“What did uncle David want?” said Emmy when Martin came back.
“Only to say Rose is back,” said Martin. “The F.O. have transferred her to London and they will be dispensing with her services soon. But she is keeping her flat in Paris. David is bringing her over on Sunday.”
“Good old Rose,” said Emmy, “I haven’t seen her for ages. I expect she’s had a marvellous time abroad. She may be in time to see the Jersey calve.”
“Do have a little sense of fitness, Emmy,” said Martin. “Rose doesn’t know a bull from a cow. But it’s always amusing when she comes. John’s boys are coming this Sunday, aren’t they?”
Emmy said they were.
“Then I’ll ask Robin Dale to come with them,” said Martin, looking kindly at Anne. “I’ll ring up the school now.”
He got up again and went, with his slight limp, into the house.
“It’s a shame Martin has to limp like that,” said Sylvia to Emmy. “Can’t they do anything?”
“They haven’t yet,” said Emmy. “But Rose said she knew a wonderful man in Lisbon who had cured lots of people that got stiff legs and things in the war. I must ask her about him again. I could run Rushwater quite well for a month or six weeks in the autumn with Macpherson. And you could come over and help me.”
Sylvia said she would love to.
Anne again felt out of it. Also slightly confused, because she wondered who Rose was. It could hardly be Rose Fairweather; yet Rose had been in Lisbon and this man who cured people with stiff legs and things was in Lisbon.
“I expect Rose has brought some marvellous clothes from Paris,” said Emmy, continuing her artless prattle. “Not that I’d be seen dead in them,” she continued, looking with some complacence at her own serviceable legs in corduroy breeches, green woollen stockings and stout shoes.
“That’s all right,” said Martin, coming back and sitting down by Anne. “Your friend Robin will come. You’ll like Rose. She was here for my seventeenth birthday party. She is great fun.”
“I am so sorry,” said Anne desperately, “but please, who is Rose?”
“How stupid of me,” said Martin. “My cousin Rose Bingham. She has been abroad most of the war, Paris and Cairo and Lisbon and Washington and everywhere.”
Anne now knew the worst. The horrible Rose Bingham who was as funny as hell all the time was coming. David was bringing her. He would probably marry her out of hand at Rushmere church, bringing a special licence with him, and whisk her away in a very expensive private aeroplane to Paris, or Lisbon, or one of those places that other people went to. A doubt then assailed her as to whether Sunday was a day on which one could be legally married; but she put it angrily away, desiring to savour the bitterness of despair to the utmost. There was no one to whom she could unbosom herself. Martin was the horrible Rose’s cousin. Sylvia might have sympathised, but Sylvia was deep in winter feeding with Emmy.
She suddenly felt that everything was useless, and so far forgot Miss Bunting’s training as to give up any effort at conversation. Martin, thinking that Anne was probably tired, hitched his chair nearer to Sylvia’s and was soon deep in oil-cake and straw. Anne, miserably realising that she was a social failure, got up and walked slowly away. No one noticed her absence. In solitary misery she walked down the garden to where a terrace was built above the Rushmere Brook, a gazebo at each end. Here, had she but known it, David Leslie had given a perfunctory and most unromantic kiss to Mary Preston, now the mother of Leslie major and minor, on the night of Martin’s seventeenth birthday dance. And had she but known it, David had been kissing people up and down town, off and on, for more years than her whole age; though even had she known it her feelings for David would have been unaffected, for David was just David. She then cried a little from sheer self-pity, which gave her rather a grown-up and romantic feeling, and then, a slight breeze having sprung up, she returned to the more sheltered terrace where no one had noticed that she had been away.
Emmy, who had not much use for the finer shades of politeness, yawned, got up and shook herself, and said she was going to bed. The rest of the party followed her and Anne very much enjoyed talking to Sylvia through the communicating door, like young ladies in novels, and quite forgot that she meant to be unhappy.
