 CHAPTER VII The inquest at Raskarna was Biddy Joyce's affair. It was the next best thing to awake, and she took the opportunity of having a drop-stern, as she put it. The sergeant of the Constabulary, an erect Ulsterman with mutton-chop whiskers, had spread a wide net for his jury. They came from Joyce's country, from E. R. Canot, from islands of the Korrib, like dusty pilgrims. Biddy housed them in the stables, where they slept it off for a couple of nights. Jocelyn himself entertained the coroner. He seemed particularly anxious that nothing in the way of scandal should appear, though he really had no cause for anxiety, since a man who takes the risk of scrambling down a mountainside with his gun loaded supplies an obvious explanation for disaster. Naturally it was Gabrielle who suffered most. From the first she had behaved extraordinarily well. Nobody had seen the poor child's first agony of passionate grief. But she had pulled herself together quickly, leaving Radway's body were at lay, and had hurried down to Raskarna where she found Jocelyn dozing on the terrace. She had been tight-lipped and pale and awfully quiet, showing no emotion but an unprofitable desire for speed, when she led the stable hands up the mountain to the place where she had left her lover. She did not cry at all until the work was done. Then, in the rough arms of Biddy, she collapsed pretty thoroughly. Biddy put it to bed, but she would not stay there. Later in the day she was found wandering along the passages to the room where Radway had slept. She told Biddy that she only wanted to be left alone, and in that room she stayed until the time came when she had to give her evidence. In the court she did not turn a hair, though Biddy stood ready with a battery of traditional restoratives in case she faltered. Jocelyn had a very thin time of it. The strain made him more shaky than usual, and when telegrams began to flutter in from Radway's relatives a few days later, Radway had left no address and so they had been forced to wire to the Halberdons, he threw up the sponge altogether. His weakness was Considine's opportunity. Considine undertook the whole management of the Radway's visit, received them, conducted them to the room in which their son's remains were lying, and did his best to explain to them what he had been doing in this outlandish place. I suppose that this kind of solemn condolence is part of a Parsons' ordinary duties, but it must be admitted that Considine performed it well. He impressed the Radways as being solid and dependable and a gentleman. His capability and discretion made them feel that Roscarna was not so disreputable and outlandish after all. He scarcely mentioned Gabrielle, except as the only witness of the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halberdons, and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had any part in the tragedy. On their return they wrote Considine a long letter in which they thanked him for his courtesy, and regretted that their son's last moments had not been rejoiced by his ghostly ministrations. As a little thank-offering, not for their son's death but for Considine's kindness, they proposed the erection of a stained glass window in his church, a proposal that Considine gladly accepted. It was not until the Radways had disappeared and Roscarna began to recoil into its old routine of life that Gabrielle collapsed. The blow to her imagination had been heavier than anyone dreamed, so staggering in its first impact that for a time she had been numbed. In a week or two, with returning consciousness, her sufferings began to be felt. She could not sleep at night, and when she did sleep she dreamed perpetually of one thing, the endless, precarious descent of a slippery mountainside in the company of Radway. The dream always ended in the same way, with a fall, a laugh, a shattering report, and a flash of light which meant that she was awake. In her disordered eyes the woods of Roscarna, the river and the lake, took on a melancholy tinge. Though this aspect of them was new to her, it is hardly strange that she should have seen them thus, for the beauty of Roscarna is really of an illegitimate kind, an autumnal beauty of desertion and of decay. As for a sleeve analon she dared not look at it. Jocelyn tried hard to cheer her up. With an effort he whipped up enough energy to take her out with his dogs and his gun, until her look of horror made him suspect that the sound of a gunshot was a nightmare to her, as indeed it was, reminding her of many dreams and one unforgettable reality. She did her best to hide this from him, for she saw that he was really trying to be kind. Considine also tried to interest her in new things and to distract her mind. His methods were tactful. He knew perfectly well that the official manner of condolence that had gone down so well with the Radways wouldn't do for her. He just treated her as the child that he knew her to be, trying to induce her to join in a game of pretending that nothing had happened. Gabrielle realized his humane attempt from the first, and even for a time tried to play up to him. But the affair ended disastrously in a flood of bitter, uncontrollable tears, for which neither the parson nor the man could offer any remedy. It seemed to him that this was a woman's job, and so he and Jocelyn met in solemn consultation with Biddy Joyce. At this point an easy solution seemed to offer itself in an invitation from the Halbertons. They had heard all the details of the affair from Radways people, and wrote, inviting Gabrielle to stay with them in Devon for a month. The two men prepared the bait most carefully, but when their plan was disclosed to her, Gabrielle rejected it with an unusual degree of passion, imploring them to leave her alone, only to leave her alone. They resigned her to the care of Biddy, who had always considered it her proper function and privilege to deal with the affair. She said about it clumsily, but with confidence, tempting Gabrielle to eat with carefully prepared surprises, obviously humoring her in everything she did. From the very first she had viewed the Radway affair with suspicion, and now she found it difficult not to say, I told you so, though, as a matter of fact, she had done nothing of the sort. All together her methods were too transparent to be successful, and since her own robust habit of body made it difficult for her to divine any subtler cause for Gabrielle's condition, she leapt at once to the physical explanation suggested to her by her own experience of the consequences of love-making in Joyce's country. She watched Gabrielle with a keen and matronly eye, collecting her evidence from day to day after the anxious manner of mothers. When she had dwelt upon the problem for a couple of months, she prepared the result of her scrutiny, and offered them in a complete and alarming dossier to Jocelyn. In her opinion, and on this subject at least, her opinion was of value, there could be no doubt as to Gabrielle's condition. To Biddy Joyce this seemed the most natural thing in the world, but to Jocelyn the announcement came as a tremendous surprise. He knew well enough that this sort of accident was an everyday affair, in effect the usual prelude to matrimony among the peasantry of cannot, but that such an ugly circumstance should intrude itself into the Hewish family, in the case of one of its female members, seemed a monstrous calamity. He was in no condition to stand another shock, and Biddy's pronouncement completely knocked him over. In a case of this kind it was idle to doubt her authority. He only wondered how he could make the best of a desperate job. Distasteful as the business was to him, he decided to tackle Gabrielle herself. It was a very strange interview. On Jocelyn's part there were no recriminations. He was growing gentle in his old age, and in any case he regarded Gabrielle as the victim of a tragedy. All that he wanted to do was to get at the truth, and then this nothing could have been harder. For in Gabrielle he found not only an amazing ignorance, or if you prefer the word innocence, but a flaming, passionate determination to keep silence on the subject of her intimacies with Radway. To her the story was sacred, and far too precious to be bruised by the examination of any living soul. It is probable that Jocelyn tackled the matter with the utmost delicacy. Fundamentally he had the instincts of a gentleman, and as Gabrielle knew he loved her. But on this one subject no amount of entreaties or tenderness could make her speak. In the end when he could get nothing out of her he compelled himself to tell her of Biddy's suspicions. It seemed to him that this might force her into a full confession of her relations with her lover. It did nothing of the sort. She simply stood clutching a tall oak chair and looking straight out of the window over the dark woods. Then she said, Does Biddy really think I am going to have a baby? And Jocelyn nodded his head. Then she said nothing more. She simply went out of the room like a sleepwalker, leaving poor Jocelyn overwhelmed with misery by a silence that he interpreted as an admission of guilt. For him, at any rate, the matter was settled and the acuteness of Biddy Joyce finally established. And there one must leave it. Gabrielle herself accepted the verdict without question. But whether from her own secret knowledge or out of an innocence that is almost incredible, but not, in her case, impossible, I cannot say. Naturally enough, on that other strange interview with Mrs. Payne, she did not go into details. And as far as we are concerned the truth will never be known. Not that it really matters. The only thing that concerns us is the effect upon her fortunes of this real or imaginary catastrophe. All that we can say is that when she walked out of the Roscarna dining-room after her hour with Jocelyn she was subtly and curiously changed. From that moment she became, in fact, a person hypnotized, possessed by the contemplation of her approaching motherhood. She was no longer restless or tearful. She began to sleep again, and her sleep was no longer troubled by that recurrent dream. A strange calm descended on her, the calm of a Madonna thrilled by an angelic enunciation, a hallucinated calm that made her remote and independent, utterly unmoved by the commotion into which the household of Roscarna had been thrown. Her acceptance of the situation crumpled up Jocelyn entirely. He could not for a moment see any way out of the difficulty. As usual he fell back on Biddy, who brought her practical knowledge to his rescue. Biddy was emphatic. In the circumstances there was only one thing to be done. Gabrielle must be married, somehow, anyhow, and the sooner the better. It was the sort of thing that happened every day of the week, and the resources of civilization had never been able to find another solution. Jocelyn shook his head. It was all very well to talk about marriage, but where, in the neighborhood, could a bridegroom be found at such short notice? Biddy's suggestion of half a dozen available choices failed to satisfy him. However suitable the choices might be for casual relations, the idea of marriage with one of them was unthinkable. After all, whatever she had done, Gabrielle was a hewish and the heiress, whatever that might mean, of the Roscarna mortgages. Biddy, impatient of his obstinacy, gave him up. With feelings of sore humiliation he consulted Considine. It