Читать книгу The Lord of the Manor - Fred M. White - Страница 5

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'PERHAPS you will wonder why I tell you this,' Warrener said finally. He had been speaking for a long time; there was a fine glow of enthusiasm on his brown face. 'In the first place, I was pretty sure that you would be in sympathy with my idea. You did not expect anything so poetic from a business man?'

'Why not?' May asked. The glow on Warrener's face was reflected on her own. 'Two of the most delightful and fanciful books I know are written by business men. Take The Golden Age, for instance. And I suppose there is romance in business?'

Warrener laughed. He seemed to be very pleased with himself.

'Of course,' he said. 'Take my own career, for instance. We manufacture our commercial necessity in a village. That was my idea—the ideal working man in the ideal village! That was laughed at as a dream. But there it is—over two thousand workmen housed in model cottages covered with creepers—roomy, airy, efficient! We even have a theatre. We give pastoral plays in the park. And my people are getting enthusiastic as to Shakespeare! All that from prosaic soap! Oh, I can assure you there is much latent poetry in commerce. It was my education in this direction that first gave me my inspiration as to the common. But it is to remain a secret for the present. It is very fortunate for everybody that I am in time to avert the plans of those hotel people.'

'My father would never have consented,' May said.

'Probably not. But, you see, the matter is out of his hands. I am afraid that I am mainly responsible for this Hampden-like attitude of Samuel Craggs. I had quite forgotten the place of my birth. I had hardly visited it since I was a boy. Pardon my egotism; but it is necessary to tell you these things. My early memories are not pleasant; there is too much sordid poverty in them. Do you know that at one time my father wanted to marry your Aunt Gertrude?'

'I only learnt the fact to-day,' May explained.

'That was a real romance for you! My people were as poor—well, as you are. It was the most dreadful kind of poverty. My father had the opportunity of going into business, and he took it. It was a shocking thing, of course, degrading and all that. And your father had no alternative. He was conscientious according to his lights. But he ruined a very pretty and tender love-story. The tragic side of the medal lay in the fact that my father was not in the least fitted for business. It was only a long struggle against the black wolf of bankruptcy. I learnt the lesson that my father failed to grasp. I threw myself heart and soul into the concern; I became a master of detail. And to-day I have two thousand of the happiest employés in England and a fortune that is sweet and honest. Then I met you and your sister in London, and I fell in love with the daughter of my father's old friend. And when the time comes I am going to make Angela my wife.'

There was a clear ring in the last part of the speech, a challenge in the flung-back head that May did not fail to notice. Really, Angela was a very fortunate girl if she had only sense to see it. Yet Angela had been coldly polite to this highly successful trader; she had tolerated the emollient for the sake of the old family friendship. Angela was quite as proud and foolish as her father. Warrener flung back his head and laughed at his own sheer conceit.

'There,' he said, 'I have made my confession; and I am not in the least ashamed, knowing what the soap has done. It has given my mother her villa in the south of France, the only air that she can breathe; it has given my erstwhile little brother all that Harrow and Cambridge can afford; and there are other things. Is that not better than the smug contemplation of the family dignity and a set of unpaid tradesmen's books? There is a purse-proud person for you!'

'Nothing of the kind, sir.' May laughed. 'I like you all the better for it. But you have not told me why you are so interested in us.'

'Indeed I have. I have told you that I am going to marry your sister. And I told you something of the romance of Aunt Gertrude. And when I discovered that Angela was the one girl for me, I began to ask questions. Oh, I know all about it—all about the struggle to lay the ghost of the family pride, about the poor people at the hospital. I came down here and made friends with Sam Craggs. I found the emollient of the greatest possible assistance then. The hotel prospect I heard of in London. Then the Great Inspiration came on me like a flash. We could dispense with the hotel programme, which is by no means a pretty one. I bring back prosperity to the family at the same time, and that without spoiling the lovely spot or interfering with the seclusion of anybody. I may admit that Craggs gave me the first germ idea. For a long time past he has been pretty sure that your father would not listen to my suggestion. And yet I think that I have convinced you that here is a veritable goldmine.'

May nodded thoughtfully. She had been absolutely convinced. She was also absolutely convinced that her father would have nothing whatever to do with it. Still, if Craggs was right, happily Mr. Castlerayne would not be in a position to interfere.

'Let us go and discuss it with Craggs,' Warrener suggested. 'I will tell him that you have come over to the side of the angels. He is very fond of you.'

