The Freelands Part 22

A level voice with a faint lisp answered him:

"They belong to a man called Tryst; he was turned out of his cottage on Wednesday because his dead wife's sister was staying with him, so we've taken them in. Did you notice the look on the face of the eldest?"

Stanley nodded. In truth, he had noticed something, though what he could not have said.

"At nine years old she has to do the housework and be a mother to the other two, besides going to school. This is all because Lady Malloring has conscientious scruples about marriage with a deceased wife's sister."

'Certainly'--thought Stanley--'that does sound a bit thick!' And he asked:

"Is the woman here, too?"

"No, she's gone home for the present."

He felt relief.

"I suppose Malloring's point is," he said, "whether or not you're to do what you like with your own property. For instance, if you had let this cottage to some one you thought was harming the neighborhood, wouldn't you terminate his tenancy?"

She answered, still in that level voice:

"Her action is cowardly, narrow, and tyrannical, and no amount of sophistry will make me think differently."

Stanley felt precisely as if one of his feet had gone through the ice into water so cold that it seemed burning hot! Sophistry! In a plain man like himself! He had always connected the word with Felix. He looked at her, realizing suddenly that the a.s.sociation of his brother's family with the outrage on Malloring's estate was probably even nearer than he had feared.

"Look here, Kirsteen!" he said, uttering the unlikely name with resolution, for, after all, she was his sister-in-law: "Did this fellow set fire to Malloring's ricks?"

He was aware of a queer flash, a quiver, a something all over her face, which pa.s.sed at once back to its intent gravity.

"We have no reason to suppose so. But tyranny produces revenge, as you know."

Stanley shrugged his shoulders. "It's not my business to go into the rights and wrongs of what's been done. But, as a man of the world and a relative, I do ask you to look after your youngsters and see they don't get into a mess. They're an inflammable young couple--young blood, you know!"

Having made this speech, Stanley looked down, with a feeling that it would give her more chance.

"You are very kind," he heard her saying in that quiet, faintly lisping voice; "but there are certain principles involved."

And, suddenly, his curious fear of this woman took shape. Principles! He had unconsciously been waiting for that word, than which none was more like a red rag to him.

"What principles can possibly be involved in going against the law?"

"And where the law is unjust?"

Stanley was startled, but he said: "Remember that your principles, as you call them, may hurt other people besides yourself; Tod and your children most of all. How is the law unjust, may I ask?"

She had been sitting at the table opposite, but she got up now and went to the hearth. For a woman of forty-two--as he supposed she would be--she was extraordinarily lithe, and her eyes, fixed on him from under those twitching, wavy brows, had a curious glow in their darkness. The few silver threads in the ma.s.s of her over-fine black hair seemed to give it extra vitality. The whole of her had a sort of intensity that made him profoundly uncomfortable. And he thought suddenly: 'Poor old Tod! Fancy having to go to bed with that woman!'

Without raising her voice, she began answering his question.

"These poor people have no means of setting law in motion, no means of choosing where and how they will live, no means of doing anything except just what they are told; the Mallorings have the means to set the law in motion, to choose where and how to live, and to dictate to others. That is why the law is unjust. With every independent pound a year, this equal law of yours--varies!"

"Phew!" said Stanley. "That's a proposition!"

"I give you a simple case. If I had chosen not to marry Tod but to live with him in free love, we could have done it without inconvenience. We have some independent income; we could have afforded to disregard what people thought or did. We could have bought (as we did buy) our piece of land and our cottage, out of which we could not have been turned. Since we don't care for society, it would have made absolutely no difference to our present position. But Tryst, who does not even want to defy the law--what happens to him? What happens to hundreds of laborers all over the country who venture to differ in politics, religion, or morals from those who own them?"

'By George!' thought Stanley, 'it's true, in a way; I never looked at it quite like that.' But the feeling that he had come to persuade her to be reasonable, and the deeply rooted Englishry of him, conspired to make him say:

"That's all very well; but, you see, it's only a necessary incident of property-holding. You can't interfere with plain rights."

"You mean--an evil inherent in property-holding?"

"If you like; I don't split words. The lesser of two evils. What's your remedy? You don't want to abolish property; you've confessed that property gives YOU your independence!"

Again that curious quiver and flas.h.!.+

"Yes; but if people haven't decency enough to see for themselves how the law favors their independence, they must be shown that it doesn't pay to do to others as they would hate to be done by."