was a hard confession for Jocelyn, and the awkwardness of Considine did not make it easier. It seemed as if the two of them were up against a stone wall. Considine, blushing and monosyllabic, begged for time to consider what might be done, and the fact that he did not seem to be utterly hopeless, cheered Jocelyn considerably. Gabrielle, in the meantime, continued rapt and passive. In a week the result of Considine's deliberations emerged, and in a fortnight Gabrielle, only daughter of Sir Jocelyn Hewish, Baronet of Roscarna, County Galway, was married to the Reverend Marmaduke Considine at the Church of Clanderith. It is a curious task to inquire into the motives of Considine. Without doubt he felt under some obligation to the family of Hewish, and particularly to that dead lady Gabrielle's mother. And it is conceivable that he had known enough of Jocelyn during their eighteen years acquaintance to have separated his good points from his weakness, and even to respect him. But the conditions of his dependence on the Roscarna family can hardly be said to have included the fathering of its errors, and no degree of respect for Jocelyn could have made him think it his duty to marry the daughter. Was it perhaps a sense of religious duty that compelled him? It is difficult to think of marriage with the creature of Gabrielle's physical attractions as a mortification of the flesh, and though the ceremony of marriage is supposed to save the reputation of a person in Gabrielle's position, there was no religious dogma which decreed that marriage with a clergyman could save her soul. Then was it a matter of sheer quixotism? That vice, indeed, might conceivably have smoldered in the mind of this queer stick of a man, a lonely fellow cherishing in solitude, exaggerated ideals of womankind, and quick to rise to a point of honor? Even this will not do. There is nothing in the rest of Considine's history that suggests the sentimentalist. For a person he was decidedly a man of the world, with a good business head, a sense of proportion, and a keen, if deliberate, humor. In matters of sentiment I should imagine him reliable. Only one other cause for his conduct suggests itself, and that I believe to be the true explanation. He married Gabrielle Hewish because he wanted to do so, because he loved her. And that is not difficult to imagine, since he had known her intimately ever since she was born, had helped and witnessed the whole awakening of her intelligence, had found in her company his principal diversion, had watched her growing beauty and seen its final perfection. He knew her so well, body and mind, that whatever might have happened he could not help believing in her complete innocence. So well that he could afford to disregard conventional prejudices in looking at her misfortune. It is even possible that he may have dreamed of marrying her before the misfortune came, waiting, in his leisurely way, for the suitable moment. At Roscarna he had no great cause to fear any rival in love, and since an ugly providence had obligingly removed the intruder, Radway, there was no reason why he should not benefit by Radway's death. Considine was a man of forty, full of vigor and not too old for passion. The prospect of a fruitful marriage was doubtless part of the program which he had mapped out for himself. Nor must it be forgotten that he was a poor man and Gabrielle her father's only daughter. With Gabrielle herself the problem is more difficult still. It is not easy to imagine her submitting to the embraces of her tutor, however deep and ardent his affection may have been, within a few months of the catastrophe that had overwhelmed her first love. We may take it for certain that she did not then, nor at any time, love Considine. It is impossible that she should have thought of him in the character of a lover, though I have little doubt but that she would have preferred him to any of the swarm of joises whom Biddy was ready to produce. Perhaps she was offered the alternative, I cannot tell. It is certain that Jocelyn and Biddy told her, in different ways, that marriage was a necessity to her virtue. And since she was compelled by threats and blandishments and entreaties to make a virtue of necessity, she chose, no doubt, the course that was least distasteful to her. One cannot even be certain, in the light of after-event, that she understood the meaning of marriage, or anything about it, save that it was the only thing that could make an honest woman of her. She was so young, so lonely, so numbed and overwhelmed by her misfortune. I did not suppose that she minded very much what they did with her, as long as they left her at last in peace. That she was impressed by the serious persuasion of Biddy Joyce goes without saying. For there was no other woman by whom she could set her standard of conduct. No doubt the distress of Jocelyn, who is now something of a pathetic figure, moved her too. It must have given her pleasure of a sort to see the way in which he was relieved by her acceptance of the Considine Plan, if anything so passive can be called an acceptance. The shame of the moment had so broken him that his sudden recovery of spirits must have been affecting. It must have seemed to her that she had saved her father's life. When once the matter was settled, Jocelyn became almost light-hearted, trying by little tokens of affection and an attitude that was almost jocular, to pretend that nothing had happened, and that the marriage was no more than the happy conclusion of a normal courtship. On the eve of the wedding he gave her the contents of her mother's jewel box, which included some beautiful ornaments of early Celtic work. He kissed her and fondled her and hoped she would be happy, but she could not smile. He dressed elaborately for the ceremony, and when he had left her behind with Considine, feasted solemnly at Roscarna until Biddy and the coachman carried him upstairs. Never in the history of Roscarna was such a tragic bride. The married couple settled down at Clondereth in the small grey house that Considine inhabited. In his bachelor days it had been a comfortless place, but Jocelyn had seen to it that it was furnished with some of the lumber of Roscarna. The presses were filled with fine, hewish linen, and the plate engraved with the hewish crest. Jocelyn had hoped, in the beginning, that Considine would forsake his village and come to live at Roscarna. He himself, he said, needed no more in his old age than a couple of rooms. His daughter and his son-in-law might take a wing to themselves and do what they liked with it. He had counted a good deal on the attraction to Considine of the Roscarna Library. His offer was refused. Considine already had his plans cut and dried. Quite apart from the fact that his parochial duties tied him to Clondereth, he had decided that it would be better for Gabrielle to be separated from all her old associations. Like everything else he undertook, whether it were catching a trout or reclaiming a drunkard, the plan was carefully reasoned. Gabrielle was embarking on a new life that would presumably always be that of a country parson's wife. He had caught her young. It was unfortunate, of course, that he hadn't caught her three months younger. But in any case, she was still young enough to be plastic and amenable to marital influence. It seemed to him that he had a good chance of molding her into the shape that would suit his purpose. And it was obvious that the process would be easier if she were isolated from the free and easy manners of Roscarna, which had so very nearly proved her ruin, and particularly those of Biddy Joyce, who was not only a Catholic, but the possessor of an unvarnishable past in which his father-in-law had a share. Considine's decision was final, and Jocelyn Perforce submitted to it. Indeed, Jocelyn was far too feeble in these days to pit himself against Considine's more vigorous personality, even if he had not recognized the fact that he was in Considine's debt. So he went on living at Roscarna, wholly dependent on Biddy for his creature comforts, and on the dogs for his amusement. It was a mild and placid sunset. Meanwhile, Gabrielle, innocent of all domestic accomplishments, struggled with the complications of her husband's housekeeping, and Considine returned, like a giant refreshed, to the composition of his doctor's thesis. The estate of matrimony suited Considine. In the soft, clean climate of Galway, a man ages slowly, and this marriage renewed his youth. It made him full of new energies and enthusiasm, and revealed a boyish aspect in his character that seemed to Gabrielle a little grotesque, or even frightening. He wanted to express himself boisterously, flagrantly, and the proceeding was extraordinary in the case of a man who had always been so self-contained. Lacking any other outlet for these ebullitions, he threw himself energetically into his theological writings, and worked off his surplus physical steam in the management of the Roscarna estate, for which Jocelyn was gradually becoming more and more unfitted. In this, as in most things that he undertook, Considine showed himself efficient, and Jocelyn began to congratulate himself on the fact that he had secured a son-in-law with a genuine passion for the land that meant so much to him. During all this time Gabrielle remained the same indefinitely tragic figure. There was nothing physically repulsive in Considine, but even if there had been, I do not suppose that she would have felt it acutely. She had become passive. The abruptness of the first tragedy had numbed her so completely that nothing less than another emotional catastrophe could awaken her to consciousness. In this expectant hallucinated state, she passed through the early months of her married life, faithfully performing her domestic duties, sad, yet almost complacent in her sadness. Autumn swept over the countryside. Mists rising from the Korrib at Don lapped the feet of the hills in which Klandera stood, mingling at last with the melancholy vapor of white fog rolling in from sea. She began to fall in the parsonage garden, and the lawn was frosted at daybreak with cold dew. The hint of chilliness in the air only stimulated Considine to fresh energies, sending him out on long tramps with his gun. He seemed to think it strange that Gabrielle in her new state should hate the sight, and above all the sound of firearms. He tried to joke her out of it. He would never treat her as anything but a child. But to her it was not a subject in which jokes could be made. Biddy was a frequent and puzzled visitor at Klandera, puzzled and a little disappointed, because her physiological prophecies did not seem to be approaching fulfillment. By the time that Gabrielle had been married a couple of months, it became questionable whether there had been any social necessity for the hurried ceremony. But though she had her own doubts on the subject, Biddy was far too cunning to give this away to her own discredit. And when Jocelyn or Considine consulted her as to how these matters were proceeding, she armed herself with inscrutable feminine mystery, trusting to luck and assuring them it was only a question of time. After all, probabilities were on her side, and no doubt it came as a great relief to her when, in due course, the doctor from Galway confirmed her diagnosis. With this vindication of her judgment, she became more and more attentive to Gabrielle, walking over two or three