Elizabeth's Campaign Part 32

She waited a moment, but as nothing more came she was leaving the room, when he added--

'And don't forget the timber business to-morrow afternoon. Tell Dell to meet us in Cross Wood.'

When she had gone, the Squire still continued pacing, absorbed in meeting the attack of new and strange ideas. He had always been a man with a singularly small reflective gift.

Self-examination--introspection of any sort--were odious to him. He lived on stimulus from outside, attracted or repelled, amused or interested, bored or angry, as the succession of events or impressions might dictate. To collect beautiful things was a pa.s.sion with him, and he was proud of the natural taste and instinct, which generally led him right. But for 'aesthetics'--the philosophy of art--he had nothing but contempt. The volatile, restless mind escaped at once from the concentration asked of it; and fell back on what the Buddhist calls 'Maia,' the gay and changing appearances of things, which were all he wanted. And it was because the war had interfered with this pleasant and perpetual challenge to the senses of the outer world, because it forced a man back on general ideas that he did not want to consider--G.o.d, Country, Citizenship--that the Squire had hated the war.

But this woman who had become an inmate of his house, while she ministered to all the tastes that the Squire had built up as a screen between himself and either the tragic facts of contemporary life, or any troublesome philosophizing about them, was yet gradually, imperceptibly, drawing the screen aside. Her humanity was developing the feeble shoots of sympathy and conscience in himself.

What she felt, he was beginning to feel; and when she hated anything he must at least uncomfortably consider why.

But all this she did and achieved through her mere fitness and delightfulness as a companion. He had never imagined that life would bring him anybody--least of all a woman--who would both give him so much, and save him so much. Selfish, exacting, irritable--he knew very well that he was all three. But it had not prevented this capable, kind, clever creature from devoting herself to him, from doing her utmost, not only to save his estate and his income, but to make his life once more agreeable to him, in spite of the war and all the rancour and resentments it had stirred up in him.

How patient she had been with these last! He was actually beginning to be ashamed of some of them. And now to-night--what made her come and give him the extra pleasure of her company these two hours?

Sympathy, he supposed, about Desmond.

Well, he was grateful; and for the first time his heart reached out for pity--almost humbled itself--accepted the human lot. If Desmond were killed, he would never choose to go on living. Did she know that? Was it because she guessed at the feelings he had always done his best to hide that she had been so good to him that evening?

What as to that love-story of hers--her family?--her brother in Mesopotamia? He began to feel a hundred curiosities about her, and a strong wish to make life easy for her, as she had been making it easy for him. But she was excessively proud and scrupulous--that he had long since found out. No use offering to double her salary, now that she had saved him all this money! His first advance in that direction had merely offended her. The Squire thought vaguely of the brother--no doubt a young lieutenant. Could interest be made for him?--with some of the bigwigs. Then his--very intermittent--sense of humour a.s.serted itself. He to make interest with anybody--for anybody--in connection with the war! He, who had broken with every soldier-friend he ever had, because of his opinions about the war!--and was anathema throughout the country for the same reason.

Like all members of old families in this country he had a number of aristocratic and wealthy kinsfolk, the result of Mannering marriages in the past. But he had never cared for any of them, except to a mild degree for his sister, Lady Ca.s.siobury, who was ten years older than himself, and still paid long visits to Mannering, which bored him hugely. On the last occasion, he was quite aware that he had behaved badly, and was now in her black-books.

No--there was nothing to be done, except to let this wonderful woman have her own way! If she wanted to cut down the woods, let her!--if she wanted to amuse herself by rebuilding the village, and could find the money out of the estate, let her!--it would occupy her, attach her to the place, and do him no harm.

Yes, attach her to the place; bind her! hold her!--that was what he wanted. Otherwise, how hideously uncertain it all was! She might go at any time. Her mother might be ill--old ladies have a way of being ill. Her brother might be wounded--or killed. Either of those events would carry her off--out of his ken. But if she were engaged deeply enough in the estate affairs she would surely come back. He knew her!--she hated to leave things unfinished. He was eager now to heap all kinds of responsibilities upon her. He would be meek and pliable; he would put no sort of obstacles in her way. She would have no excuse for giving him notice again. He would put up with all her silly Jingoism--if only she would stay!

But at this point the Squire suddenly pulled up short in his pacing and excitedly asked himself the question, which half the people about him were already beginning to ask.

'Why shouldn't I marry her?'

He stood transfixed--the colour rising in his thin cheeks.

Hitherto the notion, if it had ever knocked at the outer door of the brain, had been chased away with mockery. And he had no sooner admitted it now than he drove it out again. He was simply afraid of it--in terror lest any suspicion of it should reach Elizabeth. Her loyalty, her single-mindedness, her freedom from the smallest taint of intrigue--he would have answered for them with all he possessed.

If, for a moment, she chose to think that he had misinterpreted her kindness, her services in any vile and vulgar way, why, he might lose her on the instant! Let him walk warily--do nothing at least to destroy the friend in her, before he grasped at anything more.

