Chapter I

Up to the death of his wife, that is to say for fifty-six years, Sir Hildebrand Oates held himself to be a very important and upright man, whose life not only was unassailable by slander, but even through the divine ordering of his being exempt from criticism. To the world and to himself he represented the incarnation of British impeccability, faultless from the little pink crown of his head to the tips of his toes correctly pedicured and unstained by purples of retributive gout. Except in church, where a conventional humility of attitude is imposed, his mind was blandly _conscia recti_. No ghost of sins committed disturbed his slumbers. He had committed no sin. He could tick off the Ten Commandments one by one with a serene conscience. He objected to profane swearing; he was a strict Sabbatarian; he had honoured his father and his mother and had erected a monument over their grave which added another fear of death to the beholder; he neither thieved nor murdered, nor followed in the footsteps of Don Juan, nor in those of his own infamous namesake; and being blessed in the world's goods, coveted nothing possessed by his neighbour--not even his wife, for his neighbours' wives could not compare in wifely meekness with his own. In thought, too, he had not sinned. Never, so far as he remembered, had he spoken a ribald word, never, indeed had he laughed at an unsavoury jest. It may be questioned whether he had laughed at any kind of joke whatsoever.

Sir Hildebrand stood for many things: for Public Morality; his name appeared on the committees of all the societies for the suppression of all the vices: for sound Liberalism and Incorruptible Government; he had poured much of his fortune into the party coffers and, to his astonishment, a gracious (and minister-harrassed) Sovereign had conveyed recognition of his virtues in the form of a knighthood. For the sacred rights of the people; as Justice of the Peace he sentenced vagrants who slept in other people's barns to the severest penalties. For Principle in private life; in spite of the rending of his own heart and the agonized tears of his wife, he had cast off his undutiful children, a son and a daughter who had been guilty of the sin of disobedience and had run away taking their creaking destinies in their own hands. For the Sanctity of Home Life; night and morning he read prayers before the assembled household and dismissed any maidservant who committed the impropriety of conversing with a villager of the opposite sex. From youth up, his demeanour had been studiously grave and punctiliously courteous. A man of birth and breeding, he made it his ambition to be what he, with narrow definition, termed "a gentleman of the old school"; but being of Whig lineage, he had sat in Parliament as an hereditary Liberal and believed in Progressive Institutions.

It is difficult to give a flashlight picture of a human being at once so simple and so complex. An ardent Pharisee may serve as an epigrammatic characterisation. Hypocrite he was not. No miserable sinner more convinced of his rectitude, more devoid of pretence, ever walked the earth. Though his narrowness of view earned him but little love from his fellow-humans, his singleness of purpose, aided by an ample fortune, gained a measure of their respect. He lived irreproachably up to his standards. In an age of general scepticism he had unshakable faith. He believed intensely in himself. Now this passionate certitude of infallibility found, as far as his life's drama is concerned, its supreme expression in his relation to his wife, his children, and his money.

He married young. His wife brought him a fortune for which he was sole trustee, a couple of children, and a submissive obedience unparalleled in the most correct of Moslem households. Eresby Manor, where they had lived for thirty years, was her own individual property, and she drew for pocket money some five hundred pounds a year. A timid, weak, sentimental soul, she was daunted from the first few frosty days of honeymoon by the inflexible personality of her husband. For thirty years she passed in the world's eye for little else than his shadow.

"My dear, you must allow me to judge in such matters," he would say in reply to mild remonstrance. And she deferred invariably to his judgment. When his son Godfrey and his daughter Sybil went their respective unfilial ways, it was enough for him to remark with cold eyes and slight, expressive gesture:

"My dear, distressing as I know it is to you, their conduct has broken my heart and I forbid the mention of their names in this house."

And the years passed and the perfect wife, though, in secret, she may have mourned like Rachel for her children, obeyed the very letter of her husband's law.

There remains the third vital point, to which I must refer, if I am to make comprehensible the strange story of Sir Hildebrand Oates. It was money--or, more explicitly, the diabolical caprice of finance--that first shook Sir Hildebrand's faith, not, perhaps, in his own infallibility, but in the harmonious co-operation of Divine Providence and himself. For the four or five years preceding his wife's death his unerring instinct in financial affairs failed him. Speculations that promised indubitably the golden fruit of the Hesperides produced nothing but Dead Sea apples. He lost enormous sums of money. Irritability constricted both his brow and the old debonair "s" at the end of his signature. And when the County Guarantee Investment Society of which he was one of the original founders and directors called up unpaid balance on shares, and even then hovered on the verge of scandalous liquidation, Sir Hildebrand found himself racked with indignant anxiety.

He was sitting at a paper-strewn table in his library, a decorous library, a gentleman's library, lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases filled with books that no gentleman's library should be without, and trying to solve the eternal problem why two and two should not make forty, when the butler entered announcing the doctor.

"Ah, Thompson, glad to see you. What is it? Have you looked at Lady Oates? Been a bit queer for some days. These east winds. I hold them responsible for half the sickness of the county."

