“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!”
§ 25
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.
“Judas the wicked trader
Sold his Lord with a kiss.
It had been good for that man
If he had not been born.”
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....
“For 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.”
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.
§ 31
That afternoon the Coroner’s inquest was held on Peter Alard, and twelve
good men and true brought in a verdict of “accidental death.” The
Coroner directed them with the conscientiousness of his kind—he pointed
out that, according to medical opinion, the dead man’s wounds must
almost certainly have been self-inflicted; but on the other hand they
had rather conflicting evidence as to how the body was lying when found,
and the doctor could not speak positively without this. He would point
out to the witnesses the desirability of leaving the body untouched
until either a doctor or the police had been summoned. No doubt they had
thought they were doing right in carrying him to his father’s house, but
such action had made it difficult to speak positively on a highly
important point. As to the motives for suicide—they had heard Miss
Mount’s evidence, which he thought had been very creditably
given—indeed, he considered Miss Mount’s conduct to have been throughout
irreproachable, and whatever the findings of the jury she must not blame
herself for having acted as any right-minded young lady would have done
under the circumstances. Feeling herself attracted by the deceased, a
married man, and realising that he was also attracted by her, she had
very properly decided to leave the neighbourhood, and but for her
father’s professional engagements would have done so at once. The
meeting at which she had made this decision known to Mr. Alard had taken
place two months ago, and it was for the Jury to decide whether it was
likely to have driven him to take his life so long after the event. The
deceased’s sister, Mrs. Benjamin Godfrey, had told them of a
conversation she had had with him on the afternoon of his death. He
seemed then to have been preoccupied about his farm of Starvecrow, and
other evidence had shown that the estate was much encumbered, like most
big properties at the present time, though the position was no more
serious than it had been a year ago. The Jury must decide if any of
these considerations offered sufficient motive for self-destruction, if
the deceased’s manner on the day of his death had been that of a man on
the verge of such desperate conduct, and if the medical evidence pointed
conclusively to a self-inflicted death. There were alternatives—he
enlarged on the nature of gun accidents, dismissed the possibilities of
murder—but the evidence for these hung on the thread of mere conjecture,
and was not borne out by medical opinion.
The verdict was a surprise to the family. The loophole left by the
Coroner had been so small that no one had expected even a local Jury to
squeeze through it. But these men had all known Peter, many of them had
done business with him, all had liked him. No one of them would have him
buried with a slur upon his memory—no one of them would have his widow’s
mourning weighted with dishonour, or his child grow up to an inheritance
of even temporary insanity—and incidentally they all liked Miss Stella
Mount, and had no intention she should bear the burden of his death if
they could help it. So they brought in their verdict, and stuck to it,
in spite of some rather searching questions by the Coroner. They
wouldn’t even bring in an open verdict—they would do the thing properly
for the kindly Squire who had for so long stood to them for all that was
best in the falling aristocracy of the land.
Peter was buried with his father in Leasan churchyard, in the great
vault of the Alards, where all of them lay who had not been buried at
Winchelsea. He and Sir John mingled their dust with Sir William the
land-grabber, whose appetite for farms lay at the bottom of all the
later difficulties of the estate, with Gervase the Non-Juror, with Giles
who met his casual loves at the Mocksteeple—with all the great company
of Squires who had lived at Conster, lorded Leasan, built and farmed and
played politics for nearly five hundred years. Perhaps as they stood
round the grave in the late April sunshine, some of the family wondered
if these were the last Alards for whom the vault would be opened.
Everyone went back to Conster after the funeral. Sir John’s will had
already been read by the solicitors. It presented no difficulties—the
whole estate went to Peter Alard and his heirs; in the event of his
dying without male issue, to Gervase. The will had been made shortly
after the death of George.
Gervase knew that now the time had come when he must face his family.
They were all there at tea, except Vera—who was still unable to leave
her room—and he could tell by a certain furtive expectancy in some and
uneasiness in others that a crisis was impending. Doris was the head of
the expectant group, Jenny of the uneasy ones. Doris had never looked
more unlike the hysterical, dishevelled woman who had wept for Sir John.
