So that was how William had taken his protest! No word to him, but this—it seemed like ill-tempered—order to put an end to the work. His anger was hot against Coombe, whom he accused in his mind of putting him in a hole for the sake of doing so, and then coming to see how he would take it. But towards William his feeling was more one of sorrow.

He had been giving him credit for generosity and kindly feeling. Surely it was unworthy of him to behave in that way, even if he had allowed himself to be unduly annoyed over the tone of the protest made to him. What must have been his attitude when he sent that telegram to his servant, and sent no word to his brother? He must have known that to dismiss his labourers in that way at a moment's notice would make trouble—trouble that would affect his brother who was on the spot. Yet he had left him to find out the high-handed action he had taken for himself. Why couldn't he have given him an opportunity of withdrawing, if he really thought that he had vetoed the undertaking, which had been in hand for a week? He couldn't have thought that; the letter written to him was not a prohibition.

What was to be done now? If that confounded fellow Coombe had come to him before dismissing the men, he would have wired to William and put it all right. Yes, he would have done that, pocketing the hurt to his dignity; for he did recognize that he had given some cause for offence, though William had been in the wrong to take it in the way he had.

Was it too late to do it even now? It was he who had induced the word to be given that had stopped the work, and it was for him to give the word for it to go on. It was simply Coombe's insolence that had refused to take it from him. Coombe would find that he had overstepped the bounds; for he had for the time made it impossible to take the course that his master must wish to have taken. If matters were to be put right, it could only be by sending a long telegram to William. He began to formulate it in his mind. He must say that his letter had not meant that he wished the work to be stopped; he must make it plain that he wanted it to go on; he must say that Coombe had already dismissed the outside labour before telling him of the orders he had received, and had refused to take orders from him to re-engage the men. It would be best to get William to wire to Coombe to act upon Colonel Eldridge's authority until he came to Hayslope himself.

It would be a complete surrender on his part; but he was ready to make it. The mood in which he had entered the house still influenced him; if William chose to act in this way towards him, he would not accept it as an offence without giving him a chance to alter his attitude. They could have it out together when they met; that would be better than writing letters, which were apt to be misunderstood.

He had sat down at his writing-table to compose his message, when the maid came in and said that some men had called to see him. Who were they? One was Jackson, from the Brookside cottages, and another was Pegg, from Crouch Lane. There were two more whom she didn't know. She was told to show them in.

Jackson was an elderly man of good character well known to Colonel Eldridge, who had employed him himself for some years, until he had been obliged to reduce his labour bill. Pegg was a younger man, who had worked on various farms, and since the war, in which he had been wounded, had never remained long in one place, because his small pension, and the greatly increased wages for agricultural labour, had enabled him to indulge his taste for occasional spells of leisure. The other two men were younger still, and one of them wore a discoloured khaki tunic. Colonel Eldridge did not know either of them, but a shrewd glance told him that they were of the agricultural labourer class, probably smartened up a bit by their military service. They stood before him, Jackson slightly in advance.

"Well, Jackson! Well, Pegg! Hope your leg hasn't been giving you any more trouble. Who are these two?"

The man in the khaki tunic answered for himself, smartly. "Thomas Dell, Colonel, late of Second Battalion Downshire Regiment." The other followed suit. "Albert Chambers, Colonel, late of Army Service Corps."

He asked them a few questions about themselves. They had served their country; the soldier in him must pay tribute to that first of all. They could be seen expanding in modest pride, as they exercised the mode of address they had learnt in the orderly room, standing before their officers as they now stood before him. He approved of them. Men who had served unwillingly in the army and taken their discharge would not have answered him in that way.

"Well, what is it you want? Jackson!"

"We were took on at Mr. William's, beg your pardon, Sir William's, sir, and now we're turned off. It don't seem hardly fair, and we thought we'd come to you about it."

"How were you taken on? By the week?"

"Yes, sir. But—"

"Coombe has just been here, and told me that you've had a week's wages instead of notice. So there's nothing unfair in it."

"Well, sir, we were told that it would be a two month's job. That's what Coombe told us."

"Coombe took you on, I suppose; not Sir William?"