On the crest of the hill, beyond the belt of pines, the hospital lay, a series of stone buildings with a chapel in the centre. The place was quite two centuries old; the stone part was ruddy and violet and saffron with the beating of bygone storms; on the green in front two good old cedars slanted in from the direction of the sea. There were hammered-iron railings in front, with the device of the Castleraynes worked into them. There was something purely feudal about the idea of these pensioners on the bounty of the head of the clan. It would have been much purer still had the income been a regular one and not a precarious dripping of doles from the overlord, who was little better than a pauper himself.

Under one of the slanting cedars, guarded from the sunshine, sat an old man reading a big volume by the aid of a pair of round iron-rimmed spectacles. His face was grooved and knotted, filled with crossed lines like the rind of a melon. He had bushy eyebrows and a chin of aggressive obstinacy. His hands were drawn and knotted by chronic rheumatism. He put aside his book with a palpable sigh as he saw his visitors.

'Well, Craggs,' Warrener said cheerfully, 'I have brought Miss May to see you—brought another convert to the Great Conspiracy!'

'She always had the brains of the family, did Miss May,' Craggs said bluntly. 'Not that I'm going to say a word against Miss Gertrude. Spending her little fortune, she is, on we folks here, and makes me downright mad to think on. But these poor creatures here as would never go to the House, nor should they be asked to, seeing as the place rightly belongs to we. It was all right so long as the plumbago lasted; it was not so bad till our mineral spring gave out; but latterly it's the bread of charity, and right nasty stuff it is. But I'm going to stop all that.'

The speaker brought his knotted hands together with a snap. The village cobbler seemed to be terribly in earnest. The others let him run on for the time.

'I found things out,' he said. 'This common belongs to us; and it comes hard if we can't get a living out of it and be independent of everybody. Time was when every rood of ground maintained its man. That's Goldsmith, as wrote the Deserted Village—a proper Radical he were, surely. And when I found out as every rood here belonged to us, I began to rack my brains for a way to turn it to account. Not as I liked the hotel idea; I liked it so little that I said nothing further, as the squire would have to put a stop to that. And then Mr. Warrener here comes along with a good notion as tickles me dreadfully. I don't know whether he said anything to you about it, miss.'

'Mr Warrener has been so good as to take me into his confidence.' May smiled. 'I regard the scheme as a distinct inspiration. I wonder it has not been thought of before. But you are going to be the man to bring it all about, Craggs.'

The old cobbler flushed with pride. The gray eyes twinkled under the bushy brows. Given scope and opportunity, Craggs would have been a great reformer, he would have been a good parliamentary debater; he had a rugged eloquence of his own. Strange that so great a Radical should have been in so uncongenial a soil. Yet he was conservative enough to dislike the idea of anything like constitutional change in the environment of his birth.

'I love the old place,' he said. 'For seventy years I've lived here. I buried my wife and my two children back yonder; and I came to the hospital feeling as I had earned my rest, not to eat the bread of charity. It lies too cold and sour in the stomach for me. What I want to see arising from the place is income; the unearned increment does not appeal to me. And yet I don't want to see the place cut up and spoilt. This is a place made by God Almighty for people to breathe the fresh air and be grateful for the gift of life—a kind of sanatorium made natural. And Mr. Warrener has found the way to do it, which comes of education and a proper use of the brain as Providence has given him.'

'That is very nice of you,' Warrener said gently. 'Your dream is pretty certain to come true, Craggs, provided that you are right as to your reading of the charter. According to your argument, the common belongs to the hospitallers to do as they please with.'

'Not to sell it,' Craggs remarked. 'Let's be fair. The chief rights belong to the Lord of the Manor, which is Mr. Castlerayne and his heirs for ever; but to work the place to the best advantage and to apply it to any legitimate purpose by means of which we can derive benefits by way of income. That's what my lawyers in Hardborough say, and they are prepared to fight the matter out for me. And the squire will fight us for certain. I've got five hundred pounds to go on with.'

Craggs paused and looked uncomfortable under the close gaze of May Castlerayne. He had a shrewd idea that she knew where the five hundred pounds had come from.

'It won't be wasted, miss,' he said almost penitently. 'Like bread cast upon the waters, it will come back after many days—ay, and not so many days either. That money came from an angel, if ever there was one, and every coin of it is blessed. And who's the squire that he should stand like a stone in the path of progress?'

The latter question was flung like a missile at the head of May. She had no answer to the challenge. She smiled in a pleased kind of way.

'When Craggs falls back on that frame of mind I always fear him,' she said. 'Let us go back to the house, Mr. Warrener; you will come and have a cup of tea. My father would never forgive me if I allowed you to go without something, even if it is only a cup of tea.'