The Freelands

J >> John Galsworthy >> The Freelands


Flora dropped the last little bottle, and sitting on the edge of the
bath let her eyebrows rise. How pleasant was that impersonal humor which
made her superior to other wives!

"You--nomadic? How?"

"Mother travels unceasingly from place to place, person to person, thing
to thing. I travel unceasingly from motive to motive, mind to mind; my
native air is also desert air--hence the sterility of my work."

Flora rose, but her eyebrows descended.

"Your work," she said, "is not sterile."

"That, my dear," said Felix, "is prejudice." And perceiving that she
was going to kiss him, he waited without annoyance. For a woman of
forty-two, with two children and three books of poems--and not knowing
which had taken least out of her--with hazel-gray eyes, wavy eyebrows
darker than they should have been, a glint of red in her hair; wavy
figure and lips; quaint, half-humorous indolence, quaint, half-humorous
warmth--was she not as satisfactory a woman as a man could possibly have
married!

"I have got to go down and see Tod," he said. "I like that wife of his;
but she has no sense of humor. How much better principles are in theory
than in practice!"

Flora repeated softly, as if to herself:

"I'm glad I have none." She was at the window leaning out, and Felix
took his place beside her. The air was full of scent from wet leaves,
alive with the song of birds thanking the sky. Suddenly he felt her arm
round his ribs; either it or they--which, he could not at the moment
tell--seemed extraordinarily soft....


Between Felix and his young daughter, Nedda, there existed the only kind
of love, except a mother's, which has much permanence--love based on
mutual admiration. Though why Nedda, with her starry innocence, should
admire him, Felix could never understand, not realizing that she read
his books, and even analyzed them for herself in the diary which she
kept religiously, writing it when she ought to have been asleep. He had
therefore no knowledge of the way his written thoughts stimulated the
ceaseless questioning that was always going on within her; the thirst to
know why this was and that was not. Why, for instance, her heart ached
so some days and felt light and eager other days? Why, when people wrote
and talked of God, they seemed to know what He was, and she never did?
Why people had to suffer; and the world be black to so many millions?
Why one could not love more than one man at a time? Why--a thousand
things? Felix's books supplied no answers to these questions, but they
were comforting; for her real need as yet was not for answers, but
ever for more questions, as a young bird's need is for opening its beak
without quite knowing what is coming out or going in. When she and her
father walked, or sat, or went to concerts together, their talk was
neither particularly intimate nor particularly voluble; they made to
each other no great confidences. Yet each was certain that the other was
not bored--a great thing; and they squeezed each other's little fingers
a good deal--very warming. Now with his son Alan, Felix had a continual
sensation of having to keep up to a mark and never succeeding--a
feeling, as in his favorite nightmare, of trying to pass an examination
for which he had neglected to prepare; of having to preserve, in fact,
form proper to the father of Alan Freeland. With Nedda he had a sense
of refreshment; the delight one has on a spring day, watching a clear
stream, a bank of flowers, birds flying. And Nedda with her father--what
feeling had she? To be with him was like a long stroking with a touch
of tickle in it; to read his books, a long tickle with a nice touch of
stroking now and then when one was not expecting it.

That night after dinner, when Alan had gone out and Flora into a dream,
she snuggled up alongside her father, got hold of his little finger, and
whispered:

"Come into the garden, Dad; I'll put on goloshes. It's an awfully nice
moon."

The moon indeed was palest gold behind the pines, so that its radiance
was a mere shower of pollen, just a brushing of white moth-down over
the reeds of their little dark pond, and the black blur of the flowering
currant bushes. And the young lime-trees, not yet in full leaf, quivered
ecstatically in that moon-witchery, still letting fall raindrops of
the past spring torrent, with soft hissing sounds. A real sense in
the garden, of God holding his breath in the presence of his own youth
swelling, growing, trembling toward perfection! Somewhere a bird--a
thrush, they thought--mixed in its little mind as to night and day, was
queerly chirruping. And Felix and his daughter went along the dark wet
paths, holding each other's arms, not talking much. For, in him, very
responsive to the moods of Nature, there was a flattered feeling, with
that young arm in his, of Spring having chosen to confide in him this
whispering, rustling hour. And in Nedda was so much of that night's
unutterable youth--no wonder she was silent! Then, somehow--neither
responsible--they stood motionless. How quiet it was, but for a distant
dog or two, and the stilly shivering-down of the water drops, and the
far vibration of the million-voiced city! How quiet and soft and fresh!
Then Nedda spoke:

"Dad, I do so want to know everything."

