Anderby Wold

London John Lane The Bodley Head

First published 1923 Reprinted 1938 Reprinted 1939 Reprinted 1948

_This book is copyright. No portion of it may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher._

Printed in Great Britain by LOWE AND BRYDONE PRINTERS LTD., London, N.W.10 for JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD, LTD. 8 Bury Place, London, W.C.1

TO DAVID AND ALICE HOLTBY IS DEDICATED THIS IMAGINARY STORY OF IMAGINARY EVENTS ON AN IMAGINARY FARM

Contents

I. Full Suzerainty

II. The Toast

III. The Kingdom

IV. The Queen

V. The Trees Of The Valley

VI. The Perfect Guest

VII. The Salvation Of Society

VIII. The Stranger At The Cross-Roads

IX. The Enemies Of Society

X. The Prophet And The Moon

XI. A Definition Of Felicity

XII. The Fruitful Ground

XIII. The Shadow On The Kingdom

XIV. The Shadow On The Wheat

XV. Before The Harvest

XVI. Harvest At Anderby

XVII. Ladies At Market Burton

XVIII. Gentlemen At Anderby

XIX. The Road To Anderby

XX. Abdication

Anderby Wold

"_Felicity is a continual progresse of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the later ... so that, in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of all mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of power after power which ceaseth only after death ... and there shall be no contentment but proceeding._"

HOBBES LEVIATHAN, I, ii.

Chapter I

Full Suzerainty

When Sarah Bannister's dog-cart bowled along the High Street of Market Burton, its progress was observed by several pairs of eyes, peeping discreetly from behind lace-veiled windows.

"Look, Lizzie, Sarah Bannister's got a new bonnet."

"My word, she'll be late if they don't hurry."

"This is the fourth year she's worn that black coat of hers. She made it in 1908, from some old stuff of her mother's."

Everybody in Market Burton knew that Mrs. Bannister and her husband were driving to a tea-party at Anderby Wold. Everybody knew that the party had been arranged to celebrate the final clearance of the mortgage from the Wold Farm. Sarah knew that they knew. Their furtive glances were not lost upon her; but she accepted all remark as a tribute to her highly respected personality.

It was a good thing, she thought, that her neighbours at least referred to her as "Sarah Bannister." Her sister Janet, and her sister-in-law Tilly, might be known familiarly as "Mrs. Donald" or "Mrs. Richard," as though their only claim to recognition lay in the identity of their lord and possessor. But no one could think that of Sarah. Anybody looking now at Tom's shrinking figure on the seat beside her might have guessed that he only crept through life like the shadow cast by the flame of his wife's vitality.

Sarah bowed severely to an acquaintance in the road. It was no use being too familiar with the wife of a retail grocer. Of course, as Mrs. Bannister, she had no claim to social superiority. Tom's father had come to the town as a cattle drover sixty years ago, when farmers sold by private agreement. It was only during the last ten years of his life that his "Now then, gentlemen!" had become a common-place of the Saturday market, and he had risen to respectability as a dealer of some repute. But as a former Miss Robson, Sarah had a position of importance to uphold in the East Riding.

The dog-cart passed the red villas and square, tree-encircled houses skirting the town, and began to mount the steady ascent of the Wolds. The December air was keen with frost and the wheels spun through fringes of ice along the puddles. Sarah drew more tightly round her the thick black coat she always wore when driving.

"You don't get stuff like this now, Tom," she observed, affectionately fingering her collar. "Not with all your newfangled electric factories and German dyes. My mother used to buy wool from a packman who came round the Wolds from the West Riding somewhere, and beautiful stuff it was too. When she died, her wardrobe in the best bedroom was full of gowns not a bit the worse for wear; but, if I died to-morrow, there wouldn't be anything worth keeping except a few bits I had from her like this cloth."

Her husband made no answer. Long ago he had acknowledged the superiority of his wife's intelligence, and considered that her judgments required neither criticism nor confirmation. He felt ill at ease, perched on the high box-seat, the foot-rest advanced to its nearest hole to accommodate his short legs. Sarah's lower seat seemed to emphasize her mental superiority.

"You're letting the reins slip down, Tom. It's a fault I'm continually having to find with your driving--let alone with other things. How do you expect the horse to know it's being driven unless you drive it? You seem to think the Almighty arranged the world on purpose to save you trouble."

Tom gathered up the reins obediently. It was useless to resent Sarah's criticism because, whether right or wrong, she had too much respect for her own judgment to acknowledge an error.

He liked a visit to Anderby; but his pleasure was always spoilt by the consciousness of Sarah's disapproval. Sarah didn't seem to like Mary. It was a pity they couldn't get on. Of course it was bad luck for Sarah that John should leave her after they had lived together for forty-two years. Still, what was a man to do? He was sure to marry one day and Mary was a fine woman even if her father had been a wrong 'un. Besides, she had been a Robson even before she married John, and that should count a good deal with a family which tended to despise every one who entered its ranks by marriage instead of by birth, as Tom knew only too well.

Noticing the uncompromising angle of Sarah's bonnet, Tom decided he was doomed to an uncomfortable afternoon. His wife cast a discerning eye across the Wolds and sniffed with meaning.

"Young Swynderby's got a fine crop of turnips there--pity they say he drinks too hard to see them."

The cart splashed on between bare, blackened hedges and chequered slopes of plough land and stubble. There were eight miles of undulating road to cover, but Sarah had no desire for the journey to end. Enjoyment was the last thing she expected from any party, but a festivity at Anderby Wold was almost too much even for her endurance.

John was, of course, everything a man should be, as Sarah frequently assured him. She ought to know, for after their mother's death she, as the eldest sister, had taken complete charge of his upbringing. She had packed his tuck-box with crab-apple jelly and plum loaves, when first he went to Dr. Deale's Academy for young gentlemen at Hardrascliffe. She had marked his linen and darned his socks and bound his hands when the blisters broke after his first heavy harvest forking in '81. When as a young bachelor he first began to farm on his own at Littledale, she had gone to keep house for him.

Of course she knew him better than Mary could. For years she had understood him with his alternating moods of obstinacy and indecision, far better than she understood herself. His orderly mind was like a familiar room, of which she held the key. She knew the thoughts from which his words arose as well as she knew the shelves from which her cups and dishes were brought to the table.

But now--it was all different. In looking for John, she found Mary.

"I do wish you'd tuck the rug in at your side, Tom. There's such a draught round my legs. Of course, if you want me to be crippled by rheumatism, there's an end of it. I've no doubt I should live somehow, and perhaps it's as well to get used to being uncomfortable before we go to that house of Mary's."

Anderby Wold was Mary's house. Littledale had been John's--John's and hers. He belonged far more to that solitary farm among the hills than to Mary's bustling place on the village street. John never had a word to say for himself at Anderby. The place bore the imprint, not of his personality, but Mary's. Mary had no right to marry him, just to make use of him. Of course it was easy to bully John, with his slow, kindly nature. He never would stand up for himself. But Sarah had managed him properly. When she had wished to visit her sisters at Market Burton she had delicately steered John to a confession of wanting to go himself. Mary simply went out and ordered the dog-cart.

"I've no patience with these newfangled ideas at Anderby," she continued. "'Hygiene' Mary Robson calls it. 'High fiddlesticks' I say. We were healthy enough before. My father died when he was ninety-two, and would have lived long enough then if he hadn't fallen out of the Upper barn when they were woolpacking."

"He was a fine old man," remarked Tom, seeking as usual for uncontroversial ground.

"No finer than most of us Robsons," snapped Sarah. But she remembered one Robson who had not been fine. Mary's father, Benjamin, had always been a most unsatisfactory person. Drinking and betting were bad enough, but there were other tales of servants hurriedly dismissed and governesses who would not stay. Of course it was a pity his wife had died when the girl was born; but she had been a queer, dowdy sort of creature, fond of books and no use in a house. Probably she would never have prevented the deepest disgrace of Ben's career--the mortgage that imperilled five hundred acres of land that had been farmed by a Robson since the sixteenth century.

"Who's building that house over there, Tom? she inquired.

"Oh, it's Sam Burrard. He's putting up a house so as not to have to drive out from the town to farm every day."

Sarah frowned.

"Why didn't you tell me? You never tell me anything worth hearing. It's just as well Sam is building himself a mansion in this world. From all accounts he won't get much of a one in the next."

In a quarter of an hour they would be at Anderby Wold. That was where Ben had died over ten years ago, and where John had called to see if he could do anything for Mary--eighteen-year-old Mary, left alone to cope with her father's debts. Oh, but she was clever! She knew that John was capable of managing two farms as well as one. Six month's tribute had been paid to decorum before she had married him--poor John being too guileless to understand her cleverness. And, for the hundredth time since the marriage, Sarah had to enter John's house as his wife's guest. It was hard.

The road rounded the summit of the hill and tilted towards the valley, two miles away. There from a cluster of leafless trees rose the welcoming smoke of Anderby Wold.

Well! Mary had everything now. Sarah wished her joy of it.

The thought of her husband driving placidly by her side, without a thought for her discomfiture, goaded Sarah to fury.

"Tom," she exclaimed, "I wish you'd use your handkerchief. There's a drop on the end of your nose!"

Tom and Sarah were the last of the family to arrive. Sarah had declined Mary's invitation to midday dinner, because she had made her Christmas puddings on the fourteenth of December ever since she was old enough to hold a wooden spoon, and nothing short of a sale or a stack fire would induce her to postpone the ceremony.

Their host and hostess stood in the porch to receive them, and Sarah alighted stiffly, passing a large white handkerchief across her lips before she came forward and kissed her brother.

"Well, John," she remarked, "I suppose I am to offer you my congratulations." To Mary she extended a more formal hand. "Well, Mary, I see you have a houseful. Has Uncle Dickie come?"

"Yes. We made him come last night so as not to be too tired for to-day. You're cold. Come in and take your things off."

"Thank you, I will. It was a very cold drive." Sarah sounded aggrieved, as though Mary were responsible for the weather.

They went upstairs. Mary's room always annoyed Sarah. The queer books, the vase of chrysanthemums, the fire in the grate, all looked as though they were trying to make it a little better than anyone else's.

"I can't think what you want a fire for at your time of life, Mary. What with coal strikes and everything and firing such a price."

"Oh, well"--Mary slid to her knees on the hearth-rug and knelt there fingering the poker--"I thought you would probably be rather cold after a long drive, and you know what the drawing-room fire is when the men get round it, backs to the mantelpiece, heels on the fender, and sixteen stones of John or Toby between us poor women and any ghost of heat. We have to do something."

The poker slipped from her fingers and fell clattering into the grate. Sarah did not know that when she was not present Mary rarely fidgeted. She thought to herself, "I don't know how John stands it. She's never still for a minute, and just think of a woman married ten years sitting about on the floor like that!"

The youthful ease of Mary's movements flaunted Sarah's sixty-three years in her face.

"I'm sorry you didn't get over in time for dinner. You'd have liked to see the spread we gave the men in the front kitchen. They had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and apple pie and cheese. It was a business, but Anne and Louisa helped me, so we got through." Mary sighed with satisfaction.

"I should have thought it would have been better to make a bit of money to set aside for a rainy day instead of spending all this as soon as your debts were paid. If you are not careful, you'll be your father all over again, Mary. Was this John's idea?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, it was mine. But John was perfectly willing. The men have helped us more than anything and it's only fair we should show them we appreciate it. Are you ready to go down?"

They might as well go down. Sarah had not come to John's house to wrangle with his wife. Anyway, it was no use criticizing Mary since she was so obviously convinced of her own perfection. They descended in silence.

The family was assembled in the drawing-room. Sarah rustled forward and greeted with varying degrees of formal familiarity her uncle, brothers and cousins. She kissed each of the women with distaste.

Mary had grouped them carefully--Aunt Jane, Uncle Dickie, Richard, Sarah's brother, his wife Tilly, who talked at intervals to nobody in particular, Anne and Louisa Robson, relegated to the window-seat as became undowered spinsters. Sarah could hear them now whispering together over a quarrel they had begun in their cradles and saw no particular reason for ever finishing. On the sofa Janet, whose profitable marriage with Donald Holmes had been her unique contribution to the world's welfare, laboriously displayed a London-made satin gown to her relations.

"Janet's getting fat," thought Sarah. "She doesn't wear as well as the rest of us. That's what comes of living in hotels and such and lying in bed till all hours. No wonder she's always suffering from nerves."

She moved across the room to Mrs. Toby Robson, the solicitor's wife. "And how are the girls?" she asked. "I suppose they'll be getting measles again this spring as usual?"

Mrs. Toby's four unattractive little daughters possessed the sole talent of acquiring infectious diseases.

"It's to be chicken-pox this year, and mumps next. I asked." Ursula, the winner of North Country Golf Championships, whom Foster Robson had introduced into the family, replied before Mrs. Toby could collect her wandering wits.

"Oh, indeed." Sarah did not like Ursula.

She sat very straight in her chair, and drew from her velvet reticule a half-knitted sock. Presently she found Mary at her side. "That's pretty wool. Are those for Tom?"

"Yes. I always make them myself. The things you buy in shops nowadays are useless--shrink up to nothing in the first wash."

"I know. I knit John's too. I'm just making some for him now. Look, I've got a new stitch for double heels. They're so nice to wear with heavy boots."

"John does not like double heels. He has such tender feet. From a boy he blistered easily." Sarah announced this distinction proudly.

"Oh, he'll like these. They are of the softest wool."

"Has he worn any yet?"

"Not like this, but he's going to this spring. I got the wool at Dobbin's in Hardrascliffe, four shillings a pound. It's lovely and soft--it couldn't hurt."

"I think you will find that it will, Mary. I've known John's feet longer than you have and his skin won't stand double heels. We Robsons are delicate in our skins. Of course if you want to save yourself the trouble of darning----"

The colour rose to Mary's face. She looked angrily at Sarah for a moment, then her knitting-needles clashed in the silence. After a little while she left the room.

Sarah watched her smile at one relation and then another on her progress to the door. It was ridiculous, the way she behaved, as though she were a queen holding a court. Well, nobody was likely to bow down to Mary, unless one counted the villagers, who were said to make an absurd fuss of her.

Sarah hoped she had gone to see about tea. Really with Mary you never knew. She might just as easily have gone off to drive old Mrs. Simpkins in to the hospital, or to sit up all night with a sick cow. She would think nothing of leaving all her relations in the drawing-room, thirsting for tea. Poor John! Double heeled socks indeed!

The gong boomed through the house.

Chapter II

The Toast

Sarah felt more comfortable when tea was served and the family established round the table. The meal was correct according to the best Robson tradition. All the food was rich, substantial and self-satisfied. The roast chickens, plump and succulent, were flanked by a dignified ham of Anderby curing. The butter oozed from luscious golden tea-cakes. On the sideboard lay a second course of tarts and cheese-cakes with filmy pastry. Plates of spiced bread, black and sticky, surrounded the huge cake.

Under the influence of warmth and rich food Sarah's irritation disappeared. She allowed Violet to pass her plate for another helping of chicken. Violet's hands were hot and red, but Sarah had come prepared for imperfections, so that was easily ignored. It was harder to overlook John's forgetfulness when he carved for her a slice of breast. Ten years ago he would never have forgotten she preferred brown meat.

Across the table Ursula chatted with Toby Robson. "But, my dear man, it's ridiculously easy. I always drive myself. Foster prefers a Humber of course, but I think an American car so much lighter. Mary, don't you like my new two-seater best?"

"I really don't know anything about cars, Ursula. Ask Mr. Holmes, he knows far more than I, and I haven't seen your two-seater yet."

No, thought Sarah, Mary would know nothing about motor-cars and, knowing nothing, would decide that there was nothing to know.

