The Hall and the Grange Part 16

"Oh, it's all so different, Cynthia, from what happened on our side.

Climb down! There was no such idea in William's mind. _Can't_ we get it straight? Supposing William apologizes to Edmund for anything that may have displeased him! I believe he would be ready to do that. And you mustn't forget Edmund's first letter to him, which you have acknowledged yourself--and I saw--was very dictatorial, and even offensive, though perhaps it was not meant to be so."

"Offensive! No, I shouldn't quite admit that."

"You say you didn't see it, dear. Among other things, he accused William of vulgarity."

"Vulgarity!" Mrs. Eldridge showed some surprise. "Well, of course that would be rather strong. But--"

"William is careless about Edmund's position here, you say. Very well.

He doesn't mean to be, and perhaps Edmund doesn't mean to be dictatorial. But he is, you know, towards William; and considering the high estimation in which William is held, and the kind of people he mixes with, upon equal terms, it _is_ sometimes rather difficult to put up with."

"Isn't all that rather apt to be pressed home upon us, dear? Not by you--I don't mean that. Naturally you are proud of the estimation in which William is held. I should be myself if I were in your place. But Edmund feels, I think, that he might be spared some of William's reminders on that point. In the very letter he wrote about the garden, in which he said that Hayslope couldn't be expected to be of such importance to him as it was to Edmund, he prepared the way by telling him of all the great people he was consorting with--as you say, upon equal terms."

"Which is exactly what I did, when I wrote to you after we had come back from Wellsbury. We _were_ there on equal terms, you know; we didn't dine in the servants' hall."

"Oh, my dear, you mustn't take it in that way, or we may as well leave off talking about it altogether. _I_ didn't show annoyance when you accused Edmund just now of being dictatorial and offensive. Don't let _us_ fall out with one another, or _every_thing is lost."

Lady Eldridge sat more erect in her chair. "We _must_ end it all," she said. "Neither you nor I want it to go on. Let us leave off finding faults in the other side, and admit that both sides have made mistakes.

It _was_ unfortunate that William should have wired to Coombe, and sent no message to Edmund at the same time. It's easy enough to see that now; but at the time it didn't occur to me, who was very anxious that offence should not be given, and I'm sure it didn't occur to William. I have told you, anyhow, that his resentment over Edmund's letter had pa.s.sed over; so _that_ can be cleared out of the way. Edmund need think no more about it. Now let us get William's mistake cleared out of the way. Tell Edmund that it was only carelessness on William's part that led to this new trouble, that _I_ much regret it, now it has been pointed out to me, and that I'm sure William will when he knows the effect it had. Will you do that, Cynthia?"

"Yes, dear, of course I will. Don't let us have any more letters. Let us wait until you come down again next week, and then Edmund and William can talk it all over together, and I'm sure at the end of it they will be as good friends as before."

Lady Eldridge breathed an audible sigh of relief, and smiled. "_We_ have talked pretty plainly to one another," she said. "I am so glad that we can. What a lot of trouble that unfortunate garden plan of ours has made! And it looked as if we were all going to amuse ourselves so much with it."

"Oh, and I hope we shall. Do you know, I think Edmund is as much disappointed at the idea of its being given up as anybody. I haven't told you yet--we seem to have been talking about all sorts of outside things--that he _was_ going to send a long telegram to William asking him to go on with it, even _after_ Coombe had come to him and refused to take his orders."

Lady Eldridge seemed quite at a loss. She stared at her and said quietly: "No, you never told me that. I didn't know that Coombe had been to Edmund at all."

"How did you think he knew, then, that the men had been paid off? You haven't done my poor old Edmund quite justice, you know, Eleanor--but I don't want to begin on that again. He was naturally upset at hearing of it first from Coombe, and _yet_ he was going to wire to William. In fact, he was going to climb down."

Lady Eldridge pa.s.sed this by with a slight contraction of the brows.

"What prevented him from writing?" she asked.

"Oh, I haven't told you that. The labourers who had been dismissed came to him, and said they wouldn't go on working under Coombe. I'm afraid William will have to get rid of that man, Eleanor. The way he has behaved is perfectly outrageous. In fact, but for him, the garden might have been half finished by this time."

There was a moment's pause. Then Lady Eldridge said: "This is something quite new again. You must tell me everything, please, Cynthia."

"I don't know that there's much more to tell, dear. Coombe quite obviously came to Edmund to crow over him, though of course he _pretended_ to be respectful. But when Edmund told him that there had been a mistake and that the work was to go on, he said he had had his orders and must abide by them. So what else could he have come for?"