Not rousing even a smile, with its sublime immodesty, that aspiration
seemed to Felix infinitely touching. What less could youth want in the
very heart of Spring? And, watching her face put up to the night, her
parted lips, and the moon-gleam fingering her white throat, he answered:

"It'll all come soon enough, my pretty!"

To think that she must come to an end like the rest, having found out
almost nothing, having discovered just herself, and the particle of God
that was within her! But he could not, of course, say this.

"I want to FEEL. Can't I begin?"

How many millions of young creatures all the world over were sending
up that white prayer to climb and twine toward the stars, and--fall to
earth again! And nothing to be answered, but:

"Time enough, Nedda!"

"But, Dad, there are such heaps of things, such heaps of people, and
reasons, and--and life; and I know nothing. Dreams are the only times,
it seems to me, that one finds out anything."

"As for that, my child, I am exactly in your case. What's to be done for
us?"

She slid her hand through his arm again.

"Don't laugh at me!"

"Heaven forbid! I meant it. You're finding out much quicker than I. It's
all folk-music to you still; to me Strauss and the rest of the tired
stuff. The variations my mind spins--wouldn't I just swap them for the
tunes your mind is making?"

"I don't seem making tunes at all. I don't seem to have anything to make
them of. Take me down to see 'the Tods,' Dad!"

Why not? And yet--! Just as in this spring night Felix felt so much,
so very much, lying out there behind the still and moony dark, such
marvellous holding of breath and waiting sentiency, so behind
this innocent petition, he could not help the feeling of a lurking
fatefulness. That was absurd. And he said: "If you wish it, by all
means. You'll like your Uncle Tod; as to the others, I can't say,
but your aunt is an experience, and experiences are what you want, it
seems."

Fervently, without speech, Nedda squeezed his arm.


CHAPTER IV


Stanley Freeland's country house, Becket, was almost a show place.
It stood in its park and pastures two miles from the little town of
Transham and the Morton Plough Works; close to the ancestral home of the
Moretons, his mother's family--that home burned down by Roundheads in
the Civil War. The site--certain vagaries in the ground--Mrs. Stanley
had caused to be walled round, and consecrated so to speak with a stone
medallion on which were engraved the aged Moreton arms--arrows and
crescent moons in proper juxtaposition. Peacocks, too--that bird
'parlant,' from the old Moreton crest--were encouraged to dwell there
and utter their cries, as of passionate souls lost in too comfortable
surroundings.

By one of those freaks of which Nature is so prodigal, Stanley--owner of
this native Moreton soil--least of all four Freeland brothers, had the
Moreton cast of mind and body. That was why he made so much more money
than the other three put together, and had been able, with the aid of
Clara's undoubted genius for rank and station, to restore a strain of
Moreton blood to its rightful position among the county families of
Worcestershire. Bluff and without sentiment, he himself set little store
by that, smiling up his sleeve--for he was both kindly and prudent--at
his wife who had been a Tomson. It was not in Stanley to appreciate the
peculiar flavor of the Moretons, that something which in spite of
their naivete and narrowness, had really been rather fine. To him, such
Moretons as were left were 'dry enough sticks, clean out of it.' They
were of a breed that was already gone, the simplest of all country
gentlemen, dating back to the Conquest, without one solitary conspicuous
ancestor, save the one who had been physician to a king and perished
without issue--marrying from generation to generation exactly their own
equals; living simple, pious, parochial lives; never in trade, never
making money, having a tradition and a practice of gentility more
punctilious than the so-called aristocracy; constitutionally paternal
and maternal to their dependents, constitutionally so convinced that
those dependents and all indeed who were not 'gentry,' were of different
clay, that they were entirely simple and entirely without arrogance,
carrying with them even now a sort of Early atmosphere of archery and
home-made cordials, lavender and love of clergy, together with frequent
use of the word 'nice,' a peculiar regularity of feature, and a
complexion that was rather parchmenty. High Church people and Tories,
naturally, to a man and woman, by sheer inbred absence of ideas, and
sheer inbred conviction that nothing else was nice; but withal very
considerate of others, really plucky in bearing their own ills; not
greedy, and not wasteful.

