Part 2

"Maria shown you round?" said Josiah, accepting a cup of tea from the graceful hands of his sister-in-law.

The depressed lady in puce silk sighed a limp yes.

"Eggshell china tea service," Gerty fixed a purposeful eye upon Josiah's cup.

"Out of old Nickerson's sale," Josiah performed an audible act of deglutition. "Four pun ten the set. Slop basin's cracked though."

"I see it is, but you have a bargain, Josiah. You always seem to have a bargain, no matter what you buy."

Josiah purred under the subtle flattery.

"Seen that chayney vawse?" He pointed across the room to a pedestal upon which was a blue china bowl.

"Looks like genuine Ming," Gertrude opened a pair of long-handled tortoiseshell glasses. There was less than a score of ladies in the whole of Blackhampton who sported glasses of that ultra-fashionable kind, but Miss Preston was one of them.

"That young feller Parish said it was genuine and he ought to know."

"Charming," Gerty sighed effectively; then her eyes went slowly round the room. "This room is perfect. And such a view. You stand so high that you can look right over the city without knowing that it's there. And there's the Sharrow beyond. Isn't that Corfield Weir on the right?"

Rather proudly Josiah said that it was Corfield Weir.

"And that great bank of trees going up into the sky must be Dibley Chase."

"Dibley right enough," vouched Josiah. "Have you had a look from the tower?"

"Yes, I have. Wonderful. Maria says on a clear day you can see Cliveden Castle."

"Aye. And a sight farther than that. You can see three counties up there. To my mind, Gert, this house stands on the plumb bit of The Rise."

Gertrude fully agreed.

"So it ought if it comes to that. I had to pay seven and sixpence a yard for the land, before I could put a brick on it."

Gertrude was impressed.

"What do you think o' that oak paneling in the dining-room?"

She thought it was charming.

"Has Maria shown you the greenus--I should say conservatory--an' the rockery--an' the motor garidge? We haven't got the motor yet, but it's coming next week."

Gertrude had seen these things. It only remained for her to enter upon a diplomatic rapture at the recital of their merits.

"No strawberries, thank you," Josiah's voice was rather sharp as the depressed lady tactlessly offered these delicacies at a moment when her lord was fully engaged in describing the unparalleled difficulties he had had to surmount in order to get the water fountain beyond the tennis lawn to work properly.

"Fact o' the matter is, our Water Board wants wackenin' up."

"Well, you are the man to do that, Josiah. You are an alderman now."

"I am." The slight note of inflation was unconscious. "And old Scrimshire an' that pettifoggin' crew are goin' to have a word in season from Alderman Munt."

"Mustn't get yourself disliked though."

Josiah smiled sourly. "Gel," he said, "a man worth his salt is never afraid o' being unpopular. Right is right an' wrong is no man's right. Our Water Board's got to be run on new lines. It's a disgrace to the city."

Miss Preston was far too wise to offer an opinion upon that matter. She knew, none better, the limits imposed by affairs upon the sex to which she belonged. But she was very shrewd and perceptive and underneath the subtle flatteries she dealt out habitually to this brother-in-law of hers was a genuine respect for great abilities and his terrific force of character.

Among all the outstanding figures in Blackhampton his was perhaps the least attractive. His name, in polite circles, was almost a byword, for he never studied the feelings of anybody; he deferred only to his own will and invariably took the shortest way to enforce it. There was generally a covert laugh or a covert sneer at the mention of his name and the house he had recently built on The Rise had set a seal upon his unpopularity. Nevertheless, the people who knew him best respected him most. His sister-in-law knew him very well indeed.

Maria poured out a second cup of tea rather nervously for Josiah to whom Miss Preston handed it archly.

"No cake, thanks. I dussent." He tapped his chest significantly; then he cast a complacent glance through the wide-flung drawing-room windows to the fair pleasaunce beyond. "So you think, Gert, take it altogether, this is a cut above Waterloo Villa, eh?"

Gertrude's only answer to such a question was a discreet laugh.

"Waterloo Villa was _so_ comfortable," sighed the depressed lady in puce silk.

"But there's no comparison, Maria, really no comparison." It was wonderful how the caressing touch of the woman of the world dispersed the cloud upon Josiah's brow almost before it had time to gather.

