Mufti Part 15

"I'm sorry--but I do. You see, I knew Rumfold pretty well in the old days. . . . Is that the reason of the frown?"

"I wasn't particularly anxious to see you or anybody," she remarked uncompromisingly. "I wanted to try to think something out. . . ."

"Then we are a well met pair," laughed Vane. "I will walk a few paces behind you, and we will meditate."

"Don't be a fool," said Joan still more uncompromisingly. "And anyway you're very early for lunch." She looked at her wrist watch. . . . "I said one o'clock and it's only half past twelve. The best people don't come before they're asked. . . ."

"I throw myself on the mercy of the court," pleaded Vane solemnly.

"I'll sit on this side of the bush and you sit on the other and in a quarter of an hour we will meet unexpectedly with all the usual symptoms of affection and joy. . . ."

The girl was slowly retracing her steps, with Vane just behind her, and suddenly through an opening in the trees Blandford came in sight. It was not the usual view that most people got, because the path through the little copse was not very well known--but from nowhere could the house be seen to better advantage. The sheet of placid, unruffled water with its low red boathouse: the rolling stretch of green sweeping up from it to the house broken only by the one terrace above the tennis lawns; the rose garden, a feast of glorious colour, and then the house itself with its queer turrets and spires and the giant trees beyond it; all combined to make an unforgettable picture.

Joan had stopped and Vane stood silently beside her. She was taking in every detail of the scene, and Vane, glancing at her quickly, surprised a look of almost brooding fierceness in her grey eyes. It was a look of protection, of owners.h.i.+p, of fear, all combined: a look such as a tigress might give if her young were threatened. . . . And suddenly there recurred to his mind that phrase in Margaret's letter about financial trouble at Blandford. It had not impressed him particularly when he read it; now he found himself wondering. . . .

"Isn't it glorious?" The girl was speaking very low, as if unconscious that she had a listener. Then she turned on Vane swiftly. "Look at that!" she cried, and her arm swept the whole perfect vista. "Isn't it worth while doing anything--anything at all--to keep that as one's own?

That has belonged to us for five hundred years--and now! . . . My G.o.d! just think of a second Sir John Patterdale--here"--the brooding wild mother look was in her eyes again, and her lips were shut tight.

Vane moved restlessly beside her. He felt that the situation was delicate; that it was only his unexpected and unwelcome arrival on the scene that had made her take him into his confidence. Evidently there was something gravely the matter; equally evidently it was nothing to do with him. . . .

"I hope there's no chance of such a tragedy as that," he said gravely.

She turned and faced him. "There's every chance," she cried fiercely.

"Dad is up against it--I know he is, though he doesn't say much. And this morning . . ." She bit her lip, and once more her eyes rested on the old house. "Oh! what's the good of talking?" she went on after a moment. "What has to be--has to be; but, oh! it makes me mad to think of it. What good does it do, what purpose in the scheme of things you may talk about, does it serve to turn out a man, who is beloved for miles around, and put in his place some wretched pork butcher who has made millions selling cat's meat as sausages?"

She faced Vane defiantly, and he wisely remained silent.

"You may call it what you like," she stormed; "but it's practically turning him out. Is it a crime to own land, and a virtue to make a fortune out of your neighbours in trade? Dad has never swindled a soul. He's let his tenants down easy all through the war when they've had difficulties over their rent; he's just idolised by them all. And now he's got to go--unless. . . ." She paused and her two hands clenched suddenly. Then she continued, and her voice was quite calm.

"I know I'm talking rot--so you needn't pay any attention. The great thinkers are all agreed--aren't they?--that the present land system is wrong--and they must know, of course. But I'm not a great thinker, and I can't get beyond the fact that it's not going to increase anybody's happiness--and there are a good many to be considered--if Dad goes, and a pork butcher comes in. . . . And that's that. . . ."

"Supposing," said Vane curiously, "it wasn't a pork butcher? Suppose it was someone who--well, let's say whom you wouldn't mind going in to dinner with."

"It would be just the same," she answered after a moment. "Just the same. It's ours, don't you see?--it's _ours_. It's always been ours."

And the brooding, animal look had come back into her eyes. . . .

Then with a laugh she turned to him. "Come on; you've got to make a bow to Aunt Jane. Mind you tell her you've killed a lot of Germans.

She'll adore you for ever. . . ."

She threw off her fit of depression and chatted gaily all the way up to the house.

"I've told Dad you're a very serious young man," she remarked, as they reached the drive; "so you'd better live up to your reputation."

