The end of the house of Alard

The night wore on, and Sir John was still alive. Nobody thought of going to bed, but after a time Doris, Mary and Rose went upstairs to the greater warmth of their father’s dressing-room. Here through the open door they could see the firelight leaping on the bedroom ceiling, and hear the occasional hushed voices of the nurse and Dr. Mount. Lady Alard sat by the fire, mute and exhausted. For the first time that they could remember she gave her family the impression of being really ill. Speller made tea, cocoa and soup on the gas-ring in the dressing-room. Hot drinks were at once a distraction and a stimulant. The night seemed incredibly long—nobody spoke above whispers, though every now and then Rose would say—“There’s no good whispering—he wouldn’t hear us even if we shouted.”

“I do hope he really is unconscious,” said Doris.

“Dr. Mount says he is.”

“But how can he know? He knows Father can’t speak, but he doesn’t know he can’t hear us.”

“I expect there are signs he can tell by.”

“The last words he ever spoke were said to me. That’ll be something comforting to remember.... But oh, it was dreadful finding him like that! I do hope it hadn’t lasted long ... that he hadn’t been like that for a long time, all alone....”

Doris bowed her head into her hands and sobbed loudly. As she sat there, crouched over the fire, her face with the merciful powder and colour washed off by tears, all haggard and blotched, and the make-up of her eyes running down her cheeks, her hair tumbling on her ears, and revealing the dingy brown roots of its chestnut undulations—she looked by far the most stricken of the party, more even than the sick man, who but for his terrible breathing lay now in ordered calm.

A clock in the house struck three.

“I wonder when we’ll hear about Peter,” whispered Rose.

“I’m surprised we haven’t heard already,” said Mary—“They must have gone all over the Starvecrow land by now.”

“Um....” said Rose, “that seems to point to his not being anywhere about the place.” Then she added—“I wonder if Gervase will come. I shouldn’t be at all surprised if he didn’t.”

“I should. They’d never keep him back when his father’s dying.”

“Well—why isn’t he here? He’s known about it for over six hours.”

“I shouldn’t think there were any trains running now. It’s not so easy as all that to come from Brighton.”

Rose relapsed into silence. After a time she said—

“Religion is a great consolation at a time like this.”

“Do you think we ought to send for Mr. Williams to come and see Father?” choked Doris.

“No—of course not. What good could he do? Poor Sir John’s quite unconscious.”

“But he may be able to hear. How do you know he can’t? Perhaps he would like to hear Mr. Williams say a prayer or a hymn.”

“My dear Doris, I tell you he doesn’t know a thing, so what’s the good of dragging poor Mr. Williams out of his bed at three o’clock in the morning? I had no patience with the people who did that sort of thing to George. Sir John couldn’t understand anything, and if he did he’d be furious, so it doesn’t seem much good either way. When I said religion was a consolation I was thinking of Mary.”

“And why of me?” asked Mary.

“Well, I often think you’d be happier if you had some sort of religion. You seem to me to lead such an aimless life.”

“Of course I’d be happier. Most people are happier when they believe in something. Unfortunately I never was taught anything I could or cared to believe.”

“Mary! How can you say that, when poor George....”

She broke off as the door opened and Jenny suddenly appeared.

“Hullo, Jenny!” cried Doris—“have you come back?—Have they found Peter?”

Jenny did not speak. She shut the door behind her, and stood with her back against it. Her face was white and damp. It was evidently raining, and wet strands of hair were plastered on her cheeks.

“Is Dr. Mount in there?” she asked.

“Yes—but Jenny ... Peter!...”

“I must see Dr. Mount first.”

“Who’s that asking for me?”

The doctor came in from the next room; at the sight of Jenny he shut the communicating door.

“I want to speak to you, Dr. Mount. Will you come with me?”

“Jenny, you really can’t treat us like this,” cried Mary, “you must tell us what’s happened. Is Peter hurt?”

“Yes—he’s downstairs.”

“Is he dead?” cried Doris, springing to her feet.

Again Jenny did not speak. She bowed her head into her hands and wept silently.

A dreadful silence filled the little room. Even Doris was perfectly quiet.

“I’ll come down,” said Dr. Mount.

“So’ll I,” said Doris.

“No,” said Jenny, “you mustn’t see him.”

“Why not?”

“He’s—he’s been dreadfully injured—part of his head....”

She stopped and shuddered. Dr. Mount pushed quietly past her to the door.

“I think I’d better go down alone. Your husband and the men are down there—I can get all the information I want from them.”

Jenny came forward to the fire and flopped into the chair Doris had left. Her clothes were wet and her boots muddy—it must be raining hard.

“I’d better tell you what happened,” she said brokenly—“The men—some from here and some from Starvecrow—found Peter lying on the Tillingham marshes about half a mile below the Mocksteeple. His dog was watching beside him, and he’d been shot through the head.”

“Murdered,” gasped Doris.

“No—I don’t think so for a moment.”

“It was an accident, of course,” said Mary.

“I wish I could think that. But the men seemed to think—my husband too—that it was his own doing.”

“His own doing! Suicide!” cried Doris—“How could they imagine such a thing?”

“From the way he was lying, and the position of the gun, and the nature of the injuries. That’s why I was so anxious for Dr. Mount to see him and give an expert opinion.”

“Is there any chance of his being still alive?”

“Not the slightest. His head is nearly entirely blown away.”

“Oh, Jenny, don’t!—it’s dreadful!”

“Yes it’s dreadful, but I’m afraid it’s true.”

“But whatever could have made him kill himself?” moaned Doris—“He’d nothing on his mind—he was perfectly happy ... it couldn’t have been because the baby was a girl.”

“Peter may have had troubles that we don’t know of,” said Rose.

“He must have,” said Jenny, “though I don’t think for a minute they were of the kind you’ve been suspecting.”

“I don’t see what other kind they could be.”

“It may have been something to do with the estate.”

“He’d never have killed himself for that. If anything had gone wrong there, it was more than ever his duty to keep alive.”

“Well, there’s no good us arguing here about what he did it for—if he really did do it. The question is—who is going to tell Mother?”

