Elizabeth's Campaign Part 28

Not that she ever paraded these things in the least. But neither did she make any unnecessary mystery about it with the Squire's family.

And indeed they were quite evident to any one living in the house.

At times she would make little, laughing, apologetic remarks to one of the daughters--'I hope you don't mind!--the Squire wants me to get things straight.' But in general, her authority by now had become a matter of course.

Her position in the Mannering household, however, was as nothing to her position in the estate and the neighbourhood. That was the amazing thing which had by now begun to set all tongues wagging. Sir Henry Chicksands, meeting Mrs. Gaddesden at the station, had poured himself out to her. 'That extraordinary young woman your father has got hold of, is simply transforming the whole place. The farmers on the whole like her very much. But if they don't like her, they're _afraid of her_! For Heaven's sake don't let her kill herself with over-work. She'll soon be leading the county.'

Yes. Work indeed! How on earth did she get through it? In the mornings there she was in the library, absorbed in the catalogue, writing to the Squire's dictation, transcribing or translating Greek--his docile and obedient slave. Then in the afternoon--bicycling all over the estate, and from dark onwards, till late at night, busy with correspondence and office work, except just for dinner and an hour afterwards.

The door of the outer hall opened and shut. Elizabeth and a young man--the new agent--entered the inner hall, where Mrs. Gaddesden was sitting, Elizabeth acknowledging her presence with a pleasant nod and smile. But they pa.s.sed quickly through to the room at the further end of the hall, which was now an estate office where Elizabeth spent the latter part of her day. It was connected both with the main living-rooms of the house, and with a side entrance from the park, by which visitors on estate matters were admitted.

A man was sitting waiting for Miss Bremerton. He was the new tenant of the derelict farm, on the Holme Wood side of the estate, and he had come to report on the progress which had been made in clearing and ploughing the land, and repairing the farm-buildings. He was a youngish man, a sergeant in a Warwickshire regiment, who had been twice wounded in the war, and was now discharged. As the son of an intelligent farmer, he had had a good agricultural training, and it was evident that his enthusiasms and those of the Squire's new 'business-secretary' were running in harness.

The new agent, Captain Dell, also a discharged Territorial, who had lost an arm in the war, watched the scene between the incoming tenant and Elizabeth, with a shrewd pair of eyes, through which there pa.s.sed occasional gleams of amus.e.m.e.nt or surprise. He was every day making further acquaintance with the lady who was apparently to be his chief, but he was well aware that he was only at the beginning of his lesson. Astonishing, to see a woman taking this kind of lead!--asking these technical questions--as to land, crops, repairs, food production, and the rest--looking every now and then at the note-book beside her, full of her own notes made on the spot, or again, setting down with a quick hand something that was said to her. And all through he was struck with her tone of quiet authority--without a touch of boasting or 'side,' but also without a touch of any mere feminine deference to the male. She was there in the Squire's place, and she never let it be forgotten. Heavens, women had come on during this war! Through the young man's mind there ran a vague and whirling sense of change.

'Well, Mr. Denman, that all sounds splendid!' said Elizabeth, at last, as she rose from her table. 'The country won't starve, if you can help it! I shall tell the County Committee all about you on Tuesday. You don't want another tractor?'

'Oh, no, thank you! The two at work are enough. I hope you'll be over soon. I should like to show you what we've been after.' The man's tone was one of eager good will.

'Oh yes, I shall be over before long,' said Elizabeth cheerfully.

'It's so tremendously interesting what you're doing. And if you want anything I can help you in, you can always telephone.'

And she pointed smiling to the instrument on the table--the first that had ever been allowed within the walls of Mannering. And that the Squire might not be teased with it, Elizabeth had long since fitted an extra inner door, covered with green baize, to the door of the office.

The new tenant departed, and Elizabeth turned to the agent.

'I really think we've caught a good man there,' she said, with a smile. 'Now will you tell me, please, about those timber proposals?

I hope to get a few words with the Squire to-night.'

And leaning back in her chair, she listened intently while Captain Dell, bringing a roll of papers out of his pocket, read her the draft proposals of a well-known firm of timber merchants, for the purchase of some of the Squire's outlying woods of oak and beech.

