Elizabeth's Campaign Part 19

'That's Xerxes, of course,' put in Desmond.

'"Him, who changed the paths of earth and sea, who sailed upon the mainland, and walked upon the deep--him did Spartan valour hold back, with just three hundred spears. Shame on you, mountains and seas!"'

'Well, that's all right, isn't it?' said the boy simply, looking up.

'Couldn't put it better if you tried, could you?' Then he said, hesitating a little as he turned down the leaf, and put the book in his pocket, 'Five of the fellows who were in the Sixth with me this time last year are dead by now. It makes you think a bit, doesn't it?--Hullo, there is father!'

He turned joyously, his young figure finely caught in the light of Elizabeth's lamp against the background of the Nike.

'Well, father you have been a time! I thought you'd forgotten altogether I was off to-night.'

'The train was abominably late. Travelling is becoming a perfect nuisance! I gave the station-master a piece of my mind,' said the Squire angrily.

'And I expect he said that you civilians jolly well have to wait for the munition trains!'

'He muttered some nonsense of that sort. I didn't listen to him.'

The Squire threw himself down in an arm-chair. Desmond perched on the corner of a table near. Elizabeth discreetly took up her work and disappeared.

'How much time have you got?' asked the Squire abruptly.

'Oh, a few minutes. Aubrey and I are to have some supper before I go. But Forest'll come and tell me.'

'Everything ready? Got money enough?'

'Rather! I shan't want anything for an age. Why, I shall be buying war-loan out of my pay!'

He laughed happily. Then his face grew suddenly serious.

'Look here, father--I want awfully to say something. Do you mind?'

'If you want to say it, I suppose you will say it.'

The Squire was sitting hunched up, looking old and tired, his thick white hair piled fantastically above his eyes.

Desmond straightened his shoulders with the air of one going over the parapet.

'Well, it's this, father. I do wish you'd give up that row about the park!'

The Squire sat up impatiently.

'That's not your business, Desmond. It can't matter to you.'

'Yes, but it _does_ matter to me!' said the boy with energy. 'It'll be in all the papers--the fellows will gas about it at mess--it's awfully hard lines on me. It makes me feel rotten!'

The Squire laughed. He was reminded of a Fourth of June years before, when Desmond had gone through agonies of shame because his father was not, in his eyes, properly 'got-up' for the occasion--how he had disappeared in the High Street, and only joined his people again in the crowd at the fireworks.

'I recommend you to stick it, Desmond. It won't last long. I've got my part to play, and you've got yours. You fight because they make you.'

'I _don't!_' said the boy pa.s.sionately. 'I fight because--'

Then his words broke down. He descended from the table.

'Well, all right, father. I suppose it's no good talking. Only if you think I shan't mind if you get yourself put in quad, you're jolly well mistaken. Hullo, Forest! I'm coming!'

He hurried off, the Squire moving slowly after him. In the hour before the boy departed he was the spoilt darling of his sisters and the servants, who hung round him, and could not do enough for him.

He endured it, on the whole, patiently das.h.i.+ng out at the very end to say good-bye to an old gardener, once a keeper, with whom he used to go ferreting in the park. To his father alone his manner was not quite as usual. It was the manner of one who had been hurt. The Squire felt it.

As to his elder son, he and Aubrey parted without any outward sign of discord, and on the way to London Aubrey, with the dry detachment that was natural to him in speaking of himself, told the story of the preceding twenty-four hours to the eager Desmond's sympathetic ears. 'Well done, Broomie!' was the boy's exultant comment on the tale of the codicil.

The house after Desmond's departure settled dreamily down. Pamela, with red eyes, retreated to the schoolroom, and began to clear up the debris left by the packing; Alice Gaddesden went to sleep in the drawing-room; Mrs. Strang wrote urgent letters to registry offices, who now seldom answered her; the Squire was in the library, and Elizabeth retreated early to her own room. She spent a good deal of time in writing up a locked diary, and finis.h.i.+ng up a letter to her mother. Then she saw to her astonishment that it was nearly one o'clock, and began to feel sleepy.

The night was warm, and before undressing she put out her light, and threw up her window. There was a moon nearly at the full outside, and across the misty stretches of the park the owls were calling.

Suddenly she heard a distant footstep, and drew back from the window. A man was pacing slowly up and down an avenue of pollarded limes which divided the rose-garden from the park. His figure could only be intermittently seen; but it was certainly the Squire.

She drew the curtains again without shutting the window; and for long after she was in bed she still heard the footstep. It awakened many trains of thought in her--of her own position in this household where she seemed to have become already mistress and indispensable; of Desmond's last words with her; of the relations between father and son; of Captain Chicksands and his most agreeable company; of Pamela's evident dislike of her, and what she could do to mend it.

