Part 5

She put this aside lightly. "Oh, there's nothing in that. It's only what she'd say. She'd say anything. But I see I ought not to ask you. No, it wouldn't be fair to bring you into it. She'd have it up against you; you're quite right. I tell you this, Mrs. Grant; when Harry comes of age--or before that, when he goes to Sandhurst--I'm off. No more of this for me. I shall snap my fingers at her. But of course you've got to stay here. No, I'll tackle her myself, and see if I can't get my own way for once."

She sprang up. "I'll go and do it now," she said. "No time like the present."

She laughed, and kissed Mrs. Grant. "Good-bye, dear," she said. "It does me good to talk to you; you're so understanding. And it does me good to have you here--you and your nice kind clever husband and your _sweet_ children. Ah, if I'd had a bit of real family life with _my_ poor boy!--it might have been here or anywhere; I shouldn't have cared where it was--it would all have been very different. Now I'll go and tackle the old dragon while I'm fresh for it. Good-bye, dear; I'll go out through the garden."

She went out by the window, and stopped to look at the sleeping baby as she crossed the lawn, smiling and making a little motion of the hand towards Mrs. Grant as she did so. Then she disappeared behind the shrubbery.

Mrs. Grant laid down her work and went to refresh herself with a look at the baby. As she turned back, her husband came out of his room, which was next to the drawing-room and also opened on to the garden.

His face was serious. "I didn't know you had Mrs. Brent with you," he said. "I've had Wilbraham. They're all at loggerheads up at the Castle, Ethel. I don't quite know what to do about it. I don't want to get up against Lady Brent; but----"

She told him of Mrs. Brent's prospective revolt. "She asked _me_ to talk to her," she said. "But I said the same as you do. We don't want to get up against her. What is the trouble with Mr. Wilbraham?"

"Much the same as with Mrs. Brent apparently. He's fed up with it too. He wants to get away."

"What, for always?"

"Oh, no. He's too fond of Harry for that. Besides, he's very comfortable here--has everything he wants. I told him that, and he didn't deny it. But he seems to have developed a furious hatred of Lady Brent. I really can't tell you why. He couldn't tell me, when I pressed him. He's morose and gloomy. He says he must get away from her for a time, or he'll go off his head."

"But surely he can take a holiday sometimes if he wants to!"

"It almost looks as if she wouldn't let him go off by himself. He asked me to go with him, for a month. He offered to pay all expenses and go where I liked. In the old days I might have been tempted--if you'd thought it would be a good thing to do. But I don't want to go away from here just now--at this lovely time of year, with the work and everything going so well. Of course I could write, but---- Anyhow I don't know who I should get to do my duty. If I thought it would really put things right! What do you think? Ought I to do it?"

"I don't know, dear. I don't understand what's going on. It looks to me as if there must be something behind it all that we don't know of."

He laughed at her and pinched her chin. "You take the novelist's point of view," he said. "I don't, which is perhaps rather odd. They're all on each other's nerves. Why don't he and Mrs. Brent go off together?" He laughed again. "He didn't really press it," he said. "He wanted me to go this week. I couldn't do that, anyhow, and when I said so he seemed to drop the idea. He had wanted me to suggest it to Lady Brent just as Mrs. Brent wanted you. They're a queer couple."

"I suppose it's only to be expected that it should be like that sometimes," she said thoughtfully. "I think I could talk to Lady Brent, if she'd only give me the chance."

"I don't think she will, and it wouldn't do to begin it."

"Oh no, I shouldn't do that. But there's Harry. It all comes back to him, you see. If she's mistaken in what she's doing, it's for his sake she's doing it. She might give me an opening there."