Of Becket, as it now was, they would not have approved at all. By what
chance Edmund Moreton (Stanley's mother's grandfather), in the middle
of the eighteenth century, had suddenly diverged from family feeling and
ideals, and taken that 'not quite nice' resolution to make ploughs and
money, would never now be known. The fact remained, together with
the plough works. A man apparently of curious energy and character,
considering his origin, he had dropped the E from his name, and--though
he continued the family tradition so far as to marry a Fleeming of
Worcestershire, to be paternal to his workmen, to be known as Squire,
and to bring his children up in the older Moreton 'niceness'--he had yet
managed to make his ploughs quite celebrated, to found a little town,
and die still handsome and clean-shaved at the age of sixty-six. Of his
four sons, only two could be found sufficiently without the E to go on
making ploughs. Stanley's grandfather, Stuart Morton, indeed, had tried
hard, but in the end had reverted to the congenital instinct for being
just a Moreton. An extremely amiable man, he took to wandering with his
family, and died in France, leaving one daughter--Frances, Stanley's
mother--and three sons, one of whom, absorbed in horses, wandered to
Australia and was killed by falling from them; one of whom, a soldier,
wandered to India, and the embraces of a snake; and one of whom wandered
into the embraces of the Holy Roman Church.

The Morton Plough Works were dry and dwindling when Stanley's father,
seeking an opening for his son, put him and money into them. From that
moment they had never looked back, and now brought Stanley, the sole
proprietor, an income of full fifteen thousand pounds a year. He wanted
it. For Clara, his wife, had that energy of aspiration which before now
has raised women to positions of importance in the counties which
are not their own, and caused, incidentally, many acres to go out of
cultivation. Not one plough was used on the whole of Becket, not even a
Morton plough--these indeed were unsuitable to English soil and were
all sent abroad. It was the corner-stone of his success that Stanley had
completely seen through the talked-of revival of English agriculture,
and sedulously cultivated the foreign market. This was why the Becket
dining-room could contain without straining itself large quantities of
local magnates and celebrities from London, all deploring the condition
of 'the Land,' and discussing without end the regrettable position of
the agricultural laborer. Except for literary men and painters, present
in small quantities to leaven the lump, Becket was, in fact, a rallying
point for the advanced spirits of Land Reform--one of those places where
they were sure of being well done at week-ends, and of congenial and
even stimulating talk about the undoubted need for doing something,
and the designs which were being entertained upon 'the Land' by either
party. This very heart of English country that the old Moretons in their
paternal way had so religiously farmed, making out of its lush grass and
waving corn a simple and by no means selfish or ungenerous subsistence,
was now entirely lawns, park, coverts, and private golf course, together
with enough grass to support the kine which yielded that continual
stream of milk necessary to Clara's entertainments and children, all
female, save little Francis, and still of tender years. Of gardeners,
keepers, cow-men, chauffeurs, footmen, stablemen--full twenty were
supported on those fifteen hundred acres that formed the little Becket
demesne. Of agricultural laborers proper--that vexed individual so much
in the air, so reluctant to stay on 'the Land,' and so difficult to
house when he was there, there were fortunately none, so that it was
possible for Stanley, whose wife meant him to 'put up' for the Division,
and his guests, who were frequently in Parliament, to hold entirely
unbiassed and impersonal views upon the whole question so long as they
were at Becket.

It was beautiful there, too, with the bright open fields hedged with
great elms, and that ever-rich serenity of its grass and trees. The
white house, timbered with dark beams in true Worcestershire fashion,
and added-to from time to time, had preserved, thanks to a fine
architect, an old-fashioned air of spacious presidency above its gardens
and lawns. On the long artificial lake, with innumerable rushy nooks
and water-lilies and coverture of leaves floating flat and bright in
the sun, the half-tame wild duck and shy water-hens had remote little
worlds, and flew and splashed when all Becket was abed, quite as if the
human spirit, with its monkey-tricks and its little divine flame, had
not yet been born.

Under the shade of a copper-beech, just where the drive cut through into
its circle before the house, an old lady was sitting that afternoon on
a campstool. She was dressed in gray alpaca, light and cool, and had on
her iron-gray hair a piece of black lace. A number of Hearth and Home
and a little pair of scissors, suspended by an inexpensive chain from
her waist, rested on her knee, for she had been meaning to cut out for
dear Felix a certain recipe for keeping the head cool; but, as a fact,
she sat without doing so, very still, save that, now and then, she
compressed her pale fine lips, and continually moved her pale fine
hands. She was evidently waiting for something that promised excitement,
even pleasure, for a little rose-leaf flush had quavered up into a face
that was colored like parchment; and her gray eyes under regular and
still-dark brows, very far apart, between which there was no semblance
of a wrinkle, seemed noting little definite things about her, almost
unwillingly, as an Arab's or a Red Indian's eyes will continue to note
things in the present, however their minds may be set on the future. So
sat Frances Fleeming Freeland (nee Morton) waiting for the arrival of
her son Felix and her grandchildren Alan and Nedda.