"What did he say he had come for? I'm not defending him, but this is serious. I want to know exactly what happened."

"Oh, he pretended that the men who had been dismissed might make a disturbance in the village. So ridiculous! Two of them are Edmund's own tenants, and the other two are most respectable men, and one of them is a teetotaller. Edmund says he has seldom had work better done than they are doing it now."

"I wish William were here. Coombe has never given us any cause for dissatisfaction, and this is quite a new light on him."

"And afterwards it came out that he had spoken in the most impertinent way about Edmund to these very men; so much so, that old Jackson wouldn't put up with it, and _all_ of them would have refused to go on working under him if he _had_ been told to go on--by William, I mean, for he had been told to go on by Edmund and had refused to do so. The fact is, I suppose he had got into a mess with his men, and thought he could shift the blame on to Edmund. You see, dear,--take it all round--it was really impossible that the work should be taken up again.

Still, I quite hope that it may be, later, and be finished in time for the autumn planting. There isn't any violent hurry, is there?"

"No. But whether the garden is made or not seems so unimportant now in the face of all these complications. I think I won't say anything to Coombe myself, but will wait until William comes down. What was it actually that he said to the men about Edmund?"

"Oh, it was outrageous; but it shows the sort of feeling that has grown up with regard to Edmund and William. He told them that Edmund was desperately jealous of William on account of his t.i.tle and his money, and that if this work they were doing was stopped they would have him to thank for it, for he hated William doing anything at Hayslope. Then of course he had been paying them more than the current rate of wages--I suppose William didn't know that--which made it difficult for Edmund when it came to employing them himself. But there they are, working for us at less than they were paid here, and refusing to go on under Coombe at the higher rate. So you see that Edmund _is_ still respected by the villagers and work-people, in spite of all the difficulties that have been made."

Lady Eldridge arose somewhat abruptly. "We seem to have got back to general criticism," she said, "which I thought we had put behind us. I am not going on with that, Cynthia. I think we had better leave it alone altogether until William comes down. See, the rain has stopped. Let us go out."

CHAPTER XIV

CHURCH AND AFTER

There was nothing remarkable about Hayslope Church, unless it was its tower, which was large enough to make it a landmark for miles around, and its bells, whose full and mellow peal ringing out across the summer woods and fields, or in winter time over a landscape m.u.f.fled white in snow, brought that sense of peaceful festivity which belongs especially to rural England, so many centuries old. The tower was of perpendicular architecture, the main body of the church, conceived with less largeness of aim, of an earlier date. But most of its character had been finally lost in the restoration to which it had been subjected in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Colonel Eldridge's grandfather had supplied the money for this work, as a thank-offering for the safe return of his son, who had been in the thick of the Indian Mutiny. The taste, which had seemed to him of the best, had been supplied by one or other of the ecclesiological malefactors of the time, whose baneful activities, carried on by their immediate successors, have left scarcely an old church in all England in which it is possible to feel the quiet and grateful influences of tradition. There were seats of pitch pine, varnished, a chancel paved with encaustic tiles, thinly lacquered metal work of a mean design, and a little triple reredos of oak underneath the distressing colours of the East window.

And yet it was possible sometimes to catch the sense of the long past, which the restorers had done their mischievous best to destroy. Lady Eldridge, somewhat troubled in her mind, and anxious to lay hold of whatever composing influence the morning service could bring her, looked here and there during the progress of the sermon, and it came home to her--that soothing impression of age and use and wont, which is the rightful heritage of old churches, and especially of old country churches.

The seats belonging to the Hall and the Grange were in what had once been the South Chapel, and were slightly raised above the rest. The side view of the altar, the choir-boys and handful of choirmen, backed by the garishly patterned organ pipes, held nothing for the eye to rest on with pleasure. But the high pulpit, of Jacobean oak, from which Mr. Comfrey was engaged in directing his flock, was consecrated by some centuries of use to that weekly exercise. Behind him, in a line from where she was sitting, was a window of little diamond panes of clear gla.s.s, through which the trees could be seen, and the birds flying to and fro. Perhaps it was this which first brought the sense of peace to her mind; for that outlook into the happy world of birds and trees had often freed her thoughts from the slight oppression caused by Mr. Comfrey's dialectics, which were concerned with nothing that seemed to bear upon the life that was all about him. But this morning it set her thinking of the past, as it hung about the familiar church, in which once or twice before she had caught at the skirts of time, and held them for a little.