In her new black frock, and her hat with the plumes that swept down to
her shoulders—powdered, rouged, salved, pencilled and henna’d into
elegance if not into beauty, she seemed to have gathered up in herself
all the pomp and circumstance of the Alards. There was not much of it to
be seen in Lady Alard’s weary preoccupation with the burnt scones, in
Rose’s glancing survey of the other women’s clothes, in Mary’s rather
colourless smartness, in Jenny’s restlessness or her husband’s
awkwardness—he had carried his first top-hat into the drawing-room, and
put it, with his gloves inside it, on the floor between his large
feet—and there was certainly nothing of it in the present holder of the
title, sitting with his arms folded and thrust up the sleeves of his
habit, his shoulders hunched as with a sense of battles to come.
Gervase considered that the sooner the row was over the better; so, as
no one seemed inclined to begin it, he decided to start it himself.
“Mother, dear, do you think you could lend me five shillings?—At least
I’d better say give it to me, for I don’t suppose there’s the slightest
chance of your ever seeing it again.”
“Yes, dear—but why ... I don’t understand.”
“Well, I’ve only got eighteenpence left from the money Father Peter gave
me to come here, and the third class fare to Brighton is six and six.”
“Gervase,” shrieked Doris—“you’re not going back to that place!”
“My dear, what else did you expect?”
“But you won’t stay there—you won’t go on being a monk—you won’t refuse
to be Sir Gervase Alard!”
“I haven’t even begun to be a monk, and, according to the solicitors,
I’ll have to go on being Sir Gervase Alard to the end of my days—but I’m
going to stay there.”
“But what’s to become of us? Gervase, you can’t be Squire and not live
here.”
“Let me explain myself. I’m not thinking of being Squire. I forfeit all
my rights absolutely, except the title, which I’m told I can’t get rid
of. But I shall sell the estate.”
The silence that fell was almost terrifying. Doris sank back in her
chair as if fainting, Lady Alard covered her face, Rose sat with her
mouth open, Jenny and Godfrey stared at each other.
Lady Alard was the first to speak.
“You mean that you’re going to turn us out—your mother and sisters—not
even leave us a roof over our heads? And what becomes of the furniture?”
“I shall of course consult your wishes about the house. If you want to
go on living here, the house and grounds are yours.”
“But Gervase,” cried Doris hoarsely—“what good will the house be to us
without the land? Do you think we’re going to live on here and see all
the estate pieced out and flung to small-holders and contractors?—I’d
rather go and live in a slum.”
“If Gervase doesn’t mean to live here, I’m by no means sure that I care
to stay on,” said Lady Alard. “The morning-room chimney smokes
abominably, and the bedrooms are extremely inconvenient—also, with my
illness, I really think I ought to live in a town. We might move into
Hastings.”
“But Gervase doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” cried Doris—“he
can’t desert us and fling away his responsibilities like this. Sell the
estate! Oh, God—poor Father!” and she burst into tears.
Rose sprang to her feet with an indignant look at Gervase, and put her
arm round Doris’s heaving shoulders, but her sister-in-law ungratefully
pushed her away.
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” said Gervase, “but I really don’t think I’m
letting anyone down. I’ve gone into things pretty thoroughly during the
last few days, and really it would have been extremely difficult for us
to carry on.”
“Difficult—but not impossible.”
“Not impossible. But possible only in the way we’ve been doing for the
last ten years, and, honestly, do you think that’s good enough?”
“It’s better than throwing everything overboard, anyhow.”
“I don’t think it is. By ‘throwing everything overboard,’ as you call
it, we can at least save the land.”
“How?”
“For the last ten years we’ve been doing hardly anything for the land.
We’ve been unable to introduce up-to-date methods; we can’t even keep
our farms in decent repair. If we hung on now, still further crippled by
death-duties, the land would simply go to pot. By selling, we can save
it, because it will pass into the hands of men who will be able to
afford it what it needs. Possibly one or two of the tenants will buy
their farms. Anyhow, there won’t any longer be a great, big, unwieldy,
poverty-stricken estate, paying more in taxes than it actually brings in
profits and deteriorating every year for lack of money spent on it.”