“Oh, Jenny....”

They looked at each other in consternation.

But Lady Alard, for all her frailty, belonged to a tougher generation than her children. In times of prosperity she might languish, but in times of adversity her spirit seemed to stiffen in proportion to the attacks upon it. If her cook had given notice she would have taken to her bed, but now when catastrophe trod on catastrophe and the fatal illness of her husband was followed by the death of her first-born son she armed herself with a courage in which her children, careless of kitchen tragedies, seemed to fail when they met the bigger assaults of life. She was less shattered by the news of Peter’s death than was the daughter who broke it to her, and rising up out of her chair, independent of arm or stick, she insisted on going downstairs into the dark, whispering house.

The others followed her, except Doris, who stayed huddled and motionless in her chair in her father’s dressing-room, like a stricken dog at its master’s door. The dining-room was lighted up and seemed full of men. They were gathered round the table on which, with a sense of futility and pathos Jenny caught sight of a pair of stiff legs in muddy boots.

At the sound of footsteps Dr. Mount came out of the room.

“What! Lady Alard!” he exclaimed, quite unprepared for such a visit.

“Yes, I want to see him.”

“You can’t—yet!”

“Are you quite sure he’s dead?”

“Quite sure.”

Dr. Mount looked shaken—his face was grey. But all faces were grey in the light of the hall, where the first livid rays of morning were mixing with the electric lamps that had burned all night.

“How did it happen, Doctor? Does anyone know?”

“Nobody knows. He was found on the Tillingham marshes. His gun may have gone off accidentally.”

“May have....” repeated Jenny.

“Will there have to be an inquest?”

“I’m afraid so. There always is in these cases.”

“Well, Sir John has been spared something.”

Her voice broke for the first time, and she turned back to the stairs. Rose and Mary went with her but Jenny lingered in the hall, where she had the comfort of seeing her husband through the dining-room door. Dr. Mount stopped as he was going back into the room.

“Has anyone told his wife?”

“Yes—one of the men came to Starvecrow at once.... I told her.... They thought it best not to take him there.”

“Of course—quite right. How did she bear it?—Perhaps I ought to go and see her.”

“Her mother’s with her, but I’m sure they’d be glad if you went there.”

“I’ve got the car—I could run round in a few minutes. I must go home too ... one or two things to see to ... I don’t think I’m wanted here just now.”

The doctor seemed terribly shaken by Peter’s death, but that was very natural, considering he had known him from a child. Also, Jenny reflected, being a religious man, the idea of suicide would particularly appall him.

“Doctor—do you—do you think he did it himself?”

“I’m sorely afraid he did.”

“But what can have made him? ... I mean, why should he? I always thought he was so happy—too happy, even. I sometimes thought him self-satisfied and over-fed.”

“We all have our secrets, Jenny, and your brother must have had a heavier one than most of us.”

“But why should you be so sure he did it? Couldn’t his gun have gone off by accident?”

“Of course it could. But the wounds would hardly have been of such a nature if it had. However, the matter will probably be cleared up in the Coroner’s court.”

Jenny shuddered.

“I wonder if he’s had any trouble—anything worse than usual about the land....” Then she remembered Rose’s suspicions of Stella Mount. Her colour deepened as she stood before Stella’s father. Could that possibly be the reason, after all? She had never imagined such a thing, but Peter certainly had been fond of Stella once, and Rose’s gossip was seldom quite baseless. She did not believe for a moment in any intrigue, but Peter might have turned back too late to his early love ... and of course Stella was going away ... it might have been that. Since undoubtedly Peter had had a secret buried under the outward fatness of his life, that secret may just as well have been Stella....

“Your husband tells me he came to see you this afternoon,” the doctor was saying, “what was he like then?”

“He seemed rather queer and silent, but afterwards I put it down to its being his first visit since my marriage. He wouldn’t forgive me for a long time, as you know, so it was only to be expected that he should feel a little awkward. But he said some rather queer things about Starvecrow—said he wished it was more like Fourhouses, said he’d spoilt it with his improvements, and seemed much more upset about it than you’d think natural.”

“Um.”

The doctor was silent a moment, then he said—

“Well, I think I’ll run over to Starvecrow in a minute or two when I’ve finished with poor Peter, then I might as well go home and have an early breakfast, and see if there are any messages for me. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

He moved away from her, and was going into the dining-room when Rose’s frightened voice suddenly shuddered down the stairs.

“Dr. Mount—will you please come up at once. There’s a change in Sir John.”

§ 24

Sir John Alard died when the cocks were crowing on Starvecrow and Glasseye and Doucegrove, and on other farms of his wide-flung estate too far away for the sound to come to Conster. His wife and daughters and daughter-in-law were with him when he died, but he knew no one. His mind did not come out of its retreat for any farewells, and if it had, would have found a body stiffened, struggling, intractable, and disobedient to the commands of speech and motion it had obeyed mechanically for nearly eighty years. Death came and brought the gift of dignity—a dignity he had never quite achieved in all his lifetime of rule. When his family came in for a last look, after the doctor and the nurse had performed their offices, they saw that the querulous, irascible old man of the last few months was gone, and in his place lay Something he had never been of stillness and marble beauty. When Dr. Mount had invited them in to the death-chamber, the daughters had at first refused, and changed their minds only when they found that Lady Alard was unexpectedly ready to go. Now Jenny at least was glad. It was her first sight of death (for she had not seen George’s body and would never see Peter’s) and she was surprised to find how peaceful and triumphant the body looked when set free from the long tyranny of the soul. It comforted her to know that in its last fatal encounter with terror, pain and woe, humanity was allowed to achieve at least the appearance of victory. Her father lying there looked like one against whom all the forces of evil had done their worst in vain.

Nobody cried except Doris, who cried a great deal. She had not cried for Peter, but when her father’s spirit had slipped out after a sigh, she had burst into a storm of noisy weeping. She was sobbing still, kneeling beside the body of the father who had bullied and humiliated her all her life, the only one of his children who really regretted him.

There was the sound of wheels in the drive below.