"Yes, sir. It was like this—"

"I've just heard all about it from Coombe. There has been a mistake. When you came in, I was just about to telegraph to Sir William. What you'd better do is to wait till I get an answer, and I've no doubt that to-morrow you'll be going on where you left off. You'll have had a day's holiday at full pay, and you won't have anything to grumble at, eh?"

He said this with a smile. He liked old Jackson, and had often stopped to have a word with him, when he had been employed on estate work, mending a fence, clearing a drain, or whatever job it might be that had to do with the land on which he had worked since boyhood. He was full of homely wisdom; a true son of the soil, with few desires that were not connected with it. Such men appeal to the fatherly instinct that is born in the best type of landowner towards those dependent on him. Their simplicity must be respected; their reliance upon the justice of their "betters" must be met by the most careful consideration of their troubles.

Old Jackson hesitated. "Well, sir," he said, "begging your pardon, we're not wishful to take on work again under Coombe. Sir William, he'd always treat us right, same as you would, if he wasn't too occupied to look after things himself, as I've told these others who've been working along of us. Pegg'll bear me out there."

Pegg bore him out, with a mumble of acquiescence, and Colonel Eldridge waited for him to go on.

"Coombe don't come from these parts," said old Jackson, and came to a stop.

"That's nothing against him, if he acts as he should. What's the complaint against him?"

But Jackson had come to the end of his powers of expression. He could only repeat: "He don't come from these parts."

Dell, in the khaki jacket, took up the tale. "He's desirous of making mischief, sir. We were told, after you came down the other morning, that there'd be trouble about the work we were doing, and if we were turned off of a good job we'd better look to you for another one."

Colonel Eldridge had not expected anything of this sort. But he was sitting in the seat of justice now, and the bearing of such a statement on himself must wait for consideration until later.

"Who was that said to? Tell me the exact words that were said."

Old Jackson found his tongue again. "That's how it was, sir," he said. "There was me and Pegg heard it, and Dell, and another who ain't here. I up and said myself that he'd no call to talk like that of you, and whatever Mr. William done with his land you'd stand by."

"You were quite right there, of course. Was there anything more said, or only just that speech?"

"He told me to go on with my work and not sauce him back, or I could lay down my tools and take myself off. I ain't used to being talked to in that way, sir; and Coombe don't belong to these parts."

"He told Warner, one of the other men took on, sir, that you didn't like Sir William having more money nor what you've got—begging your pardon for reporting his true words—and that if you could stop the work what we was engaged on, you'd do it."

This was from Chambers, the other ex-soldier, and Dell added: "That's right, sir. And he said we could see for ourselves that you were looking ugly about it, and meant mischief."

"That's enough. I don't want to hear any more insolent speeches. If you've just come to repeat that sort of thing to me, I'd rather you had let it alone. Jackson and Pegg are my tenants, though neither of them work for me. I dare say they wouldn't like to stand by and let that go on without speaking up. But it would have been better to report it to Sir William, instead of to me. I don't see what it has to do with you two at all."

They showed some surprise at that, for his anger was plain to see, and his gaze was directed straight at them. "I've told you," he said to Jackson, "that I was on the point of wiring to Sir William to ask him to give instructions to Coombe to proceed with the work. That would have meant taking you all on again. If you don't want to be taken on, I can't do anything more for you."

Old Jackson seemed to have nothing further to say, and the two ex-soldiers were still under the influence of the rebuke administered to them. It was Pegg who spoke, with a preparatory clearing of the throat. "Jackson said you was thinking of mending the road through the park, sir."

"Mending the road!"

"It wants doing," said Jackson, speaking now in quite a different tone, as an expert, whose word carries weight. "It wants doing bad. Put it off any longer and 'twill mean laying a new foundation here and there, and steam-rolling and all, when take it in time and a bit of metal will serve. There's a hole by the three oaks that never ought to been allowed to get so. You can maybe patch it up to-day, but I wouldn't answer for what you could do with it to-morrow. Nothing's been done to the road for a matter of five years or more."

"You may call it six," said Colonel Eldridge. "It was mended last in the winter before the war, and it was mostly your doing, Jackson."

