By the middle of July he was installed in rooms in Upworthy under the fostering care of the Rockrams, two old servants from the Manor. Tom Rockram had been Stimson’s predecessor, before the old Squire died, and his wife had soared from scullery-maid to cook in the same establishment. Their cottage faced the village green, and stood in its own garden. Each spring and summer the Rockrams took in boarders, but, at a hint from Dr. Pawley, they were glad to get a permanent “gentleman.” Grimshaw was given a good bedroom and sitting-room, and he had the use of Pawley’s dispensary.

Upon the faces of the two old servants were inscribed, with full quarterings, the Chandos arms. Whatever a Chandos did was just right. Brian, of course, in the judgment of Mrs. Rockram, was the handsomest hussar in the kingdom; Tom Rockram spoke with even greater enthusiasm of Cicely as the sweetest young lady in the world. Too sugary, perhaps, these descriptions, from a hypercritical point of view, but indicating loyalty and gratitude, qualities rare indeed in modern servants. Grimshaw found himself valeted to perfection, and looked forward to excellently cooked meals, a quite novel experience. The cosiness of it all was in delightful contrast to domestic conditions in Poplar. He wondered whether he would grow fat, like the weed on Lethe’s wharf, and slowly rot at ease. For the first time in his life he began to spell comfort with a capital “C.” To Pawley and Lady Selina he said emphatically: “I never had such a billet.” To himself, he thought, with amused apprehension: “Will this cosseting get a strangle-hold on me?” And if it did, what of it? Good men and true toiled and moiled, struggling on against adverse winds and currents, to achieve just such snug anchorage.

Pawley introduced him to some of the local magnates, who smiled graciously upon an old Wykhamist. Each day it became more certain to the young man that a prosperous future was his if he played the cards already in his hand. Sir Dion had been right. A sound country practice was not to be sneezed at. And the premium paid to Pawley had been negligible. In fine, he was treading a broad highway, walking briskly towards fortune, if not fame. Pawley suggested that on occasion he might ride.

“Would your means justify keeping a horse?” he asked.

“Do you mean a hunter? The doctor in boots?”

“Well, yes. A cavalier, you know, challenges attention. One day a week in the season might be worth while from every point of view.”

Grimshaw laughed.

“And how about my research work?”

“As to that——! You see, my dear fellow, I hesitate to advise you. The horse is a suggestion, nothing more. Long ago I gave up hunting. I’ve regretted it. As for research work, doesn’t it exact too undivided energies? I had to scrap my microscope before I put down my hunter. Think it over.”

Grimshaw nodded. But he hardly dared to confess to himself how keen he was to take up again open-air sports and pastimes. His first appearance on the village green, as a cricketer, had been acclaimed by all Upworthy. Lady Selina said solemnly: “Perhaps we shall beat Wilverley next year.”

Playing cricket, he met John Exton, and exchanged some talk with him. In Poplar it was impossible to throw a stone without hitting young men of John’s kidney. They, however, threw the stones in Poplar quite regardless of whom they might hit. Grimshaw knew that the Extons were under notice to quit the old homestead; and he knew also that Lady Selina had persuaded Lord Wilverley to entrust a small farm to Ephraim. This had soaped the ways by which the Extons slid from one parish into another. John was very bitter about it.

“We’ve never had a dog’s chance,” he told Grimshaw. “I don’t say, sir, that Father was wise to buy thoroughbred stock when he hadn’t proper buildings to house ’em in, but the old Squire egged him on to do it. Things were a sight better in his time, because he kept the whip-hand of Gridley. Now, Gridley does pretty much as he pleases, and my lady don’t know what goes on behind her back. Gridley sees to it that she ain’t bothered.”

“You’re up against a system,” said Grimshaw. “It’s no use blaming individuals.”

“I blame my lady,” John replied doggedly.

He was not the only one in Upworthy who held that individual responsible.

Nick Farleigh, the softy, did odd jobs for Tom Rockram, pumping water, fetching and carrying like a retriever, blacking boots, and feeding poultry. In common with many children of undeveloped minds, he had strange gifts, fashioning queer objects out of unconsidered trifles. Grimshaw won his devotion by showing him how to make a Chinese junk out of a square of newspaper.

Nick said gratefully:

“I bain’t afeard of ’ee, zur.”

“Why should you be afraid of anybody, my boy?”

