Elizabeth should be writing to him stirred intolerable resentment in the girl's passionate heart. She knew very well that it was foolish, unreasonable, but could no more help it than a love-smitten maiden of old Sicily. It was her hour of possession, and she was struggling with it blindly.

And Elizabeth, the shrewd and clever Elizabeth, saw nothing, and knew nothing. If she had ever for a passing moment suspected the possibility of 'an affair' between Arthur Chicksands and Pamela, she had ceased to think of it. The eager projects with which her own thoughts were teeming, had driven out the ordinary preoccupations of womankind. Derelict farms, the food-production of the county, timber, village reconstruction, war-work of various kinds, what time was there left?—what room?—in a mind wrestling with a hundred new experiences, for the guessing of a girl's riddle?

Yet all the same she remained her just and kindly self. She was troubled—much troubled—by the twins' behaviour. She must somehow get to the bottom of it.

So that when only she and Pamela were left in the hall she went up to the girl, not without agitation.

'Pamela—won't you tell me?—have I done anything to offend you and Desmond?'

She spoke very quietly, but her tone showed her wounded. Pamela started and looked up.

'I don't know what you mean,' she said coldly. 'Did you think we had been rude to you?'

It was the first hostile word they had ever exchanged.

Elizabeth grew pale.

'I didn't say anything about your being rude. I asked you if you were cross with me.'

'Oh—cross!' said Pamela, suddenly conscious of a suffocating excitement. 'What's the good of being cross? It's you who are mistress here.'

Elizabeth fell back a step in dismay.

'I do think you ought to explain,' she said after a moment. 'If I had done anything you didn't like—anything you thought unkind, I should be very very sorry.'

Pamela rose from her seat. Elizabeth's tone seemed to her pure hypocrisy. All the bitter, poisonous stuff she had poured out to Desmond the night before was let loose again. Stammering and panting, she broke into the vaguest and falsest accusations.

She was ignored—she was a nobody in her own home—everybody knew it and talked of it. She wasn't jealous—oh no!—she was simply miserable! 'Oh, I daresay you can no more help it than I can. You, of course, are twenty times more use here than I am. I don't dispute that. But I am the daughter of the house after all, and it is a little hard to be so shelved—so absolutely put in the background!—as I am—'

'Don't I consult you whenever I can? haven't I done my best to—' interrupted Elizabeth, only to be interrupted in her turn.

—'to persuade father to let me do things? Yes, that's just it!—you persuade father, you manage everything. It's just that that's intolerable!'

And flushed with passion, extraordinarily handsome, Pamela stood tremulously silent, her eyes fixed on Elizabeth. Elizabeth, too, was silent for a moment. Then she said with steady emphasis:

'Of course there can only be one end to this. I can't possibly stay here.'

'Oh, very well, go!' cried Pamela. 'Go, and tell father that I've made you. But if you do, neither you nor he will see me again for a good while.'

'What do you mean?'

'What I say. If you suppose that I'm going to stay on here to bear the brunt of father's temper after he knows that I've made you throw up, you're entirely mistaken.'

'Then what do you propose?'

'I don't know what I propose,' said Pamela, shaking from head to foot, 'but if you say a word to father about it I shall simply disappear. I shall be able to earn my own living somehow.'

The two confronted each other.

'And you really think I can go on after this as if nothing had happened?' said Elizabeth, in a low voice.

Pangs of remorse were seizing on Pamela, but she stifled them.

'There's a way out!' she said presently, her colour coming and going. 'I'll go and stay with Margaret in town for a bit. Why should there be any fuss? She's asked me often to help with her war-workroom and the canteen. Father won't mind. He doesn't care in the least what I do! And nobody will think it a bit odd—if you and I don't talk.'

Elizabeth turned away. The touch of scorn in her bearing was not lost on Pamela.

'And if I refuse to stay on, without saying or doing anything—to put myself right—you threaten to run away?'

'I do—I mean it,' said Pamela firmly. She had not only hardened again under the sting of that contempt she detected in Elizabeth, but there was rising up in her a sudden and rapturous vision of London:—Arthur at the War Office—herself on open ground—no longer interfered with and over-shadowed. He would come to see her—take her out, perhaps, sometimes to an exhibition, or for a walk. The suggestion of going to Margaret had been made on the spur of the moment without after-thought. She was now wedded to it, divining in it a hundred possibilities.

At the same moment she became more cautious, and more ashamed of herself. It would be better to apologize. But before she could speak Elizabeth said:

'Does Desmond agree with what you have been saying?'

Pamela staring at her adversary was a little frightened. She rushed into a falsehood.

'Desmond knows nothing about it! I don't want him dragged in.'

Elizabeth's eyes, with their bitter, wounded look; seemed to search the girl's inmost mind. Then she moved away.

'We had better go to bed. We shall both want to think it over. Good-night.'

And from the darkness of the hall, where fire and lamp were dying, Pamela half spell-bound, watched the tall figure of Elizabeth slowly mounting the broad staircase at the further end, the candle-light flickering on her bright hair, and on a bunch of snowdrops in her breast.