"Yes, sir. And there was a tidy bit of metal got out of the lower quarry what we didn't use all of. You'd only have to break it up and lead it; and lead some gravel to put on it. 'Tis true that I did say to Pegg and these two that us four 'ud make a good job of it in four weeks, maybe five—I wouldn't undertake not to make a tidy job of it in less. Put it off and it'll take longer."

Colonel Eldridge sat considering, his eyes on the papers in front of him. "What about the other two who were taken on at the Grange?" he asked.

"They've gone off, sir," said Dell. "They didn't like the job, and wouldn't have stayed anyhow."

"They have gone off? They're not hanging about the village?"

"No, sir. They took their money, and went off by train to Southampton where they belong to the docks."

"Where are you two lodging?"

They told him, and he made no comment, except to say: "If I take you on, you'll have to work under Jackson, and you'll have to keep quiet in the village. A glass or two at the inn I don't mind, but we never have any trouble with drink at Hayslope, and I wouldn't put up with it."

Chambers looked scandalized, and asserted himself to be a teetotaller. Dell said: "I'm a respectable man, Colonel, and if anybody's been putting it about that I'm otherwise that man's a liar, begging your pardon for the language."

"Very well. I accept what you say. I'll take the four of you on from to-morrow, by the week. What wages were you getting at the Grange?"

They told him, and he said they were too high. "You know that, Jackson. Wages have gone up enormously. I don't grudge them to men like you, who do your work as it ought to be done. But I'm not going to pay more than the current rate. If Coombe took you on at the Grange at the rate you say, he ought not to have done it."

They expressed themselves in their various ways as satisfied with what he offered them, and old Jackson said: "Who am I to take my orders from, sir, now Bridger has gone?"

"You'll take them from me. I'm my own bailiff now. Meet me in half an hour at the three oaks, and I'll settle with you what's to be done."

He wanted a little time for consideration, and when the men had filed out of the room and left him alone, he rose and walked up and down, as his habit was when he had to think anything out.

He wanted to be quite sure that he had done right. The cost of these repairs would be heavy, but the state of the drive would not admit of much further delay, as old Jackson had said, unless it were to become almost impassable here and there, and involve a larger expenditure later on. He had been ashamed of it only half an hour before, when Lord Crowborough had turned off on to the grass of the park to escape the worst place, and shown, by making no comment on it, that he knew why it had been left as it was. He was rather relieved at having had his hand forced about it, for it didn't do to shirk making necessary repairs out of unwillingness to spend money on them at the right time. Only bad landlords did that, and they suffered for it in the long run. The cost would be inconvenient at this moment, but it could be met. Jackson would do the work thoroughly, and he was glad to have the old fellow back in his employ. It might even be worth while to keep him on, for now that he had got rid of his bailiff there was nobody to whom he could delegate any overseeing, and he was more tied than he wanted to be. Pegg was a bit of a rolling stone, but would keep up to the mark as long as the job lasted. The other two seemed good sort of men, and would probably do as well as any.

All that was satisfactory enough; but it wanted thinking about as it affected his relations with William.

The idea of wiring to him in the terms he had intended must be given up. That had settled itself, for the extra labour he had employed was no longer available. Two of the men had gone off, and the other four had refused to continue with it. That was Coombe's fault, without any question. He had always suspected that fellow of being a mischief-maker, and now he stood revealed. The report with which he had come to him had been immediately proved to be absolutely groundless. Of the men of whom he had professed to be so suspicious that it was necessary to come and give a warning—for the good name of the village—two belonged to it—which he didn't—and were well known, two had already left it, and from the other two there was nothing to fear. The impudent readiness with which he had turned the few questions of the other morning into a mischievous attack showed him for what he was. Colonel Eldridge hardly felt indignation on account of it. The man had given himself away, and was as good as done with. Whatever their differences, William would never keep in his employ a man who had misbehaved in that way.