Nick became confidential.

“I be afeard o’ nothink ’cept they broody hens o’ Mrs. Rockram’s. You know I be soft, zur, don’t ’ee?”

“Nonsense! We shall make a man of you yet, Nick.”

Nick considered this, with his head on one side. Then he whispered:

“I be soft along o’ my lady.”

Grimshaw asked Pawley to explain. With some reluctance, Pawley repeated what he had said to Cicely, with these additions:

“Nick’s mother, just before he was born, lost her two little girls of diphtheria. The boy was born wanting. Timothy Farleigh has never got over it. Lady Selina had just buried the Squire. In your opinion, Grimshaw, could mental suffering so affect and afflict an unborn child?”

“It might,” Grimshaw replied.

“Ever since Timothy Farleigh has smouldered with resentment.”

Grimshaw nodded. He had heard about Agatha Farleigh from John Exton. Agatha was now working in London, earning good wages, but Timothy, at the ale-house, accused Lady Selina of hounding a clever girl out of her village.

“I smell foul weather,” said Grimshaw.

Within a week the Great War had broken out.

Upworthy remained perfectly calm.

Brian Chandos came home on short leave. His regiment would be one of the first to go. He smoked many pipes with Grimshaw, picking up the old friendship easily, just where he had left it, apparently the same ingenuous youth whom Grimshaw remembered at Winchester. Really a Pacific of essential differences rolled between them, differences of experience. Grimshaw listened to Brian on the coming “show.” As a soldier he seemed to know something about his “job.” As the prospective heir to a fine property his ignorance was immeasurable. He viewed it, as it were, from the wrong end of the telescope. What appeared big to him—the future of foxhunting, for instance, game-preserving, and polo—was negligible to Grimshaw in comparison with decent housing and a better wage for land-workers. Brian cut him short when, tentatively, such reforms were barely outlined:

“Cottages in the rural districts don’t pay, never did. We can’t raise wages without hostilising the farmers—and I ask you, where are we if we do that?” Again and again he silenced argument in Grimshaw by repeating filially: “Mother knows; you talk to her; she’d do anything in reason, anything.”

And at the first dinner at the Manor, rather to Grimshaw’s dismay, Brian said, in a loud voice, as if it were a good joke: “I say, Mums, Old Grimmer is a bit of a Rad. You must take him in hand. He’s an out-and-out reformer.”

Cicely didn’t improve matters by adding:

“And a jolly good thing too. Dr. Pawley says we are antediluvians.”

Pawley was not present, having departed on his holiday. Lady Selina looked down her nose.

“Are you quite sure Dr. Pawley said that, my dear?”

“Absolutely,” Cicely replied. “We are only modern in our frocks; and that doesn’t apply to you, Mums.”

Unfortunately for Grimshaw, Lord Wilverley happened to be present. He, at any rate, was recognised outside of his own county as an enlightened and experienced agriculturist. And being a kindly man, secure in a great position, he came to Grimshaw’s rescue. Lady Selina found herself listening to the opinions of a magnate, who might be a son-in-law. And the odds against such a desirable match diminished when she saw Cicely eagerly assimilating what Wilverley said. And, of course, Wilverley being Wilverley, could say what he pleased. Grimshaw realised, with humorous dismay, that he was cast for the part of scapegoat. On his head would fall the hardly-concealed resentment of the lady of the manor.

After dinner matters became worse. Brian wanted to talk to Wilverley about horse-breeding. Lady Selina took up her embroidery. Cicely made herself agreeable to Grimshaw, instead of improving the shining hour with the best parti in the neighbourhood. And Grimshaw, grateful to a charming girl, exerted himself to please and entertain. It seemed to be predestined that he would gain in favour with the daughter what he might lose with the mother. And who will blame him if he strove to distinguish himself with the former after some extinguishment at the hands of the latter? He could talk much better than Wilverley, and he knew it. Wilverley spoke didactically. Grimshaw had a more graceful seat astride his hobby-horse. He excelled in description, transporting Cicely to Essex and Poplar, into the deep clay ruts of the one and the mean streets of the other. Cicely could not help contrasting the two men, the fidgety irritability of Wilverley with the easy good-humour of Grimshaw, who laughed at his own failures. Wilverley grew red and heated in argument; Grimshaw became pale and cool.

