“I am afraid I must ask both you and Edward to make other plans.”
She gazed at him.
“Other plans?”
“Yes. I do not wish to inconvenience you in any way, but Fullerby is quite past his work. It has been obvious for a long time, and I have now given him notice. The gardener whom I am going to engage has a family, and will have to be provided with a cottage. James was only able to offer you this lodge because Fullerby owned his own house in the village.”
Emmeline looked quite bewildered.
“But, Arnold, I’ve been here for sixteen years. I never thought-”
“Perhaps you will do so now. If you are in any doubt about the legal position, let me reassure you. You had no agreement about the lodge, I believe, and you have never paid any rent for it.”
“No,” said Emmeline. Then, after a little pause, “James was a very kind brother.”
He remained where he was, silhouetted against the sunny garden.
“You had no agreement, and you paid no rent. The furniture, such as it is, was, I believe, put into the house and lent to you by James.”
“Some of the things are my own.”
“No doubt. But you cannot claim an unfurnished tenancy. You cannot, in fact, claim a tenancy at all. James allowed you to reside here because he did not require the house for a gardener. I do.”
Emmeline’s hands had remained folded in the lap of her blue smock. Her eyes maintained the wide puzzled look which he found so absurd in a woman of her age. It was almost as if she did not understand what he was saying. He raised his voice.
“As I said, I have no desire to inconvenience you. You will probably want to look round before you settle again. I would suggest that you go into rooms in Embank or anywhere else that may suit you-” He stopped because she was shaking her head.
“No, I should not care about that.”
“Well, of course I have no wish to dictate.”
She looked at him very directly and said,
“It is not because of Fullerby and the new gardener-is it, Arnold? It is because of Edward. You do not like Edward to be here.”
“I do not think it at all suitable that he should be here.”
“It has always been his home, Arnold. It would still be his home if James had not believed that he was dead.”
His cold composure broke.
“Burlingham has given him this agency for the express purpose of making things unpleasant for me! It is, I suppose, his vulgar idea of a joke! Take the black sheep of the family and set him down at your neighbour’s gate! One doesn’t expect anything from a pig but a grunt, but I must say, Emmeline, I am surprised that you should lend yourself to such a discreditable manoeuvre! Since you appear to have an affection for Edward, you ought to be able to see that you are doing him a great disservice by pushing him into the limelight and raking up a lot of things which would be much better forgotten. If you really care for him you would do better to persuade him to go elsewhere.”
She maintained her gaze.
“And if he did?”
“It would be a great deal better for him. If he goes where nobody knows him he can make a fresh start, and there will be no interest in where he has been or what he has done during the last five years. Whereas here-” He threw up his head with a movement which brought his profile into relief. “Why should he come back here, where every second person has some fresh scandalous theory to account for the time he was away? Burlingham’s motive is plain enough. He knows what I think of him, and in his own vulgar parlance, he would like to score me off. But what is Edward’s motive-and what is yours? I tell you, I won’t have it, and if he comes here, you must go!”
The last word was almost shouted. To anyone who did not know him very well indeed the scene would have been a surprising one. Emmeline was not surprised. This slipping of control-she had seen it happen before. Quite suddenly, as it had happened now-when a dog with which he was playing had snapped-when a horse had put his foot in a hole and let him down-when he had done something which he did not care to have known and was confronted with the consequences. She had always known that under an appearance of coolness and reserve there was something in Arnold that was unstable, something which under pressure was liable to slip. She sat looking at him now, and wondered what the pressure might be.
For his part, Arnold was aghast. The interview had got completely out of hand. He was saying all the things he had not meant to say. They burned at the back of his mind, but he had not meant to give them words. He had intended to be calm, reasonable, and dignified. He was engaging a new gardener, he required the lodge, he was reluctantly compelled to ask Emmeline to make other arrangements. There was not to have been the most distant allusion to Edward. Impossible now to revert to the calmly ordered plan.
Emmeline looked at him, her eyes very blue above the faded cotton smock, and said,
“Why are you afraid of Edward coming here?”
CHAPTER VII
Susan walked back from the shop with her postcards and a present of tomatoes for Emmeline. “My own growing,” Mrs. Alexander had told her. “And I don’t know that I ought to say so, but the plants come from Mr. Fullerby. Wonderful successful he have always been with the tomatoes up at the Hall- won all the prizes with them at the Embank Shows. Pity he’s leaving.”
“Oh, is he?”
“Well, you won’t say I said so, but I did hear tell as he was. Seems he and Mr. Arnold don’t rightly get on together. And maybe he won’t be sorry. He’s got his house, and there’ll be the old age pension, and if he wants to do a bit of jobbing work, there’s Miss Blake and Dr. Croft, both of them would be glad enough to have him in by the day. It’s Mr. Arnold will be finding out as he’s made a mistake to my way of thinking. But that’s just between you and me.”
Susan picked up the bag of tomatoes, but Mrs. Alexander had by no means done.
“That William Jackson will be leaving too, Miss Susan-I don’t know whether you’ve heard. Got his notice yesterday, so 1 heard tell. I always did say he’d go too far one day. In the Lamb or over at Embark every night till closing time, and getting to work late in the morning. A dreadful time Annie has with him, poor thing. And what she wanted to take him for, goodness knows. Twenty years she was, with your Aunt Lucy -went to her at fourteen. And then to go and marry a good-for-nothing like William Jackson that was after her savings and the money Miss Lucy left her! Ten years younger than her if he was a day!”
Susan remembered William Jackson very well-one of the under gardeners at the Hall. She remembered him as a boy, red-haired and ferrety-faced. She had never liked him very much. Annie had been a fool to marry him. Aunt Lucy would never have let her do it. She hoped things were not as bad as Mrs. Alexander made out, but when she said so there was a shake of the head.
“Oh, my dear, no! Poor Annie, she’s nothing but a wreck. And stuck away in that lonely cottage on the other side of the splash! No wonder they got it cheap! Downright dangerous going over those stepping-stones after dark or when it rains heavy. There did ought to be a bridge, but look what everything costs these days. Pity it didn’t get seen to when labour was a penny a day back in Queen Elizabeth’s time.”
Susan laughed.
“A penny a day bought as much as a good many shillings do now. It paid the rent of a cottage and fed and clothed a family.”
“And a pity is isn’t like that now!” said Mrs. Alexander.
As Susan went back she wasn’t thinking about the deterioration in the value of money, or about Fullerby, or William Jackson, or even about poor Annie. She had two pictures in her mind, and do what she would, she couldn’t blot them out. In one of them she was standing in the dusty lane between Embank and Greenings with her suit-case at her feet and her hands stretched out to Edward Random. In the other Clarice Dean was doing practically the same thing in the middle of the village street. This picture was a great deal brighter and more distinct than the other. Clarice was a great deal brighter and prettier than the rather shadowy figure of Susan Wayne. She had a humiliated sense of having been outdone. Ridiculous, but there it was. She had felt warm and friendly towards Edward. She had showed it with nothing at all in her mind except that friendly warmth. And then Clarice had to do practically the same thing and do it a great deal better. There had been a sparkle-a glow of colour-