The inquest at Roscarna was Biddy Joyce's affair. It was the next best
thing to a wake, and she took the opportunity of having a dhrop
stirrun'--as she put it. The sergeant of the constabulary, an erect
Ulsterman with mutton-chop whiskers, had spread a wide net for his
jury. They came from Joyce's Country, from Iar Connaught, from islands
of the Corrib, like dusty pilgrims. Biddy housed them in the stables,
where they slept it off for a couple of nights. Jocelyn himself
entertained the coroner. He seemed particularly anxious that nothing
in the way of scandal should appear, though he really had no cause for
anxiety, since a man who takes the risk of scrambling down a
mountain-side with his gun loaded, supplies an obvious explanation for
disaster.
Naturally it was Gabrielle who suffered most. From the first she had
behaved extraordinarily well. Nobody had seen the poor child's first
agony of passionate grief; but she had pulled herself together quickly,
leaving Radway's body where it lay, and had hurried down to Roscarna
where she found Jocelyn dosing [Transcriber's note: dozing?] on the
terrace. She had been tight-lipped and pale and awfully quiet, showing
no emotion but an unprofitable desire for speed when she led the
stable-hands up the mountain to the place where she had left her lover.
She did not cry at all until the work was done. Then, in the rough
arms of Biddy, she collapsed pretty thoroughly. Biddy put her to bed,
but she would not stay there. Later in the day she was found wandering
along the passages to the room where Radway had slept. She told Biddy
that she only wanted to be left alone; and in that room she stayed
until the time came when she had to give her evidence. In the court
she did not turn a hair, though Biddy stood ready with a battery of
traditional restoratives in case she faltered.
Jocelyn had a very thin time of it. The strain made him more shaky
than usual, and when telegrams began to flutter in from Radway's
relatives a few days later--Radway had left no address and so they had
been forced to wire to the Halbertons--he threw up the sponge
altogether. His weakness was Considine's opportunity. Considine
undertook the whole management of the Radways' visit, received them,
conducted them to the room in which their son's remains were lying and
did his best to explain to them what he had been doing in this
outlandish place. I suppose that this kind of solemn condolence is
part of a parson's ordinary duties, but it must be admitted that
Considine performed it well. He impressed the Radways as being solid
and dependable and a gentleman. His capability and discretion made
them feel that Roscarna was not so disreputable and outlandish after
all. He scarcely mentioned Gabrielle, except as the only witness of
the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their
son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse
shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their
questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halbertons,
and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had any part in the
tragedy.
On their return they wrote Considine a long letter in which they
thanked him for his courtesy and regretted that their son's last
moments had not been rejoiced by his ghostly ministrations. As a
little thank-offering (not for their son's death, but for Considine's
kindness) they proposed the erection of a stained glass window in his
church, a proposal that Considine gladly accepted.
It was not until the Radways had disappeared and Roscarna began to
recoil into its old routine of life, that Gabrielle collapsed. The
blow to her imagination had been heavier than anyone dreamed, so
staggering, in its first impact, that for a time she had been numbed.
In a week or two, with returning consciousness, her sufferings began to
be felt. She could not sleep at night, and when she did sleep she
dreamed perpetually of one thing, the endless, precarious descent of a
slippery mountain-side in the company of Radway. The dream always
ended in the same way, with a fall, a laugh, a shattering report, and a
flash of light which meant that she was awake.
In her disordered eyes the woods of Roscarna, the river, and the lake
took on a melancholy tinge. Though this aspect of them was new to her,
it is hardly strange that she should have seen them thus, for the
beauty of Roscarna is really of an elegiac kind, an autumnal beauty of
desertion and of decay. As for Slieveannilaun, she dared not look at
it.
Jocelyn tried hard to cheer her up. With an effort he whipped up
enough energy to take her out with his dogs and his gun, until her look
of horror made him suspect that the sound of a gunshot was a nightmare
to her, as indeed it was, reminding her of many dreams and one
unforgettable reality. She did her best to hide this from him, for she
saw that he was really trying to be kind.
Considine also tried to interest her in new things and to distract her
mind. His methods were tactful. He knew perfectly well that the
official manner of condolence that had gone down so well with the
Radways wouldn't do for her. He just treated her as the child that he
knew her to be, trying to induce her to join in a game of pretending
that nothing had happened. Gabrielle realised his humane attempt from
the first and even, for a time, tried to play up to him, but the affair
ended disastrously in a flood of bitter, uncontrollable tears for which
neither the parson nor the man could offer any remedy. It seemed to
him that this was a woman's job, and so he and Jocelyn met in solemn
consultation with Biddy Joyce.
At this point an easy solution seemed to offer itself in an invitation
from the Halbertons. They had heard all the details of the affair from
Radway's people and wrote inviting Gabrielle to stay with them in Devon
for a month. The two men prepared the bait most carefully, but when
their plan was disclosed to her, Gabrielle rejected it with an unusual
degree of passion, imploring them to leave her alone ... only to leave
her alone.
They resigned her to the care of Biddy, who had always considered it
her proper function and privilege to deal with the affair. She set
about it clumsily but with confidence, tempting Gabrielle to eat with
carefully prepared surprises, obviously humouring her in everything she
did. From the very first she had viewed the Radway affair with
suspicion, and now she found it difficult not to say, 'I told you so,'
though, as a matter of fact, she had done nothing of the sort.
