§ 17
A few days before Easter, Peter came suddenly to Fourhouses. He came early in the afternoon, and gave no explanation either of his coming or of his staying away. Jenny was upstairs, helping her mother-in-law turn out the conjugal bedroom, when she heard the sound of hoofs in the yard. She ran to the window, thinking it was Ben come home unexpectedly from an errand to Wickham Farm, but had no time to be disappointed in the rush of her surprise at seeing Peter.
“There’s Peter—my brother—come at last!” she cried to Mrs. Godfrey, and, tearing off her dusting cap, she ran downstairs, still in her gingham overall. She wanted to open the door to him herself.
He could not have expected her to do this, for he was staring uninterestedly at his boots. Her gingham skirts evidently suggested a servant to him, for he lifted his eyes slowly, then seemed surprised to see her standing all bright and blowzed before him.
“Jenny!”
“Hullo, Peter! So you’ve come to see me at last.”
He mumbled something about having been passing through Icklesham.
“Won’t you come in?—the man’ll take your horse. Hi! Homard—take Mr. Alard’s horse round to the stable.”
“I can’t stop long,” said Peter awkwardly.
“But you must, after all this time—come in.”
She had meant to ask him why he had kept away so long and why he had come now; but when she found herself alone with him in the kitchen, she suddenly changed her mind, and decided to let things be. He probably had no reasonable explanation to offer, and unless she meant to keep the breach unhealed, she had better treat this visit as if there was nothing to explain about it.
“How’s Vera?” she asked.
“She’s getting on splendidly, thanks.”
“And the baby?”
“That’s getting on too.”
“Do tell me about it—is it like her or like you?”
“It’s like her—a regular little Yid.”
“Never mind—she will probably grow up very beautiful.”
Peter mumbled inaudibly.
Jenny looked at him critically. He seemed heavier and stupider than usual. He gave her the impression of a man worn out.
“You don’t look well.... Are you worried? I do hope you aren’t dreadfully disappointed the baby’s a girl.”
“It doesn’t really matter.”
“Of course not. The first one never does. You’re sure to have others ... boys.”
Peter did not answer, and Jenny felt a little annoyed with him. If this was the way he behaved at home she was sorry for Vera. It was curious how nervy these stolid men often were....
“How are Father and Mother?” she asked, to change the subject—“I suppose you go up to Conster every day.”
“Twice most days. They’re not up to much—at least Father isn’t. He’s had some pretty good shocks lately, you know. He was dreadfully upset the baby’s being a girl—and that fool Gervase’s business was a terrible blow for him.”
“It was a blow for me too. I did my best to put him off it, but it was no use. My only comfort is that apparently it’ll be some time before he’s really let in for it. He may come to his senses before then.”
“I don’t think so. He’s as obstinate as the devil.”
“What—have you tried arguing with him?”
“Yes—when I heard what he’d done, I drove over to Thunders Abbey or whatever it’s called, and did my level best to bring him back with me. But it was all no good—you might as well try to argue with a dead owl.”
“Good Lord!—you went over to Thunders, and tried to bring him back! Poor old Peter! But do tell me how he is, and what he’s doing. What sort of place is it?”
“Oh a great big barrack, spoiling the country for miles round. But they’ve got some fine land and absolutely all the latest ideas in farming—motor traction and chemical fertilisation and all that.”
“And was Gervase working on the farm?”
“No, Brother Joseph—that’s what the fool’s called now—Brother Joseph, when I saw him, was scrubbing out the kitchen passage on his hands and knees like a scullery maid. A dignified occupation for an Alard!”
“Poor old Gervase, how he’d hate that! But he’ll be all the more likely to come to his senses and give it up, especially when he’s got over his disappointment about Stella. I feel it’s really that which was at the bottom of it all.”
Peter did not speak for a moment. He leaned back in his wooden armchair, staring at the fire, which was leaping ruddily into the chimney’s cavern.
“Do you mind if I light my pipe?” he asked after a bit.
“Of course not—do. I’m glad you’re going to stay.”
He took matches and his tobacco pouch out of his pocket, and she noticed suddenly that his hands were shaking. For the first time a dreadful suspicion seized her. His heaviness—his nerviness—his queer, lost manner ... was it possible, she wondered, that Peter drank?