"Of course there isn't, Gerty. Any one with a grain o' sense knows that. Why, only this morning as I went down in the tram with Lawyer Mossop, he said, 'Mr. Munt, this new house of yours is quite the pick of the basket.'"

"It is, Josiah." The discreet voice rose to enthusiasm. "And no one knows that better than Maria."

The lady in puce silk gave a little sigh and a little sniff. "Waterloo Villa was quite good enough for _me_," she murmured tactlessly.

V

There was silence for a moment and then said Josiah: "Talking of Lawyer Mossop--that reminds me. I'm going round to see him. I wonder what time he gets back from his office." He looked at his watch. "Quarter past five. Bit too soon, I suppose."

Maria ventured to ask what he wanted Lawyer Mossop for.

Josiah did not answer the question immediately. When he did answer it his voice had such a depth of emotion that both ladies felt as if a knife had been plunged suddenly into their flesh.

"I'm goin' to take our Sally out of my will." There was something almost terrible in the sternness and finality of the words.

The depressed lady in puce silk gave a gasp. A moment afterwards large tears began to drip freely from her eyes.

Aunt Gerty sat very upright on a satinwood chair, her hands folded in front of her, and two prominent teeth showing beyond a line of extremely firm lips. She didn't speak.

"Nice thing"--each word was slowly distilled from a feeling of outrage that was almost unbearable--"to be made the talk and the mark of the whole city. And after what I've done for that gel! School--college--France--Germany--your advice, you know, Gerty----"

Aunt Gerty didn't speak.

"And then she comes home and gets herself six weeks' hard labor. Hard labor, mark you!"

Both ladies shivered audibly.

"Nice thing for a man who has always kept himself up, to have his daughter pitchin' brick ends through the windows of the Houses o' Parliament, to say nothin' of assaulting the police. Gerty, that comes of higher education."

Still Aunt Gerty didn't speak.

"Fact is, women ain't ripe for higher education. It goes to their heads. But I'll let her see. In a few minutes I'll be off round to Lawyer Mossop."

"But--Josiah!" ventured a quavering voice.

"Not a word, Mother. My mind's made up. That gel has fairly made the name o' Munt stink in the nostrils of the nation. Not ten minutes ago that rotten little dog Bill Hollis flung it in my teeth as I came in at the front gate. The little wastrel happened to be passing and he called after me, 'Sally out of Quod yet?' One o' these days I'll quod him--the little skunk--or Josiah Munt J.P. is not my name."

Maria continued to weep copiously but in silence. She dare not make her grief vocal with the stern eye of her husband upon her. The tragedy of her eldest girl's defiance, now sixteen years old, was still green in her memory. Josiah had given Amelia plainly to understand that if she married William Hollis he would never speak to her again and he had kept his word. Maria had not got over it even yet; and now their youngest girl, Sally, on whose upbringing a fabulous sum had been lavished, had disgraced them in the sight of everybody.

Josiah was meting out justice no doubt, but mothers are apt to be irrational where their offspring are concerned; and had Maria been able to muster the courage she would have broken a lance with him, even now, in this matter of the youngest girl. But she was afraid of him. And she knew he was in the right. Sally's name had appeared in all the papers. That morning, by a cruel stroke, they had come out with her portrait--Miss Sarah Ann Munt, youngest daughter of Alderman Munt J.P. of Blackhampton, sentenced to six weeks hard labor. Yes, it was cruel! It would take her father a long time to get over it. And for Maria herself, it was like the loss in infancy of the young Josiah; it was a thing she would always remember but never quite be able to grasp.

The silence grew intolerable. At last it was broken by Gertrude Preston.

"You'll be having splendid roses, Josiah--next year." Those mincing tones, quite cool and untroubled, somehow did wonders. Josiah had always been a noted rose grower and as his sister-in-law pointed elegantly to the rows of young bushes beyond the drawing-room windows something in him began to respond. After all that was his great asset as a human entity: the power to react strongly and readily to the many things in which he was interested.

"Aye," he said, almost gratefully. "Next year they'll be a sight. I've had a double course o' manure put down."

"I hope there'll be some of my favorite Gloire de Dijons," said Gerty with fervor.

