The Hall and the Grange - Archibald Marshall

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bound between boards; the very virtue of their titles, if titles they had, seemed to be denied them. Nor did the heroines please her any better. She could never imagine herself one of them with any pleasure. If stately, they were never stately enough; if blushing and timid, they were merely passed by as of no account. Even Ouida, for whom she made an exception, having read some of her novels in early life, under a strong sense of immodesty, concerned herself with unessentials. Miss Baldwin wanted no pages of description, however poetic. She could get that in Wordsworth, duly annotated, so that there should be no mistake as to locality. If it was question of a garden in which a love scene was to be enacted, she only wanted to imagine it for herself—the most beautiful garden that ever was, not without indications of wealth on the part of its owners; or if a cottage garden, the mere mention of roses and honeysuckle would suffice. It was the people who mattered and what happened to them, and with them she smiled and wept, and felt, to the depths of her being.

      So perhaps Miss Baldwin was happy after all, if not in the circumstances of her daily life, which she went through conscientiously and efficiently, in that paradise the gates of which were always open to her, where men were as gods, and women were worshipped by them, and none of them ever behaved in the way that Miss Baldwin was always impressing upon her pupils was the only possible way to behave.

       Table of Contents

       Table of Contents

      Such was the family party that sat round the breakfast table at Hayslope Hall on that summer morning. Colonel Eldridge was the only member of it upon whom a weight seemed to lie, and his disturbance of mind was guessed at by nobody but his wife, who threw occasional exploratory and sympathetic glances at him, but made no particular effort to lighten his mood, unless by being more than usually responsive to the chatter of the girls. Whatever it was that was troubling him, she would hear of it after breakfast, when she always went to his room with him before setting herself to the occupations that would keep them apart for the rest of the morning.

      She was a trifle apprehensive as to whether she herself might not have given him cause for displeasure. He had refused to dine at Pershore Castle two nights before, but she and Pamela had gone, and he had not objected to that. What he might possibly object to, however, was the invitation she had given to young Lord Horsham to lunch at Hayslope that very day. She had not told him yet that she had done so, for her reason for asking the young man had been quite clearly defined in her own mind, and she did not want him to guess at it. Perhaps Pamela had told him that Horsham was coming, he had guessed why, and was displeased about it.

      But no! She knew before breakfast was over that that was not the cause of his mood.

      Pamela said: "Jim is coming to lunch and I suppose he will want to play tennis afterwards. We'd better mow the lawn, Judy, and mark out the court again."

      Colonel Eldridge frowned, and Mrs. Eldridge's spirit drooped, but rose again when he said: "It isn't your business to mow lawns. That's one of the things that Perkins ought to see to."

      Poor dear man, he hated the idea of his daughters doing work that had always been done as a matter of course by servants. He was sore about all the things that they ought to have had and he could no longer give them, even when they were things that made no difference to them whatever.

      "Oh, we like doing it, Daddy," said Pamela. "It makes us feel that we've earned our games on it. Don't deprive us of the rewards of virtue."

      He left the subject. "You'd better ask Fred Comfrey to lunch, if Horsham is coming," he said. "You'll want a four, and I shan't be able to play this afternoon."

      So it was settled, to Mrs. Eldridge's relief. It was the first time that Horsham had been asked to Hayslope Hall since the disturbance in which he had been concerned, and her husband had made no comment on it. It was not that that was troubling him.

      Nevertheless, she made first mention of it when they went into his room together. "I'm glad you don't mind Jim coming here," she said. "I forgot to tell you that I'd asked him."

      "Mind him! Oh, no, I don't mind him. It wasn't he who behaved in any way that I could be annoyed over. And as for the Crowboroughs, I shan't keep it up against them any longer. I couldn't bring myself to go over there on Monday, but I'm glad you and Pamela went. We must get them over here some time. Cynthia, I'm extremely annoyed at something I've seen this morning."

      "Yes, dear? What is it?"

      She sat herself down by the window, while he stood by his writing table, or moved between it and the fireplace, while he unburdened himself.

      "William talked to me on Sunday about making an addition to his garden—a big addition, taking in a grazing meadow of four acres; Barton's Close, it's called—at the bottom of the wood."

      "Yes, dear, I know it, and William and Eleanor told me about it. You don't object, do you?"

      "Object! It means cutting up pasture, and he has no right to do that without my permission; no right whatever. It isn't a thing that ought to be done in these days. Besides, his garden is out and away too big as it is. This addition would make it double the size of our garden. It's quite unreasonable. The house isn't his. I let it to him as a country cottage, and never thought of it being turned into a large country house wanting a great deal of money to keep it up. I talked to him about all that on Sunday, and thought he understood. Certainly I didn't consent to cutting up Barton's Close, and he must have known I didn't. But I happened to go down there this morning, and they are already at work—his own gardeners and half a dozen labourers besides. Really, it's too bad. From what Coombe told me, it was all settled last week—design and everything, and the labour arranged for. So it was a mere pretence asking for my permission at all. I didn't give it; yet he goes straight away and puts the work in hand."

      "Did you say definitely that you wouldn't consent?" Mrs. Eldridge asked. She was rather taken aback. She knew all about those garden plans, and had even made suggestions of her own about them. William had mentioned once the necessity of asking a landlord's permission to cut up pasture, but it had been taken for granted that there would be no difficulty about that. She was not quite sure that she had not said herself that there would be no difficulty about that. Certainly it had never crossed her mind that there would be.

      "I objected," said her husband decisively. "Possibly I didn't say in so many words: 'No, you can't do it.' I shouldn't say that to William. I pointed out to him plainly why it was inadvisable, and he seemed to understand."

      "Is it very important, Edmund? There's plenty of pasture about there, isn't there?"

      "I don't know that there's more than can be made use of. But that wasn't the chief point. It's the enlarging and enlarging at the Grange that has become objectionable. It has gone beyond all reasonable grounds already. All very well, as long as William is there, and treats it as a toy on which to spend his money. But if anything happens, it will be a white elephant—a big house with no land to it, which nobody else is likely to want, and no longer any good as a second house on the place, which it has always been before. You and the girls couldn't live there if anything happened to me."

      "I never thought of that," she said slowly. "I don't want to think of it either. Of course William has become very lavish; but he is so rich now that I suppose it doesn't matter. And it is different, isn't it, dear, now that poor Hugo is dead?"

      "Oh, that's what he kept driving in on me. He'll come after me here. I'm not likely to forget it. Still, the place is mine, as long as I'm alive, and I'm not going to hand over the reins to William. He's no right to act in that way, as if I counted for nothing."

      "No," she said; "it's unfortunate. What are you going to do? I suppose you didn't tell Coombe to stop the work?"

      "No; I shouldn't put

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