Long Summer Day (33 page)

‘Made a good many changes here,’ he remarked, gruffly, as though he resented not having been consulted. ‘Place didn’t change at all in Lovell’s time. Or his father’s time either come to that!’

Paul murmured that the house and grounds had badly needed attention when he arrived in June and offered to show them round but when Cribb looked to Gilroy for a lead the old man waved a thin hand and said, rather impatiently, ‘No time today! Some other time! Might as well come straight to the point, Cribb. Nothing gained by beating about the damned bush!’, and he moved over to the fire and spread his hands to the blaze.

‘His Lordship refers, I think, to some idle gossip that has reached him regarding your political sympathies,’ said Cribb, and Paul was surprised at his directness as though he was an employer rebuking an assistant who had just bungled a sale. He went on in a slightly more genial tone. ‘No more than rumour, of course, but it doesn’t do to let these things go unchallenged, Craddock. After all, we’ve got to stick together, particularly now that the Government is making such heavy weather. Wouldn’t you say so?’, and he flexed his massive blue jowls, so that it seemed to Paul that he was looking at two purple puddings divided by the broad peninsula of Cribb’s nose.

Paul’s first reaction to this challenge was astonishment. It seemed to him impossible that two men of their years could be so sure of themselves on another’s hearthrug. Then, in the wake of his astonishment, resentment rose in his throat and irritation changed to anger when Gilroy, without even looking at him, said in his thin, rustling voice, ‘They tell me that little rat of a Radical has been courting you, Craddock! Won’t do, you know! Best show the rascal the door straightaway! Don’t stand on politeness with scum of that kind! Give ’em an inch and they take an ell!’

Amazement at the man’s insufferable arrogance held Paul’s anger in check for a moment and he said, vaguely, ‘Rascal? Ruffian? … I can only suppose you must be referring to Mr James Grenfell. He’s just been here. He looks in almost every week when he’s over this way,’ and Gilroy said, with a glare, ‘The devil he does! Then it’s true then?’ but without the least indication that he was aware of Paul’s resentment.

‘Yes, he does,’ Paul said, sullenly, ‘and I’m bound to say that I find him not only extremely civil but exceptionally good company! Moreover, I can’t help feeling that he wouldn’t speak of either of you gentlemen as you have spoken of him!’

He felt much better after he had said this and regained control of himself, a process made easier by the startled look that crossed Cribb’s face and the blankness of Gilroy’s expression. Cribb said, in a much more conciliatory tone, ‘Oh, come now, Craddock, you aren’t going to tell his Lordship that you vote for those damned Radicals?’

‘I haven’t had an opportunity to vote at all yet,’ Paul said cheerfully, ‘but after this extraordinary interview I shall think about doing so at the next election!’ whereupon Gilroy made a move for the door saying, in a voice scarcely above a whisper, ‘Come, Cribb!’, but the agent was less impulsive and stood his ground, saying firmly, ‘No, your Lordship! Wait a moment, I beg of you! Our job is to win votes, not throw them at Grenfell’s feet!’, and he turned back to Paul with a smile that came close to a grimace and said, ‘I take it you are uncommitted, Craddock? Well, and why not? You’re still a youngster and you’ve been out of the country throughout the war. There’s no cause for a quarrel, my Lord, I daresay Mr Craddock will learn as he goes along, and we ought, as neighbours, to give him a chance before we jump to conclusions.’

Gilroy paused, seemingly undecided and Cribb readdressed himself to Paul with a great show of frankness. ‘Listen here, young man, I admit to being—well—a little shocked when I heard that Grenfell was a regular visitor here, and I daresay it seems presumptuous to have us pounce on you like this but you’re a stranger in the district so you can’t be expected to see through a wily bird like Grenfell. He’s a good talker and I don’t underestimate him in the way some of the party do but surely you must see that it can’t be in your true interests as a landowner to get mixed up with that kind of rag, tag and bobtail! After all, if Grenfell and his kind had their way there wouldn’t be any landowners!’

‘Good God, man!’ said Paul, ‘Grenfell isn’t a Barcelona anarchist, or a Russian nihilst! He represents a respectable democratic party and what right have you or Lord Gilroy to call here and virtually order me to show him the door?’

‘We’re wasting our time,’ Gilroy said, quietly, ‘the fellow is obviously a damned Radical! I suspected it from the first, when I saw what a drubbing he had given the old place’, and he would have walked into the hall had not Cribb, very flustered now, seized his arm and protested, ‘That isn’t the way to canvass, my Lord! Believe me, I’m an old hand and there’s never anything gained by turning your back on a constituent! Craddock must see for himself the harm done by adopting this we’re-all-Englishmen-together attitude!’, and he turned back to Paul and said, ‘You’re open to reason, I take it? You haven’t actually promised Grenfell political support in the constituency?’

