Part 5

"Of course I will," answered Roger. "You must tell me what to do. But you must realise, Aunt Sarah, that this is a bad knock to me; it's so awful to have you here like this, here with me now, and to know at the same time that you're so ill."

He was obviously unstrung, but Sarah Greene was too intent on her subject even to notice. Her soft untroubled voice went on:

"It isn't awful to know beforehand, Roger; it's splendid, because of Lynton. Lynton really is important, and I can make so many preparations now that I know. I'm leaving it to you, Roger--money too, of course, but that doesn't matter. It's the house and land that matter. You'll live there, you and Mary; your children will be born there, and when you die your son will have it. Are you listening Roger dear, do you understand?"

Roger relaxed his attitude of strained attention; he had caught something of the urgency of her preoccupation.

"I love Lynton," he said simply. "It will entirely change my life. You know I'm not very happy in my work and living like this, but I can be absolutely happy at Lynton, and I'll try to have things exactly as you would like them. It's absurd to thank you, Aunt Sarah; Lynton isn't a Christmas present, but I promise you I'll keep it up to standard."

"It does reassure me to hear you say that," Mrs. Greene answered happily, "I know you love it, Roger, and there will be enough money to keep it as it ought to be kept."

Her eyes were vague, her thoughts abstracted as she brooded over the years during which her life had been bound up with the life of Lynton.

"You know, I've lived there all my life," she went on, "except for the first three years after I married. There was never enough money when I was a girl; the house got shabbier and shabbier, and there were only two labourers for the gardens, and everything was over-grown; even the lawns had to be scythed and looked like rough meadows. And then I married Hugh and he loved it nearly as much as I did, and even during the three years when Mamma was still alive, he spent a little money here, and a little there, very secretly and carefully so that she shouldn't guess."

"Where were you living then, Aunt Sarah?" interrupted Roger.

"We had taken a house not far from Lynton. You know it surely; it's called Willowes, only about two miles the other side of Petworth. Of course Hugh came up to town during the week; he was very busy you know. Geoffrey had refused to go into his father's business, so Hugh stepped into old Mr. Greene's shoes when he died. I came up sometimes, but not very often. Then when Mamma died we went to live at Lynton of course, and Hugh gave me a free hand. I put the house right first; it was the easiest, but then it took a long time to work up the gardens, and the lawns didn't come right for years. And you see the tenants hadn't had anything done for them for a long time, so I had to be very judicious. The farms needed new roofs and some wanted new outbuildings, and the fences and gates were in a shocking state, but we improved it all slowly."

Mrs. Greene fell silent, thinking gratefully of all that her husband's money had been able to do for the place she loved.

"And now of course it's perfect," said Roger soberly.

She caught eagerly at the word.

"Yes, I think it is perfect, but you know it would go downhill at once if it wasn't looked after. And that's why I'm so glad to have told you all my affairs. You see dear, now I can go over everything with you, and give you all sorts of details that it would take you some time to find out for yourself, and so there need be no hitch later on when you take over."

Both were conscious that this was a reminder of the grim fact underlying the whole conversation, but to Mrs. Greene it seemed unimportant, and Roger was enough in tune with her to be able to concentrate on the one lovely aspect of the situation.

"I'd like to go with you to Lynton," he suggested.

"That's exactly what I want. I feel I must get back there at once dear. I can't stay on in town. But I don't want to hurt Mary's feelings, and I must come up again next week for Mrs. Rodney's party. What is the best thing to do?"

"Do you really want to go at once?"

"Yes, really at once. To-morrow if possible--I suppose I mean to-day------"

A sudden realisation of the time swept over Mrs. Greene.

The stars had faded and a pale dawn was creeping up the sky.

"It's cold," she said, "and it's some absurd hour in the morning. We must both go to bed. I don't know what we've been thinking of; this is all most unusual."

Roger smiled and stood up.

"I'm just going," he said, "but first about plans: We'll tell Mary that you feel it's too long to stay in town, and that you're going home to-day, and coming back next week. And I'll join you to-morrow, Saturday, and spend Sunday with you."

It was surprising that Roger should take the initiative to this extent; he seemed suddenly to have become more mature, more capable, and Sarah Greene found the effect very restful.

"Thank you, Roger dear, that will be the best possible plan," she said, enjoying to the full the rare sensation of being arranged for.

She stood up, shivering a little in the cold morning air.

"You've been the greatest comfort to me," she said, "and I don't want you to think of this talk as being at all sad. It isn't. Planning for the future is a very happy thing, and now I'm going to bed again."

Roger kissed her.

"Goodnight, my dear," he said. "Sleep well till breakfast, and rely on me. I'll take care of Lynton for you."