Underneath the tower, from the wooden ceiling behind the high-pointed arch, the stout bell-ropes hung down, thickened with worsted where the ringers held them. Behind them were the ponderous oak doors, from a c.h.i.n.k between which streamed a thin plate of golden light, that fell upon the sombre tables of the law, which the renovators had banished from over the altar; and above the arch was a large square panel painted with the Royal Coat of Arms. Somehow, the sight of these things, which had nothing to do with the long-ago history of the church, was grateful to her. Her imagination, and her knowledge, were equal to reviving some vision of the church as it had been before the Reformation, when the same kind of country-folk as now resorted to it fixed their stolid gaze upon the priest before the altar, and knew him in his outside comings and goings as the villagers of to-day knew their Mr. Comfrey. But it was a life nearer to her own, and yet established for some generations past, of which the voice of the old church whispered to her this morning. By turning her head to the right she could see a large mural monument of white marble, filling the s.p.a.ce of a blocked-up window, which commemorated the virtues of an early eighteenth century Eldridge, and those, less enlarged upon but possibly as exemplary, of his wife. Those were the times of which she liked to think, and the years that came after them, when her husband's forbears lived in the Hall, much as it was now, and came here every Sunday, to take part in the same prayers and psalms, and to listen, or otherwise, to sermons from the same pulpit. Some of them had lived through troublous times, but none, surely, in such a time of unrest as this, with the great catastrophe only just lifted, and its ultimate results not yet in any power to foresee. She herself had been less affected by it than many. She had lost no near relations; she had not to rearrange her life to meet reduced opportunities. But the weight of it hung over her all the same.

It was a comfort to feel that here was something that went on, that came from a past not too remote, and was joined to her life by special ties.

In the two seats in front of her sat the family from the Hall. They had not come unscathed out of the catastrophe. Yet the same sense of something stable and supporting in this Sunday habit of churchgoing hung about them. More even than herself they belonged here. Almost more than the house they inhabited, this place seemed to stand for continuity and settlement in the lives of such as they. For life in the house must alter from time to time, and might alter much; but what went on in the church altered little.

Such a life as theirs seemed to her preferable to her own life, even with the restrictions that diminished means had brought them. Such restrictions would not have troubled her for herself, as long as the quiet round of daily duty and pleasure remained. She would have enjoyed it more than the life she led, chiefly in London. The days she spent at the Grange were the best days, but the Grange too seemed to echo the busy London life, so bound up in all its aspects with the spending of money. There was some restful feeling about it, surrounded as it was by the woods and fields, but it was not to compare with the restfulness of the Hall, which reflected only the life of the country, as it had been lived there for generations. It seemed to her that if she had been in Cynthia's place she would have been glad that the London house had had to be given up, for all her interests then would have been concentrated upon the house which was really the home. Cynthia did love her country home, she knew, and had accepted the change in her lot with admirable absence of complaint. But they were not made alike; Cynthia would have been completely happy if their positions in life had been changed.

Colonel Eldridge sat upright in his seat, his closely-cropped grey head held erect, the brown skin of his neck and shaven cheek contrasting with the clean polished white of his stiff collar, his flat back and square shoulders clothed in dark creaseless serge. The rigid neatness of his appearance and attire went with his straight confined mind, in which there was little room for the leniencies that gave her the sense of something large and responsive in her husband. Her gaze rested on him, and she tried to imagine something of what he was thinking, as he sat so unmoved, his eyes bent down, and his ears, she was sure, not responsive to Mr. Comfrey's well-intentioned hair-splittings.

It was probably this effort to put herself in his place that brought to her a rush of pity for him, so strong that moisture came to her eyes, and she looked away to the ribbons and daisies in Isabelle's hat, immediately in front of her.

She had been hard to him in her thoughts, although she had worked upon her husband's more easily moved sensibilities to put aside the offence he had caused, and to treat him with generosity. She had even felt great impatience with Cynthia, though she hoped she had refrained from showing it. It had been difficult, the day before, to treat her with the customary affection, when they had laid aside their discussion, which was leading to no understanding, and spent an hour together out of doors. She believed Cynthia to be as anxious as she was that this unseemly dispute in which they had found themselves involved should end; but Cynthia had allowed herself to say many things that she would not have allowed to be said to her without taking great offence. She had been right to let them go by, but she was not so sure that she had not kept a spark of resentment over them alive in her mind. If so, she must put it out. Cynthia was her friend of many years, and did love her; of that she was a.s.sured. Friends ought to be able to speak plainly to one another, and if they did not agree upon a given subject, they must fall back upon the deeper agreement to which their friendship had brought them, tested by time and welded by affection.