"I don't think so. It all passes over Harry's head. It's rather remarkable how normal he is. One might not have expected it under such circumstances. Well, I must get back, dear. Wilbraham has taken a big slice out of my morning. I'm sorry for him and wish I could help him. But I don't see how I can, except by continuing my friendship. I was rather flattered that he should have come and talked to me. He professes to think very little of my knowledge of human nature, you know. But most of that's a pose, and I like him. He went off to tackle Lady Brent himself. Mrs. Brent too, you say. She'll have a happy day of it, I should think."

At this moment the peaceful seclusion of the scene was destroyed by the incursion of Jane and Pobbles, who, released from their studies, came tumultuously round the corner of the house, Jane leading. They woke up the baby, or, as her time for waking up was past, perhaps they only completed the process, and they escaped rebuke for it. Their cry was for Harry. Where was Harry? He had promised to come not a moment later than twelve o'clock, and it was already two minutes past.

Jane was a straight, somewhat leggy child, with the promise of beauty when the time should come for her to accept her dower of femininity. At present she was more like a boy than a girl, except for her long thick plait of fair hair, which she would have given almost anything to be allowed to sacrifice in the interests of freedom. She was aboundingly full of life and the most amazing physical energy. She affected an extreme virility of speech, and exercised a severe discipline over Pobbles, who occasionally raged against it as an offence to his manhood, but as a rule accepted the yoke and prospered under it. He was a handsome child, strong and vigorous too, but without his sister's determined initiative. They were a pair to be proud of, and their parents were proud of them, but found them a handful. Miss Minster could manage them by the exercise of a good-humoured authority which never allowed itself to be rattled. But it was only Harry whose lightest word they obeyed without question. He was their hero and their most adored playmate. Perhaps Jane showed more femininity in submitting to his direction than was apparent in her attitude towards him, in which there was none to be seen.

Harry came into the garden as they were clamouring their questions, with his retriever wagging its tail at his heels. He was seventeen now, grown almost to his full height, but his face was still that of a boy. There was a radiant look of health and happiness in it. He was extraordinarily good to look at, not only because of his beauty, of form and feature and colouring, which was undeniable, but because of this sort of inward light, which suffused it with a sense of perfection that went right through him. Mrs. Grant caught her breath as she looked at him. She saw him as some wonderful work of God, without flaw, untroubled in his happiness. Whatever disturbances there might be among the figures of coarser clay by whom he was surrounded, there must be some breath of finer spirit in each and all of them, since he stood on the threshold of manhood as he was, here before her eyes.

The matter in hand was the building of a log cabin in a bit of forest that reached down from the wooded hill behind the Vicarage garden. Harry and the children had been working at it for a month or more, and it was to be a very perfect specimen of a log cabin.

"Why haven't you brought the saw?" said Jane, turning upon Pobbles. "Go and fetch it."

"It's your turn," said Pobbles. "Can't always be fetching things for you."

"Be quick," said Jane. "We're wasting time. Come on, Harry, we'll start. He can run after us."

"Don't know where to find the saw," said Pobbles, untruthfully.

"Jane will go and help you," said Harry. "Hurry up, both of you."

Jane put her long legs in rapid motion without a word, Pobbles pounding along after her on his shorter ones. Harry laughed. "That's the way to talk to them," he said.

Jane returned bearing the saw, Pobbles following. They set off immediately for the wood, and the voices of all three of them were heard for a long time in animated conversation through the hot drowsy air.

*CHAPTER VI*

*REVOLT*

Lady Brent sat in her business room, engaged in affairs, or apparently so. Business room it was called, but it was little like one except for the large writing-table in the window at which she sat, and as a matter of fact she transacted most of the actual business of house and estate which fell to her share in a room downstairs called the Steward's room, which was far more severely furnished. This large upstairs room, with its deep embrasured window looking on to the park, was her fastness, and she did not often withdraw herself into its seclusion. It was next to her bedroom, and might have been better called her boudoir, but that the ancient and severe splendour of its furnishing would have seemed to rebuke such a name. It was richly carved and panelled, the furniture was heavy and sombre, and lightened by none of the modern touches which made the long drawing-room downstairs, which was mostly used, bright and even gay. This room was as characteristic of the old romantic Castle as any in it. It spoke of a time long gone by, and of a life more austere than modern life is apt to be. There were few comforts in it but a great deal of rich massive dignity. When Lady Brent ensconced herself in it she was the chatelaine of the Castle, seated in state, and as formidable as it was in her power to make herself.

