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Chapter Twenty One

A few days after the dance at the Hall Doctor Fairbridge motored out from Rushleigh to pay a call upon Mrs Chadwick. Nominally the call was upon Mrs Chadwick; the object of his visit, however, was to see her niece. It was an object shared by so many that his chance of getting Peggy alone seemed very uncertain. It would appear as though every one were bent on frustrating his attempts to draw her aside from the rest; as though Peggy herself abetted them in their unkind design.

There were staying in the house a number of young people of both sexes. It seemed to Doctor Fairbridge that many of the girls were quite amiable and charming; nevertheless, the majority of the men evinced a predilection for Peggy’s society, which predilection, since he shared in it, he might better have understood.

When a man has made up his mind that he wants to marry; when, moreover, he is equally decided in his selection of his future wife, there is on the face of it no reason for delay. Doctor Fairbridge was fully determined on both points; he was also conscious of the danger of delay in the case of a girl so popular as Peggy; therefore he decided to press his suit on the first opportunity, and he hoped the opportunity would present itself that afternoon. Since it showed no likelihood of offering itself, since Peggy betrayed no readiness to assist him, desperation emboldened him to ask her to go with him into the conservatory for a few minutes’ private talk.

“Oh!” murmured Peggy, changing colour, “that sounds so dreadfully mysterious.”

She accompanied him, nevertheless. Mrs Chadwick, looking after them as they passed through the glass doors and stepped into the moist and enervating atmosphere of the fernery, which led out from the long drawing-room, looked anxious. She was so certain as to what Doctor Fairbridge intended saying, and so uncertain what Peggy would say in response, that she felt strongly tempted to propose a general move in the same direction. But for the conviction that putting off the inevitable is not to put an end to it, she would have proposed this; instead she diverted the general attention by starting one of her inimitable anecdotes; and in the uproarious laughter which greeted the story the retreat of Peggy and her cavalier was successfully covered.

The sound of the merriment penetrated to the fernery, and brought a smile of sympathy to Peggy’s lips. She looked for some response at her companion, but Doctor Fairbridge was so extraordinarily grave that the brightness faded from Peggy’s face and left her serious too, and a little embarrassed by the silence which fell between them, which he appeared unequal to break. She started to talk in a professional manner about the ferns; but Doctor Fairbridge had no intention of wasting his time on horticultural matters, and he plunged forthwith into the subject he had so keenly at heart. A little halting in his speech, and less assured in manner than when he had solicited the interview, he stood before Peggy, and looked earnestly into the wilful grey eyes, which at the moment were serious enough.

“Miss Annersley,” he began – and finding this address too formal for the occasion, hastily substituted her Christian name – “Peggy, I think you can’t be altogether unprepared for what I am about to say. You must know by now how things are with me. I love you. I have loved you ever since I first met you.”

He spoke as though the meeting had taken place years before instead of two months ago.

“Tell me,” he added, with eager persuasiveness, “do you like me?.. just a little?”

Now Peggy was a young woman who had listened to such confidences often, and who, by reason of the numbers of her admirers, had grown hardened to their appeals. She found them, however, sufficiently embarrassing to cause her to regret, not so much wounding her lovers, as the trouble she was put to in order to wound them as little as possible. It showed a want of consideration on the part of the men she wished to be friendly with when they made that agreeable condition no longer possible. Youth and beauty in a woman handicap her in the matter of masculine friendship; yet eliminate the disqualifying attributes, and the difficulty of friendship with the opposite sex is even greater. The position therefore becomes well-nigh impossible.

Peggy looked back at the young man with such disconcerting candour in the grey eyes that he began to feel somewhat foolish and found himself reddening awkwardly. A girl when she receives a proposal of marriage has no right to appear so composed.

“I like you so well,” Peggy answered him quietly, “that I hope you won’t say anything more. It’s – such a pity,” she faltered, losing something of her former calmness, “to spoil everything. Let us take a mutual liking for granted, and leave it at that.”

This sounded like a brilliant inspiration, but was in reality a repetition of a suggestion made on a similar occasion to an entirely different suppliant. The experience of its ill-success on the former occasion might have prepared her for its inefficacy now, but it was the only thing which flashed into her mind at the moment, and she said it a little breathlessly in the hope that it would decide Doctor Fairbridge in favour of retreat. It failed, however, of the desired effect. He caught at the leaf of a palm near his arm and began unthinkingly on its destruction, not looking at the mischievous work of his fingers, but staring at Peggy.

