Notwithstanding Part 21

Nicholls. "I used to go while Nicholls was alive, and very convenient it was; but Sir Harry don't want no widders nor single spinsters--only wives of them as has votes."

Politics were not so complicated twenty years ago as they are now. Those were the simple days when Sir Harry Ogden, the Member, urbanely opined that he was for Church and State, and gave tea shortly before the election to the wives of his const.i.tuents. And the ladies of Swale and Riff, and even the great Mrs. Nicholls, thought none the worse of their Member because there was always a sovereign at the bottom of the cup.

"Mr. Black wants to start a Mothers' Meeting in Swale," continued Annette. "He asked me to talk it over with you. I know he is hoping for your nice parlour for it, so beautiful as you always keep it."

Mrs. Nicholls was softened by the compliment to her parlour, the condition of which was as well known as that Queen Victoria was on the throne, but she opined that there had been a deal too much "argybargy"

already among the Swale matrons about the Mothers' Meeting, and that she did not see her way to joining it.

Annette, who had been deputed by Mr. Black to find out the mysterious cause of Mrs. Nicholls' reluctance, remarked meditatively, "I don't know how the Vicar will get on without you, Mrs. Nicholls."

"No, miss," said Mrs. Nicholls, "of course not. He was here only yesterday, and he says to me, 'Mrs. Nicholls, the Swale folk oughter all heng together, and we look to you.' And I says, 'Sir, it's not for me to chunter with you; but it's no manner of use setting me up as a queen in Swale when there's Mrs. Tomkins as bounceful as can be, as has been expecting homage ever since she and her spring-cart came in last Lammas, which none of us don't feel obligated to bow down to her.'"

"Of course not. But there are others besides Mrs. Tomkins. There are the Tamsies, your next-door neighbours. They are quiet, hard-working people, with a lot of little ones. She would be very thankful, I know, to join the Mothers' Meeting, if the Vicar can start it."

"Mrs. Tamsy," said Mrs. Nicholls judicially. "I dare say Mrs. Tamsy _would_ like anything she can get, whether it's out of my pig-tub or her own. That don't make no differ to Mrs. Tamsy, nor what's put on the hedge to dry--if so be as anything's blowed to her side. She's that near she'd take the pence off the eyes of her mother's corp. No, miss! I'd do a deal for the Vicar, but I won't have Mrs. Tamsy in my place, nor I won't set foot in hers. Not that I ain't sorry for her, with Tamsy coming home roaring on a Sat.u.r.day night, and hectoring and bullocking about till the children has to sleep in the hen-roost."

And in the course of conversation Mrs. Nicholls at last divulged to Annette, what she had kept bottled up from Mr. Black, and indeed from every one, that the real reason that a Mothers' Meeting could not be inst.i.tuted in the small circle of the Swale matrons, even if the gathering did not include Mrs. Tamsy, was because of old Mr. Thornton's death. Mr. Thornton, it seemed, had been "an octogeranium and the last sediment of his family, and not one of his own kin to put him in his coffin." The Swale ladies had taken the last duties on themselves, and there had been "unpleasantness at the laying out," so that friendly relations had been suspended between them ever since the funeral.

Annette sighed as she left Mrs. Nicholls and set out across the meadows towards Riff. She was to meet Janey in the Hulver gardens, and help her to pick the snap-dragons, now blooming riotously there.

But one small sigh for the doomed Mothers' Meeting was the only tribute Annette paid to it. Her thoughts reverted quickly to other subjects.

Her placid, easy-going mind was troubled.

The long letter written at night to Mrs. Stoddart three weeks ago had never been posted. The following morning had brought a hurried line from her friend saying that she was that moment starting on a yachting trip with her son. She mentioned that she was coming down to Annette's neighbourhood in a month's time, on a visit to Mr. Stirling at Noyes, when she hoped for opportunities of seeing her.

Annette had dropped her own letter into the fire, not without a sense of relief. She had hated the idea of immediate action, and she had been spared it. She would go on quietly until she could confer with Mrs.

Stoddart. But in spite of the momentary respite the fear remained at the back of her mind that when Mrs. Stoddart did know about the Manvers family she would almost certainly insist on Annette's leaving Riff.