Mrs. Brent, coming in from the Vicarage, wrought up to her purpose, looked for her in the long drawing-room, and not finding her there had the intuition that she was in her business room. She hesitated a little before going upstairs to verify it, making a further draught upon her determination. Of course! She had known that it was coming to a row. She was as sharp as a cartload of monkeys, and had seen that the row was likely to occur just at this very time. That was why she had taken to her business room, when by all usual habits she would have been sitting downstairs or in the garden, during the hour before luncheon.

So thought Mrs. Brent, mounting the oak staircase, and summoning all her resolution. She wouldn't be awed by the stately lady in the stately room. After all, it was only a piece of play-acting. She knew something about play-acting herself. She would be cold and stately too, announce her determination and then go away. She'd show that she wasn't to be put upon. Perhaps it would be easier like that. There would be no leading up to the subject and no discussion after it, as there must have been if she had joined her mother-in-law downstairs, and felt compelled to sit on with her.

But she knew, as she opened the door, that it would not be easier.

"Oh, I wondered where you were. I just wanted to say something to you, if you're not too busy."

The tone did not seem right, somehow, even to herself. Lady Brent turned round from the table at which she was sitting, and took off the tortoise-shell rimmed glasses which she wore for reading and writing. She did not look in the least degree formidable--a well-preserved, well-dressed, middle-aged lady, not really obliged to wear glasses, even for reading and writing, and not wanting them at all for anything else. "Yes, certainly, Charlotte," she said, "I have nearly finished what I came here to do, and you are not interrupting me at all."

Mrs. Brent had an impulse to make up some trivial message and go away, but conquered it. Her voice shook a little as she said, still standing: "I wish to go up to London, for a few days--say a week--as soon as possible."

Again she had not satisfied herself. She had used the prim reserved tone of a maid giving notice--"I wish to leave at the end of my month." It seemed to her that she had only just prevented herself adding, "my lady."

Lady Brent received it much as she might have received notice from a servant, whose temporary dissatisfaction with her place must not be taken too seriously. "Why do you want to do that?" she asked, in a level, even a kindly voice.

It touched some chord in Mrs. Brent. She had, perhaps, prepared herself for a peremptory refusal, and if it had come she would have been ready to combat it, and obstinate to push her determination through. But supposing her request should, after all, be granted! That would put everything right and save a lot of trouble.

All the irritation she had been piling up against Lady Brent would be dissolved. She did not want to quarrel with her, if it could be avoided. She would have to go on living with her, whether she had a short respite now or not. And it had not always been so very disagreeable to live with her.

"Oh, I must, I really must," she said. "I can't stand it any longer. Just a week! I'll go and see my mother, and be as quiet as possible. Harry needn't know I'm going to her, if you don't want him to, though I don't see what difference it would make."

"I think I do," said Lady Brent quietly. "But perhaps you'd better sit down, and talk it over. What is it you can't stand any longer? If there's anything wrong here we ought to be able to put it right. Only I must first know what it is."

Mrs. Brent sat down. She saw that her appeal had been a mistake. She could not now coldly state her intention and support it against opposition, behaving as one stately lady towards another, as she had pictured it to herself, coming up the staircase. And of course Lady Brent did not mean to let her go, if she could help it.

She sat down in a high-backed Carolean chair. "I don't want to go into all that," she said stiffly. "I shall be able to stand it all right when I come back. A little holiday is what I really want, and what I mean to have. It's not much to ask, after nearly eighteen years. Well, I say ask--but I'm not asking. I'm just telling you that I'm going away on Thursday, or perhaps Friday, and I shall come back in a week--or ten days."