Tilly, Richard's wife, helped herself to a third cheese-cake and wistfully regarded the netted frill of a doily on the plate before her.

"Do you get these doilies up yourself, Mary?" she asked. "I always find netting goes so badly when you iron it. I do wish you'd tell me what to do."

"Yes. We do all our own laundry work. I ironed those myself. It's simply a matter of careful starching, and then pulling them away from under the iron."

Possibly she was right. Mary was a good housekeeper. Sarah impatiently speared a pat of butter and began to spread it on her bread. Was it never possible for half an hour to pass without some one asking her advice? And accepting it when given as though it were as reliable as the Bible? No wonder the girl's head was turned. And really there was nothing so extraordinary about her. Why, she wasn't even good-looking!

Yet, watching her tall figure, broad-shouldered and long-necked, her wide mouth with its faint indication of complacency, and the sudden upward thrust of her chin when she wished to emphasize a statement, Sarah knew well enough wherein lay Mary's attraction for John. Her finely shaped hands were unusually muscular. Every easy motion of her arms or body suggested that behind it lay a reserve of strength. Her gentleness seemed to be compounded of restricted energy rather than weak emotion. All the qualities which John had admired in Sarah he found softened by youth in Mary.

Sarah looked towards the head of the table where John sat behind the chickens. He was a fool to sit like that quietly carving or looking up occasionally to catch Mary's eye with his shy smile. Why couldn't he get up and say something for himself? Once he got started he had as many wits as any of them. It was only because Mary was convinced he couldn't talk that he never did.

"John," Sarah asked suddenly, "why didn't you show that shorthorned bull of yours at York? You know there was nothing to beat it from the North Riding."

"We are not going to begin showing yet," interposed Mary, ignoring Uncle Dickie's unfinished anecdote. "It's too expensive. We're going to start when we get a little capital laid by."

"I asked John," commented Sarah, and said no more. But she mentally registered Mary's spasmodic extravagance over the men's feast and her meanness over the show as another grievance against her.

Uncle Dickie resumed his narrative. He was enjoying the society of his hostess. Prompted by her smiling responses he had passed from one story to another, sometimes abandoning one before he reached its climax. But as Mary knew them all by heart that did not matter much and was perhaps more entertaining. He had told the story of the bull-pup at Highwold and the gardener's son, and of the ghost seen by Sir Michael Seton's great grandfather ... or was it great grand-uncle? He was not quite sure ... getting an old man, and Mary must not expect his memory to be as good as once it had been ... well, perhaps great-grandfather of the present Sir Charles....

Mary accepted each tale serenely, dispensing appropriate answers with the same unflurried precision as she dispensed second cups of tea to their rightful owners.

Ursula leaned forward and picked a cocoa-nut bun from the plate before her. She bit off a little circle with her white teeth and ate it slowly before she turned to Toby Foster.

"Why _does_ Uncle Dickie tell all those awful old chestnuts?" she asked.

Toby cocked his head. Being the only professional member of the family he had a reputation for wit, and felt that something good was expected of him.

"Because, my dear lady, I expect he has learnt that in the telling of stories, as in other things, it is more blessed to give than to receive."

Uncle Dickie was only deaf enough to ask people to repeat phrases whose repetition might embarrass them. The fear that he might miss any of the good things of life haunted him ceaselessly. He stopped suddenly and turned round.

"What's that? What's that? Some one mention me? Hey?"

The family was silent till Mary turned to him smiling. "Cousin Toby was only saying--though I don't think you were meant to hear--that you were one of those people who have learnt that it is more blessed to give than to receive."

"Stuff and nonsense!" Uncle Dickie threw out his chest like a cock-sparrow. The room was warm; the meat had been tender; Mary enjoyed his stories. After all, in spite of his eighty-seven years, he was still an entertaining companion. It occurred to him at last that his family's declared affection might arise from appreciation of his good qualities rather than from expected enjoyment of his bank balance.

Under the table-cloth he groped for Mary's hand with his knotted fingers.

Sarah, noticing the gesture, sniffed.

One of the famous Robson silences held the company spellbound. Then John, prompted by a sign from Mary, went to the side-table, and the pop of a cork closed the incident.

"We thought we would have some champagne to-night as this is a rather festive occasion," said Mary. "We don't often have an excuse."

"Splendid! Just the thing!" Toby licked his lips and winked at Ursula, intimating that he and she stood apart, belonging to a world where tea and champagne were only mixed at wedding-breakfasts. A faint smile quivered at the corner of Ursula's mouth.

Sarah felt more convinced than ever that Mary was leading John to ruin.

The glasses were filled and the guests paused. Then Aunt Jane, sitting at John's right hand, became aware with awful certainty that her husband was about to make a speech. She turned to John in fluttering horror.

"Oh, John, your Uncle Dickie's going to make a speech. Do stop him. He always says something dreadful, and it upsets him so that he can't sleep for nights afterwards."

But to John the effort of initiative, especially concerning his own relatives, was intolerable. He shook his head and said nothing. Uncle Dickie rose slowly to his feet.

"We have come together," he began without further ceremony, "on a most auspicious occasion. Ten years ago our little lass here was married to John."

"Little lass!" thought Sarah. "Why, the woman's five feet ten at least."

"Not but what ten years is a short enough time for a man and his wife to live together without quarrelling. Our Jane and I have stood it for three score. But, when John crossed over the hedge from Littledale and hung up his hat in Anderby as you might say, things weren't exactly plain sailing."

He paused and ran his fingers up and down the table-cloth awaiting further inspiration. His wife coughed apprehensively.

"There was some matter of a mortgage what had to be paid off. And a bad business it was too."

"Hear, hear!" commented Donald Holmes. Then realizing that emphasis on this point was undesirable, he relapsed into stifled silence.

"A bad business for those that had less sense than these young folks. But I understand that now the final payment has been made. I'd hoped to see them comfortably settled before I went, for John is a good lad and Anderby a fine farm, and now it seems that nothing is wanting to make us happy but a young Robson to hold it after they're gone. But I've no doubt----"

Jane had suddenly choked and looking up Uncle Dickie caught sight of Sarah's grim perturbation and Mary's crimson-flooded cheeks.

"I've no doubt that we--John--I was saying--auspicious occasion----"

His flow of eloquence was checked, but he remembered his carefully considered peroration and raised his glass.

"I want you to join with me in drinking their health. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John and Mary Robson of Anderby Wold."

They drank in awkward silence until Toby, glad of an excuse to cover Uncle Dickie's lapse from tact, broke forth into a lusty carolling of "For he's a jolly good fellow!" And the company caught up the chorus. Even Anne and Louisa, their cheeks flushed by the unwonted champagne and their emotions slightly beyond control, joined in with their creaky sopranos.

Foster called upon John to reply. He looked helplessly round the table until he met Mary's encouraging smile and then rose slowly to his feet.

"I can't make a speech," he said, "any more than the gardener could who was invited to dinner at Edenthorpe Hall because he fished young Master Seton out of the lake. He had to reply to Sir Michael's vote of thanks, and he hummed and hawed till his wife came to the rescue. 'Now, Sir Charles,' said she, 'you mun excuse our John. 'E ain't used to speechifying. Any talking that's done in our 'ouse--_ah_ does it'!"

He sat down suddenly, his large form shrinking abashed behind the ham. His confidence deserted him as rapidly as it had arrived.

"Get up, Mary," Toby called, knocking on the table with his fork. "Come along! Your man's given you away. You'll have to do it."

Mary rose.

"I'm not much of a speaker either," she began, but to Sarah her low clear voice betrayed no self-distrust. "I can only say thank you all very much for your kindness and you, Uncle Dickie, for your good wishes. John and I could never have managed if you had not stood behind us and given us confidence. It mayn't seem much to have done, but we are pleased to-night because Anderby is safe. And--and we thank you all for coming and hope you'll often come here again."

She paused and smiled at her relations round the table. "She doesn't hope we'll come here again," Sarah was thinking. "She doesn't care if she never sees us again. She cares for nothing but her farm and that people should think she's a wonder!"

Mary concluded:

"I don't think I can wish you anything better than the old toast, 'Ere's tiv us, all on us. May we niver want nowt, naun on us. Nor you, nor me, nor ony on us--nor me neither!"

The last dog-cart had rumbled down the darkness of the road; the last guest had been escorted to bed with candles and hot whisky, before John and Mary stood alone together in the drawing-room. The fire had burnt low. A heavy scent of tobacco, chrysanthemums and hot whisky hung about the room. The clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve thin, tinkling notes.

Mary knelt on the hearth-rug and swept the fallen ashes beneath the grate. There was a green line round the handle of the hearth-brush where Violet had omitted to rub away the brass polish. For a moment this absorbed Mary's attention. Then she turned to her husband and said:

"Well John, I think that went off all right, don't you?"

"Oh, ay," responded John without enthusiasm.

"John--I----" She rose, and began to straighten the chintz covers on the sofa. "I've been wondering--I mean--you know I'm sorry about Uncle Dickie--I mean that he should have to say--all that about a young Robson to carry on here--I mean--I wonder somethimes how much you mind----"

"Oh, that's all right. Don't you worry, honey. It can't be helped." John turned slowly from her and left the room. In passing the silver table near the door he knocked over a small vase. Always in the drawing-room he seemed to occupy more than his fair allowance of space.

The door closed. Mary went forward and picked up the fallen vase. It was a flimsy fluted thing, a wedding present from Anne and Louisa. Mary held it in her hand while she listened to John's footsteps on the mat, on the tiles of the hall, on the stair carpet. One stair creaked. They must get a new board there, she thought. At a turn of the stair he hit his foot against a brass rail that rang jangling through the house. Then she heard him in the room above, now by the window, now sitting down to throw off his shoes, now by the bed. It creaked and groaned. Then there was silence.

She knelt again by the fire, holding her hands above the glowing ashes.

Well, that was that. It had been a long day, and even her vitality could not stand unlimited exertion. Still, it had been worth it. Mrs. Holmes's toupee, Sarah's nastiness about the socks, the hole in the best linen sheet--all these were only echoes and shadows from another world. The only real and solid thing was the knowledge that the mortgage was paid. Nothing else mattered. She was prepared to sing her _Nunc dimittis_ for the consummation of her life's work, forgetful that over forty years of her three score and ten still remained in which all sorts of things could happen. This was her hour of triumph in which she tasted that unfearing gladness which gives no hostage to defeat.

The ashes crumbled and collapsed. The room was growing cold. She rose and began to move dreamily about the room, straightening chairs and tables, and flicking cigarette ends from the ashtrays into the fire-place.

Because of the mortgage she had lived for twenty-eight years on the Wolds under the shadow of their reproach. In her lonely childhood the fields of Anderby had assumed for her a more definite personality than any of the people whom she knew. Land was, after all, the thing that mattered most. That was why she had been so miserable when her father brushed aside the foreman's suggestions of improvement with a curt "We can't afford it. So there's an end on't." That was why she had laboured for nearly a whole day, trying to stuff up the cracks along the cowshed wall with bits of mud and straw because she was sure the Wolds must despise such shabby buildings.

And then that haunting fear that one day "They" would suddenly swoop down upon the farm and carry it away as the jinns in the fairy book carried off Solomon's palace ... and the restless uncertainty that seemed to stand between her father and any joy of possession.... All this, he had constantly explained with increasing emphasis as the farm grew more dilapidated, was not his fault, but the result of the mortgage.

Well, there was no need to lie any longer, as eight-year-old Mary had lain, with the bed-clothes drawn up round her ears to shut out the voice of the wind howling along the corridors, because it might be the voice of the mortgage, come at last from the dark sky to carry off "every stick and stone, lassie, every stick and stone." Her father had said that this would happen, and he must know.

He must know--must know what? Why, of course, that a bowl of water placed in the middle of the room prevented it from reeking with stale tobacco for days after a party. She must go and get one.

Mary rubbed a drowsy hand across her eyes. She must have been half asleep, sitting in the big arm-chair while the room grew colder and colder. Wearily she rose and walked towards the door.

Then she stood still.

Out in the hall she heard a faint rustling sound. It could not be a mouse. No one would be walking about now. It must be ever so late. She looked at the clock--half-past two.

A click as though a door shut. The dining-room door. Some one was up. Not John. She would have heard him move. Who then?

She stood hesitating, the handle of the dining-room door in her hand. It was strange to wait again like this, wondering whether one ought to go on into the dining-room because Father was there and the whisky bottle and that was an undesirable combination....

Well, it couldn't be that now anyway. She opened the door and walked across the hall.

The dining-room door was ajar. A strip of light wavered against the darkness.

All this had happened before. If she entered the room, Mary was sure that her father would look up from the table and swear softly at her intrusion.

Of course he couldn't. He had died over ten years ago. Mary had seen him die, crying aloud that the mortgage, the mortgage, the mortgage had got him at last, and that she alone was left to fight it.

Her breath came quickly. There was a scraping sound, and somebody sighed heavily. She pushed open the door and went in.

Janet Holmes, in a voluminous quilted dressing-gown, knelt on the floor near the sideboard. Seeing Mary, she rose to her feet with greater alacrity than the Harrogate specialist would have thought possible but unfortunately in her haste she dropped a china biscuit jar that fell against the corner of the fender, breaking in a hundred fragments.

"Oh dear, oh dear! How you startled me!" she gasped.

"Is anything wrong?" asked Mary severely. The jar had been a relic of her mother's lifetime. It was old Spode, and Mary loved dearly the twisting blue flowers on its glazed surface. She regarded it ruefully.

"Oh dear! I'm so sorry. But you did startle me so. It just slipped out of my hand. I hope it was not of any great value, though with these things it's not what they cost, is it? It's the things they belonged to--I mean, you know since we went to the Grange--late dinner--my digestion--the doctor at Harrogate said 'Now, Mrs. Holmes, always take food one hour before retiring,' and I thought perhaps a biscuit----"

"Oh, I see."

Ten minutes elapsed before Mrs. Holmes could be consoled for the omission of late dinner, Mary's inopportune appearance, and the destruction of the biscuit jar. Mary escorted her to her room, and then returned to gather up the fragments.

Fingering the broken pieces reverently, she forgot that the jar had been cracked before and only remembered it as a beautiful thing that had once been hers. The thought of possession was comfortable and satisfying. Mary's mouth curved in a soft little smile. Anderby was hers. The mortgage was paid. That was worth anything; worth unlovely dresses made in the village, worth the constant strain of economy, worth the ten year's intimacy with a man whose presence roused in her alternate irritation and disappointment.

"Nothing is wanting to make us happy except a young Robson."

Mary brushed together the crumbs from the hearth-rug and straightened her back.

Well, worth that too, perhaps.

She looked round the shadowy room--ghostly dark beyond her feeble candlelight. The smile flickered again across her face.

"May we never want nowt, nawn on us," she whispered.

Chapter III

The Kingdom

While Uncle Dickie was proposing his toast in the Robsons' dining-room, another party was in progress up the village in the smoke-room of the _Flying Fox_. The _Flying Fox_ was a cosy little inn, not frequented by strangers like the _Eden Arms_. The men who now sat there, smoking and talking, were old habitués.

On the high-backed settle near the fire-place sprawled Ezra Dawson, the Robsons' shepherd, a great soldierly figure in corduroys. A drooping eyelid marred his handsome face, half obscuring his twinkling left eye in a perpetual wink. He was holding forth to a young farmer who stood sheepishly near the table.

"Noo, lad, tha may be a clever fellow." The men on the far bench snorted incredulously. "Ah'm not saying tha is, but taking it for a parable like. Tha may be a clever fellow, but if tha marries a fool she'll ruin tha. And if tha's a fool and weds a clever lass wi' a good hand for pastry, who feeds lads well and keeps in wi' gentry and dealers, tha's fair fettled up and mebbe'll find tha self a rich man some day."

