Chapter XIII: Part 13

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?”

THE END

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.