“Have you heard when the Mounts are leaving?” she asked him, stifling her thoughts.
“No, I haven’t.”
“Stella was here three days ago, and she said that they’ve at last settled about the practice. She seemed to think they might be free to go at the end of May.”
“Oh.”
“I expect Vera’s glad they didn’t go off in a hurry, and leave her with a new man for the baby. Dr. Mount’s the best maternity doctor for miles round.”
“Yes, I’ve heard that.”
He was falling back into silence, and no remark of hers on any topic seemed able to rouse him out of it, though she tried once or twice to re-animate him on the subject of Gervase. He lounged opposite her in his armchair, puffing at his pipe, and staring at the fire, now and then painfully dragging out a “yes” or a “no.” She was beginning to feel bored with him and to think about her work upstairs. Was this all he had to say to her after three months’ estrangement?—an estrangement which he had never troubled to explain. She had been weak with him—let him off too easily—she ought to have “had things out with him” about her marriage. She had a right to know his reasons for forgiving her just as she had a right to know his reasons for shunning her.... He had treated her inexplicably.
She was working herself up to wrath like this when Peter suddenly spoke of his own accord.
“This place is like what Starvecrow used to be.”
“Used to be?—when?”
“Before Vera and I came to it—when the Greenings had it. Do you remember the kitchen fireplace?—it was just like this.”
“Starvecrow is far grander than Fourhouses now. I’m just a plain farmer’s wife, Peter—I’m never going to pretend to be anything else.”
“And Starvecrow was just a plain farm; but we’ve changed it into a country house.”
“Mary’s been wanting me to do the same for Fourhouses, but I’ve told her I’d be very sorry to. I like it best as it is.”
“So do I.”
“Then are you sorry you’ve altered Starvecrow?”
“Yes.”
“But it’s a lovely place, Peter. You’ve made a perfect little country house out of it. I’m sure you wouldn’t be pleased to have it the ramshackle old thing it used to be.”
“Yes, I should.”
“Well, Vera wouldn’t, anyhow. You and she are in a totally different position from us. I’m not keeping Fourhouses as it is because I don’t think it’s capable of improvement, but because I don’t want to put myself outside my class and ape the county. You’re just the opposite—you’ve got appearances to keep up; it would never do if you lived in the funny hole Starvecrow used to be in the Greenings’ time.”
“I loved it then—it was just like this—the kitchen fire ... and the fire in the office—it used to hum just like this—as if there was a kettle on it. The place I’ve got now isn’t Starvecrow.”
“What is it, then?”
“I don’t know—but it isn’t Starvecrow. I’ve spoilt Starvecrow. I’ve changed it, I’ve spoilt it—Vera’s people have spoilt it with their damned money. It isn’t Starvecrow. Do you remember how the orchard used to come right up to the side wall? They’ve cut it down and changed it into a garden. The orchard’s beyond the garden—then it doesn’t look so much like a farm. A country house doesn’t have an orchard just outside the drawing-room windows....”
He had left his chair, and was pacing up and down the room. His manner seemed stranger than ever, and Jenny felt a little frightened.
“I’m glad you don’t want me to change Fourhouses,” she said soothingly—“I must tell Mary what you’ve said.”
“But I do want you to change it,” he cried—“I can’t bear to see it as it is—what Starvecrow used to be.”
“Don’t be silly, Peter. Starvecrow is much better now than it ever used to be.”
He turned on her almost angrily—
“Goodbye.”
She felt glad he was going, and still more glad to hear her husband’s voice calling her from the yard.
“There’s Ben. Must you really be going, Peter?”
“Yes—I must.”
He walked out of the room, and she followed him—both meeting Ben on the doorstep. Young Godfrey was surprised to see his elder brother-in-law—he had made up his mind that Peter would never come to Fourhouses. He was still more surprised at his abstracted greeting.
“Hullo, Godfrey. Glad to see you—that’s a fine mare. Jenny, will you tell them to bring my horse round?”
“Yes.... Carter! Mr. Alard’s horse.... Peter can’t stay any longer, Ben. I told him you’d be sorry.”