"Then mun I marry a clever woman?" asked the boy.

"Noo, lad, ah wouldn't go so far as to say that. If tha' marries a good-for-nowt,'un she'll ruin tha, but if tha weds a clever lass folks'll give her all credit and call thee a fool."

Bert frowned anxiously.

"Then what am I to wed?"

"Stay single, Bert," advised another voice from the doorway. It came from a short, red-bearded man who had not yet spoken. "Stay single an' tha'll never have cause to rue."

"But if ah'm single ah'll have to get a housekeeper. Our Liza says she can't stay with me much longer." Bert was genuinely anxious to profit by their counsel.

"Noo then, Shep," laughed another, "who'd you say he ought to get as housekeeper, a clever lass or a fool?"

Dawson turned slowly.

"Nay lad, did'st ever hear tell of a clever housekeeper?"

Bert scratched his head but failed to recall such a phenomenon.

"You see," explained the shepherd gleefully, "all clever housekeepers marries their masters. Y'can't get round women. They scores all ways."

"Ah'm not denying they scores," said the red-bearded woman-hater. "What I asks is--why do we let'em? Because we're fond fools! That's why. Take any man you like an' any woman you like and set'em to do t' same job, and ye'll find t' woman fair beat before they've been at it ten minutes. Talk about women's reets--if they had their reets they'd all be shut up in their houses wi' their bairns!"

"Missus been a bit pawky to-day, Eli?" inquired Dawson with a quizzical glance at the fiery orator.

The company nodded in sympathy. They knew the humour of a wife's tongue when the wind was easterly and the Christmas rent due, and another addition to the family expected. Eli Waite's domestic troubles had been a welcome topic at many similar gatherings, so, though he was unpopular and suspected as an extremist, to-night his audience was inclined to be gracious. But Eli disappointed those who hoped to hear further details of the Waite household. He changed the conversation.

"There's rare goings on up at t' Robsons to-night they say."

"Ay," replied Dawson, taking another drink. "T' family stayed on to tea, and health drinking and the like. Violet let me see table when I was up salting bacon this after' an' giv'd me a bit o' t' cake."

"And a drop o' whisky ah'll be bound," laughed old Deane. "Noo then, Shep, tell t' truth and shame t' devil."

"Ay. Mebbe a drop o' whisky. Allus keep in wi't women ah says."

"Ugh," growled Eli. "Ye talk o' women, Dawson, but ye'd any of you sell your souls for a bit o' dinner up at Mrs. Robson's. She knows how t' manage you all--coals an' Christmas pudding--an' then there'll be no grumblin' about wages at Martinmas."

"Tha eats dinner there tha'sen fast enough, Eli, when tha's chance."

"Ay. Chance is a bonny thing."

Eli turned upon the Shepherd. "Chance is a bonny thing wi' you, Shep, and Mary Robson--going following her aboot like a gawking lad, as if tha' hadn't wenches enough wi'out your master's woman."

"What's that?" Dawson's one eye suddenly opened.

"Ah only said tha' hadn't much self-respect, sucking up t' gentry," said Eli, retreating hastily.

"Ay. Tha'd better only say yon. Ah thowt mebbe it was a matter o' summat else."

"So did I, indade," broke in a sharp Irish voice from an obscure corner. A little, black haired man came forward and placed his glass on the table. "If you have anything to say about Mrs. Robson at all, you'll just have the goodness to step outside the door and repate it to me, slow and careful."

"Ah've no call to answer for my words to a drunken Irish harvester who stays beyond his times."

"Noo then, Mike," interposed Dawson. "Doant take on. Eli didn't mean nowt. 'E's been like a bear wi' a sore head ever since his missus hasn't been well like. Anderby air don't suit him like that out at Market Burton, does it, Eli?"

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Misther Dawson!" began Mike O'Flynn.

But Dawson rose slowly and laid one hand on the little man's shoulder.

"It's my business as much as your'n, lad, that no one here speaks words like them there o' Waite's, what I wouldn't care for Mrs. Robson to hear. Ah've known her since she was a little lass, an' used to ride her pony up to Sheepfold as pretty as a circus girl. Eli's a stranger like, an' don't know what we of Anderby does."

"Then it's me who'll tell him quick enough bedad, if he clacks his foul tongue again."

"Doant be a fool, Mike." Dawson's deep voice rose from a cloud of blue smoke. "Waite won't say no more. Ye see, it's like this here, Eli. Mike was sick two years ago last harvest up at Littledale, and Mrs. Robson went up at night an' sat poulticing him an' the like for long enough."

"'Twas pneumonia I had," broke in Mike, unwilling to surrender to another the pleasure of telling this story. "Like to die I was, and seeing the gowlden gates half opened an' she came to me like an angel from heaven.

"'Is it the praste you'll be wanting?' says she. 'Now what should I want with a praste when 'tis the angels themselves have come to look after me'? says I. But she only smiled and sent for Father Murphy from Hardrascliffe, and for three days an' nights she hardly left me side an' me with a pain like hot iron across me chest, an' me voice like the creaking o' the pump when 'tis oiling it needs."

"Ay. That's all very well for Robsons, but all folks ain't like that, nor all farmers either. Mrs. Robson 'ud give away her last coat if need be; but ah've just come from a talk wi' Ted Wilson--him as is gardener for Willerby's up at Highwold."

The speaker was a lean, melancholy man who had been fidgeting by himself with a draught-board in the corner.

"They're new folks, ain't they?"

"Ay. Wust turn old Granger ever did to Anderby was dying like that an' letting Willerby take his farm."

"I thowt Willerby was a decent, quiet sort o' chap. 'E doant say much, but 'e could do worse nor that."

"Nay, but yon's not trouble."

Dawson took a pull at his pipe and hazarded grimly:

"It's a woman ah'll be bound."

"Ay. I said to Wilson, 'Ow'd ye come on wi' missus these days?' Ah says. And he gives me one o' them there slow, considerable looks like, an' says, 'She doant like rattens getting in among 'er chickens.' 'E does fowls up at Willerby's does Wilson.' 'Well,' ah says, 'nor does other folks, but it's all fortunes o' war.' 'It's fortunes o' war when it's other people's chickens,' says 'e. 'But it's danged carelessness o' some one else's when they're your own. Missus is a bad loser,' 'e says. 'Why, she bain't mean, is she, Ted?' ah says. '_Mean?_' 'e says. You know that way 'e has o' waiting to let you get one word well chewed before 'e gives you 'tother. 'Oh no. She's not mean. She'd only steal t' shroud off her mother's corpse, an' then take on because it wouldn't wash!'"

"Ay," murmured Dawson sagely. "There's nowt so queer as folks."

"Except women, Shep," jeered Waite.

"Then what wages will they be giving up at Willerby's?" asked Bert Armstrong, feeling that as the only farmer present he ought to show a decent interest in the affairs of his new neighbours.

"Same as anyone else's. Same as Robson's. But when you get no bits o' beef, nor packets o' tea, nor nursing if you're sick, you can soon tell t' difference. Ah can tell you, Wilson says 'e won't stay after Martinmas unless things tak' up a bit."

"There you are," pronounced Shepherd triumphantly, removing his pipe from his mouth to give greater effect to his words. "'Tis t' woman again. Get a bad 'un and a good farmer's nowt. Get a good 'un and t' farmer don't count."

"If you think so much o' them, Shep, why have you never married yourself?"

"Ah've never yet found a lass wi' a bit o' brass who'd have me. If ever ah does find one wi' same mind as myself, ah'll away get wed."

"Tha mun have her rich then?"

"Oh ay." Dawson knocked the ashes from his pipe and prepared to depart.

"But if she turns out a bad 'un?" pursued Bert, in quest of information.

"Well then, she'll still have 'er brass, and a fat sorrow's better t' bear than a lean sorrow."

The company stirred and smiled. Old Deane in the corner shook his head.

"Ay. But you don't find 'em like Mary Robson growing on every hedge bottom," he said.

Outside, the wind tore at the stacks and hedges in a shrieking hurricane. It snatched at Mike's hat, and whipped the sleet across his face. He had left early, for work, interrupted that day, began next morning at six, and the long nights were short enough after back-aching days in the sheep-fold.

As he passed the railings of Mary's garden he heard through a lull in the storm the clop, clop of hoofs on the road before him, and Sarah Bannister drove past in a flurry of black shadows and yellow carriage lights. Upstairs in the Wold Farm, a single light burned and Mike, thinking it to shine from Mary's room, sighed sentimentally and murmured a paternoster for her soul's salvation. Neither his experiences as a soldier in India and Africa nor the indifference of his fellow workers on the farm had robbed him of a simplicity which somehow confounded the Mary of Anderby with the Lady of Sorrows.

Unfortunately for his pious intention the light before his shrine was only a candle carried by Violet into the spare bedroom where Foster and Ursula had decided to spend the night rather than face the violence of the storm.

Chapter IV

The Queen

Next morning Mike's devotion met with its reward, for as he rode along the village street, swinging his legs from the shaft of a turnip cart, he saw Mary emerge from her garden and turn towards him along the road.

Mike was whistling a tune as he rode, for after the storm the morning air was radiantly clear. In its cold clarity the sweeping curves of the Wolds, the filigree tracery of black branches against the sky, and the sturdy outline of the Norman church on the hill were as boldly defined as in an etching. From every blackened twig on the hedgerows trembled a lucid drop of moisture. There was a salt sting in the wind from the sea six miles away.

Mary seemed part of the freshness and gaiety of the morning. Mike watched her as she strode forward along the path, loving her buoyant, confidant movements and the sheen of her brown hair, like wet beech leaves below her small fur-trimmed cap.

She smiled at Mike. Her smile caught the sunlight and dazzled him.

"Well, and how does Becky go?"

Becky was the old mare who drew the turnip cart. Mary condescended to share with Mike the delicious intimacy of a secret that, left to herself, Becky would go as far as the _Flying Fox_, but there would stop, trained by Mike's predecessor to unbreakable habit. Such jokes gain point by frequent repetition.

"She goes well enough till she has to stop for her 'usual,'" laughed Mike. "Oh, Mrs. Robson, we're wishing it was married you were every day after the foine dinner we had yesterday."

"I'm very glad I'm not, Michael. You've no idea what a lot of work it makes, or how much washing up there is afterwards. And people about the house to get cleared away--and--oh, lots of things."

"Indade, it's lucky they are to have the chance of staying."

"It's not lucky for me. Here am I only just going up to decorate the Christmas Tree and late as it is because of everything. Still, there's fifteen years before our silver wedding...."

She smiled a gracious dismissal and passed on.

It was good to be alive, she thought, and good to be queen of so fair a kingdom, and to have worshipping subjects like Mike O'Flynn who paid her homage in the street. In no place sooner than in a village does philanthropy bring its own reward and Mary, pleased because her subjects' gratitude was swift, forgot it might be also transitory.

Everything had gone very well. Perhaps she had been a little too prompt in speeding her parting guests. Uncle Dickie had looked almost hurt when she bustled him into his carriage. But then such a busy person as Mary would never have time for anything if she always stopped to consider other people's feelings. There were so many really important things to be done. The Christmas Tree was important. She had superintended its decoration ever since she was fifteen. There was literally no one else who could do it properly.

Then it was a singularly pleasant thing to do. All the way up the Church Hill Mary was repicturing former trees and former decorations. She always felt a little awed by the tall, tapering tree, standing darkly green against the whitewashed walls of the schoolroom. Still untouched by frivolous hands its regal austerity retained something of the frosty stillness of pinewoods on a starlit night. For a moment--this silent dignity; then with the arrival of noisy helpers the scene became one of riotous carnival. For they carried boxes of coloured balls, bales of scarlet and yellow bunting, baskets laden with glittering tinsel, trumpets painted silver and vermilion, dolls in vivid muslin dresses, stars and medallions, tops and skipping ropes, and tumbled them in festive profusion over baskets and chairs. They tied the oranges on first and the tree was rich with the gold of alien fruit, then the stars and balls and spangled disks, and finally the gaily tinted candles in fragile metal stands, till the tree stood in many-coloured splendour ripe for its fantastic harvest.

She entered the school.

The room was in a state of chaos. All the desks lay piled at one end, so that the door would hardly open. At the other a group of women surrounded the tree.

The door squeaked as Mary pushed it open. Mrs. Coast, the schoolmaster's wife, set down a basket of coloured balls and came forward to greet her. She was always a little more afraid of life than usual in Mrs. Robson's presence, half admiring her, half abashed. Mr. Coast did not like Mary, and where Mr. Coast disliked Mrs. Coast must not admire.

"Well, this is good of you, Mrs. Robson," she said quite sincerely. Mary generally managed to impress other people with the immensity of her goodness. "We were just saying 'Now I wonder if she'll come, being so busy with everything.'"

Miss Taylor, the assistant schoolmistress moved rapidly out of Mary's way, accidentally stepping on two china ornaments in her transit. Her plump arms were almost bursting from her flannel blouse in their exuberant eagerness for work. She beamed upon Mary.

"Yes, I'm sure," she broke in. "Little Hal Stephens met me this morning with his mouth full of mince-pie and said 'Have you been to Robsons', Miss Taylor?' and I said, 'No Hal.' So he said 'Then you'd better go. Mrs. Robson's been getting married again and there's lots of good things to eat. But you know I still saw the old Mr. Robson about. What's going to happen to him now there's a new one?'"

Everyone smiled, recognizing that Miss Taylor, for very love of living, had to say something however silly on every occasion. Only the young ladies from the Glebe Farm were not quite sure that this was a proper subject for a joke.

"Oh yes," said Mary, drawing off her gloves and beginning to string thread through the oranges. "Hal came up with a note from his mother, and we had so much stuff left over from yesterday I just gave him some mince-pies. He's a good little chap and ever so useful his mother says."

"His brother works for you, doesn't he?" Mrs. Coast made a desperate effort to entertain her distinguished helper. If only Mr. Coast was not always remembering that time when Mrs. Robson persuaded her husband not to sign a testimonial of recommendation. Even if he was applying for a new post then, and Mrs. Robson had spoilt his chances, she was a very nice woman.

Mary replied serenely.

"Yes, he's third lad and John says he is going to be a very smart boy. We might put some of these oranges on now, don't you think? Lily, would you mind getting the steps? Your legs are younger than mine, my dear." Mary was mounted on the steps, an orange hanging from each hand, the boughs of the tree swaying round her in a curtain of feathery green, when the vicar entered the room.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Slater," she called. "Have you come to help us?"

"Good afternoon, Mrs. Robson--Coast--afternoon, Miss Taylor. Well, Lily, Gerty, how are you, ha? How are you? Most kind of you to come, Mrs. Robson--so busy--most kind. Cold weather for the time of the year. Yes, very, ha?"

The vicar came forward firing off little staccato sentences as he threaded his way cautiously between the boxes, baskets and kneeling girls who strewed the floor. Miss Taylor held out her hand towards him, then realizing that she was alone in her action withdrew it and giggled, the blushes chasing one another in rosy waves across her face. She had been a farmer's daughter before she became a teacher, and now her appearance was reminiscent of churns and milk-pails rather than desks and blotting paper.

Mary bent down from the steps.

"Would you mind handing me some of the stars now? Yes. Well, if you don't mind, Mr. Slater, I should be grateful. There! The red ones look pretty on the green, don't they?"

She came down and withdrew a few paces into the room to inspect her work. As she stood, with her head a little on one side and her hands full of scarlet thread and tinsel, Lily and Gerty from the Glebe Farm eagerly studied her brown coat and round cap with its soft fur hoping to gain a hint for their next fashionable experiments.

