The Freelands

CHAPTER VII

The next day Stanley’s car, fraught with Felix and a note from Clara, moved swiftly along the grass-bordered roads toward Joyfields. Lying back on the cushioned seat, the warm air flying at his face, Felix contemplated with delight his favorite countryside. Certainly this garden of England was very lovely, its greenness, trees, and large, pied, lazy cattle; its very emptiness of human beings even was pleasing.

Nearing Joyfields he noted the Mallorings’ park and their long Georgian house, carefully fronting south. There, too, was the pond of what village there was, with the usual ducks on it; and three well-remembered cottages in a row, neat and trim, of the old, thatched sort, but evidently restored. Out of the door of one of them two young people had just emerged, going in the same direction as the car. Felix passed them and turned to look. Yes, it was they! He stopped the car. They were walking, with eyes straight before them, frowning. And Felix thought: ‘Nothing of Tod in either of them; regular Celts!’

The girl’s vivid, open face, crisp, brown, untidy hair, cheeks brimful of color, thick lips, eyes that looked up and out as a Skye terrier’s eyes look out of its shagginess – indeed, her whole figure struck Felix as almost frighteningly vital; and she walked as if she despised the ground she covered. The boy was even more arresting. What a strange, pale-dark face, with its black, uncovered hair, its straight black brows; what a proud, swan’s-eyed, thin-lipped, straight-nosed young devil, marching like a very Highlander; though still rather run-up, from sheer youthfulness! They had come abreast of the car by now, and, leaning out, he said:

“You don’t remember me, I’m afraid!” The boy shook his head. Wonderful eyes he had! But the girl put out her hand.

“Of course, Derek; it’s Uncle Felix.”

They both smiled now, the girl friendly, the boy rather drawn back into himself. And feeling strangely small and ill at ease, Felix murmured:

“I’m going to see your father. Can I give you a lift home?”

The answer came as he expected:

“No, thanks.” Then, as if to tone it down, the girl added:

“We’ve got something to do first. You’ll find him in the orchard.”

She had a ringing voice, full of warmth. Lifting his hat, Felix passed on. They WERE a couple! Strange, attractive, almost frightening. Kirsteen had brought his brother a formidable little brood.

Arriving at the cottage, he went up its mossy stones and through the wicket gate. There was little change, indeed, since the days of Clara’s visit, save that the beehives had been moved farther out. Nor did any one answer his knock; and mindful of the girl’s words, “You’ll find him in the orchard,” he made his way out among the trees. The grass was long and starred with petals. Felix wandered over it among bees busy with the apple-blossom. At the very end he came on his brother, cutting down a pear-tree. Tod was in shirt-sleeves, his brown arms bare almost to the shoulders. How tremendous the fellow was! What resounding and terrific blows he was dealing! Down came the tree, and Tod drew his arm across his brow. This great, burnt, curly-headed fellow was more splendid to look upon than even Felix had remembered, and so well built that not a movement of his limbs was heavy. His cheek-bones were very broad and high; his brows thick and rather darker than his bright hair, so that his deep-set, very blue eyes seemed to look out of a thicket; his level white teeth gleamed from under his tawny moustache, and his brown, unshaven cheeks and jaw seemed covered with gold powder. Catching sight of Felix, he came forward.

“Fancy,” he said, “old Gladstone spending his leisure cutting down trees – of all melancholy jobs!”

Felix did not quite know what to answer, so he put his arm within his brother’s. Tod drew him toward the tree.

“Sit down!” he said. Then, looking sorrowfully at the pear-tree, he murmured:

“Seventy years – and down in seven minutes. Now we shall burn it. Well, it had to go. This is the third year it’s had no blossom.”

His speech was slow, like that of a man accustomed to think aloud. Felix admired him askance. “I might live next door,” he thought, “for all the notice he’s taken of my turning up!”

“I came over in Stanley’s car,” he said. “Met your two coming along – fine couple they are!”

“Ah!” said Tod. And there was something in the way he said it that was more than a mere declaration of pride or of affection. Then he looked at Felix.

“What have you come for, old man?”

Felix smiled. Quaint way to put it!

“For a talk.”

“Ah!” said Tod, and he whistled.

A largish, well-made dog with a sleek black coat, white underneath, and a black tail white-tipped, came running up, and stood before Tod, with its head rather to one side and its yellow-brown eyes saying: ‘I simply must get at what you’re thinking, you know.’

“Go and tell your mistress to come – Mistress!”

The dog moved his tail, lowered it, and went off.

“A gypsy gave him to me,” said Tod; “best dog that ever lived.”

“Every one thinks that of his own dog, old man.”

“Yes,” said Tod; “but this IS.”

“He looks intelligent.”

“He’s got a soul,” said Tod. “The gypsy said he didn’t steal him, but he did.”

“Do you always know when people aren’t speaking the truth, then?”

“Yes.”

At such a monstrous remark from any other man, Felix would have smiled; but seeing it was Tod, he only asked: “How?”

“People who aren’t speaking the truth look you in the face and never move their eyes.”

“Some people do that when they are speaking the truth.”

“Yes; but when they aren’t, you can see them struggling to keep their eyes straight. A dog avoids your eye when he’s something to conceal; a man stares at you. Listen!”

Felix listened and heard nothing.

“A wren;” and, screwing up his lips, Tod emitted a sound: “Look!”

Felix saw on the branch of an apple-tree a tiny brown bird with a little beak sticking out and a little tail sticking up. And he thought: ‘Tod’s hopeless!’

“That fellow,” said Tod softly, “has got his nest there just behind us.” Again he emitted the sound. Felix saw the little bird move its head with a sort of infinite curiosity, and hop twice on the branch.

“I can’t get the hen to do that,” Tod murmured.

Felix put his hand on his brother’s arm – what an arm!

“Yes,” he said; “but look here, old man – I really want to talk to you.”

Tod shook his head. “Wait for her,” he said.

Felix waited. Tod was getting awfully eccentric, living this queer, out-of-the-way life with a cranky woman year after year; never reading anything, never seeing any one but tramps and animals and villagers. And yet, sitting there beside his eccentric brother on that fallen tree, he had an extraordinary sense of rest. It was, perhaps, but the beauty and sweetness of the day with its dappling sunlight brightening the apple-blossoms, the wind-flowers, the wood-sorrel, and in the blue sky above the fields those clouds so unimaginably white. All the tiny noises of the orchard, too, struck on his ear with a peculiar meaning, a strange fulness, as if he had never heard such sounds before. Tod, who was looking at the sky, said suddenly:

“Are you hungry?”

And Felix remembered that they never had any proper meals, but, when hungry, went to the kitchen, where a wood-fire was always burning, and either heated up coffee, and porridge that was already made, with boiled eggs and baked potatoes and apples, or devoured bread, cheese, jam, honey, cream, tomatoes, butter, nuts, and fruit, that were always set out there on a wooden table, under a muslin awning; he remembered, too, that they washed up their own bowls and spoons and plates, and, having finished, went outside and drew themselves a draught of water. Queer life, and deuced uncomfortable – almost Chinese in its reversal of everything that every one else was doing.

“No,” he said, “I’m not.”

“I am. Here she is.”

Felix felt his heart beating – Clara was not alone in being frightened of this woman. She was coming through the orchard with the dog; a remarkable-looking woman – oh, certainly remarkable! She greeted him without surprise and, sitting down close to Tod, said: “I’m glad to see you.”

Why did this family somehow make him feel inferior? The way she sat there and looked at him so calmly! Still more the way she narrowed her eyes and wrinkled her lips, as if rather malicious thoughts were rising in her soul! Her hair, as is the way of fine, soft, almost indigo-colored hair, was already showing threads of silver; her whole face and figure thinner than he had remembered. But a striking woman still – with wonderful eyes! Her dress – Felix had scanned many a crank in his day – was not so alarming as it had once seemed to Clara; its coarse-woven, deep-blue linen and needle-worked yoke were pleasing to him, and he could hardly take his gaze from the kingfisher-blue band or fillet that she wore round that silver-threaded black hair.

He began by giving her Clara’s note, the wording of which he had himself dictated:

“DEAR KIRSTEEN:

“Though we have not seen each other for so long, I am sure you will forgive my writing. It would give us so much pleasure if you and the two children would come over for a night or two while Felix and his young folk are staying with us. It is no use, I fear, to ask Tod; but of course if he would come, too, both Stanley and myself would be delighted.

“Yours cordially,

“CLARA FREELAND.”

She read it, handed it to Tod, who also read it and handed it to Felix. Nobody said anything. It was so altogether simple and friendly a note that Felix felt pleased with it, thinking: ‘I expressed that well!’

Then Tod said: “Go ahead, old man! You’ve got something to say about the youngsters, haven’t you?”