“I can’t leave it at that,” he said. “It – it isn’t liking with me. I love you. I… Please be patient with me, Miss Annersley. I find it so difficult to express all I feel. Of course, I can’t expect that you should love me as I love you… How should you? But I am hoping that perhaps – in time – ”

He broke off, so manifestly at a loss in face of the discouragement he read in her indifferent look, so awkward and disturbed and reproachful at her lack of reciprocity, that he found it impossible to proceed with his appeal. He had, in rehearsing the interview in bed on the previous night, brought it to such an entirely different issue that the situation as it actually befell found him unprepared. The virile eloquence of the previous night did not fit the present occasion.

“I want to marry,” he finished lamely.

That, in the circumstances, was an unfortunate admission. A gleam, expressive of amusement rather than of tenderness, shone in Peggy’s eyes.

“I know,” she said. “You told me so before… on account of the practice.”

He glared at her, flushed and angry.

“Hang the practice!” he said rudely. “I want to marry you.”

This bomb, which had been clumsily preparing from the outset, exploded with little effect. Peggy certainly lowered her eyes, and the warm blood mounted to her cheeks; but she did not appear overwhelmed by this frank declaration. It was, indeed, whatever emotion swayed the speaker, so shorn of sentiment in itself that the girl was relieved of any fear she might have entertained of hurting him with a refusal. Had she been as much in love with him as he had professed to be with her, her answer would still have been “No.”

“I am sorry,” she said, a trifle unsympathetically. “I don’t, you see, want to marry you.”

“Don’t say ‘no’ without at least considering my proposal,” he urged blankly. “I’ll wait – as long as you wish. But I can’t take ‘no’ like that. I’ve never wanted anything in all my life as I want you. Don’t be so unkind, Peggy, as to refuse me a little hope. I’m an ass, I know. And perhaps I have been a little abrupt – ”

“Well, a little,” agreed Peggy.

“Do you mind,” she added quickly, seeing him clutch desperately at a second palm-leaf in his agitation, “keeping to the leaf you have already spoiled?”

He dropped the worried leaf as though it had stung him, and half turned from her.

“You are heartless,” he exclaimed with bitterness, taking his defeat ill, recognising that it was a defeat even while he refused to accept her answer as final. He had been so confident of success that his failure was the more humiliating in consequence of his former assurance.

“I feel certain,” he resumed more quietly, “that later you will be a little sorry for your unkindness to me. I never loved anyone till I met you. I love you very earnestly.”

“I’m sorry,” said Peggy again. “I would be a little more sympathetic if I knew how. But, you see, I have never been in love in my life.”

“I think I could teach you to love,” he said, in all good faith. “I am going to try.”

She laughed.

“I never had any aptitude,” she said, “unless it was for gardening. You had better give me up, Doctor Fairbridge, as hopeless, and find an abler pupil.”

“I shall never,” he pronounced solemnly, “give you up. I do not change. I have met the one woman in the world for me. Oh, Miss Annersley,” he added, ceasing to be rhetorical and becoming therefore a much more interesting study to Peggy, “don’t be too hard on a fellow. I won’t bother you any more now. But one day I hope you will listen to me more patiently, and be a little kinder to me. I’m awfully keen on this.”

“Yes,” said Peggy. “I wish you weren’t. I’m just going to forget all you’ve said, and we will go on being friendly. I am a good deal keener on friendship than on the other relationship.”

“Are you?” he said, surprised, as though that were an attitude he had never contemplated before; that he found, indeed, difficult to reconcile with his ideas of girls. “I’m not. But the half loaf, you know… I will content myself with that for the present – only for the present.”

How, he wondered, when he returned with Peggy to the drawing-room – which he would have preferred not to do, and only agreed to on her showing him that it might be remarked if he left without taking leave in the usual manner – had he been deceived into making such a miscalculation? Clearly Peggy was a heartless little flirt. She had assuredly encouraged him. He was conscious as he entered the drawing-room in her wake of a slight diminution in his regard for her. There is nothing like a wound to the pride for clearing a man’s vision.

“For goodness’ sake,” exclaimed Peggy, looking back at him over her shoulder as he emerged behind her through the glass doors, “don’t wear so long a face. It will be remarked.”

Doctor Fairbridge, who felt little inclination towards cheerfulness, mended his expression none the less; but the smile which he summoned to his aid was rather forced.

“I can’t act,” he said reproachfully. “You’ve hurt me. I’m feeling sore, Miss Annersley.”

“Don’t be silly,” Peggy admonished him. “You needn’t look sore, anyhow.”

She led him towards her sister, and left him with her, feeling assured that Sophy would administer an anodyne; Sophy had helped to heal wounds of her making before. She had the knack of putting a man in better conceit with himself; it is a knack which springs from the dictates of a kindly nature.