Mary made her judgment critically.

"I like that so far," she said, moving forward. "But I think there are just a few things too many on the left. Supposing we finish the actual decorations first and then see what room we have for the toys. And then----"

She broke off as a door on her right opened and the schoolmaster entered the room.

He was a harmless looking man of thirty-nine or forty, with a straggling brown moustache and stooping shoulders, but his pince-nez hid restless, hostile eyes and his thin nostrils dilated whenever he became annoyed, which was almost always, because the world seemed a contrary place for those born without a talent for success.

Directly he came in, the atmosphere of bustling cheerfulness deserted the room.

Mary turned to him with strained affability.

"Well, Mr. Coast, don't you think we're doing rather well?"

She knew he disliked her. She knew he remembered that day three years ago, when she had seen him strike Ronnie Peel in a fit of exasperation and had turned upon him with an outburst of righteous indignation. And then the testimonial. He had been told about that of course by one of those kind friends who prove their loyalty by revealing other people's nastiness.

But she was acutely troubled because somebody disliked her. Even if she was not exactly fond of Coast, that was no reason why Coast should not like her.

"I bought these blue balls in Hardrascliffe," she said, holding out a box. "Don't you think they're rather pretty, Mr. Coast? We broke such a lot last year, and this is a nice big tree."

"Very kind I'm sure, Mrs. Robson, but we had already bought some new ornaments with the Christmas Tree Fund."

"Oh I know, but there's no harm in having a few left over. Is there, Mr. Slater?" When Mary felt opposition from one quarter, she always tried to strengthen her position by approval from another.

"Well, really they are very pretty--very nice--yes--quite. Ha, Mr. Coast, ha?"

"It was very nice I'm sure, Ernie," interposed Mrs. Coast tremulously. "They'll do beautifully. I'm sure I was wondering how we were going to get all those top branches covered. I do hate a tree to look bare."

"Yes, it's shocking, isn't it?" sniggered Miss Taylor, then sank into a depressed silence.

Mary tried again.

"Are you having a good concert this year, Mr. Coast?"

"About the same as usual, Mrs. Robson."

The schoolmaster frowned with disapproval upon the trumpets tied to the lower branches of the tree.

Again there was silence.

Miss Taylor felt that something must be done about it.

"Lucy Morrison is doing a lovely skirt dance," she ventured. "And the sixth standard sketch is fine. It is called 'The Bells of Christmas,' and the girls wear fancy costume."

"That will be nice. Did you make the dresses, Mrs. Coast? I know how clever you are at that sort of thing."

The schoolmaster's wife lifted a timid head and hastily denied the presumption of ever having been clever at anything. But she had helped with the costumes certainly, though Ernie had told her what to do.

"Mrs. Robson"--the schoolmaster passed his tongue over dry lips--"there's a little matter I should like to talk to you about, if you could spare the time."

"Certainly, Mr. Coast. What is it?"

Mary was at the top of the steps now, fixing the Christmas fairy to the highest spire of the tree.

"I should prefer to speak to you in private, if I might trespass for a few minutes on your valuable time."

Mary shrugged her shoulders with resignation.

"Are you in any hurry?" she asked airily.

Not for worlds would she have confessed that the prospect of an interview alone with Coast scared her, that the possibility of his rudeness was dreadful to her.

"Oh, no. Any time that suits you will do for me, Mrs. Robson."

"Will it do when we've finished the tree?"

"Of course, Mrs. Robson. Naturally it would be impossible to finish the decorations without your kind advice."

"Hand me up another trumpet then, Miss Taylor, will you please?"

Mary continued to decorate the tree, whistling a little tune below her breath. All the time she was conscious of the schoolmaster's brooding eyes, watching her from below.

They finished the tree.

Mary was putting on her fur and gloves when Coast again approached her.

"Ah, Mrs. Robson, you are ready I see. Perhaps if you would step into my house we could settle that little affair more comfortably."

Comfortably! As if it were possible to settle any little affair with Coast "comfortably"! And certainly his house would not add to the comfort of the settling.

Mary, following Coast across the asphalt playground, wondered for the hundredth time at the weird phantasy of the too enterprising Victorian architect, who, fired by the inspiration of the Albert Memorial, had become a devotee of Gothic ornateness. She regarded its painted gables, twisted chimneys and sunless windows gloomily and decided that she was in for an unpleasant half-hour.

Mr. Coast's sitting-room was as unfriendly as his manner. Even the cuckoo clock, swinging its one wooden leg, and crouching against the wall like a hobgoblin, proclaimed twelve o'clock with a forbidding voice. Mary sat down and prepared for the worst.

The room was no kinder to Coast than it was to Mary. He shifted his weight from one foot to the order and sought for inspiration.

He was acutely miserable. Mrs. Robson, quietly sitting with folded hands inspecting the woolwork mats, the wax flowers under their glass cover, and the "Everlastings" in the mantelpiece vase, seemed completely mistress of the situation.

Coast hated his room. Everything seemed to have been there a long time, but nothing was at rest. He knew it was all in execrable taste. Mrs. Robson would think he didn't know any better than that. She would not guess that the furniture was bequeathed by Coast's predecessor, and he, with his mind fixed upon rapid promotion, had not thought it worth while to alter things.

He sought for an appropriate beginning and found none. During the previous days he had rehearsed this interview, casting himself for the triumphant rôle of vanquisher of the tyrant and picturing lovingly Mrs. Robson's final confusion. Now he could think of nothing to say.

"Well?" Mary from her chair raised calm, indifferent eyes to her host, where he stood by the mantelpiece frowning and biting his moustache. "I thought you had something to tell me."

Coast passed a trembling hand across his mouth.

"Mr. Robson probably told you of my proposal about the paddock."

If only he could find something safe to look at, he was sure he would be all right. His eyes travelled along the mantelpiece and the chiffonier to the bookcase. There in a row below faded novels and school readers were his books.

"My husband did say something to me, but I forgot."

"He probably told you that the County Council had made a very handsome offer for its purchase."

"They made the offer to me. The field is mine."

Mrs. Robson was looking at the books too now. Her glance had followed his. She saw a fat grey volume called "Capital" by Karl Marx and a paper backed volume called "Essays on Socialism" by Bentley Box, and a flaming orange cover, with scarlet letters announcing "The Salvation of Society" by some one whose name was too small to be legible.

"I understand," said Coast, "that you have refused to sell."

"My husband wants the field for sheep washing. It's the only paddock we have with running water. I believe you want the County Council to buy it to make a field for the children to play in. I don't think it would be at all suitable."

Even as she spoke she repictured the paddock, fenced high with hawthorn, and the stream that in summer dried to a thin thread. There John had found her one summer evening shortly after her father's death and had asked her to marry him. Well, her acceptance had been a matter of convenience rather than passion, and no courtship could have been more decorous. But in the shadowy sweetness of that evening she had dreamed of a romance she did not know, and the field was fragrant with memory. Even now she could feel the damp air on her face and smell the delicate scent of hawthorn and wet earth, and hear the tearing sound of cows feeding in the long grass.

"It is very suitable, Mrs. Robson. It opens straight on the playground, right under the supervision of the school house and it's a nice level ground."

"I dare say. But you would find the stream a great inconvenience."

"Not at all, it could be fenced off."

"Why, it nearly cuts the field in half."

"Not quite, I think, if you observe it closely. I see you hardly know the field," he added with patronizing gentleness. "Perhaps if you came down and looked----"

"My good man!" cried Mary, losing patience. "If you think I don't know my own land!"

She broke off with a short laugh.

"Not at all, Mrs. Robson, not at all. I was merely suggesting that you might reconsider the possibility of selling. The County Council have offered to buy this field in connection with the school. They rarely enough make generous suggestions of this kind. The field is admirably situated and I am sure we could meet you about the price."

"It is nothing to do with the price." Mary spoke quietly, a little ashamed of her last outburst. "They offered very rightly to buy the land at its market value. We suggested that they might rent it from us, but my husband and I do not wish to sell."

Coast turned away from her, but in the looking-glass above the mantelpiece he could see her smiling, determined mouth, and the complacent repose of her clasped hands.

"They don't want to rent it," he said, wrestling with his increasing irritation, "they want to buy the land and make their own improvements. Walls, and levelling and so on."

"Then why don't they try for the field in the village that young Armstrong rents from the Setons of Edenthorpe?"

"It's too big and not so handy. And being in the village they'd ask more for it. It might come in for building cottages. Your field is obviously the one, Mrs. Robson. You must see that you are doing a great injustice to the village if you won't sell."

"There is no question of injustice," said Mary, rising and straightening her fur. "I shall always be willing to lend it for the children's games, when we are not needing it for the sheep or young horses. But I will not sell."

"Yes, Mrs. Robson." Coast's voice trembled with anger. "I know that you are always willing to lend your land or your presence or your pony-cart. It costs you nothing and you get a good deal of credit for it from a certain class of people. But when you are asked to part with something that means a small sacrifice, but which will be of great service to the village, then it's a different matter altogether, isn't it?"

"I think you forget yourself, Mr. Coast. You will not find that your incivility makes me any more ready to sell. I don't think it is any use staying and arguing with you any longer, especially as you can't control your temper."

She swept out of the room.

As she crossed the passage, she caught sight of Mrs. Coast's frightened face, hovering like a ghost near the kitchen door. But she ignored its mute appeal and closed the front door behind her with exaggerated care.

Outside she walked with hurried steps along the path by the churchyard. Outraged virtue is a comfortable feeling. Coast had no right to speak to her like that. As if she wasn't ready to do anything for Anderby! Why, now that the Wold Farm was safe she had no stronger interest left in life than her care for the village. He could not help knowing how much she cared. It was common talk how she sat up all night when old Mrs. Watts had bronchitis, and how she drove every sick child in to hospital....

It was dinner-time now. She would be late and that was the schoolmaster's fault. She almost wished she had let John sign that testimonial and so get rid of the man. There would have been room in Leeds for him to lose himself. You could never get away from anyone in Anderby.

All the way down the path she assured herself that Coast was an awful man and that she was suffering from her difficult act of justice three years ago.

As she turned into the village street she began to feel uncomfortable. Was it, after all, so very important that she should keep the field? She who always laughed at sentiment, what did she hope to gain by it? A secret garden of romance? Or rather a convenient paddock where there were good mushrooms and running water? If ever she had loved John, it would have been different. She would have had a right to be sentimental. Still--she liked to pretend that once she had welcomed her lover like other women. The dream was so elusive that, without the field, it might vanish altogether.

And, anyway, Coast has no right to speak to her like that.

She wrapped herself in satisfaction, as in a soft, warm cloak.

The garden gate closed behind her with a clang.

She would not sell.

Chapter V

The Trees Of The Valley

It was a dreary winter. All day in the garden shrubbery Mary could hear the drop, drop of water from the trees. Christmas came and went in a sorrowful vapour of drifting rain.

Mary hated it all. She hated the long drives in to market down a fog muffled road. She hated the cold clammy feeling of curtains and sheets in the farm-house. She hated the loosened tile that allowed a slow yellow stain to creep across the ceiling of the best bedroom. Besides, she had a persistent cold in her head. It was all very trying.

She lay awake in bed in the chill half-light, awaiting for the church clock to strike seven. The curtains, drawn almost to the centre of the window, flapped and swayed, while the strip of luminous grey that must be the sky outside contracted and expanded with their wanton motion.

Below the bed-clothes at her side she could see John's humped outline. That fringe of soft darkness against the pillow was his beard. The sheet rose and fell with his even breathing.

The heaviness of his sleep annoyed Mary intensely. She might toss and turn and ruckle up the bed-clothes as she would, on sleepless nights when the harvest was bad, or there was a case of anthrax at Littledale, but the only sign of responsibility John ever gave was an occasional snore.

After all, it was her farm. Why should he worry?

Last night she had slept badly, dreaming that John hit her because she would not put a new cake of soap on his wash-stand. Just now she wished her dream were true. Life with John would be so much more tolerable if he would only just sometimes assert his personality. Strike her? Why, he'd go for days without soap rather than make the effort of asking her for it, and as for helping himself--why, he'd sooner get drunk at the _Flying Fox_ though the soap box was only in the wardrobe by their bed.

She clasped her hands round her bent knees and looked down at him. The Robson relatives said she bullied him. They did not realize that John's total inability ever to disagree with anyone about anything transformed even an attitude of consideration to one of tyranny. If Mary always knew exactly what men she wanted to keep after Martinmas, and what date she wanted the pig to be killed, must she refrain from expressing her desires because John's agreement was assured? What was one to do with a man who said, "Well, honey, you know best," whenever one asked his opinion on any subject from chicken food to Fire Insurance?

The mountain of clothes beside her stirred and heaved. John raised his head from the pillow, then sighed himself to sleep again.

Mary could just see his profile now in the dim light. Really, he was quite good-looking. People always called him "a good-looking man." And he was very patient and kind and unselfish--and had all the irritating negative virtues of the oppressed.

Oh, but one wanted some one young and swift and romantic! Some one who would laugh and quarrel and argue and make friends again. Some one who might occasionally utter an unanticipated remark.

The door opened and Violet came in with a can of hot water.

"Good morning, Violet; what's the time?"

"Quarter to seven, m'm. Shall I light the candle, and do you want the wall oven on this morning?"

"Yes, please. I'm going to bake for the Wesleyan tea."

John was waking up. He rolled over drowsily and stuck his head above the clothes, blinking at Mary with blue sleepy eyes.

His customary formula greeted her:

"What's the time, honey?"

Mary believed he had made the same inquiry every morning of their married life.... Ten years and five weeks.... Three hundred and sixty-five days in a year....

"Quarter to seven and a cold morning."

"Oh. All right, is it time we were stirring?"

"I think so. Violet has brought the water."

That was what they always said--the same things every morning. And there were so many remarks he might make. He might, for instance, tell her she looked rather nice, sitting there with her two heavy plaits falling across her shoulders, and the strong cream column of her throat rising above the frills of her flannel nightgown. It was a pretty throat, not reddened by exposure like Ursula's; because Mary nearly always wore high collars.

He might tell her she was pretty. That would give colour and excitement to the whole day. Perhaps if she said something pleasant to him he might be induced to return the compliment.

She watched him rear himself slowly from the bed, his great shoulders straining at the pyjama jacket. Clumsily his bare feet groped for his slippers on the floor.

"Eh, John, you great thing!" She laughed up at him softly. "What a giant you are! No wonder they call you 'Big John of Littledale'!"

He had found his slippers, and gathered round his body the dressing-gown from the foot of the bed. Without comment he turned and slouched across the room.

Mary felt as though he had slammed the door in her face. "Fool!" she cried to herself. "Fool! Wasn't I asking for it?"

Two hours later she stood in the red-tiled kitchen busy with her flour dredgers and baking boards and great jars of sugar and currants. She liked the warm buttery smell of baking and the mastery of familiar instruments and quick confident movements over tins and oven and wooden spoons. She enjoyed the blast of warm air that struck her cheeks when she opened the oven door, and the greetings of men who passed the kitchen window on their way from one stackyard to another.

When Violet came from the "front way" to make an eleven o'clock cup of tea, Mary was in a thoroughly good humour, her early-morning depression forgotten.

"I don't think," she said, rubbing the flour off her hands, "that you ever told me if you found your aunt better, when you went to see her in Hardrascliffe on Saturday."

"I didn't go. Please, m'm, are you ready for me to mash the tea?"

"Yes please--the brown pot. Why didn't you go?"

"I went to the pictures with Percy Deane."

"With Percy Deane? Why, what's happened to Fred Stephens?"

Violet flung the tea into the cups with more generosity than discretion. Mary's table suffered a little during the process.