"You bet there will be. There's a dozen bushes over yond. By the way, Gert, you're comin' to the show to-morrow week."

Miss Preston, for all her enthusiasm for roses, was not sure that she could get to the show. But Josiah informed her that she would _have_ to come. And he enforced his command by taking a leather case from his breast pocket and producing a small blue card on which was printed:

BLACKHAMPTON AND DISTRICT ROSE GROWERS' ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT, ALDERMAN JOSIAH MUNT J.P.

The twenty-seventh annual Show will be held in the Jubilee Park on Tuesday, August the Fourth. Prizes will be presented at six o'clock to successful competitors by Mrs. Alderman Munt. The Blackhampton Prize Brass Band will be in attendance. Dancing in the evening, weather permitting.

Admission one shilling.

"That'll get you in, Gert." The card was placed in her hand. "Come and stand by Maria and keep her up to it."

Had Maria dared she would have groaned dismally. As it was she had to be content with a slight gesture of dismay.

"You see it'll be a bit o' practice for her. In 1916--the year after next--she'll be the Mayoress."

The lady in puce silk shuddered audibly.

VI

In the process of time the clock on the drawing-room chimneypiece chimed six and Josiah "stepped round" to Lawyer Mossop's.

That celebrity lived at The Gables, the next house but one along The Rise. Outwardly a more modest dwelling than Strathfieldsaye, it was less modern in style, more reticent, more compact. As Josiah walked up the drive he noted with approval its well kept appearance and its fine display of rhododendrons, phlox, delphiniums, purple irises and many other things that spoke to him. He was a genuine lover of flowers.

Mr. Munt's pressure of the electric button was answered by a manservant in a starched shirt and a neat black cutaway. The visitor noted him carefully as he noted everything. "I wonder what he pays a month for that jockey!" was the form the memorandum took on the tablets of his mind.

"Mr. Mossop in?"

"If you'll come this way I'll inquire, sir."

Josiah was led across a square-tiled hall, covered in the center by a Persian rug, into a room delightfully cool, with a large window in a western angle opening on to a pergola ablaze with roses, along which the westering sun streamed amazingly.

"What name, sir?"

"Hey?" Josiah frowned. As if there was a man, woman or child in Blackhampton who didn't know him! Still, it was good style. "Munt--Mr. Munt."

"Thank you, sir!" The manservant bowed and withdrew.

Yes, it was good style. And this cool, clean but rather somber room had the same elusive quality. Three of its four walls were covered with neat rows of books, for the most part in expensive bindings. Style again. All the same the visitor looked a little doubtfully upon those shining shelves. Books were not in his line, and although he did not go quite to the length of despising them he was well content that they shouldn't be. Books stood for education, and in the purview of Mr. Josiah Munt, "if they didn't watch it education was going to be the ruin of the country."

Still to that room, plainly but richly furnished, those rows of shining leather lent a tone, a value. A shrewd eye ran them up and down. Meredith--Swinburne--Tennyson--Browning--Dickens--Thackeray--all flams, of course, but harmless, if not carried too far. Personally he preferred a good billiard room, but no one in Blackhampton disputed that Lawyer Mossop was the absolute head of his profession; he could be trusted therefore to know what he was doing. There was one of these books open on a very good table--forty guineas worth of anybody's money--printed in a foreign language, French probably, of which he couldn't read a word. Il Purgatorio, Dante. Fine bit of printing. Wonderful paper! Yes, wonderful! He handled it appraisingly. And then he realized that Lawyer Mossop was in the room and smiling at him in that polite way, that was half soft sawder, half good feeling. The carpet was so thick that he had not heard him come in.

"Good evening, Mr. Munt." The greeting was very friendly and pleasant. "Sit down, won't you?"

"No, I'll stand--and grow better." Mr. Munt had a stock of stereotyped pleasantries which he kept for social use. They seemed to make for ease and geniality.

The two men stood looking at each other, the solicitor all rounded corners and quiet ease, the client stiff, angular, assertive, perhaps a shade embarrassed.

"Anything I can do for you, Mr. Munt?"

The answer was slow in coming. It was embodied in a harsh growl. "Mossop, I want you to take that gel of mine, Sally, out of my will."

The lawyer said nothing, but pursed his lips a little, a way he had when setting the mind to work, but that was the only expression of visible feeling in the heavily lined face.

