CHAPTER IV
THIS OUR SISTER
"Clinton. On the 16th inst. the Lady Susan Clinton, aged 28."
How could such an announcement, to the Squire reading it in the obituary column of his paper, cause any emotion stronger than the feeling that all was for the best?
For one thing, although the direct cause of Susan's death had been pneumonia, there was little doubt, to him who knew the state of mind she had been in when her illness had first attacked her, that she had succumbed to that, and not to any ailment of the body, which, otherwise, she could have shaken off. She had paid the price, poor girl! The account as against her was closed, her name dropped from the ledger.
That she had died in full repentance, and would therefore escape the ultimate fate of branded sinners, his easy creed allowed him to take for granted. The very fact that she had died seemed to make her state in the hereafter secure. For her it was well.
And not less so for those whom she had, in the phrase that came readily to his lips, left behind. Humphrey—poor Humphrey—who was overwhelmed with grief, as it was only natural he should be, would come to feel in time that her death had been, if not a blessing in disguise—which would be a harsh way of putting it—then a merciful dispensation of Providence. He had nothing to reproach himself with. He had cloven to his wife at a time when he might, justifiably, have played a very different part; had been prepared to share with her such of the punishment for her crime as could not be avoided; had even accepted—quixotically, as the Squire thought—part responsibility for it; and in short had fulfilled his duty towards her with a fine loyalty such as his father, remembering certain episodes in his career, had hardly thought to be in him. He had been tried as by fire, and had come well out of the ordeal, a better man in every way.
No, Humphrey had nothing to reproach himself with. Indeed, it would comfort him in the future to think that he had been tender to the poor girl in her disgrace, comforted her, been ready to throw over the life that suited him, so as to help her to recover herself, stood up for her, when she could not with reason be defended, been with her at the last, broken down when it was all over. His thoughts ran smoothly into the worn phrases apt to these sad occasions, when grief is subdued to not unpleasing melancholy, and melancholy is the shade of the tree of death, in which we are sitting for a time, but with the sunshine of life still before us.
Humphrey was still young. He could travel for a time, if he wanted to, or, perhaps better still, stay quietly at Kencote, until he had got over his loss; and then he could take up his life as before. When time had healed his wound he might even marry again. But that was to look too far ahead, with poor Susan not yet under the ground, and the Squire checked the thought at once. If she had lived he would certainly have had a very difficult time with her. A high resolve is one thing; the power to carry it out, day by day, when the exaltation in which it was made has faded away, is another. Humphrey was not trained to such efforts. He might have tired of it. Susan might have "broken out" again. All sorts of trouble might have arisen, which—well, which, by the mercy of Providence, it was not necessary now to conjecture. For Humphrey, all was for the best.
The Squire was glad, on his own account, that he had withdrawn his embargo upon Susan's visiting Kencote, before this had happened. He had been very near to imposing it again after his interview with Lord Sedbergh; but Susan had even then been dangerously ill; and the absorption caused by the rapid progress of her illness, and the contingent comings and goings, had fortunately taken his mind off the details of her past misdemeanour. He had been preserved—mercifully—from dealing his son that extra blow.
And yet he doubted whether he would have been able to play his part with her. It was plain now, whatever it had been when he had walked down the steps of Lord Sedbergh's club, that strong reproaches would not have helped matters; that nothing he had had it in his mind, then, to do or say to ease himself of the burden, whose weight his old friend had made him compute by refusing to touch it, would have lightened it; and that the effect of his knowledge would only have been to make things more difficult alike for himself and for Humphrey. His anger against the poor girl would be buried in her grave. It would not be difficult to speak of her now with that regretful affection that would be expected of him.
And her death made him less vulnerable. He perceived now, not without a shudder, that his safety depended upon the silence of a woman who, wherever the responsibility lay, had been bought, and might be bought again; or, if that were unlikely, might lightly let loose the hint which, gathering other hints to itself, would grow into the avalanche that would involve him in the disgrace he so much feared. But an accusation against a dead woman—if it were made it would be less readily believed, more reprehensible, easier to cast off. And Susan would not be there, a possible weakness to her own defence.