Lights had been brought in, and Elizabeth sat shading her eyes from the lamp before her,--a strong and yet agreeable figure. Was it the consciousness of successful work--of opening horizons, and satisfied ambitions, that had made a physical presence, always attractive, so much more attractive than before--that had given it a magnetism and fire it had never yet possessed? Pamela, who was developing fast, and was acutely conscious of Elizabeth, asked herself the question, or something like it, about once a week. And during a short Christmas visit that Elizabeth had paid her own people, her gentle mother, much puzzled and a little dazzled by her daughter, had necessarily pondered the why and wherefore of a change she felt, but could not a.n.a.lyse. One thing the mother's insight had been clear about. Elizabeth was not in love. On the contrary, the one love-affair of her life seemed to be at last forgotten and put aside. Elizabeth was now in love with _efficiency_; with a great task given into her hand. As to the Squire, the owner of Mannering, who had provided her with the task, Mrs. Bremerton could not imagine him or envisage him at all. Elizabeth's accounts of him were so reticent and so contradictory.... 'Well, that's very interesting'--said Elizabeth thoughtfully, when Captain Dell laid down his papers--'I wonder what Mr. Mannering will say to it? As you know, I got his express permission for you to make these enquiries.

But he hates cutting down a single tree, and this will mean a wide clearance!'

'So it will--but the country wants every stick of it. And as to not cutting, one sees that from the woods--the tragedy of the woods!'--said the young man with emphasis. 'There has been no decent forestry on this estate for half a century. I hope you will be able to persuade him, Miss Bremerton. I expect, indeed, it's Hobson's choice.'

'You mean the timber will be commandeered?'

'Probably. The Government have just come down on some of Lord Radley's woods just beyond our borders--with scarcely a week's warning. No "With your leave" or "By your leave"! The price fixed, Canadians sent down to cut, and a light railway built from the woods to the station to carry the timber, before you could say "Jack Robinson."'

'You think the price these people offer is a fair one?' She pointed to the draft contract.

'Excellent! The Squire won't get nearly as much from the Government.'

'What one might do with some of it for the estate!' said Elizabeth, looking up, her blue eyes dancing in the lamplight.

'Rebuild half the cottages?' said the other, smiling, as he rose. 'A village club-house, a communal kitchen, a small holdings scheme--all the things we've talked about? Oh yes, you could do all that and more. The Squire doesn't know what he possesses.'

'Well, I'll take the papers to him,' said Elizabeth, holding out her hands for them. 'I may perhaps catch him to-night'

A little more business talk, and the agent departed. Then Elizabeth dreamily--still cogitating a hundred things--touched an electric bell. A girl typist, who acted as her clerk, came in from an adjoining room. Elizabeth rapidly dictated a number of letters, stayed for a little friendly gossip with the girl about her father in the Army Service Corps, who had been in hospital at Rouen, and had just finished, when the gong rang for afternoon tea.

When Elizabeth entered, the hall was crowded. It was the princ.i.p.al sitting-room of the house, now that for reasons of economy fires were seldom lit in the drawing-rooms. Before Elizabeth's advent it had been a dingy, uncomfortable place, but she and Pamela had entirely transformed it. As in the estate so in the house, the Squire did not know what he possessed. In all old houses with a continuous life, there are acc.u.mulations of furniture and stores, discarded by the generation of one day, and brought back by the fashion of the next. A little routing in attics and forgotten cupboards and chests had produced astonishing results. Chippendale chairs and settees had been brought down from the servants'

bedrooms; two fine Dutch cabinets had been discovered amid a ma.s.s of lumber in an outhouse; a tall j.a.panese screen, dating from the end of the eighteenth century, and many pairs of linen curtains embroidered about the same time in branching oriental patterns by the hands of Mannering ladies, had been unearthed, and Pamela--for Elizabeth having started the search had interfered very little with its results--had spent some of her now scanty leisure in making the best of the finds. The hall was now a charming place, scented, moreover, on this January evening by the freesias and narcissus that Elizabeth had managed to rear in the house itself, and Pamela, who had always been ashamed of her own ill-kept and out-at-elbows home, as compared with the perfections of Chetworth, had been showing Arthur and Beryl Chicksands what had been done to renovate the old house since they were last in it--'and all without spending a penny!'--with a girlish pleasure which in the Captain's opinion became her greatly. Pamela needed indeed a good deal of animation to be as handsome as she deserved to be! A very critical observer took note that her stock of it was rapidly rising. It was the same with the letters, too, which for a month or so past, she had condescended to write him, after treating him most uncivilly in the autumn, and never answering a long screed--'and a jolly good one!'--which he had written her from Paris in November.

As Elizabeth came in, Pamela was reading aloud a telegram just received, and Miss Bremerton was greeted with the news--'Desmond's coming to-night, instead of to-morrow! They've given him forty-eight hours' leave, and he goes to France on Thursday.'