"Excuse my troubling you to-night, Mossop. But I felt I couldn't wait. Give me an appointment for the morning and I'll look in at the office. Nice goings on! And to think what her education cost me!"

The lawyer made a silent gesture, spreading his hands like a stage Frenchman, half dismay, half tacit protest.

"Better have a new document, eh?" The outraged parent had been already dismissed; the highly competent man of affairs was now in control. "My second girl, Ethel, Mrs. Doctor Cockburn, can have it all now, except"--Josiah hesitated an instant--"except five thousand pounds I shall leave to Gertrude Preston."

Lawyer Mossop was still silent. But the mobile lips were working curiously. "Not for me to advise," he said at last, very slowly, with much hesitation, "but if I might----"

Josiah cut him short with a stern lift of the hand.

"I know what you're going to say, but if she was your gel what'd you do, eh?"

Lawyer Mossop rubbed his cheek perplexedly. "At bottom I might be rather proud of her."

"You--might--be--rather--proud--of--her!" It was the tone of Alderman Munt J.P. to a particularly unsatisfactory witness at a morning session at the City Hall. An obvious lie, yet a white one because it was used for a moral purpose. Mossop had no ax to grind; he merely wanted to soften things a bit for a client and neighbor. "You can't tell _me_, Mossop, you really think _that_."

The solicitor gazed steadily past the purple face of his client through the open window to the riot of color beyond. "Why not?" he said. "Think of the pluck required to do a thing like that."

Josiah shook his head angrily. "It's the devil that's in her." He spoke with absolute conviction. "And it's always been there. When she was that high"--he made an indication with his hand--"I've fair lammoxed her, but I could never turn her an inch. If she wanted to do a thing she'd do it--and if she didn't nothing would make her."

"A lady of strong character."

"Cussedness, my friend, cussedness. The devil. And it's brought her to this."

The lawyer, however, shook his head gently. "Well, Mr. Munt, as I say, it is not for me to advise, but if she was a daughter of mine----"

"You'd be proud of her." The sneer was rather ugly.

"In a way--yes--perhaps ... I don't say positively ... because one quite sees.... On the other hand, I might ... I don't say I should ... I _might_ be just as angry as you are."

The thundercloud began to lift a little. "Come now, that's sense. Of course, Mossop, you'd be as mad as anybody--it's human nature. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry pointin' the finger of scorn"--_Sally out of Quod yet_ was still searing him like a flame--"you'd be so mad, Mossop, that you'd want to forget that she belonged to you."

"It might be so." Mr. Mossop's far-looking eyes were still fixed on the pergola. "At the same time, before I took any definite step, I think I should give myself a clear fortnight in which to think it over."

Josiah laughed harshly. "No, Mossop--not if you were as mad as I am."

It was so true that the solicitor was not able to reply.

"When I think on her"--the great veins began to swell in the head and neck of the lord of Strathfieldsaye--"I feel as if I'd like to kill her. Did you see that picture in the _Morning Mirror_? And that paragraph in the _Mail_? It's horrible, Mossop, horrible. And first and last her education's cost me every penny of three thousand pound."

Mr. Mossop nodded appreciatively; then, sympathetically, he lifted the lid of a silver box on a charming walnut-wood stand and asked his visitor to have a cigar.

"No, I never smoke before my dinner," said Josiah sternly. "She hasn't been home a month from Germany." The veins in his forehead grew even more distended.

"Where--in Germany?"

"Eight months at Dresden. Pity she didn't stop there. Fact o' the matter is she's over-educated."

The lawyer looked a little dubious.

"Oh, yes, Mossop. Not having a boy, I don't mind tellin' you I've been a bit too ambitious for that gel. And over-education is what this country is suffering from at the present time. It's the national disease. And women take it worse than men. School--college--Paris--and Germany on the top of 'em. I must have been mad. However ... there it is! ... let me know when the document's ready and I'll look in at the office and sign it."

The lawyer would have liked to continue his protest but the face of his client forbade. He crossed to his writing table, took up a pencil and a sheet of notepaper and said, "Miss Sarah's portion to Mrs. Cockburn except----"

"Five thousand pounds to Gertrude Preston."