Paul said deliberately, ‘No, Mr Cribb, I haven’t. As a matter of fact he’s never asked for it.’

‘He wouldn’t,’ said Cribb savagely, ‘that’s his way! Now listen to me, young man …’ but Paul, plunging both hands in his breeches pockets, said, ‘No, Mr Cribb,
you
listen to
me
!
Before I came down here I never gave a thought to politics, except to wonder sometimes, when I saw what was happening to the Boers, how our treatment of them could be justified but I’ve learned a good deal about politics this morning, and I don’t like what I’ve learned! You say this isn’t the way to canvass votes and, by God, you’re right! I can’t imagine a more hamfisted way of going about it! Grenfell, as I said, hasn’t canvassed me in several visits here but neither has he treated me like a stupid child or a recently liberated serf! I’m not clear in my own mind what the Conservative Unionist Party stand for, or even what the Liberal Party stand for but you’ve made me eager to find out! I can see that your party lacks two things—tact and good manners, neither of which have been in evidence since you walked in that door!’

He moved above the fireplace to pull the bellrope but Gilroy cheated him by stamping out of the room before he could ring. Cribb remained, however, and seemed to be bouncing with rage, so that Paul, again seizing the advantage said, ‘I’m sorry it had to happen like this, Cribb. I don’t think you or I would have lost our tempers if you had come alone. But what else would you expect a man to do when complete strangers walk into his house and quarrel with his choice of friends?’

Cribb was clearly a man of mettle and apparently possessed a very keen sense of duty, for he somehow mastered his rage and said, in a high-pitched voice, ‘You’re committing social suicide here, Craddock! Good God, man, why won’t you let someone experienced in these matters help you?’ and Paul, scarcely knowing why, felt rather sorry for him as he said, ‘I don’t want to seem ungracious but this is supposed to be a democratic country and we’re supposed to have outgrown political pressures on the individual! Why didn’t you come here like Grenfell, and make some attempt to get to know me before blackmailing me into joining a party?’

‘Because it never occurred to me that you needed anyone to teach you common sense!’ snapped Cribb. ‘A man doesn’t buy an estate of thirteen hundred acres without being prepared to defend it! You should have learned that much fighting Kruger!’

He must have decided at this point that any further argument would involve him in loss of face for he picked up his hat and crossed the room but because Gilroy had slammed the door he had to fumble with the handle and whilst he was thus engaged, with Paul watching him, they heard a step on the stone floor of the office, and both turned as Grace Lovell walked into the room.

They saw that she was smiling a little sourly, as she said, with studied casualness, ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, but I just couldn’t let you go without knowing I approve of every word my fiancé said, Mr Cribb! You Unionists really are insufferable bullies, and I do hope we can make it hot for you down here; Shall I show Mr Cribb out, Paul dear?’

Paul dear remained rooted, his back to the fire, but Cribb, now in a fighting mood, snarled, ‘I only hope your father feels the same way about it, Miss Lovell! And Mrs Lovell also, both very good friends of mine, as you no doubt know!’, and to Paul, ‘Good-day, Craddock! If it’s war you want you won’t find us as easy to beat as Boers! We have their kind of staying power and a great deal more money!’

‘Oh, but they weren’t all that easy to beat,’ Grace said, ‘as you would have found out if you had been in the field like Mr Craddock!’, but it is doubtful whether Cribb heard her for he was already outside the room and a moment later they heard the front door slam and then the crunch of the gig’s wheels on the gravel.

They remained silent for a moment, Grace standing leaning against the door, her head cocked slightly to one side and her little crooked smile giving her the look of a clever, impudent child, who has just scored a point over grown-ups. Finally Paul, said, breathlessly, ‘That was very sporting of you, Grace, but you didn’t have to burn your boats in order to rub salt into the smart! You realise Cribb will spread the news up and down the Valley in a matter of hours, and you’ll look pretty foolish if you have to back down on it!’

‘Well,’ she said, cheerfully, walking across to the fire and giving the sullen log a kick with her boot, ‘I don’t know how you feel about it but I haven’t any intention of “backing down” as you say! As for you, you had your chance in the churchyard on Christmas Eve and didn’t take it!’

‘You meant what you said? It wasn’t said simply to confound that bully?’

‘I meant it,’ she said coolly, ‘but it was a rather different tale from the one I rode here to tell you.’

‘You mean that you were listening all the time, and it helped you to change your mind about us?’