Annette could see for herself that her position there was untenable. But the longing to remain grew, nevertheless. She vaguely, foolishly hoped that some way of remaining might yet be found. For she was drawn towards Riff, as she had never been drawn to any other place, partly no doubt because, owing to her aunt's death, all her energies had been called out there for the first time in her life. It had been no sinecure to take Aunt Cathie's place. She had taken it, and she had filled it. She was no longer a pale, useless, discontented girl, cooped up in an airless London house with two self-centred, elder women whom she secretly despised for immolating their sister. Now that her aunts were under her protection and absolutely dependent on her, and, if they had but known it, at her mercy, she had become at first tolerant of them, and then compa.s.sionate and amused, and finally affectionate. If she had kept her own life entirely apart from them, they were not aware of it.

For neither of the Miss Nevills had yet discovered that though they themselves were not alive others might be, and Annette had done nothing since her return to them to break that illusion so rudely shaken by her departure. In their opinion, Annette had now "settled down," and each aunt was secretly of opinion that her niece's existence was supported by copious draughts from the deep wells of her own wisdom and experience.

But perhaps Annette had other incentives for clinging to Riff.

Sometimes as we go through life we become conscious of a mysterious instinctive attraction towards certain homely people, and certain kindly places, for which we cannot account, to which we can only yield. They seem to belong to us, to have a special significance for us. When Annette first saw Janey and Roger she felt that she had known them all her life, that they had long been part of her existence. When first she walked with them beside the Rieben she seemed to recognize every turn of the stream. The deep primrosed lanes welcomed her back to them. Had she wandered down them in some previous existence? When she gathered her first posy of lady's-smock in the long water meadow near the mill, the little milk-white flowers said, "Why have you been away from us so long?" And when, a few days later, she first stood with Janey in the April suns.h.i.+ne on the wide terrace of Hulver, the stately shuttered house had seemed to envelop her with its ancient peace, and to whisper to her, "I am home."

Annette reached the bridge by the mill, and looked across the tranquil water to the village cl.u.s.tering round the church, and the old red-gabled Manor house standing among its hollies.

Her heart throbbed suddenly.

Surely the angel with the sword would not drive her away again!

CHAPTER XXIII

"Thou vacant house, moated about by peace."

STEPHEN PHILLIPS.

Mr. Stirling and his nephew were standing in the long picture gallery of Hulver, looking at the portrait of Roger Manvers of Dunwich, who inherited Hulver in Charles the Second's time.

"His grandmother, Anne de la Pole, that pinched-looking old woman in the ruff, would never have left it to her daughter's son if she had had anyone else to leave it to," said Mr. Stirling. "She built Hulver in the shape of an E in honour of her kinswoman Queen Elizabeth. That prim little picture below her portrait shows the house when it was new. It must have looked very much the same then as it does now, except that the hollies were all trimmed to fantastic shapes. Look at the birds and domes and crowns."

"I like them better as they are now," said his nephew, a weak-looking youth with projecting teeth, his spectacled eyes turning from the picture to the renowned avenue of hollies, now stooping and splitting in extreme old age.

"I have often wondered what homely Roger Manvers, the burgess of Dunwich, must have felt when old Anne actually left him this place after her only son was drowned. I can so well imagine him riding over here, a careful, st.u.r.dy man, not unlike the present Roger Manvers, and having a look at his inheritance, and debating with himself whether he would leave Dunwich and settle here."

"And did he?"

"Yes. The sea decided that for him. A year later it swept away the town of Dunwich as far as Maison Dieu. And it swept away Roger Manvers'

pleasant house, Montjoy. And he moved across the borders of Suffolk to Lows.h.i.+re with all he had been able to save from his old home, and established himself here. I like the way he has hung those wooden-looking pictures of his burgess forbears in their furred cloaks and chains among the brocaded D'Urbans and De la Poles. Roger Manvers tells me that it was old Roger who first took the property in hand, and heightened the Kirby dam, and drained Mendlesham Marsh, and built the Riff almshouses. The De la Poles had never troubled themselves about such matters. And to think of that wretched creature the present owner tearing the old place limb from limb, throwing it from him with both hands! It makes me miserable. I vow I will never come here again."

The caretaker had unshuttered a few among the long line of windows, and the airlessness, the ghostly outlines of the m.u.f.fled furniture, the dust which lay grey on everything, the faint smell of dry rot, all struck at Mr. Stirling's sensitive spirit and oppressed him. He turned impatiently to the windows.

If it is a misfortune to be stout, even if one is tall, and to be short, even if one is slim, and to be fifty, even if one is of a cheerful temperament, and to be bald, even if one has a well-shaped head, then Mr. Stirling, who was short and stout, and bald as well, and fifty into the bargain, was somewhat heavily handicapped as to his outer man. But one immense compensation was his for an unattractive personality. He never gave it a moment's thought, and consequently no one else did either. His body was no more than a travelling-suit to him. It was hardy, durable, he was comfortable in it, grateful to it, on good terms with it, worked it hard, and used it to the uttermost. That it was not more ornamental than a Gladstone bag did not trouble him.

"Put it all in a book," said his nephew absently, whose eyes were glued to the pictures. "Put it in a book, Uncle Reggie."

Mr. Stirling had long since ceased to be annoyed by a remark which is about as pleasant to a writer as a suggestion of embezzlement is to a bank manager.

"Have you seen enough, Geoff? Shall we go?" he said.

"Wait a bit. Where's the Raeburn?"

"'Highland Mary'? Sold. A pork butcher in America bought her for a fabulous sum. I believe d.i.c.k Manvers lost the whole of it on one race.

If there is coin in the next world, he will play ducks and drakes with it upon the gla.s.sy sea."

"Sold! Good G.o.d!" said his nephew, staring horrorstruck at his uncle.

"How awful! Pictures ought not to belong to individuals. The nation ought to have them." He seemed staggered. "Awful!" he said again. "What a tragedy!"

"To my mind, _that_ is more tragic," said Mr. Stirling bluntly, pointing to the window.

In the deserted garden, near the sundial, Janey was standing, a small nondescript figure in a mushroom hat, picking snap-dragons. The gardens had been allowed to run wild for lack of funds to keep them in order, and had become beautiful exceedingly in consequence. The rose-coloured snap-dragons and amber lupins were struggling to hold their own in their stone-edged beds against an invasion of willow weed. A convolvulus had climbed to the sundial, wrapping it round and round, and had laid its bold white trumpet flowers on the leaded disk itself. Janey had not disturbed it. Perhaps she thought that no one but herself sought to see the time there. The snap-dragons rose in a great blot of straggling rose and white and wine-red round her feet. She was picking them slowly, as one whose mind was not following her hand. At a little distance Harry was lying at his full length on the flags beside the round stone-edged fountain, blowing a.s.siduously at a little boat which was refusing to cross. In the midst of the water Cellini's world-famed water nymph reined in her dolphins.

A yellow stone-crop had found a foothold on the pedestal of the group, and flaunted its raw gold in the vivid suns.h.i.+ne amid the weather-bitten grey stone, making a fantastic broken reflection where Harry's boat rippled the water. And behind Janey's figure, and behind the reflection of the fountain in the water, was the cool, sinister background of the circular yew hedge, with the heather pink of the willow weed crowding up against it.

The young man gasped.

"But it's--it's a picture," he said. And then, after a moment, he added, "Everything except the woman. Of course she won't do."

Geoff's curiously innocent prominent eyes were fixed. His vacant face was rapt. His uncle looked sympathetically at him. He knew what it was to receive an idea "like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought."

The caretaker, whose tea-time was already delayed, coughed discreetly in the hall.

"Come, Geoff," said Mr. Stirling, remorsefully but determinedly, taking his nephew's arm. "We can't remain here for ever."

"It's all right except the woman," said Geoff, not stirring. "Every sc.r.a.p. It hits you in the eye. Look how the lichen has got at the dolphins. All splendour and desolation, and the yew hedge like a funeral procession behind. Not a bit of sky above them: the only sky reflected in the water." His voice had sunk to a whisper.

"When you are my age," said Mr. Stirling, "it is just the woman, not some fanciful angel with a Grecian profile and abnormally long legs, but that particular little brown-haired creature with her short face whom you brush aside, who makes the tragedy of the picture. When I think of what that small courageous personage endures day by day, what her daily life must be--but what's the use of talking? Twenty can't hear a word fifty is saying--isn't meant to. Wake up, Geoff. There is another lady in the case. It is past the caretaker's tea-time. You _must_ learn to consider the fair s.e.x, my dear boy. We are keeping her from her tea.