Elizabeth's Campaign Part 22

The Squire having shot his bolt, looked anxiously for the effect of it.

Elizabeth, apparently, took it calmly. She was standing with one hand on the table behind her, and the autumn sun streaming in through the western windows caught the little golden curls on her temples, and the one or two small adornments that she habitually wore, especially a Greek coin--a gold stater--hanging on a slender chain round her neck. In the Squire's eyes, the stately figure in plain black, with the brilliant head and hands, had in some way gathered into itself the significance of the library. All the background of books, with its pale and yet rich harmony of tone, the gla.s.s cases with their bronzes and terra-cottas, the statues, the papers on the table, the few flowers that were never wanting to Elizabeth's corner, the taste with which the furniture had been re-arranged, the general elegance and refinement of the big room in fact, since Elizabeth had reduced it from chaos to order, were now related to her rather than to him. He could not now think of the room without her. She had become in this short time so markedly its presiding spirit. 'Let there be order and beauty!' she had said, instead of dirt and confusion; and the order and beauty were there.

But the presiding spirit was now surveying him, with eyes that seemed to have been watchfully withdrawn, under puckered brows.

'I don't understand,' said Elizabeth. 'You have fastened up the gates?'

'I have,' said the Squire jocularly. 'Mrs. Perley believes the Committee will bring a tank! That would be a sight worth seeing.'

'You really want to stop them from ploughing up that land?'

'I do. I have offered them other land.'

Elizabeth hesitated.

'Don't you believe what the Government say, Mr. Mannering?'

'What do they say?'

'That everything depends upon whether we shall have food enough to hold out? That we can't win the war unless we can grow more food ourselves?'

'That's the Government's affair.' The Squire sat down at his own table and began to look out a pen.

'Well now, Miss Bremerton, I don't think we need spend any more time over this tiresome business. I've already lost the morning. Suppose we get on with the work we were doing yesterday?'

He turned an amicable countenance towards her. She on her side moved a little towards a window near her table, and looked out of it, as though reflecting. After a minute or two he asked himself with a vague anxiety what was wrong with her. Her manner was certainly unusual.

Suddenly she turned, and came half across the room towards him.

'May I speak to you, please, Mr. Mannering?'

'By all means. Is there anything amiss?'

'I think we agreed on a month's notice, on either side. I should be glad if you would kindly accept my notice as from to-day.'

The Squire rose violently, and thrust back his chair.

'So that's what you have been cogitating in my absence?'

'Not at all,' said Elizabeth mildly. 'I have made a complete list of the pa.s.sages you asked for.'

She pointed to her table.

'Yet all the time you were planning this move--you were making up your mind what to do?'

She hesitated.

'I was often afraid it would have to be done,' she said at last.

'And pray may I ask your reasons?' The Squire's tone was sarcastic.

'I should like to know in what I have failed to satisfy you. I suppose you thought I was rude to you this morning?'

'Oh, that didn't matter,' she said hastily. 'The fact is, Mr.

Mannering,' she crossed her hands quietly in front of her, 'you put responsibilities on me that I am not prepared to carry. I feel I must give them up.'

'I thought you liked responsibility.'

Elizabeth coloured.

'It--it depends what sort. I begin to see now that my principles--and opinions--are so different from yours that, if we go further, I shall either be disappointing you or--doing what I think wrong.'

'You can't conceive ever giving up your opinion to mine?'

'No!' Elizabeth shook her head with decision. 'No! that I really can't conceive!'

'Upon my word!' said the Squire, fairly taken aback. They confronted each other. Elizabeth began to look disturbed. Her eyelids flickered once or twice.

'I think we ought to be quite serious,' she said hurriedly. 'I don't want you to misunderstand me. If you knew how I valued this opportunity of doing this cla.s.sical work with you! It is _wonderful_'--her voice wavered a little, or the Squire fancied it--'what you have taught me even in this short time. I am proud to have been your secretary--and your pupil. If it were only that'--she paused--'but you have also been so kind as to--to take me into your confidence--to let me do things for you, outside of what you engaged me for. I see plainly that--if I go on with this--I shall become your secretary--your agent in fact--for a great many things besides Greek.'

Then she made an impetuous step forward.

'Mr. Mannering!--the atmosphere of this house chokes me!'

The Squire dropped back into his chair, watching her with eyes in which he tried--not very successfully--to keep dignity alive.

'Your reasons?'

'I am with the _country_!' she said, not without signs of agitation; 'and you seem to me to care nothing about the country!'

Disputation was never unwelcome to the Squire. He riposted.

'Of course, we mean entirely different things by the word.'

She threw back her head slightly, with a gesture of scorn.

'We might argue that, if it were peace-time. But this is _war_! Your country--my country--has the German grip at her throat. A few months--and we are saved--or broken!--the country that gave us birth--all we have--all we are!' Her words came short and thick, and she had turned very white. 'And in this house there is never, in your presence, a word of the war!--of the men who are dying by land and sea--_dying_, that you and I may sit here in peace--that you may talk to me about Greek poetry, and put spokes in the wheels of those who are trying to feed us--and defend us--and beat off Germany.

Nothing for the wounded!--nothing for the hospitals! And you won't let Pamela do anything! Not a farthing for the Red Cross! You made me write a letter last week refusing a subscription. And then, when they only ask you to let your land grow food--that the German pirates and murderers mayn't starve us into a horrible submission--_then_ you bar your gates--you make endless trouble, when the country wants every hour of every man's time--you, in your position, give the lead to every shirker and coward! No! I can't bear it any more! I must go. I have had happy times here--I love the work--I am very glad to earn the money, for my people want it. But I must go. My heart--my conscience won't let me stay!'

She turned from him, with an unconscious gesture which seemed to the Squire to be somewhat mingled with that of the great Victory towering behind her, and went quickly back to her table, where she began with trembling hands to put her papers together.

The Squire tried to laugh it off.

'And all this,' he said with a sneer, 'because I tied up a few gates!'

She made no reply. He was conscious of mingled dismay and fury.

'You will stay your month?' he inquired at last, coldly. 'You don't propose, I imagine, to leave me at a moment's notice?'

She was bending over her table, and did not look up.