Elizabeth's Campaign Part 24

Out!--was she? Her own mistress already!

'Send Miss Pamela here at once,' he commanded.

In a minute or two a girl's quick step was heard, and Pamela ran in.

'Yes, father?'

'Where is Miss Bremerton?' The Squire was standing in front of the fire, angrily erect. He had delivered his question in the tone of an ultimatum.

'Why, father, you've forgotten! She arranged with you that she was to go to tea at the Rectory, and I've just got a note from Mrs.

Pennington to ask if they may keep her for the evening. They'll send her home.'

'I remember no such arrangement,' said the Squire, in a fury.

'Oh, father--why, I heard her speak to you! And I'm sure she wanted a little break. She's been looking dead-tired lately, and she said she had a headache at lunch.'

'Very well. That'll do,' said the Squire, and Pamela departed, virtuously conscious of having stood by Elizabeth, though she disliked her.

The Squire felt himself generally cornered. No doubt she was now telling her story to the Penningtons, who, of course, would disapprove the gates affair, in any case. The long hours before dinner pa.s.sed away. The Squire thought them interminable. Dinner was a gloomy and embarra.s.sed function. His daughters were afraid of rousing a fresh whirlwind of temper, if the gates were mentioned; and nothing else was interesting. The meal was short and spare, and the Squire noticed for the first time that while meat was offered to him, the others fed on fish and vegetables. All to put him in the wrong, of course!

After dinner he went back to the library. Work was impossible. He hung over the fire smoking, or turning over the pages of a fresh section of the catalogue which Elizabeth had placed--complete--on his desk that morning.

It seemed to him that all the powers of mischief had risen against him. The recent investigation of his affairs made by Elizabeth at his express wish, slight and preliminary though it was, had shown him what he had long and obstinately refused to see--that the estate had seriously gone down in value during the preceding five years; that he had a dozen sc.r.a.ps and disputes on his hands, more than enough to rasp the nerves of any ordinary man--and as far as nerves were concerned, he knew very well that he was not an ordinary man; that, in short, he was impoverished and embarra.s.sed; his agent was a scandal and must be dismissed, and his new lawyers, a grasping, incompetent crew. For a moment, indeed, he had had a glimpse of a clear sky. A woman, who seemed to have the same kind of business faculty that many Frenchwomen possess, had laid hands on his skein of troubles, and might have unravelled them. But she had thrown him over. In a little while he would have to let Mannering--for who would buy an estate in such a pickle?--sell his collections, and go and live in a flat in West Kensington. Then he hoped his enemies--Chicksands in particular--would be satisfied.

But these, to do him justice, were not the chief thoughts, not the considerations in his mind that smarted most. Another woman secretary or woman accountant--for, after all, clever women with business training are now as thick as blackberries--might have helped him to put his affairs straight; but she would not have been a Miss Bremerton, with her scholarship, her taste, her love of the beautiful things that he loved. He seemed to see her fair skin flushing with pleasure as they went through a Greek chorus together, or to watch her tenderly handling a bronze, or holding a Tanagra figure to the light.

Of course some stupid creatures might think he was falling in love with her--wanting to marry her. He laughed the charge to scorn. No!

but he confessed her comradeship, her friendship, had begun to mean a good deal to him. For twenty years he had lived in loneliness.

Now, it seemed, he had found a friend, in these days when the new independence of women opens a thousand fresh possibilities not only to them, but to men also.

Well, well, it was all over! Better make up his mind to it.

He went to the window, as it was nearing ten o'clock, and looked out. It was foggy still, the moon and stars scarcely visible. He hoped they would have at least the sense at the Rectory to provide her with a lantern, for under the trees the road was very dark.

Oh, far in the distance, a twinkling light! Good! The Squire hastily shut the window, and resumed his pacing. Presently he thought he heard the house door open and shut, and a little while after the library clock struck ten.

Now it would be only the natural thing to go and say good-night to his daughters, and, possibly, to inquire after a headache.

The Squire accordingly emerged. In the hall he found his three daughters engaged in lighting their candles at the Chippendale table, where for about a hundred and fifty years the ladies of Mannering had been accustomed to perform that rite.

The master of the house inquired coldly whether Miss Bremerton had returned safely. 'Oh yes,' said his daughter Margaret, 'but she went up to bed at once. She hasn't got rid of her headache.'

Mrs. Strang's stiff manner, and the silence of the others showed the Squire that he was deep in his daughters' black books. Was he also charged with Miss Bremerton's headache? Did any of them guess what had happened? He fancied from the puzzled look in Pamela's eyes as she said good-night to him that she guessed something.

Well, he wasn't going to tell them anything. He went back to the library, and presently Pamela, in her room upstairs, heard first the library bell, then the steps of Forest crossing the hall, and finally a conversation between the Squire and the butler which seemed to last some time.

