PART ONE
PAGE
CONSTER MANOR 1
PART TWO
LEASAN PARSONAGE 79
PART THREE
FOURHOUSES 145
PART FOUR
STARVECROW 237
_PART I_
CONSTER MANOR
THE END OF THE HOUSE
OF ALARD
_PART I_
CONSTER MANOR
§ 1
There are Alards buried in Winchelsea church—they lie in the south aisle
on their altar tombs, with lions at their feet. At least one of them
went to the Crusades and lies there cross-legged—the first Gervase
Alard, Admiral of the Cinque Ports and Bailiff of Winchelsea, a man of
mighty stature.
Those were the days just after the Great Storm, when the sea swallowed
up the first parish of St. Thomas à Becket, and King Edward laid out a
new town on the hoke above Bukenie. The Alards then were powerful on the
marsh, rivals of De Icklesham and fighters of the Abbot of Fécamps. They
were ship-owners, too, and sent out to sea _St. Peter_, _Nostre Dame_
and _La Nave Dieu_. Stephen Alard held half a knight’s fee in the manors
of Stonelink, Broomhill and Coghurst, while William Alard lost thirty
sailors, thirty sergeants-at-arms, and anchors and ropes, in Gascony.
In the fifteenth century the family had begun to dwindle—its power was
passing into the hands of the Oxenbridges, who, when the heiress of the
main line married an Oxenbridge, adopted the Alard arms, the lion within
a border charged with scallop shells. Thus the trunk ended, but a branch
of the William Alards had settled early in the sixteenth century at
Conster Manor, near the village of Leasan, about eight miles from
Winchelsea. Their shield was argent, three bars gules, on a canton azure
a leopard’s head or.
Peter Alard re-built Conster in Queen Elizabeth’s day, making it what it
is now, a stone house with three hipped gables and a huge red sprawl of
roof. It stands on the hill between Brede Eye and Horns Cross, looking
down into the valley of the river Tillingham, with Doucegrove Farm,
Glasseye Farm and Starvecrow Farm standing against the woods beyond.
The Alards became baronets under Charles the First, for the Stephen
Alard of that day was a gentleman of the bedchamber, and melted down the
Alard plate in the King’s lost cause. Cromwell deprived the family of
their lands, but they came back at the Restoration, slightly Frenchified
and intermarried with the Papist. They were nearly in trouble again when
Dutch William was King, for Gervase Alard, a son in orders, became a
non-juror and was expelled from the family living of Leasan, though a
charge of sedition brought against him collapsed from lack of substance.
Hitherto, though ancient and honourable, the Alards had never been rich,
but during the eighteenth century, successful dealings with the East
India Company brought them wealth. It was then that they began to buy
land. They were no longer content to look across the stream at
Doucegrove, Glasseye and Starvecrow, in the hands of yeomen, but one by
one these farms must needs become part of their estate. They also bought
all the fine woodlands of the Furnace, the farms of Winterland and
Ellenwhorne at the Ewhurst end of the Tillingham valley, and Barline,
Float and Dinglesden on the marshes towards Rye. They were now big
landowners, but their land-hunger was still unsatisfied—Sir William, the
Victorian baronet, bought grazings as far away as Stonelink, so that
when his son John succeeded him the Alards of Conster owned most of the
land between Rye and Ewhurst, the Kent Ditch and the Brede river.
John Alard was about thirty years old when he began to reign. He had
spent most of his grown-up life in London-the London of gas and
crinolines, Disraeli and Nellie Farren, Tattersalls and Caves of
Harmony. He had passed for a buck in Victorian society, with its
corruption hidden under outward decorum, its romance smothered under
ugly riches in stuffy drawing-rooms. But when the call came to him he
valiantly settled down. In Grosvenor Square they spoke of him behind
their fans as a young man who had sown his wild oats and was now an
eligible husband for the innocent Lucy Kenyon with her sloping shoulders
and vacant eyes. He married her as his duty and begat sons and
daughters.
He also bought more land, and under him the Alard estates crept over the
Brede River and up Snailham hill towards Guestling Thorn. But that was
only at the beginning of his squireship. One or two investments turned
out badly, and he was forced to a standstill. Then came the bad days of
the landowners. Lower and lower dropped the price of land and the price
of wheat, hop-substitutes became an electioneering cry in the Rye
division of Sussex and the noble gardens by the river Tillingham went
fallow. Then came Lloyd George’s Land Act—the rush to the market, the
impossibility of sale. Finally the European war of 1914 swept away the
little of the Alard substance that was left. They found themselves in
possession of a huge ramshackle estate, heavily mortgaged, crushingly
taxed.
Sir John had four sons—Hugh, Peter, George and Gervase—and three
daughters, Doris, Mary and Janet. Hugh and Peter both went out to fight,
and Hugh never came back. George, following a tradition which had ruled
in the family since the days of the non-juring Gervase, held the living
of Leasan. Gervase at the outbreak of hostilities was only in his second
term at Winchester, being nearly eighteen years younger than his brother
George.
Of the girls, only Mary was married, though Doris hinted at a number of
suitors rejected because of their unworthiness to mate with Alard. Jenny
was ten years younger than Mary—she and Gervase came apart from the rest
of the family, children of middle age and the last of love.
§ 2
A few days before Christmas in the year 1918, most of the Alards were
gathered together in the drawing-room at Conster, to welcome Peter the
heir. He had been demobilised a month after the Armistice and was now
expected home, to take on himself the work of the estate in the place of
his brother Hugh. The Alards employed an agent, and there were also
bailiffs on one or two of the farms, but the heir’s presence was badly
needed in these difficult days. Sir John held the authority, and the
keenness of his interest was in no wise diminished by his age; but he
was an old man, nearly seventy-five, and honourably afflicted with the
gout. He could only seldom ride on his grey horse from farm to farm,
snarling at the bailiff or the stockman, winking at the chicken
girl—even to drive out in his heavy Wolsey car gave him chills. So most
days he sat at home, and the work was done by him indeed, but as it were
by current conducted through the wires of obedient sons and servants.