It was not quite the address of one stately lady to another, but it seemed to have served its turn. Lady Brent turned back to her writing-table and took up her rimmed spectacles.

"Very well," she said.

Mrs. Brent sat in her high-backed chair, looking at her. She placed her spectacles upon her well-shaped nose, and took up her pen. Then she said, as calmly as before: "If you tell me you are going there is no more to be said. I'll finish what I'm doing now, before luncheon."

"Then you're ready for me to go; you don't mind," said Mrs. Brent.

"It doesn't much matter whether I mind or not, does it? You tell me you are going. You refuse to discuss it with me?"

"Well, I don't want to make trouble. It's no good talking over things. There's nothing much wrong, really. If I go away now for a bit I shall be all right when I come back. I expect, really, I shall be rather glad to get back."

Lady Brent put down her pen and took off her spectacles. "Oh, but if you go away you won't come back," she said, turning towards her again. "Surely you understand that!"

Mrs. Brent felt that she had been entrapped into an opening unfavourable to herself. Now was the time, if she had it in her, to exercise the restraint and reserve shown by Lady Brent. But it was not in her; she became angry at once, and showed her anger.

"Of course I might have known that you were leading me on," she said bitterly. "I dare say it seems very clever to you, and it's what you're always doing. But I'm not going to give in to it any more. I'm going away--only just for a little holiday--and I'm coming back. You can't prevent me. This is my home. I've lived here getting on for eighteen years--me and my child. I dare say you'd like to keep him and get rid of me. But you can't do it."

"If I wanted to do that I could do it," returned Lady Brent; and, as the statement brought no immediate response, she repeated it, in the same level tone but with slightly increased emphasis. "If I wanted to do that I could do it."

"Perhaps you could do it, by law," said Mrs. Brent. "I don't know anything about the law, except what you've told me. Perhaps you could and perhaps you couldn't. But there's one thing you can't do, and that's take away my child's love for me, though I dare say you'd like to do that too. You don't suppose that if I went away and came back here and you had me turned away from the door, you wouldn't hear something about it from him. You don't suppose that, do you? He's pretty near a man now. You're his guardian till he comes of age; I know that you had yourself made so by the law, and I didn't make any objection; you told me it was best for him, and I believed you. But you'd find it wasn't all a question of law if you tried any game of that sort. I don't know what Harry would do, but I do know that whatever he did it wouldn't suit your book."

Lady Brent had listened to this speech without showing the smallest sign of discomposure, but her light blue eyes were hard and cold as she said: "There is a good deal of truth in what you say. Your going away would completely upset everything that has been done during the last eighteen years for Harry's benefit. Both you and I have made sacrifices on his behalf. We agreed to do so when you came here before he was born. I have kept strictly to the bargain. I should not, for my own pleasure, live the retired life that I do here, all the year round, with you as my constant companion. For my own sake I should be immensely relieved to say good-bye to you for a time, if it were possible."

"Yes, that's the sort of nasty thing you say."

"Isn't it exactly what you say to me? Why should you suppose your society is any more gratification to me than mine is to you?"

"I wish to goodness you would say good-bye to me, then, for a time. Why isn't it possible? It is possible. I tell you I'm going, and I'm coming back."

"Do you remember anything at all about the bargain we struck when you first came here, or have you forgotten it entirely, after nearly eighteen years, as you say?"

"Of course I remember it. You didn't mince your words then any more than you do now. You made me feel that I was dirt beneath your feet, but you'd put up with me for the sake of preventing my boy--if it was to be a boy--doing what his father had done, and marrying somebody he loved, if you didn't think she was good enough for him."

"You can put it like that if it pleases you. You consented to everything. You yourself wanted the child brought up with nothing to remind him that on one side his birth wasn't suited to his long ancestry on the other. I warned you what the sacrifice would be. It meant giving up your own people, for one thing, and you gladly consented to do that. It meant your doing your utmost to fill the position that I freely offered you here."