Nevertheless, there was a curious incandescence about him. Under ordinary atmospheric pressure he might seem dull, sinking into odd silences and introspections, but when a right vacuum was obtained, such a vacuum as a charming young lady might present, an inquiring mind, let us say, empty of essential facts, he glowed, giving out heat and light, not a blazing, eye-blinking glare, but something softly and steadily illuminating.

“I’ve had some humiliating experiences, Miss Chandos. Till you live and work amongst the very poor, you can’t realise how difficult it is to understand them, and how much more difficult it is for them to understand us. Millions have never seen a woman like you. They live like animals; they are animals; and, of course, that’s our fault.”

“Our fault?” she gasped. But she was the more interested because he had made his theme personal.

“Oh, yes; we don’t give enough; and now, because of that, they, poor things, at the mercy of any glib, red-rag revolutionary, want to take too much. The privileged classes have never really exercised their greatest privilege.”

“And what is that, Mr. Grimshaw?” she asked in a low voice.

“Why, helping others to help themselves. Ordinary charity only hinders. Wage earners demand more than panem et circenses.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Bread and ‘movies.’ They don’t like dry bread; and the ‘movies’ serve to fill them with envy for all they haven’t got.” Then, in a different tone, with a queer astringent cynicism, he added: “I didn’t exercise my privileges.”

“I’m sure you did,” she affirmed with conviction.

“No—I bolted. I couldn’t stick it. My own impotence maddened me. Perhaps——” His voice died away. He began again: “It’s not what we do that counts, but the way we do it. Talking to them is waste of time. Words! Words! How one hates them after a time! I’ve waded through all the dreary stuff that’s written about the poor. Most of it makes one sick. I don’t believe that conditions can be bettered anywhere by talk, not even when the talk is buried in the Statute Book. Something more is needed. Some—some tremendous discipline that will change the point of view of the classes and the masses so that they can see each other in truer perspective. Do the waves wonder why they batter themselves into spray against the rocks? But there is attrition all the time. Tremendous forces win in the end.”

“Do you mean that we are the rocks?”

“We stand on the rocks, blandly looking at the waves, impressed by their fury, but not attempting to control it and use it. Perhaps the biggest rock on which we stand is class loyalty. I’m sure your mother prides herself on that.”

“Of course she does.”

“Have you ever tried to analyse class loyalty?”

“No.”

“Self-preservation is behind and beneath it. At core lies a selfish, primitive instinct—to hold on tight to what we have regardless of how we came by it. Above this is a reticulation, a spider’s web, of inherited prejudices and predilections, so tangled up that one despairs of untangling them. On the surface, like a soft moss, love of ease spreads itself. I feel that here in all my bones. I try to fight against it. The lure of comfort——! What a bait——! Satan’s tit-bit——!”

His vehemence, the more insistent because he spoke so quietly, almost in a whisper, made a profound impression. She had never heard any man talk like this. The abysmal conviction in his tone amazed her. Wilverley, as she knew, preached in and out of season a doctrine of reconstruction and reform. But he did it with the air of a man who was grinding his own axe, putting a finer edge upon a weapon which he intended to use to better his own large fortune. He never lost sight of the fact that what he did on his domains paid, brought grist to his mill. All his excellent schemes for housing labourers comfortably, for paying them a higher wage, for nourishing them adequately, for developing in them capacities and potentialities, were really inspired by the force which had raised his father from the lower middle class to the nobility. Obviously, Grimshaw was actuated by no such essentially selfish motive. He thought of others before himself; he seemed to behold a travailing world with the detachment of a physician pledged, if need be, to sacrifice his own comfort and advancement in the practice of his hard profession. She said hesitatingly, groping her way towards his conclusions:

“Surely, Mr. Grimshaw, there is something finer than that in what you call class loyalty?”

“All loyalty is fine,” he replied, “but there can be no monopoly of it. Do you think that the unprivileged classes do not feel it in a blind sort of way? Of course they do. And that loyalty is a driving power which the more unscrupulous of their mis-leaders are harnessing to their own ambitions. Class loyalty, wherever you find it, is undiluted Prussianism.”

She laughed a little.

“Is my mother a Prussian?” she asked mischievously.

“Your mother,” he replied less tensely, with a glance at that lady as she bent over her embroidery, “is—is——”

“Covered with soft moss?” she suggested.

“We are all covered with moss, Miss Chandos. And, I suppose, the moss must be raked off before we can see with clear vision.”

