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Major Vigoureux, a novel by Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch |
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Chapter 18. Vashti Pleads For Saaron |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII. VASHTI PLEADS FOR SAARON For twenty minutes Sir Caesar and Mr. Pope beat the shrubberies, and even carried their search down to the great walled garden which was one of the wonders of Inniscaw. Tradition said that the old monks had built it, of bricks baked upon the mainland; and that it had been their favourite pleasance, because its walls shut out all view of the sea. Certainly if the old monks had built this garden, they had built it well. The Priory itself, of Caen stone, had lain in ruins for at least two hundred years before the Lord Proprietor came to clear the site and build his new great house on the old foundations; but these brick walls defied the tooth of time. Magnificent walls they were, four feet in thickness, heavily buttressed; the bricks set in mortar tougher than themselves. They enclosed two acres of rich black soil at the mouth of Inniscaw's one valley, where it widens into a marsh beside the shore. Between them and the water's edge stood the Lord Proprietor's new schoolhouse, above a small landing quay; and within the schoolhouse a class was singing as Sir Caesar and Mr. Pope entered the old garden. The children's voices came floating prettily over the old wall--so prettily that Abe Jenkins, the septuagenarian gardener, ceased working to comment upon it, leaning on his hoe and addressing Eli Tregarthen, who lounged by the gateway leading to the shore. "Always fond of children, I was," said Abe Jenkins, "though I never picked up courage to marry. 'Twas the women that always daunted me. And now I've a-come to a time o' life that I'm glad of it. A married man throws his roots too deep, an' when Death come along, 'tis always too soon for 'en. He wants to bide and see his youngest da'rter's child, or he wants to linger and mend a thatch on the linhay--his married son can't be brought to see the importance o't.... What with one thing and another, I never knowed a married man yet 'was fit to die; whereas your cheerful bachelor comes up clean as a carrot. What brings you across from Saaron to-day, Tregarthen? I'll wage 'tis to fetch your children back from school." "Partly," assented Eli. "Iss; partly, that, an' to listen here to their voices soundin' so pretty across the wall. And partly, I reckon, 'tis on the chance to get speech with the Lord Proprietor and persuade 'em to let you bide on Saaron. But that you'll never do. Mind, I'm not sayin' a word against th' old curmudgeon. He's my employer, to start with, besides being what God made 'em. But, reason? You might as well try reason on the hind leg of a jackass. Go thy ways home, Tregarthen: go thy ways home an' teach yourself that all this world and the kingdoms thereof be but what the mind o' man makes 'em, and Saaron itself but a warren for rabbits." Tregarthen shook his head. "A barren rock.... Come now, bring your mind to it!" Abe suggested, coaxing. "'Tis no good, Abe." "A cottage in a vineyard--what says holy Isaiah? A lodge in a garden of cucumbers--a besieged city----" "Abe Jenkins!"--It was the Lord Proprietor's voice calling from the upper gate. "Y'r honour!" Abe snatched his hoe and wheeled about sharply as the great man came down the path with Mr. Pope at his heels. "How long have you been working here?" demanded Sir Caesar. "Perhaps I had better have said 'idling,'" he added, with a frown and a curt nod at Tregarthen in the gateway. Sir Caesar's gray eyebrows had a trick of bristling up, like a cat's, at the first hint of unpleasantness, even at sight of anyone who crossed his will; and they bristled now. "'Been workin' here the best part of the morning," answered Abe, with an old man's freedom of tone and a complacent look backward at the patch of turned soil. "And 'might have been workin' yet but the children singin' their hymn yonder"--with a jerk of his thumb towards the wall that hid the school building--"warned me 'twas time to knock off for dinner." Now, the Lord Proprietor had meant his question for preface to another. "Had Abe, while at work, caught sight of a strange lady anywhere in the garden?" The question, if put just then, and in Tregarthen's hearing, might have changed the whole current of this small history; for Tregarthen was a poor hand at dissimulation--or, rather, was incapable of it. But the sight of his back, as he turned away, caused Sir Caesar's eyebrows to bristle up yet more pugnaciously. "Hi, sir?" Tregarthen turned slowly. "You are waiting here to fetch your children from school, I suppose?" "Yes," said Tregarthen. "And isn't that an instance, man, of what I tried to make you understand two days ago? Cannot you see what time and trouble you'll be saving yourself--let alone the children--when you're comfortably settled on Brefar and within half-a-mile of a handy school?" "Yes," said Tregarthen again. His eyes met the Lord Proprietor's without servility as without disrespect, but with a kind of patient wonder. "Well, then"--Sir Caesar turned to Mr. Pope for confirmation--"here is a man who--to give him his due, eh?