How on earth did he know that? But then Tod HAD a sort of queer prescience.

“Well,” he brought out with an effort, “don’t you think it’s a pity to embroil your young people in village troubles? We’ve been hearing from Stanley – ”

Kirsteen interrupted in her calm, staccato voice with just the faintest lisp:

“Stanley would not understand.”

She had put her arm through Tod’s, but never removed her eyes from her brother-in-law’s face.

“Possibly,” said Felix, “but you must remember that Stanley, John, and myself represent ordinary – what shall we say – level-headed opinion.”

“With which we have nothing in common, I’m afraid.”

Felix glanced from her to Tod. The fellow had his head on one side and seemed listening to something in the distance. And Felix felt a certain irritation.

“It’s all very well,” he said, “but I think you really have got to look at your children’s future from a larger point of view. You don’t surely want them to fly out against things before they’ve had a chance to see life for themselves.”

She answered:

“The children know more of life than most young people. They’ve seen it close to, they’ve seen its realities. They know what the tyranny of the countryside means.”

“Yes, yes,” said Felix, “but youth is youth.”

“They are not too young to know and feel the truth.”

Felix was impressed. How those narrowing eyes shone! What conviction in that faintly lisping voice!

‘I am a fool for my pains,’ he thought, and only said:

“Well, what about this invitation, anyway?”

“Yes; it will be just the thing for them at the moment.”

The words had to Felix a somewhat sinister import. He knew well enough that she did not mean by them what others would have meant. But he said: “When shall we expect them? Tuesday, I suppose, would be best for Clara, after her weekend. Is there no chance of you and Tod?”

She quaintly wrinkled her lips into not quite a smile, and answered:

“Tod shall say. Do you hear, Tod?”

“In the meadow. It was there yesterday – first time this year.”

Felix slipped his arm through his brother’s.

“Quite so, old man.”

“What?” said Tod. “Ah! let’s go in. I’m awfully hungry…”

Sometimes out of a calm sky a few drops fall, the twigs rustle, and far away is heard the muttering of thunder; the traveller thinks: ‘A storm somewhere about.’ Then all once more is so quiet and peaceful that he forgets he ever had that thought, and goes on his way careless.

So with Felix returning to Becket in Stanley’s car. That woman’s face, those two young heathens – the unconscious Tod!

There was mischief in the air above that little household. But once more the smooth gliding of the cushioned car, the soft peace of the meadows so permanently at grass, the churches, mansions, cottages embowered among their elms, the slow-flapping flight of the rooks and crows lulled Felix to quietude, and the faint far muttering of that thunder died away.

Nedda was in the drive when he returned, gazing at a nymph set up there by Clara. It was a good thing, procured from Berlin, well known for sculpture, and beginning to green over already, as though it had been there a long time – a pretty creature with shoulders drooping, eyes modestly cast down, and a sparrow perching on her head.

“Well, Dad?”

“They’re coming.”

“When?”

“On Tuesday – the youngsters, only.”

“You might tell me a little about them.”

But Felix only smiled. His powers of description faltered before that task; and, proud of those powers, he did not choose to subject them to failure.

CHAPTER VIII

Not till three o’clock that Saturday did the Bigwigs begin to come. Lord and Lady Britto first from Erne by car; then Sir Gerald and Lady Malloring, also by car from Joyfields; an early afternoon train brought three members of the Lower House, who liked a round of golf – Colonel Martlett, Mr. Sleesor, and Sir John Fanfar – with their wives; also Miss Bawtrey, an American who went everywhere; and Moorsome, the landscape-painter, a short, very heavy man who went nowhere, and that in almost perfect silence, which he afterward avenged. By a train almost sure to bring no one else came Literature in Public Affairs, alone, Henry Wiltram, whom some believed to have been the very first to have ideas about the land. He was followed in the last possible train by Cuthcott, the advanced editor, in his habitual hurry, and Lady Maude Ughtred in her beauty. Clara was pleased, and said to Stanley, while dressing, that almost every shade of opinion about the land was represented this week-end. She was not, she said, afraid of anything, if she could keep Henry Wiltram and Cuthcott apart. The House of Commons men would, of course, be all right. Stanley assented: “They’ll be ‘fed up’ with talk. But how about Britto – he can sometimes be very nasty, and Cuthcott’s been pretty rough on him, in his rag.”