Peggy herself joined a group of young people who were listening with sceptical amusement to the history of the Hall ghost which Mr Errol, newly arrived, was relating. Peggy seated herself near him.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” she asked.

“Well,” he replied with gravity, “there is so much which is incomprehensible that I cannot discredit things merely because I fail to understand them.”

She looked at him with interest, while the scepticism of the rest strove courteously to efface itself.

“I heard of the ghost from Robert,” she announced. “Hannah has seen it. But Robert didn’t seem to know very much about it. It is respectable to have a ghost. I hope it is a pleasant one.”

“There are two,” he said.

“Good gracious!” exclaimed Peggy. “Two misty apparitions! Hannah doesn’t own to seeing two. I might be able to stand one, but two would be the death of me. Who are they?”

“One is a hound,” he explained; “the other is a lady. They have been seen walking on the terrace in the dusk. They walk the length of the terrace and back, look towards the west, and disappear.”

“And then does something awful happen?” inquired one of the listeners.

“No; I never heard that anything happened. Nor does the apparition appear regularly. It has only been seen about three times, and always after dusk.”

“I shall watch for it,” said Peggy. “I am not in the least alarmed now I know there is a dog. I have never been afraid of a living dog; I couldn’t fear a dead dog. I feel nearly as brave as Robert.”

She described, almost in Robert’s own words, and with a droll mimicry of Robert’s manner, his professed contempt for what he could put his hand through and his gruesome familiarity with old bones. Robert was so well known a figure in Moresby, was known even to the guests staying at the Hall, that Peggy’s imitation of the sexton’s manner provoked the merriment of all her hearers. The vicar was as greatly amused as the rest.

“Robert may be very brave in the matter of ghosts,” he said; “but I have known him quail before something not usually considered terrifying.”

“What is that?” inquired Peggy.

“A woman,” he answered, and met her eyes and smiled.

Chapter Twenty Two

With the finish of the holidays the guests at the Hall went their several ways, and there was a lull in the feverish round of gaiety which had moved Moresby out of its accustomed calm, and had introduced into the usually contented breasts of the rustic portion of the community a dissatisfaction with their former quiet life and a profound respect for the new residents, quite apart from the prestige that descended upon them by virtue of their dwelling at the Hall. Even in the matter of the home farm, managed and worked entirely by women – which innovation had been looked on distrustfully by the sons of the soil – the Chadwicks were accorded a grudging recognition of success. The home farm was like to prosper. Moreover, it would not interfere with local farmers. Everything which it would produce was to be disposed of in markets which Moresby did not reach. Mrs Chadwick had no intention of using her wealth to the injury of her neighbours; and she made that clear to them before she set about stocking her farm.

Since there was capital at the back of the enterprise, since the farm was stocked with the best, and everything was up to date, and managers and workers alike were keen and experienced, Mrs Chadwick had no misgivings as to the ultimate result of this venture. It was a hobby of hers, and one upon which she spent much time and thought. A woman living in the country needed some outlet for her energy, she opined.

Robert, although he approved highly of Mrs Chadwick, was sternly opposed to the idea of women farming. Hadn’t he seen a woman “orched”? And didn’t he know how fearsome they were with cattle? Why, even the milking was done by men nowadays, and a lot better done, in his opinion.

Mrs Chadwick invited him to inspect the farm and the model dairy, and, because Robert interested her, she personally conducted his tour and explained things to him, and listened to his comments attentively, approving when he made a wise suggestion, which was seldom, and maintaining silence before his cavilling remarks. One proposal which she made out of the kindness of her heart threw Robert into such a fever of angry trepidation that for the time his admiration for Mrs Chadwick was seriously jeopardised – the proposal being that she should offer Bob’s young woman a position in the model diary. Robert stood still in the path and eyed her stonily.

“Don’t you do it, mum,” he said, with such earnestness of manner, so much angry opposition in his eyes, that Mrs Chadwick showed the surprise she felt. “Don’t you do it,” he repeated.

“But why?” she asked. “I hoped I might be doing you, through Bob, a little service.”

“You’ll be doin’ me a much greater service in leavin’ Bob’s young woman where ’er be,” he replied. “If ’er comes yere Bob’ll follow.”

“I should have thought you and Hannah would be pleased at that,” she said.

“Maybe Hannah would. I don’t doubt ’er would, ’cause ’er knows I’d be vexed. Do you suppose,” he added reproachfully, “that ’aving to go to church more’n once o’ Sundays, and sometimes in the week, I want to be kep’ awake o’ nights listenin’ to Bob ’ollering to the Lord? Hannah don’t mind, ’cause it isn’t ’er profession; but when a man makes ’is livin’ through the Church ’e wants ’is off-time free o’ it.”