"And you wouldn't try reasoning?"

"They are not amenable to reason."

Stanley took up his hat.

"Well, I think some of us are. I see your point; but, you know, violence never did any good; it isn't--isn't English."

She did not answer. And, nonplussed thereby, he added lamely: "I should have liked to have seen Tod and your youngsters. Remember me to them.

Clara sent her regards;" and, looking round the room in a rather lost way, he held out his hand.

He had an impression of something warm and dry put into it, with even a little pressure.

Back in the car, he said to his chauffeur, "Go home the other way, Batter, past the church."

The vision of that kitchen, with its brick floor, its black oak beams, bright copper pans, the flowers on the window-sill, the great, open hearth, and the figure of that woman in her blue dress standing before it, with her foot poised on a log, clung to his mind's eye with curious fidelity. And those three kids, popping out like that--proof that the whole thing was not a rather bad dream! 'Queer business!' he thought; 'bad business! That woman's uncommonly all there, though. Lot in what she said, too. Where the deuce should we all be if there were many like her!' And suddenly he noticed, in a field to the right, a number of men coming along the hedge toward the road--evidently laborers. What were they doing? He stopped the car. There were fifteen or twenty of them, and back in the field he could see a girl's red blouse, where a little group of four still lingered. 'By George!' he thought, 'those must be the young Tods going it!' And, curious to see what it might mean, Stanley fixed his attention on the gate through which the men were bound to come. First emerged a fellow in corduroys tied below the knee, with long brown moustaches decorating a face that, for all its haggardness, had a jovial look. Next came a st.u.r.dy little red-faced, bow-legged man in s.h.i.+rt-sleeves rolled up, walking alongside a big, dark fellow with a cap pushed up on his head, who had evidently just made a joke. Then came two old men, one of whom was limping, and three striplings. Another big man came along next, in a little clearance, as it were, between main groups. He walked heavily, and looked up lowering at the car. The fellow's eyes were queer, and threatening, and sad--giving Stanley a feeling of discomfort. Then came a short, square man with an impudent, loquacious face and a bit of swagger in his walk. He, too, looked up at Stanley and made some remark which caused two thin-faced fellows with him to grin sheepishly. A spare old man, limping heavily, with a yellow face and drooping gray moustaches, walked next, alongside a warped, bent fellow, with yellowish hair all over his face, whose expression struck Stanley as half-idiotic. Then two more striplings of seventeen or so, whittling at bits of sticks; an active, clean-shorn chap with drawn-in cheeks; and, last of all, a small man by himself, without a cap on a round head covered with thin, light hair, moving at a 'dot-here, dot-there' walk, as though he had beasts to drive.

Stanley noted that all--save the big man with the threatening, sad eyes, the old, yellow-faced man with a limp, and the little man who came out last, lost in his imaginary beasts--looked at the car furtively as they went their ways. And Stanley thought: 'English peasant! Poor devil! Who is he? What is he? Who'd miss him if he did die out? What's the use of all this fuss about him? He's done for! Glad I've nothing to do with him at Becket, anyway! "Back to the land!" "Independent peasantry!"

Not much! Shan't say that to Clara, though; knock the bottom out of her week-ends!' And to his chauffeur he muttered:

"Get on, Batter!"

So, through the peace of that country, all laid down in gra.s.s, through the dignity and loveliness of trees and meadows, this May evening, with the birds singing under a sky surcharged with warmth and color, he sped home to dinner.

CHAPTER XX

But next morning, turning on his back as it came dawn, Stanley thought, with the curious intensity which in those small hours so soon becomes fear: 'By Jove! I don't trust that woman a yard! I shall wire for Felix!' And the longer he lay on his back, the more the conviction bored a hole in him. There was a kind of fever in the air nowadays, that women seemed to catch, as children caught the measles. What did it all mean?

England used to be a place to live in. One would have thought an old country like this would have got through its infantile diseases!

Hysteria! No one gave in to that. Still, one must look out! Arson was about the limit! And Stanley had a vision, suddenly, of his plough-works in flames. Why not? The ploughs were not for the English market. Who knew whether these laboring fellows mightn't take that as a grievance, if trouble began to spread? This somewhat far-fetched notion, having started to burrow, threw up a really horrid mole-hill on Stanley. And it was only the habit, in the human mind, of saying suddenly to fears: Stop! I'm tired of you! that sent him to sleep about half past four.

He did not, however, neglect to wire to Felix: