Elizabeth's Campaign

er tweed skirt and country boots showed traces of mud much deeper than anything on the high road; her dress was covered with bits of bramble, dead leaves, and th

't be allowed. No one ought to be free to ruin his land as he pleases! It concerns the State. "Manage your land dec

ed there for forty years, with a decrepit wife, both of them horribly neglected and dirty, and making latterly no attempt to work the farm, a new tenant had appeared who would have taken the place, if the Squire would have rebuilt the house and steadings, and a

County Committee, and a peremptory order had

uch a muddle. As a child and growing girl she had spent long summers in the country with a Dorsetshire uncle who farmed his own land, and there had sprung up in her an instinctive sympathy with the ric

amily's affairs. She had also been the paid secretary of an important learned society in her twenties not long after she left college, and knew well that she had been a conspicuous success. She had a great love, indeed, for any sort of organizing, large and small, for putting things st

f running the Squire's estate! Wh

there lay the precious document-unsigned and unwitnessed-for any one to see. He made no comment, nor of course did

incompetent men, Gregson at their head, who were being turned out. With regard to ploughing up the park, all his attempts so far to put legal difficulties in the way of the County Committee

le who had never heard of Pausanias. But she was alarmed lest he should 'try it on' a little too far, in these days when the needs of war and the revolutionary current

be herself. How absurd! She, who had just been six weeks on the scene! But neither of the married daughters had the smallest influence

morning was fine and the Squire was away, she had dragged a small table out into the garden, in front of the library, and set to work there on a part of the new catalogue of the collections, which she and Mr. Levasseur were making. She did not, however, like Mr. Leva

dge of ancient growth, which ran out at right angles to the library, and made one side of a quadrangular

t them. For Mrs. Gaddesden's type she had an instinctive contempt, the contempt of the clever woman of small means who has had to earn her own living, and to watch in silence the poses and pretences of rich women playing at p

her side of this impenetrable hedge, made her raise her

. Gaddesde

get this this morning. My dear Margaret,' with great emphasis, 'there's no question about it! If she chooses, she'll be mistress here before long. She's steadily getting father into her hands. She was never engaged, was she, to look after accounts and farms? and yet here she is, taking everything on. He'll gr

ice-a deep husky

o be married against her will,

r thirty wants a home-and a husband. She'd get that here anyway,

ned transfixed. Then with a contemptuous shake of th

herself, with perfect sang-froid. 'If I thought it worth while to marry this elderly lunatic-he's an interesting lunatic, though!-I suppose I could do it. But it isn't worth while-not the le

ning to fascinate her, both by their difficulty and their scale-she found her thoughts oddly interfered with, first by recolle

spirits, and before going up to town had given her in twenty minutes, à propos of some difficulty in her work, one of the

praise, distressed by his censure. Practically and morally, patriotically, above all, she despised him, thought him 'a worm and

r right. A pony-cart-a girl driving it-a man in khaki beside her; wi

d that he, Desmond, was 'jolly well going to see to it that neither old Aubrey nor Beryl were bullied out of their lives by father,' if he could help it. So no doubt the second girl-figure was that of Be

uckish thought crossed her mind, sending a flash of slightly cynical laughter through her quiet eyes. If Mrs. Gaddesden's terrors-for she supposed they were terrors-were suddenl

s playing about her firm mouth and chin. Then, as the sound

aid the Captain in Pamela's ear. She had brought him in her pony-carriage so far, as he was no

s, and examined the fi

' said Pamela, pointing to some red roofs amon

ad been proxime for the Ireland, and a Ballio

n his voice, as he introduced his fiancée to Elizabeth. The two shook hands,

to the eastward spread an undulating chalk plain, its pale grey or purplish soil showing in the arable fields where the stubbles were just in process of ploughing, its monotony broken by a vast wood of oak and

es where the fallen or broken trunks of the great beech trees, as they had crashed down-hill upon and against each other, had assumed all sorts of grotesque and phantasmal attitudes, as in a trampled mêlée of giants; there were other parts where slender plumed trees, rising branchless to a great height abo

nto a sunny bed of dry leaves, conveniently placed in front of Elizabeth

eth as

are any good?-that after the war the

ase the Labour Party

ssons like the rest of us. But I do want to know whether Miss Bremerton thinks Oxford was any use-before the war-and is going to be any use after the w

d what he meant by 'the old Oxford,' and an amusing dialogue sprang up between them as to their respective recollections of the great University-the dons, the lectures, th

erving her, 'get a prize once that somebody had giv

abeth, 'how did

I believe it was you!-whose translation of Browning's "Lost Leader" into Greek iambics was better than mine. They set it in the Ireland. You admit it? Capital

th, Elizabeth at on

in made a

n ages, when one great Latin scholar gave, as he thought, the neatest possible translation of "The path of glory leads but to the grave," another grea

of this Georgian generation, and when th

se, may I

fair!' said the Captain, chewing a p

t out-wit

h every word of it, turned it inside out in fact, while the Cap

t,' he said, when she came to an end. 'Several firs

g into camp that evening. In a few months he would be a full-blown gunner at the front. Beryl, watching Aubrey's thin face and nervou

s idiot she, Pamela, must seem in comparison! The memory of her talk with him made her cheeks hot. So few chances of seeing him!-and when they came, she threw them away. She felt for the moment as though she hated Elizabeth. Why had her father saddled her upon them? Life was difficult enough before. Passionately she began to think of h

addressing Arthur Chicksands, who seemed to be

he worst of any-the test of us all-especially of you civilians at home

, and because of her father's behaviour she would probably not be able to see him in the interval. Perhaps she might never see him again. Perhaps this was the last time. And he would go away witho

rey Mannering's, as he sat beside her on the grass. The man's hand enfolded the girl's-he turned round to smile at h

h a light, decided movement, and all the others fell into line. Arthur and Beryl still accompanied the Mannering contingent a short distance, the Capt

stiffly apart. The C

me sometimes! I shall be awfu

felt the colour

to say about them,

But write about anything. It's awfull

d hurriedly, 'If you like,' hating herself for the coolness in her voice, and shook hands, only to hear him say, as he turned final

Elizabeth. Towards the west the beautiful day was dying, and the light streamed on the girl's lithe young figure and caught her golden-brown hair. Clouds of gnats rose in the mild air; and a light seemed to come back from the bronzed and purple hedgerows, making a gorgeous atmosphere, in which the quiet hill-top and th

late; he might want her for a hundred things. His last evening! Her heart smote her. They had reached the park gate

y notice. Pamela and Forest were in attendance on the young warrior, who was himself in the wildest spirits, shouting and whistling up and downstairs, singing the newest and most

stew to death in it. Oh, I know-I can give it to my batman. The fellows tell me you can always get rid of things to your batman. It's like sending your wedding-pres

y,' said Pamela confidently; 'and I say-

or of the drawing-room, heard him handsomely thanking his elder sisters. He ran into her as he emerged wi

p to London anyway.' And having shovelled them all off on to her,

emerton, I want

f the same mind as everybody outside and inside Mannering-tha

ind of

em!-Well, I'd like a small Horace, if you can find one. "My tutor" was an awfully good hand at Horace. He really d

she understood that he had been a half in the Sixth at Eton, before his cadet training began. She found him two small poc

to find anything

e said absently, and presently hi

nyway?' He handed her the book. 'But I forget some of the

slated, feelin

partans at

Hi

, of course,'

mainland, and walked upon the deep-him did Spartan valour hold back

en he said, hesitating a little as he turned down the leaf, and put the book in his pocket, 'Five of the fellows who were

nely caught in the light of Elizabeth's

ime! I thought you'd forgotten

coming a perfect nuisance! I gave the station-ma

civilians jolly well have to

quire threw himself down in an arm-chair. Desmond perched on the corner

e you got?' asked

re to have some supper before I go

ready? Got m

g for an age. Why, I shall be

. Then his face gr

want awfully to say s

ay it, I suppose

king old and tired, his thick white ha

houlders with the air of o

I do wish you'd give up

sat up im

iness, Desmond. It c

It'll be in all the papers-the fellows will gas about it at

agonies of shame because his father was not, in his eyes, properly 'got-up' for the occasion-how h

t last long. I've got my part to play, and you

e boy passionately

ke down. He descen

nly if you think I shan't mind if you get yourself put in q

him, and could not do enough for him. He endured it, on the whole, patiently dashing out at the very end to say good-bye to an old gardener, once a keeper, with

he dry detachment that was natural to him in speaking of himself, told the story of the preceding twenty-four hours to

sleep in the drawing-room; Mrs. Strang wrote urgent letters to registry offices, who now seldom answered her; the Squire was in the library, and Elizabeth retreated early to her own room. S

nd threw up her window. There was a moon nearly at the full outsid

slowly up and down an avenue of pollarded limes which divided the rose-garden from th

in her-of her own position in this household where she seemed to have become already mistress and indispensable; of Desmond's last words with her; of the

ed her-had not made enough of her perhaps? But girls must learn now to accept simpler and blunter manners from their men friends. She guessed that Pamela was in that self-conscious, exalté mood of first youth which she remembered so well in herself-fretting too, no doubt, poor child! over the parting from Desmon

urking in it. And that being so, she promptly, and without arrière pensée of any sort, allowed herself the pleasant recollection of half an hour's conversati

scapade! How to stop it?-

r ear. What was the meaning of this long nocturnal pacing? Had the Squire, after all, a heart, or some fragment of one? Wa