“I’m sure I’m very sorry, Sir”—he blushed at his slip into deference, but was quite unable to say “Peter”—“Is Mrs. Alard doing well?” he asked clumsily.
“Very well, thank you.”
“I hope you’ll come and see us again soon,” said Jenny—“I’d like to show you the house.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” he returned absently, and went to meet his horse, which was being led to him across the yard.
§ 18
The sun was still high as Peter rode back through the crosscountry lanes to Starvecrow. The days were lingering now, and the fields were thickening for May. In the hay-fields the young crops were already marking their difference from the pastures with a rust of sorrel and a gilding of buttercups, and the hedges were losing their traceried outline in smothers of vetch and convolvulus.
Peter mechanically noted the progress of the winter sowings on Scragoak, Stonelink, and other farms he passed. These were all dependencies of Alard, and their welfare was bound up with Conster. Pleasant, homely places, their sprawling picturesqueness made up for any want of repair to all but the eye of his father’s agent. Peter saw the needs of most of them—rebuilding, rethatching, redraining—and his mind, mechanically and from force of habit, deplored the impossibility of taking action. The position seemed quite hopeless, for he could do nothing now, and things would be even worse at his father’s death, when the weight of death-duties and the pressure of mortgage holders would probably choke out the little life there was left in the Alard estates. But even this ultimate foreboding was only mechanical—his real emotions, his most vital pains, were all centred in himself.
He had spoken truly when he told Jenny that he could not bear the sight of Fourhouses. He could not even bear the thought of it. When he thought of that quiet, ancient house, with its bricked floors and wide, sunny spaces, with its humming kitchen fire and salt-riddled beam-work—above all when he thought of it as the home of loving hearts and the peace which follows daring—he felt unendurably the contrast of what he had made of Starvecrow. It was what Starvecrow used to be—it was what Starvecrow might have been ... for even if he had renounced the place he loved for the woman he loved, Starvecrow would have still gone on being the same, either as the home of another agent, or—if his father had really fulfilled his threat of selling it—the home of some honest farmer like Ben Godfrey, a man who would not only live in it but possess it, and give it back the yeoman dignity it had lost.
Starvycrow—Starvycrow.
What was it now? What had he made it? It was a small country house, perfectly furnished and appointed, with a set of model buildings attached. It was the home of a burnt-out love, of the husks of marriage, of a husband and wife whose hearts were foes and whose souls were strangers, of lost illusions, of dead hopes, and wasted sacrifices. That was what it was now. That was what he had made it.
He remembered words which long ago he had spoken to Stella.... “Places never change—they are always the same. Human beings may change, but places never do.” Those words were untrue—places can change, do change—Starvecrow had changed, he had changed it. While Stella, the woman, had not changed. She was still the same—the dear, the lovely ... and the unchanged, unchanging Stella might have been his instead of this changed Starvecrow. He had sacrificed the substance of life to a dream, a shadow, which without the substance must go up in smoke. He had sold his birth-right for a morsel of bread—or rather he had given away his bread for the sake of an inheritance in the clouds, which he could never hold.
His old hopes and his old fears had died together. Neither the fact that his newborn child was a girl, nor the final defection of Gervase the heir-apparent could make him hold his breath for Alard. These things had not killed his dreams, as once he had thought, but had merely shown that they were dead. The thought of his father’s death, which could not now be far off, and his own succession to the property, with all the freedom and power it would bring, no longer stirred his flagging ambition. When he became Sir Peter he could probably save the House of Alard in spite of death-duties and mortgagees. Without restrictions, master of his own economies, he could put new life into the failing estate—or at least he could nurse and shelter it through its difficult times till the days came when the government must do something to set the Squires on their legs again.... But the thought had no power to move him—indeed Alard hardly seemed worth saving. It was a monster to which he had sacrificed his uttermost human need. Gervase had been a wise man, after all. And Jenny ... Jenny had done what Peter might have done. He and Stella might now have been together in some wide farmhouse, happy, alive and free. This child might have been her child.... Oh, how could he have been so blind? He had not known how much he really loved her—he had thought she was just like other women he had loved, and that he could forget her. She would go away, and she would manage at last to forget him; but he who stayed behind would never be able to forget her. He would live on and on, live on her memory—the memory of her touch and voice, her narrow shining eyes, her laughter and her kisses—live on and on until even memory grew feeble, and his heart starved, and died.