Besides, how could she put up with him? 'I am the dried husk of a man!' thought the Squire, with vehemence. 'I couldn't learn her ways now, nor she mine. No; let us be as we are--only more so!'

But he was shaken through and through; first by that vanishing of his boy into the furnace of the war, which had brought him at last within the grip of the common grief, the common fear, and now by this strange thought which had invaded him.

After dinner, Elizabeth, who was rather pale, but as cheerful and self-possessed as usual, put Mrs. Gaddesden's knitting to rights at least three times, and held the wool for that lady to wind till her arm ached. Then Mrs. Gaddesden retired to bed; the Squire, who with only occasional mutterings and mumblings had been deep in Elizabeth's copy of the _Times_, which she had at last ventured to produce in public, went off to the library, and Elizabeth and Pamela were left in the hall alone.

Elizabeth lingered over the fire; while Pamela wondered impatiently why she did not go to her office work as she generally did about nine o'clock. Pamela's mood was more th.o.r.n.y than ever. Had she not seen a letter in Elizabeth's handwriting lying that very afternoon on the hall-table for post--addressed to Captain Chicksands, D.S.O., War Office, Whitehall? Common sense told her that it probably contained nothing but an answer to some questions Arthur had put to the Squire's 'business secretary' as to the amount of ash in the Squire's woods--Arthur's Intelligence appointment having something to do with the Air Board. But the mere fact that Elizabeth should be writing to him stirred intolerable resentment in the girl's pa.s.sionate heart. She knew very well that it was foolish, unreasonable, but could no more help it than a love-smitten maiden of old Sicily. It was her hour of possession, and she was struggling with it blindly.

And Elizabeth, the shrewd and clever Elizabeth, saw nothing, and knew nothing. If she had ever for a pa.s.sing moment suspected the possibility of 'an affair' between Arthur Chicksands and Pamela, she had ceased to think of it. The eager projects with which her own thoughts were teeming, had driven out the ordinary preoccupations of womankind. Derelict farms, the food-production of the county, timber, village reconstruction, war-work of various kinds, what time was there left?--what room?--in a mind wrestling with a hundred new experiences, for the guessing of a girl's riddle?

Yet all the same she remained her just and kindly self. She was troubled--much troubled--by the twins' behaviour. She must somehow get to the bottom of it.

So that when only she and Pamela were left in the hall she went up to the girl, not without agitation.

'Pamela--won't you tell me?--have I done anything to offend you and Desmond?'

She spoke very quietly, but her tone showed her wounded. Pamela started and looked up.

'I don't know what you mean,' she said coldly. 'Did you think we had been rude to you?'

It was the first hostile word they had ever exchanged.

Elizabeth grew pale.

'I didn't say anything about your being rude. I asked you if you were cross with me.'

'Oh--cross!' said Pamela, suddenly conscious of a suffocating excitement. 'What's the good of being cross? It's you who are mistress here.'

Elizabeth fell back a step in dismay.

'I do think you ought to explain,' she said after a moment. 'If I had done anything you didn't like--anything you thought unkind, I should be very very sorry.'

Pamela rose from her seat. Elizabeth's tone seemed to her pure hypocrisy. All the bitter, poisonous stuff she had poured out to Desmond the night before was let loose again. Stammering and panting, she broke into the vaguest and falsest accusations.

She was ignored--she was a n.o.body in her own home--everybody knew it and talked of it. She wasn't jealous--oh no!--she was simply miserable! 'Oh, I daresay you can no more help it than I can. You, of course, are twenty times more use here than I am. I don't dispute that. But I am the daughter of the house after all, and it is a little hard to be so shelved--so absolutely put in the background!--as I am--'

'Don't I consult you whenever I can? haven't I done my best to--'

interrupted Elizabeth, only to be interrupted in her turn.

--'to persuade father to let me do things? Yes, that's just it!--_you_ persuade father, you manage everything. It's just that that's intolerable!'

And flushed with pa.s.sion, extraordinarily handsome, Pamela stood tremulously silent, her eyes fixed on Elizabeth. Elizabeth, too, was silent for a moment. Then she said with steady emphasis:

'Of course there can only be one end to this. I can't possibly stay here.'

'Oh, very well, go!' cried Pamela. 'Go, and tell father that I've made you. But if you do, neither you nor he will see me again for a good while.'

'What do you mean?'

'What I say. If you suppose that _I'm_ going to stay on here to bear the brunt of father's temper after he knows that I've made you throw up, you're entirely mistaken.'

'Then what do you propose?'

'I don't know what I propose,' said Pamela, shaking from head to foot, 'but if you say a word to father about it I shall simply disappear. I shall be able to earn my own living somehow.'

The two confronted each other.

'And you really think I can go on after this as if nothing had happened?' said Elizabeth, in a low voice.

Pangs of remorse were seizing on Pamela, but she stifled them.

'There's a way out!' she said presently, her colour coming and going. 'I'll go and stay with Margaret in town for a bit. Why should there be any fuss? She's asked me often to help with her war-workroom and the canteen. Father won't mind. He doesn't care in the least what I do! And n.o.body will think it a bit odd--if you and I don't talk.'