“But I’m perfectly sure that if you pulled yourself together you could
save the estate without cutting it in pieces. A conservative government
is sure to improve matters for us and reduce taxation. I know Peter
could have saved us.”
“I’m not Peter.”
“But you could save us if you wanted to. You’ve only to put yourself at
the head of things, and get a really good bailiff, and perhaps sell an
outlying farm or two to bring in a little ready money.... But you won’t.
That’s what you mean. You don’t want to come out of your monastery and
face the world again. You could save us. But you won’t.”
“You’re quite right—I won’t.”
The discussion had somehow become a dialogue between Gervase and Doris.
Why Doris should appoint herself as Alard’s spokesman no one exactly
knew, but none of the rest made any effort to join in. Lady Alard was
too deeply preoccupied with the house and its impending changes to worry
about the land, Rose was angry with Doris for having repulsed her, so
would give her no support, Mary was indifferent, Godfrey diffident, and
Jenny, though revolting deeply from her brother’s choice, was too loyal
to him to take anyone else’s part.
“I won’t because I can’t,” continued Gervase; “I can’t leave the Abbey,
even if I knew that by doing so I could save Conster. I went there long
before I’d the slightest notion I should ever succeed to this place, but
even if I’d known I should have gone just the same. The only other thing
I could do now would be to appoint a trustee to administer the estate
for me, but in that way I should only be adding to the difficulties all
round. By selling the place I’m doing the best possible thing for the
land and for everyone else. The land will run a chance of being
developed to its fullest value, instead of being neglected and allowed
to deteriorate, and I’ll be making a fairly decent provision for Mother
and all the rest of you—you’ll be far better off than if we’d stuck to
the old arrangement; you’ll have ready money for about the first time in
your lives. Mother and Doris and Mary can live on here if they like, or
they can go and live in Hastings or in town. I think the sale ought to
realise enough to make everyone fairly comfortable—anyhow, much more
comfortable than they are in the present state of things.”
“But, Gervase,” sobbed Doris—“you don’t seem to think of the family.”
“What else am I thinking of? I’m just telling you that you and Mary and
Mother——”
“But we’re not the family. I mean the whole thing—the house of Alard.
What’s to become of it if you go and sell the estate, and shut yourself
up in an Abbey, instead of coming here and looking after the place, and
marrying and having children to succeed you? Don’t you realise that if
you don’t marry, the whole thing comes to an end?”
“I’m afraid it will have to come to an end, Doris. I can’t save it that
way.”
Doris sprang to her feet. She looked wild.
“But you must save it—you must. Oh, Gervase, you don’t understand. I’ve
given up my life to it—to the family. I’ve given up everything. I could
have married—but I wouldn’t—because he wasn’t the sort of man for our
family—he wasn’t well-connected and he wasn’t rich—it would have been a
comedown for an Alard, so I wouldn’t have him—though I loved him. I
loved him ... but I wouldn’t have him, because I thought of the family
first and myself afterwards. And now you come along, undoing all my
work—making my sacrifice worthless. You don’t care twopence about the
family, so you’re going to let it be sold up and die out. We’re going to
lose our house, our land, our position, our very name.... I gave up my
happiness for Alard, and you go and make my sacrifice useless. Gervase,
for God’s sake save us. You can—if only you’ll come away from those
monks and be Squire here. I’m sure God can’t wish you to desert us.
Gervase, I beg you, I pray you to save the family—I pray you on my
knees....”
And suiting the action to the word, she went down on her knees before
him.
The others sat rooted to their chairs—partly at the sight of Doris’s
frenzy, partly of her humiliation, partly to hear the multitudinous
lovers she had always hinted at reduced in a moment of devastating
candour to one only. Gervase had sprung to his feet. He trembled and had
turned very white. Then for a moment he, too, seemed to turn to stone.
“I pray you,” repeated Doris hoarsely—“I pray you on my knees....”