'That's very short!' said Elizabeth, as she took her place beside Pamela, who was making tea. 'Does your father know?'

Forest, it appeared, had gone to tell him. Meanwhile Captain Chicksands was watching with a keen eye the relation between Miss Bremerton and Pamela. He saw that the Squire's secretary was scrupulously careful to give Pamela her place as daughter of the house; but Pamela's manner hardly showed any real intimacy between them. And it was easy to see where the real authority lay. As for himself he had lately begun to ask himself seriously how much he was interested in Pamela. For in truth, though he was no c.o.xcomb, he could not help seeing--all the more because of Pamela's variable moods towards him--that she was at least incipiently interested in him. If so, was it fair to her that they should correspond?--and that he should come to Mannering whenever he was asked and military duty allowed, now that the Squire's embargo was at least partially removed?

He confessed to himself that he was glad to come, that Pamela attracted him. At the same time there was in him a stern sense that the time was no time for love-making. The German hosts were gathering; the vast breakdown in Russia was freeing more and more of them for the Western a.s.sault. He himself was for the moment doing some important intelligence work, in close contact with the High Command. No one outside a very small circle knew better than he what lay in front of England--the fierce death-struggle over a thousand miles of front. And were men and women to be kissing and marrying while these storm-clouds of war--this rain of blood--were gathering overhead?

Involuntarily he moved further from Pamela. His fine face with the rather high cheek-bones, strong mouth, and lined brow, seemed to put softness away. He approached Elizabeth.

'What is the Squire doing about his wood, Miss Bremerton? The Government's desperately in want of ash!'

He spoke almost as one official might speak to another--comrade to comrade. What he had heard about her doings from his father had filled his soldier's mind with an eager admiration for her. That was how women should bear themselves in this war--as the practical helpers of men.

He fell into the chair beside her, and Elizabeth was soon deep in conversation with him, a conversation that any one might overhear who would. It turned partly on the armies abroad--partly on the effort at home. There was warmth--even pa.s.sion--in it, studiously restrained. But it was the pa.s.sion of two patriots, conscious through every pulse of their country's strait.

The others listened. Pamela became silent and pale. All the old jealousy and misery of the autumn were alive in her once more. She had looked forward for weeks to this meeting with Arthur Chicksands.

And for the first part of his visit she had been happy--before Elizabeth came on the scene. Why should Elizabeth have all the homage and the attention? She, too, was doing her best! She was drudging every day as a V.A.D., washing crockery and scrubbing floors; and this was the first afternoon off she had had for weeks.

Her limbs were dog-tired. But Arthur Chicksands never talked to _her_--Pamela--in this tone of freedom and equality--with the whole and not the half of his mind. 'I could hold my own,' she thought bitterly, 'but he never gives me the chance! I suppose he despises girls.'

As the hall clock struck half-past five, however, Elizabeth rose from her seat, gathering up the papers she had brought in from the office, and disappeared.

Arthur Chicksands looked at his watch. Beryl exclaimed:

'Oh, no, Arthur, not yet! Let's wait for Desmond!'

Pamela said perfunctorily--'No, please don't go! He'll be here directly.'

But as they gathered round the fire, expecting the young gunner, she hardly opened her lips again. Arthur Chicksands was quite conscious that he had wounded her. She appeared to him, as she sat there in the firelight, in all the first fairness and freshness of her youth, as an embodied temptation. Again he said to himself that other men might love and marry on the threshold of battle; he could not bring himself to think it justifiable--whether for the woman or the man.

In a few weeks' time he would be back in France and in the very thick, perhaps, of the final struggle--of its preparatory stages, at any rate. Could one make love to a beautiful creature like that at such a moment, and then leave her, with a whole mind?--the mind and the nerve that were the country's due?

All the same he had never been so aware of her before. And simultaneously his mind was invaded by the mute, haunting certainty that her life was reaching out towards his, and that he was repelling and hurting her.

Suddenly--into the midst of them, while Mrs. Gaddesden was talking endlessly in her small plaintive voice about rations and queues--there dropped the sound of a car pa.s.sing the windows, and a boy's clear voice.

'Desmond!' cried Pamela, with almost a sob of relief, and like one escaping from a nightmare she sprang up and ran to greet her brother.

Meanwhile Elizabeth had found the Squire waiting for her, and, as she saw at once, in a state of tension.

'What was that you were saying to me about timber last week?' he demanded imperiously as she entered, without giving her time to speak. 'I hear this intolerable Government are behaving like madmen, cutting down everything they can lay hands on. They shan't have my trees--I would burn them first!'