Riding over the farms between Leasan and Vinehall it suddenly struck him how easily he might turn aside and go to see Stella. She had promised that she would see him again before she went away. Should he go now and ask her to redeem that promise? Should he go and plead with her as he had never pleaded before? She could still save him—she could still be to him what she might have been. In one mad moment he saw himself and Stella seeking love’s refuge at the other end of the country, in some far, kindly farm in Westmoreland or Cornwall. Vera would divorce him—she would be only too glad to get her freedom—and by the time he became Sir Peter Alard he would have lived the scandal down. Stella still loved him—she was awake, alive, and passionate—she had none of the scruples and conventions, reserves and frigidities which keep most women moral—she had only her religion to stand between them, and Peter did not think much of that. A collection of dreams, traditions and prohibitions could not stand before his pleading—before the pleading of her own heart. He had not really pleaded with her yet....
For a moment he reined in his horse, hesitating at the mouth of the little lane which twists through the hollows of Goatham and Doucegrove towards Vinehall. But the next minute he went on again, driven by a question. What had he to offer Stella in exchange for all that he proposed to take from her?—What had he to give her in exchange for her father, her home, her good name, her peace of mind? The answer was quite plain—he had nothing but himself. And was he worth the sacrifice? Again a plain answer—No. He was worn, tired, disillusioned, shop-soiled, no fit mate for the vivid woman whom some hidden source of romance seemed to keep eternally young. Even suppose he could, by storming and entreaty, bend her to his desire, he would merely be bringing her to where he stood today. A few years hence she might stand as he stood now—looking back on all she had lost.... He would not risk bringing her to that. Three years ago he had sacrificed her to his desires—he had made her suffer.... It would be a poor atonement to sacrifice her again—to another set of desires. The least he could do for her was to let her follow her own way of escape—to let her go ... though still he did not know how he was to live without her.
§ 19
When he reached home he went upstairs to see Vera. Her mother and Rose were with her, and they were having tea.
“Hullo!” said his wife—“Where have you been all day?”
“I lunched over at Becket’s House—Fuller asked me to stay. And in the afternoon I went to see Jenny.”
He had not meant to tell them, but now he suddenly found he had done so. Vera lifted her eyebrows.
“Oh. So you’ve forgiven her at last. I think you might have told me before you went there. I want to thank her for writing to me, and you could have saved me the fag of a letter. She’ll think it odd my not sending any message.”
“I’m sorry, but I never thought of going till I found myself over there.”
“And how is Jenny?” asked Rose.
“She seemed very well.”
“And happy?”
“Yes—and happy.”
“Is she still living like the wife of a working-man, with only one maid?”
“No, not like the wife of a working-man, who doesn’t keep even one maid, but like the wife of a well-to-do farmer, which she is.”
“You needn’t bite my head off, Peter,” said Rose.
“Your tea’s in the drawing-room,” said Vera—“I asked Weller to put it there ready for you when you came in. Nurse thinks it would be too much of a crowd if you had it up here. Besides, I know you’d rather be alone.”
Peter rose from his seat at the bedside.
“All right—I’ll go downstairs.”
“I didn’t mean now, you old silly,” said Vera, pulling at his coat. “Hang it all, I haven’t seen you the whole day.”
Peter looked down at her hopelessly—at her large, swimming brown eyes, at her face which seemed mysteriously to have coarsened without losing any of its beauty, at the raven-black braids of her hair that showed under her lace nightcap, and last of all at her mouth—full, crimson, satisfied, devouring.... He became suddenly afraid—of her, with this additional need of him, this additional hold on him, which her motherhood had brought—and of himself, because he knew now that he hated her, quite crudely and physically hated her.
“I’m afraid I can’t stay—I’ve got rather a headache ... and I’m going out directly to pot rabbits.”
“That’s an odd cure for a headache,” said Vera. She looked hurt and angry, and he felt a brute to have upset her at such a time. But he could not help it—he had to go, and moved towards the door.