“I see,” she said. “Yes; I had forgotten that. We will leave Bob’s young woman where she is.”

“Don’t think I’m not obliged to you, mum,” Robert hastened to say, relenting before her amiable reasonableness, “for thinking of it. But it wouldn’ be to your interest nohow. Bob’s young woman would give more time to ’er prayers than to your dairy. It’s all soul wi’ they, and nothin’ o’ conscience. I wouldn’ like you to be cheated like that there; no, I wouldn’. A lady wot is so generous as you be ought to ’ave ’er interests studied.”

Robert’s zeal, like the zeal of many conscientious objectors to the self-seeking of others, placed him beyond the proscribed limits of profiting through Mrs Chadwick’s generosity. He had profited handsomely during the Christmas week; he profited again on that crisp sunny morning when he parted from her after his inspection of the farm, and left her walking leisurely across the fields with the pekinese disporting itself beside her, running ahead of her in pursuit of imaginary rabbits and running back again for approbation of its sporting proclivities.

Where the fields were bisected by a country road Will Chadwick had undertaken to meet her and motor her back. It was rather beyond the hour fixed for the meeting, but Mr Chadwick was a patient man, and a knowledge of his wife’s habits prepared him for delay. He had brought Diogenes with him in the car because Diogenes had expressed the wish to accompany him; and Diogenes, not being blessed with the same amount of patience, had been allowed to dismount, and was putting in his time, as the pekinese was doing, in searching the hedges for possible sport. Diogenes was not a sporting dog; but when he saw a cat, or any other legitimate form of chase, he tried to cheat onlookers into believing that he was. A pose is detestable in man or beast; it not infrequently leads to his undoing. Diogenes posed so enthusiastically that he almost deceived himself into mistaking the pose for the quality it sought to emulate.

It was unfortunate that on this occasion, when he was especially bent on imposing on himself, and was pursuing his snuffling search for hidden prey among the dank fern-stalks and soft mould in the hedge, the pekinese should at the same moment be engaged in a similar form of deception on the farther side of the hedge. Diogenes detected the fur of its long coat through the wet, shining leaves, and though familiarity with the pekinese should have accustomed him to discriminate between it and a cat, the practice of self-deception had become such an obsession that he wilfully ignored this distinction and, with a low growl, burst through the hedge and seized his quarry and shook it playfully in a transport of delight, then laid the little limp body down and stood over it in an attitude of satisfied triumph and barked a cheerful accompaniment to Mrs Chadwick’s screams.

Mrs Chadwick made a dart forward and struck at Diogenes with her hand, to Diogenes’ pained surprise; then she gathered the pekinese up in her arms and fell to lamenting loudly.

Diogenes walked back to the car with an air of injured disgust and wagged a short, tentative tail at his master; but Mr Chadwick, ignoring these overtures, passed him, and was over the hedge in a trice and beside his disconsolate wife.

“Oh, I say, Ruby, I am sorry!” was all that he could articulate, as he gazed at the limp bit of fur in her arms and then into her weeping face.

He blamed himself for having brought Diogenes, but most of all he blamed Diogenes for doing the last thing on earth that might have been expected of him. As Mrs Chadwick continued to lament, and continued to hold the dead dog in her arms, his perturbation increased to the extent of causing him to swear.

“Damn that dog!” he exclaimed in exasperation, and put his arm about his wife’s shoulders, and took with his disengaged hand the limp, lifeless thing from her. “He didn’t suffer at all,” he assured her. “It was so quick, he couldn’t have realised that he was hurt.”

This knowledge was, of course, consoling to the bereaved mistress; but, beside her grief at the loss of her tiny pet, the consolation was insufficient to balance her distress. She laid her head on her husband’s shoulder and wept unrestrainedly, to the distrustful amazement of a cow which lifted its head above the hedge to stare at this singular grouping. Fortunately for the cow’s peace of mind Diogenes was by now thoroughly subdued, having gathered from the unusual noises disturbing the tranquillity of the day that this game, like another game he had played with Mr Musgrave’s cat, promised a less agreeable ending than he had foreseen. He recalled that on that occasion he had been beaten; so he lay down docilely beside the motor and feigned slumber, in the hope that when the fuss was over the cause of it would be forgotten. But Diogenes’ fate was even then being sealed on the other side of the hedge.

“Don’t cry, Ruby,” Mr Chadwick said. “It won’t bring the little beggar to life, you know; and you’ll make yourself sick. I’ll get you another pet, dear.”

This promise, though well meaning, was mistaken. In the first shock of her grief Mrs Chadwick recoiled from the suggestion.

