Anthony Lyveden Part 34

Wind, rain, and sun set upon their favourites a mark which there is no mistaking. Under the treatment of these three bluff specialists the handsome face had in a short month become a picture. In all his life the ex-officer had never looked so well.

It was when he had given his late master notice and had twenty-one pounds in the world that Lyveden had seen the advertis.e.m.e.nt--

_A solitary existence, hard work, long hours, 3 a week, fuel, a bachelor's unfurnished lodging, and an open-air life is offered to an ex-officer: the job has been considered and abusively rejected by five ex-other ranks on the score that it is "not good enough"; as an ex-officer myself, I disagree with them; incidentally, I can pay no more; sorry to have to add that applicants must be physically fit.

Write, Box 1078, c/o "The Times," E.C.4._

Immediately he had applied by telegram, paying for a reply....

Three days later he and Patch had emerged from the London train into the keen night air of Chipping Norton.

There on the platform to meet him had stood his new employer--a tremendous figure of a man, with the eyes of an explorer and the physique of an Atlas, and, after a little delay, Lyveden had found himself seated in a high dog-cart, which, in the wake of an impatient roan, was bowling along over the cold white roads, listening to the steady deep voice foretelling his fate.

"We're going to Girdle. I've taken a room at the inn there for you to-night. Your cottage is two miles from there. I'll show you the way and meet you there in the morning--at half-past eight, please. It's water-tight--I had the thatch tended this year--and it's got its own well--good water. It's in the park, by the side of the London road, so you won't be too lonely. Now, your work. Woodman, road-maker, joiner, keeper, forester, gardener--that's what I want." Anthony's brain reeled. "That's what I am myself. Listen. I've inherited this estate, which has been let go for over a hundred years. There isn't a foot of fencing that isn't rotten, a road that you can walk on, a bridge that is safe. The woods--it's all woodland--have gone to blazes. I want to pull it round.... Fifty R.E.'s and a Labour Battalion is what it wants, but that's a dream. I've tried the obvious way. I asked for tenders for mending a twelve-foot bridge. The lowest was seventy pounds. I did it myself, single-handed, in seven days....

I've saved my stamps since then. Well, I've got a small staff."

Anthony heaved a sigh of relief. "Two old carters, two carpenters, three magnificent sailors--all deaf, poor chaps--and a little lame engineer. But I haven't an understudy.... I hope you'll like it, and stay. It's a man's life."

"I like the sound of it," said Lyveden. "What are you on now?"

"Road-making at the moment. The fence is the most important, but the roads are so bad we can't get the timber through. It's all sawn ready--we've got a toy saw-mill--but we can't carry it. You see..."

The speaker's enthusiasm had been infectious. Lyveden had found himself violently interested in his new life before he had entered upon it.

The next day he had accepted the tiny cabin as his future home, and had had a fire roaring upon the hearth before nine o'clock. Colonel Winchester, who had expected to lodge him at Girdle for the best part of a week, had abetted his determination to take immediate possession with a grateful heart, presenting his new tenant with some blankets and an excellent camp-bed, and putting a waggon at his disposal for the rest of the day. Seven o'clock that evening had found Anthony and his dog fairly installed in their new quarters.

And now a month had gone by--to be exact, some thirty-four days, the biggest ones, perhaps, in all Lyveden's life. In that short s.p.a.ce of time the man whose faith had frozen had become a zealot.

Five thousand acres of woodland and the fine frenzy of an Homeric Quixote had wrought the miracle. Of course the soil was good, and had been ruthlessly harrowed and ploughed into the very pink of condition to receive such seed. For months Lyveden's enterprise had been stifled: for months Necessity had kept his intellect chained to a pantry-sink: such ambition as he had had was famished. To crown it all, Love had lugged him into the very porch of Paradise, to slam the gates in his face.... Mind and body alike were craving for some immense distraction. In return for board and lodging for his terrier and himself, the man would have picked oak.u.m--furiously: but not in Hampshire. That was the county of Paradise--Paradise Lost.

As we have seen, the bare idea of the employment had found favour in Lyveden's eyes, and, before they had been together for half an hour, the personality of Winchester had taken him by the arm. When, two days later, master and man strode through the splendid havoc of the woods, where the dead lay where they had fallen, and the quick were wrestling for life, where the b.a.s.t.a.r.d was bullying the true-born, and kings were mobbed by an unruly rabble--dogs with their paws upon the table, eating the children's bread--where avenues and glades were choked with thickets, where clearings had become brakes, and vistas and prospects were screened by aged upstarts that knew no law; when they followed the broken roads, where fallen banks sprawled on the fairway, and the laborious rain had worn ruts into straggling ditches, where culverts had given way and the dammed streams had spread the track with wasting pools, where sometimes time-honoured weeds blotted the very memory of the trail into oblivion; when they stood before an old grey mansion, with what had once been lawns about it and the ruin of a great cedar hard by its side, its many windows surveying with a grave stare the wreck and riot of the court it kept--then for the first time Anthony Lyveden heard the sound of the trumpets.