"Oh. I'm off with Fred. Will you have a bit of cheese-cake, m'm?"

"Violet, why are you off with Fred? He's an awfully nice boy. I can't say I ever did think much of Percy. He drinks too much and he's not a steady worker. I'm sure he's not the man for you. Now Fred----"

"Oh, I'm sick of Fred. He's so rough in his talk."

Mary leaned back against the table and sipped her tea, conscious that, in spite of her easy patronage, she was bitterly jealous of Violet, of her youth and unconscious egoism. She was jealous of the suitors who rang their bicycle bells in the road on Saturday evenings as they waited, posy in cap, to ride with Violet to Hardrascliffe.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked.

"Oh, you know. When we go to the pictures and there isn't much room, Fred just says 'Shuve up, lass,' right loud so as every one can hear we're common folk like; while Perce, he always says polite 'Will you be so kind as to pass a little further up the seat, please?' I have myself to think of."

Violet tossed an independent head.

"But that's so silly," said Mary with common sense, "if you really like Fred best. He's devoted to you. You used to tell me you liked him last autumn."

"Well, I've learnt a thing or two since then. Anyway, I'd much rather walk out with a tailor's assistant than a common labourer."

"But it matters so much more whether you love him. It does really. It's not a bit of use marrying some one just because it seems a sensible thing to do." Mary's earnestness was quite remarkable.

"Oh--love!" sneered Violet.

And there was an end of it.

But all the time she was changing her clothes and driving into Market Burton with her husband, Mary was haunted by Violet's final exclamation. Possibly she was wrong. Her obstinacy about the water-paddock in the village, her advice to Violet, her wistfulness in the morning, were all part of a sentimental legend, invented by people to hide the emptiness of their lives. "Oh--love!"

Well, anyway, there was the farm and the village, and plenty of useful and important things to do. Really at her age, it was time she stopped being so stupid. John was a good husband, and at least he never said "Shuve up, lass!" There were compensations even in marrying an older cousin.

Her destination that afternoon was the drawing-room of Petunia Villa, whither Uncle Dickie and Aunt Jane had retired after their farming days were over. Anne and Louisa lived with them, and on Wednesday afternoons, while the men attended the Cattle Market, all the ladies of the family congregated there among the woolwork and antimacassars.

Mary had brought her sewing and sat a little apart, listening to her sisters-in-law run through their conversational répertoire--servants, ailments, the Medical Mission's sale of work. Among her husband's relatives she had gained an unmerited reputation for silence. But she was aware that every remark she made in Market Burton was repeated and criticized from house to house, and passed on continually, with the brief prelude, "Mary Robson says so and so," and the probable qualification, "Isn't she _queer_?"

Janet Holmes was concluding a long narrative.

"... And so I said, 'Mr. Jefferson, I've bought silk from your establishment for five and thirty years; but, after this, never again!' And I walked out of the shop."

There followed a murmur of approbation from the sisters-in-law. Then the conversation, having for so long dwindled into a monologue, ceased entirely, while a new topic was sought. Mary, who had formed a habit of trying to give people what they wanted, provided one for them.

"Did you know that Toby had bought a new car?" she asked.

They fell upon it with avidity.

"He'd better by half have kept the money to pay his doctor's bills. Molly tells me they weren't paid for last time, and now, with the new one coming, I'm sure I don't know how he'll manage." Sarah Bannister poked her knitting-needles sharply into the sock.

"Really? Another? Really? I didn't know," murmured Anne.

"You never do," Louisa commented severely. "Will he drive it himself, Mary?"

For a moment Mary wondered whether the inquiry related to the prospective infant or the car; but Sarah answered for her.

"He'll drive it himself for a couple o' months, and then he'll have a nasty accident one of these fine days and smash the whole concern, and start a new craze. That's what he'll do."

"I thought carpentering was the last fad?" Louisa transferred a pin from her mouth to the hem of the shirt she was stitching.

"He tried carpentering until their maid fell over his newfangled draught screen at the head of the stairs and broke her leg. Then he really had to stop turning his drawing-room into a joiner's shop. Louisa, hand me that other ball of wool, please." Mrs. Bannister made a practice of exacting occasional small services from her sisters, to impress upon them her seniority.

"If we don't take care," remarked Louisa, "we shall find the Tobys will be another lot of poor relations." Being dependent herself, she naturally objected to anyone else occupying a similar position.

"There's one thing I will say for Toby"--Sarah so rarely said things in favour of her relatives that the company looked up attentively--"I don't think he ever would be a poor relation."

"I'm sure he'll ruin himself one day," sighed Aunt Jane.

"Being a poor relation has nothing to do with how much money you've got. It's just a state of mind."

"What an idea, Sarah! You do say some th'ngs! I'm sure it all comes of his being a solicitor. My husband always said lawyers were no good." Janet Holmes shook a melancholy head.

"Solicitor? I wouldn't mind his being a solicitor," snapped Sarah. "It's when he's a carpenter and chicken farmer and amateur photographer that I've no patience with him. He'll be standing for Parliament one day just to try something new, you see if he doesn't. I've no patience with a man who makes a profession of his hobbies."

"I don't mind so long as he makes a hobby of his profession," laughed Mary. "John and I have put most of our affairs into his hands."

"Oh. Indeed. Have you? Well, it's your own fault then if you come to grief. Did _you_ advise John to go to Toby?"

"I did," said Mary. "He's our cousin. I'm sure I don't know who else there is."

"I advised John to do nothing of the kind."

Mary raised her eyebrows. This, from Sarah, was a confession of defeat. If Mary had advised John to do one thing when Sarah had asked him to do something else, and he had followed Mary's guidance, then it was strange that Sarah should acknowledge it. Sarah was strange, though.... Always had been rather clever and certainly odd. "Odd" for Market Burton meant any digression from the straight and narrow path of conventionality. You never knew what Sarah would say next.

Callers drifted in. At Market Burton a lady's social success could be measured by the number of teas she attended on Wednesday afternoons. Nearly all the ladies of Market Burton were the wives of retired farmers.

Mary continued to sew and to be depressed by the new-comers. Their hats were depressing; their shoes were depressing; their similarity was the most depressing of all. This was what life in Market Burton did to you. Once these people had risen early and worked hard, and wrestled with the soil that gave them livelihood, as she rose and worked and wrestled. Now, if they moved at all from their chairs by the fire-side, they rose and turned round and round, through the garden-bound streets and chattering parlours of the valley town and then sat down again. It almost seemed as though the rolling hills and open country had proved too much for them. Each generation was born, brought up amongst the scattered farms, worked for a while, and reared a new generation to follow after them, then slipped back into the sheltered valley to wither and die.

Snatches of their conversation drifted towards her across the room--maids, their sisters, the price of butter.

Mary shivered. They were as lifeless as the uprooted trees, carried from the wold side and laid in the back garden of the farm, awaiting destruction for firewood. Their talk was as meaningless as the rustle of dry leaves on brittle twigs.

Mrs. Holmes gasped her way across the room, and sat down beside Mary.

"Yes, you know," she began without further prelude, "I've just come back from Harrogate, and it hasn't done me a bit of good. Ethel, my cook you know, has given notice, and my nerves are all to pieces. You don't know a nice girl, do you? You're so lucky with maids, I know--always keep them. Then, of course, having a village like that to choose from...."

In the other corner Anne and Mrs. Toby, who had just arrived, were discussing the price of wool for socks. Aunt Jane's head was nodding in the arm-chair near the fire. Only Sarah sat alert and grim. "I won't grow like them. I won't!" thought Mary. "I won't ever leave the farm and come here to grow all withered and dry. I won't even stay alive like Sarah, and hate everything that alters because I can't grow along with it."

She hardly listened to Janet's tale of woe.

Then there was a sudden rustle and clatter and Ursula Robson entered the room. She came in as usual unannounced, and Mary wondered if anyone could be more unlike the ladies round the fire. From her scarlet toque to her high-heeled shoes, she looked about as appropriate in that Victorian gathering as Dodo in a Cranford parlour.

"Yes, I've just dropped in for a moment," she announced, greeting her relatives with breathless energy. Ursula had cultivated a manner that might convey to her acquaintances something of the reckless pace of that society to which she aspired. "Foster would go down to the market--such a bore when I wanted to get home in time to dinner. The Lesters were coming in afterwards to play bridge."

She peeled a long _suede_ glove from her slim arm, rolled it into a ball and tossed it on to the sofa before she sat down by Mary and asked cheerfully:

"Well, and how's John?"

Mary with amused interest followed Sarah's disapproving glance across the room to Ursula's ankles. When Mrs. Foster Robson sat down the sheath-like skirt below her fur coat slid almost up to her knees. Ursula, looking up too, caught Sarah's critical glance. With an impish gesture she thrust forward a little both her disgraceful legs and turned to Mary vivaciously.

"You haven't answered my question. How's John?" she asked.

"John's all right. I won't ask after Foster as I met him in the market."

"Then if you saw him in the market you saw the most disreputable hat in the East Riding. Mary, what do you do to your husband when he will dress himself up as an 'old clo' man? I've hidden that hat. I've danced on it. I've even put it in the rubbish bin, but up it comes again and goes to market on Wednesdays, as though he'd just bought it from Henry Heath's. What am I to do?"

"I should burn it," suggested Mary calmly.

Ursula at least was alive. She was not in any way a tree of the valley. It was a relief to know that there still were some people with vitality left.

Louisa's soft voice cooed disapproval:

"Wouldn't that be rather wasteful?"

"Wasteful? Good Lord, if you could see it you wouldn't talk about waste! Aunt Jane, you ought to be used to dealing with this sort of thing. What do you do with Dickie when he's obstinate?"

"Dickie!" Mary looked up with apprehension to see if the roof would fall on such astounding levity. But Ursula fully realized the extent of her privilege. She knew the awe-struck pride with which her relatives watched her prowess on the golf links. Her airy impertinences and elusive skirts were forgiven because Anne and Louisa loved to impress strangers with "Mrs. Foster Robson, the Golf Champion." And even Mrs. Tilly would talk confusedly of mashies and niblicks, though she had never been on the links in her life.

"Foster's going to Scotland for a fortnight next week," she announced suddenly.

"You'll go too, I suppose?" Mary asked.

"No. I don't feel up to knocking about much just now."

Mary flashed a discerning glance at her cousin's face.

Ursula smiled, a subtle, triumphant smile. A dimple, never long in hiding, flickered on her rounded cheek.

"Oh, Ursula!" cried Mary softly. "You don't mean?"

Ursula nodded, still smiling.

The sisters were all discussing an approaching sale of work, and the two women on the sofa seemed isolated. They spoke quietly. "Do the others know?"

"Not yet. I'll feel such a fool telling them. They always make such an ungodly fuss about these kind of things, and because I've been South for so long they forget there's any such possibility."

"When?"

"April."

"Well, anyhow _you_ are doing your duty." Mary laughed a little, but her fingers, tightly holding the linen she sewed, were trembling. She felt a little breathless, as though she had just found in the possession of another something she had sought a long time. Then the instinct that made her respond to an expressed need came to her aid.

"Look here, Ursula, if you feel rather bored at the idea of being alone when Foster goes away, why not come to Anderby for a fortnight? We haven't had any visitors--anyway, young ones--for ages."

"Do you mean that? I'd love it. It's so dull when I can't play golf. Are you sure I shan't be a nuisance?"

"Of course you won't. I'd love to have you."

She would. Because Ursula was young. Anything was better than this dreary monotony of middle age--when one was only twenty-eight.

"Righto. I'll come. And, Mary, I wonder if you'd tell the others after I've gone. I should feel such an ass and they're bound to know soon."

"Of course I will."

Ursula nodded and smiled and left her, to pay her compliments to Aunt Jane.

Mary sat and watched her. Why, she wondered, had she asked her to stay? Why had she promised to tell the family that Ursula, and not she, was going to have a baby? Why did one ever tell those faded women anything? Her news would stir them lightly, as a breeze stirs withered leaves to a rustling chatter, but that would subside too, and they would forget until the next breeze blew.

Besides, why Ursula's news, when she wanted so much to give them tidings of her own? Ursula had all the luck. It wasn't as if she cared for Mary. She only looked upon her as someone useful, and staid, and a little dull.

Mary pulled herself together. After all she had her work. She had Anderby. Her needle flew in and out of her material as she nursed this thought. All that one really wanted was that things should stay as they were. What did it matter if Ursula had a private income and clothes from London and an exasperating air of importance?

She could have a thousand babies for all Mary cared! One day she would retire too, and grow old, and come to wither among the trees of the valley.

Mary never would. Never, never!

Aunt Jane beckoned her.

"Come and talk to me, love. I haven't seen you for long enough."

Mary crossed the room and sat down by the big arm-chair. Aunt Jane sat, her bird-like head on one side, waiting for Mary to tell her something. She always sat like this, waiting for people to tell her something. It was her one interest in life, though she always forgot what they told her.

Mary knew she was waiting, but there seemed to be nothing to say. Ursula was still in the room, so she must not yet talk about the baby, but besides that she could think of nothing but dried leaves rattling on rotten twigs in a valley garden.

"Well, love?" prompted Aunt Jane.

"Have you been cutting down any trees lately?" asked Mary wildly.

Her sisters-in-law looked up in mild surprise, but Aunt Jane only shook her head.

"No, love," she replied. "You see since we gave up farming we haven't had any wood of our own."

Chapter VI

The Perfect Guest

Ursula stood in front of the looking-glass inspecting the angle of her hat. It was a new hat. She had put it on to impress Mary. Mary dressed rather like the worthier type of village school teacher. She wore flannel blouses with high collars. It was time some one took her in hand. "There's something about looking after a parish that makes a woman forget to powder her nose," thought Ursula.

Ursula had come to Anderby on a mission of mercy. She was going to brighten Mary up. Mary had been shut away too long with that extraordinarily dull husband of hers. She thought that the only thing a married woman could do, if she had any time left over from looking after her own household, was to look after some one else's. Well, Ursula was going to show her that there were lots of other things to do. The perfect guest was one who contributed something to the life of her hostess. Ursula was going to teach Mary how to dress, and play bridge, and behave like a girl of twenty-eight instead of a woman of forty. And yet she would be tender and gentle, with the tenderness of expectant motherhood--fashionable yet considerate, thoughtful yet spontaneous.

Ursula found continual pleasure in the contemplation of her own spontaneity.

Mary re-entered the drawing-room, carrying a tea-tray. Now was the time, thought Ursula, to lay her fur coat carelessly on the sofa, and reveal the soft grey draperies of her satin dress. What a mercy she looked so much nicer than most women in these circumstances. It just showed there was no real need to let yourself go.

But Mary did not seem to notice the dress.

"We're having a cup of tea now," she explained, arranging the tray on the table, "because I expect you would like one after your drive, and I have to go out down the village on an errand."

"When? Now?"

Then she would not be present while Ursula spread on the antiquated dressing-table the elaborate paraphernalia of her toilette--bottles, scent, powder, manicure instruments. She would not be instructed by the display of Ursula's fairy-like _lingerie_. She would miss part of her education.

"I'm sorry if it seems rude, but it's rather important. I dare say you will be glad of a rest, though."

"It's something that's worrying you, Mary. What?"

"Worrying me? Why, whatever makes you think I'm worrying?"

"My dear, you're hardly an expert at disguising your feelings. Do you mind if I have a cigarette? Now then, come along! Confession is good for the soul."

Mary must be worried if she was too preoccupied to notice the fur coat.

"I'm only going to see the schoolmaster about a boy John wants to come and work on the farm this spring. The schoolmaster says he hasn't reached the sixth standard yet, and doesn't want him to leave school."

"What are you going to do, then?"