times a week to Klandera, and instructing her in the traditional duties of motherhood as they are taught in the West. All through the days of autumn, Gabrielle sat at her window, looking over the misty lawn and making the clothes for her baby. It is not surprising, under the circumstances, that Considine did not show any symptoms of paternal pride. This, it must be confessed, was the most unpleasant condition of his bargain. Still, he had undertaken it deliberately and meant to go through with it like a man. He looked forward to the time when it should be over and done with. Then they would be able to make a new start. Gabrielle would be wholly his, and Radway, he confidently expected, forgotten. In the meantime, having in the flush of marriage, completed his theological thesis, and sent it off to the university from which he expected a doctor's degree, he determined to enjoy the sporting possibilities of Roscarna to the full. His shooting took him far afield, and he saw very little of Gabrielle on the daytime. He kept away deliberately, for her condition made her strange and irritable at times, and he did not consider that devotion to her in a difficulty for which he had not been responsible, was part of his contract. Later, no doubt, his turn would come. For the present, moreover, he felt that he could not quite trust himself, and the fear that his suppressed grudging might make him lose control of his temper made him anxious to avoid the risk. Gabrielle was thankful for this. She never felt unkindly towards him, and yet she was glad when she could feel sure of not seeing him for a time. In the dusk he would return, too drugged with air and exercise to take much notice of her, and for this also she was thankful. One evening in February, when Gabrielle was sitting in a dream over her turf fire, Considine came home from a day's black-cock shooting in the woods on the edge of the lake. She did not hear him coming, for the garden path was now deep in fallen leaves. As he turned to open the house door, Considine saw a small shadow moving under the garden hedge. He thought it was a rabbit, and quickly, without considering, he slipped a cartridge into his gun, aimed at it, and fired. The sound of a shattering report at close quarters broke Gabrielle's dream, recalling an old horror. She jumped to her feet and cried out. Considine, hearing her cry, dropped his gun and ran into the house. He found her standing with her hands pressed to her eyes and trembling violently. She did not see him when he called her name, and then, still shaken like a poplar in a storm, she turned on him with eyes full of hate, and let loose on him a flood of language such as she must have learned from the Roscarna stable boys, words that she couldn't possibly have spoken if she were sane. He apologized for his carelessness and tried to soothe her, and when she had stopped abusing him and broken down into desolate tears, he picked her up in his arms, carried her to their bedroom, and sent a messenger riding to Roscarna for bitty joys. She lay on the bed, quivering, and Considine, white and harassed, stayed beside her. He did not dare to leave her alone, even though she would not look at him. By the time that Biddy arrived in a fluster, Gabrielle's child had been prematurely born. There was never any question of independent life. The case remained in Biddy's hands, and whether the child were Radway's or Considine's, nobody in the world but Biddy Joyce and Gabrielle ever knew. There is no doubt that Biddy would have committed herself to any lie, rather than lose her reputation as an authority, for Biddy was a Joyce. Personally I cherished the passionate belief that no man but Considine was the father. CHAPTER IX It is certain that Considine secretly regarded the death of Gabrielle's child with thankfulness. It had brought their equivocal relation to an end, and now that the matter was cleared up, there was no reason why their married life should not be as plain-sailing as he desired. This was the beginning. As for Gabrielle, she recovered slowly. The emotional storm that had been the cause of her accident had affected her more deeply than the illness itself, which Biddy, as might be expected, mismanaged. The wintry season was at its loneliest when she came downstairs again, very pale and transparent, and began to settle down into the ways of the house. Even so the storm had cleared the air, and when she began to recover her strength she also recovered some of her spirit. Looking backward she realized the depths in which she had been struggling, and determined, rather grimly, that whatever happened she would never descend to them again. She was naturally a healthy and happy creature, and now that her troubles were over she meant to enjoy life. Considine rejoiced at her recovery. It must not be forgotten that Considine was genuinely in love with her, that he found her physically exquisite and had always delighted in her swift mind. And even if Gabrielle could not give him in return an ideal passion she did not in the very least dislike him. She had always looked upon him as a good friend. Before their marriage ever since her earliest childhood they had spent many happy hours together. As a tutor he had been able to interest her, and apart from the fact that he was now her husband, and could offer her tenderness and admiration as well, there was no reason why her life should be very different from what it had been. The only thing that she loved of which he had deprived her was Roscarna. At first she had felt that more than anything, but when she recovered from her illness and was able for the first time to accompany Considine on his visits to the estate it seemed to her that her passion for Roscarna had faded. Perhaps also she was now a little frightened by its associations, and felt that it would be safer for her to cut herself entirely free from everything that reminded her of the old era. When she visited the house to see her father she would look wistfully, almost fearfully, at her old haunts, the path to the lake, the woods that she never entered now, and above them the cloudy vastness of Slevenalon. She used to go there once a week, and Considine, as a matter of course, went with her. By the beginning of the spring her reason for these visits ceased. Jocelyn who had been ailing for a year or more, suddenly died. I suppose it was the kind of death that he might have expected. It was now two years since he had been able to take the keen physical delight in country life that had been his chief apology for his early excesses. Even before the blow of Radway's accident and Gabrielle's marriage had fallen upon him, his arteries had been aging, and though he was barely sixty years of age, a man is as old as his arteries. The end came swiftly with a left-sided cerebral hemorrhage that robbed him of his speech and paralyzed the right side of his body, not in the middle of any unusual exertion, but when he was sitting quietly over the fire after dinner. Biddy found him there when she brought him in his nightcap, huddled up on the floor where he had fallen. She had expected something of the kind for long enough. No one in the world knew Jocelyn as well as she did. She guessed that nothing could be done and waited for the morning before she sent for Considine or the doctor. In the afternoon when Gabrielle and Considine visited him, Jocelyn was almost good-humored, laughing sardonically and screwing up one of his bird-like eyes while, from the other, tears escaped. He passed from laughter to tears quite easily. It was very horrible to see one side of his childish, gray-whiskered face puckered up with crying and the other limp and blank. He finished by making cheerful signs to them that he was sure he would be better in a week. Of course he wasn't. Within five days his poor brain was smitten with two more tremendous blows. The third stroke killed him, coming in the night. It was Biddy who kissed his face and put Peter's pence upon his eyes and folded his arms on his breast. If any woman in the world had a right to perform this melancholy function for Jocelyn, it was she. He was hers and when he died she was alone with him, which was as it should have been. Even when he was dead Biddy had not finished with him. For many years he had trusted her with the key of the cellar and this privilege allowed her to arrange awake, exceeding in magnificence anything in the memory of Joyce's country. They kept it up for three days, the scattered Joyce's foregathering from outlandish corners of Mayo and Conomara. Naturally she didn't tell Considine. He himself discovered the darkened dining-room at Roscarna's strewn with human debris and lit with fifty candles. The candles were poppish and the drinkers were pagan, so he turned to Biddy and told her more or less what he thought of her. He pointed with disgust to a couple of drinkers who lay snoring on a sofa under the window. All the riff-raff in the country, he said. Biddy flared up. Riff-raff, is it? Sure it's his own sons and mine who do be after paying respect to their own father and him lying dead. But Considine was not to be beaten. He had known for many years that Biddy was a kindly humbug. He knew that if he didn't now get rid of her Roscarna would become nothing more than a warren in which her innumerable relatives might swarm. He purged Roscarna of Joyce's, Biddy included. He buried Jocelyn decently, according to the ritual of the Church of Ireland, and proceeded to put his wife's estate in order as soon as her father's remains were disposed of. There was more work in it than he had bargained for. Even the small immediate courtesies and formalities took time. The announcements in the papers and short obituary notices, letters, discreetly composed, announcing the melancholy event to Lord and Lady Halberton, an official search for Jocelyn's last will, a formal application for probate. When these things were finished, Considine's real work had only begun. He had to readjust the whole financial fabric of Roscarna to find out what money was owed or owing, to decide how much of Gabrielle's paper inheritance was tangible. He unearthed the firm of Dublin solicitors in whose hands the business of the estate had been allowed to drift for the last twenty years. They seemed to him a pack of shifty rogues. He was not used to dealing with lawyers, and what he took for cunning was nothing more than the traditional gesture of the profession. It was unthinkable that a firm of such ancient establishment should show any traces of haste in a matter of business. When Considine began to hurry them up, they simply offered to surrender the business. No doubt they knew far better than Considine that there wasn't much in it. He imagined that they were bluffing and took them at their word, with the result that there fell upon Klondariff a snowstorm of documents, leases and mortgages and conveyances and post-Obit, all the documentary debris of a crumbled estate, from the Elizabethan charter on which the first hewish had founded Roscarna, to the illiterate IOUs of Jocelyn's spider-racing days. Considine, up to his neck in it, called on Gabrielle to help in the ordering of her affairs. At Klondariff they had not room enough for this accumulation of papers, so they set aside the library at Roscarna for the purpose, sorting and indexing the hewish dossier as long as the daylight lasted. Considine worked steadily through them as though he were dealing with a mathematical calculation. To Gabrielle, on the other hand, there was something mysterious in her occupation. Fingering these papers that other fingers had touched, she communed with the dead, not with her father who could scarcely write his own name, but with the ancient stately hewishes who had built Roscarna and grown rich on the Spanish trade. Sitting at the long table with Considine, a pile of papers before her, her attention would wander, and while her eyes watched the west wind blowing along the woods, she would feel that she was not herself but another hewish woman staring out of the library windows on a rough day in March a hundred years ago. And in this dream she would be lost until the light died in the woods in a stormy sunset, and Considine began to collect the papers and sheaves and lock them in the press. By the time that spring appeared, Considine, doing his best to put the affairs of Roscarna in order, had realized the hopeless disorder in which they were involved. In the whole of Jocelyn's tenure of the estate, the only stable period had been that of his bourgeois marriage. In youth he had been wildly profligate, in old age negligent, in neither caring for anything beyond his immediate needs. His tenants owed him thousands of pounds that he had never attempted to recover, for he had found it easier to borrow money on mortgage than exact it in rent. As a result of Jocelyn's finance, Considine found that Gabrielle's only hope of saving anything from the ruined fortune lay in the sacrifice of Roscarna itself. The property, hopelessly degenerated as an agricultural estate, had still some value as a fishing or shooting box, and there was a chance that some wealthy Englishman might buy it for that purpose. For a moment the idea of selling Roscarna hurt her, but after a little thought she consented to the sale. Considine advertised the opportunity in the English sporting papers, but the only reply that came to him was a long and anxious letter from Lord Halberton, who had been shocked to see the Irish branch of his family reduced to selling their house and land. His lordship offered to come over in person and give Considine the benefit of his opinion. Considine wrote very fully in reply and closing a balance sheet that made Lord Halberton sit up and rub his eyes. The business-like tone of Considine's letter struck him very favorably. That sort of thing was so rare in a person. As a matter of fact he had already heard from the Radways how tactfully Considine had managed the difficult situation of their son's death. It struck him that Considine was too good a man to be wasted in the wilds of Ireland, where the cause of tradition and aristocracy needed no bolstering. A fellow who could wind up an estate as entangled as Roscarna would be useful in the sphere of the Halberton territorial influence. He talked the matter over with his wife, and in the end wrote to Considine at some length, concurring in his wise determination to get rid of Roscarna. If you sell Roscarna, he wrote, it will scarcely be fitting for your wife to remain in the district occupying a small house in Clonderef. My lady and I both consider that this proceeding would be incompatible with Gabrielle's dignity. As luck will have it, the living of Lapton-Hewish, that is the way in which your wife's name is spelled in England, will shortly be vacant. I have persuaded Dr. Harrow, the present incumbent, who is over ninety, and not very active, that it would be well for him to make way for a younger man. The living is not generously endowed, but it has the advantage of being on the edge of my estate, and I have great pleasure in offering it to you. There is no reason why it should not lead to further advancement. The receipt of this letter made Considine tremulous with pleasure. His original settlement in Ireland had been the result of a romantic inclination to play the missionary in a godless Catholic country. When first he came to Clonderef, he hadn't for a moment realized that the huge inertia of the West would get hold of him and enchain him. But with the passage of time this was what had happened. He knew now that he could not, of his own will, escape. And at the very moment when Jocelyn's death had created a general upheaval and made the situation in Clonderef restless, Lord Halberton's offer gave him the chance not only of returning to his own country, but of making up for lost time. He jumped at it, and Gabrielle, who could not bear the idea of seeing her own ruscanna in the occupation of strangers, gladly consented. I do not suppose it would have made much difference to Considine if she had objected. The Tragic Bride by Francis Brett Young Chapter 10 At Lapton-Hewish in the following autumn Mrs. Payne found them. The details of what had happened in the interval are not very clear, but the effect of the change upon Gabrielle must have been considerable. For the Mrs. Considine who appeared to Mrs. Payne does not seem to have had much in common with the dazed, hysterical child we left at Ruscanna. I doubt if it was the experience of her marital relations with Considine that made her grow up. From the first she had tacitly disregarded them. I suppose the change was simply the result of living in a more civilized and populous country, for South Devon was both in comparison with her lost Ruscanna. The Halbertons had been very kind to them. How much of their kindness sprang from original virtue, and how much from anxiety that the least connection of the family should be worthy of their reflected luster, it is difficult to say. No doubt it pleased them to be generous on a feudal scale, particularly since Gabrielle, with her striking beauty and sharp wits, showed possibilities of doing them credit. As soon as the aged Dr. Harrow had been bundled out, the establishment of the Considines became a game as entertaining to Lady Halberton in the sphere of religious culture, as chemical experiments were to her husband in that of root crops, with the delightful difference that human souls ran away with much less money than man-goals. While the rectory at Lapton was having its roof repaired, its walls painted, and the fungus that grew in the cupboards of old Cannon Harrow's bedroom removed, the Considines were housed at Halberton and instructed in the family tradition. In the case of Dr. Considine, his honeymoon activities had pulled off the degree in divinity, this was easy, for he had spent his childhood on a feudal estate in Wiltshire, and his politics were therefore identical with Lord Halberton's. With Gabrielle, whom Lady Halberton took in hand, the process was more difficult. She couldn't at first quite catch the Halberton air, but being an admirable mimic, she soon tumbled into it. The clothes with which Lady Halberton supplied her helped her to realize the character that she was expected to assume. Sometimes she felt so pleased with her performance that she was tempted to overdo it, and suddenly found herself presenting a caricature of Halberton manners that was so acute as to be cruel. And sometimes, when she felt that she couldn't keep it up, she would suddenly drop the whole pretense and relapse into the insinuating brogue of Bitty Joyce, an amazing trick that she employed with scandalous effect in later years. But although she occasionally laughed at it, Gabrielle found the ease and luxury of Halberton house very much to her taste. She lost her thin and anxious expression, and it became a great favorite, not only with Lady Halberton, but also with the old gentleman and Lady Barbara, the elder daughter, who was still unmarried and likely to remain so. After six weeks at Halberton, the Considines moved into the rectory at Lapton, a square, solid building, endowed with luxuriant creepers and protected on the side that faced the prevailing wind and the roadway, with a covering of hung slates. On the three other sides lay a garden which had been too much for Cannon Harrow and his gardener Hannaford. Both of them had been old and withered, and the tremendous vitality of the green things that grew in that rich red soil had overcome all their efforts at repression, so that the house had been besieged and choked with vegetation and milled weed with the dampness of rain and sap. It was all very lush and generous and cool, no doubt, in summer, but when the rain that drove in from the channel glistened on the hung slates and dripped incessantly from myriads of shining leaves, the rector of Lapton-Hewish might as well have been living in a tropical swamp. To the north of them the huge masses of Dartmoor stole the air so that their life seemed to be lost in a windless eddy and in the deep valleys with which the country was scored the air lay dead for many months at a time. Gabrielle, accustomed to the free spaces of Connemara, felt the change depressing, though she would not admit it. Indeed, she had far too many things to think about to have time for speculating on her own health. First of all, the collars. At Roscarna the reputation of Jocelyn, and above all his relations with Biddy Joyce, had saved the Hewishes from these formalities, and the great distances that separated the houses of gentle folk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more spontaneous and less formal affair in any case. In Devon, as Gabrielle soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades of social finesse. Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage. As soon as she was settled in at Lapton the country descended on her and she was overwhelmed with visitors from all three classes. If she had been a stranger the Devonshire people would probably have watched her with a preconceived suspicion and dislike for a couple of years. But even her questionable qualities of youth and spontaneity could not dispose of the fact that she had been born a Hewish and had lately visited that Halberton house. In that mild climate people remain alive or, if you prefer it, asleep longer than in any other part of England, and the visitors who came flocking to Lapton were, for the most part, in a stage of decrepit or suspended life. They drove through the steep and narrow lanes in all sorts of ancient vehicles, in jingles, victorias, brooches, and enormous family drags. Their coachmen, older and more withered than themselves, wore mid-Victorian whiskers and shiny cockades on their hats. In Gabrielle's drawing room the visitors sat on the extreme edges of their chairs. They spoke with a faded propriety, dropping their final Gs, and specialized in the abbreviation Ain't. They stayed for a quarter of an hour exactly by the French clock on the mantelpiece, contriving, in this calculated period, to make it quite clear that they were on terms of intimacy with the Halbertons, and they invariably finished by inviting the Considines to lunch. In this way Gabrielle became familiar with a number of dining rooms, furnished in mahogany and horse hair, and hung with opulent studies of still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith. The meal was usually served by the whiskered coachmen, who wore, for the occasion, a waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, and there was always cake for lunch. After the port, which generally made her feel sleepy, Considine would be taken off to see the stables, and Gabrielle conducted to a walled garden, heavy with the scent of ripening fruit, where there was no shade but that of huge apple trees, frosted with American blight