The physical attraction, no doubt, of the work to be done was crooking a beckoning finger. To pa.s.s his time among these glorious woods, to have a healthy occupation which would never be gone, to enjoy and provide for his dog a peaceful possession of the necessities of life, was an alluring prospect.

Yet this was not the call the trumpets had wound. That distant silvery flourish was not of the flesh. It was the same fanfare that has sent men to lessen the mysteries of the unknown world, travel the trackless earth, sail on uncharted seas, trudge on eternal snows, to sweat and shiver under strange heavens, grapple with Nature upon the Dame's own ground and try a fall with the Amazon--with none to see fair play--for the tale of her secrets.

Anthony's imagination p.r.i.c.ked up its flattened ears....

Gazing upon the crookedness about him, he saw it straightened: looking upon the rough places, he saw them made plain. He saw the desolation banished, the wilderness made glad. He saw the woods ordered, the broken roads mended, the bridges rebuilt, streams back in their beds, vistas unshuttered, avenues cleared.... He saw himself striving, one of a little company sworn to redeem the stolen property. Man had won it by the sweat of his brow--his seal was on it yet--that great receiver Nature must give it up. It was not the repair of an estate that they would compa.s.s; it was the restoration of the kingdom of man.

Marking the light in his employee's eyes, Colonel Winchester could have flung up his cap. Opening his heart, he spoke with a rough eloquence of the great days the place had seen, of lords and ladies who had slept at the house, of coaches that had rumbled over that broken bridge, of a troop ambushed at the bend of the avenue, of a duel fought upon that sometime sward....

"The world 'd think me mad. In the clubs I used to belong to they'd remember that I was always a bit of a crank. To the Press I should be a curio worth three lines and a photograph of the 'Brigadier Breaks Stones' order. But there's a zest to the job you won't find in Pall Mall. There's an encouragement to go ahead that you seldom strike in this world. There's a grat.i.tude the old place'll hand you that no reporter could ever understand...."

It was true.

As the short days went tearing by, the spirit of the place entered into Anthony's soul. He laboured thirstily, yet not so much laboured as laid his labour as a thank-offering at his G.o.ddess's feet. He counted himself happy, plumed himself on his selection for the office, thanked G.o.d nightly. But that he needed the pay, he would not have touched it.

As it was, a third of it went into his tool-bag. The appalling magnitude of the task never worried him--nor, for the matter of that, his fellow-workers. Master and men went toiling from dawn to dusk under a spell, busy, tireless as gnomes, faithful as knights to their trust. Their zeal was quick with the devotion to a cause that went out with coat-armour. Rough weather might chill one iron, but another was plucked from the fire ere the first was cold. There never was seen such energy. Place and purpose together held them in thrall. Had encouragement been needed, the death of every day showed some material gain. Foot by foot the kingdom was being restored.

Whether the G.o.ddess of the estate had charmed Patch also, it is not for me to say. He was certainly a happy fellow. Life had apparently developed into one long, glorious ramble, which nothing but nightfall could curtail. To his delight, too, Anthony and the other men showed an unexpected and eventful interest in stones and boughs and ditches and drains, and sometimes they even dragged trees along the ground for him to bark at. It is to be hoped that he also expressed his grat.i.tude of nights......

If he has not done so this night, it is too late now, for he is stretched upon the warm bricks in a slumber which will allow of no orisons this side of to-morrow.

Let us take his tip, gentlemen. The night is young, I know, but Anthony has been abroad since c.o.c.k-crow. Besides, I have led you a pretty dance. You have, in fact, tramped for miles--'tis two and an odd furlong to the old grey house alone--and the going is ill, as you know, and the night, if young, is evil. A whole gale is coming, and the woods are beside themselves. The thrash of a million branches, the hoa.r.s.e booming of the wind, lend to the tiny chamber an air of comfort such as no carpets nor arras could induce. The rain, too, is hastening to add its insolence to the stew. That stutter upon the pane is its advance-guard....

Did you hear that dull crash, gentlemen? Or are your ears not practised enough to pluck it out of the welter of rugged harmony? It was an elm, sirs, an old fellow, full of years, gone to his long home.

For the last time the squirrels have swung from his boughs: for the last time the rooks have sailed and cawed about his proud old head.