Here again he checked his thoughts. He was not ready to face a situation in which he would either have to deny untruthfully, or to keep damaging silence. But, certainly, for him, all was for the best.
Dick came in, as he was sitting with the paper on his knee. He wore a black tie, but was otherwise dressed as usual. His face was becomingly grave. They talked over details of the funeral. Susan was to be buried at Kencote, in the churchyard where so many generations of Clintons had been buried, her own distant ancestors among them, but none within living memory who had not lived out the full tale of their years. Her body would lie in the church that night, and the house would fill up with many of those who would follow her to the grave on the morrow, including some members of her own family, all of whom the Squire disliked or was prepared to dislike. He ardently wished himself done with the painful ordeal. He doubted whether he would be able to acquit himself unremittingly in the manner that would be expected of him. He would have to wear a face of gloom, when he was already itching to be rid of these cheerless trailing postscripts to the message of death, and commit himself once more to the warm current of life. He would have to say so many things that he did not feel, and do so much that he hated doing.
The shadow, not of grief but of the adjuncts of grief, lay over the house, and darkened the bright June sunshine, or such of it as was allowed to filter through the blinded windows. Not for fifty years or more had such an assemblage been made at Kencote. The successive funerals of the Squire's six aunts, who had lived since his marriage at the Dower House, and the last of whom had died at another house in the village only two years ago, had been untroublous, not to say brisk, ceremonies, occasions of meeting between seldom-seen relations, and of hospitality almost festive, but tempered by affectionate reminiscence of the departed, and the feeling that one might talk naturally and freely, so long as one did not actually laugh. Ripe age had fallen on the rest laid up for it; there had been no occasion to feign deep sorrow.
But—"the Lady Susan Clinton, aged 28"!—there was material for sharp sorrow there; and the Squire was disturbed by the fear that he might not be able to show it; might even, if he were off his guard, show that he did not feel it.
"Did you hear from mother this morning?" asked Dick, when they had disposed of the details he had come to discuss.
"Yes. Humphrey is bearing up; but, of course, poor fellow, he can't get used to the idea yet. We must keep him here for a bit, after we rid the house of all these people; and he'll soon come round to himself."
"Was there any trouble between them latterly?" Dick asked, in a matter-of-fact voice, but gave the Squire time to collect his thoughts by going on immediately, "I don't want to pry into your affairs or his, but I had an idea that that business of Gotch's wasn't all he came to see you about the other day."
"Why do you think that?" asked the Squire with undiplomatic directness.
"Well—your going up to town with him the next day, for one thing. I only wanted to say that if it's a question of money again, which hasn't been put right by poor Susan's death, you can count on me for help if there's any difficulty in raising it."
What a good son this was—safe, level-headed, coolly and responsibly generous! The Squire would have given a good deal to have been released from his promise, and able to take him into full confidence then and there.
"Well," he said, "there was trouble about money, and I was prepared to find it, without interfering with estate affairs. That's why I didn't come to you. But the necessity is over now."
He mentally patted himself on the back for this masterpiece of statement, transgressing the strict truth by no more than perfectly allowable omission.
"Her settlement falls in, I suppose," said Dick. "I'm glad you were spared the worry, although the way out of it is sad enough. I've been sorry for Humphrey for some time. He had come to see that he had always played the fool about money, and was beginning to get his ideas straight; but poor Susan—well, one doesn't want to think about her in that way now—but there's no doubt she was a terrible drag on him. I'd seen it coming for some time, and when he talked to me at Christmas about settling down, I was pretty sure that he didn't know everything, and would be coming with another story soon."
"Why did you think that?" asked the Squire, with the sensation of treading on very thin ice.
"Oh, it was common talk of how she was going on—had been, I should say, for she did seem to have calmed down within the last year. Otherwise, I think I should have made up my mind to give Humphrey a hint, disagreeable as it would have been. Things were being hinted at about a year ago that made me think we might find ourselves involved in some bad scandal before we were much older."