‘I haven’t been very clever, have I?’ she said, ‘I’m giving away too much and too quickly!’ Then, facing him, ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever
seen
you, Paul, can’t you understand that? I thought of you as someone pleasant, kind, and well-meaning but I didn’t know you were a rebel and I certainly didn’t give you credit for that much nerve! I loathe people like Gilroy and Cribb, and everything they stand for, but until ten minutes ago I assumed you were only a watered-down version of them! Well, you aren’t, quite obviously you aren’t, and it makes a big difference! I’m not in love with you and it wouldn’t be honest of me to pretend I was but we’ve got more in common than either of us imagined and that’s a better basis for marriage than story-book slush!’

He crossed to the fireplace and lifted her hand, looking at it thoughtfully and noting the regularity of the long tapering fingers that somehow gave the hand strength as well as delicacy. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘without “story-book slush” marriage must be a very dull institution, too dull to have lasted as long as it has. Maybe it emerges if the marriage is any good but I suppose it’s much the same as any other endeavour—its success depends on what people are prepared to put into it. All I know for certain is that I’m willing to trust my instincts but I don’t think you are, not really, and that’s why it might be wiser to see a lot more of each other and be damned to what Cribb and Gilroy broadcast up and down the Valley!’

She looked at him steadily, without withdrawing her hand. ‘That’s not how you were talking to them,’ she said, ‘it’s more how I should have imagined you talked if someone had told me about what happened.’

‘The two things aren’t the same,’ he said.

‘Oh, but they are, because both are a calculated risk! You took one without a second thought but now you buck at taking another? You asked me to marry you and I said I’d think about it. Well, I have thought about it, and I’d be very happy to, so to the devil with hanging fire until all the fun’s gone out of it! If we are going to marry let’s do it without orange blossom and stale jokes!’

‘You would be prepared to marry soon?’

‘Today, Paul.’

‘We can’t cheat Celia and the gossips out of everything. Half the Valley would regard marriage at Easter as indecent!’

‘It’s no concern of Celia’s,’ she said seriously, ‘or of anyone else’s in the Valley and that’s important to me, Paul. This is one thing I’m not obliged to share with anyone but you.’ It did not seem preposterous that she should carry her passion for privacy into marriage and he found that he was beginning, at last, to be able to anticipate her approximate line of thought.

‘Very well, Grace,’ he said, ‘and you would probably like to be married away from here, in front of a couple of impersonal witnesses?’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I should like that very much if it could be managed.’

‘It shall be managed,’ he said, grimly, ‘for all I want is a chance to prove how right it could be for both of us. We could get a special licence but that would require your father’s permission and Celia would have to be won over. Could that be done, do you suppose?’

‘All Celia wants it to get me off her hands. I can leave father to her. I don’t imagine he’ll be bothered to attend.’

He began to understand something of the source of her bitterness, although he could not quite rid himself of a suspicion that she enjoyed over-dramatising a situation.

‘All right, then, that’s how it will be! I’ll ride back with you this afternoon and talk to Celia and if you’ll stay for lunch I’ll take her up on that dinner invitation I declined yesterday.’ Then, because her expression remained serious, he tried laughing at her. ‘I must say you don’t look much like a girl who has just accepted a gentleman’s proposal!’ he said, taking her face between his hands and kissing her gently on the mouth. Her lips were no more than submissive, so that he thought of Claire Derwent’s lips as he said, ‘You really
are
sure, Grace? We aren’t under any obligation at all to rush things. I told Celia yesterday that I wouldn’t have you hustled!’

She took her time answering this, looking at him steadily, so that he saw her in sharper focus, wondering a little at her composure but as baffled as ever by her remoteness. He marked other, equally familiar things about her, the clipped fringe, blue-black against her pale forehead, the ivory lustre of the skin stretching along the jawline to the deep cleft of her chin and one other feature that he had forgotten, dimples, starved of laughter, on either side of her wide mouth. She said, at length, ‘You have been good to me, Paul, and I know you mean always to be good. Well, you won’t find one aspect of me wanting, and I’ll prove it!’ and suddenly she threw her arms about his neck and returned his kiss in a way that drove all doubts from his mind, so that nothing existed for him beyond her lips or the strong pressure of her body that seemed almost to clamour for him. When she drew back he was filled with a yearning of her that demanded immediate release and catching up her hand he pressed it to his lips and said, breathlessly, ‘I’ll tell them, Grace! I’ll tell them you’re staying, dearest!’ and rushed from the room as though he intended proclaiming his triumph from the housetops but when he bore down on Thirza Tremlett, dusting an engraving in the hall, he checked himself and said, gruffly, ‘Tell Mrs Handcock Miss Lovell is staying to luncheon and ask Chivers to saddle Snowdrop and bring both horses round to the front door at two o’clock sharp!’