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Chixon, Chikesonds, or Chicksands Priory, Bedfordshire, as it now stands, what a pleasing various art was spelling in olden time, was, in the reign of Edward III., a nunnery, situated then, as now, on a slight eminence, with gently rising hills at a short distance behind, and a brook running to join the river Ivel, thence the German Ocean, along the valley in front of the house.
To pull down the hurdles, and tamely let in Chicksands and his minions how odious! To part with Elizabeth Bremerton and to be reduced again to the old chaos and helplessness how still more odious! As to the war so like a woman to suppose that any war was ever fought with unanimity by any country! Look at the Crimea! the Boer War! the Napoleonic Wars themselves, if it came to that!
During that first Christmas leave he paid several visits to Chetworth, and evidently felt at home there. To Lady Chicksands, whom most people regarded as a tiresome nonentity, he was particularly kind and courteous. It seemed to give him positive pleasure to listen to her garrulous housekeeping talk, or to hold her wool for her while she wound it.
Pamela became silent and pale. All the old jealousy and misery of the autumn were alive in her once more. She had looked forward for weeks to this meeting with Arthur Chicksands. And for the first part of his visit she had been happy before Elizabeth came on the scene. Why should Elizabeth have all the homage and the attention? She, too, was doing her best!
But as they gathered round the fire, expecting the young gunner, she hardly opened her lips again. Arthur Chicksands was quite conscious that he had wounded her. She appeared to him, as she sat there in the firelight, in all the first fairness and freshness of her youth, as an embodied temptation.
She was drudging every day as a V.A.D., washing crockery and scrubbing floors; and this was the first afternoon off she had had for weeks. Her limbs were dog-tired. But Arthur Chicksands never talked to her Pamela in this tone of freedom and equality with the whole and not the half of his mind. 'I could hold my own, she thought bitterly, 'but he never gives me the chance!
The Squire turned a furrowed brow towards his approaching visitor, and putting down a small bronze he had been holding raised a warning hand. 'How do you do, Chicksands? Very sorry, but I'm much too filthy to touch. And I'm horribly busy! These things arrived last night, and Mr. Levasseur has kindly come over to help me unpack them. Don't know if you've met him. Mr.
Temple had probably returned from a journey into Yorkshire, his travels in Holland were over some time ago, and passing through Bedford within ten miles of Chicksands, he neglected to pay his respects to Dorothy, for which he is duly called to account in Letter 3. December 24, 1652. In all things else, pray say I am his servant.
Chicksands passed through it, speechless with indignation and, if the truth were told, bewilderment. The Squire shut the door upon his adversary, and then, with his hands on his sides, exploded in a fit of laughter. 'I always knew I must be rude to the old boy some time, he said, with the glee of a mischievous child. 'But, ye gods, how his feathers drooped!
But he is nearly fit again. The butler expressed his sympathy with a complete absence of shyness or servility, then threw open a door at the end of the passage, announcing, 'Sir Henry Chicksands, sir. 'D-mn! said a voice loudly within. Sir Henry gave an involuntary start. Another look passed between him and Forest, amused or interrogative on the visitor's part, non-committal on the butler's.
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