--works as hard as any on the Islands; harder, I daresay, than his own hired labourer----" Mr. Pope nodded. "--A man," continued Sir Caesar, "who never gives himself a holiday; a man whose nature it is to grudge every hour of the day that isn't employed in wringing money out of a desert. Come now!"--warmed by his own eloquence to a geniality equally hearty and false, Sir Caesar swung around again upon Mr. Pope--"I daresay we may call him, to his face, about the best of my farmers!" Mr. Pope inclined, with the half of an embarrassed smile. As an agent, he felt any such appreciation of a tenant to be, if not dangerous, at least uncalled for, liable to be misinterpreted. He contented himself with answering--in a murmur--that Mr. Tregarthen had given the estate in the past every satisfaction; that it would surprise him indeed if (at this time of day) Mr. Tregarthen were (of all men) to raise trouble. But the Lord Proprietor, as a master of men, brushed this hesitancy aside, and with jovial tact. "A first-rate fellow," he insisted. "One of our best! Only pig-headed, as the best always are. And so, when I offer him a choice of two farms, each better than his present one, he must needs take it into his head that I'm doing him an injury. Such a man"--here Sir Caesar wagged a forefinger at the accused--"needs to be protected against himself. Such a man needs to be told--and pretty straight--that he is injuring others besides himself, and that, as I have authority in these Islands, so I owe it to my conscience to forbid his letting his children grow into little savages." Eli Tregarthen looked up as though a stone had struck him. The colour on his face darkened. Hitherto (though suffering from it) he had not argued, even in his own mind, against Sir Caesar's evicting him from Saaron. He had resented it, as one resents mere brute force; but he had not argued with that which had never presented itself as resting upon argument.... Though he knew himself to be a slow-witted man, Eli had a clear sense of his wife's wisdom, and that wisdom irradiated for him any argument which came--as this accusation of neglecting the children surely came--within range of Ruth. "If you dare to say that again," said Eli, "I'll knock your head off." All three of them heard it--the Lord Proprietor, Mr. Pope, and old Abe--though neither could believe his ears. For Eli had spoken quite quietly and distinctly. Mr. Pope was the first to recover; but before he could get in a word, Eli was following up the attack--still not hastily, still with a slow pause on every word. "You? What do you know of children, that never had a child? And what do you know of Saaron or any other island, that never took your life here nor made your living? You fill your pockets in a London shop; you go off to an auction, and there you bid for these Islands, that you've never seen. But what did you buy, you little man, over and above the power to make yourself a nuisance in your day? Was it understanding of the Islands? Or a birthright in 'em? Or a child to leave it to?... There, I do wrong to be angered with 'ee--you've got so little by your bargain! But you put a strain upon a man, you do--talkin' of children in that way. Children?" The man paused with something like a groan. An instant before it had been in his mind to tell Sir Caesar passionately that, so far from grudging the time spent in fetching Annet, Linnet and Matthew Henry from school, he looked forward to it as the one bright break in a day that began before sunrise and lasted till after sunset. It had been on the tip of his tongue, too, to say, with equal passion, that any man who spoke of them as savages insulted his wife's care of them. But eloquence had come to him, now for the first time in his life, as an inspiration. At the first check he stammered, and broke down; and so, with a hunch of his shoulders, turned his back on his audience and walked off heavily down the lane. Mr. Pope, with great tact, laid a hand lightly on the Lord Proprietor's arm and conducted him back to the gate by which they had entered. There, yet gasping for speech, the great man lifted his eyes, and was aware of Mrs. Pope and Miss Gabriel distractedly advancing along the path. With a gulp he pulled himself together, and walked forward to inform them that the chase had been unsuccessful; that not a glimpse of the fugitive had been discovered. Resuming a hold upon his gallantry, he hoped that his