“Is that Gervase?” asked Jenny, going to the window.

“No,” said Mary, “it’s Dr. Mount going away.”

“He seems in a great hurry to get off,” said Rose—“he didn’t wait a minute longer than he could possibly help.”

“I don’t wonder,” said Jenny.

“I expect he’s gone home to break it to Stella,” whispered Rose.

“He told me he was going to Starvecrow to see Vera,” said Jenny icily. She hated Rose’s conjectures all the more that she now shared them herself.

“It will be dreadful for some people at the inquest,” continued her sister-in-law.

“Dreadful! how dreadful?—You don’t mean Stella’s to blame, do you?”

“Oh, of course, I don’t mean she’s really done anything wicked—but she let poor Peter go on loving her when she knew it was wrong.”

“How could she have stopped him?—supposing it’s true that he did love her.”

“Any girl can stop a man loving her,” said Rose mysteriously.

“Oh, can she?—it’s obvious you’ve never had to try.”

Jenny was surprised at her own vindictiveness, but she felt all nerves after such a night. Rose was plunged into silence, uncertain whether she had been complimented or insulted, and the next minute there was another sound of wheels in the drive.

“That must be Gervase.”

A taxi had stopped outside the door, and out of it climbed, not Gervase but Brother Joseph of the Order of Sacred Pity, with close-cropped hair, a rough, grey cassock and the thickest boots man ever saw. As she watched him from the window, Jenny felt a lump rise in her throat.

She was going down to meet him when suddenly Doris started up from the bedside.

“Let me go first.”

She brushed past her sister and ran downstairs before anyone could stop her. Jenny hurried after her, for she felt that Doris in her present condition was not a reassuring object to meet the home-comer. But she was too late. Doris flung open the door almost at the same instant as the bell rang.

“Welcome!” she cried hysterically—“Welcome—Sir Gervase Alard!”

If Gervase was taken aback at his sister’s appearance, he did not show it by more than a sudden blink.

“My dear Doris,” he said, and taking both her hands he kissed her poor cheek where rouge and tears were mingled—“I met Dr. Mount—and he’s told me,” he said.

“About Peter?”

“Yes.”

He came into the hall and stood there a quaint, incongruous figure in his cloak and cassock.

“Hullo, Wills,” as the butler came forward.

“How do you do, Mr. Gervase—I mean Sir Ger—or rather I should say——”

He remembered that his young master was now Brother Something-or-other, having crowned an un-squirelike existence, much deplored in the servants’ hall, by entering a Home for Carthlicks. He compromised with—

“Can I have your luggage, sir?”

“Here it is,” said Gervase, holding out on one finger a small bundle tied up in a spotted handkerchief, and Wills who was going to have added “and your keys, sir,” retired in confusion.

“Where’s Peter?” asked Brother Joseph.

“In there,” Jenny pointed into the dining-room where Peter still lay, now no longer pathetic and futile in booted and muddy death, but dignified as his father upstairs under his white sheet.

Young Alard went in, and standing at the head of the table, crossed himself and said the first prayer that had been said yet for Peter. His sisters watched him from the doorway. Doris seemed calmer, her tears came more quietly.

“How’s Mother?” he asked as he came out.

“She’s been wonderful,” said Jenny, “but I think she’s breaking a bit now.”

“And Vera?”

Vera had not been wonderful. It is difficult to be wonderful when your husband has killed himself because he loved another woman and you did not die in childbirth to let him marry her.

“It’s dreadful,” moaned Jenny. Then suddenly she wondered if Gervase knew the worst. There was a look of bright peace in his eyes which seemed to show that he was facing sorrow without humiliation or fear.

“Did Dr. Mount tell you that—tell you exactly how Peter died?”

“He told me he had been killed accidentally out shooting. He gave me no details—he couldn’t wait more than a minute.”

“Oh, my dear, it was much worse than that....”

She saw that once again she would have to “break it” to somebody. It was easier telling Gervase than it had been to tell the others, for he did not cry out or protest, but when she had finished she saw that his eyes had lost their bright peace.

Doris was sobbing again, uncontrollably.

“The two of them gone—first Peter and then Father. To think that Peter should have gone first.... Thank God Father didn’t know! He didn’t know anybody, Gervase—the last person he recognised was me. That will always be a comfort to me, though it was so dreadful.... I went into the library, and found him all huddled there, alone ... and I said ‘Are you ill, Father?’—and he said ‘Get out’—and now, Gervase, you’re the head of the family—you’re Sir Gervase Alard.”

“We’ll talk that over later. At present I must go and see Mother.”

“But you’re not going to back out of it—you’re not going to leave us in the lurch.”

“I hope I shan’t leave anybody in the lurch,” he replied rather irritably, “but there are lots of more important things than that to settle now. Where is Mother, Jenny?”

“She’s upstairs in Father’s dressing-room.”

She noticed that he looked very white and tired, and realised that he must have been travelling for the greater part of the night.

“Are you hungry, dear? Won’t you eat something before you go up?”

“No thank you—I don’t want anything to eat. But might I have a cup of tea?”

“Speller’s making that upstairs, so come along.”

They were halfway up, and had drawn a little ahead of Doris, when he bent to her and whispered—

“Does Stella know?”

“Yes—Dr. Mount was on his way home when you met him.”

“Oh, I’m glad.”

So he, too, perhaps thought Stella might be the reason....

The little dressing-room was full of people. Ben Godfrey was there, the son-in-law and the man of the house till Gervase came. Mr. Williams was there too, summoned by Rose at a seasonable hour. He was sitting beside Lady Alard, who had now begun to look old and broken, and was trying to comfort her with a picture of her husband and son in some nebulous Paradisaical state exclusive to Anglican theology. He looked up rather protestingly at the sight of Gervase, whose habit suggested rival consolations and a less good-natured eschatology. But young Alard had not come to his mother as a religious, but as her son. He went up to her, and apparently oblivious of everyone else, knelt down beside her and hid his face in her lap. “Oh, Mummy—it’s too terrible—comfort me.”