V

On Saturday morning a dense pearl-coloured mist rose about two feet above ground, so that walking along her familiar paths Sarah Greene experienced unfamiliar sensations. Trees and bushes seemed to balance lightly on the swimming vapour; the gentle slope up to the garden assumed a fiercer gradient; everything was wet to the touch, yet no rain fell.

At noon a watery sun gleamed fitfully through the stationary clouds, but at four o'clock when Roger drove along the beech avenue only occasional bare branches were dimly visible, and when the car turned the last corner he saw that the lovely sombre house was softly shrouded.

Mrs. Greene had spent the afternoon in a state of unreasonable disappointment. She knew that Roger had arrived at Lynton countless times in the full splendour of sunlight, but she had determined that this arrival, too, should have the benison of the sun. He was not coming this time only as Roger Dodds; he was coming as owner of Lynton who must also be lover of Lynton.

Proud and confident as she was of the irreproachable beauty of house and land, she had nevertheless set her heart on showing them off to their best advantage at this particular moment when Roger would be likely to see them from a new angle.

His first words dispelled her anxiety.

"Isn't this mist beautiful? I don't think I've ever seen the house look so lovely and mysterious."

"Does it really strike you like that? I've been feeling so cross with the weather all afternoon; I wanted sun for you, but it doesn't matter if you like this."

"I do. I think it's beautiful," repeated Roger emphatically.

"Come and have tea now," said Mrs. Greene, "and just tell me when you have to go back to town so that I can arrange everything to get the most value from your visit."

"I must go to-morrow evening about five, I'm afraid. There's a rotten slow train about then that'll do me quite well."

"Is Monday quite impossible?"

"I'm afraid it is, quite," Roger answered definitely.

"Very well, then," said Mrs. Greene. "After tea and this evening we'll devote to business. I'll get out the map of the estate and give you details about all the tenants and go over the books with you. That will leave us free really to enjoy to-morrow. I think it will be a lovely day; it often is after a mist like this, and we'll go for a long walk and have a late lunch.

"I'd like that immensely."

"We'll go down the grass walk to the lower fields where Lynton marches with Hurstfield and then home through the woods. And sometime I want you to talk to Hamilton. He's an excellent man and he can help you a great deal. I'm not quite satisfied with Parks, the second gardener. We'll ask Hamilton what he thinks of him."

"I've been thinking a lot about Lynton yesterday and to-day," said Roger, shyly, "and realising how much I like every detail. It's good the way the house stands four square to the winds, and I like the Portland stone it's built of. Really the exterior is a lovely combination of ornament and discretion. It's sound, don't you think?"

"That's exactly what your Uncle Hugh used to say," answered Mrs. Greene slowly. "Yes, it's sound. Houses are beautifully permanent, aren't they? I like to think that stone lasts, just as I like to remember that the beeches will be better for your son than they were for my grandfather. Lynton consolidates itself with every generation."

"It's a good point of view," said Roger soberly. "You know I like stability and soundness. I saw so much chaos in the war that I had a violent reaction in favour of settled traditional things. In fact I'm very conventional."

"You have to be conventional if you're going to be at all happy in the country," Mrs. Greene announced with decision. "I don't mean because of the people, though there's that too, of course. They are much more conventional than in town, and they'd be disappointed and puzzled if one didn't do certain conventional things. But I was thinking of Nature really. You'll find that the land and the woods and the gardens all proceed along the most orderly and conventional lines. Really, Roger, there are no surprises, except that every year I find the first tulips more lovely than I had remembered. But nothing bizarre ever happens. Things either go smoothly and the crops are good and the flowers do well, or else it's warm too early and we get frost in April and everything is nipped; but either way it goes by rote."

"Every word you say makes me like it all the more." Roger's face was serious. "You see I'm rather like that myself. I'm dull; I've no surprises."

Mrs. Greene attacked him hotly in his own defence.

"Really Roger, what nonsense you talk. It's ridiculous to say you're dull. I don't find you so at all, and you very often surprise me. I don't approve of your underrating yourself like that."

Roger laughed.

"I don't mean to underrate myself, but sometimes I feel I'm a dull dog."

"You never need feel that when you're with me, Roger," said Mrs. Greene, struggling to express an emotional fact in an unemotional manner. "You know how fond I am of you, my dear boy, and proud of you too. You touched me very much by what you said at dinner the other night about our friendship. I know it was quite true and genuine, and the more I think of it, the more I am glad to think of you and Mary living here."

She stood up abruptly.

"Come now, let's go and get out the books; I really have a great deal to tell you."

Late that night Sarah Greene drew back the curtains of her bedroom and looked out over the wide lawns to the formally cut box hedge beyond and to the meadows beyond that, sloping steeply up to the solitary woods.