visitors would remain for luncheon. "After which," he added, with a creditable smile, "we may, if we will, resume the search in more philosophical mood." But here again Mr. Pope was tactful. He divined that his patron was suffering; that the wound needed, for the moment, solitude and silence to ease its smart. He was sorry to deprive the ladies of such a pleasure; but, for his part, business called him back to Garland Town. He had, he regretted to say, an engagement at two o'clock sharp. To be sure, if the ladies chose to stay, he could send back the boat for them.... But this he said knowing that his wife was thoroughly frightened, and that (as she herself put it later) wild horses would not induce her to remain, lacking his protection. The Lord Proprietor escorted his visitors down to the landing quay and there helped the ladies to embark. The search for the fair fugitive (he promised them) should be vigorously prosecuted. She was not likely to elude it for long, and he would at once report success. The leave-takings over, he stood by the shore until the small boat had made her offing, and so, with a farewell lift of the hat, turned and walked moodily towards the house. He was relieved to be alone after the morning's very painful experiences. Twice since breakfast he had been wounded in his dignity, and nowhere does a man of his nature suffer more acutely. Nor could the wounds be covered over and hidden, for he had taken them openly, almost publicly. His anger swung helplessly forward and back between the two outrages, both to him inexplicable. To be sure he had not reckoned on any gratitude for the gift of the breeches. But what had he done that they should be flaunted on a scarecrow?... Oh, it was monstrous! As little could he understand Tregarthen or Tregarthen's language. Some gadfly must have stung the man. A few acres of the barrenest land in the whole archipelago--and the fellow talked as though he were being dispossessed of an Eden! Yes, and as though that were not enough, he had used the flattest disrespect. The Lord Proprietor was not accustomed to disrespect. From the first his Islanders had treated him with the deference due to a king. Save and except the Commandant, no man had ever crossed his will or disputed his authority. His rage swung back again upon the Commandant. It was all very well to plead that the Commandant had been in church at the time; but, after all, an officer must be held responsible for his men's doings. Let Major Vigoureux beware! More than once the Lord Proprietor had been minded to memorialise the War Office and inquire why the taxpayers' money should be wasted to maintain three superannuated soldiers at full pay in a deserted barracks. "Upon my word," said the Lord Proprietor to himself, "I've a mind to run over to Garrison Hill and ask Vigoureux what the devil he means by it. Either he knows of this, or he doesn't: I'll soon learn which. In either case I'll have an apology; and, what's more, I'll teach him who's master here, once for all." He had reached the terrace, and paused there for a moment to draw breath after his climb, at the same time throwing a glance across the blue waters of the roadstead towards Garrison Hill and the white buildings upon it slumbrous in the autumn haze. The glance threatened mischief to that unconscious fortress and a sharp nod of the head confirmed the threat. "Yes, yes, this very afternoon! The sooner the better!" He swung about and stepped across the terrace to a French window that stood open to the air and sunshine. It was the window of the morning room, where he usually took his luncheon, and he passed in briskly, meaning to ring the bell and give orders to have the meal served at once. But, as he stepped across the low sill somebody rose in the room's cool shadow and confronted him, and he fell back catching at the jamb for support and staring. It was the stranger herself: the woman for whom they had all been vainly searching! "Good morning!" said Vashti, with a self-possessed little bow. "Oh, but I fear I have startled you?" "Ah--er--" the Lord Proprietor pulled himself together with an effort--"Well, to tell the truth? you did take me by surprise; the more so that----" "It was dreadfully uncivil of me--not to say impudent--to walk in here unannounced. But the fact is I could find no door along the terrace; nothing but windows. Forgive me." "Certainly, madam, certainly.... The front door is, so to speak, at the rear of the building.... But I was going to say that you took me the more by surprise because, as a matter of fact, I had just given up hunting for you." Vashti laughed. She looked adorably cool and provoking; and still, as he stared at her, the Lord Proprietor wondered more and more whence in the world she came. He knew little of female beauty (the late Lady Hutchins had been plain-featured) and less