His sisters were surprised, Ben Godfrey was embarrassed, Rose and Mr. Williams tactfully looked another way. But Lady Alard’s face lit up with almost a look of happiness. She put her arms round him, hugging his dark cropped head against her bosom, and for the first time seemed comforted.

§ 26

The Mounts’ little servant had gone to bed by the time Stella came home from church, so she did not hear till the next morning of the message from Starvecrow. Her father had rung her up earlier in the evening to say that he would probably not be home that night; and she was not to sit up for him. So she carefully bolted both the doors, looked to see if the kitchen fire was raked out, pulled down a blind or two, and went upstairs.

She was not sorry to be alone, for her mind was still wandering in the dark church she had left ... coal black, without one glimmer of light, except the candle which had shown for a moment behind the altar and then flickered out in the draughts of the sanctuary. Spring by spring the drama of the Passion searched the deep places of her heart. The office of Tenebrae seemed to stand mysteriously apart from the other offices and rites of the church, being less a showing forth of the outward events of man’s redemption than of the thoughts of the Redeemer’s heart.... “He came, a man, to a deep heart, that is to a secret heart, exposing His manhood to human view.” Throughout those sad nocturnes she seemed to have been looking down into that Deep Heart, watching its agony in its betrayal and its forsaking, watching it brood on the scriptures its anguish had fulfilled.... “From the lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet” ... watching it comfort itself with the human songs of God’s human lovers, psalms of steadfastness and praise—then in the Responds breaking once more into its woe—a sorrowful dialogue with itself—“Judas, that wicked trader, sold his Lord with a kiss”—“It had been good for that man if he had not been born” ... “O my choicest vine, I have planted thee. How art thou turned to bitterness” ... “Are ye come out against a thief with swords and staves for to take me?” ... “I have delivered my beloved into the hand of the wicked, and my inheritance is become unto me as a lion in the wood”—“My pleasant portion is desolate, and being desolate it crieth after me.”

Through psalm and lesson, antiphon and response, the Deep Heart went down into the final darkness. It was swallowed up, all but its last, inmost point of light—and that too was hidden for a time ... “keeping His divinity hidden within, concealing the form of God.” In the darkness His family knelt and prayed Him to behold them; then for a few brief moments came the showing of the light, the light which had not been extinguished but hidden, and now for a few moments gleamed again.

It was all to the credit of Stella’s imagination that she could make a spiritual adventure out of Tenebrae as sung in Vinehall church. The choir of eight small boys and three hoarse young men was rather a hindrance than an aid to devotion, nor was there anything particularly inspiring in the congregation itself, sitting on and on through the long-drawn nocturnes in unflagging patience, for the final reward of seeing the lights go out. Even this was an uncertain rite, for old Mr. Bream, the sacristan, occasionally dozed at the end of a psalm with the result that he once had three candles over at the Benedictus; and another time he had let the Christ candle go out in the draught at the back of the Altar and was unable to show it at the end, though his hoarse entreaties for a match were audible at the bottom of the church. But Stella loved the feeling of this His family sitting down and watching Him there in stolid wonder. She loved their broad backs, the shoulders of man and girl touching over a book, the children sleeping against their mothers, to be roused for the final thrill of darkness. She was conscious also of an indefinable atmosphere of sympathy, as of the poor sharing the sorrows of the Poor, and drawn terribly close to this suffering human Heart, whose sorrows they could perhaps understand better than the well-educated and well-to-do. She felt herself more at ease in such surroundings than in others of more sophisticated devotion, and on leaving the church was indignant with an unknown lady who breathed into her ear that she’d seen it better done at St. John Lateran.

Up in her bedroom, taking the pins out of her hair, her mind still lingered over the office. Perhaps Gervase was singing it now, far away at Thunders Abbey.... She must write to Gervase soon, and tell him how much happier she had been of late. During the last few weeks a kind of tranquillity had come, she had lost that sense of being in the wrong with Peter, of having failed him by going away. She saw that she was right, and that she had hated herself for that very reason of being in the right when poor Peter whom she loved was in the wrong. But her being in the right would probably be more help to him at the last than if she had put herself in the wrong for his dear sake.

She too might have sold her Lord with a kiss. She wondered how often kisses were given as His price—kisses which should have been His joy given as the token of His betrayal. She might have given such a token if He had not preserved her, delivered her from the snare of Peter’s arms ... oh, that Peter’s arms should be a snare ... but such he himself had made them. She had not seen him for a long time now—a whole fortnight at least; and in less than another fortnight she would be gone.... He was keeping away from her, and would probably keep away until the end. Then once more he would see Vera, his wife, holding their child in her arms ... and surely then he would go back. Probably in a few days too he would be Sir Peter Alard, Squire of Conster, head of the house ... then he would be thankful that he had not entangled himself with Stella Mount—he would be grateful to her, perhaps....

How the words would ring in her head!—breaking up her thoughts. She felt very tired and sleepy—and she would have to be up early the next morning. “My inheritance is as a lion in the wood.”... Those words had made her think of Starvecrow. She had always thought of Starvecrow as her inheritance, the inheritance of which Peter had robbed her.... Starvycrow ... oh, if only Peter had been true they might now be waiting to enter their inheritance together. Sir John Alard could not have kept them out of it for more than a few years. But Peter had cut her off, and Starvecrow was strange to her—she dared not go near it ... strange and fierce—a lion in the wood.

She was sorry for Sir John Alard, lying at the point of death. She viewed his share in her tragedy with the utmost tolerance. He had belonged to the old order, the toppling, changing order, and it was not he who had failed the spirit of life, but Peter, who belonged to the new but had stood by the old. Poor Peter who had inherited only the things which are shaken, when he was the heir of the kingdom which cannot be moved....

§ 27

Only her sudden waking showed her that she had been asleep. She started up and looked at the time. This was Good Friday morning, and it was now half-past six. She jumped out of bed, hurried on her clothes, tumbled up her hair, and was rather sleepily saying her prayers when she heard the sound of her father’s car at the door. He was back, then—all was over—Peter was now Sir Peter Alard, and would not think of her again. Tears of mingled pity and relief filled her closed eyes till the end of her bedside office—

“May the souls of the faithful, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen.”