that reminded her, in their passive mellowness, of the people who owned them. Nothing more violent than archery in its old and placid variety ever invaded the lives of these country families. If it had not been for the headaches with which their society always afflicted her, Gabrielle would have been tempted time after time to scandalize them. But the examples of Considine, who was always frigidly at ease, restrained her, and so she allowed herself to be lulled to sleep, recovering slowly as they drove back through the green lanes to Lapton. Her symptoms of boredom were taken in this society for evidence of her good breeding, and since she was too tired to be scandalous, Gabrielle became a social success. Her success is important, not because it changed her in any way, but because it paved the way for the development by which she became acquainted with Mrs. Payne, and the most intriguing episode of her life began. It was notorious that Considine's parochial labours occupied very little of his time. The parish was small and scattered, Lapton Hewish itself being a mere hamlet, and the neighbouring farmers so soaked in respectable tradition and isolated from opportunities of vice that their souls lay in no great danger of damnation. The activities of Considine were practically limited to his Sunday services. But though the softness of the climate might eventually have transformed him into a lightness of the ancient automaton who had preceded him, it was not in his nature to take things too easily. He came of a vigorous stock. The clear, thin air of the Wiltshire Downland that his ancestors had breathed made for energy of temperament. At Roscarna he had given vent to this in the education of Gabrielle, the acquisition of his doctor's degree, and the management of his father-in-law's estate. His capacity for management, of which he had shown evidence in his winding up of the Roscarna affairs, appealed to Lord Halberton, and it was not long before he proposed a series of improvements to the Lapton property that took his patrons fancy. In Considine's ideas there was not only imagination but money, and Halberton was getting rather tired of his own expensive agricultural experiments. The big house of the parish, Lapton Manor, had lain for several years unoccupied, for no other reason apparently but that it was isolated and out of date. To Lord Halberton it represented at least a thousand pounds a year in waste. When Considine had been at Lapton Hewish for a little more than six months this deserted mansion suggested itself to him as an outlet for his energies. He told Gabrielle nothing of this, he was not on the habit of discussing business matters with Gabrielle, but he rode over to Halberton House one day with an elaborate and practical paper scheme. He proposed, in effect, to vacate the rectory and take over Lapton Manor as it stood. The idea had been suggested to him at first by one of the consequences of Gabrielle's social success. The wife of a neighbouring baronette had fallen in love with her, the fact that her husband had followed suit made things easier. This woman was the mother of two sons, of whom the elder, the heir to the title, was delicate. She did not wish to separate the boys, and realising that it was impossible to send them together to an ordinary preparatory school, the notion had come to her of asking the Considines if they would take them into their house at Lapton. Dr. Considine, no doubt, would find time to equip them with a good classical education, while Gabrielle could supply the feminine influence which was so essential to real refinement. She was not only tired of tutors, their equivocal social status was so tiresome, but sufficiently spartan to feel that her sons would be better away from home for a little while. Away, but not too far away. Gabrielle had thought it would be rather fun to have a couple of boys, even dull boys like the Tracy's in the house. She had told Considine that she would like the arrangement if only the rectory were bigger. As it was they couldn't possibly entertain the proposal. This set Considine thinking, and from his deliberations emerged the much more ambitious scheme of taking over a Lapton manner and equipping it as a social school for the education of really expensive boys. He decided that he would not take a greater number than he could educate by himself. His pupils must all be well connected or wealthy. He would teach them not only the things with which a public school might reasonably be expected to equip them, but the whole duty of a landlord proprietor. The neglected mannerlands, already a drag on the Halberdon property, should be his example. His pupils should see it recover gradually with their own eyes. The fees they paid should go to its development and provide at the end of three or four years' work the satisfaction of a model and profitable estate. All Considine's heart was in the plan. He loved teaching and he loved the land. He had a natural aptitude for both and the opportunity of developing them seemed too good to be missed. Lord Halberdon agreed. A lease was signed in which Considine, paying a nominal rent for Lapton manner, undertook to restore the lands and house to the condition from which they had fallen. Both landlord and tenant were delighted with their bargain. In six weeks the rectory had been vacated and re-let to an old lady from the north of England who wanted to die in Devonshire and the Considine's had moved to the manor under the benign eyes of Lady Halberdon. In another fortnight the first pupils, the Tracy boys, arrived and Considine was advertising in the morning post and the times for three at fees that even Lord Halberdon considered outrageous. There's plenty of money in the country, said Considine. With the insight of genius he added to his advertisement. Special care is given to backward or difficult pupils. CHAPTER 11 When Mrs. Payne had the good luck to stumble on Considine's advertisement, for in spite of the strange complications that ensued for the Considine's, the occasion was certainly fortunate for her. That remarkable person was at her wit's ends. If she had not been a woman of resource and character as well as a devoted mother, I think she would have given up the problem of Arthur as a bad job long before this. But it was literally the only thing that really mattered to her in life, and if she had abandoned the struggle I do not know what would have become of her. By ordinary cannons Mrs. Payne could not be considered an attractive woman. The only striking features in her plain and rather expressionless face were her eyes which were of a soft and extraordinarily beautiful gray. She had large hands and feet, no figure to speak of, and she dressed abominably. She possessed, in fact, all the virtues and none of the graces, and was, in this respect at any rate, the diametrical opposite of her son. Her appearance suggested that life had given her a tremendous battering, a condition that would have been pitiful if it were not that she also gave the impression of having doggedly survived it, and for this reason one could not help admiring her. Her husband had been a businessman of exceptional brilliance, of a brilliance indeed that was almost pathological, and may have accounted in part for the curious mentality of Arthur. In a short but incredibly active life he had amassed a fortune that was considerable, even in the Midlands where fortunes are made. I do not know what he manufactured, but his business was conducted in Gloucester, and the Overton estate, which he acquired shortly before his death, lay under the shadow of Cotswold, between its escarpment and the isolated hill of Breeden, within twenty miles of that city. Mr. Payne had died of acute pneumonia in a sharp struggle that was in keeping with his strenuous mode of life. Seven months after his death his only child, Arthur, was born. In the care of her son and the control of the fortune to which he would later succeed, Mrs. Payne, who was blessed with an equal vocation for motherhood and finance, became happily absorbed. Everything promised well. The business in Gloucester realized more than she could have expected, and she settled down in the placid surroundings of Overton with no care in the world but Arthur's future. He was a singularly beautiful child, fair-haired, with a skin that even in manhood was dazzlingly white and eyes that were as arresting as his mother's. A creature of immense vitality who shook off the usual diseases of childhood without difficulty, and developed an early and almost abnormal physical perfection. He was not, it is true, particularly intelligent. He did not begin to talk until he was over three years old. But this slowness of development was only in keeping with his mother's physical type, and his early childhood was a period of sheer delight to her in which no shadow of the imminent trouble appeared. By the time that he had reached his seventh year Mrs. Payne was beginning to be worried about him. His bodily health was still magnificent, but there was a strain in his character that worried her. It appeared that it was impossible for him to tell the truth. Hap hazard lying is no uncommon thing in children, proceeding as it sometimes does from an excess of imagination and an anxiety to appear startling. But imagination was scarcely Arthur's strong point, and his lies were not haphazard but deliberately planned. To a woman of Mrs. Payne's uncompromising truthfulness this habit appeared as a most serious failing. She could not leave it a chance in a vague hope that Arthur would grow out of it. She tackled it heroically and directly by earnest persuasion, and later by punishments. By one method and another she determined to appeal to his moral sense, but after a couple of years of hopeless struggling she was driven to the conclusion that this, exactly, was what he lacked. It seemed that he had been born without one. The thing was impossible to her, for his father had been a man of exceptional property, and without self-flattery she knew that she herself was the most transparently honest person on earth. As the boy grew older his opportunities for showing this fatal deficiency increased. Whatever she said or did, and however sweetly he accepted her persuasions and punishments, it became evident that she, at any rate, was incapable of keeping his hands from picking and stealing and his tongue from evil speaking, lying and slandering. The condition was the more amazing in the face of his great natural charms. All her friends and visitors at Overton found the boy delightful. His physical beauty remained as wonderful as ever. On the surface he was a normal and exceptionally attractive child, but in her heart she realized bitterly that he was a completely amoral being. In nothing was this more apparent than in his behavior toward animals. Overton, lying as it did in the midst of a green countryside, was a natural sanctuary for all wild creatures, in which Arthur, from his earliest years, had always shown a peculiar interest. As a child he would spend many hours with the keeper, developing an instinct for woodcraft that seemed to be the strongest in his composition. He knew all the birds of the estate, their habits, their calls, their refuges. Once in the shadow of the woods he himself was a wild animal, a creature of farnish activity and grace. Mrs. Payne always encouraged this passion of his as a natural and admirable thing, until one day the