"Oh, Dick," the Squire broke out, "we mustn't talk like this about a dead woman. Humphrey told me everything. It's all wiped out and done with now, for her, poor girl."
"Yes," said Dick. "But I'm not going to pretend that I think her death is a calamity. I don't; although any feeling one may have had against her is wiped out, as you say. In fact, if she had begun to pull herself up, as I think she had, and had got it all off her mind before she died, as I suppose she did, it's possible to feel kindly towards her. Still, I think she had made too big a mess of things. It would have come between them. As it is, he'll be able to think of her without bitterness. He'll get over the shock in time."
This was all so much what the Squire felt himself, summed up as it might have been in the comfortable phrase, "all for the best," that its effect upon him was much the same as if he had had the relief of telling Dick everything. He cheered up palpably, until he remembered what lay immediately in front of him; but faced even that with more equanimity, upheld by Dick's sympathetic support, and relieved of some doubt as to whether his thoughts about poor Susan were quite of the right colour.
The afternoon train, which in the course of these histories we have so often met at Kencote Station, brought the coffin and the mourners. Humphrey looked pale and worn, but collected. He stood with his mother's arm in his while the coffin, covered with flowers, was taken out of the purple-lined van, and lifted on to a hand bier. The church was much nearer to the station than the house, and the little procession walked there, past the cottages with blinds all drawn, and the villagers standing by them, mostly in black, which only served to heighten the bright colours of the flowers with which the gardens were full. The sky was of the purest blue, and larks trilled unseen in its translucent vapours, as if to draw the thoughts of the mourners away from the earth in which they were presently to see these mortal remains laid. The elms and chestnuts whispered of life going on and renewing itself year by year until the end. The rich springing growth of early summer in this quiet country village spoke of life and of hope; and the black line of mourners moving slowly along was not incongruous with it, if the poor clay they were escorting was really only the husk from which new life had already sprung.
The Squire, sobered to becoming gravity by the sight of the coffin, yet felt his thoughts tuned to the beauty of the sky and the familiar surroundings. It was he who had planned this walking escort. There would be carriages, and a state suitable to the occasion on the morrow. This was to be a home-coming, a token of his forgiveness of her for the trouble she had caused him, a sort of last taste of the everyday life of Kencote, into the intimacy of which she was finally to be received as a daughter of the house. It appealed also to that sense of common human life, which is the fine flower of squiredom. Death levels all; he had no feeling that the cottagers standing at their garden gates were intruding their curiosity, as was felt by Susan's mother for one, who thought this public tramp between a station and a church an outrage on her nobility. The cottagers were his friends on an occasion like this, had a right to share mourning as well as festival with the family in whose interests they were hereditarily bound up. He took comfort from seeing them there. They were his people; without them this quiet home-coming would have been incomplete.
The coffin was taken into the chancel of the ancient church, and set down over the brass of a knightly Clinton who had died and been buried there five centuries before. Almost without exception those who followed it were his direct descendants, and the same stones surrounded them as had sheltered the mourners at his funeral. So many years, so little change! Christening, marriage, burial—the renewal of life in the same stock had gone on through the centuries. This new burial was only a ripple in the steady, pauseless flow, and would have been no more if the head of the house himself had lain where this poor, foolish, erring girl, now hardly regretted, and soon to be forgotten, was laid.
A few prayers were said, and a hymn sung, and then she was left to lie there alone. Shafts of sunlight would slant across the stones, and fading, give place to twilight, then to dusk, then to darkness. The church would be very still. Dawn would come, with the sweet twittering of birds, and the sun would once more strike through the armorial glass of the East window, and paint stone and timber with bright colour; and still she would be lying there, dead to the glory of a new day as she had been dead to the darkness of the night. Nothing would matter to her any more. In a little while her dust would mingle with that of long generations of Clintons forgotten, and her memory would pass away as theirs had passed. Her life had been everything to her, her wants and hopes and regrets the centre of her being. Now it was as if it had never been—for her, lying in the still church.