She marked presently an old man limping slowly on a stick toward where
the drive debouched, and thought at once: "He oughtn't to be coming this
way. I expect he doesn't know the way round to the back. Poor man, he's
very lame. He looks respectable, too." She got up and went toward
him, remarking that his face with nice gray moustaches was wonderfully
regular, almost like a gentleman's, and that he touched his dusty hat
with quite old-fashioned courtesy. And smiling--her smile was sweet
but critical--she said: "You'll find the best way is to go back to that
little path, and past the greenhouses. Have you hurt your leg?"

"My leg's been like that, m'm, fifteen year come Michaelmas."

"How did it happen?"

"Ploughin'. The bone was injured; an' now they say the muscle's dried up
in a manner of speakin'."

"What do you do for it? The very best thing is this."

From the recesses of a deep pocket, placed where no one else wore such a
thing, she brought out a little pot.

"You must let me give it you. Put it on when you go to bed, and rub it
well in; you'll find it act splendidly."

The old man took the little pot with dubious reverence.

"Yes, m'm," he said; "thank you, m'm."

"What is your name?"

"Gaunt."

"And where do you live?"

"Over to Joyfields, m'm."

"Joyfields--another of my sons lives there--Mr. Morton Freeland. But
it's seven miles."

"I got a lift half-way."

"And have you business at the house?" The old man was silent; the
downcast, rather cynical look of his lined face deepened. And Frances
Freeland thought: 'He's overtired. They must give him some tea and
an egg. What can he want, coming all this way? He's evidently not a
beggar.'

The old man who was not a beggar spoke suddenly:

"I know the Mr. Freeland at Joyfields. He's a good gentleman, too."

"Yes, he is. I wonder I don't know you."

"I'm not much about, owin' to my leg. It's my grand-daughter in service
here, I come to see."

"Oh, yes! What is her name?"

"Gaunt her name is."

"I shouldn't know her by her surname."

"Alice."

"Ah! in the kitchen; a nice, pretty girl. I hope you're not in trouble."

Again the old man was silent, and again spoke suddenly:

"That's as you look at it, m'm," he said. "I've got a matter of a few
words to have with her about the family. Her father he couldn't come, so
I come instead."

"And how are you going to get back?"

"I'll have to walk, I expect, without I can pick up with a cart."

Frances Freeland compressed her lips. "With that leg you should have
come by train."

The old man smiled.

"I hadn't the fare like," he said. "I only gets five shillin's a week,
from the council, and two o' that I pays over to my son."

Frances Freeland thrust her hand once more into that deep pocket, and as
she did so she noticed that the old man's left boot was flapping open,
and that there were two buttons off his coat. Her mind was swiftly
calculating: "It is more than seven weeks to quarter day. Of course I
can't afford it, but I must just give him a sovereign."

She withdrew her hand from the recesses of her pocket and looked at
the old man's nose. It was finely chiselled, and the same yellow as his
face. "It looks nice, and quite sober," she thought. In her hand was her
purse and a boot-lace. She took out a sovereign.

"Now, if I give you this," she said, "you must promise me not to spend
any of it in the public-house. And this is for your boot. And you must
go back by train. And get those buttons sewn on your coat. And tell
cook, from me, please, to give you some tea and an egg." And noticing
that he took the sovereign and the boot-lace very respectfully,
and seemed altogether very respectable, and not at all coarse or
beery-looking, she said:

"Good-by; don't forget to rub what I gave you into your leg every night
and every morning," and went back to her camp-stool. Sitting down on it
with the scissors in her hand, she still did not cut out that recipe,
but remained as before, taking in small, definite things, and feeling
with an inner trembling that dear Felix and Alan and Nedda would soon be
here; and the little flush rose again in her cheeks, and again her lips
and hands moved, expressing and compressing what was in her heart. And
close behind her, a peacock, straying from the foundations of the old
Moreton house, uttered a cry, and moved slowly, spreading its tail under
the low-hanging boughs of the copper-beeches, as though it knew
those dark burnished leaves were the proper setting for its 'parlant'
magnificence.


CHAPTER V


The day after the little conference at John's, Felix had indeed received
the following note:


"DEAR FELIX:

"When you go down to see old Tod, why not put up with us at Becket?
Any time will suit, and the car can take you over to Joyfields when you
like. Give the pen a rest. Clara joins in hoping you'll come, and Mother
is still here. No use, I suppose, to ask Flora.

"Yours ever,

"STANLEY."


During the twenty years of his brother's sojourn there Felix had been
down to Becket perhaps once a year, and latterly alone; for Flora,
having accompanied him the first few times, had taken a firm stand.

"My dear," she said, "I feel all body there."

