After dinner he stood long at a window, then twisted away, and walked
to Thring, where he captained in a football match, Loveday watching his
rage, his twisting waist, and then accompanying him home: but in the
dining-room they found the lord-of-the-manor's bailiff; and Loveday,
divining something embarrassing, took himself away.
The same evening there were two appraisers in the house, and the
bailiff, on their judgment, took possession of the chattels on the
holding except some furniture, and some agricultural “fixtures”. The
sale was arranged for the sixth day.
From the old Hogarth the truth could no longer be hidden...
Two days he continued quiet in the old nook by the hearth, apparently in
a kind of dotage doze; but on the third, he began to poke about, hobbled
into the dairy, peered into the churn, touched the skimmer.
“You'll have to wear the cap”, Margaret heard him mutter--“or be turned
out”.
As if taking farewell, he would get up, as at a sudden thought, to go to
visit something. He kept murmuring: “I always said, Get a bit of land as
your own, but I never did; the days went by and by....”
Margaret, meantime, was busy, binding beds with sheets, making bundles,
preparing for the flitting, with a heaving breast; till, on the fifth
day, a van stood loaded with their things at the hall-door, and she,
with untidy hair, was helping heave the last trunk upon the backboard,
when the carman said: “Mrs. Mackenzie says, mum, the things mustn't be
took to the cottage, except you pay in advance”.
Now Margaret stood at a loss; but in a minute went bustling, deciding
to go to Loveday, not without twinges of reluctance: for Loveday, with
instinctive delicacy, had lately kept from the farm; and to Margaret,
whose point of view was different, the words “false friends” had
occurred.
Passing through an alley of the forest, she was met by a man--a
park-keeper of Frankl's--a German Jew, who had once handed her a note
from Frankl. And he, on seeing her, said: “Here have I a letter for your
brother”.
“Who from?” she asked.
“That may I not say”.
When he handed her an envelope rather stuffed with papers, she went
on her flurried way; and soon Loveday was bowing before her in his
sitting-room at Priddlestone.
“You will be surprised to see me, Mr. Loveday,” said she, panting.
“A little surprised, but most awfully glad, too. Is all well?”
“Oh, far from that, I'm afraid. But I haven't got any time--and, oh my,
I don't know how to say it,--but to be frank with you--could you lend
Richard two pounds--?”
Loveday coloured to the roots of his hair.
He could not tell her: “Open that envelope in your hand”, for that would
have meant that it was he who had sent the £50 it contained; and he had
now only one sixpence in Priddlestone.
“That is”, she said--“if it is not an inconvenience to you--”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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