"So I have done my utmost."

"And now, when what we agreed to do together has turned out better than either of us could have hoped for, when we are very nearly at the end of it, and can send Harry out into the world what we have made of him here, you want to break the bargain. And why? Not for any good it can possibly do him, but just because you want to go back to what you were before you came here--for your own petty selfish pleasure."

"It isn't that," she said vehemently. "I say it isn't natural that anybody should cut themselves off from their own flesh and blood. I loved my father and he died without me setting eyes on him. You let me write to mother then. I didn't do it without asking you, and----"

"Didn't we strike the bargain afresh then? Didn't I say I was sorry that it should have been required of you to cut yourself off from your family, but that it had already then proved to be the right course? And didn't you agree with me, though it was harder for you to bear then than at any time?"

The tears came. "Of course it was hard, then," she said. "But you were kind to me. So you were when I first came. If I was giving up something, I was going to get something too. All that I'd been was to be forgotten, though it isn't true that I'd been anything that I ought not to have been. Harry was to grow up knowing me as belonging here. You were to be his legal guardian, but he was to be my child."

"Yes, and I might have struck a much harder bargain with you than that. You would have consented. I might have taken the child and paid you off. That's often done, you know, in cases like yours."

She was sobbing now. "You're cruel," she said. "Yes, you are cruel, even when you're pretending to be nice. You like hurting me. Pay me off! Anybody'd think, to hear you talk, I'd been a loose woman."

"I've never said that, or implied it."

"No, you've never said it. You wouldn't dare. But you've made me feel that's how you look at me. Why didn't you pay me off, then, and get rid of me?"

"Exactly. Why didn't I?"

"Well? I'm asking you."

"I was willing to give you your chance. Whatever I may have thought of you, I didn't want to deprive you of your child, or him of his mother, so long as you were ready to make yourself the kind of mother he ought to have had. You said you'd do it. You were grateful to me. You consented to every stipulation I laid down. The chief of them all was that you should break absolutely with your past until he came of age. Then you could do what you liked; it would be between you and him. Now you want to break that stipulation. I say that if you break it on one side you break it on the other; I also say that it would be a very wicked thing to break it, now at this time."

"It wouldn't be if you'd just let me go away for a bit and come back."

"That I won't do. Why do you want to go away? It isn't just to see your mother. I know that well enough. You want the life of London, the life you led there before Harry was born--theatres, and suppers and gaiety, with the sort of people that you ought to be ashamed of mixing yourself up with, when you think about Harry, and what he is. You've done without it for nearly eighteen years. For goodness' sake do without it for a little time longer. Don't knock down what we've been building up for all these years, just for a selfish whim. Think of Harry, not of yourself."

"I do think of him. I love him better than anything in the world. I'd go barefoot if it was to do something for him."

"You're not asked to go barefoot. All you're asked to do is to go on living the quiet but very comfortable life that you've lived here for years past, and make the best of it. It's what I'm doing myself."

She dried her eyes and rose from her chair. "I see I'm not going to get any kindness from you," she said. "But I'll think about it. Perhaps I shan't go. I've stood it so long that perhaps I can stand it a bit longer. If I was _sure_ it was for Harry's good I'd never move out of the place till I was carried out. I'll think about it and let you know."

"You needn't let me know anything," said Lady Brent. "If you go you go, and if you stay you stay."

With that Mrs. Brent left her. She did not immediately return to whatever she had been doing, but sat looking out through the open casement across the open spaces of the park to the woods beyond. Her face was still hard and still watchful. By and by she looked at her watch, and almost immediately a knock came at the door. She answered as if she had been expecting it, and Wilbraham came into the room.

There was a sullen discontented expression on his face, which was unusual with him. He had kind lazy eyes and a whimsical twist on his mobile lips; but all that was obliterated.