A breeze had sprung up dispelling the mist, the heaped-up clouds were hurrying across the dark sky, and the young clear moon was unrimmed.

"To-morrow will be a wild and lovely day," she said softly, "Lynton will look its best for Roger."

Confident and contented she got into bed and slept till morning, when she wakened to just such a day as she had foretold. White clouds were still hurrying across the sky, but in between it was a deep and steady blue. Leaves were flying over the lawn; a branch had been blown off the lime tree near her window and lay untidily on the path below. Even the solid hedge yielded a little this way and that to the contrary wind.

It was a sparkling and exhilarating morning. Sarah Greene and Roger Dodds shared in its exhilaration as they started out before eleven. They had made no professions of pleasure beyond Roger's casual comment, "A lovely day, isn't it?" as he came in a little late and sat down to breakfast. But each was conscious of the other's happiness, and at times when Mrs. Greene caught Roger's eye, or saw him lift his head suddenly intent as a fiercer gust battered on the windows, she felt that they were conspirators who shared a secret too exquisite to be alluded to.

This feeling persisted. Never before had Roger seemed so responsive. As they walked at a good pace down the grass path, his hidden excitement communicated itself to her, and her delight was obvious to him.

I've never felt like this with anyone but Hugh, she thought. It's like a discovery. I've never really known Roger before, and now, just when Lynton and I need him, he suddenly unfolds. It's too surprising.

A small toad hopped clumsily across their path; his legs as he took off for each leap seemed incredibly long, and his protruding eyes were startled. They stopped to watch him, and laughed.

Roger, too, was conscious that a marked change had taken place in their relationship; it was more alive, and at the same time more comfortable. It struck neither of them as strange that this should be so; everything seemed perfectly natural to the ill-assorted pair; the small woman of seventy, pinched, sallow, dressed in nondescript clothes, but walking bravely in her sensible shoes, and the tall untidy young man, with his inexpressive body and face.

Mrs. Greene did not attempt to explain to herself this forward move in their intimacy. She accepted it as a belated discovery of Roger's real quality. But as they left the grass walk and trudged through the busy rustling woods, still not talking, Roger hit on a solution that satisfied him.

It's the link of succession, he decided; there must be a link of either love or hate between a person who is going to hand over the thing he values most highly to someone who values it too. And Aunt Sarah has neither hate nor resentment for me, so that this particular situation which might be painful is oddly enough quite easy.

"What are you thinking, Roger?" asked Mrs. Greene suddenly. He turned his head to smile down at her.

"I was thinking how very comfortable we were," he answered simply.

"I thought that a few minutes ago. I'm very comfortable altogether, Roger. Mary said to me the other day that she thought I had no worries, and really, you know, it's perfectly true."

"How big exactly is the estate?" asked Roger inconsequently.

"Two thousand, five hundred and thirty-four acres," Mrs. Greene answered precisely.

"That ought to provide you with a worry or two," suggested Roger.

"No, it doesn't. I have occasional anxieties but no real worries."

They walked on in silence till Roger said abruptly, "I hate London."

"Of course you do; everybody does really," answered Mrs. Greene inattentively.

Roger laughed and took her arm.

"No they don't," he said. "That's nonsense. They like it mostly. They feel safe living in a sort of rabbit warren. They'd be terrified if you set them down in a little cottage in an open space."

"I suppose that's true," answered Mrs. Greene, "but it seems incredible to me. Aren't the woods lovely, Roger?"

"They're perfectly lovely. You know I feel I ought to be asking you all sorts of things but instead I'm just enjoying myself."

"So am I. I'm very fond of this path; I often come down it."

No faintest tinge of sadness broke their even happiness though both were thinking of the many hundreds of times that Mrs. Greene had walked along the grass path, over the fields and through the woods, and of the very few more that would be added to the total.

"It's quite dense here, isn't it?" said Mrs. Greene, "and yet, you know, in a minute we'll be in the meadow with the house in front of us."

"I know; it always comes on you suddenly."

As Roger spoke, a turn in the path brought them out of the wood into full view of the house.

The sun streaming over Lynton turned its austere grey facade to a mottled richness, and the leaves of the Virginia creeper that was only allowed to climb at the south-east corner licked at the stone like little fiery tongues. The tall chimneys, the tall narrow windows, gave to the sober beauty of the house an airy effect of grace and lightness that did not mar its steadfast quality. Lynton was undoubtedly sound.

Mrs. Greene and Roger had stopped at the edge of the wood. For a moment the woman who was about to leave Lynton and the man who was about to enter it stood together on a little hill and gazed greedily at it over the intervening box hedge. Then they walked on, through an opening in the hedge, over the lawn, and in at a side door.

"I want to find Hamilton this afternoon," said Mrs. Greene after lunch. "He'll be in one of two places. He always is on Sunday afternoons; either in the wall-garden or the peach-house."