Clara had remembered that, and she was putting Lady Maude on one side of Cuthcott, and Moorsome on the other, so that he would be quite safe at dinner, and afterward – Stanley must look out!

“What have you done with Nedda?” Stanley asked.

“Given her to Colonel Martlett, with Sir John Fanfar on the other side; they both like something fresh.” She hoped, however, to foster a discussion, so that they might really get further this week-end; the opportunity was too good to throw away.

“H’m!” Stanley murmured. “Felix said some very queer things the other night. He, too, might make ructions.”

Oh, no! – Clara persisted – Felix had too much good taste. She thought that something might be coming out of this occasion, something as it were national, that would bear fruit. And watching Stanley buttoning his braces, she grew enthusiastic. For, think how splendidly everything was represented! Britto, with his view that the thing had gone too far, and all the little efforts we might make now were no good, with Canada and those great spaces to outbid anything we could do; though she could not admit that he was right, there was a lot in what he said; he had great gifts – and some day might – who knew? Then there was Sir John – Clara pursued – who was almost the father of the new Tory policy: Assist the farmers to buy their own land. And Colonel Martlett, representing the older Tory policy of: What the devil would happen to the landowners if they did? Secretly (Clara felt sure) he would never go into a lobby to support that. He had said to her: ‘Look at my brother James’s property; if we bring this policy in, and the farmers take advantage, his house might stand there any day without an acre round it.’ Quite true – it might. The same might even happen to Becket.

Stanley grunted.

Exactly! – Clara went on: And that was the beauty of having got the Mallorings; theirs was such a steady point of view, and she was not sure that they weren’t right, and the whole thing really a question of model proprietorship.

“H’m!” Stanley muttered. “Felix will have his knife into that.”

Clara did not think that mattered. The thing was to get everybody’s opinion. Even Mr. Moorsome’s would be valuable – if he weren’t so terrifically silent, for he must think a lot, sitting all day, as he did, painting the land.

“He’s a heavy ass,” said Stanley.

Yes; but Clara did not wish to be narrow. That was why it was so splendid to have got Mr. Sleesor. If anybody knew the Radical mind he did, and he could give full force to what one always felt was at the bottom of it – that the Radicals’ real supporters were the urban classes; so that their policy must not go too far with ‘the Land,’ for fear of seeming to neglect the towns. For, after all, in the end it was out of the pockets of the towns that ‘the Land’ would have to be financed, and nobody really could expect the towns to get anything out of it. Stanley paused in the adjustment of his tie; his wife was a shrewd woman.

“You’ve hit it there,” he said. “Wiltram will give it him hot on that, though.”

Of course, Clara assented. And it was magnificent that they had got Henry Wiltram, with his idealism and his really heavy corn tax; not caring what happened to the stunted products of the towns – and they truly were stunted, for all that the Radicals and the half-penny press said – till at all costs we could grow our own food. There was a lot in that.

“Yes,” Stanley muttered, “and if he gets on to it, shan’t I have a jolly time of it in the smoking-room? I know what Cuthcott’s like with his shirt out.”

Clara’s eyes brightened; she was very curious herself to see Mr. Cuthcott with his – that is, to hear him expound the doctrine he was always writing up, namely, that ‘the Land’ was gone and, short of revolution, there was nothing for it but garden cities. She had heard he was so cutting and ferocious that he really did seem as if he hated his opponents. She hoped he would get a chance – perhaps Felix could encourage him.

“What about the women?” Stanley asked suddenly. “Will they stand a political powwow? One must think of them a bit.”

Clara had. She was taking a farewell look at herself in the far-away mirror through the door into her bedroom. It was a mistake – she added – to suppose that women were not interested in ‘the Land.’ Lady Britto was most intelligent, and Mildred Malloring knew every cottage on her estate.

“Pokes her nose into ‘em often enough,” Stanley muttered.

Lady Fanfar again, and Mrs. Sleesor, and even Hilda Martlett, were interested in their husbands, and Miss Bawtrey, of course, interested in everything. As for Maude Ughtred, all talk would be the same to her; she was always week-ending. Stanley need not worry – it would be all right; some real work would get done, some real advance be made. So saying, she turned her fine shoulders twice, once this way and once that, and went out. She had never told even Stanley her ambition that at Becket, under her aegis, should be laid the foundation-stone of the real scheme, whatever it might be, that should regenerate ‘the Land.’ Stanley would only have laughed; even though it would be bound to make him Lord Freeland when it came to be known some day…

To the eyes and ears of Nedda that evening at dinner, all was new indeed, and all wonderful. It was not that she was unaccustomed to society or to conversation, for to their house at Hampstead many people came, uttering many words, but both the people and the words were so very different. After the first blush, the first reconnaissance of the two Bigwigs between whom she sat, her eyes WOULD stray and her ears would only half listen to them. Indeed, half her ears, she soon found out, were quite enough to deal with Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar. Across the azaleas she let her glance come now and again to anchor on her father’s face, and exchanged with him a most enjoyable blink. She tried once or twice to get through to Alan, but he was always eating; he looked very like a young Uncle Stanley this evening.