The weather, by some unaccountable oversight, remained hot and still. Day after day the elms and oaks looked darker and heavier against the dark cloudless blue sky. The roses were buds at daybreak, shameless flaunting blooms by mid-day, scented carpets upon the earth by nightfall. Nature so far forgot herself as to provide warmth, unending strawberries and peas and young beans. All was golden sunshine, life, a piercing sweetness. The only tarnish on Anne’s happiness was the thought that at the end of the week Sunday would come, and with it the horrible Rose Bingham. But she did her best to forget that separator of companions and terminator of delights.
It was not Martin’s fault that Anne was a good deal alone. Nor was it Sylvia’s or Emmy’s fault, for though they were both extremely well disposed towards her, the affairs of farm and dairy kept them busy throughout the long day, and by the evening they were all pleasantly fatigued; and also pleasantly disposed to discuss at great length what they had been doing during the day and what they meant to do on the morrow. Luckily for Anne, Mr. Macpherson took a fancy to her and she accompanied him on a good many of his estate activities, listening to his talk, or sitting quite happily in the car while he went into farms or cottages. And sometimes they climbed the hills behind the house together, where Mr. Macpherson noted what trees would have to be felled and where the new planting was to be done. From him Anne learnt a good deal about the Leslie family: what a pity it was that Martin’s father had been killed, how well Martin was taking over the responsibility for the place, how proud old Mr. Leslie had been of his prize bulls and his first-class milkers and how Martin was nearly as good a judge of cattle as his grandfather had been: how fond he was of Mrs. John Leslie, the mother of Robin’s pupils, how he hoped to finish his life in the place to which most of it had been devoted.
“But I thought you wanted to lay your bones in Scotland, Mr. Macpherson,” said Anne, parodying, we fear, the old agent’s favourite theme.
“To tell you the truth, Miss Anne,” said Mr. Macpherson, who stuck to this pleasant old-fashioned way of addressing young ladies, “I have no very particular feeling about my bones one way or the other. But I would like to die here, and I should preferrr,” said the old agent, whose voice became more Scotch when his feelings were stirred,“ to die when the hay is in, and the corn cut and thrashed and stacked, and the winter feed earthed up, and Mrs. Siddon has bottled all the fruit and vegetables and made all the jam. I could fold my hands and go then,” said Mr. Macpherson, who was quite obviously thinking of what would have to be done next.
“But you can’t die this year,” said Anne seriously. “There’s the planting to be done on Hangman’s Hill and the new roof for the potting-shed, and you know you said the Rushmere Brook needed cleaning out, down by the keeper’s cottage.”
“You are maybe right, Miss Anne,” said Mr. Macpherson. “But there’s one thing I fear I shan’t see, though I’d much like to see it, and that is David settled. He’s a grand lad and I am as fond of him as if he were my own son, but he has had all the rope he needs; forbye his hair is beginning to get a bit thin on the top,” said Mr. Macpherson meditatively.
To Anne this comment was so dreadful, so soul-wracking, that she nearly got out of the car and went home. But as they were now slowly climbing Hangman’s Hill by a track never meant for cars, the machinery was making such a noise, not to speak of the view getting more beautiful every moment, that she found it better to say nothing and stay where she was.
The little car, expressing at every step its unwillingness to go any further, at last stopped, panting, on the top of Hangman’s Hill, the most considerable eminence in those parts. Before 1914 there would have been no view, so thickly was it wooded, but during the last war most of the timber had
been felled and replaced by quick-growing conifers which were as quickly removed when they reached the point at which they were worth selling. Anyone who had known Hangman’s Hill forty years earlier would have experienced a severe shock on finding the beeches and the thorns replaced by larch and fir, the tall ones in regimental lines, the small ones rather squashed together in nurseries waiting to be planted out. And such an observer would have lamented the romantic gloom which even at mid-day overspread the hill, and might have gone so far as to quote from Cowper’s threnody on poplars and make an allusion to the Woods of Westermain: which would have given him the utmost pleasure and done no harm to anybody. But that same observer, if the intelligent and well-educated man we take him to be, could not, even in the middle of his grief, have failed to notice the exquisite prospect now opened to his view in more than one direction, nor the skilful way in which Mr. Macpherson had disposed long open rides among his conifers, each with a different enchantment to the view. To the North the downs rolled away, one green humped bulk behind another where sheep-bells rang. To the east and south-east were glimpses of the arable land, now turning golden. To the west and south-west lay the green water meadows bordering the River Rising, then the roofs and towers of Barchester, crowned by its soaring steeple; then low downs intersected by valleys of streams of rivers, and on the farthest horizon in a glimmer of golden mist, the real hills, well beyond the county but a part of its landscape.