“Aren’t you going to take any notice of your little daughter?” purred Mrs. Asher—“Baby dear, I don’t think your daddy’s very proud of you. He hasn’t been near you since breakfast.”
Speechlessly Peter went to the cradle and gazed down on the little wizened face. His heart felt hard; not one pang of fatherhood went through it. “You little sheeny—you little Yid”—he said to the baby in his heart.
“Isn’t she a darling?” his mother-in-law breathed into his neck—“isn’t she a love? Do you know, Vera thinks now that Miriam would do better than Rachel—it goes better with Alard.”
Peter did not think that either went particularly well with Alard, but he said nothing. Wasn’t there a Jewish name which meant “The glory is departed from my house”?
He kissed the baby and went out, thankful to have escaped kissing the mother.
Some truth-loving providence had insisted on afflicting him with the headache he had claimed as an excuse for not sitting with Vera. His head ached abominably as he went into the drawing-room where his tea was laid. The firelight ruddied the white walls, the silver and the furniture, where comfort and cretonne were skilfully blended with oak and antiquity. His thoughts flew back to the evening when he and Vera had first come into this room on their return from their honeymoon. He had thought it beautiful then—though even then he had realised it was not the right room for Starvecrow. It used to be one of the kitchens, and in the old days when he had first known it, had had a bricked floor and a big range, like the kitchen at Fourhouses. Tonight he hated it—it was part of the processes which had changed Starvecrow out of recognition. He rang the bell impatiently. He would have his tea carried into the office. That was the room which had altered least.
Even here there were changes, but they were of his own choice and making—he had planned them long before his marriage. The furniture of Greening’s day—the pitch-pine desk and cane-seated chairs—had been impossible; he had always meant to get a good Queen Anne bureau like this one, and some gate-backed chairs like these. There was nothing un-farmlike in this plainly furnished office, with its walls adorned with scale-maps and plans of fields and woods, and notices of auctions and agricultural shows.
Nevertheless today he found himself wishing he had it as it used to be. He would like to see it as it used to be—as Stella used to see it, when she came in fresh and glowing on a winter’s afternoon, to sit beside the fire ... he could almost feel her cold cheek under his lips....
Then for one moment he saw it as it used to be. For an instant of strangeness and terror he saw the old scratched desk, with Greening’s files and account-books upon it, saw Greening’s book-shelves, with their obsolete agricultural treatises—saw the horse-hair armchair and the two other chairs with the cane seats, and the picture-advertisement of Thorley’s cake on the wall.... He stood stock still, trembling—and then suddenly the room was itself again, and it didn’t even seem as if it had altered.... But he felt dreadfully queer. He hurried to the door and went out through the passage into the little grass space at the back. God! he must be ill. What a fright he’d had! Suppose the hallucination had continued a moment longer, should he have seen Stella come into the room, unbuttoning her fur collar, her face all fresh with the wind?...
He went round to the front of the house, and fetched his hat and overcoat and gun. He’d go out after the rabbits, as he’d said. There were too many of them, and he’d promised Elias ... anyhow he couldn’t stand the house. He whistled for Breezy, and the spaniel ran out to him, bounding and whimpering with delight. The sky was turning faintly green at the rims. The dusk was near.
He passed quickly through the yard. From the open doorway of the cowhouse came cheerful sounds of milking, and he could see his cows standing in shafts of mote-filled sunlight. The cowhouse had been enlarged and modernised—Starvecrow could almost now be called a model farm. But he knew that the place wanted to be what it was in the old days—before his wife’s money had been spent on it. It was not only he who was dissatisfied with the changes—Starvecrow itself did not like them. He knew that tonight as he walked through the barns.... Starvecrow had never been meant for a well-appointed country house, or a model farm. It ought to have been, like Fourhouses, the home of happy lovers. It was meant to be a home.... It was not a home now—just a place where an unhappy man and woman lived, desiring, fleeing, mistrusting, failing each other. He could have made it a home—brought Stella to it somehow, some day, at last. Perhaps—seeing his father’s condition, that day would not have been far off now.... But like everything else, Starvecrow had been sacrificed to Alard. He had sacrificed it—he had betrayed the faithful place. He saw now that he had betrayed not only himself, not only Stella, but also Starvecrow.