She rose from her knees and ran downstairs to meet her father. He was standing in the hall, pulling off his furry driving gloves.

“Hullo, darling”—kissing his cold face—“Come in to the surgery, and I’ll light the fire and get you some tea.”

“Were you going to church?”

“Yes, but I shall have to be late, that’s all.”

“I have something to tell you, my dear.”

His grave face sent a sudden chill into her heart.

“Father!—what is it?—has anything happened to——”

“Sir John Alard is dead——”

“Well——”

She knew that was not what he had to tell her.

“And Peter doesn’t inherit Conster.”

She stared at him—she could not understand. Was Peter illegitimate? Her heart sickened at the monstrous irony of such a thought.... But it was impossible. She was conceiving the preposterous in self-defence—in frantic hope that Peter was not ... dead.

“Is he dead?” she asked her father.

He bowed his head silently.

She could not speak. She was kneeling on the floor in front of the unlighted fire. In one hand she held some sticks, and for a time she could not move, but knelt there, holding out the unkindled sticks towards the back hearth.

“I felt I must come home and tell you before the rumour reached you. He was found on the Tillingham marshes, with his gun....”

“How?—an accident?” she mumbled vaguely.

“I don’t know, my dear—I’m afraid not.”

“You mean....”

“I mean that from the way they tell me he was lying and from the nature of the wounds, I feel nearly sure that it was his own act. I am telling you this, poor darling, because you would be sure to hear it some time, and I would rather you heard it from me.”...

“Will there be an inquest?” she heard herself asking calmly.

“Yes, there’s sure to be an inquest. But of course I don’t know what the findings will be, or if the Coroner will want to question you.”

“I don’t mind if he does—I can answer.”

She did not quite know what she was saying. She went over and stood by the window, looking out. A mist was rising from the garden, giving her an eastward vista of fields in a far-off sunshine. The air was full of an austere sense of spring, ice-cold, and pierced with the rods of the blossomed fruit-trees, standing erect against the frigid sky.

Her father came and put his arm around her.

“Perhaps you would like to be alone, my dear—and I must go and see poor Mrs. Peter. I came here first, because I wanted to tell you ... but now I must go to Starvecrow.”

(Starvycrow ... being desolate it crieth after me.)

He stooped and kissed her averted face.

“My darling ... I’m so sorry.”

She felt a lump rise in her throat as if it would choke her—it broke into a great sob.

“Cry, dearest—it will do you good.”

She gently pushed him from her—but when he was gone, she did not cry.

§ 28

The little shrill bell of Vinehall church, the last of a large family of pre-Reformation bells, was still smiting the cold air, but Stella could not pray any more than she could weep. Neither could she remain indoors. She put on her furs and went out. She wished she had the car—to rush herself out of the parish, out of the county, over the reedy Kentish border, up the steep white roads of the weald, away and away to Staplehurst and Marden, to the country of the hops and the orchards.... But even so she knew she could not escape. What she wanted to leave behind was not Vinehall or Leasan or Conster or even Starvecrow, but herself. Herself and her own thoughts made up the burden she found too heavy to bear.

She walked aimlessly down Vinehall Street, and out beyond the village. The roads were black with dew, and the grass and primrose-tufts of the hedgerow were tangled and wet. There was nowhere for her to sit down and rest, though she felt extraordinarily tired at the end of two furlongs. She turned off into a field path, running beside the stacks of a waking farm, and finally entering a little wood.

It was a typical Sussex spinney. The oaks were scattered among an underwood of hazel, beech and ash; the ground was thick with dead leaves, sodden together into a soft, sweetsmelling mass out of which here and there rose the trails of the creeping ivy, with the starry beds of wood-anemones; while round the moss-grown stumps the primrose plants were set, with the first, occasional violets. A faint budding of green was on the branches of the underwood, so backward yet as to appear scarcely more than a mist, but on the oaks above, the first leaves were already uncurling in bunches of rose and brown. Then at the bend of the path she saw a wild cherry tree standing white like Aaron’s rod against the sky. The whiteness and the beauty smote her through, and sinking down upon one of the stumps, she burst into a flood of tears.

She cried because her pain had at last reached the soft emotions of her heart. Hitherto it had been set in the hard places, in self-reproach, in horror, in a sense of betrayal, both of her and by her.... But now she thought of Peter, shut out from all the soft beauty of the spring, cut off from life and love, never more to smell the primroses, or hear the cry of the plovers on the marsh, never more to watch over the lands he loved, or see the chimney-smoke of his hearth go up from Starvecrow.... She had robbed Peter of all this—she did not think of him as cut off by his own act but by hers. It was she who had killed him—her righteousness. So that she might be right, she had made him eternally wrong—her Peter. She had been the wicked trader, selling her lover for gain. It had been well for her if she had not been born.

The softer emotions had passed, and with them her tears. She clenched her hands upon her lap, and hated herself. She saw herself as a cold, calculating being. She had said “I will get over it,” and she had said “Peter will get over it.” No doubt she was right about herself—she would have got over it—people like her always did; but about Peter she had been hopelessly wrong. He had deeper feelings than she, and at the same time was without her “consolations.” Her “consolations”!—how thankful she had been that she had not forfeited them, that she had not given them in exchange for poor Peter. At first they had not seemed to weigh much against his loss, but later on she had been glad and grateful; and while she had been finding comfort in these things, building up her life again out of them, Peter had been going more and more hungry, more and more forlorn, till at last he had died rather than live on in starvation.

She hated herself, but there was something worse than just self-hatred in the misery of that hour. If she had betrayed Peter it was that she, too, had been betrayed. She had been given the preposterous task of saving her soul at the expense of his. If she had not fled from the temptation of his presence—if she had given way to his entreaties and promised not to leave him without the only comfort he had left, Peter would still be alive. She would have done what she knew to be wrong, but Peter would not be dead in his sins. Why should her right have been his wrong? Why should his dear soul have been sacrificed for hers? He had died by his own hand—unfaithful to his wife and child in all but the actual deed. Why should she be forced to bear the guilt of that?