Coombe was so patently the fount and origin of the break-up that had come upon William's plans that it was a little difficult to go back to what had given him his handle. When he turned his mind to it, he experienced a droop of spirit. It was his protest that had started the trouble, and he had no inclination to shirk that fact, though it was also true that if William had not received it in the spirit he had, no harm would have been done. He had some effort to put himself in William's place, and did arrive at the conclusion that he had probably not received his letter until his return from his visit that morning, and that he had probably written in answer to it, which answer he would receive the next morning. That softened the effect of his peremptory order, but by no means justified it; for unless he had intended to show his annoyance by it, he would surely have sent him a wire at the same time.

The result of his cogitations was that nothing could be done then to mend the matter. He must wait to see if there was a letter from William, and, whether there was or not, it would be better to write no more letters, but to wait further until William came down on Friday evening, which he usually did. The garden should be made somehow, with another than Coombe to direct it. He wanted to see the garden made now, almost as much as William did.

He went out and made the arrangements with old Jackson, and then again returned to the house, slowly, and with very different thoughts from those which had borne him company on the same road an hour before. He did not want to think any more about the unpleasantness that had come upon him. No doubt it would work itself out, but he did not feel that he was free of it yet. And the vision of the larger freedom that had come to him had faded. He was in no mind now to go to William and ask him for the money that would settle all his difficulties.

After supper, which had taken the place of dinner at Hayslope Hall on these long summer evenings, he walked with his wife in the garden, and told her of what had happened.

She was more disturbed than he had been over William's telegram to Coombe, and his failure to communicate at the same time with him. "You're sure you didn't actually forbid him to go on?" she asked.

Yes, he was quite sure; but in answer to a further question he could not declare with such certainty that he had not written in a way that could arouse annoyance. "I'm afraid I did express myself rather strongly," he admitted. "But I always have said straight out what I meant to William, and he has never taken it like this. Besides, my impression is that I showed him, in what I wrote afterwards, that I didn't mean it seriously—or not so seriously as all that. I intended to, anyhow."

"Ah!" she sighed. "You ought to have shown me the letter before you sent it. I could have told you whether it was right or not. I wonder if Eleanor saw this telegram before William sent it! I'm sure to hear from her to-morrow, and I think you are sure to hear from William."

"William ought not to have done it," he said, in a tone of finality. "I can't think that he would have behaved like this a few years ago."

"Oh, my dear, of course he wouldn't."

"Why do you say that?" he asked in some surprise.

"It's quite plain, isn't it? William was nobody much then, compared to you. Now he is a notable, and expects to be treated as such."

"He has never shown that he expected us to treat him any differently."

"Oh, as long as we keep our places, and don't presume."

He did not smile at this. "I didn't know you felt like that about him," he said. "You don't about Eleanor, do you?"

"No. Eleanor has a more level head. I haven't really much fault to find with William either. I was only laughing at him. One does laugh at people who go up in the world, and show themselves so delighted with it, doesn't one? It's the best way to take them, especially if you're not going up in the world yourself. Or perhaps it isn't the best way. I'm not sure. Perhaps it shows you're a little jealous of them. But I'm certainly not jealous of Eleanor, and I'm sure you're not jealous of William. Poor William! I'm a little sorry for him."

"Sorry for him!"

"Ye—es. His success hasn't improved him. I don't like him as well as I did, and of course I'm sorry for the people I don't like, just as I'm rather inclined to envy the people I do like. I'll tell you what I think about all this bother. I don't believe William has the slightest intention of giving up his garden. He'll expect you to be overcome with remorse at having rebuked him, and beg him to go on. What does it matter to him, paying six men a week's wages, with no work done for it? Add there's no hurry, you know. They weren't going to plant in any case until October. There will be plenty of time to get new men to work at it, and get it finished in time."

"Do you really think that is what he has in his mind? Something of the same sort occurred to me, but I don't want to think such a thing."

"Well, dear, you had much better follow your own ideas about it than mine. You can't expect a woman to take the broad view of something that touches her that a man can. I dare say you're more likely to be right about William than I am. You have always treated him with great forbearance, and until now you have kept good friends with him."

"You do think that—that I've treated him with forbearance?"

She stopped, and with a light laugh, looking up at him, put her hands on his shoulders. "My dear kind-hearted conscientious old man!" she said. "I'll tell you what I think. If you don't make a stand now, William will very soon be everything at Hayslope, and you will be nothing."