Then, for an hour, while the house sank into silence, Pamela sat crouched and shivering by the only log left in the grate. 'A little while ago,' she was thinking miserably, 'I had good feelings and ideas—I never hated anybody. I never told lies. I suppose—I shall get worse and worse.'

And when she had gone wearily to bed, it was to cry herself to sleep.

The following morning, an urgent telegram from her younger sister recalled Elizabeth Bremerton to London, where her mother's invalid condition had suddenly taken a disastrous turn for the worse.



CHAPTER XII

'Hullo, Aubrey! what brings you here?' And with the words Arthur Chicksands, just emerging from the War Office, stopped to greet a brother officer, who was just entering it.

'Nothing much. I shan't be long. Can you wait a bit?'

'Right you are. I've got to leave a note at the Ministry of Munitions, but I'll be back in a few minutes.'

Arthur Chicksands went his way to Whitehall Gardens, while Major Mannering disappeared into the inner regions of that vast building where dwell the men on whom hang the fortunes of an Empire. Arthur walking fast up Whitehall was very little aware of the scene about him. His mind was occupied with the details of the interview in which he had just been engaged. His promotion had lately been rapid, and his work of extraordinary interest. He had been travelling a great deal, backwards and forwards between London and Versailles, charged with several special enquiries in which he had shown both steadiness and flair. Things were known to him that he could not share even with a friend so old and 'safe' as Aubrey Mannering. The grip of the coming crisis was upon him, and he seemed 'to carry the world in his breast'

'Next year—next February—where shall we all be?' The question was automatically suggested to him by the sight of the green buds of the lilac trees In front of Whitehall Terrace.

'Oh, my dear Susan!—do look at those trees!'

Chicksands, startled from his own meditations, looked up to see two old ladies gazing with an eager interest at a couple of plane trees, which had just shed a profusion of bark and stood white and almost naked in the grey London air. They were dear old ladies from some distant country-side, with bonnets and fronts, and reticules, as though they had just walked out of Cranford, and after gazing with close attention at the plane trees near them they turned and looked at all the other plane trees in Whitehall, which presented an equally plucked and peeled appearance.

Then the one addressed as Susan laughed out—a happy, chuckling laugh.

'Oh, I see! My dear Ellen, how clever people are now! They're camouflaged—that's what it is—can't you see?—all the way down, because of the raids!'

The admiring fervour of the voice was too much for Chicksands. He hurried past them, head down, and ran up the steps of the Ministry of Munitions. From that point of vantage he turned, shaken with amusement, to see the pair advancing slowly towards Westminster, their old-fashioned skirts floating round them, still pointing eagerly at the barkless trees. Had they come from some piny region where the plane is not? Anyway the tension of the day was less.

He repeated the tale to Aubrey Mannering a few minutes later, when they had turned together into Birdcage Walk. But Aubrey scarcely gave it the ghost of a smile. As to his old friend's enquiries about his own work and plans, he answered them quite readily, but shortly, without any expansion; with the manner, indeed, of one for whom talk about himself had no sort of attraction. And as they passed along the front of the barracks, where a few men were drilling, Chicksands, struck by his companion's silence, turned a sudden look upon him. Mannering's eyes were absently and yet intently fixed on the small squads of drilling men. And it was sharply borne in on Chicksands that he was walking beside the mere image or phantom of a man, a man whose mind was far away—'voyaging through strange seas of thought alone.' Mannering's eyes were wide open; but they made the weird impression on the spectator of a double seeing—of some object of vision beyond and behind the actual scene of the barracks and the recruits, and that an object producing terror or pain. Chicksands made a remark and it was not answered.

It was not the first time that Arthur had observed this trance-like state in the man who was to be his brother-in-law, and had been his 'chum' from childhood. Others had noticed it, and he had reason to think that Beryl was often distressed by it. He had never himself seen any signs of strangeness or depression in Aubrey before the Easter of 1915, when they met in Paris, for the first time after the battle of Neuve Chapelle, in which Mannering had lost his dearest friend, one Freddy Vivian, of the Worcesters. During the winter they had met fairly often in the neighbourhood of Ypres, and Aubrey was then the same eager, impulsive fellow that Chicksands had known at Eton and Cambridge, bubbling over with the exploits of his battalion, and adored by his own men. In April, in a raid near Festubert, Mannering was badly wounded. But the change in him was already evident when they were in Paris together. Chicksands could only suppose it represented the mental and nervous depression caused by Vivian's death, and would pass away. On the contrary, it had proved to be something permanent.

Yet it had never interfered with his efficiency as a soldier, nor his record for a dare-devil courage. There were many tales current of his exploits on the Somme, in which again and again he had singed the beard of Death, with an absolute recklessness of his own personal life, combined with the most anxious care for that of his men. Since the battle of Messines he had been the head of a remarkable Officers' School at Aldershot, mainly organized by himself. But now, it seemed, he was moving heaven and earth to get back to France and the front. Chicksands did not think he would achieve it. He was invaluable where he was, and his superiors, to Mannering's indignation, were inclined to regard him as a man who was physically fit rather for home service than the front.