keeper, who was no more humane than the majority of keepers, came to her with a shocking story of Arthur's cruelty, an enormity that it would have taken the mind of a devil rather than a man to imagine. When she taxed the boy with it he only laughed. She thrashed the matter out. She pointed out to him that he had done a devilish thing, but in the end she had to give it up, for it became clear to her that he was trying as hard as he could to see her point of view, but couldn't, simply because it wasn't in him. She began to realize, slowly and reluctantly, that it was no good for her to appeal to something that didn't exist. The boy had been born with a body a little above the normal and a mind a little below the average, but nature had cruelly denied him the possession of a soul, and neither her prayers nor her devotion could give him what he congenitally lacked. She wondered whether the isolation of his life at Overton had anything to do with it, whether contact with other children of his own age would reduce him to the normal. She took the risk and sent him at the age of twelve to a preparatory school at Cheltenham. Before the first term was half over, they sent for her and asked her to remove him. The headmaster confessed that the case was beyond him. On the surface the boy was one of the most charming in the whole school, but his heart was an abyss of the most appalling blackness. Mrs. Payne and treated him to tell her the worst. He hedged, said that it wasn't just one thing that was wrong, but everything, everything. She asked him if he had ever known a case that resembled Arthur's. No, he thanked heaven that he hadn't. Could he advise her what to do? Lamely he suggested a tutor, and then as an afterthought a mental specialist. The word sent a chill into Mrs. Payne's heart. The idea that this bright, delightful child, the idol of her hopes, was the victim of some obscure form of moral insanity frightened her. But she was a woman of courage and determined to know the worst. She took him to a specialist in London. Arthur thoroughly enjoyed this desolating trip. The specialist talked vaguely, leaving her nothing but the faintest gleam of hope. There were more things in heaven and earth, he said, than were dreamed of in the philosophy of the most distinguished alienists. He talked indefinitely of internal secretions. It was possible, he said, and underlined the word possible, just barely possible that in a year or two, to put it bluntly at the time of puberty, the boy's disposition might suddenly and unaccountably change. He implored her not to count on it, and assured her that for the present medical science could do no more. If, by any chance, his prophecy should be fulfilled, he begged Mrs. Payne to let him know. The case, if she would pardon the use of this objectionable word, was one of the greatest professional interest. She took Arthur back to Overton and waited desperately. Tudor succeeded Tudor. Each of them found Arthur charming and impossible. For herself she saw no change in him that was not physical. By this time she had abandoned any idea of finding him a profession. At the same time she was anxious to make him capable of managing the Overton estate, and though she dared not send him to one of the ordinary agricultural colleges, for fear of a repetition, on a larger scale, of the Cheltenham disaster, she thought that it might be possible to find a capable land agent who would give him some kind of training and put up with his idiosyncrasy for the sake of a substantial fee. While searching for a suitable instructor, she happened to see Considine's advertisement. The fact that he gave the name of a great landowner, Lord Halberton, as a reference, convinced her that the opportunity was genuine, and the prospectus promised instruction in all the subjects that would be most useful to Arthur, the fact that only a small number of pupils was to be taken, and that the place should be regarded as a friendly country house, rather than as a school, attracted her. But the part of the advertisement that finally persuaded her to a faint glimmer of hope was Considine's artfully worded final paragraph, special care is given to backward or difficult pupils. Like all sufferers from incurable diseases, she was only too ready to place confidence in any person who laid claim to special knowledge. She began to wonder if Considine was such a specialist. She wrote to him, looking for a miracle to save her from her afflictions. Considine replied formally. He did not jump at the idea of taking Arthur, a fact which convinced her that education at Lapton Manor was something of a privilege, and this made her disregard the fact that the privilege was expensive. Still, his note was direct and businesslike. He made it clear that if he were willing to take backward or difficult boys, he expected to be paid a little more for his trouble, but the confident tone in which he wrote suggested that he was a man who knew his business. He did know his business. Considine was a clear-headed and capable person, with a degree of confidence in himself that went a long way towards assuring his success. He proposed, finally, that it would be more satisfactory for both of them if Mrs. Payne were to visit him at Lapton and see the place and its owners for herself. Then they could talk the matter over and define the peculiar difficulties of Arthur's case. More and more impressed, she accepted the proposal. Considine met her train at Totnes with a dog-cart and drove her to Lapton Manor. CHAPTER XII In that part of the world the early autumn is the most lovely season of the year. The country, in its variety and sudden violences of shape and color, seemed to her sensationally lovely after the mild beauty of her own Midland landscape, dominated and restrained by the level skylines of Cotswold. Considine, who spoke very little as he drove, but was a stylish whip, told her the names of the villages through which they passed, names that were as soft and sleepy as Lapton Hewish itself. He showed her his church, with a flicker of pride, and the hung slates of the rectory wall through a gap in the green. Then they passed into the open drive of Lapton Manor. He explained to her that the estate had been neglected and was now the subject of an experiment, but it seemed to her that the level fields through which the drive extended had already come under the influence of his orderly mind. To everything that Considine undertook, there clung an atmosphere of formal precision that suggested nothing so much as the eighteenth century. The Manor, suddenly sweeping into view from behind a plantation of ilux, confirmed this impression. It was such a house as Considine must inevitably have chosen, a solid Georgian structure, square and somber, with a pillared portico in front shading the entrance and its flanking windows. The window-panes of the upper story blazed in the setting sun. In the hall, Gabrielle Considine awaited them. She was dressed in black, probably she was still in mourning for Jocelyn, with a white muslin collar such as a widow might have worn. To Mrs. Payne, by an unconscious personal contrast, she seemed very tall and graceful and exceedingly well-bred. No doubt Considine had prepared the way for this impression. On the drive up he had spoken several times of Lord Halberton, my wife's cousin. Mrs. Considine's voice was very soft, with the least hint of Irish in it, an inflection rather than a brogue. Her hands, her neck and her face were very white. Possibly her skin seemed wider because of the blackness of her hair and of her dress and the beautiful shape of her pale hands. Curiously enough the chief impression she made on Mrs. Payne was not the obvious one of youth, and this shows that Gabrielle, outwardly at any rate, had changed enormously in the last year. Mrs. Payne did not know then, and certainly would never have guessed, that the Lady of the House was under twenty years of age. She only saw a creature full of grace, of dignity, and of quietness, and she knew that Considine was proud of these qualities that his wife displayed. There was nothing to suggest that the pair were not completely happy in their marriage. After dinner they proceeded to business. They sat together in the drawing-room. Mrs. Considine, busy with her embroidery, had a small table apart, while her husband, capable judicial, begged Mrs. Payne to tell him the peculiar features of Arthur's case. She found Considine sympathetic, and the telling so easy that she was able to express herself naturally in the most embarrassing part of her story. Considine helped her with small encouragements. Gabrielle said nothing, bending over her work while she listened. Indeed, she had scarcely spoken a dozen words since Mrs. Payne's arrival. When she came to the episode of Arthur's expulsion from the school of Cheltenham, Considine made an uneasy gesture, suggesting that his wife should retire, and Gabrielle quietly rose. Mrs. Payne begged her to stay. It is much better that you should both know everything, she said. I want you to realize things at their worst. It is much better that you should know exactly where we stand. She wondered afterwards why Considine had suggested that Gabrielle should go. At first she had taken it for granted that he was merely considering her own maternal feelings in an unpleasant confession. It was not until she thought the matter out quietly at Overton that she decided that his action was really in keeping with the rest of his attitude towards his wife. That he did, in fact, regard her as a small child who should be repressed and denied an act of interest in his affairs. Gabrielle's quietness had puzzled her. Perhaps this was its explanation. For the time the story absorbed her and she thought no more of Gabrielle. Considine was such an excellent listener, sitting there with his long fingers knotted and his eyes fixed on her, that she found herself subject to the same sort of mesmeric influence as had overcome Lord Halberton. He inspired her with a curious confidence, and she began to hope, almost passionately, that he would undertake the care of Arthur. Before she had finished her narrative she was assailed with a fear that he wouldn't. He seemed to be weighing the matter so carefully in his mind, and burst out with an abrupt, "'But you will take him, won't you?' Considine smiled. "'I shall be delighted,' he said. Her thankfulness at the end of so much strain almost bowled her over. "'You make me feel more settled about him already,' she said. "'I'm almost certain that he will be happy here. I feel that I'm so lucky to have heard of you, you and your wife,' she added. For all the time that she had been speaking she had been conscious of the silent interest of Gabrielle. When it came to a question of terms there was nothing indefinite about Considine. The fees that he suggested were enormous, but Mrs. Payne's faith in him was by this time so secure that she would gladly have paid anything. All through the rest of her visit this slow and steady confidence increased. From the bedroom in which she slept she could see the wide expanse of the home fields. It seemed to her that the quiet of Lapton was deeper and mellower and more intense than any she had ever known. It was saturated with the sense of ancient, stable, sane tradition. It breathed an atmosphere in which nothing violent or strange or abnormal could ever flourish. She felt that, in contrast with their restless modern Cotswold