As to Pamela, Elizabeth's thoughts went oddly astray. She was vexed with the girl for what had seemed to the elder woman her young rudeness to a gallant and distinguished man. Why, she had scarcely spoken a word to him during the sitting on the hill! In some way, Elizabeth supposed, Captain Chicksands had offended her--had not made enough of her perhaps? But girls must learn now to accept simpler and blunter manners from their men friends. She guessed that Pamela was in that self-conscious, _exalte_ mood of first youth which she remembered so well in herself--fretting too, no doubt, poor child! over the parting from Desmond. Anyway she seemed to have no particular interest in Arthur Chicksands, nor he in her, though his tone in speaking to her had been, naturally, familiar and intimate. But probably he was one of those able men who have little to say to the young girl, and keep their real minds for the older and experienced woman.

At any rate, Elizabeth dismissed from her mind whatever vague notion or curiosity as to a possible love-affair for Pamela in that direction might have been lurking in it. And that being so, she promptly, and without _arriere pensee_ of any sort, allowed herself the pleasant recollection of half an hour's conversation which had put her intellectually on her mettle, and quickened those infant ambitions of a practical and patriotic kind which were beginning to rise in her.

But the Squire's coming escapade! How to stop it?--for Desmond's sake chiefly.

Dear boy! It was on a tender, almost maternal thought of him that she at last turned to sleep. But the footstep pursued her ear. What was the meaning of this long nocturnal pacing? Had the Squire, after all, a heart, or some fragment of one? Was it the parting from Desmond that thus kept him from his bed? She would have liked to think it--but did not quite succeed!

CHAPTER VII

A week or two had pa.s.sed.

The Squire was on his way to inspect his main preparations for the battle at the park gates, which he expected on the morrow. He had been out before breakfast that morning, on horseback, with one of the gardeners, to see that all the gates on the estate, except the Chetworth gate, were locked and padlocked. For the Chetworth gate, which adjoined the land to be attacked, more serious defences were in progress.

All his attempts to embarra.s.s the action of the Committee had been so far vain. The alternatives he had proposed had been refused.

Fifty acres at the Chetworth end of Mannering Park, besides goodly slices elsewhere, the County Committee meant to have. As the Squire would not plough them himself, and as the season was advancing, he had been peremptorily informed that the motor plough belonging to the County Committee would be sent over on such a day, with so many men, to do the work; the land had been surveyed; no damage would be done to the normal state of the property that could be avoided; et cetera.

So the crisis was at hand. The Squire felt battle in his blood.

As he walked along through his domain, exhilarated by the bright frosty morning, and swinging his stick like a boy, he was in the true Quixotic mood, ready to tilt at any wind-mill in his path. The state of the country, the state of the war, the state of his own affairs, had produced in him a final ferment of resentment and disgust which might explode in any folly.

Why not go to prison? He thought he could bear it. A man must stand by his opinions--even through sacrifice. It would startle the public into attention. Such outrages on the freedom, on the ancient rights of Englishmen, must not pa.s.s without protest. Yes--he felt it in him to be a martyr! They would hardly refuse him a pocket Homer in prison.

What, a month? Three weeks, in actual practice. Luckily he cared nothing at all about food--though he refused to be rationed by a despotic Government. On a handful of dates and a bit of coa.r.s.e bread he had pa.s.sed many a day of hard work when he was excavating in the East. One can always starve--for a purpose! The Squire conceived himself as out for Magna Charta--the root principles of British liberty. As for those chattering fellows of the Labour Party, let them conquer England if they could. While the Government ploughed up his land without leave, the Socialists would strip him of it altogether. Well, nothing for it but to _fight_! If one went down, one went down--but at least honourably.

In the _Times_ that morning there was a report of a case in the north, a landowner fined 100, for letting a farm go to waste for the game's sake. And Miss Bremerton had been holding up the like fate to him that morning--because of Holme Wood. A woman of parts that!--too clever!--a disputatious creature, whom a man would like to put down. But it wasn't easy; she slipped out of your grip--gave you unexpected t.i.ts for tats. One would have thought after that business with the will, she would be anxious to make up--to show docility. In such a relation one expected docility. But not a bit of it! She grew bolder. The Squire admitted uncomfortably that it was his own fault--only, in fact, what he deserved for making a land-agent, accountant, and legal adviser out of a poor lady who had merely engaged herself to be his private secretary for cla.s.sical purposes.

All the same he confessed that she had never yet neglected the cla.s.sical side of her duties. His thoughts contrasted the library and the collections as they were now, with what they had been a couple of months before. Now he knew where books could be found; now one could see the precious things he possessed. Her taste--her neatness--her diligence--nothing could beat them. And she moved so quietly--had so light a foot--and always a pleasant voice and smile.