The pillars of her universe seemed to crumble. Either heaven had betrayed her or there was no heaven. She almost preferred to believe the latter. Better ascribe the preposterous happenings of the night to chance than to a providence which was either malignant or careless of souls. Perhaps God was like nature, recklessly casting away the imperfect that the fittest might survive. Poor Peter’s starved, undeveloped soul had been sacrificed to her own better-nourished organism, just as in the kingdom of nature the weakest go to the wall.... She looked round her at the budding wood. How many of these leaves would come to perfection? How many of these buds would serve only as nourishment to more powerful existences, which in their turn would fall a prey to others. She would rather not believe in God at all than believe in a Kingdom of Heaven ruled by the same remorseless laws as the bloody Kingdom of Nature....

But she could not find the easy relief of doubt, though something in her heart was saying “I will doubt His being rather than His love.” After all, what was there to prove the assertion that God is love?—surely it was the most monstrous, ultramontane, obscurantist dogma that had ever been formulated. The Real Presence, the Virgin Birth, the physical Resurrection were nothing to it. It was entirely outside human knowledge—it ran directly contrary to human experience ... and yet it was preached by those who looked upon the creeds as fetters of the intellect and the whole ecclesiastical philosophy as absurd. Fools and blind!—straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel! She laughed out loud in the wood.

Her laughter brought her to her senses—yes, she knew she would always be sensible. She would either have to be sensible or go mad. It is the sensible people who fill the asylums, for they cannot rest in the halfway house of eccentricity. To Stella it was a dreadful thing to have laughed out loud in a wood. She was terrified, and jumped up at once to go home. By the watch on her wrist it was half-past eight; her father would be home from Starvecrow and wanting his breakfast. Breakfast, dinner and tea ... people like herself could never forget breakfast, dinner and tea.

§ 29

“Well, my dear, did you go to church?”

“No, I went for a walk instead.”

Her tone was perfectly calm, if a little flat. She was really being splendid, poor little girl.

“Gervase is back—I forget whether I told you. I met him on my way home early this morning.”

“Oh—how does he look?”

“Very well—though changed, of course, with his hair cut so short. I’m glad he’s there. He’ll take Lady Alard out of herself.”

“How is Lady Alard?”

“She’s much better than I could have thought possible.”

“And Mrs. Peter?”

“She’s different, of course ... Jewish temperament, you know. But I left her calmer. I think she’ll try and keep calm for the sake of the child—she adores that.”

The doctor had had rather a rough time at Starvecrow, but he would not tell Stella about it. Vera was in no doubt as to the cause of her husband’s death, and as soon as Stella was out of hearing, Dr. Mount was going to telephone to a Rye practitioner to take charge of the case. Mrs. Peter was nearly well, and really he could not go near her again after what she had said....

“When is the inquest going to be?” asked Stella abruptly.

“Tomorrow afternoon, my dear. Godfrey was at Conster, and he says he’s seen the Coroner.”

“And shall I have to go?”

“I fear so. But no doubt you’ll get an official intimation. You aren’t afraid, are you, sweetheart?”

“No, I’m not afraid.”

“Will you drive me out this morning? I must go over to Benenden, and take Pipsden on the way back.”

“Yes, I should like to drive you.”

So the day passed. In the morning she drove her father on his rounds, in the afternoon she dispensed in the Surgery, and in the evening there was church again. Church was black.... “And they laid him there, sealing the stone and setting a watch.... Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in the place of darkness, and in the deep—free among the dead, like unto those who are wounded and lie in the grave, who are out of remembrance.... And they laid him there, sealing a stone and setting a watch.”

The great three-days drama was over. For the last time the Tenebrae hearse had stood a triangle of sinister light in the glooms of the sanctuary. Tomorrow’s services would be the services of Easter, in a church stuffed with primroses and gay with daisy chains. What a mockery it all would be! How she wished the black hangings could stay up and the extinguished lamp before the unveiled tabernacle proclaim an everlasting emptiness. She shuddered at the thought of her Easter duties. It would be mere hypocrisy to perform them—she who wished that she had mortal sin to confess so that Peter need not have died in mortal sin.

She thought of Gervase, so near her now at Conster, and yet spiritually so very far away, in peaceful enjoyment of a Kingdom from which she had been cast out. She had half expected to see him in church that evening, but he had not been there, and she had felt an added pang of loneliness. The sight of him, a few words from him, might have comforted her. She thought of Gervase as he used to be in the old days when he first learned the faith from her. She almost laughed—she saw another mockery there. She had taught him, she had brought him to the fold—he himself had said that but for her he would not have been where he was now—and now he was comforted and she was tormented.

Then as she thought of him, it struck her that perhaps he might have written—that there might be a letter waiting for her at home. Surely Gervase, who must guess what she was suffering, would take some notice of her, try to do something for her. Obsessed by the thought, she hurried home from church—and found nothing.

Though the expectation had not lasted half an hour, she was bitterly disappointed. It was callous of him to ignore her like this—he must know her position, he must guess her anguish. She felt deserted by everyone, obscure and forsaken. It is true that her father was near her and loved her and shared her sorrow, but he did not know the full depths of it—he was satisfied that she had done right, and thought that she, too, was satisfied. She could not thrust her burden of doubt upon his simple soul. She was becoming rapidly convinced that only Gervase could share her burden with her, and if he stood away ... could she bear it alone?

That night she scarcely slept at all. Her mind went round and round on its treadmill, its sterile walk of questions and regrets. In the small hours she must have dozed a little, for she dreamed she had gone to a Mass for Peter’s soul, and Gervase was the Priest. The server had just carried the Book to the north end of the Altar, and she stood waiting to hear the grail—“The righteous shall be held in everlasting remembrance: he shall not be afraid of any evil tidings.” But instead a terrible voice rang out: “I have delivered my beloved into the hand of the wicked, and my heritage is become unto me as a lion in the wood.”... Trembling and panting, she awoke to the realisation that no Mass could be said for Peter, no office read; that he was not one of “the Faithful Departed”—that good company of many prayers....