The lawyer made a brief note. "Right," he said gravely. "I hope a codicil will be sufficient; we'll avoid a new instrument, if we can. You shall know when it's ready."

Josiah gave a curt nod.

"Going to be war in Europe, do you think?" said the solicitor in a lighter, more conversational tone. It was merely to relieve the tension; somehow the atmosphere of the room was heavy and electric.

"Don't know," said Josiah. "But I'll not be surprised if there is--and a big one."

Mr. Mossop showed a courteous surprise. This question of a coming big war was a perennial subject for discussion in social and business circles. It had been for years and it had now come to rank in his mind as purely academic. He could not bring himself to believe in "the big burst up" that to some astute minds had long seemed inevitable.

"Any particular reason for thinking so just now?" To the lawyer it was hardly a live issue; somehow it was against all his habits of thought; but it was an act of charity at this moment to direct the mind of his client.

"Stands to reason," Josiah spoke with his usual decision. "Germany's got thousands of millions locked up in her army. She'll soon be looking for some return in the way of dividends."

"But one might say the same of us and our navy."

"That's our insurance."

"That's how they speak of their army, don't they?--with Russia one side of them, France the other."

"I daresay, but"--there was a pause which, brief as it was, seemed to confer upon Mr. Munt an air of profound wisdom--"mark my words, Mossop, they're not piling up all these armaments for nothing. It's not their way."

"But they are so prosperous," said the lawyer. "They are hardly likely to risk the loss of their foreign markets."

"Nothing venture, nothing win. And they do say the German workingman is waking up and that he is asking for a share in the government."

"One hears all sorts of rumors, but in these matters one likes to be an optimist."

"I daresay," Josiah looked very dour. "But I'll tell you this. I'm main glad I got out of all my Continental investments a year last March."

The solicitor had to own that that was a matter in which his client had shown uncommon foresight. The present state of the market was a remarkable vindication of his sagacity.

There was another little pause in which the solicitor, himself an able man of business, could not help reflecting upon the native shrewdness of this client so keen, so hardheaded, so self-willed. And then it was broken by Mr. Munt taking a step towards the door and saying, "When are you and the wife and daughter coming to see us, Mossop? Come to a meal one evening, won't you?"

The invitation was point blank; but behind the lawyer's genial courtesy was the trained fencer, the ready-witted man of the world. "Most kind of you," he said heartily. "Only too delighted, but, unfortunately, my womenfolk are going up to Scotland to-morrow"--he gave private thanks to Allah that it was so!--"and I follow on Saturday, so perhaps if we may leave it till our return"--the solicitor raised his frank and ready smile to the stern eyes.

"Quite so, Mossop!" The client frowned a little. "Leave it open. But I'd like you to see the house. And Mrs. M. would like to know your wife and daughter."

"They'll like to know her, I'm sure." The air of sincerity was balm. "But they've been so busy gadding about just lately"--the laugh was charming--"that they've had to neglect their social duties."

Josiah was far too elemental to feel slighted, even if the lawyer had not been so disarming. "But you people here on The Rise have the name of being a stuck-up lot, especially some of you old standards. And I'm bound to say, Mossop, my experience is that you seem to live up to it."

Lawyer Mossop laughed his soft rich note as he followed Mr. Munt across the hall. He opened the front door for his client, and then, hatless as he was, accompanied the visitor down the short drive as far as the gate.

"Nice things here, Mossop," Josiah pointed to the flower beds on either side. "That a Charlotte Fanning?" A finger indicated a glorious white rose whose dazzling purity of color stood out beyond all the rest.

Mr. Mossop said it was a Charlotte Fanning.

"Not sure you are going to beat mine, though."

Mr. Mossop said modestly that he did not expect to do that. Mr. Munt had long been famous for his roses; and by comparison the lawyer declared he was but a novice. The client was flattered considerably by the compliment.

At the gate, the proprietor of the Duke of Wellington pointed to the distant gables of Strathfieldsaye, and said, "Well, come round when you get back. The garden won't be much of a show for twelve months yet, but the house is first class. I designed it myself."

With the winning charm which even Josiah, who felt that he paid for it on the High Court scale could not resist, Mr. Mossop promised that he would come round when he got back.

"An' don't forget the wife and daughter."