Elizabeth's Campaign Part 29

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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sion.

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 sh.e.l.ls 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 s.h.i.+ps 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 advertis.e.m.e.nts--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 pa.s.sion 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 pa.s.sion.

'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.