She lay motionless, her face buried in the pillow, without struggles or tears. She was aware, without sight of the dawn breaking round her, of the cold white light which filled the room, of the grey sky lying like a weight upon the trees. She heard the wind come up and rustle round the house, and the cocks begin to crow, some near, some far away—Padgeham answering Dixter, and Wildings echoing Brickwall. The new day had come—Holy Saturday, the day of peace, the last and greatest of the Sabbaths, the seventh day on which God rested from the six days’ labour of His new creation.

She was roused by a clock striking eight, and again her abominable sense asserted itself. She had never lain in bed so long in her life—she must get up quickly, and give her father his breakfast before he started on his rounds.

With as it were leaden weights in her head and limbs, she rose, dressed and went down. As she was going down the stairs a kind of hope revived. Perhaps this morning there would be a letter from Gervase....

Yes, there was. It was lying in the letter box with a lot of others. She eagerly tore it open and read—

“Stella, dear—this is just to tell you how I feel for you and am praying for you.—Gervase.”

That was all.

A sick and silly feeling of disappointment seized her. She knew now that for some unaccountable reason she had been banking her hopes on that letter. She had been expecting Gervase to resolve her doubts, to reconcile her conflicts. But instead he seemed ridiculously to think she could do all that for herself. Her heart warmed against him—perhaps he shrank from coming to grips with the problem. His faith recoiled from the raw disillusion which he must know she was feeling. He would keep away from her rather than be mixed up in her dust.... Well, he should not. His aloofness should not save him. She would go over to Conster and see him, since he would not come to her. With a growing resentment she told herself it was the least he could do for her. She had given him his faith—he might at least make an effort to save hers.

“Father,” she said when they were at breakfast—“do you mind driving yourself out this morning? I’m going to Conster to see Gervase.”

“Certainly, my dear. I’m glad you’re going to see him—I thought perhaps he might be coming here.”

“So did I—but he’s asked me to go there instead.”

Something in her detached and dispassionate said—“that lie was quite well told.”

§ 30

As soon as her father had gone, she set out for Conster. She went by the road, for the field way ran near Starvecrow, and she had not the courage to go by Starvecrow.

She did not get to Conster till nearly eleven, and as she walked up the drive she asked herself what she would do if Gervase was out. She would have to wait, that was all. She must see him—he was the only person on earth who could help her.

However, he was not out. Wills let her in very solemnly. He did not attach any importance to the gossip in the servants’ hall—but ... she looked ill enough, anyway, poor creature.

“Yes, Miss, Sir Gervase is in. I will tell him you’re here.”

Stella started a little—Sir Gervase! She had asked for Mr. Gervase. She had forgotten. In her absorption in the main stream of the tragedy she had ignored its side issues, but now she began to realise the tempests that must be raging in Gervase’s life. Would he have to leave his community, she wondered—after all, he could easily come out, and great responsibilities awaited him. The next minute she gave another start—as she caught her first sight of Brother Joseph.

He seemed very far away from her as he shut the door behind him. Between them lay all the chairs and tables, rugs and plants of the huge, overcrowded drawing-room. For the first time she became aware of a portrait of Peter on the wall—a portrait of him as a child, with masses of curly hair and wide-open, pale blue eyes. She stared at it silently as Gervase came towards her across the room.

“Stella, my dear.”

He took both her hands in his firm, kind clasp, and looked into her eyes. His own seemed larger than usual, for his hair was cut very close, almost shorn. That, and his rough grey cassock buttoned collarless to his chin, altered his appearance completely. Except for his touch and voice, he seemed almost a stranger.

“Gervase....” she sank into a chair—“Help me, Gervase.”

“Of course I will. Did you get my note?”

“Yes—but, oh, Gervase....”

She could say no more. Her breath seemed gone. She held her handkerchief to her mouth, and trembled.

“I should have written more—but I’ve had such a time, Stella, with my family and the lawyers. Perhaps you can understand what a business it all is when I tell you that I’ve no intention of coming out of the Order, which means I’ve got to make up my mind what to do with this place. I’ve been at it hard all yesterday afternoon and this morning with my father’s London solicitors, but I’ve managed to keep the family quiet till after the funeral, by which time I shall have the details settled. Otherwise I should have come to see you.... But I knew you were safe.”

“Gervase, I’m not safe.”

“My dear——”

He held out his hand and she took it.

“I’m not safe, Gervase. You think I’m stronger than I am. And you don’t know what’s happened.”

“I know all about Peter.”

“Yes, but you don’t know the details. You don’t know that Peter killed himself because I insisted, in spite of all his entreaties, on going away. He told me that my presence was the only comfort he had left, but I wouldn’t stay, because if I stayed I knew that I should be tempted, and I was afraid.... I thought it was my duty to run away from temptation. So I ran. I never thought that perhaps Peter couldn’t live without me—that I was saving my soul at the expense of his. I wish now that I’d stayed—even if it had meant everything.... I’d far rather sin through loving too much than through loving too little.”

“So would I. But have you loved too little?”

“Yes—because I thought of myself first. I thought only of saving my own soul ... and I thought I could forget Peter if only I didn’t ever see him again, and I thought he could forget me. But he couldn’t—and I can’t.”

“In other words, you did right and behaved very sensibly, but the results were not what you expected.”

“Gervase—if you tell me again that I’ve been ‘right’ and ‘sensible,’ I—oh, I’ll get up and go, because you’re being just like everyone else. Father says I’ve been ‘right’ and ‘sensible’—and I know Father Luce would say it—and the Coroner will say it this afternoon. And it’ll be true—true—true! I have been right and sensible, and my right has put Peter in the wrong, and my sense has driven him mad.”

“And what would your ‘wrong’ have done for Peter?”

“He’d still be alive.”