"I'm going to Coast to tell him that the boy is thirteen and has put in his attendances. If he hasn't got to the sixth standard now, he never will. He's keen on sheep and hates lessons. On the farm he'll be getting experience as well as making money. It's absurd to keep him sitting at a desk chalking coloured flowers!"

"Oh, you talk to the schoolmaster like that, do you? But isn't there something about education acts and things? I don't know much about it. It's not my line, but the kid seems pretty young."

Ursula was not at all interested in lads and education acts. She wanted to talk about her own interesting condition or Mary's style of hairdressing. But she had made up her mind to be patient, and patient she would be.

"Mr. Woodcock," continued Mary with heat, "says in the _Yorkshire Chronicle_ that the people who make education acts are legislating for the normal majority. It is the business of local knowledge to determine the exceptions."

"My dear Mary, you talk like a Member of Parliament. Are you really interested in these things?"

"Rural education? Yes, of course."

"Why 'of course'? I'm not. I never put my nose inside Middlethorpe. I don't know if there's a village school or not except when the beastly bell rings in the morning--and yet Foster seems to do pretty well on the farm."

"It's not entirely a question of money though, is it?"

Mary looked at Ursula with grave, wide eyes.

"Isn't it? Philanthropy, then, and all that sort of thing, I suppose. Does your schoolmaster enjoy it when you snatch his lambs away from him? Does he, Mary?"

She laughed.

"No. I don't believe he does. But that's not the point."

"I don't really see that there is a point to it at all."

Ursula lit one cigarette from another and threw the dead end into the grate. She did not like smoking a lot just now, but really, with Mary----

"Well, some one's got to do it," said Mary.

"Why? Do what?"

"Oh, see that nurses are provided and that the girls get situations and--oh, I don't know. Besides, I like it."

"Of course." Ursula smiled pityingly. "I suppose when you have so few other ties----"

Mary flushed.

Ursula continued:

"You look tired. I'm sure you do too much. I shall speak to John about it. Why don't you go in for golf?"

"Golf? I shouldn't be any good at that I'm afraid. Besides Hardrascliffe links are so far away. I haven't time."

"Time? Of course you have time. As much time as anyone. As me, for instance."

Mary shook her head slowly, and began to gather up the tea-things.

"You'll excuse me going away now, won't you? I shan't be long. You'll just have nice time to unpack comfortably and I expect John will be in any moment now."

She left the room.

Ursula curled herself comfortably on the sofa and putting another cushion behind her head, prepared to enjoy a grievance. Really it was rather casual of Mary to go and leave her just after her arrival. She did not seem to realize her good fortune in having her cousin there at all. "She's hopelessly limited and narrow-minded. Poor Mary! Anybody so thoroughly pleased with herself must be disillusioned one day. She'll come a cropper soon," prophesied Ursula.

She was too tired to go upstairs and dress. Besides, what was the use, when John and Mary never changed for high tea?

Her head sank back among the cushions.

"Oh, that you, Ursula? How are you?"

John stood before her holding out a polite but rather grimy hand. His beard was grizzled with frost. His farming boots distributed little pools of melting ice on the carpet. Leather breeches encased his great legs.

Ursula sat up and patted her perfectly-ordered hair.

"Good gracious! I must have been dozing. How are you, John? I'm perfectly fit, thanks."

"Where's Mary?"

"She's gone off up the village somewhere. I say, John, you ought to keep an eye on that wife of yours. She works much too hard."

John tugged at his beard and smiled lazily down at Ursula.

"Oh, I can't stop her. If she wants to do anything she will. What's she up to now?"

"She's off to tell the schoolmaster some home-truths about a lad or something. She says you want him on the farm and he's under age."

"Jack Greenwood? I don't want him. That's her idea. How long has she been gone?"

"Oh, I don't know. Ages. Do sit down and talk to me."

John looked apologetically at his boots. Near Ursula's fragile daintiness he felt more than ever conscious of his bulk and clumsiness.

"Where's Foster?" he asked.

"He's away in Scotland buying stock. He's crazy about crossing something or other with Highland Cattle. _I_ don't know." Ursula seemed preoccupied. Her brow was ruffled with thought. "John, does Mary always rule things in the village in this high-handed way?"

"What? I dun' know. That's her business. I never interfere."

"But don't you see she's wearing herself out? Making an old woman of herself while she ought to be still a girl? Besides, after all, you're the farmer, aren't you? Of course," with a sigh, "I know she's magnificent."

"Oh--ay."

"But it must make it a little uncomfortable for every one if she will set the village by the ears."

John sat silent for a minute. Ursula lay and watched him, her sharp brown eyes quietly searching his ruminative face. There was something about John that reminded her of an ox--large, docile, fated. "Well, it's nowt to do with me," he said at last. "I'd better go and clear away some of this mess. So long."

He left her.

Well, it was evident that nothing could be done with John. She would have to concentrate on Mary. The determination to reform her cousin-in-law's existence pursued her throughout the evening. It would be an entertaining game, the sole relief of a rather monotonous visit to otherwise boring people.

Next morning she was awakened by Mary, standing over her bed with the breakfast tray. One irritating thing about Mary was that she always seemed to be carrying trays somewhere.

"Good heavens! What's the time?"

"Half-past eight. John wanted breakfast at a quarter past seven this morning. He had to go to Littledale early."

"Well, it's awfully ripping of you, but you know you shouldn't spoil me."

"It's not a question of spoiling," returned Mary serenely. "I couldn't let you get up so early, especially as I don't suppose you feel quite at your best in the mornings just now."

How like Mary to emphasize the unromantic aspect of a really rather romantic thing! Ursula surveyed the tray which Mary arranged in a businesslike fashion by her side. Mary's manner always reminded Ursula vaguely of a hospital nurse. She made you feel as if you weren't a person at all, but only an object of her philanthropy.

Ursula decided that the time had come to assert her personality. "Oh, Mary, I'm so sorry, but do you mind if I don't eat this bacon? I never take it now, nothing but an egg or a scrap of fish. No, no! Don't take it away. I might perhaps try to manage it."

"Oh, for goodness' sake don't eat it if it would upset you. I ought to have asked last night. It was silly of me. You really should have told me. And perhaps you'd rather have tea instead of coffee?"

"Oh, no. Don't bother. I couldn't think of troubling you. I'll manage with coffee this morning. It mayn't make me ill." Ursula smiled brightly.

"Oh, does it make you sick? I'll bring some tea in a minute."

Mary vanished from the room and Ursula lay and wondered whether it was worth while getting out of bed to brush her hair before Mary returned. Just like Mary to come in and find her asleep with dishevelled hair and her face still covered with the cream she had put on before retiring. It was not at all in keeping with the effect she had intended to produce. But perhaps Mary hadn't noticed much. Ursula climbed out of bed, wincing as her toes touched the cold carpet. There were always such appalling draughts in these old houses. A rug against the door would be a good thing. She mentally recorded the suggestion.

A deft fingering of her dark hair and the addition of a rosy satin wrap transformed Ursula. She snuggled back among the pillows as Mary came in bearing a teapot, an egg-cup, a hot water-bottle and a shawl.

"There now," she said. "That's better, isn't it? Now put this shawl round your shoulders. It's cold this morning, isn't it?"

"Thanks awfully. No I don't want the shawl, thanks. I have my wrap. It was sweet of you to think of it, though."

"Would you care to come out a little later?"

"I'd love to. I'm longing to see this wonderful village of yours." She shivered a little.

"Are you cold? Do have the shawl."

"No, thanks, but perhaps if you don't mind shutting the door."

"Well, then, I'll come for the tray presently. Don't hurry down. Have you a book? I left a few on the table. Have you everything you want?"

"Yes, rather. Thanks awfully. And what about a bath? Do I just ring when I'm ready or what? I could go along myself of course, only I don't want to give any trouble. Perhaps Violet----"

"Violet's busy this morning. I'm sorry we haven't got a bathroom yet. I'll bring some cans up to your room."

"Not a bathroom? Poor things! Why, if I don't have my bath every morning I feel perfectly filthy. And bathing in one's room is such a chill-some business, isn't it?"

"I'm afraid it is really. But you shall have a fire. I'll light one now." She lit the fire and went out, leaving Ursula alone with the tray.

* * * * *

Ursula waited quarter of an hour for Mary in the hall, and while she waited, she reluctantly yielded to an increasing sense of irritation. She had come to Anderby prepared to be very nice to Mary--and here was Mary trying to patronize her all the time. All that breakfast in bed, and fire and bath business had subtly transferred Ursula from the position of a friend to that of a dependent. "Perfection of service lies in the appearance of rendering none," quoted Ursula to herself, and decided she was badly used.

And when Mary at last appeared in the hall, she came forward with an apology which implied no shame but was merely a statement of courtesy.

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting, but the butcher's cart came round and then Mrs. Walker brought me her nursing subscription."

"Oh, don't worry about me. I've been as right as a trivet--only waiting about half an hour. Where are we going?"

"Well, if you don't mind I want to go up to the churchyard. Old Jacob Jordan died a day or two ago. They're burying him to-morrow and I sent a man up to line the grave with evergreen. The old people haven't much of a garden, and they do appreciate those little attentions."

"Do you go and decorate the grave yourself?"

"No, I only want to see how it's getting on. Here, let me open the gate. You'll spoil your gloves."

But Ursula was already tugging at the iron bars, and withdrew her hand, grimacing at the stripe of moisture across the doeskin gauntlet. She felt that it would have been becoming in Mary to show some sign of concern. But Mary only said quietly:

"You should have let me do it."

Ursula walked on for a little way in silence. Then she asked:

"Will you go to the funeral to-morrow?"

"Yes. If you'll excuse me for that time. It won't take long."

"Do you go to all their funerals?"

"The people in the village? Yes, mostly."

"Mary, how _can_ you?"

"Why shouldn't I? I don't mind."

"Funerals are so beastly depressing. If you go to a lot you'll get morbid and queer."

"I shan't. I quite enjoy them."

"Enjoy them? Good Lord, that just shows how fearfully bad they are for you. Enjoying a funeral! I never heard of anything so grizzly."

"It's not a bit grizzly really. If you lived about here, you'd understand. People enjoy them nearly as much as weddings and a lot more than christenings."

"Oh, I see." Ursula cracked a frozen puddle with the point of her walking-stick. "A christening may be a farce and a wedding a fiasco, but you know where you are with a funeral."

"Yes, I suppose so," said Mary calmly.

They had turned from the village street into a path that led up the hill to the church. Ursula took up her tale.

"All the same, I think it's perfectly beastly, making a kind of beanfeast because somebody is going to be shut up in the earth. Do you know, if you don't mind I think I'd rather not go into the churchyard just now--an open grave, it always gives me the shudders. I can wait outside."

"Why, of course. How silly of me not to have thought about it. It doesn't matter. I can go another time. Let's turn down here."

"Here" meant past the School House.

"What a hideous place!" said Ursula.

"Oh, I don't know." Mary resented anyone else who criticized her village. "Why, there's the schoolmaster."

"Is he one of your adorers?" Ursula asked, looking with amusement at the lean, black coated figure carrying a pile of books from one building to another.

Mary flushed.

"Not exactly," she said, but as Mr. Coast approached she smiled at him graciously. "Good morning," she called. "A blustery morning, isn't it? How's Mrs. Coast?"

She was not going to let Ursula see that there was any fly in her ointment of patronage.

But Coast regarded her coldly without a sign of recognition. From her he turned to Ursula, in her fur coat and rakish hat. His scornful eyes swept across them and he turned away.

Ursula suppressed a giggle of triumph. This was the worship offered by Mary's beloved villagers. The family should hear of this. "What a rude man!" she remarked airily.

"I expect the sun was in his eyes," said Mary.

Ursula decided it would be tactful to change the conversation. Poor Mary! She looked like a lion tamer when Leo won't sit up and do his tricks!

"You know, Mary," she began with pretty diffidence, running her walking-stick along the path, "you're such a dear. I'd hate to see you spoiled, and living this sort of life must be rather dangerous--likely to get you into a groove."

"What sort of a groove?" asked Mary.

"Well, all this village work and so on. And sticking so closely to your house and everything, as if you were one of your own aunts."

Mary held herself well in hand.

"I thought I had explained all that before," she said patiently. "You see we've had to economize a lot because of the mortgage. We only started even having a maid last year, though we could have two easily in that house. And I do a lot of the garden myself, though it's really too big for me to manage. You know the mortgage had to be paid."

"That old mortgage seems to have been the bane of your life, Mary. Thank goodness it's paid now and you can forget it. You ought to play bridge and dance. Can you dance? You look as if you could. You move rippingly!" Ursula hummed a few bars from a popular waltz. "And then--I know it sounds awful cheek on my part, but couldn't you do something about your clothes?"

"My clothes?"

"Yes. You know, of course, I understand it's been awfully difficult for you. And we all think you've been perfectly splendid, the way you've toiled and pinched to pay those beastly debts, but now they're all done with couldn't you go to some one rather more enterprising for your coats and skirts? Of course I get mine in town, but I dare say you wouldn't want to go so far. Still, there's York and Hull and Scarborough. Oh, lots of places where there must be a decent tailor."

"I dare say. I can't afford it though. We're not millionaires yet. John must get some capital laid by."

"Still, I don't see why you shouldn't do things, especially as you haven't any children to keep you at home. Now _I'm_ quite prepared to settle down for a bit after April but you really might be a bit more normal. Of course, it's been bad luck, having to save such a lot and all that, but it's all over now. You mustn't get in a groove."

Mary smiled, a queer, twisted smile.

So that was what they thought of the thing that had dictated the whole course of her life, forced her into marriage with a man old enough to be her father, and left her, now that youth was passing, deprived of every interest except her village work. Something that was all over, and might be comfortably forgotten.... Though, without it, she might be going to have a child as well as Ursula....

"Of course I dare say I've no right to say anything, Mary. You know it's only because you're such a dear really...."

Middle-aged. That was what Ursula said she was. Well, she often felt it. She supposed it must be with thinking about the same thing for so long. Monomania is an efficient destroyer of youth.

Well, if she was in a groove, there was no escape from it. Not by the easy way of tennis parties and bridge which Ursula suggested. She had placed herself irretrievably in the ranks of the older generation. If youth meant the adventuring towards an uncertain choice of life, then, when the choice was made, youth ended. Ten years ago Mary had made her choice. Henceforward she was captive in a "groove," and must descend in it steadily until the end of life, with no digressions that might lead her to the hill-tops of success or the valleys of humiliation.

She opened the gate for Ursula and passed behind her up the wintry garden.

Never mind! She would make it all worth while.

Anderby was going to be the most prosperous, popular, well cared for village in the East Riding before she had done with it. She'd show them.

She went along the passage with shining eyes and began to prepare dinner.

In spite of herself the elasticity of her youth had momentarily triumphed.

John followed her and stood in the doorway watching her with his slow smile.

She always knew when he had something to tell her. It was so irritating of him just to stand there without speaking. She thrust her tins into the oven and closed the door carefully before she looked up.

"Well?" she asked.

"Honey, I've just seen that chap Coast."

"Oh, have you? And what has he to say for himself?"

"He says that if you take young Greenwood away from school he'll report you to the Inspector and you'll have to answer for your action in Court."

John chuckled.

Mary tossed the oven cloth aside contemptuously. In the fine exaltation of her mood she could afford to laugh at Coast.

"Let him," she said. "I'd love to see him try to have me up before my betters. Think of old Sir Charles Seton's face when he saw me in the dock! He told Mr. Slater, when I was put on the Nursing Committee, that I was an estimable woman."

"Well, I wouldn't do anything rash if I were you."