This afternoon he sat by the fire in the last patch of sunlight, which
his wife hankered to have shut off from the damasked armchair.
“It really is a shame to run any risks with that beautiful colour,” she
murmured from the sofa. “You know it hasn’t been back from Hampton’s a
week, and it’s such very expensive stuff.”
“Why did you choose it?” snarled Sir John.
“Well, it was the best—we’ve always had the best.”
“Next time you can try the second best as a new experience.”
“Your father really is hopeless,” said Lady Alard in a loud whisper to
her daughter Doris.
“Sh-sh-sh,” said Doris, equally loud.
“Very poor as an aside, both of you,” said Sir John.
The Reverend George Alard coughed as a preliminary to changing the
conversation.
“Our Christmas roses are better than ever this year,” he intoned.
His wife alone supported him.
“They’ll come in beautifully for the Christmas decorations—I hope
there’s enough to go round the font.”
“I’d thought of them on the screen, my dear.”
“Oh no! Christmas roses are so appropriate to the font, and
besides”—archly—“Sir John will let us have some flowers out of the
greenhouse for the screen.”
“I’m damned if I will.”
Rose Alard flushed at the insult to her husband’s cloth which she held
to lie in the oath; none the less she stuck to her coaxing.
“Oh, but you always have, Sir John.”
“Have I?—Well, as I’ve just told my wife, there’s nothing like a new
experience. I don’t keep three gardeners just to decorate Leasan church,
and the flowers happen to be rather scarce this year. I want them for
the house.”
“Isn’t he terrible?” Lady Alard’s whispered moan to Doris once more
filled the room.
Jenny laughed.
“What are you laughing at, Jenny?”
“Oh, I dunno.”
She was laughing because she wondered if there was anything she could
say which would not lead to a squabble.
“Perhaps Gervase will come by the same train as Peter,” she ventured.
“Gervase never let us know when to expect him,” said her mother. “He’s
very thoughtless. Now perhaps Appleby will have to make the journey
twice.”
“It won’t kill Appleby if he does—he hasn’t had the car out all this
week.”
“But Gervase is very thoughtless,” said Mrs. George Alard.
At that moment a slide of wheels was heard in the drive, and the faint
sounds of a car coming to anchor.
“Peter!” cried Lady Alard.
“He’s been quick,” said Doris.
George pulled out his watch to be sure about the time, and Jenny ran to
the door.
§ 3
The drawing-room was just as it had always been.... The same heavy
dignity of line in the old walls and oak-ribbed ceiling spoilt by undue
crowding of pictures and furniture. Hothouse flowers stood about in pots
and filled vases innumerable ... a water-colour portrait of himself as a
child faced him as he came into the room.
“Peter, my darling!”
His mother’s arms were stretched out to him from the sofa—she did not
rise, and he knelt down beside her for a moment, letting her enfold him
and furiously creating for himself the illusion of a mother he had never
known. The illusion seemed to dissipate in a faint scent of lavender
water.
“How strange you look out of uniform—I suppose that’s a new suit.”
“Well, I could scarcely have got into my pre-war clothes. I weigh
thirteen stone.”
“Quite the heavy Squire,” said Sir John. “Come here and let’s have a
look at you.”
Peter went over and stood before his father’s chair—rather like a little
boy. As it happened he was a man of thirty-six, tallish, well-built,
with a dark, florid face, dark hair and a small dark moustache. In
contrast his eyes were of an astounding blue—Saxon eyes, the eyes of
Alards who had gone to the Crusades, melted down their plate for the
White King, refused to take the oath of allegiance to Dutch William;
eyes which for long generations had looked out on the marshes of
Winchelsea, and had seen the mouth of the Rother swept in spate from
Romney sands to Rye.
“Um,” said Sir John.
“Having a bad turn again, Sir?”
“Getting over it—I’ll be about tomorrow.”
“That’s right, and how’s Mother?”
“I’m better today, dear. But Dr. Mount said he really was frightened
last week—I’ve never had such an attack.”
“Why didn’t anyone tell me? I could have come down earlier.”
“I wanted to have you sent for, dear, but the children wouldn’t let me.”
The children, as represented by George Alard and his wife, threw a
baffled glance at Peter, seeking to convey that the “attack” had been
the usual kind of indigestion which Lady Alard liked to enoble by the
name of Angina Pectoris.
Meanwhile, Wills the butler and a young footman were bringing in the
tea. Jenny poured it out, the exertion being considered too great for
her mother. Peter’s eyes rested on her favourably; she was the one thing
in the room, barring the beautiful, delicate flowers, that gave him any
real pleasure to look at. She was a large, graceful creature, with a
creamy skin, wide, pale mouth, and her mother’s eyes of speckled brown.
Her big, beautifully shaped hands moved with a slow grace among the
teacups. In contrast with her Doris looked raddled (though she really
was moderate and skillful in the make-up of her face and hair) and Rose
looked blowsy. He felt glad of Jenny’s youth—soft, slow, asleep.
“Where’s Mary?” he asked suddenly, “I thought she was coming down.”
“Not till New Year’s eve. Julian can’t come with her, and naturally he
didn’t want her to be away for Christmas.”
“And how is the great Julian?”
“I don’t know—Mary didn’t say. She hardly ever tells us anything in her
letters.”