Felix had rejoined:

"No bad thing, once in a way."

But Flora had remained firm. Life was too short! She did not get on
well with Clara. Neither did Felix feel too happy in his sister-in-law's
presence; but the gray top-hat instinct had kept him going there, for
one ought to keep in touch with one's brothers.

He replied to Stanley:


"DEAR STANLEY:

"Delighted; if I may bring my two youngsters. We'll arrive to-morrow at
four-fifty.

"Yours affectionately,

"FELIX."


Travelling with Nedda was always jolly; one could watch her eyes noting,
inquiring, and when occasion served, have one's little finger hooked in
and squeezed. Travelling with Alan was convenient, the young man having
a way with railways which Felix himself had long despaired of acquiring.
Neither of the children had ever been at Becket, and though Alan was
seldom curious, and Nedda too curious about everything to be specially
so about this, yet Felix experienced in their company the sensations of
a new adventure.

Arrived at Transham, that little town upon a hill which the Morton
Plough Works had created, they were soon in Stanley's car, whirling into
the sleepy peace of a Worcestershire afternoon. Would this young bird
nestling up against him echo Flora's verdict: 'I feel all body there!'
or would she take to its fatted luxury as a duck to water? And he said:
"By the way, your aunt's 'Bigwigs' set in on a Saturday. Are you for
staying and seeing the lions feed, or do we cut back?"

From Alan he got the answer he expected:

"If there's golf or something, I suppose we can make out all right."
From Nedda: "What sort of Bigwigs are they, Dad?"

"A sort you've never seen, my dear."

"Then I should like to stay. Only, about dresses?"

"What war paint have you?"

"Only two white evenings. And Mums gave me her Mechlin."

"'Twill serve."

To Felix, Nedda in white 'evenings' was starry and all that man could
desire.

"Only, Dad, do tell me about them, beforehand."

"My dear, I will. And God be with you. This is where Becket begins."

The car had swerved into a long drive between trees not yet full-grown,
but decorously trying to look more than their twenty years. To the
right, about a group of older elms, rooks were in commotion, for
Stanley's three keepers' wives had just baked their annual rook pies,
and the birds were not yet happy again. Those elms had stood there when
the old Moretons walked past them through corn-fields to church of a
Sunday. Away on the left above the lake, the little walled mound had
come in view. Something in Felix always stirred at sight of it, and,
squeezing Nedda's arm, he said:

"See that silly wall? Behind there Granny's ancients lived. Gone
now--new house--new lake--new trees--new everything."

But he saw from his little daughter's calm eyes that the sentiment in
him was not in her.

"I like the lake," she said. "There's Granny--oh, and a peacock!"

His mother's embrace, with its frail energy, and the pressure of her
soft, dry lips, filled Felix always with remorse. Why could he not give
the simple and direct expression to his feeling that she gave to hers?
He watched those lips transferred to Nedda, heard her say: "Oh, my
darling, how lovely to see you! Do you know this for midge-bites?" A
hand, diving deep into a pocket, returned with a little silver-coated
stick having a bluish end. Felix saw it rise and hover about Nedda's
forehead, and descend with two little swift dabs. "It takes them away at
once."

"Oh, but Granny, they're not midge-bites; they're only from my hat!"

"It doesn't matter, darling; it takes away anything like that."

And he thought: 'Mother is really wonderful!'

At the house the car had already disgorged their luggage. Only one man,
but he absolutely the butler, awaited them, and they entered, at once
conscious of Clara's special pot-pourri. Its fragrance steamed from blue
china, in every nook and crevice, a sort of baptism into luxury. Clara
herself, in the outer morning-room, smelled a little of it. Quick and
dark of eye, capable, comely, perfectly buttoned, one of those women who
know exactly how not to be superior to the general taste of the period.
In addition to that great quality she was endowed with a fine nose, an
instinct for co-ordination not to be excelled, and a genuine love of
making people comfortable; so that it was no wonder that she had risen
in the ranks of hostesses, till her house was celebrated for its ease,
even among those who at their week-ends liked to feel 'all body.' In
regard to that characteristic of Becket, not even Felix in his ironies
had ever stood up to Clara; the matter was too delicate. Frances
Freeland, indeed--not because she had any philosophic preconceptions on
the matter, but because it was 'not nice, dear, to be wasteful' even if
it were only of rose-leaves, or to 'have too much decoration,' such
as Japanese prints in places where they hum--sometimes told her
daughter-in-law frankly what was wrong, without, however, making the
faintest impression upon Clara, for she was not sensitive, and, as she
said to Stanley, it was 'only Mother.'