“With your guilt upon him as well as his own. Stella, my dear, listen to me. When I talk about your being ‘right’ I don’t mean what most people would mean by right. If it’s any comfort to you, I think that most people who have intelligence and are not merely conventional would think you had done wrong. You loved Peter and yet refused to have him, with the result that his life is over and yours is emptied. I know, and you know, that you did this because of an allegiance you owed beyond Peter. But most people wouldn’t see that. They’d think you had refused him because you were afraid, because you dared not risk all for love. They’d never see that all the daring, all the risk, lay in your refusing him. Now be candid—isn’t part of your unhappiness due to your feeling that it would have been braver and more splendid to have done what Peter wanted, and let everything else go hang?”

“Yes,” said Stella faintly.

“Well, I’ll tell you what I think would have happened—if you’d stayed—stayed under the only conditions that would have satisfied Peter. Vera would have, of course, found out—she has found out already a great deal more than has happened; she’s not the sort of woman who endures these things; she would have divorced Peter, and he would have married you. Nowadays these scandals are very easily lived down, and you’d have been Lady Alard. After a time the past would have been wiped out—for the neighbourhood and for you. You would probably have become extremely respectable and a little censorious. You would have gone to Leasan church on Sundays at eleven. You would have forgotten that you ever weren’t respectable—and you would have forgotten that you ever used to live close to heaven and earth in the Sacraments, that you ever were your Father’s child.... In other words, Stella, you would be in Hell.”

Stella did not speak. She stared at him almost uncomprehendingly.

“I know what you think, my dear—you think you would have undergone agonies of regret, and you tell yourself you should have borne them for Peter’s sake. But I don’t think that. I think you would have been perfectly happy. Remember, you would have been living on a natural level, and though we’re made so that the supernatural in us may regret the natural, I doubt if the natural in us so easily regrets the supernatural. Your tragedy would have been that you would have regretted nothing. You would have been perfectly happy, contented, comfortable, respectable, and damned.”

“But Peter—he——”

“Would probably have been the same. He isn’t likely to have turned to good things after seeing how lightly they weighed with you. But the point is that you haven’t the charge of Peter’s soul—only the charge of your own—‘Man cannot deliver his brother from death or enter into agreement with God for him.’ It cost very much more to redeem their souls than you could ever pay.”

“But, Gervase, isn’t Peter’s soul lost through what he did—through what I drove him to——”

“My dear, how do we know what Peter did? What do we really know about his death? Can’t you take comfort in the thought that perfect knowledge belongs only to Perfect Love? As for your own share—your refusal to love your love for him unto the death, your refusal to make it the occasion for treachery to a greater love—that refusal may now be standing between Peter’s soul and judgment. You did your best for him by acting so—far better than if you had put him in the wrong by making his love for you—probably the best thing in his life—an occasion for sin. He takes your love out of the world unspoilt by sin. Your love is with him now, pleading for him, striving for him, because it is part of a much greater Love, which holds him infinitely dearer than even you can hold him. Stella, don’t you believe this?”

She was crying now, but he heard her whisper “Yes.”

“Then don’t go regretting the past, and thinking you would have saved a man by betraying God.”

“I’ll try not....”

“And suppose as the result of your refusing to stay, Peter had turned back to Vera, and been happy in his wife and child again, you wouldn’t have regretted your action or thought you’d done wrong. Well, the rightness of your choice isn’t any less because it didn’t turn out the way you hoped.”

“I know—I know—but ... I was so cold and calculating—one reason I wanted to go away was that though I couldn’t have Peter I didn’t want to go without love ... for ever....”

“I scarcely call that ‘cold and calculating.’ I hope you will love again, Stella, and not waste your life over has-beens and might-have-beens. It’s merely putting Peter further in the wrong if you spoil your life for his sake.”

“You think I ought to get married?”

“I certainly do. I think you ought to have married years ago, and Peter was to blame for holding that up and damming your life out of its proper course. He kept you from marrying the right man—for Peter wasn’t the right man for you, Stella, though probably you loved him more than ever you will love the right man when he comes. But I hope he will come soon, my dear, and find you—for you’ll never be really happy till he does.”

“I know, Gervase, I know—oh, do help me to be sensible again, for I feel that after what’s happened, I couldn’t ever.”

“My dear, you don’t really want help from me.”

“I do. Oh, Gervase ... I wish I weren’t going to Canada—I don’t feel now as if I could possibly go away from you. You’re the only person that can help me.”

“You know I’m not the only one.”

“You are. You’re the only one that understands ... and we’ve always been such friends.... I feel I don’t want to go away from you—even if you’re still at Thunders....”

She spoke at random, urged by some helpless importunity of her heart. He coloured, but answered her quite steadily.

“I shall never leave Thunders, my dear. It’s too late for that now. I shall always be there to help you if you want me. But I don’t think you really want me—I think you will be able to go through this alone.”

“Alone....”

A few tears slid over her lashes. It seemed as if already she had gone through too much alone.

“Yes, for you want to go through it the best way—the way Love Himself went through it—alone. Think of Him, Stella—in the garden, on the cross, in the grave—alone. ‘I am he that treadeth the wine-press-alone.’”

“But, Gervase, I can’t—I’m not strong enough. Oh ... oh, my dear, don’t misunderstand me—but you say you owe your faith to me ... can’t the faith I gave you help me now that I’ve lost mine?”

“You haven’t lost it—it’s only hidden for a time behind the Altar ... you must go and look for it there. If you look for it in me you may never find it.”

She rose slowly to her feet.

“I see,” she said, as a blind man might say it.

He, too, rose, and held out his hand to her.

“You’ll know where I am—where I’ll always be—my life given to help you, Stella, your brother, your priest. I will be helping you with my thoughts, my prayers, my offices—with my Masses some day, because, but for you I should never say them. In that way I shall pay back all you’ve given me. But to the human ‘me’ you’ve given nothing, so don’t ask anything back. If I gave you anything in that way I might also take—take what I must not, Stella. So goodbye.”

She put her hand into his outstretched one.

“Goodbye, Gervase.”

“Goodbye.”

She wondered if he would give her another of those free kisses which had shown her so much when first he went away. But he did not. They walked silently to the door, and in the silence both of that moment and her long walk home she saw that he had paid his debt to her in the only possible way—by refusing to part with anything that she had given him.