In this dispute there seemed to be nothing that could be done by discussing the rights and wrongs of it. Discussion seemed only to add new causes of complaint, which were already so numerous as to be swamping the original one. But the deeper tie was there, for all of them. She made up her mind definitely that she, for her part, would lean all her weight upon it, and not allow herself to be turned aside by any accidents of the moment. And she knew that William would be ready to act the large generosity that was his, even to the extent of accepting blame, where blame was not rightly due to him.

What was it that really lay at the bottom of the feeling that seemed to be growing up to separate them? Not the question of the garden, which had been complicated by all sorts of little mistakes, or it would have been amicably settled long ago. Cynthia had been right when she had said that that was only a symptom, though she had applied it only to one side. Edmund complained of William overshadowing him at Hayslope. That was what it came to in the last resort. Well, William was a man of mark, and Edmund was not. And it was impossible for William to put the same value upon what was of most importance to Edmund, which was also a cause of complaint. Hayslope wasn't and couldn't be always in the forefront of his mind, with all the varied and thronging interests that were his.

Edmund ought to be able to see that; but if he couldn't, or wouldn't, then it only remained for William to be more careful than ever not to upset his dignity, which should not be very difficult for him, with the affection that he had for Edmund. As for the dictatorial methods that Edmund was apt to adopt towards his younger brother, perhaps it had been a mistake to bring them up at all. It would be small-minded to keep them standing as a subject for resentment, and they meant nothing that mattered. William had put up with them comfortably for the greater part of his life, and she was sure he would go on putting up with them for the sake of keeping the peace.

Without a doubt, when the balance was struck, there had been more offence against them than against Edmund. Very well, then; it was for them to make light of it. They could well afford to do so. They had so much more than Edmund now; they would even stand in Edmund's place some day, if they survived him, and would have that in addition which he had hoped to have handed on to his son. Poor Edmund; he had been very much tried. It would not cost much to give way to him in this affair, and carefully to avoid all occasions of offence in the future.

The service came to an end, and the congregation streamed out into the bright sunlight. It was composed of the households from the Hall, the Grange, and the Vicarage, a few farmers and their families, villagers and labouring people. It had not filled half the church, for the country habit of churchgoing is lessening, along with the not so admirable habit of Sabbatarianism. At Hayslope, perhaps more people went to church than would be usual in a country village, because the gentry went regularly, and, although Colonel Eldridge would not have put pressure on any of his tenantry to follow his example, it was generally supposed that he liked to see as full a congregation as possible. It was his custom to linger in the churchyard after the service, to exchange salutations, and for a few words with one and another. Lady Eldridge, whose eyes and ears were open towards him, marked his pleasant courteous air with those to whom he spoke. It was plain that they liked to be singled out by him. He was an excellent Squire, of a kind that is fast disappearing. There was n.o.body there that morning of whom he did not know something more than their occupations about this estate. He could probably have put a name to all the children, and they bobbed, and touched their caps to him, not as if they had merely been taught to do so. It was not, after all, no small a thing to hold the respect and esteem of some few hundreds of people towards all of whom, directly or indirectly, he stood in a special position not invariably easy to maintain. Money could not have bought just that response; there were many rich landowners, generous according to their lights, who would not have been liked and respected in the way this one was, who might now be called poor.

There was a gate leading from the churchyard to the Vicarage garden, but Fred Comfrey joined himself on to the Eldridges, who crossed the road and entered the park through the lodge gates, just opposite. He seemed to Norman, who watched him with an unfavouring eye, to do this with a hangdog air, as if he knew he was taking a liberty. At any rate, he should not walk with Pamela, if that was his object. Norman fastened upon her himself, and said: "Let's get away. I want to talk to you about something."

"Wait half a minute," she said, her head turned towards the group behind her; and then she moved towards Fred, and said: "I've found that book at last. If you'll come up now I'll give it to you."

Fred visibly brightened, before Norman's offended eyes, and seized upon her invitation as inclusive of her company during the walk home, for he put himself instantly by her side. She threw a half-glance at Norman, such as to absolve her in his mind from having intended this; but she shouldn't have given the bounder the opportunity of joining her in that way. Of course he would stick like a leech, if he got the smallest encouragement.

Pamela said to Norman, trying to bring him into a conversation of three: "Do you remember that book, 'Jack o' the Mill' that Hugo used to be so fond of when he was a boy? I remember him showing me the pictures in it, when I was quite tiny. Fred reminded me of it, and I've found it for him."

"No," said Norman, who remembered the book perfectly well. But "no" was the shortest word he could find. He wanted to hear Fred talk, and give himself away.