It was in the very early morning--between four and five--that Elizabeth was wakened, first by vague movements in the house, and then by what seemed to be cautious voices outside. She drew a curtain back and looked out--a misty morning, between darkness and dawn, and trees standing on the gra.s.s in dim robes of amethyst and gold. Two men in the middle distance were going away from the house.

She craned her neck. Yes--no doubt of it! The Squire and Forest.

What could they be about at that hour of the morning? They were going, no doubt, to inspect the barricades! Yet Forest himself had told her that nothing would induce _him_ to take a hand in the 'row.'

It was strange; but she was too weary and depressed to give it much thought. What was she going to do now? The world seemed emptily open before her once more, chill and lonely as the autumn morning.

CHAPTER IX

On the following morning the breakfast at Mannering was a very tame and silent affair. Forest was not in attendance, and the under housemaid, who commonly replaced him when absent, could not explain his non-appearance. He and his wife lived in a cottage beyond the stables, and all that could be said was that he 'had not come in.'

The Squire also was absent. But as his breakfast habits were erratic, owing to the fact that he slept badly and was often up and working at strange seasons of the night, neither of his daughters took any notice. Elizabeth did not feel inclined to say anything of her own observations in the small hours. If the Squire and Forest had been working at the barricade together, they were perhaps sleeping off their exertions. Or the Squire was already on the spot, waiting for the fray? Meanwhile, out of doors, a thick grey mist spread over the park.

So she sat silent like the other two--(Mrs. Gaddesden was of course in bed)--wondering from time to time when and how she should announce her departure.

Pamela meanwhile was thinking of the letter she would have to write to Desmond about the day's proceedings, and was impatient to be off as soon as possible for the scene of action. Once or twice it occurred to her to notice that Miss Bremerton was looking rather pale and depressed. But the fact only made Pamela feel p.r.i.c.kly. 'If father does get into a row, what does it really matter to her.

She's not responsible!--she's not one of us!'

Immediately after breakfast, Pamela disappeared. She made her way quietly through the park, where the dank mist still clung to the trees from which the leaf was dropping silently, continuously. The gra.s.s was all cobwebs. Every now and then the head of a deer would emerge from the dripping fern only to be swallowed up again in the fog.

Could a motor-plough work in a fog?

Presently, she who knew every inch of the ground and every tree upon it, became aware that she was close to the Chetworth gate. Suddenly the rattle of an engine and some men's voices caught her ear. The plough, sure enough! The sound of it was becoming common in the country-side. Then as the mist thinned and drifted she saw the thing plain--the puffing engine, one man driving and another following, while in their wake ran the black glistening furrow, where the gra.s.s had been.

And here was the gate. Pamela stood open-mouthed. Where were the elaborate defences and barricades of which rumour had been full the night before? The big gate swung idly on its hinges. And in front of it stood two men placidly smoking, in company with the village policeman. Not a trace of any obstruction--no hurdles, no barbed wire, only a few ends of rope lying in the road.

Then, looking round, she perceived old Perley, with a bag of ferrets in his hand, emerging from the mist, and she ran up to him breathlessly.

'So they've come, Perley! Was it they forced the gate?'

Perley scratched his head with his free hand.

'Well, it's an uncommon queer thing, Miss--but I can't tell yer who opened them gates! I come along here about seven o'clock this mornin', and the fog was so thick yo couldn't see nothin' beyond a yard or two. But when I got up to the gates, there they were open, just as you see 'em now. At first I thought there was summat wrong--that my eyes wasn't what they used to was. But they was all right.'

'And you saw the gates shut last night?'

'Barred up, so as you couldn't move 'em, Miss!--not without a crowbar or two, an' a couple of men. I thowt it was perhaps some village chaps larkin' as had done it. But it ain't none o' them. It beats me!'

Pamela looked at the two men smoking by the gate--representatives, very likely, of the Inspection Sub-Committee. Should she go up and question them? But some inherited instinct deterred her. She was glad the country should have the land and the corn. She had no sympathy with her father. And yet all the same when she actually saw Demos the outsider forcibly in possession of Mannering land, the Mannering spirit kicked a little. She would find out what had happened from some of their own people.

So after watching the County Council plough for a while as it clove its way up and down the park under the struggling sun which was gradually scattering the fog--her young intelligence quite aware all the time of the significance of the sight--she turned back towards the house. And presently, advancing to meet her, she perceived the figure of Elizabeth Bremerton--coming, no doubt, to get picturesque details on the spot for the letter she had promised to write to a certain artillery officer. A quick flame of jealousy ran through the girl's mind.

Miss Bremerton quickened her step.

'So they're open!' she said eagerly, as she and Pamela met. 'And there's nothing broken, or--or lying about!'

She looked in bewilderment at the unlittered road and swinging gate.