"No, I'm sure you'd never do anything rash if you were anyone. Never mind. Go along and wash your hands. There's Yorkshire pudding for dinner, and it won't stand waiting."

Chapter VII

The Salvation Of Society

After Ursula's departure Mary doubled her parochial activities. She visited the wives of all John's married labourers; she ministered continually to the invalids and old age pensioners; she organized a dance in the School Room in aid of the Village Institute, and a whist drive in aid of the local hospital. She was going to make Anderby the most prosperous, popular, well-cared-for village in the East Riding.

The village regarded her efforts with mingled awe and irritation. Mrs. Robson was wonderful. Her generosity, her persistence, her catholicity of interest, all were wonderful. At the same time they were a little embarrassing.

"You've no sooner got your shirt in t' wash but she's after you to see if you want a new one," sighed Ted Wilson.

But even he agreed that she was wonderful.

One day she stood in a bookshop in Hardrascliffe, tired out by a week of perpetual activity. She was looking for a birthday present for John. Lately his silence had become so wearisome that she welcomed any opportunity of rousing his admiration or dislike, if only to evoke a remark. Now he might talk about a book. He seemed to enjoy reading about agriculture and even sometimes read her passages from the _Farmer's Weekly_.

Mary herself hadn't much use for books. Once they had been well enough, but now she was too busy to be bothered with them. There were quite a lot in the house that had once belonged to her mother, but none of these would be likely to move John to the companionship of criticism.

She stood indifferently turning over the volumes offered her by Mr. Forsitt the bookseller. They all looked a little dull, she thought.

"Haven't you anything more modern than these?" she asked. "I want something with a sort of kick in it. No, not a story. He doesn't like novels. Something about farming."

"Ah." Mr. Forsitt pressed the tips of his fingers together and meditated. Then he suddenly ducked his head and scurried off to the corner table. "I have it," he cried. "The very book for you, Mrs. Robson." He returned flourishing a volume in a bright orange cover. "Here we are! _The Salvation of Society_ by David Rossitur. Essays. Just out."

Mary took the book from him, and gazed at the vermilion letters across the wrapper. _The Salvation of Society._ Somehow the title was familiar, though she could not remember where she had last seen it. A queer title. Rather high-flown perhaps.

She opened the book and looked at the chapter headings: "The Generation at the Cross-Roads," "Revolution and Beyond," "The Reincarnation of Bestiality," "The Agricultural Calvary," "The Tyranny of Possession"....

No. It was not a Methodist production. What then?

"Yes, Mrs. Robson. I think I may safely say I recommend that to you if you want something exciting. I have not read it myself. Not quite in my line perhaps. A little rash, I gather. A volume of essays by a young gentleman recently expelled from Cambridge--or was it Oxford?"

"Yes?"

"Quite young, I gather. Oh, quite young. A mere boy, Mr. Locking tells me. The Reverend Mr. Locking. He has advanced views. Very. The parishioners at St. Paul's and St. Giles's hardly seem to like him. But there, he buys a good many books from us. Then there was Mr. Coast. He bought a copy--the schoolmaster from your part of the world I believe, Mrs. Robson."

Coast! That was it. Mary knew now that she had seen the book during that preposterous interview, when Coast had dared to condemn her for lack of generosity. It would be rather entertaining to discover what sort of literature appealed to him.

"Will it do for a birthday present for my husband?" she asked, smiling. Mr. Forsitt was an old friend and Mary retained a childish habit of taking tradesmen into her confidence, which many of her relations thought most unbecoming.

"Oh, quite suitable, I think. Very interesting to a farmer, I dare say. Let me wrap it up for you. Seven _and_ sixpence. And the next thing?"

She went home with the flamboyant cover discreetly veiled in brown paper. She quite intended to amuse herself with it that night before she handed it over to John. But when she reached Anderby Violet had toothache and the groceries weren't unpacked, and books were all very well, but one had other things to see about.

On Sunday she forgot all about it. On Monday and Tuesday she was busy washing and ironing. On Wednesday she drove with John to Market Burton. On Thursday she always churned.

That was a busy day. She turned and turned before the butter came, and, even when the churning was done, there were golden slabs to be wrapped in grease-proof paper ready for the carrier to convey them into Hardrascliffe. Mary felt tired as she washed her hands. Nothing exciting ever happened. There had not even been a satisfactory lot of butter.

Outside the starlings were chattering in the naked trees. The mild evening air--it was warm for February--might blow away that jaded feeling. She mentally reviewed her list of pensioners and invalids.

Mrs. Watts! The name flashed across her mind. She had not visited her for several weeks.

Mrs. Watts, being completely crippled by rheumatism, lived in a high-backed chair in the kitchen of her small cottage, attended by Louie, her half-witted niece. But from her chair the old lady could acquire in one day more intimate and extensive knowledge of village gossip than Mary could collect in a week.

So to Mrs. Watts she went.

Mrs. Watts received her boisterously. For a cripple she possessed remarkable vocal and mental energy.

"Come in, Mrs. Robson," she shouted. "Come in! Now wherever have you been all t' time? I haven't set eyes on you since back end o' Christmas. Has Mrs. Foster gone yet? When's baby coming, eh?"

"Oh, of course," laughed Mary. "I quite see it's no use my ever telling you anything. I don't know why I come here. You always know all my news before it's happened. The baby's coming in April if all goes well."

She drew off her gloves, laid a small packet of tea on the mantelpiece and sat down to enjoy herself. She had a whole hour before tea. One could learn a lot from Mrs. Watts in an hour.

"Well, and how are you?"

"I'se about middlin'. I haven't caught sight o' t' edge o' Peter's robe yet, and they say you've got to see that before you come t' gowlden gates."

"Well, I'm glad of that."

"Ay. I think you are. There's nowt goes well in t' village but I think we are glad on't. I don't know what some on us would do without you."

"Oh, you'd do well enough."

Lately a sneaking fear had found its way to Mary's mind that the village could do without her. It was comforting to be reassured.

"Nay now, would we? Just look at Mrs. Foster. What good d'ye think comes of her in her parts o' t' Wold? My nephew works for Burrages out Middlethorpe way, and I hear all goings on there. Why she didn't send so much as a jelly to Middlethorpe cricket club dance!"

"Well, she has other interests."

Mary was guiltily conscious that she found criticism of Ursula pleasant.

"Yes, she had a lot of interest in your chair covers, hadn't she?"

"Now what on earth did you hear about them?"

The old woman chuckled and, bending forward, patted Mary's hand with stiff fingers.

"Now don't you take on about that. Your Violet told her cousin, Mrs. Jellaby, what lives down in Spring Cottages. And she came in here a bit back for a talk and told me how young Mrs. Foster had been staying up at Anderby, and how she'd been wanting you to get oyster satin cushions with black borders. 'Ah've no notion what oyster satin covers is like,' ah says, 'but t' my mind, it sounds a bit messy.'"

"Violet has no business to repeat things she hears in the house."

"Why, bless you, don't you know a lass will tell owt tiv' her friends whether she's in service or not? Ye can't stop it, Mrs. Robson. Ye might as well get butter out of a dog's throat as a bit of gossip back from a lass who's once heard tell on't."

"I suppose so. But it's rather hard on me, isn't it, if I can't even keep my chair covers to myself?"

Mary smiled half whimsically, unable to be as annoyed as her dignity demanded.

"Now then don't you go fashin' yourself about your chair covers. If Violet says owt, it's never but what it's to your credit. I'm sure lass or lady, there's none better respected on whole o' t' woldside, seek where you like."

"Don't be silly. There are lots better. What I do, I do for pleasure."

"Ay, but it's a kind o' pleasure that takes it out of you more than you let on. What's happened to roses that used to be in your cheeks, eh? You've been fretting yourself because Mr. Coast wouldn't let you have Jack Greenwood for shepherd lad, ay. Mrs. Greenwood told me all about yon business. And how ye'd got him away now and all. 'Of all fond fools,' ah said, 'yon schoolmaster chap takes a lot o' beating.' As I said to Mrs. Greenwood, 'Eddication's all very well,' ah says, 'but it doesn't teach you to drive a waggon let alone a plough!'"

Mary sighed. So every one knew about Jack Greenwood too. Every one knew about everything. The fierce light that beats upon a throne is only a candle's flicker beside the searching glare of village criticism. It consoled her, though, to think that publicity could only further reveal her love for Anderby. And it was pleasant to sit in the dancing firelight, while the dusk crept up the orchard outside, and listen to Mrs. Watts telling her how wonderful she was.

Mrs. Watts knew that Mary found it pleasant. Mrs. Robson, she considered, was a very fine young woman, but as she talked a thousand past acts of kindness, of gratuitous attention, of charitable patronage rose before her. Somehow by her crude flattery she seemed paying a little of her debt back to the mistress of the Wold Farm, and holding over her, if only for a moment, that suzerainty which belongs to people who can give us what we need.

An hour later, when Mary opened the front door and entered her lamplit hall, she recalled with a faint sensation of disgust her calm acceptance of the old woman's praise. But after all if people liked her why shouldn't they say so? And if they spoke why shouldn't she listen? "It isn't as if it was likely to turn my head," she thought as she drew the curtains across the dining-room windows. "I'm not a little fool to be taken in by that sort of thing."

She really thought she wasn't.

At the same time she was glad that John had to attend a vestry meeting that evening, for she had suddenly remembered the orange-covered book. Mr. David Rossitur's acid comments on capitalist farmers were likely to prove an effective antidote to the cloying sweetness of Mrs. Watts's adulation.

She produced the book from a drawer and sat down in John's arm-chair before the fire.

At first, she read with knit brows; then her eyes opened wide; then she sat up straight in the arm-chair, her lips parted in a half-amused, half-incredulous smile. It really was an outrageous book! Mary was unacquainted with any political or social theories more violent than those expounded in the columns of the _Yorkshire Chronicle_. The only excuse for this tirade against capitalism, patronage and "the dependence of the proletariat upon the self-interested solicitude of a bourgeois minority," lay in the youth of its author. Of course he must be a mere boy--a student at Oxford, according to the preface. And they were always very young, Mary was sure. A footnote explained that the writer had spent one summer vacation on a walking tour, investigating the conditions in which agricultural labourers of the South Country lived and worked. It added that he hoped to continue his researches in the North at an early date, for the conclusions he had reached after his Southern pilgrimage had convinced him that the only hope for England lay in social revolution. Anything less drastic--the extension of trades unionism, or the political ascendancy of the Labour Party--was merely a sop thrown to the proletarian Cerberus.

"He's very fond of that word 'proletarian'" thought Mary. She was not absolutely certain what it meant.

There followed a scornful rejection of the passive optimism of the Constitutionalists. Darwin was denounced as a traitor to the cause of progress. "Society," declared Mr. Rossitur, "is perishing from senile decay, awaiting the fabled miracle of evolution." Reform could only follow destruction: destruction of empty loyalties, destruction of cowardly compromise, of a tyranny based on material advantage and sentimentalism that masked rapacity.

Quotations abounded. In his zeal to carry conviction the author rarely expressed an opinion without the support of some famous authority, as if his own cheques would not hold good unless backed by a great financier.

It was all bewildering, and ridiculous and intriguing. Certainly Mary had never encountered anything of the kind before. She became entangled in a labyrinth of obscure reasoning. She was belaboured by pages of savage rhetoric. She stumbled over unfamiliar phrases that recurred here with unremitting urgency--"Living Wage," "Standard of comfort," "Private capitalists." Quite half of it was wholly beyond her comprehension.

"Perhaps I'm tired," she thought. "I shall be able to take it in better to-morrow."

When John returned from the meeting, she rose regretfully and hid the book in the sideboard drawer.

Of course, it was all nonsense; but what amusing nonsense! And somehow, for all its extravagance, it was really rather refreshing. Some grace of youth and burning sincerity relieved its ugliest violence and crudest rhetoric. She wished she could talk to the author. It really was amazing that anyone clever enough to go to Oxford should know so little about farms. Mary would like to explain exactly why one had to look after people who weren't capable of looking after themselves and why one paid labourers' wages instead of every one sharing the profits. It was all so self-evident when one knew anything at all about agriculture. Of course Mr. Rossitur didn't. He was only a boy, whose tempestuousness was too childish to be dangerous, and whose idealism was too unselfconscious to be sentimental. Quite a dear, Mary thought, but terribly ignorant of what things were really like.

"I wonder whatever John will think," she mused as she undressed that night. The prospect of John's inevitable comment was highly entertaining.

Mary had only two days to wait before his birthday, when she handed him her present after the usual ceremonial kiss. My word, at least here was something to make him talk! All day she looked forward eagerly to his reception of the social theories of David Rossitur.

After tea she produced her sewing and, handing John his pipe and the book, sat down to await his verdict.

For three hours she sat silently sewing. The black hands of the clock crawled forward. The room was silent except when, every few minutes, John's hand flicked over another page. It was a quarter past ten.

A coal, crashing suddenly from the grate to the hearth, aroused John. He looked at the clock and put down his book.

"Bedtime I think, missus," he said.

Mary began to fold her work. Now was the time when he must speak. He must really. Even if he had very little to say about most things, at least he must have some sort of an opinion about this.

John was poking the largest lumps of coal out of the fire. It was his favourite habit of economy.

Mary could bear it in silence no longer.

"Well, John," she remarked as casually as she could, "what do you think of it? How far have you got?"

"Page 121," said John and, knocking the ashes out of his pipe against the fender, he went upstairs to bed.

Next morning Mary walked up to Littledale to see the foreman's latest baby. Coming home through the fields she recovered for the first time from her husband's rebuff of the previous night.

Really John's stupidity mattered very little on a morning like this. She wanted to race with the wind, to jump, to shout, to sing.

The freshly turned ploughland gleamed purple in the sunlight. A faintly pink haze caressed the stubble.

What did anything matter?

It was good land. What nonsense that writer person talked all about handing over property to the State to be run by syndicates of working men. As though just anyone could farm who thought it would be rather nice to walk about and watch the crops grow! Why, a hundred years ago this height of the wold had been covered by gorse and short-cropped turf. The sixty-acre and its neighbouring fields were still known as the "Sheep Walk." To produce this fertile soil her grandfather and her father and John had marled and manured and watched and waited as though nothing else in the world was of any importance. Even in her own day hundreds of tons of burnt chalk must have been scattered on the hill-side to make those turnips swell so gallantly.

Mr. Rossitur, if you please, thought the land was easy to own. Mary wanted to tell him that to care for it as she cared one had to give up everything--even the chance of ever hearing anyone say something more intelligent than "Page 121!"

From the other side of the hedge rose a sharp cry, half pain, half terror.

Mary looked at the thick interlacing of hawthorn, but could see nothing. Then came voices--a man's hoarse and angry, a boy's shrill with fear.

She began to run along the uneven road.

The hedge was broken by a strip of fence across the stump of a tree. Beyond, near a "pie" of turnips, stood a half-filled cart. Near it, crouching in the road, knelt the boy, Jack Greenwood, whom Mary had prematurely wrested from the Council School. Bending over him, with a short whip in his hand, stood Waite, the beast man.

"Stop that! What are you doing, Waite?" called Mary. She climbed the fence with greater speed than elegance, slipping a little on the damp wood.

The man looked up, with surly defiance.

"I warn't doing nowt, Mrs. Robson. This lad's an idler. He needs a bit o' stick now and then to keep him up ti'd mark."

"Come here, Jack," commanded Mary.

The boy rose and limped towards her sobbing, not at all unwilling to make capital out of his misfortunes. A furrow of pink, washed clean by tears, ran down his muddy face. He held one hand across his bleeding ear.

"What has he been doing, Waite?"