home, its intense normality must surely have some subtle reassuring effect upon her son. Gazing over those yellow fields in the early morning she felt a more subtle happiness than she had ever known since her husband's death. So, full of hope, she returned to Overton and announced the arrangements she had made to Arthur. He took to them gladly. He was tired of the unnatural indolence of Overton, and in any case he would have welcomed a change. In everything but his fatal abnormality he was an ordinary healthy boy, and the prospect of going into a new county and learning something of estate management, a subject in which he was really interested, appealed to him. He described the drive from the station, the house, and the general conditions in detail. Her enthusiasm for Considine rather put him off. "'I hope he isn't quite such a paragon as you make out,' he said. "'Or he'll have no use for me.'" Gabrielle appeared as a rather shadowy figure in his mother's background. "'Oh, there's a wife, is there?' he said. "'That's rather a pity.'" She smiled, for this was typical of his attitude towards women. Even though she smiled at it, her heart was full of thankfulness, for as he had grown older she had lived in an indefinite terror of what might happen when Arthur did begin to notice women. It was quite bad enough that he should be without a conscience in matters of truth and property. If he were to be found without conscience in matters of sex, there was no end to the complications with which he might have to deal. She always remembered the specialist's prophecy that the period of puberty might be marked by a complete change for the better in his dangerous temperament, but she was secretly haunted by a fear that this critical age might, by an equal chance, reveal some new abnormality or even aggravate the old. Arthur was now nearly seventeen and physically, at any rate, mature. For the present she lived in a state of exaggerated hopes and fears. The amazing part of the whole business was that Arthur didn't realize it. He looked upon the anxiety which Mrs. Payne found it so difficult to conceal as feminine weakness. He wished to goodness that she wouldn't fuss over him, being convinced that he himself was an ordinary, plain sailing person who had submitted for long enough to an unreasonable degree of pampering. He didn't see any reason why he shouldn't be treated like any other boy of his age, and felt that he had already been cheated of many of the rights of youth. One of the principal reasons why he welcomed the Lapton Plan was that it would free him from the constant tug of apron strings and allow him to mix freely with creatures of his own age and sex. He went off to Lapton in the highest spirits, determined to have a good time, rejoicing in the prospect of freedom in a way that made his mother feel that she had been something of an oppressor. She could not resist the temptation of seeing the last of him, and so they traveled down together. This time she stayed a couple of days at Lapton. It was part of Constantine's plan to let parents see as much of the place as they wanted, if only to convince them that they were getting their money's worth. Everything that Mrs. Payne saw reassured her. The routine of the house seemed to be reasonable and healthy. The mornings were devoted to lessons in the library. During lunch the pupils went out over the fields or into the woods, where Constantine instructed them in details of farming and forestry. Their work was not merely theoretical. They had to learn to use their hands as well as their brains, to plow a furrow or bank a hedge or dig a pit for man-goals. Constantine kept them busy, and at the same time made them useful to himself. They used to come in at tea-time, flushed with exercise, and pleasantly fatigued. The late afternoon and evening were their own. They played tennis or racket or read books in the library, a long room with many tall windows that had been set aside for their instruction and leisure. Mrs. Payne rejoiced to find that their life at Lapton was so full. In the absence of any idleness that was not well earned, she saw the highest wisdom of Constantine's system, for it seemed to her that her anxiety for Arthur had probably done him an injustice in depriving him of a natural outlet for his energies. At Lapton he could scarcely find time for wickedness. In this way her admiration for Constantine increased. She only regretted that she had not been able in the past to secure a tutor of his capable and energetic type. Following the series of languid and futile young men whom the very best agencies had sent her, she came to the conclusion that no man of Constantine's type could ever have been forced to accept a tutor's employment. Even in the choice of his pupils she saw signs of his discrimination. In addition to the two Tracy's, whose delightful manners were undeniable, he had secured two other boys, one the younger son of an East Anglican peer, and the other a boy whose father was a colonel in the Indian army. The paragraph in Constantine's advertisement that had first attracted her had made her wonder if his school might not develop into a collection of oddities. But all the pupils that she saw were not only the sons of gentlemen, but obviously normal. She felt that their influence, seconding the control of Constantine, must surely have a stabilizing effect upon Arthur and was content. During the two days of her visit she still found Gabrielle a little puzzling. She couldn't quite believe that her extreme quietness and reserve were nothing more than simplicity. Knowing nothing of her origins she did not realize that Gabrielle was actually shy of her, and that this and nothing else explained her air of mystery. On the last night, however, feeling that after all Gabrielle was the only woman in the house in whom she could confide, she overcame her own diffidence, and told her the whole story over again from a personal and feminine point of view. Gabrielle listened very quietly. I am so anxious that I felt bound to tell you, just in the hope that you'd be interested, said Mrs. Paine. One woman feels that it takes another woman to understand her. If you had children of your own you'd understand quite easily what I mean. I think I do understand, said Gabrielle. There are little things about which I should be ashamed to worry your husband. I wonder if it would be asking too much of you to hope that you would sometimes write to me and tell me how he is. Naturally, I can't expect you to take a special interest in Arthur, more than in others." She found it difficult to say more. Of course, I will write to you if you want me to, said Gabrielle. Mrs. Paine impulsively kissed her. CHAPTER XIII Gabrielle fulfilled her promise. All through the first term, while Autumn hardened into winter, at Lapton, a season of sad sunlight, she kept Mrs. Paine posted in the chronicle of Arthur's progress, and these dutiful letters comforted his mother in her unusual loneliness at Overton. They were not particularly interesting letters, and they never brought to her any announcement of the long-awaited miracle. But they gave her the assurance that some other woman had her eye on him, and this, for some strange reason that may have been explained by Arthur's dependence on her through her long widowhood, comforted her. In the beginning Gabrielle interested herself in Arthur simply for the sake of Mrs. Paine. She had been touched by the mother's anxiety and found her perhaps a little pathetic. But in a little time she began to be interested in Arthur for himself. In the ordinary way she did not see a great deal of her husband's pupils. Nominally, of course, she was the female head of the household, but Considine, aware of her limited domestic experience and her ignorance of English customs, had secured a housekeeper from his own home in Weltshire, a Mrs. Bemberton, who also filled the office of Matron. As might be expected in a woman of Considine's choice, Mrs. Bemberton was capable, and, as luck would have it, she was also kindly. All the domestic arrangements at Lapton ran smoothly under her direction. She was reasonably popular with the boys and mothered them. She even found time to mother Gabrielle, respectfully, for she had come from a county that is staunchly feudal, and was aware of her mistress's august connections. It was fortunate for Gabrielle and her relations with the boys that she had so little to do with their domestic management. The fact that she only saw them in their moments of recreation saved her from being regarded as an ogreous, her only suspicious circumstance being the fact that she was married to Considine. Before the winter came, she had played games with them, and since she had so much of the tomboy in her, had made herself acceptable as a sportswoman and a good sort. By the time that Arthur Payne arrived, the days were drawing in, and she saw very little of them, except in the evenings, after dinner, when she and Considine would join them in a game of snooker in the billiard room, or take a hand of wist, old-fashioned wist, in the library. It was here that she first became personally aware of Arthur's disability. For several weeks she had been getting used to him as a normal being, attractive because he was so undeniably handsome and well-developed, more than usually attractive to her, perhaps, because she was dark and he was fair. She had noticed his eyes, so like the beautiful eyes of Mrs. Payne, his splendid teeth, and the charming ingeniousness of his manner. Subtly influenced by these physical features, and taking him for granted, she had almost forgotten the curious history that Mrs. Payne had confided to her, and it came as a shock to her playing cards against him one evening to realize suddenly that he was cheating. Her first impulse was one of indignation, but as she was not quite sure of herself, she said nothing, waiting to see if she could possibly have been mistaken. In a few moments he cheated again, this time beyond any possible doubt. She flushed with vexation. It seemed to her an enormous thing. She was just in the point of throwing down her cards when Mrs. Payne's story came back to her. Instead of dislike, she felt a sudden wave of pity and wonder. She had wanted, on the spur of the moment, to give him away, but she realized that this would only discredit him with the other boys and probably lay him open to a sort of persecution. If he wasn't really responsible, that would be a pity, and so she held her tongue. All the same she couldn't go on playing cards with him. She knew that if she did, she would be bound to continue on the lookout and be shocked by a series of these ugly incidents. She asked Considine if he would read to them, and he consented readily. She liked reading aloud, partly because he was not unreasonably, vain of his speaking voice, and partly because the practice was part of his theory of education. At that time he was reading Stevenson, an author who was supposed to combine a flawless literary style with the soundest moral precepts and an attitude towards life that encouraged the manly virtues peculiar to Englishmen. Gabrielle enjoyed his reading thoroughly, for she had so much of the boy in herself and was quite unacquainted with any Victorian literature. He read Catriona slowly and with gusto. Gabrielle from her corner watched Arthur Payne sprawling on a sofa at the edge of the lamp-light. He was really a remarkably handsome young