What was she feeling? Short, quick stabs of self-consciousness as to how she was looking; a sort of stunned excitement due to sheer noise and the number of things offered to her to eat and drink; keen pleasure in the consciousness that Colonel Martlett and Sir John Fanfar and other men, especially that nice one with the straggly moustache who looked as if he were going to bite, glanced at her when they saw she wasn’t looking. If only she had been quite certain that it was not because they thought her too young to be there! She felt a sort of continual exhilaration, that this was the great world – the world where important things were said and done, together with an intense listening expectancy, and a sense most unexpected and almost frightening, that nothing important was being said or would be done. But this she knew to be impudent. On Sunday evenings at home people talked about a future existence, about Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Chinese pictures, post-impressionism, and would suddenly grow hot and furious about peace, and Strauss, justice, marriage, and De Maupassant, and whether people were losing their souls through materialism, and sometimes one of them would get up and walk about the room. But to-night the only words she could catch were the names of two politicians whom nobody seemed to approve of, except that nice one who was going to bite. Once very timidly she asked Colonel Martlett whether he liked Strauss, and was puzzled by his answer: “Rather; those ‘Tales of Hoffmann’ are rippin’, don’t you think? You go to the opera much?” She could not, of course, know that the thought which instantly rose within her was doing the governing classes a grave injustice – almost all of whom save Colonel Martlett knew that the ‘Tales of Hoffmann’ were by one Offenbach. But beyond all things she felt she would never, never learn to talk as they were all talking – so quickly, so continuously, so without caring whether everybody or only the person they were talking to heard what they said. She had always felt that what you said was only meant for the person you said it to, but here in the great world she must evidently not say anything that was not meant for everybody, and she felt terribly that she could not think of anything of that sort to say. And suddenly she began to want to be alone. That, however, was surely wicked and wasteful, when she ought to be learning such a tremendous lot; and yet, what was there to learn? And listening just sufficiently to Colonel Martlett, who was telling her how great a man he thought a certain general, she looked almost despairingly at the one who was going to bite. He was quite silent at that moment, gazing at his plate, which was strangely empty. And Nedda thought: ‘He has jolly wrinkles about his eyes, only they might be heart disease; and I like the color of his face, so nice and yellow, only that might be liver. But I DO like him – I wish I’d been sitting next to him; he looks real.’ From that thought, of the reality of a man whose name she did not know, she passed suddenly into the feeling that nothing else of this about her was real at all, neither the talk nor the faces, not even the things she was eating. It was all a queer, buzzing dream. Nor did that sensation of unreality cease when her aunt began collecting her gloves, and they trooped forth to the drawing-room. There, seated between Mrs. Sleesor and Lady Britto, with Lady Malloring opposite, and Miss Bawtrey leaning over the piano toward them, she pinched herself to get rid of the feeling that, when all these were out of sight of each other, they would become silent and have on their lips a little, bitter smile. Would it be like that up in their bedrooms, or would it only be on her (Nedda’s) own lips that this little smile would come? It was a question she could not answer; nor could she very well ask it of any of these ladies. She looked them over as they sat there talking and felt very lonely. And suddenly her eyes fell on her grandmother. Frances Freeland was seated halfway down the long room in a sandalwood chair, somewhat insulated by a surrounding sea of polished floor. She sat with a smile on her lips, quite still, save for the continual movement of her white hands on her black lap. To her gray hair some lace of Chantilly was pinned with a little diamond brooch, and hung behind her delicate but rather long ears. And from her shoulders was depended a silvery garment, of stuff that looked like the mail shirt of a fairy, reaching the ground on either side. A tacit agreement had evidently been come to, that she was incapable of discussing ‘the Land’ or those other subjects such as the French murder, the Russian opera, the Chinese pictures, and the doings of one, L – , whose fate was just then in the air, so that she sat alone.