But her acts lived. The ripples she had caused in the pond of life would spread, intersecting other ripples caused by other acts, until they reached the border.
When they had returned to the house Nancy went up with Joan into her room—the room in which they had slept side by side for all but a few nights in their lives until Nancy's marriage. There was only one bed in the room now.
"How odd it looks!" said Nancy. "Do you miss me, my precious old Joan?"
"Of course I do," said Joan. "I had to make them take your bed out. It made me feel so horribly lonely."
"If John is ever unkind to me," said Nancy, "I shall come here and have it put back."
She checked herself. No vestige of a joke was to be allowed until after to-morrow. She thought herself unfeeling for even inclining to light speech. To her and Joan the death of someone not much older than themselves was a startling thing; and the death of anyone so close to them, in their inexperience of death, would have subdued them for a time.
"Let's go and talk in the schoolroom," Nancy said. "Nobody will come there."
They sat together on the old comfortable sofa, arms entwined. The absence of sentiment with which they had been accustomed to treat one another had given place to frequent signs of affection. They had hardly been more together during their childhood than since Nancy had come to Kencote after her honeymoon the day before. Their stream of talk flowed unceasingly. Oceans of separate experience had to be bridged.
Now they put aside for a time their own affairs of the past and future, and talked about the immediate present.
"Did you speak to Humphrey?" Joan asked. "I didn't; but I thought he looked awful."
"He kissed me when we came in," said Nancy, "and said he was glad I had come back in time. He spoke much the same as usual, but went away directly. Joan, how awful he must be feeling! Just think what John would feel if he were to lose me!"
"You haven't been married so long," said Joan; but immediately added, "I suppose that wouldn't make any difference, though. I do feel frightfully sorry for Humphrey. I almost think it would have been better if the funeral had been at once, instead of making it like two. It must be awful for him to think of her lying there all alone in the church. You know, Uncle Tom wanted to have tapers and somebody to watch; but father wouldn't."
"No; I didn't know that. Why?"
"He said candles were Roman Catholic; and that there would be nobody who wanted to watch. I think he was right there. You know, Nancy, I think the saddest thing about it is that there is nobody who is very sorry for poor Susan's death—except Humphrey. I don't think her own people are. None of them looked it."
"Lady Aldeburgh cried."
"She pretended to. Her eyes were quite dry."
"I liked Susan. So did you."
"Yes, in a way. Perhaps not very much. I wish I had liked her more, now. I am sorry, of course. But I feel much more glad at having you again, than sorry because she is dead."
Nancy gave her a squeeze. "I can't realise that she is dead," she said, "that she was in that coffin. I felt just a little bit like choking when Uncle Tom read that part about a place of rest and peace. It was so dreadful to think of her being dead; but that seemed to alter it all. If she is somewhere alive still—and happy!"
"Yes," said Joan seriously. "I hope Humphrey is thinking about that."
On the morrow there was a difficult time to get through before the funeral, at twelve o'clock. The Squire took the "Times" into his room when it came, but only glanced over it, standing up. He made occasion to go to the Rectory, and to the Dower House, and spent some little time at each; and the hour came round.
It was over quickly. The large company walked and drove back to the house, which stood once more normally unshuttered, and ate and drank. There was a buzz of conversation in the crowded dining-room, which at times swelled beyond the limits of strict propriety, and suddenly subsided, only to rise and sink again.
Departures began to be taken. This was the hardest time for the Squire to go through, for he had to say something in answer to the words of each. The end came with a rush, when most of those who had been staying in the house, with those who had come down that morning, left to take the special train back to London.
When the last carriage had departed the Squire turned back into the hall with a great sigh of relief. He went into his room and stood by the open window, breathing deeply of the soft summer air, as if his lungs had been cleared of some obstacle. "Well, that's over," he said aloud as he turned away.
The sound of his words checked him. He went to the window again, and looked across the garden and the park to where the church tower showed between the trees. "Poor girl!" he said slowly. And then, after a pause, "Poor dear girl!"
This satisfied him, and he went briskly to the table where the newspapers were laid in order.