animal, with his fair hair tangled and his hands clasped on his knees. He could see his eyes in the gloom. They seemed to burn with eagerness while he listened, as though his imagination were on fire with him. She forgot that Considine was reading and went on watching the boy. It seemed to her incredible that it was he whom she had detected in such a deliberate dishonor half an hour before. It was Melancholy. She felt most awfully sorry for him. She wished, above all things, that she could help him. People said that he was beyond help. In the end he became conscious of her scrutiny and smiled across at her, and this broke the spell of reflection. She heard Considine's voice. I will take up the defense of your reputation, she said. You may leave it in my hands. And with that she withdrew out of the library. That's the end of Chapter 19. He closed the book, putting a marker in it methodically, as was his want. Gabrielle thanked him. She smiled to herself, for it seemed to her that the words of Miss Grant, with which he had recalled her from her abstraction, had a curious and prophetic meaning for herself. She was thankful for a moment that she hadn't thoroughly given Arthur's reputation away to his comrades. She felt herself thrilled by a new and curious interest. She determined, as a part of her duty to his mother, to speak to Arthur himself about what she had observed. She caught him in the passage, just as the boys were going to bed, and drew him aside into the drawing-room. The room was quite dark. Arthur, I want to speak to you, she said. He laughed. What's the matter? When we were playing cards tonight, you cheated. For a moment there was silence. Then he laughed again. Not an uneasy, shameful laugh, but one of sheer amusement. It shocked her. At last he said, Did you see it? Then why didn't you make a fuss about it? She was thankful, at any rate, that he had not lied to her. That was what she had fearfully expected. I didn't want to give you away to the others. Why not? There wouldn't have been any news to them. They know that I cheat already. That's why they're up against me. But that doesn't worry me. I don't understand you. It seemed to me a horrible thing to do. Can't you see that? No, I can't. Perhaps I'm different. When I play, I play to win. But that's the whole point. If you don't stick to the rules of the game, there's no credit in winning, is there? He was silent for a moment. He was silent with an effort of the most courageous honesty, he said. Well, it feels the same to me. I like winning, anyhow. She hesitated for a moment. It makes it so that—so that we can't respect you, she said. Now I suppose you'll go and tell Dr. Considine. Just my luck. Indeed, and I shan't do anything of the sort. It's between us two, she replied. He was silent. Well, it does no good talking about it, he said mournfully. I've made differently, that's all. Do you want anything else? She didn't, and he left her in the dark. This small incident and the conversation that followed opened her eyes to the reality of the problem. She didn't, indeed, tell Considine what had happened, but she did talk to him once or twice about the history of Arthur Payne. He did not tell her much, for it was part of his plan that his wife should not be mixed up in the business of the school. These things, in his opinion, lay entirely outside a woman's province. Her place was in the drawing-room, and her position that of a hostess, or providentially, that of a mother. For the present there were no signs of her fulfilling the latter. In spite of Considine's discouragement, her interest in Arthur was now fully aroused, and more eagerly, for the very reason of the limits which her husband had set to her activities. Life at Lapton Manor to a person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull. The nature of the surrounding country, with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth or freedom, imprisoned her spirit. Even Roscarna, in its decay, had been more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor house set in its circle of low hills. Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Sleevianalon or the mountains of Momturk. Here, even in their more frequent sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor to the sea. In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice, so that no strange calling-convances passed the lodge gates at Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that was neither life nor death. If she had shared Considine's interest in his profession, things might have been different. No doubt she would have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm. But her enthusiasm was of a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine. No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by its violence. In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her she was thrown more and more upon her own resources. Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing interest in Arthur. She had never returned to the card-playing incident, but as time went on a number of others equally distressing presented themselves. Having constituted herself his special protectress and the savior of his reputation she tackled each of them with courage. In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they came within the area of a kind of blind spot in his brain. She soon found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an amoral intelligence. She would have appealed on grounds material, but it seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should be rarely at one. Sweet persuasion was equally useless, and indeed how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love had failed so signally? Even so she would not own herself beaten. It was tantalizing. For the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him. The opportunity arose from Arthur's trouble. He had told her the truth when he said his fellow-pupils at Lapton were already aware of his lack of honor in games. Nothing is less easily forgiven by boys, and when the others discovered that he cheated and lied, not so much by accident as unprincipled, they began to treat him as an outcast from their decent society. The Tracy's went so far as to report his failing to Considine. An unpleasant contra-tomp but one that Considine had expected. He explained to them that pain was not entirely to blame and that his constitution was not normal. He advised them to take the weakness for granted. Even when he did this he knew that such distinctions were unlikely to be acceptable to a boyish coat of honor. On the other hand the special fees that Mrs. Payne was paying him were essential to the development of his plans. As a compromise he decided to keep Arthur apart from the others in their amusements in the most natural way he could devise. Practically for a want of a better solution he handed him over to the care of Gabrielle. Arthur resented this. He was fond of games and of sport. He liked winning and he liked killing. He thought it humiliating to his manly dignity to be relegated to Gabrielle's society. He wrote bitterly to his mother about it using the contemptuous nickname that the boys had invented for Mrs. Considine. "'I think old Considine,' he wrote, "'must be thinking of turning me into a nursemaid. I'm always being told off to help Gabby in the garden or take her for drives in the pony-cart. Isn't much fun taking a woman shopping!' But Gabrielle was glad of it. The new plan supplied her with the first prolonged companionship of a person of her own age, there were less than three years between them, that she had known. Little by little Arthur accepted it and they became great friends. It was a curious relation, for though it must have been simple on his side, on hers it was full of complication. To begin with, his society was a great relief from her loneliness. Again she had already, for a want of another enthusiasm, conceived an acute interest in his curious temperament, and her eagerness to get to the bottom of it, and if possible to find a cure, was now fanned by something that resembled a maternal passion. They spent the greater part of his spare time together, and often, at hours when he would normally have been working with Considine, she would ask for him to take her driving into Totnes or Dartmouth, their two market towns. In the evenings they would walk out together in search of air along the lip of the basin in which Lapton Manor lay. In one of these evening walks a strange thing happened. They had climbed the hills and had sat for a few minutes on the summit, watching the sun go down behind the level ridges that lead inward from the start. While they were sitting there in silence, Arthur suddenly slipped away over the brim of a little hollow full of bracken on the edge of the wood. A moment later Gabrielle heard him laughing, and walked over quietly to see what he was doing. She saw him crouched, quite unconscious of her presence, among the ferns at the bottom of the hollow. He had caught a baby rabbit, and now he was torturing the small terrified creature, its beady eyes set with fear just as a cat plays with a mouse. He was watching it intently, letting it escape to the verge of freedom, and then catching it and throwing it violently back. For a second it would lie motionless with terror, and then make another feeble attempt at escape. She watched this display of animal cruelty with horror, and yet she could not speak, for she wanted to see what he would do next. At last the rabbit refused to keep up the heartless game any longer. It simply lay and trembled. Gabrielle prodded it with his foot, but it would not move. This appeared to incense him. He took a flying kick at the poor beast, and killed it. It lay for a moment twitching, its muzzle covered in blood. A little thing no bigger than a kitten two months old. Gabrielle ran to him, flaming with anger. She picked up the mutilated rabbit, and hugged it to her breast. Why did you do that? You beast! You devil!" she cried. She could have flown at him in her anger. Arthur only laughed. He stood there laughing, staring straight at her with his wide honest eyes. "'It's dead. It's all right,' he said. Her fingers were all dabbled with the blood of the rabbit that twitched no longer. She could do nothing. She dropped the carcass with a pitiful gesture of despair, and burst into bitter tears. She sat sobbing on the edge of the hollow. She could not see him, but presently she heard his voice, curiously shaken with emotion at her side. "'I say, Mrs. Considine,' he said. "'Don't. Please don't. I simply can't stand it.' "'Oh, get away. Leave me alone,' she sobbed. "'I can't bear you to be near me. It was so little, so happy.' He wouldn't go. He spoke again, and his voice was quite changed. She had never heard a note of feeling in it before. "'I can't bear it. You—I can't bear that you should suffer. "'I swear I won't do a thing like that again, not if it hurts you. On my honor, I won't. "'Yes, you will. I suppose you can't help it. It's awful. You haven't a soul. You aren't human.' His voice choked, as he replied. "'I swear it. I do, really. I could do anything for you, Mrs. Considine. I feel that I could. For God's sake, try me.' She compelled herself, still sobbing, to look at him. She saw that his face was tortured and his eyes full of tears. But she could say no more, and they walked home in silence. End of Chapter 13, Recording by Roger Maline