“Oh, Mr. Macpherson,” was all Anne could say; but this comment, inadequate though it may appear, entirely satisfied the old agent.
“And well you may say so, Miss Anne,” he said. “I cannot truthfully say that I am responsible for the landscape, but I sometimes feel that we have understood each other, and that a part of my work here will go on when I am dead.”
This struck Anne as so fitting to the time, the place, the season, that she felt a delightful sense of romantic melancholy, of looking on happy autumn fields and thinking of days that were no more, and she could have cried with the greatest pleasure, but Mr. Macpherson said it was high time they were getting back for tea. So they remounted the little car which, chattering with rage, pursued its homeward path down the track heavily scored by timber waggons, and did not stop complaining till they got onto the farm road again.
The plan for the afternoon was that Anne should go back with Mr. Macpherson for tea and that Emmy, Martin and Sylvia should join them there. Mr. Macpherson’s house was exactly what we should all like, with none of the drawbacks. It was a small Regency house partaking slightly of the cottage orné in that it had very improbable stucco battlements and a small church porch. It was painted cream and its small but elegant verandah on the south side was green. To the north it was sheltered by rising ground and a belt of well-groomed trees. Before the verandah a lawn sloped down to the Rushmere Brook. There was a mild rose-garden, a very good little walled fruit and vegetable garden, and no kind of provision whatsoever for playing any kind of game.
“Oh!” said Anne as they drew up before the elegant little iron gate in the fence. “Oh! Mr. Macpherson!”
Pleased by her admiration the Agent offered to show her his house. It consisted of a wide hall, a drawing-room which looked out onto the verandah and had a tiny conservatory communicating with it at the further end, a dining-room, and a room where Mr. Macpherson kept his pipes, such papers as he did not keep in the Estate Office and complete files of The Scotsman and the Stock Breeders’ Gazette. Upstairs there were three bedrooms and a surprisingly modern bathroom.
“That,” said Mr. Macpherson, when he had displayed its glories to Anne and taken her out to sit on the verandah, “was a present to me from Mr. Leslie on my sixtieth birthday. He said, in worrds I am prroud to rrrepeat,” said Mr. Macpherson, letting his feelings and his Scotch tongue get the upper hand of him for a moment, “that I had given good service to his father and to himself, and if I felt like marrying when I retired I ought to have a nice bathroom for the future Mrs. Macpherson. That, you will understand,” he said, looking firmly at Anne, “was just by way of a joke, for I never yet saw the woman I’d have married.”
Anne said that was a great pity.
“I couldn’t exactly say,” said Mr. Macpherson cautiously. “There are points about marriage, but had I married I might have left a widow, and I may tell you, Miss Anne, that an agent’s widow can be a sore trial and expense to an estate. No; when I die this house will be free and Martin can give it to anyone he thinks suitable. Only one thing I have said to him about it. The new agent—and I doubt if he will be able to afford one for some time—must live in one of those new houses in the village. This house is too good for the agent. Now, if Martin marries, Emmy might like to live here for a time, for she will never be happy away from Rushwater. I would like to see Martin married. The lad is too much alone and though Emmy is a fine girl, she is a harum-scarum creature. He needs a wife who will look after him with that leg of his. Ah well.”
At this moment, to the intense joy and excitment of Anne the town-child, Emmy in a pony-cart and Martin and Sylvia on horses came up to the side gate where an elderly kind of groom-factotum took their horses and led them away.
An elderly woman then brought tea onto the verandah and Mr. Macpherson asked Emmy to preside, which she did with something less than her mother’s grace, but with great hospitality and goodwill.
“I say, Mr. Macpherson,” said Emmy, “I think the Jersey is going to calve by to-morrow night. I’m going to sit up to-morrow anyway. So’s Sylvia.”