Her brother recovered himself and, taking both her hands, pulled her to
her feet.
“Don’t, Doris....”
“Then, will you?”
“My dear, is the family worth saving?”
“What d’you mean?”
“Listen, Doris. You’ve just told me that you’ve given up your life’s
love and happiness to the family. Peter ... I know ... gave up his. Mary
gave up part of hers, but saved a little. Jenny alone has refused to
give up anything, and is happy. Is our family worth such sacrifices?”
Her head drooped unexpectedly to his shoulder, and she collapsed in
weeping.
“No,” he continued—“it isn’t worth it. The family’s taken enough. For
five hundred years it has sat on the land, and at first it did good—it
cared for the poor, it worked its farms to the best advantage, and the
estate prospered. But it’s outlived those days—it’s only an encumbrance
now, it’s holding back the land from proper development, it’s keeping
the yeoman and small land-owner out of their rights, it can’t afford to
care for the poor. It can barely keep its hold on the land by dint of
raising mortgages and marrying for money. It can only be kept up by
continual sacrifices—of the land, of the tenants, of its own children.
It’s like a wicked old dying god, that can only be kept alive by
sacrifices—human sacrifices. And I tell you, it shan’t be any more.”
There was another pause, noisy with Doris’s weeping. The other members
of the family began to feel that they ought to take their share in the
argument. They none of them felt for Alard what Doris so surprisingly
felt, but after all they could not sit round and watch Gervase turn the
world upside down without some protest.
“You know I want to be reasonable,” said Jenny in rather an uncertain
voice, “and I don’t want to push you into a way you don’t want to go.
But from your own point of view, don’t you think that all this that’s
happened just shows—that—that this religious life isn’t, after all, the
right life for you—the life you were meant for?”
“I always said it was very silly of Gervase to become a monk,” said Lady
Alard. “He could do quite a lot of good in the parish if he lived at
home. Mr. Williams said he was looking for someone to manage the Boy
Scouts.”
“Yes, that was what poor George was always saying,” said Rose—“‘Charity
begins at home.’”
“Oh, don’t think I haven’t prayed over this,” cried Gervase—“that I
haven’t tried hard to see if, after all, my duty didn’t lie in taking my
place here and trying to save the property. But I’m quite sure that
isn’t my duty now. As I’ve tried to show Doris, Conster simply isn’t
worth saving. It’s lost its power for good—it can only do harm, to the
district and to us. It had much better come to an end.”
“But even if you feel like that about the estate,” said Mary—“there’s
the family apart from the land. It’s rather dreadful to think that a
fine old family like ours should be deliberately allowed to die out—the
name become quite extinct. And it’s not only for the family’s sake, but
for yours. You’re a young man—scarcely more than a boy. I think it’s
dreadful that you should already have made up your mind to live without
marriage and die without children.”
“So do I!” cried Jenny, fierce at last.
“I’ve gone into all that,” said Gervase with a touch of weariness, “and
you know how I’ve decided.”
“But these new circumstances hadn’t arisen.”
“I shouldn’t have decided differently if they had.”
“I’m not sure,” said Mary—“that even that other plan you spoke of
wouldn’t be best—better than selling everything, I mean. Couldn’t you
administer the estate through a bailiff or trustee?”
“If my father and Peter couldn’t make it pay, what would be the result
of an absentee landlord?—the place wouldn’t stand it. We’d bust. No, in
fairness to the land it ought to go back to the small landlords—that’s
its only chance of recovery. I’m not doing this only for our own sakes,
but for the sake of the land and the people it ought to belong to.”
“I think you’re a traitor,” said Rose—“a traitor to your house.”
“I wish I was dead,” cried Doris. “First Father—then everything else....
I’ve nothing to live for now.”
“Why, you’ve got me,” said Lady Alard—“You’ll come with me, Doris. I
think I shall go to Worthing—it’s more bracing than the coast here.
Gervase, do you think the dining-room sideboard would fit into a smaller
house?”
“Oh, Father,” sobbed Doris—“Oh, Father—oh, Peter.... What would you have
done if you had known how it was going to end?”