Starvycrow—Starvycrow.
Peter walked quickly, almost running, from the reproach of Starvycrow.
§ 20
At about seven o’clock that evening a message came up from Conster, and as Peter was still out, it was brought to Vera. It was marked “immediate,” so she opened it.
“Who brought this, Weller?”
“The gardener’s boy, Ma’am.”
“Tell him Mr. Alard is out at present, but I’ll send him over as soon as he comes home——Sir John’s had another stroke,” she told her mother.
“Oh, my dear! How dreadful—I wish you hadn’t opened the letter. Shocks are so bad for you.”
“It wasn’t a shock at all, thanks. I’ve been expecting it for weeks. Besides, one really can’t want the poor old man to live much longer. He was getting a perfect nuisance to himself and everybody, and if he’d lived on might have done some real damage to the estate. Now Peter may just be able to save it, in spite of the death-duties.”
“But, my dear, he isn’t dead yet!” cried Mrs. Asher, a little shocked. She belonged to a generation to which the death of anybody however old, ill, unloved or unlovely, could never be anything but a calamity.
“He’s not likely to survive a second stroke,” said Vera calmly. “I’m sorry for the poor old thing, but really it’s time he went. And I want Peter to come into the estate before he’s quite worn out and embittered. It’s high time he was his own master—it’ll pull him together again—he’s been all to pieces lately.”
“And it’ll quite settle the Stella Mount business,” she added secretly to herself.
The next hour passed, and Weller came up to ask if she should bring in the dinner.
“What can have happened to Peter!” exclaimed Vera.
“I daresay he met the messenger on his way back, and went straight to Conster.”
“Then it was very inconsiderate of him not to send me word. Yes, Weller, bring the dinner up here. You’ll have it with me, won’t you, Mother, as Peter isn’t in?”
They were eating their fruit when Weller came in with another “Urgent.” It was from Doris, and ran—
“Hasn’t Peter come back yet? Do send him over at once whenever he does. Father is dying. Dr. Mount does not expect him to last the night. We have wired to Jenny and Mary and even Gervase. Do send Peter along. He ought to be here.”
“How exactly like Doris to write as if we were deliberately keeping Peter away! I don’t know where he is. Doris might realise that I’m the last person who’d know.”
Her hands were trembling, and she whimpered a little as she crushed up the note and flung it across the room into the fireplace.
“Don’t be upset, Vera darling. Nothing could possibly have happened to him—we should have heard. He’s probably accepted a sudden invitation to dinner, the same as he did to lunch.”
“I know nothing’s happened to him—I’m not afraid of that. I know where he is....”
“Then if you know ...”
“He’s with Stella Mount,” and Vera hid her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically.
Mrs. Asher tried to soothe her, tried to make her turn over and talk coherently, but with that emotional abandonment which lay so close to her mental sophistication, she remained with her face obstinately buried, and sobbed on. Her mother had heard about Stella Mount, chiefly from Rose, but had never given the idea much credit. She did not credit it now. But to pacify Vera she sent over a carefully worded message to Dr. Mount’s cottage, asking that if Mr. Peter Alard was there he should be told at once that he was wanted over at Conster.
The boy came back with the reply that Mr. Alard was not at Vinehall, and had not been there that day. Everyone but the maid was out—Dr. Mount at Conster Manor and Miss Mount in church.
“That proves nothing,” said Vera—“he needn’t have met her at the house.”
“But if she’s in church——”
“How do we know she’s in church? She only left word with the maid that she’s gone there——” and Vera’s sobs broke out again until the nurse begged her to calm herself for the sake of the child. Which she promptly did, for she was a good mother.
§ 21
At Conster all the family was by now assembled, with the exception of Peter and Gervase. Ben Godfrey had brought Jenny over from Fourhouses, and Mary had motored from Hastings; Rose was there too, with a daughter’s privileges. They were all sitting in the dining-room over a late and chilly meal. They had been upstairs to the sick-room, where the prodigals had entered unforbidden, for Sir John knew neither sheep nor goat. His vexed mind had withdrawn itself to the inmost keep of the assaulted citadel, in preparation for its final surrender of the fortress it had held with such difficulty of late.