He threw up an accusing hand. If the east wind had been a human vagabond brought before Sir Hildebrand Oates, Justice of the Peace, it would have whined itself into a Zephyr. Sir Hildebrand's eyes looked blue and cold at offenders. From a stature of medium height he managed to extract the dignity of six-foot-two. Beneath a very long and very straight nose a grizzling moustache, dependent on the muscles of the thin lips as to whether it should go up or down, symbolised, as it were, the scales of justice. Sketches of accurately trimmed grey whiskers also indicated the exact balance of his mind. But to show that he was human and not impassionately divine, his thin hair once black, now greenish, was parted low down on the left side and brought straight over, leaving the little pink crown to which I have before alluded. His complexion was florid, disavowing atrabiliar prejudice. He had the long blunted chin of those secure of their destiny. He was extraordinarily clean.

The doctor said abruptly: "It's nothing to do with east winds. It's internal complications. I have to tell you she's very seriously ill."

A shadow of impatience passed over Sir Hildebrand's brow.

"Just like my wife," said he, "to fall ill, when I'm already half off my head with worry."

"The County Guarantee----?"

Sir Hildebrand nodded. The misfortunes of the Society were public property, and public too, within the fairly wide area of his acquaintance, was the knowledge of the fact that Sir Hildebrand was heavily involved therein. Too often had he vaunted the beneficent prosperity of the concern to which he had given his august support. At his own dinner-table men had dreaded the half-hour after the departure of the ladies, and at his club men had fled from him as they flee from the Baconian mythologist.

"It is a worry," the doctor admitted. "But financial preoccupations must give way"--he looked Sir Hildebrand clear in the eyes--"must give way before elementary questions of life and death."

"Death?" Sir Hildebrand regarded him blankly. How dare Death intrude in so unmannerly a fashion across his threshold?

"I should have been called in weeks ago," said the doctor. "All I can suggest now is that you should get Sir Almeric Home down from London. I'll telephone at once, with your authority. An operation may save her."

"By all means. But tell me--I had no idea--I wanted to send for you last week, but she's so obstinate--said it was mere indigestion."

"You should have sent for me all the same."

"Anyhow," said Sir Hildebrand, "tell me the worst."

The doctor told him and departed. Sir Hildebrand walked up and down his library, a man undeservedly stricken. The butler entered. Pringle, the chauffeur, desired audience.

Admitted, the man plunged into woeful apology. He had been trying the Mercédès on its return from an overhaul, and as he turned the corner by Rushworth Farm a motor lorry had run into him and smashed his head-lamps.

"I told you when I engaged you," said Sir Hildebrand, "that I allowed no accidents."

"It's only the lamps. I was driving most careful. The driver of the lorry owns himself in the wrong," pleaded the chauffeur.

"The merits or demerits of the case," replied Sir Hildebrand, "do not interest me. It's an accident. I don't allow accidents. You take a month's notice."

"Very well, Sir Hildebrand, but I do think it----"

"Enough," said Sir Hildebrand, dismissing him. "I have nothing more to hear from you or to say to you."

Then, when he was alone again, Sir Hildebrand reflected that noble resignation under misfortune was the part of a Christian gentleman, and in chastened mood went upstairs to see his wife. And in the days that followed, when Sir Almeric Home, summoned too late, had performed the useless wonders of his magical craft and had gone, Sir Hildebrand, most impeccable of husbands, visited the sick-room twice a day, making the most correct enquiries, beseeching her to name desires capable of fulfilment, and urbanely prophesying speedy return to health. At the end of the second visit he bent down and kissed her on the forehead. The ukase went forth to the servants' hall that no one should speak above a whisper, for fear of disturbing her ladyship, and the gardeners had orders to supply the sick-room with a daily profusion of flowers. Mortal gentleman could show no greater solicitude for a sick wife--save perhaps bring her a bunch of violets in his own hand. But with an automatic supply of orchids, why should he think of so trumpery an offering?

Lady Oates died. Sir Hildebrand accepted the stroke with Christian resignation. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Yet his house was desolate. He appreciated her virtues, which were many. He went categorically through her attributes: A faithful wife, a worthy mother of unworthy children, a capable manager, a submissive helpmate, a country gentlewoman of the old school who provided supremely for her husband's material comforts and never trespassed into the sphere of his intellectual and other masculine activities. His grief at the loss of his Eliza was sincere. The impending crash of the County Guarantee Investment Society ceased to trouble him. His own fortune had practically gone. Let it go. His dead wife's remained--sufficient to maintain his position in the county. As Dr. Thompson had rightly said, the vulgarities of finance must give way to the eternal sublimities of death. His wife, with whom he had lived for thirty years in a conjugal felicity unclouded save by the unforgivable sins of his children now exiled through their own wilfulness to remote parts of the Empire, was dead. The stupendous fact eclipsed all other facts in a fact-riveted universe. Lady Oates who, after the way of women of limited outlook, had always taken a great interest in funerals, had the funeral of her life. The Bishop of the Diocese conducted the funeral service. The County, headed by the old Duke of Dunster, his neighbour, followed her to the grave.