“You are raking some of it off me. I told you I wanted to work with you. I do—more than ever, but you mustn’t rake at Mother. Perhaps you noticed that Lord Wilverley tried raking at dinner.” He nodded. “Oh, you did. Of course, she has to stand it from him.”

“Lord Wilverley, I noticed, made an impression on you.”

His eyes met hers. She noticed a twinkle in them. All tension had gone from his pleasant voice.

“I like what he does more than I like what he says. He tries to spur people to his ideas. You can’t spur Mother.”

“No.”

“I am glad that you are more—a—persuasive in your methods.”

“Am I?”

She smiled, nodding her head. He wondered whether there was a tincture of the coquette in her. In criticising Wilverley was she trying to hide her real feelings for him? He had not answered the question when Wilverley left Brian and approached the pair on the sofa. Grimshaw made sure he wanted to talk to Cicely, and rose at once. To his surprise, Wilverley said without any condescension:

“I’m looking forward to making your better acquaintance, Mr. Grimshaw. If you have no other engagement, will you dine and sleep at the Court some day that suits you next week?”

“With great pleasure.”

A day was named, and shortly afterwards Wilverley took his leave. Grimshaw left the Manor a few minutes later. Alone with her children, Lady Selina said with a sigh:

“Dear me! It wasn’t a very pleasant dinner, was it?”

“I enjoyed myself,” said Cicely.

“Yes, b’Jove! We saw that, didn’t we, Mums? And the little baggage sided against us. But we held our own—we held our own.”

Lady Selina smiled maternally, catching an echo of Brian’s father. Cicely replied sharply:

“If you hold on too tight to what you think is your own, you may lose it, if democracy wins this war.”

“Hark to her!” exclaimed Brian. “What a cry!”

Cicely, however, saw the expediency of running mute. She kissed her mother and brother and went to bed. Lady Selina turned troubled eyes upon her son.

“Have I made a mistake in being civil to this friend of yours, Brian?”

Brian hastened to reassure her: Old Grimmer was a thundering good sort. And a mighty clever fellow, not likely to quarrel with his bread-and-butter. Civility would tie him to his mother’s apron-strings. Nothing like it. Ask him to shoot! Introduce him to all the swells! But keep an eye peeled on Cis. Modern girls kicked over the traces. Arthur Wilverley meant business. Any fool could see that. Grimshaw was a gentleman. He wouldn’t attempt to poach in another fellow’s preserves. All the same, make him feel the weight of obligation. Be civil, be kind—keep it up!

Lady Selina was not quite comforted.

“Your Old Grimmer is very attractive. And, to-night, it seemed to me that poor dear Arthur was rather eclipsed. Sometimes, Brian, I feel discouraged, and then I want support. I can’t argue with Arthur, for instance. He overwhelms me with words—words. And then, like your father, I say nothing. But it comforts me greatly to feel that you think as I do, that the old ways suffice you.”

“Ra-ther!”

“You are my dear son.”

She held his hand, gently caressing it, gazing at him with tears in her eyes, which he pretended not to see. Thousands of mothers throughout the land were indulging in these furtive caresses, saying little because they feared to say too much. Thousands of sons respected such pathetic silences.

Before Grimshaw’s brief visit to Wilverley Court, an incident took place, trivial in itself, but fraught with far-reaching consequences. The faithful Mrs. Rockram fell ill, taking to her bed with a neglected cold likely to develop into pleurisy and pneumonia. Grimshaw, however, came to the rescue and—as Mrs. Rockram affirms to this day—saved her life. For twenty-four hours grave issues impended above a high temperature and severe pain. Cicely was in and out of the cottage half a dozen times, bringing what was required from the Manor kitchen, and ministering eagerly to an old friend. Lady Selina, wisely or otherwisely, made no protest. She must have known that two highly-strung young people would be thrown together. But, at the moment, every young woman in the kingdom had become a potential nurse. And also, as luck would have it, no professional nurse could take Cicely’s place. And Mrs. Rockram had served the Chandos family for five-and-twenty years ...!

