§ 3

Peter was out early the next morning, when the first pale sunshine was stealing up the valley of the Tillingham, flooding all the world in a gleam of watery gold. He had awoken to the music of his farm, to the crowing of his cocks, to the stamping of his cattle in their stalls, to the clattering of his workmen’s feet on the cobbles of the yard. Starvecrow was his home, his place for waking up and falling asleep, for eating his food and warming himself at his fire, for finding his wife at the end of the day, for the birth of his children.... He had, as he stood that morning in the yard, a feeling both of proud ownership and proud adoption.

The whole farm, house and buildings, looked tidy and prosperous. It had lost that rather dilapidated, if homely, air it had worn before his marriage. Though the Ashers might have neither enough capital nor inclination to pay off the debts of their son-in-law’s family, they had certainly been generous in the matter of their daughter’s home. But for them the place could never have been what it was now—trimmings and clippings, furnishings and restorings had been their willingly paid price for Alard blood. The whole farm had been repaired, replanted and restocked. Indeed Starvecrow was now not so much a farm as a little manor, a rival to Conster up on the hill. Was this exactly what Peter had intended for it?—he did not stop to probe. No doubt his imagination had never held anything so solid and so trim, but that might have been only because his imagination had planned strictly for the possible, and all that had been possible up to his falling in love with Vera was just the shelter of that big kindly roof, the simplicity of those common farmhouse rooms, with the hope and labour of slow achievement and slow restoration.

Still, he was proud of the place, and looked round him with satisfaction as he walked down the bricked garden path, beside the well-raked herbaceous border. He went into the yard where his men were at work—he now employed two extra hands, and his staff consisted of a stockman, a shepherd, a ploughman, and two odd men, as well as the shepherd’s wife, who looked after the chickens and calves.

Going into the cowhouse he found Jim Lambard milking the last of the long string of Sussex cows. He greeted his master with a grin and a “good marnun, sur”—it was good to hear the slurry Sussex speech again. Peter walked to the end of the shed where two straw-coloured Jerseys were tethered—one of them, Flora, was due to calve shortly, and after inspecting her, he went out to interview the stockman. John Elias had held office not only in Greening’s time, but in the days before him when Starvecrow was worked by a tenant farmer—he was an oldish man who combined deep experience and real practical knowledge with certain old-fashioned obstinacies. Peter sometimes found him irritating to an intense degree, but clung to him, knowing that the old obstinacies are better than the new where farm-work is concerned, and that the man who insists on doing his work according to the rules of 1770 is really of more practical value than the man who does it according to the rules of the Agricultural Labourers’ Union. Elias had now been up a couple of nights with the Jersey, and his keen blue eye was a trifle dim from anxiety and want of sleep. Peter told him to get off to bed for a few hours, promising to have him sent for if anything should happen.

He then sent for the ploughman, and discussed with him the advisability of giving the Hammer field a second ploughing. There was also the wheat to be dressed in the threshing machine before it was delivered to the firm of corn-merchants who had bought last year’s harvest. A final talk with his shepherd about the ewes and prospects for next month’s lambing—and Peter turned back towards the house, sharp-set for breakfast and comfortably proud of the day’s beginning. He liked to think of the machinery of his farm, working efficiently under his direction, making Starvecrow rich.... Conster might still shake on its foundations but Starvecrow was settled and established—he had saved Starvecrow.

The breakfast-room faced east, and the sunshine poured through its long, low window, falling upon the white cloth of the breakfast table, the silver, the china and the flowers. The room was decorated in yellow, which increased the effect of lightness—Peter was thrilled and dazzled, and for a moment did not notice that breakfast had been laid only for one. When he did, it gave him a faint shock.

“Where’s your mistress?” he asked the parlourmaid, who was bringing in the coffee—“isn’t she coming down?”

“No, sir. She’s taking her breakfast upstairs.”

Peter felt blank. Then suddenly he realised—of course she was tired! What a brute he was not to think of it—it was all very well for him to feel vigorous after such a journey, and go traipsing round the farm; but Vera—she was made of more delicate stuff.... He had a feeling as if he must apologise to her for having even thought she was coming down; and running upstairs he knocked at her door.

“Come in,” said Vera’s rather deep, sweet voice.

Her room was full of sunshine too, but the blind was down so that it did not fall on the bed. She lay in the shadow, reading her letters and smoking a cigarette. Peter had another shock of the incongruous.

“My darling, are you dreadfully tired?”

“No—I feel quite revived this morning,” and she lifted her long white throat for him to kiss.

“Have you had your breakfast?”

“All I want. I’m not much of a breakfast eater, that’s one reason why I prefer having it up here.”

“But—but aren’t you ever coming down?”

“Poor boy—do you feel lonely without me?”

“Yes, damnably,” said Peter.

“But, my dear, I’d be poor company for you at this hour. I’m much better upstairs till ten or eleven—besides it makes the day so long if one’s down for breakfast.”

Peter looked at her silently—her argument dispirited him: “the day so long.”... For him the day was never long enough. He suddenly saw her as infinitely older and tireder than himself.

“Run down and have yours, now,” she said to him, “and then you can come up and sit with me for a bit before I dress.”