“There is no good saying that I expect him to recover this time,” Dr. Mount had said. “I will not say it is impossible—doctors are shy of using that word—but I don’t expect it, and, in view of his former condition which would be tremendously aggravated by this attack, I don’t think anyone can hope it.”
“Will it be long?” asked Doris, in a harsh, exhausted voice.
“I don’t think it will be longer than forty-eight hours.”
Doris burst into tears. Her grief was, the family thought, excessive. All her life, and especially for the last three months, her father had victimised her, browbeaten her, frustrated her, humiliated her—she had been the scapegoat of the revolted sons and daughters—and yet at his death she had tears and a grief which none of the more fortunate could share.
“I found him—it was I who found him”—she sobbed out her story for the dozenth time. “I came into the study with his hot milk—Wills has refused to bring it ever since poor Father threw it in his face—and I saw him sitting there, and he looked funny, somehow. I knew something was wrong—he was all twisted up and breathing dreadfully.... And I said ‘Father, is anything the matter?—aren’t you feeling well?’ And he just managed to gasp ‘Get out.’ Those were the last words he uttered.”
Sir John had not been put to bed in his attic-bedroom, the scene of his ignoble tea-making, but in his old room downstairs, leading out of Lady Alard’s. She and the nurse were with him now while the others were at supper. She had a conviction that her husband knew her, as he made inarticulate sounds of wrath when she came near. But as he did the same for the nurse, the rest of the family were not convinced.
“When is Peter coming?” groaned Doris—“I really call it heartless of him to keep away.”
“But he doesn’t know what’s happened,” soothed Jenny—“he’ll come directly he’s heard.”
“I can’t understand what he’s doing out at this hour. It’s too late for any business, or for shooting—where can he have gone?”
“You’ll be getting an answer to your second message soon,” said Ben Godfrey.
“I daresay Peter thought he’d have his dinner first,” continued Doris—“I expect he thought it didn’t matter and he could come round afterwards.”
“I don’t think that’s in the least likely,” said Mary.
“Then why doesn’t he come?—he can’t be out at this hour.”
“He must be out—or he would have come.”
“It’s not so very late,” said Jenny, “only just after nine.”
“He may have gone out to dinner somewhere,” said Rose.
“Yes, that’s quite possible,” said Jenny—“he may have gone somewhere on business and been asked to stay—or he may have met someone when he was out.”
“I’ve a strong feeling that it mightn’t be a bad plan to ’phone to Stella Mount.”
“But Dr. Mount ’phoned there an hour ago, saying he’d be here all night. She’d have told him then if Peter was there.”
“I think it quite probable that she would not have told him.”
“What exactly do you mean by that, Rose?”
“Mean?—oh, nothing.”
“Then there’s no use talking of such a thing. I’m quite sure that if Peter had been at the Mounts’, Stella would have sent him over directly she heard about Father.”
At that moment Wills came into the room with a note for Doris.
“That must be from Starvecrow,” she said, taking it. “Yes, it’s from Mrs. Asher—‘Peter hasn’t been in yet, and we are beginning to feel anxious. He told us he was going out to shoot rabbits and one of the farm men saw him start out with his gun and Breezy. Of course he may have met someone and gone home with them to dinner. As you have a ’phone, perhaps you could ring up one or two places.”
“We could ring up the Parishes,” said Jenny—“he may have gone there. Or the Hursts—aren’t they on the ’phone? I don’t think the Fullers are.”
“It’s an extraordinary thing to me,” said Rose, “that he should stop out like this without at least sending a message to his wife. He might know how anxious she’d be.”
“Peter isn’t the most thoughtful or practical being on earth. But there’s no good making conjectures. I’m going to ’phone every place I can think of.”
Jenny spoke irritably. Rose never failed to annoy her, and she was growing increasingly anxious about Peter. She had told the others of his visit that afternoon, but she had not told them of his queer, gruff, silent manner. Not that she had seen, or saw now, anything sinister in it, but she could not rid herself of the thought that Peter had been “queer,” and that to queer people queer things may happen.