Altogether her methods were too transparent to be successful; and since
her own robust habit of body made it difficult for her to divine any
subtler cause for Gabrielle's condition, she leapt at once to the
physical explanation suggested to her by her own experience of the
consequences of love-making in Joyce's country. She watched Gabrielle
with a keen and matronly eye, collecting her evidence from day to day
after the anxious manner of mothers. When she had dwelt upon the
problem for a couple of months she prepared the results of her
scrutinies and offered them in a complete and alarming dossier to
Jocelyn. In her opinion--and on this subject at least her opinion was
of value--there could be no doubt as to Gabrielle's condition.
To Biddy Joyce this seemed the most natural thing in the world, but to
Jocelyn the announcement came as a tremendous surprise. He knew well
enough that this sort of accident was an everyday affair, in effect the
usual prelude to matrimony, among the peasantry of Connaught; but that
such an ugly circumstance should intrude itself into the Hewish
family--in the case of one of its female members--seemed a monstrous
calamity. He was in no condition to stand another shock, and Biddy's
pronouncement completely knocked him over. In a case of this kind it
was idle to doubt her authority. He only wondered how he could make
the best of a desperate job.
Distasteful as the business was to him, he decided to tackle Gabrielle
herself. It was a very strange interview. On Jocelyn's part there
were no recriminations. He was growing gentle in his old age, and in
any case he regarded Gabrielle as the victim of a tragedy. All that he
wanted to do was to get at the truth, and than this nothing could have
been harder, for in Gabrielle he found not only an amazing
ignorance--or if you prefer the word, innocence--but a flaming,
passionate determination to keep silence on the subject of her
intimacies with Radway. To her the story was sacred, and far too
precious to be bruised by the examination of any living soul.
It is probable that Jocelyn tackled the matter with the utmost
delicacy. Fundamentally, he had the instincts of a gentleman, and, as
Gabrielle knew, he loved her; but on this one subject no amount of
entreaties or tenderness could make her speak. In the end, when he
could get nothing out of her, he compelled himself to tell her of
Biddy's suspicions. It seemed to him that this might force her into a
full confession of her relations with her lover. It did nothing of the
sort. She simply stood clutching a tall oak chair and looking straight
out of the window over the dark woods. Then she said: "Does Biddy
really think I am going to have a baby?" And Jocelyn nodded his head.
Then she said nothing more. She simply went out of the room like a
sleep-walker, leaving poor Jocelyn overwhelmed with misery by a silence
that he interpreted as an admission of guilt. For him, at any rate,
the matter was settled and the acuteness of Biddy Joyce finally
established.
And there one must leave it. Gabrielle herself accepted the verdict
without question, but whether from her own secret knowledge or out of
an innocence that is almost incredible but not, in her case,
impossible, I cannot say. Naturally enough, in that other strange
interview with Mrs. Payne, she did not go into details, and as far as
we are concerned the truth will never be known. Not that it really
matters. The only thing that concerns us is the effect upon her
fortunes of this real or imaginary catastrophe. All that we can say is
that when she walked out of the Roscarna dining-room after her hour
with Jocelyn she was subtly and curiously changed.
From that moment she became, in fact, a person hypnotised, possessed by
the contemplation of her approaching motherhood. She was no longer
restless or tearful. She began to sleep again, and her sleep was no
longer troubled by that recurrent dream. A strange calm descended on
her, the calm of a Madonna thrilled by an angelic annunciation--a
hallucinated calm that made her remote and independent, utterly unmoved
by the commotion into which the household of Roscarna had been thrown.
Her acceptance of the situation crumpled up Jocelyn entirely. He could
not for a moment see any way out of the difficulty. As usual he fell
back on Biddy, who brought her practical knowledge to his rescue.
Biddy was emphatic. In the circumstances there was only one thing to
be done. Gabrielle must be married--somehow--anyhow--and the sooner
the better. It was the sort of thing that happened every day of the
week and the resources of civilisation had never been able to find
another solution. Jocelyn shook his head. It was all very well to
talk about marriage, but where, in the neighbourhood, could a
bridegroom be found at such short notice? Biddy's suggestion of half a
dozen available Joyces failed to satisfy him. However suitable the
Joyces might be for casual relations the idea of marriage with one of
them was unthinkable. After all, whatever she had done, Gabrielle was
a Hewish and the heiress, whatever that might mean, of the Roscarna
mortgages. Biddy, impatient of his obstinacy, gave him up.
With feelings of sore humiliation he consulted Considine. It was a
hard confession for Jocelyn and the awkwardness of Considine did not
make it easier. It seemed as if the two of them were up against a
stone wall. Considine blushing and monosyllabic, begged for time to
consider what might be done; and the fact that he did not seem to be
utterly hopeless cheered Jocelyn considerably. Gabrielle, in the
meantime, continued rapt and passive.
In a week the result of Considine's deliberations emerged, and, in a
fortnight, Gabrielle, only daughter of Sir Jocelyn Hewish, Baronet, of
Roscarna, County Galway, was married to the Rev. Marmaduke Considine at
the church of Clonderriff. The _Irish Times_ described the wedding as
quiet.