To-morrow there will be another empty stall in that majestic quire which it has taken Time six hundred years to fill....

The distant crash brought Lyveden out of a sleep-ridden reverie. For a second he listened intently, as if he hoped that he had been mistaken, and that the sound he had heard had been but a trick of the wind. Then he gave a short sigh and knocked out his pipe.

"And you've had no answer?" said the Judge, snapping a wafer betwixt his fingers and thumb.

His guest shook his head. Then he hastened to enlighten the wine-waiter, who had been about to refill his gla.s.s with port and had construed the gesture as a declension of the nectar.

"Never a line," he said shortly. "Of course the letter may never have reached him. But, if it did, he may not have thought it worth while ... I mean, I wrote very guardedly."

"Naturally," said the Judge, "naturally. Still, I should have thought..."

The two men sat facing each other across a small mahogany table from which the cloth had been drawn. The surface thus exposed gave back such light as fell upon it enriched and mellowed. In this it was typical of the room, which turned the common air into an odour of luxury.

Servants, perfectly trained, faultlessly groomed, stepped noiselessly to and fro, handing dishes, replenishing gla.s.ses, antic.i.p.ating desires.

A tremendous fire glowed in its ma.s.sive cage; a crimson carpet and curtains of almost barbaric gravity contributed to the admirable temperature and deadened unruly noise. A brace of shaded candles to each small table made up nine several nebulae, whose common radiance provoked an atmosphere of sober mystery, dim and convenient. Light so subdued subdued in turn the tones of the company of hosts and visitors.

Conversation became an exchange of confidences; laughter was soft and low; the murmurous blend of talk flowed unremarked, yet comforted the ear. The flash of silver, the sparkle of gla.s.s, the snow of napery, gladdened the eye. No single circ.u.mstance of expediency was un.o.bserved, no detail of propriety was overlooked. Pomp lay in a litter which he had borrowed of Ease.

"Shall I write again?" said the solicitor.

Mr. Justice Molehill stared at his port. After a moment--

"No," he said slowly. "Not at present, at any rate. I don't want to push the matter, because I've got so very little to go on. In moving at all, I'm laying myself open to the very deuce of a snub."

"I shall get the snub," said his guest. "But that's what I'm paid for.

Besides, I'm fairly hardened."

That he evinced not the slightest curiosity regarding his mysterious instructions argued a distinction between the individual and the adviser, firmly drawn and religiously observed. For a Justice of the King's Bench suddenly to be consumed by a desire to know the names of the uncles of somebody else's footman smacked of collaboration by Gilbert and Chardenal. Once, however, the solicitor knew his client, he asked no questions. Reticence and confidence were in his eyes equally venerable. Usually he had his reward. He had it now.

"In the spring," said his companion, "of 1914 I went to Sicily. On my way back I stopped for one night at Rome. The day I left, while I was resting after luncheon, the manager of the hotel brought a priest to my room--a Catholic priest of some position, I fancy--an Englishman. I can't remember his name. He spoke very civilly, and begged my instant attention.

"An old Englishman, it seemed, lay dying upon the first floor. He was all alone--no relations--no servant. He could speak no Italian.

Realizing that he was dying, he was frantic to make a will. His frenzied attempts to convey this desire to the attendant doctor had resulted in the latter dashing into the street and stopping and returning with the first priest he encountered. This happened to be my friend. Upon beholding him, the patient, who had hoped for a lawyer, had turned his face to the wall. Then, to his relief, he found that, though a priest, yet he was English, and begged him to fetch an attorney. The priest hurried to the manager, and the manager brought him to me....

"You know how much I know about wills. All the same, argument was not to be thought of. To the laity, solicitor, lawyer, barrister, and attorney are synonymous terms. Moreover, they are all will-wrights. A judge is a sort of shop-steward....

"Well, I drew one. To tell you the truth, I don't think it was so bad.

I attended the poor man. I took his instructions. And there and then in the sickroom I drew the will upon a sheet of notepaper. He signed it in my presence and that of the priest. The latter then took charge of it, with a view to getting it stamped next morning at the British Consulate. We both had some hazy idea that that was desirable.

"I left Rome the same night.

"Gradually--we've all had a lot to think about in the last seven years--I forgot the whole incident. Then, some two months ago, when I was at Brooch, a fellow gives evidence before me in a burglary case. A footman called Anthony Lyveden. For a long time I couldn't imagine where I'd heard the names before. Then something--I'll tell you what in the smoking-room--brought it all back. Anthony Lyveden was the nephew of the man whose will I made, and he was named as the sole legatee.