When they reached the Buckingham Palace end of the Walk, Mannering paused.

'Where are you lunching?'

'At Brooks', with my father.'

'Oh, then I'll walk there with you.'

They struck across the park, and talk fell on a recent small set-back which had happened to a regiment with which they were both well acquainted.

Chicksands shrugged his shoulders.

'I've heard some details at the War Office. Just ten minutes' rot! The Colonel stopped it with his revolver. Most of them splendid fellows. Two young subs gave way under a terrific shelling and their men with them. And in ten minutes they were all rushing forward again, straight through the barrage—and the two lieutenants were killed.'

'My God!—lucky fellows!' cried Mannering, under his breath, with a passion and suddenness that struck astonishment into his companion.

'Well, yes,' said Arthur, 'in a sense—but—nothing would have happened to them. They had wiped it out.'

Mannering shook his head. Then with a great and evident effort he changed the conversation.

'You know Pamela's in town?'

'Yes, with Margaret Strang. I'm going to dine there to-night. How's the new agent getting on?'

Aubrey smiled.

'Which?—the man—or the lady?'

'Miss Bremerton, of course. I got a most interesting letter from her a fortnight ago. Do you know that she herself has discovered nearly a thousand ash in the Squire's woods, after that old idiot Hull had told her she wouldn't find half-a-dozen? A thousand ash is not to be sneezed at in these days! I happen to know that the Air Board wrote the Squire a very civil letter.'

'"All along of Eliza!"' mused Mannering. 'She's been away from Mannering just lately. Her invalid mother became very seriously ill about three weeks ago, and she had to go home for a time. My father, of course, has been fussing and fuming to get her back.'

'Poor Squire! But how could Pamela be spared too?'

Mannering hesitated.

'Well, the fact is she and my father seem to have had a good old-fashioned row. She tried to fill Miss Bremerton's place, and of course it didn't answer. She's too young, and my father too exacting. Then when it broke down, and he took things out of her hands again, comparing her, of course, enormously to her disadvantage with Miss Bremerton, Pamela lost her temper and said foolish things of Miss Bremerton. Whereupon fury on my father's part—and sudden departure on Pamela's. She actually bicycled off to the railway station, sent a telegram for her things, and came up to Margaret. Alice Gaddesden is looking after father. But of course he and she don't get on a bit.'

The Captain looked much concerned.

'It's a pity Pamela takes that line—don't you think? I really don't see the conspirator in Miss Bremerton. I hoped when I saw her first she would make just all the difference to Pamela.'

'Yes, it's puzzling. I ran down to see my father, who was in a rabid state of mind, not knowing what to do with all the schemes and business this clever woman started—perfectly lost without her.'

'Ah, that's the worst of your Indispensable!' laughed Chicksands.

Mannering threw him a quick, scrutinizing look. Various items of information picked up at Mannering, mostly from his sister Alice, had made him wonder whether some jealousy of a more vital and intimate kind than appeared might not be at the root of Pamela's behaviour. He was not observant at this period of his life, except of things relating to his engagement to Beryl, his work, or those inner pre-occupations which held him. But it had once or twice crossed his mind that Pamela might be interested in Arthur; and there had been certain hints from Beryl, who was, however, he was certain, scarcely better informed than he was. Pamela was a most secretive and independent young woman. He doubted whether even Desmond, whom she adored, knew much about her.

Well, supposing she was jealous—jealous of her father's secretary, and on account of Arthur, was there the smallest cause for it? He understood that Arthur and Miss Bremerton had met occasionally, and he had himself heard Chicksands express the warmest admiration for her as the right sort of new woman, 'as straight as you make 'em'—and with 'a brain like a man'—which, from one who was always rather a critical spectator than a courtier of women, was high praise. But as for any spark of sex in it—Mannering laughed at the notion. No. If that really was Pamela's delusion, something must be done to rid his little sister of it if possible. He would talk to Beryl.

But—as always when any new responsibility presented itself to him—a deep inner weariness rebelled. In small things as in great, he was mentally like a man walking and working with a broken limb.

* * * * *

Arthur Chicksands stood some time that evening waiting on the doorstep of Mrs. Strang's small house, in one of the old streets of Westminster. 'No servants, I suppose,' he said to himself with resignation. But it was bitterly cold, and he was relieved to hear at last the sound of a voice and a girl's laugh inside. Pamela opened the door to him, pulling down the sleeves of a thin black dress over her shapely arms.

'Oh, come in. Margaret's cooking the dinner, and I've laid the table. Bernard's just bringing up some coals, and then we're ready.'

Mr. Bernard Strang, a distinguished Home Office official, appeared at that moment in his shirt-sleeves at the head of the kitchen stairs, bearing a scuttle of coal in each hand.

'Gracious! Give me one of them!' said the Captain, hurrying to the rescue.

But Mr. Strang, putting down the right-hand scuttle, to take breath, warned him off.

'Thank you, Chicksands—but no brass hats need apply! Many thanks—but you're too smart!' He pointed, panting, to the red tabs and to the bit of variegated ribbon on Chicksands' broad chest. 'Go and help Pamela bring in the dinner.'