"Doesn't he ever take a day off."

"No, not really. Mrs. Hamilton is very bad-tempered; gardeners' wives are always shrews you'll find, and he never stays indoors if he can help it."

"I wonder if they're shrews because their husbands are so placid, or if the husbands have to be placid because the wives are shrews," mused Roger.

"I can tell you." Mrs. Greene spoke decisively. "All good gardeners have easy-going temperaments, so they have a fatal attraction for domineering women.-"

"I see. Hamilton is a good man, isn't he?"

"Excellent; patient and enterprising, the two best qualities in a gardener. If you're not tired we'll go up to the garden now and look for him."

"Surely it's you who should be tired after such a long walk?"

"Oh, no, I'm in quite good training for walking," answered Mrs. Greene serenely.

Hamilton was discovered in the garden, leaning with folded arms over the back of a seat, looking gloomily at the bare rose-bushes.

"Good afternoon, Ma'am, good afternoon sir," he said straightening up as Mrs. Greene and Roger approached. "This is a real untidy wind."

He frowned disapprovingly and relapsed again into brooding silence. Roger looking at the melancholy face above the white shirt with its dotted blue stripe and stiff white collar wondered if Mrs. Hamilton's tongue was the cause of so much sorrow, or if pessimism as well as placidity was inherent in the tribe of gardeners.

"I wanted to have a chat with you about Parks," Mrs. Greene was saying. "Do you feel quite satisfied with him, Hamilton?"

"He does his work well and thoroughly," answered Hamilton cautiously.

"But apart from that?" questioned Mrs. Greene.

Hamilton took off his cap and gently scratched his head before replying. Presently he replaced the cap and pronounced heavily:

"The flowers don't like him, Ma'am."

"That's what I was afraid of," said Mrs. Greene, "I don't think they grow for him."

Roger felt amazed. I have an awful lot to learn, he thought; I never realised that flowers only grew for people they liked. I expect Hamilton will heartily despise me. On an impulse of propitiation he ventured to remark:

"Surely it's very surprising that flowers should grow for one person and not another in the same garden, under the same conditions."

Hamilton smiled pityingly and addressed Mrs. Greene.

"It's well seen that Mr. Dodds is not a countryman," he said. Then turning to Roger he added, "Plants are like children, sir; they need handling. Ignorant persons or persons who don't care enough about them can't handle them proper."

Roger was crushed, and at the same time stimulated at the thought of what lay before him. The immediate future was depressing. He visualised the grimy badly-lit third-class carriage, the inexplicable delays characteristic of Sunday trains, the depressing arrival at Victoria. But soon there would be no Sunday journeys; he would come to Lynton to stay.

A poignant sorrow filled him at the thought that Aunt Sarah would not be there to enjoy it with him; but her calmness, her air of acceptance, had been infectious. Roger felt, as she did, that regrets would be out of place; that the rounding-off of her life, so nearly complete, was merely an incident in the continuity of Lynton.

She was still talking about Parks and his successor.

"We'll tell him to look around, then, for a month or two; there's no immediate hurry, though I'd like it settled soon. And in the meantime I'll ask Lady Langton about that man of hers who's leaving her."

"Parks'll be sorry to leave," said Hamilton slowly. "People get attached to Lynton. There's something about the place."

"There is," answered Mrs. Greene, "there certainly is. Well, we must get back to the house now. Mr. Dodds is going up to town this evening."

"That's a short visit this time, sir," said Hamilton. "But then London people move about more quickly than what we do."

"I don't want to go," said Roger, anxious to make it clear that not restlessness but sheer necessity drove him back to London. "I'd much rather stay on here, but I have to get back to work."

Hamilton became a little more cordial.

"Well, goodbye, sir," he said, "We'll hope to see you down again soon," and Roger felt childishly elated at having wiped out the bad impression made by his first comment.

"He crushed me utterly, Aunt Sarah," he said as soon as they were out of ear-shot.

Mrs. Greene laughed.

"My dear Roger, he's always like that. It's only his gloomy way of speaking, but I think he likes you; he often asks after you."

"I like him," said Roger, "but he alarms me."

"He won't when you know him better; he's really the mildest creature on the place. Now we must hurry back; I want you to have a cup of tea before you go."

"You'll come to us on Thursday, then?" asked Roger, as the car drove up to take him to the station.

"Yes, I'd like to do that, but I'll come back here on Saturday after Edith's party, and you and Mary will come soon for a long visit, won't you?"

"We'd like to," answered Roger soberly. "It would be good for Mary to be in the country just now, and I'd like to be with you."

"I know that, my dear boy--" Sarah Greene lifted her face to be kissed--"And I've had a delightful twenty-four hours with you."