“I couldn’t have another pet,” she wailed. “I loved him so. I couldn’t bear another dog in his place. I d-don’t want to see a dog again.”

“All right,” he said. “But buck up, Ruby. Come and get into the car, and I’ll drive you home.”

“I couldn’t endure to have that brute in with me,” she sobbed angrily.

“No, of course not. We’ll leave the beast behind. You shan’t be worried with the sight of him again. I’ll shoot him.”

He made the promise glibly, in the hope that this threat would rouse her. It roused her effectually, but not in the way in which he had intended. She looked up with a gleam of vindictive satisfaction in her eyes, showing through her tears.

“Oh, do!” she said. “Shoot him to-day. I couldn’t see him about after this.”

“All right,” he acquiesced, none too heartily. Diogenes was a valuable dog, and had, moreover, a winning way with him towards the people whom he liked, and Will Chadwick was certainly one of these. Mr Chadwick could no more have shot the dog with his own hand than he could have shot a child.

“I’ll see to it,” he said.

The first intimation Diogenes had that it was expected of him that he should walk home was when the car started and left him, mute and bewildered and bespattered with mud, in the road gazing after it. No word had been vouchsafed him, no look. From the silence and the absence of interest in himself he had been deluded into supposing that he was not held responsible for the evil that had been done; but with the disappearance of the car vague doubts disturbed him, and he started in a sour, halfhearted way to follow the car and face his destiny. Even had his intelligence been equal to grasping what that destiny was, so great is the force of habit that he would have returned inevitably to meet it.

Diogenes got back some time after the car, and was met at the entrance by one of the few men employed at the Hall. This person, who had apparently been waiting for him, fastened a lead to his collar and took up a gun which he had rested against a tree, seeming as though he too were bent on posing as a sportsman, which he was not, save in the humble capacity of cleaning his master’s guns.

“You come along with me, old fellow,” he said, and tried to look grim, but softened on meeting Diogenes’ inquiring eye. “Shame, I calls it,” he ejaculated in a voice of disgust. “Anyone might ’a’ made the mistake of taking that there for a rabbit. Blest if I rekernised it for a dog when I seed it first.”

He led Diogenes out through the gate and down the road towards a field. The gate of the field was troublesome to open. While he fumbled with the padlock, his gun resting against the gatepost for the greater freedom of his hands, a joyous bark from Diogenes, who previously had worn a surprisingly docile and depressed mien, as though aware of what was going forward which these preparations portended, caused him to desist from the business of unfastening the gate to look up. When he saw who it was whose hurrying figure Diogenes thus joyfully hailed, he did not trouble to go on with his job, but waited for Peggy to approach. She came up at a run, and caught at Diogenes’ lead, and, holding it, stared at the man.

“What were you going to do with him?” she asked, her accusing eyes going from his face to the gun, and from the gun back again to his face.

“Shoot ’im, miss,” he answered. “It’s the master’s orders.”

“Absurd!” cried Peggy angrily. “I won’t have it done.”

“Sorry, miss,” the man replied, looking at her with a mingling of doubt and submission in his glance. “But I’m afraid it’ll ’ave to be. Shoot ’im, without delay. Them’s my orders.”

“Well, you can’t obey them,” replied Peggy, as calmly as her agitation allowed, “because, you see, I won’t let you. You can’t shoot him while I hold him, can you?”

“No, miss,” he replied. “But it’s as much as my place is worth – ”

Peggy cut him short.

“I am going to take him away,” she said. “I’ll hide him… send him away from the place. But I won’t have him sacrificed for – for a silly accident like that. Both Mr and Mrs Chadwick will regret it later. He’s a very valuable dog.”

“Yes, miss,” he said. “I allow it’s a shame. But the master was very short and emphatic. What am I to say when ’e asks me if it’s done?”

“He won’t ask,” Peggy answered, as confident that her uncle would be nearly as pained at Diogenes’ death as her aunt was over the pekinese. “He will take it for granted, of course, that it is done. Go into the field and fire off your gun, and then return to the house. I’ll see to Diogenes.”

“You are quite sure, miss,” the man said doubtfully, “that you won’t let no one see that there dog? If the master thought that I’d deceived him – ”

“No one shall see him,” Peggy answered, not considering at the moment the magnitude of this promise. “I take all responsibility. You leave him with me.”

“Very good, miss,” he said cheerfully, as much relieved to be free from the task appointed him as Peggy was to watch him vault the gate and disappear, gun in hand, into the field.

The next thing she and Diogenes heard was the report of the gun as this pseudo-murderer killed an imaginary dog in the field with bloodthirsty zest.