of clothes; but three or four times in his life, at public functions, he had mixed with the great ones of the land, and here patently was one of them. Her speech, dress, bearing, all proclaimed it; her easy self-possession, too, and air of authority. Out of what Olympus had she descended upon these remote Atlantic isles? "I saw that you had company," she answered, "and I ran away. To tell you the truth I was a little afraid of them--that is to say, of some of them. But what was Archelaus doing here?" The Lord Proprietor frowned. "Did he come to apologise? Oh, but that is just one of the reasons that brought me here! You must not be angry with Archelaus; no, really, it was not his fault, at all, but mine." "I think, ma'am," said the Lord Proprietor, "we are talking at cross-purposes." "No, no, we are not," she corrected him briskly with a little laugh. "We are talking about that unhappy scarecrow." She paused, as though checked by irrepressible mirth, and he flushed hotly. "And no, again!" she went on, perceiving this; "I was laughing at Archelaus--poor fellow!--overtaken here by his accusers. Did they make it very painful for him?" "Even supposing him capable of shame--which I doubt--I certainly do not think he suffered more than he deserved." "You are very much annoyed?" asked Vashti, suddenly serious. "Well, then, I am sorry. It was all my suggestion--though it never entered my head that anyone would be walking that way and catch sight of--of the thing. I meant it to be a little surprise for the Commandant when he came home from church; though when he returned and heard what had happened, he scolded me terribly." "You will excuse me"--the Lord Proprietor drew himself up stiffly--"if I fail to see either where the humour comes in, or why you--a stranger, unknown to me even by name----" "Ah, to be sure! My name is Cara." "Then, as I was saying, Miss Cara, I fail to see----" "And you are quite right of course," Vashti made haste to agree. "I ought not to have done it. But weren't you, too, a little bit to blame? It wasn't very nice of you, you know." "I beg your pardon? What wasn't very nice of me?" "Why, to hurt their feelings; and especially the Commandant's. He is a poor man; poor, and sensitive, and easily hurt." "You are talking to me in riddles, Miss Cara. I have done nothing at all to hurt the Commandant's feelings." "Not intentionally, of course. I told him--and I told the sergeant too--that I was sure you never meant to wound them. It would have been too cruel." "But," protested the Lord Proprietor, "I have done nothing, I tell you; nothing beyond presenting Sergeant Archelaus with--with an article of attire of which he stood badly in need. Miss Gabriel, some weeks ago, drew my attention to the state of the poor fellow's--er--wardrobe, and suggested that something might be done." "I thought so," Vashti nodded. "I dare say now," she went on, after seeming to muse for a moment, "you are one of those strong-minded men who find it hard to understand how sensible people can worry over what they put on their backs!" "That happens to be a constant source of wonder with me," he confessed; "though for the life of me I can't tell how you came to guess it." "Never mind how I guessed it," said Vashti, smiling. "The point is, that you take this lofty and very scornful view of clothes, and yet you must have noticed that many men of your acquaintance--men otherwise sensible--take quite another; that in the city, for instance, a hard felt hat is not usually worn with a frock coat." "Granted," said the Lord Proprietor; "though I could never understand why." "And you have noticed that soldiers are even more particular; and the reason with them is perhaps a little more easily grasped. Their uniform is a symbol, so to speak. It stands for the service to which a good soldier should be devoted." "If you had seen that man's small-clothes!" "Yes, I grant that Archelaus neglects his regimentals. But to neglect them, and to be willing to mix them up with civilian clothes, are two very different things. Perhaps you did not think of this?" "Really, now," answered Sir Caesar, "I should not have supposed that it mattered what these men wore, in such an out-of-the-world spot." Vashti's eyes rested on him for a second or two, in a kind of wondering despair at his obtuseness. But she controlled herself to reply quite patiently: "At any rate, it was wrong of me to encourage the men's resentment, and I came here this morning to beg your pardon." He acknowledged this with a bow, but stood silent for a moment, eyeing her. "You are a relative of Major Vigoureux?" he asked, after a pause. "No." "You are staying with him, I understand?" "No." Vashti shook her head, with a smile. "But I very much want you to forgive me," she went on; "for I have another favour to ask you." Again he bowed slightly. "You give my curiosity