Vane groaned. "Your sins be upon your own head," he remarked. "I've already had one serious dissertation this morning from old John, who used to be lodgekeeper at Rumfold."

"I know him well," cried the girl. "A dear old man. . . ."

"Who shares your views on the land question," said Vane with a smile.

She stopped and faced him. "Don't you?" she demanded quietly.

"In your own words, Joan--I am a very serious young man; and I am seeking for knowledge."

For a moment she seemed about to reply, and then, with a short laugh, she turned on her heel and walked on. It was just as they were entering the drawing-room that she looked at him over her shoulder. "I hope your search will be successful," she remarked; "and I hope still more that when it is successful you won't commit suicide. To have knowledge, to know to-day what is the truth, would be, I think, the most terrible burden any man could bear. Have you ever thought how tired G.o.d must be?"

Before he could answer she was shouting down her aunt's ear-trumpet.

And Vane was left wondering at the strange mixture which went to make up Joan Devereux.

Sir James was cordially delighted to see him, especially when he discovered that Vane knew Mr. Trent.

"Where's the little girl?" he asked as they eat down to luncheon.

"Margaret was her name, I think."

To his intense annoyance Vane found himself colouring slightly, and at the same moment he became acutely aware that a pair of grey eyes were fixed on him from the other side of the table.

"She is nursing at Etaples, I believe," he answered casually, but a soft gurgle of laughter told him it was useless.

"Captain Vane, Dad, is the soul of discretion," mocked Joan. "I shouldn't be surprised if he wasn't nursed by her. . . ."

"Devilish nice girl to be nursed by, too, my dear," chuckled her father, "from what I remember of her. What do you think, Vane?" He was mercifully spared the necessity of answering by the intervention of Aunt Jane, who had pursued her own train of thought, blissfully unconscious of any change of conversation.

"How many of the brutes did you say you'd killed, young man?" she boomed at him, at the same time putting her ear-trumpet at the "ready."

"Two for certain," howled Vane; "perhaps three."

She resumed her lunch, and Sir James laughed. "My sister," he remarked, "is full of war. . . . Rather fuller--like a good many of those who have stayed behind--than you fellows. . . ."

"It's very much nicer," said Vane with a laugh, "to kill--even a Boche--in imagination than in reality. . . . Though I've seen many men," he added thoughtfully, "go blood mad."

"Do you remember that description of Kipling's," said Sir James, "of the sc.r.a.p between the Black Tyrone and the Pathans? Mulvaney was sick, and Ortheris cursed, and Learoyd sang hymns--wasn't it?"

"I've seen them all those ways," said Vane thoughtfully, "and the worst of the lot are the silent ones. . . . There was one fellow I had who never uttered a word from the time we went over till the finish, and he never--if he could avoid it--struck a man anywhere except in the stomach. . . . And incidentally he could quote more from the Bible than most Bishops. . . . In fact, if he ever did speak, so I'm told, when he was fighting it was just to remark, 'And the Lord said'--as he stabbed."

Sir James nodded, and then half-closed his eyes. "One just can't get it," he said. "None of us who haven't been there will ever get it--so I suppose it's not much use trying. But one can't help thinking that if only a few of the people who count over here could go and see, it might make a difference. We might not be having so much trouble. . . ."

"See the reality and clear away the humbug," said Vane. "Can't be done, Sir James. I know Staff Officers who would willingly give a year's pay to shepherd a personally conducted Cook's party to France of the British working man. They get their legs pulled right and left by everybody out there; and do you wonder?" He laughed shortly. "Tommy's no fool: six pounds a week instead of a s.h.i.+lling a day. And comparisons are odious."

"But couldn't they be taken really into things?" asked his host.

"I can't quite see the party popping the parapet," grinned Vane. "It's not a thing which anyone does for pleasure. . . ."

It was at that moment that with a loud booming noise Aunt Jane again contributed to the conversation. "I'm afraid you've wasted your time out there, young man."

"She means that two Germans and one doubtful isn't enough," gurgled Joan, as she saw Vane's look of bewilderment. To his relief the old lady did not adjust her trumpet, so he a.s.sumed rightly that he would be allowed to suffer her displeasure in silence. . . .

"Well," said Sir James after a pause. "I suppose there are unsurmountable difficulties in making people understand. But if I had my way I'd take some of these blackguards who are fattening on the country's helplessness and I'd put 'em in the front line trenches. . . ."

"With a trench mortar bombardment on," supplemented Vane laughing.