The Squire drew himself up.
"You"ve made the arrangements, I suppose, for to-morrow?"
He spoke curtly, as the master of the house to a dependent.
Elizabeth meekly replied that she had done everything according to his directions. Mrs. Gaddesden was to have the South rooms.
"I said the East rooms!"
"But I thought--" Elizabeth began, in consternation.
"You thought wrong," said the Squire cuttingly. "Do not trouble yourself. I will tell Forest"
Elizabeth coloured crimson, and went on with her work. The Squire rang the bell. But before Forest could answer it, there was a quick step in the pa.s.sage, and Desmond came bursting in.
"Pater, I say! it"s too fine! You can"t frowst all day at this nonsense. Come out, and let"s shoot those roots of Milsom"s. He told me yesterday there were five or six coveys in his big field alone.
Of course everybody"s been poaching for all they"re worth. But there"s some left. Forest"ll get us some sandwiches. He says he"ll come and load for you. His boy and the garden boy"ll do for beaters."
The Squire stood glumly hesitating, but with his eye on his son.
"Look here," said Desmond, "I"ve only got two days!"
Elizabeth could not help watching the boy--his look at his father, the physical beauty and perfection of him. The great Victory at the end of the room with her outstretched wings seemed to be hovering above him.
"Well, I don"t mind," said the Squire slowly.
Desmond gave a laugh of triumph, twined his arm in that of his father, and dragged him away.
"DEAR BELOVED d.i.c.k--I must just finish this before dinner. Oh, how I like to think of you at Baghdad, with trees and shade, and civilized quarters again, after all you"ve gone through.
Have you got my letters, and those gauze things I sent you for the hot weather? They tell me here they"re right. But how"s one to know? Meanwhile, my dear, here are your mother and sister on their knees to you, just to be told what you want. Try and want something!--there"s a dear.
"Mother"s fairly well--I mean as well as we can expect after such an illness. My salary here enables me to give her a proper trained nurse, and to send Jean to school. As to the rest, don"t trouble about me, old man. Sometimes I think it was my pride more than anything else that was hurt a year ago. Anyway I find in myself a tremendous appet.i.te for work. In spite of his oddities, Mr. Mannering is a most stimulating critic and companion. My work is interesting, and I find myself steeped once more in the most fascinating, the most wonderful of all literatures! What remains unsatisfied in me is the pa.s.sion which you know I have always had for setting things straight--organizing, tidying up! Not to speak of other pa.s.sions--for work directly connected with the war, for instance--which have had to be sc.r.a.pped for a time. I can"t bear the muddle and waste of this place. It gets on my nerves.
Perhaps, if I stay, I may get a chance. I have made a small beginning--with the food. But I won"t bother you with it.
"Above all, I must try and make friends with the twins.
Desmond would be easy, but he"s going. Pamela will be more difficult. However, I shall do my best. As I have already said, if she would only set up a flirtation--a nice one--that I could aid and abet!
"What will the married sisters be like? Desmond and Pamela say very little. All I know is that Alice--that"s Mrs.
Gaddesden--is to have a fire in her room all day, though the weather now is like July. To judge from her photographs, she is fair, rather pretty, stout and lethargic. Whereas Margaret is as thin almost as her father, and head-over-ears in war charities. She lives, says Pamela, on arrowroot and oatcake, to set an example, and her servants leave her regularly every month.
"Well, we shall see. I run on like this, because you say you like to be gossipped to; and I am just a little lonely here--sometimes. Good-night, and good-bye.--Your devoted sister,
"ELIZABETH."
CHAPTER IV
"Come in!" said Alice Gaddesden in a languid tone. From the knock, sharp and loud, on her bedroom door, she guessed that it was her sister Margaret who wished to see her. She did not wish, however, to see Margaret at all. Margaret, who was slightly the elder, tired and coerced her. But she had no choice.
Mrs. Strang entered briskly.
"My dear Alice! what a time of day to be in bed! Are you really ill?"
Mrs. Gaddesden grew red with annoyance.
"I thought I had told you, Margaret, that Dr. Crother advised me more than a year ago not to come down till the middle of the morning. It rests my heart."
Mrs. Strang, who had come up to the bedside, looked down upon her sister with amused eyes. She herself was curiously like the Squire, even as to her hair, which was thick and fair, and already whitening, though she was not yet thirty. Human thinness could hardly have been carried further than she and the Squire achieved it. She had her father"s nose also. But the rest of her features were delicately regular, and her quick blue eyes were those of a woman who told no falsehoods herself, and had little patience with other people"s.
"My dear Alice, why do you believe doctors? They always tell you what you want to hear. I am sure you told Dr. Crother exactly what to say," said Margaret, laughing, as she placed a chair by the bedside.
"Oh, of course I know you think everybody"s a sham who isn"t as strong as yourself!" said Mrs. Gaddesden, sinking back on her pillows with a soft sigh of resignation. "Though I think you _might_ have remembered the horribly hard work I"ve been doing lately."
"Have you?" Mrs. Strang wrinkled her brow, as though in an effort to recollect. "Oh, yes, I know. I have always been getting notices lately with your name on them, at the end of a long tail beginning with a d.u.c.h.ess, and stuffed with Countesses. And I always think--there"s Alice doing the work, and the Countesses getting the glory. Do you really do the work?"
And Margaret, who did not often see her sister, and was of a genuinely inquiring turn of mind, turned upon her a penetrating look.
"Well, of course," said Mrs. Gaddesden, a little confused, "there are always the secretaries."
"Ah-ha!" Mrs. Strang laughed--one might almost say crowed. "Yes, indeed, if it weren"t for the secretaries! By the way, what do you think about the specimen here?"
Mrs. Gaddesden lost her languid air at once. She sat up among her pillows, a reasonably pretty woman, not without some likeness to Pamela, in points that did not matter.
"My dear Margaret," she said, with emphasis, "this has got to be watched!--_watched_, I tell you."
Mrs. Strang opened her eyes wide.
"What on earth do you mean?"
Alice Gaddesden smiled.
"Well, of course, you"re much cleverer than I am, but I really do see further in practical matters than you do. Haven"t you noticed,"
she bent forward, looking mysterious and intent, "how _already_ father depends upon her, how she"s beginning to run the whole show--and she hasn"t been here much more than six weeks? My dear Margaret, with a secretary like that you _never_ can tell!"
"Well," said Mrs. Strang coolly, "and what then?"
"Oh, well, of course, if you"re prepared to see a person like that--in our mother"s place!"
""A person like that"--how dreadfully old-fashioned you are, Alice!
She"s a lady; she"s much more highly educated than you or I, and if she gets her way, she"ll perhaps keep father out of some of the sc.r.a.pes he seems bent on. You know this business of the park is perfectly mad!"
For the first time in this conversation Margaret Strang"s face was grave. And when it was grave, some people would have called it fine.
"And just think what it"ll cost," said Mrs. Gaddesden despondently, "even if he had a case--which he probably hasn"t--and if he were to win it. There"ll be no money left for Aubrey or any of us soon."