“Sylvia certainly mustn’t,” said Martin. “I am responsible for the cow. Emmy can help if she wants to. And old Herdman will be there. He hasn’t missed a calf since he came here as a boy in the year of Queen Victoria’s first Jubilee.”
Mr. Macpherson said Herdman was bad with his lumbago again, so Mrs. Herdman had told him that morning.
“He’ll turn up all right if he’s wanted,” said Martin. “He has a theory that if a man—by which he means himself—spent all his life in the cowshed and didn’t have to go home and find the missus had been washing the kitchen floor, making a man get the perishing colic in his innards, he’d never have nothing wrong with him. He may be right; I haven’t tried it.”
“Mrs. Herdman is dreadfully clean,” said Emmy. “Her kitchen is always swimming in soapsuds when I go there. You know that cottage is a disgrace, Martin.”
“I know it is,” said Martin ruefully. “I wish to goodness I could build a few better ones, but I can’t get permission to do anything, let alone the labour.”
“Never mind,” said Emmy. “Perhaps we’ll have better luck with the new Government. The Conservatives are bound to come in again, even if it isn’t such a big majority and then they’ll have to pay some attention to housing and things.”
“Do you think a Conservative Government will come in?” asked Anne.
“Of course,” said Emmy and Sylvia in one breath.
Martin looked sad and said nothing.
“If you ask my opinion,” said Mr. Macpherson, “Gresham will get in for East Barsetshire; but I wouldn’t bet on it and I wouldn’t bet on any constituency except Mr. Churchill’s and perhaps South Kensington. It’s going to be a landslide as it was in 1906. None of you remember that. Stalybridge was the first sign of how the current was flowing against us, and then all the dykes went down. We’ll see it again. What does Sir Robert think, Miss Anne?
Anne, feeling a little frightened at being suddenly appealed to about politics, said that Daddy had said it would be a hard fight, but that Mr. Adams would be a clean fighter, whatever his supporters might be.
“Sir Robert is right,” said Martin. “I’ve had to meet Adams on some county matters and I have rather a respect for him. He has the courage of his opinions too. He addressed a large meeting at the Barchester Mechanics’ Institute and told them that if Barchester returned him he wouldn’t vote for a single measure that gave the working classes something for nothing. He then said he had always been a working man himse
lf and had paid his way wherever he went, and he didn’t want to be taxed to help a lot of unmentionables to get everything free. Then he said he wasn’t going to vote for sending our food abroad, or for lending money to Mixo-Lydia, or broadly speaking for anything.”
“What happened?” said Anne.
“I thought there was going to be a free fight,” said Martin, “and having been trained to fight under Army Regulations I didn’t much like the look of it. But a lot of his men from the ironworks were there and they sang Annie Laurie in parts at the top of their voices and then God Save the King, so we all got home without having our heads broken. Adams told me he was very proud of the Works Choral Society.”
“I expect he will win,” said Anne. “Daddy thinks a lot of the same things that Mr. Adams does, but he can’t say them so well. I mean daddy can’t help talking like himself. I mean I can’t quite explain,” she finished lamely.
“I know,” said Emmy, who had been listening with an interest she rarely showed for anything outside the cow world, her capable hands outspread on her corduroyed knees, “Sir Robert and Mr. Adams say the same things, but Sir Robert says them in a gentleman’s voice and Mr. Adams doesn’t, so Mr. Adams will get in.”
“And that’s the humour of it,” said Martin, and Anne cast an appreciative glance at him, which he received with pleasure.
“Well, anyway, we’ll know soon,” said Emmy getting up. “Come on, Anne, I’ll drive you home. I brought the pony-cart on purpose because I thought you’d be tired.”
The equipages were brought round. Sylvia and Martin mounted their horses and rode away. Anne thanked Mr. Macpherson for her happy afternoon and got into the pony-trap. Mr. Macpherson stood at his gate to see the cavalcade depart. Much as he liked Anne, it was the riders whom he followed with his eyes, and as he went back into his house he thought that perhaps one of his dearest wishes might be fulfilled and he could hand over his life’s work with a conviction that it would be continued by a generation he might not live to see.
Peace Breaks Out Page 22