The telephone yielded no results. Neither the Parishes nor the Hursts were harbouring Peter, nor could she hear of him at the Furnace or Becket’s House, or at the Vinehall solicitor’s, or the garage at Iden, the final resorts of her desperation. Of course he had friends who were not on the telephone, but it was now after ten o’clock, and it was difficult to believe that if he had accepted a casual invitation to dine he would not have come home or sent word.
“Lord! how ghastly it is,” she cried, as she hung up the receiver for the last time—“Father dying and Peter disappeared. What are we to do, Ben?”
“I think we ought to go and have a look for him,” said her husband.
“How?—and who’d go?”
“I’ll get a chap or two from here, and the men at Starvecrow. If he was only out after conies he wouldn’t have gone far—down to the Bridge, most likely. We ought to search the fallows.”
“Yes, do go,” said Doris—“it’s the only thing to be done now. I know something dreadful has happened to him. And perhaps tomorrow he’ll be Sir Peter Alard....”
She had forgotten that Godfrey was the presumptuous boor who had disgraced her name. She saw in him only the man of the family—the only man of the family now.
“I’ll ring for Wills, and he’ll see about lanterns—and perhaps Pollock would go with you. And Beatup and Gregory know the district well—I’ll have them sent for from the farm.”
“Reckon I’d better go up to Starvecrow, John Elias would come with me, and Lambard and Fagge.”
“If you’re going to Starvecrow,” said Jenny, “I’ll go too, and see if I can do anything for poor Vera. I expect she’s dreadfully worried and frightened.”
“Don’t go!” cried Doris—“suppose Father died....”
“I can’t see what good I should be doing here. Vera needs me more than you do.”
“She’s got her mother. And it would be dreadful if Father died while you were out of the house.”
“Not more dreadful than if I was in it. He doesn’t know me, and wouldn’t see me if he did.”
“I think you’re very heartless,” and Doris began to cry—“Father might recover consciousness just before the end and want to forgive you.”
“I don’t think either is the least likely. Come along, Ben.”
Her husband fetched her coat from the hall, and they set out together. Doris sat on in her chair at the head of the table, sobbing weakly.
“I think this is a terrible thing to have happened. Father and Peter going together.... It makes me almost believe there isn’t a God.”
“But we’ve no reason to think Peter’s dead,” said Mary—“a dozen other things may have happened. He may have broken his leg out in the fields and be unable to get home, in which case the men will soon find him. I don’t see why you need take for granted that he’s killed.”
“I think it far more likely that he’s gone off with Stella Mount,” said Rose, relieved of Jenny’s repressing presence.
“Why ever should you think that?” said Mary. “I wasn’t aware that he was in love with her—now.”
“He’s been in love with her for the last year. Poor Vera’s had a dreadful time. I’m sure she thinks Peter’s gone with Stella.”
“Really, Rose, you surprise me—and anyhow, Stella answered her father’s ’phone call a short time ago, so she must be at home.”
“She might just have been going to leave when he rang up.”
“Well, the ’phone’s in the next room if you like to give her a call—and know what to say to her. Personally I should find the enquiry rather delicate.”
“It won’t do any good my ringing up,” sulked Rose—“if they’re gone we can’t stop them. If they’ve not gone then Doris is right, and Peter’s probably killed or something. I don’t know which would be the worst. It’s dreadful to think of him chucking everything over when if he’d only waited another hour he’d have heard about Father’s illness. He’d never have gone if he’d known he was to be Sir Peter so soon.”
“Well, I’d rather he’d gone than was killed,” said Doris—“the other could be stopped and hushed up—but if he’s dead ... there’s nobody left.”
“What about Gervase?” asked Mary.
“He’s no good.”
“Surely he’d come out of his convent or whatever it is, if he knew he had succeeded to the property.”
“I don’t know. Gervase never cared twopence about the property. I don’t think he’d come out for that.”
“They wouldn’t let him out,” said Rose.
“Is he coming here now?” asked Mary.
“I wired to him when I wired to you and Jenny. But I don’t know whether he’ll come or not, and anyhow he can’t be here for some time.”
“What time is it?”
“Nearly twelve.”
The three women shivered. The fire had gone out.