"He's an idle, good-for-nowt. Back end o' ten o'clock I sent him up to get the cart forked up wi' swedes, and as he never comed and never comed, I had t' come up mysen and see what's wrong, and here he was, with nowt to say, and nowt done."

"Did you ask him why?"

"Ay. That I did and all." Waite plucked a turnip from the pie with his long handled fork and flung it into the cart.

Mary was quietly examining the boy's injuries. His shoulder was bruised and his ear inflamed, but her opportune arrival had prevented further damage.

For a little while she did not speak. Her mind was again with Mr. David Rossitur, and his plea for the independence of the labouring class, and for a wider recognition of the innate dignity of human nature. Then she spoke slowly, almost as though addressing herself alone.

"Oh. So you sent a boy up to do work you are supposed to do yourself, and expect him to manage a horse, and to fork turnips into a cart he is too small to reach and, because he couldn't do it, you came and beat him, did you? And thought that no one would see? You know we don't beat boys at Anderby. Jack has only just started to work. I wonder what sort of opinion he has of farm life."

Waite continued to throw turnips into the cart. They fell from his fork with dull little thuds, punctuating Mary's speech.

"I didn't know Jack was going to work for you," she continued. "It isn't the first time you've done this sort of thing, you know. I can't let you go on working together because you obviously don't know how to treat a boy. And even if I take Jack away, you'll be up to the same tricks with some one else, sooner or later. So I'm afraid you'll have to go. I'm sorry--but I don't know what else to do. You shall have a week's wages, but I can't allow this sort of thing here, don't you see? Jack, come along with me and I'll give you something for your ear. No, don't cry, because you're not much hurt really, you know. I'm ashamed of you, Waite, and I hope you're ashamed of yourself. I shall tell Foreman and my husband of the step I have taken. You can consider yourself dismissed."

The man continued phlegmatically to throw turnips into the cart, his body swaying loosely from the hips as he stooped and lifted. He might never have heard Mary's voice, but as she went down the road she sighed, conscious that she had made another enemy. First Coast, now Waite....

The government of a kingdom was not always easy. Mary hated to be disliked. She loved to imagine herself the idolized champion of the poor and suffering, the serene mistress of bountiful acres, where the season was always harvest and the labourers worthy of their hire. Coast and Waite were somehow out of the picture.

Then she heard the squelch of Jack's boots on the road behind her. At least, in dismissing Waite, she had fulfilled her rôle as champion of the oppressed. She saw herself for a moment as she hoped Jack saw her, calm mistress of his destiny snatching him from peril, and she smiled again at the vision.

Then she wondered how John would take it when she told him she had dismissed the beast man. But even this, she decided, did not matter, and so went down to Anderby.

Chapter VIII

The Stranger At The Cross-Roads

Mary drove home from Hardrascliffe along a dark, wind-swept road. She had been busy all the afternoon helping Ursula to establish herself in the nursing-home where she was to await the arrival of her child.

Ursula was not an easy person to help. She had actually made Mary feel an interloper in the nursing-home she had visited all her life, by that air of off-hand familiarity with which she took possession of the whole staff. She had aroused all sorts of uncomfortable desires which Mary had thought were hidden deep beneath a weight of busy complacency.

Mary had believed she was cured of that disease. After all anyone could nurse a baby. Very few people had the privilege of nursing a whole village. Mary's tenderness benefited nearly three hundred people. Ursula's could only benefit one ridiculous thing that was not even quite a person. And, if John was a little dull, Mary was sure that Foster would have driven her crazy in three days let alone three years. The way in which he danced attendance on Ursula was perfectly sickening. Carnations at 6d. each in her bedroom indeed!

All the same, Mary knew she was not cured.

The cart turned in to the last street of the town. The air grew colder and more unfriendly. Between blackened chimney stacks Mary could see tattered wisps of cloud driven across a smouldering sky. In a minute the storm would break. Still, she was glad she was driving into the storm, not lying between some one else's sheets in a strange room, watched over by a lynx-eyed nurse, all starch and propriety. A doctor, too, dropping in at all hours to stare at her cheerfully and declare, "We're coming along nicely, aren't we?"

Having a baby was all very well, but it seemed to afford other people an excuse for conspiring against one's dignity.

With a rattle of hail stones on the splash-board and harness, the storm swept down upon her. She bent her head and drove forward. Really for March this was outrageous!

She wondered if she had remembered all her shopping: the flannel for Mrs. Burton's little boy, the currants and matches and mincing-machine.

Ursula had _crêpe de Chine_ night dresses and the bassinet in the corner was covered with lace and pink ribbon. Dreadful extravagance! Foster would be ruined before he knew where he was.

She touched the pony with her whip. He sprang forward eager for the stable. Then he hesitated and dropped into a stumbling limp. Mary put down the whip, drew up to the side of the road, and threw the rug across her seat.

It was very dark now and Starlight was restless. She climbed carefully out of the cart, speaking aloud in a comforting voice:

"It's all right, old man, it's all right."

Her attempts at conciliation were not very effective. Starlight stood, scraping the ground with his hoof. Mary felt her way cautiously along the shaft and bent to pick up the pony's foreleg. She could not see, and her groping fingers unexpectedly encountering his knee made him start violently.

Well, there was no help for it. She would have to get a light. That was a nuisance. She went back and reached one of the cart lamps. It clattered as she drew it from its socket, and again the pony jerked forward. She only just caught the reins in time.

It was all rather complicated--like one of those puzzles, Mary decided, where one had to take the geese across the stream without leaving the ducks behind with the fox. There were newly-strewn flints on the road, one of which was obviously in Starlight's hoof; but the wind whirled against her and nearly extinguished the light, and if she put it down she could not see Starlight's foot--besides, he was irritated by pain and would not stand still.

There really seemed to be no way out of the dilemma. She stood, holding the reins, and watching the steam rising from the pony's back in the glow of candlelight. If she were Mrs. Watts, she supposed she would pray about it. Prayer always seemed a rather cowardly shifting of responsibility on to other people, but what was one to do?

"Is anything wrong? Can I help?" A voice spoke out of the darkness.

She started violently, having heard no footsteps. Below her usual appearance of composure, she had always retained a childish terror of the dark.

Starlight was startled too and looked round with a rattle of harness. Mary handed the lamp to a pair of hands that reached for it into the light, and turned to pacify the pony.

"Poor old man! Poor old Starlight! Was the pain bad then?" She turned ungratefully upon the new-comer. "Whatever made you come up so quietly like that, frightening the pony?"

"I'm sorry. I expect the storm stopped you from hearing me. I thought something was wrong. I'll go away if you like."

"No. Hold the lantern, please. There's a stone in the pony's foot I think." Mary spoke haughtily. She was ashamed of her display of nervous irritation, and shame always made her haughty.

The lantern held by the stranger cast a delta of golden light on the stony road and the pony's hoof, which Mary raised to her knee. There, safely embedded behind the iron shoe, lay an ugly-looking flint.

"Have you a knife?" asked Mary.

Her hands were trembling, because the pony's breath came short and nervously. Every minute she expected him to start forward, and her imagination depicted her prostrate figure trampled below his hoofs.

"I've got a knife, but it isn't much good. One blade's broken. I might try, though, if you'll let me. You'll get so muddy."

"I won't," lied Mary stoutly. One knee was in a puddle, and she felt very wet, but she hated being seen at a disadvantage, and thought that her dignity could only be maintained by independence. "Give me the knife, please."

He passed it to her in silence, and she fumbled with frozen fingers at the blade.

"Can't you undo it for me?" she complained querulously.

The stranger unfastened the blade and stood silently holding the lamp. Mary struggled with the flint, but her usually capable hands were incapacitated by cold. The lamplight danced and glimmered across the snow. Cold trickles of melting sleet insinuated themselves between her collar and her neck. The flint did not move.

The stranger spoke again, very meekly:

"Won't you let me try?"

Mary stiffened herself for a refusal. Then he added plaintively: "After all, it's my knife, and you're breaking the only whole blade."

It was a young voice, certainly cultured, and possibly might have been attractive, had its owner not been suffering from an obvious cold.

"All right." Her assent was ungracious. "You can come if you like."

She rose stiffly to her feet and took the lantern. The stranger knelt in her place. She could see slim shoulders below a mackintosh and the back of a bent head covered with red hair.

The shoulders worked for a moment. Then a triumphant "Got it!" announced the success of masculine superiority. Unfortunately at that moment Starlight also "Got it." His foot being at last released he sprang forward, ungratefully knocking his benefactor to the ground.

Mary seized the pony's head. The stranger rolled adroitly towards the middle of the road and there was a small confusion.

Mary cried, "Are you hurt?"

The stranger said "Damn!" calmly and without prejudice.

Starlight backed slowly towards the hedge.

Then things became more peaceable.

The stranger rose rubbing his shoulder and announcing strangely:

"There are no bones broken, but the patient must be kept quiet." It was then that Mary first suspected him of not being quite sane.

Mary, who had managed in the confusion to retain her hold of the lantern, said:

"Oh, I'm so sorry. It's such a shame. And I was being so horrid to you, because you startled me, and really I was longing for some one to come."

Together they drew Starlight cautiously away from the hedge and replaced the lamp in its socket.

"Where are you going?" asked Mary. She had time now to notice that they stood near the cross-roads where the road to Anderby dissects that between Cattlesby and Beaverthorpe.

The stranger was brushing mud and water from his trousers.

"Well," he remarked ingenuously, "do you know, I'm not at all sure?"

"But where do you _want_ to go?" repeated Mary. No one could possibly go wandering about just anywhere on a night like this--not if they were in their senses.

"I don't think I want to go anywhere." His voice was suddenly small and pathetic. "In fact, I'm sorry, but I think I'm going to be sick."

He was.

Compunction seized upon Mary.

"Oh, I'm so awfully sorry! Are you hurt badly?"

She thought the pony must have struck him in some vital part of his anatomy. A desperate sense of helplessness assailed her. Supposing the man died here by the roadside, and she miles away from a doctor, unable to lift him into the high cart, unwilling to leave him alone in the dark. On the other hand he might only have had too much to drink.

"I'm all right now." The stranger's voice was shaky but more cheerful. To Mary's relief he walked across the road quite firmly and stood by the cart. "I wasn't really much hurt, only sort of winded and very much surprised. I know it's bad manners. I'm sorry."

He actually laughed, but his teeth were chattering, and he held tightly to the shaft as though he were not sure of his balance.

Crises made Mary practical. "Can you get into the cart?" she asked. Without further comment he climbed up and sat down in her seat. "That's my seat. Please move to the other side. And take care, the pony always starts forward directly I get in."

She scrambled up and they drove forward in silence. It was very dark.

"Are you all right?"

"Quite, thanks. Only a little shaken, not hurt at all. I shouldn't have let go like that so soon. I always go and spoil things at the end."

"Do you? Oh, I know that feeling so well! I do it too. And it's so much worse than if you'd been stupid all the time, isn't it? Because you forget all the times you've been clever and only forget what happened at the end."

Mary couldn't think why she said that. She did not usually talk in that sort of way. She did not usually feel so excited, as though something wonderful was going to happen. And yet it was nothing to give a stranger a lift on a stormy night. She pulled herself together.

"Look here, do you really want to go this way?"

"Where are we going?"

"Towards Anderby."

"What a pretty name! Yes, let's go there."

As though it were a matter of free choice, made on the impulse of the moment because of a nice name!

Mary turned towards him with frowning brows. The drink theory recurred to her. She wished it was not quite so dark. Or he might be suffering from concussion of the brain. It did make people queer.

She stopped the cart and began to turn the pony towards Hardrascliffe. She must find the doctor.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm turning the cart. We've come the wrong way."

"This is the way we were going before. We're going to Anderby."

"Yes, but we want to go to Hardrascliffe."

She must humour him.

"We don't want to go to Hardrascliffe. You were wanting to go to Anderby. So was I, though I didn't know it. How far is it?"

"Three miles, but----"

"Please go on. Is it on my account you want to turn back? Because if it is, please don't. I'm quite all right. I suppose there's an inn or something there where I can stay the night. And I'm quite well. Only muddy. I had this cold before I fell," he added apologetically.

"But, really"--Mary was only half reassured--"where were you going? You must have been going somewhere."

"I really don't know where I was going. I suppose I was lost. But now I'm going to Anderby. Once I've made up my mind to do things I always do them. And really, in a wet March, one village is much the same as another."

"But what are you _doing_?"

"Oh, didn't I explain? I'm on a walking tour."

"What on earth are you doing going for a walking tour in March with a cold in your head?"

"I didn't start with the cold. It came. It's my job."

"The cold?" Mary was completely mystified.

"No. The tour. The cold's my necessary infirmity. All great men have them. Look at Julius Caesar with his epilepsy and Pepys with his stone--I beg your pardon. That's not quite polite, is it? Look at St. Paul then, and the thorn in his flesh, and me with my colds."

"But how are walking tours your job?" Mary clung resolutely to the point to save herself from complete insanity.

"Because I'm a sort of a journalist on a holiday. I got headaches in Manchester, reporting and writing silly articles and things in the very plainest street you ever saw, so my chief, who is a very decent fellow, suggested that I should walk about in Yorkshire a bit, collecting materials about the life of the agricultural labourer, and lots of juicy statistics about capitalist farmers that will make them sit up and see the iniquity of their ways. Do you know anything about them?"

"Capitalist farmers?"

A little while ago Mary thought she knew very little. Mr. David Rossitur had enlightened her. She added smilingly, "I think I know a good deal. You see, I am one."

The stranger threw back his head with a laugh. It was that laugh which betrayed at once both his youth and his sanity. Nothing so gallant and infectious could have come from a diseased mind. His laugh seemed to shake the years from Mary and set her again in the company of youth.

"My sworn enemy!" he cried. "Don't you think you'd better set me down? I warn you, you are bringing a traitor into your camp. I am a rabid socialist of the dangerous and most disreputable type."

"You are nothing so romantic," retorted Mary. "You are quite a young boy with a bad cold who has just been sick in the middle of the road, and you are coming home with me. Evidently you are quite unfit to be wandering about the wolds by yourself. I don't care whether you're a socialist or not. If you're rabid, it just shows that you're not capable of looking after yourself."

"I'm not a boy. I'm twenty-four, and I take myself and my politics very seriously. It's the prerogative of mediocrity. And I'm out to smash your rotten social system into little bits." Then he sneezed three times. "And I warn you that I will never break bread in the house of a declared enemy of society."

"I never asked you to," Mary replied. Her pulses were beating furiously. A queer excitement caught her by the throat. She forced herself to be very matter-of-fact. "I think you will be very silly to smash anything. It's so wasteful. I think socialism and all that very silly. So does my husband."

For the life of her, Mary could not think why she had dragged John into it.

"I read a book," she continued, "about a month ago. A very silly book called _The Salvation of Society_ by David Rossitur. He thought he was so clever and modern because he prophesied that England was going to the dogs. My sister-in-law, Sarah, came to exactly the same conclusion long ago, though she hasn't been to college."

Mary spoke with heat. She felt annoyed because she could not talk more cleverly, though it was silly to be excited about a book, when the boy beside her, socialist or no socialist, was cold and wet and needing a hot drink.

"I'm glad you didn't like the book. It shows your sound judgment. I think it's rotten. Pessimism is the refuge of the unimaginative. I've outgrown all those destructive ambitions long ago, though when I wrote it----"

"When you--what?"

"When I wrote it I thought it was rather clever."

"But--what do you mean? You're not the author, are you?"

She turned towards him, but the darkness came between them, an impenetrable curtain.

"I'm afraid I am. My name's David Rossitur." His teeth were chattering with cold. "But of course I see now that co-operation, fostered from above simply with the idea of ultimate revolution, can never result in constructive reform. Now my ide