It was ten days later. The lovely valley, so soon to be defiled, lay resplendent in the sunset. Another year, thought Mr. Metcalfe, and this fresh green foliage would be choked with soot, withered with fumes; these mellow roofs and chimneys which for two hundred years or more had enriched the landscape below the terrace, would be hidden by functional monstrosities in steel and glass and concrete. In the doomed field Mr. Westmacott, almost for the last time, was calling his cattle; next week building was to begin and they must seek other pastures. So, in a manner of speaking, must Mr. Metcalfe. Already his desk was littered with house-agents’ notices. All for £500, he told himself. There would be redecorations; the cost and loss of moving. The speculative builders to whom he had viciously appealed showed no interest in the site. He was going to lose much more than £500 on the move. But so, he grimly assured himself, was Lady Peabury. She would learn that no one could put a fast one over on Beverley Metcalfe.

And she, on the opposing slope, surveyed the scene with corresponding melancholy. The great shadows of the cedars lay across the lawn; they had scarcely altered during her long tenancy, but the box hedge had been of her planting; it was she who had planned the lily pond and glorified it with lead flamingoes; she had reared the irregular heap of stones under the west wall and stocked it with Alpines; the flowering shrubs were hers; she could not take them with her where she was going. Where? She was too old now to begin another garden, to make other friends. She would move, like so many of her contemporaries, from hotel to hotel, at home and abroad, cruise a little, settle for prolonged rather unwelcome visits, on her relatives. All this for £250, for £12 10s. a year, for less than she gave to charity. It was not the money; it was Principle. She would not compromise with Wrong; with that ill-bred fellow on the hill opposite.

Despite the splendour of the evening an unhappy spirit obsessed Much Malcock. The Hornbeams moped and drooped; Colonel Hodge fretted. He paced the threadbare carpet of his smoking room. “It’s enough to make a fellow turn Bolshie, like that parson,” he said. “What does Metcalfe care? He’s rich. He can move anywhere. What does Lady Peabury care? It’s the small man, trying to make ends meet, who suffers.”

Even Mr. Hargood-Hood seemed affected by the general gloom. His lawyer was visiting him at the Brakehurst. All day they had been in intermittent, rather anxious consultation. “I think I might go and talk to that Colonel again,” he said, and set off up the village street, under the deepening shadows, for the Manor House. And from this dramatic, last-minute move for conciliation sprang the great Hodge Plan for appeasement and peace-in-our-time.

“… the Scouts are badly in need of a new hut,” said Colonel Hodge.

“No use coming to me,” said Mr. Metcalfe. “I’m leaving the neighbourhood.”

“I was thinking,” said Colonel Hodge, “that Westmacott’s field would be just the place for it…..”

And so it was arranged. Mr. Hornbeam gave a pound, Colonel Hodge a guinea, Lady Peabury £250. A jumble sale, a white-elephant-tea, a raffle, a pageant, and a house-to-house collection, produced a further 30s. Mr. Metcalfe found the rest. It cost him, all told, a little over £500. He gave with a good heart. There was no question now of jockeying him into a raw deal. In the rôle of public benefactor he gave with positive relish, and when Lady Peabury suggested that the field should be reserved for a camping site and the building of the hut postponed, it was Mr. Metcalfe who pressed on with the building and secured the old stone tiles from the roof of a dismantled barn. In the circumstances, Lady Peabury could not protest when the building was named the Metcalfe-Peabury Hall. Mr. Metcalfe found the title invigorating and was soon in negotiation with the brewery for a change of name at the Brakehurst Arms. It is true that Boggett still speaks of it as “the Brakehurst,” but the new name is plainly lettered for all to read: The Metcalfe Arms.

And so Mr. Hargood-Hood passed out of the history of Much Malcock. He and his lawyer drove away to their home beyond the hills. The lawyer was Mr. Hargood-Hood’s brother.

“We cut that pretty fine, Jock. I thought, for once, we were going to be left with the baby.”

They drove to Mr. Hargood-Hood’s home, a double quadrangle of mellow brick that was famous far beyond the county. On the days when the gardens were open to the public, record crowds came to admire the topiary work, yews and boxes of prodigious size and fantastic shape which gave perpetual employment to three gardeners. Mr. Hargood-Hood’s ancestors had built the house and planted the gardens in a happier time, before the days of property tax and imported grain. A sterner age demanded more strenuous efforts for their preservation.

“Well, that has settled Schedule A for another year and left something over for cleaning the fishponds. But it was an anxious month. I shouldn’t care to go through it again. We must be more careful next time, Jock. How about moving east?”

Together the two brothers unfolded the inch ordnance map of Norfolk, spread it on the table of the Great Hall and began their preliminary, expert search for a likely, unspoilt, well-loved village.

As Mr. James shut the side door behind him, radio music burst from every window of his house. Agnes, in the kitchen, was tuned in to one station; his wife, washing her hair in the bathroom, to another.

The competing programmes followed him to the garage and into the lane.

He had twelve miles to drive to the station, and for the first five of them he remained in a black mood.

He was in most matters a mild-tempered person—in all matters, it might be said, except one; he abominated the wireless.

It was not merely that it gave him no pleasure; it gave active pain, and, in the course of years, he had come to regard the invention as being directed deliberately against himself, a conspiracy of his enemies to disturb and embitter what should have been the placid last years of his life.

He was far from being an old man; he was, in fact, in his middle fifties; he had retired young, almost precipitously, as soon as a small legacy had made it possible. He had been a lover of quiet all his life.

Mrs. James did not share this preference.

Now they were settled in a small country house, twelve miles from a suitable cinema.

The wireless, for Mrs. James, was a link with the clean pavements and bright shop windows, a communion with millions of fellow beings.

Mr. James saw it in just that light too. It was what he minded most—the violation of his privacy. He brooded with growing resentment on the vulgarity of womankind.

In this mood he observed a burly man of about his own age signalling to him for a lift from the side of the road. He stopped.

“I wonder if by any chance you are going to the railway station?” The man spoke politely with a low, rather melancholy voice.

“I am; I have to pick up a parcel. Jump in.”

“That’s very kind of you.”

The man took his place beside Mr. James. His boots were dusty, and he sank back in his seat as though he had come from far and was weary.

He had very large, ugly hands, close-cut grey hair, a bony, rather sunken face.

For a mile or so he did not speak. Then he asked suddenly, “Has this car got a wireless?”

“Certainly not.”

“What is that knob for?” He began examining the dashboard. “And that?”

“One is the self-starter. The other is supposed to light cigarettes. It does not work. If,” he continued sharply, “you have stopped me in the hope of hearing the wireless, I can only suggest that I put you down and let you try your luck on someone else.”