Man and maid, therefore, beheld each other with clear vision under the happiest conditions of a temporary and unconventional intimacy. They glided into comradeship, not recking where it might carry them. The current bore them out of a prosaic present into a land of dreams, the shadowy future where we fondly believe that we shall be more abundantly blessed. Both were unaware of the interest and curiosity that each kindled in the other, because, with all sincerity, they were engrossed in a common task which exacted unceasing vigilance. Even Grimshaw, with his habit of introspection and analysis, would have ridiculed the suggestion of sentimental attraction between himself and Cicely. He knew better than his amateur nurse how acute was the condition of his patient, a stout, lymphatic woman, with but slight powers of resistance to disease. And Cicely, for her part, could have sworn truthfully that the mere sight of Grimshaw’s tense face, the mere sound of his incisive voice, had frightened her out of her wits, constraining her to uncompromising obedience and attention. For the first time she saw a man fighting desperately to save the life of another. The only thing that seemed to matter was to help him to the best of her ability.

Had she contented herself with that, no consequences would have ensued. But she divined instantly that Grimshaw, unsparing of himself, needed her special attention. Dr. Pawley’s cook was taking a holiday like her master. The food at The Chandos Arms was primitive. And it did not occur to Lady Selina to ask Grimshaw to stay at the Manor. Brian had rejoined his regiment. Cicely rose triumphantly to a small emergency. Grimshaw found cold ham on his sideboard, some delicious sandwiches and hot soup. He gobbled these up without hazarding any conjecture as to whence they came. Tom Rockram, however, enlightened him. The honest fellow had some of the ham for his own dinner.

“You can thank my young lady,” he told him.

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Grimshaw, “I haven’t.”

His thanks, perhaps, were heartier because belated.

The crisis passed swiftly; and Grimshaw had other patients. But Cicely stuck to her post till Mrs. Rockram was pronounced well able to fend for herself. By that time Cupid had sped his shafts. The victims, as yet, felt no smart, but each magnified the other, disdaining measurements. Mont Blanc and Monte Rosa, twin peaks, soaring into the blue!

The intimacy ended as suddenly as it had begun. Grimshaw took leave of his comrade with unaffected regret and slightly awkward apologies.

“I’m afraid I ordered you about, Miss Chandos.”

“Oh, you did. But I liked that. Obedience is necessary to success. That line is engraved on my heart. I used to write it out thousands of times when I first went to school.”

“Did you? There’s a touch of the rebel in you.”

“Yes; there is. I used to spell ‘necessary’ with one ‘s’ on purpose to annoy the mistress who set the pun. Such a silly pun too. Vain repetitions!”

“Exasperating everywhere.”

“Particularly in church, from the mouth of dear old Goody.”

“You are a rebel. And so am I.”

“Of course I know that.” Her eyes met his frankly, with an odd challenge. Against his discreeter judgment he felt impelled to take up that challenge.

“Do you still want to work with a rebel?”

She eyed him with self-possession, faintly smiling. But she was thinking how difficult it would be to describe him adequately in a letter to Miss Arabella Tiddle. By now she was able to view him in perspective, ripening to full maturity. Immense possibilities were indicated, she decided. Would he expand into a splendid somebody? Would he “furnish up”?—to use Brian’s favourite expression about a four-year-old. Dr. Pawley had said of him: “He rings true,” with an allusion to the eighteenth-century wine-glasses which he collected. And, after that happy comparison, she had never heard Grimshaw speak without noting the lingering resonance of his tones. Head and body were admirably proportioned, rich in line and contour, but not aggressively so. The careless eye would wander past him. He was, admittedly, too thin, too pale, to please the ordinary bouncing country miss; and yet he had the colour of a fine black-and-white print.

She answered his question charmingly:

“If you still want to work with me.”

“I do—I do. But how to go to work bothers me. You see, I am not—I fear I never can be—diplomatic.”

All traces of the doctor had vanished. He stood before her, clothed with an endearing humility and humanity. Cicely might, at her age, be deemed incapable of thus summing up a passing phase in a man who attracted her, but she grasped the essential fact: he loathed to inflict pain on others. His mission in life was obviously to alleviate suffering. Her first thought was: “How wisely he has chosen his profession!” She said softly:

“I think I understand and sympathise. But my Mother——?”

She broke off abruptly, unable, perhaps unwilling, to give words to sensibilities still inarticulate. Very eagerly he took up the broken sentence.

“But I understand too. And just because she is your mother,” he placed, unconsciously, the slightest emphasis on the personal pronoun, “I feel so much the more bothered.”

“Please don’t bother too much!”

She held out her hand and went her way.