'I cannot swear to that,' Kate said, wishing she knew more about Mr. Fairley, and what lay in his heart toward Eleanor. She squeezed Ellie's hands as she dropped them, and managed a smile. 'But you might find it enjoyable. And when you have kissed him, you can tell me what it is like, so that I will know, too.' Again, unbidden, Sir Charles's face came into her mind.
Eleanor turned and they began to walk again. 'Thank you, Kate,' she said, subdued. 'If you think it would help, I will try.' There was a silence, and then she picked up her pace
and her voice took on a determined cheerfulness. 'There are so many things to do. I am to have final fittings for my trousseau at Worth's next week. And there are yet shoes to be bought and gifts for the wedding party, and the flowers to be arranged, and-'
'Ellie,' Kate said, 'do you love him?'
'Love Mr. Fairley?' Eleanor's laugh was quick and nervous. 'Why, of course I love him! Don't be silly. At any rate, it is a very good match. Mama and Papa are ecstatic, and all my friends are envious. Why do you ask?''
'Because,' Kate said soberly, remembering the long relationship between her aunt and uncle, 'marriage at its best is difficult. Unless there is love to leaven it, it is a flat, hard loaf. It is not a loaf to relish, nor will it nourish.'
Eleanor stared at her. 'Why, Kate! You are a poet at heart, I swear-a philosopher, a romantic!'
'I fear that I am a romantic,' Kate said with a wry smile, 'at least where marriage is concerned. I will never marry for less than love-which means, I suppose,' she added, 'that I will never… marry.' She stopped, struck, suddenly, with the realization that she was, truly and deeply, a romantic. Eleanor, on the other hand, was profoundly pragmatic. She accepted her social responsibilities and did what was set before her to do without question. Whatever her heart might whisper in the dark of the night, she would go on playing the role she had been trained since birth to play.
'Not marry!' Eleanor exclaimed in amazement. 'Be forever a spinster!' She tilted her pretty head, frowning. 'You must be one of those freethinking women who reject men's control and want the vote.'
Kate picked up a small flat rock and threw it as her boy cousins had taught her to do a long time ago, across the open water. It skipped four times, perfectly, then settled with a splash among the lily pads on the other side. A startled swan, coal-black, raised its elegant head as if to question. With a satisfaction far out of proportion to the mere achievement of rock-skipping, Kate watched the circles widen in the still water, interlacing with one another, a series of rippling rings. Finally she spoke.
'You are right,' she said. 'I am too independent ever to allow a man to dictate my beliefs and my behavior. I could never be less than an equal partner. As for the vote, I plead guilty to trusting my opinions as confidently as those of most men.' She turned back to Eleanor with a small smile. 'And not only that, but I confess to believing that I could responsibly hold office.'
Eleanor's mouth forgot for a moment its practiced smile and a certain wistfulness came into her expression. 'Oh, Kate, such self-assurance! If only I had your ability to face the future undaunted. Perhaps then I should-'
She stopped, considering the choices she might exercise. Then, to Kate's regret, her face lost its seriousness and her gay smile returned. ' 'But you had best not confide your political ambitions to Bradford, and most especially not to Sir Charles. I fear they would both be terribly annoyed.'
'Or terribly frightened,' Kate said thoughtfully. 'I feel sympathy for them. It must be very difficult for one entire sex to contemplate the changes in the world these days. Women campaigning for suffrage, choosing their own marriages, earning their own livings-'
Eleanor took Kate's arm and turned them back toward the house. 'I admire the sentiment of independence and those who are bold enough to express it,' she said. 'But I must also confess to enjoying the comfort of being cared for and the luxury of being loved by someone who can afford it. I daresay Mama is right when she says that a large income is the best recipe for happiness.' She trilled a laugh. 'Now, we had best go back, do you think? Bradford and Sir Charles will be right along.'
'Of course,' Kate said dryly. 'We must not keep the men waiting,'
39
'In the last third of the nineteenth century England s cultivated acreage declined by nearly three million acres. In the same years, British industry lost its anility to he competitive. Hoping to improve the situation, many eagerly latched onto any scheme tor industrial development. Among these was tne development 01 tne motor car.'
At the same moment, Bradford and Charles were traveling in the Marsden carriage from Colchester to Bishop's Keep. Charles, having spent the first hour of the morning searching fruitlessly for information about the Order of the Golden Dawn, and the second in unproductive conversation with Inspector Wainwright, had determined to give up his investigations altogether.
'It is futile,' he said sourly, watching the countryside flash past the carriage window. ' 'If the killer is caught, it will be because the police stumble upon him.'
Bradford roused himself from his inward contemplations with some difficulty. 'What d'you expect?' he asked gloomily. 'Police are a grubby, incompetent lot. You have better things to do with your time than mucking about with them.'
'I suppose,' Charles said. Of course, there was still the vicar, who might be persuaded to tell what he knew. And
Kathryn Ardleigh, who had some reason to associate Mrs. Farnsworth and Monsieur Armand and could perhaps be led to reveal it. Or he could return to Mrs. Farnsworth and see if he could rattle' No, by Jove!' he exclaimed out loud, striking one hand with the other fist, 'I'm no Holmes, and this is no fiction, where all is made right in the end. This is one of those situations where the whole truth will never be known. I'm bloody well done with it.'
'Right,' Bradford said. He looked up, his face set, as if he also had come to a conclusion. 'Sheridan, I need your advice about a matter of some consequence.'
Charles turned away from the window. 'If I can,' he said.
' 'I spent yesterday afternoon with Perkins, the estate manager,' Bradford replied, dejected. He took off his hat and flung it on the seat. 'The estate has fallen into a bit of a hole.' He paused. 'A pit, actually. Hard to see how things are to be dug out. Rents are off disastrously-not just ours, of course. It's this agricultural depression. Foreign corn pouring in at a fraction of what we can produce it for, farmers bankrupt, farms uncultivated, tenants defaulting on their rents. And bad weather these last two years, harvests rotting in the fields.'
'It seems worse here in Essex than elsewhere,' Charles said as they passed an empty cottage, the thatch of its roof fallen in, the bare ribs of rafters exposed to the sky. In a neighboring field, two thin cows were making a rough living on nettles. 'Some of the land looks quite derelict.'
Bradford spoke with heavy gloom. ' 'There are over a dozen tenant cottages empty on the manor, barns falling in, fields uncultivated. Perkins says new farmers can't be gotten because the buildings and the roads are so decayed. We'd have to lay on at least thirty thousand pounds out of capital just to make the damned farms livable.'
Charles looked at him. Coming from a family whose commercial investments had removed it from dependence on the land, he knew about the dreadful agricultural situation chiefly from reading and looking about him. The evidences of the depression were certainly everywhere-farm workers flooding the city, families dispossessed, crime on the increase. It was a desperate situation.
But as far as Marsden Manor was concerned, the solution seemed to him quite logical and obvious. 'You have access to the railroad,' he pointed out. 'Could not the fields be converted from crops to pasture, and the enterprise from grain to dairy? The London market, I understand, is clamoring for milk and butter.'
'That's what Perkins suggests. But it's doubtful the pater would do something as radical as that, even if it