no rest, Miss Cara, and I perceive you mean to satisfy it only in your own way. As for the--er--incident we have been discussing, pray consider that--so far as you are concerned--I dismiss it." He did so with a slight wave of the hand. "You wish to ask me a favour?" "I do. I came to plead with you; to say a word on behalf of Eli Tregarthen, your tenant on Saaron Island." The Lord Proprietor started. "Are you at the bottom of that also?" he asked, angrily. Vashti's eyes opened wide in astonishment. "I beg your pardon?" she murmured. "I do not understand." "It seems to me," he caught her up, "that for a total stranger, you are losing remarkably little time." "In what, sir?" she demanded, facing him fairly, with a lift of her handsome chin. "In subverting my authority, ma'am; or, rather, in prompting others to subvert it.... Though, to be sure," he went on, in sarcastic wrath, "it may again be an accident that I happened on Eli Tregarthen less than an hour ago, and that he used very insolent language to me in the presence of my agent." "It was not only an accident," said Vashti, slowly, and with patent sincerity; "it was one that, since I came here to urge his suit, I would have given a great deal to prevent." She paused, and for a moment seemed to be musing. "Must I understand, then, that you refuse to hear a word in his favour?" "The man is a fool!" Sir Caesar clasped his hands behind him under his coat-tails, and paced the room. "His insolence to me apart, he is a complete fool! I offer him the choice of two farms--either one of them acre for acre, worth twice the rental of Saaron.... I simply cannot understand!" "No," said Vashti, with a little sigh, "you cannot understand." He had reached the fireplace, and wheeled round on her, his back to the hearth and his legs a-straddle. "What can I not understand?" he demanded. "Many things." Vashti met his eyes for a moment, then turned her own to the window and the blue waterways beyond the terrace, beyond the massed tree-tops of the pleasure grounds. "Many things, and the Islands in particular. You did not understand just now that a soldier, though condemned to stand sentry in a forgotten outpost, can still be sensitive for the honour of his service, because the root of his life lies there. You cannot understand that the root of Eli Tregarthen's life goes down into the soil he has tilled from childhood as his parents tilled it. To you Garrison Hill is a tumble-down fort, and Saaron Island a barren rock; yet you call them yours, because you have purchased them. And, nevertheless--to do you justice--you are not one who rates everything by its price in money. If you were, I could beg you to take a higher rent for Saaron and leave Eli Tregarthen undisturbed." He shook his head. "The man pays me a fair rent; as much as I can conscientiously ask. I have a conscience, Miss Cara, and a sense of responsibility. It is not good that Tregarthen lets his children run wild there, so far from school." "And if, sir," she went on, "you are doing this for the children's sake, I could promise you that there are means to educate them better than any children on the Islands. But the difficulty does not lie with the children. It lies in your sense of possession, which makes Saaron Farm there"--she waved a hand--"an eyesore in the view from this window, and simply because Eli Tregarthen has crossed your will. You defend an instinct of selfishness that takes about five minutes to pass into a principle with any man who buys land. You maintain the landlord's right to ordain the lives on your estate, and command them to be as you think best; nor does it seem to you to affect your claim for power that we understood and drew our nature from the Islands for years before ever you came to hear of them." "Radicalism, ma'am!" "Yes, sir. It is for the roots I plead, against your claim that the surface gives all." He thrust his hands under his coat-tails again, and took a turn up and down the room. "I do not affect to agree with you, Miss Cara," said he, not looking towards her when she stood by the French window, but stretching out his hand to the bell. "Yet, as owner of these Islands, I desire to be just. I desire also to understand these Islanders, of whom, it appears, you know so much more than I. And if you do me the honour to take luncheon with me--" Here he broke off, to ring at the bell-pull. "But I warn you I am tenacious as well as curious, and shall demand to know a little more of my lecturer." He turned and stood blinking. Vashti had disappeared. The room was empty. He took a step to the open window, sprang out upon the terrace, and glanced to right and left. The terrace, too, was empty. He hurried to the stairway leading down through the shrubberies. Not so much as the glimpse of a flying skirt rewarded him. _ |
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