The Sundered Streams: The History of a Memory That Had No Full Stops

by Reginald Farrer

Jim, meanwhile, was pressing her with pleas that he also might be allowed to join the party. His father, too, did not seem disinclined to grant his request. Gundred returned briskly to the immediate present. No, no; this complicating element must on no account be introduced. She could trust Heaven to look after Ivor Restormel when once he was inside Long Kern, but she was not at all inclined to trust It to discriminate between the innocent and the guilty, when it came to arranging the rock-fall or the sudden rush of water which she anticipated with a certain holy complacency. All Ivor’s companions would almost certainly perish with him. On no account, then, must her own precious child run any risk of being included in the Evil One’s condemnation. She looked at Jim, so eager, so young, so brilliant.

There was nothing in the world her hidden nature loved so hungrily. By comparison even her great love for Kingston was very much a matter of pride and habit. But Jim was her own, of her own body, of her own blood, the crowning achievement of her life, the visible evidence of Heaven’s approval. In himself he was altogether lovely and delightful. And beyond all that again, beyond his own personal qualities, he stood to Gundred for the other thing she most venerated and cherished in the world—the glory of March and Brakelond. When he grew up he was to resume his mother’s name, and unite the resplendency of the Mortimers with the money of the Darnleys; and then, when her father died, it was an open secret that the dignities of the House would be revived in the person of her son. Gundred felt that through her own wifely and motherly virtues she had been privileged to support the banner of March and Brakelond. It was because she had always been so humble, so devout, that such an honour had been vouchsafed her, and her son was doubly precious in her eyes, not only in himself, but as the Duke of her own providing, who should continue, from his high place, to set an example of Evangelical piety to the people of England. She shuddered at the thought of allowing her jewel to run into danger, and made haste to make it very certain to Jim that in no circumstances would he be allowed to share Ivor’s descent of Long Kern.

‘You don’t want to get wet and cold right down there in the horrid dark—no?’ concluded Gundred ingratiatingly.

‘But it won’t be wet,’ protested the boy. ‘Father has had the stream dammed about two hundred yards above the hole. Otherwise they would not have been able to go down at all. They would all have been drowned. The water is very high just now, after the rain. But, as it is, it will be quite dry down in the caves.’

But Gundred, strong in her private foresight of Heaven’s intentions, could not be swayed from her decision. Kingston was forced into the contest, and found himself compelled, for the sake of peace and dignity, to endorse his wife’s prohibition. Jim subsided at last, flushed with resentful disappointment. Gundred, meantime, was eating her egg dispassionately, with her usual seraphic tranquillity, while her heart was filled with strange, conflicting feelings. She looked across at Ivor Restormel with secret curiosity. She knew that he was doomed, and in the last moments could not stifle a certain pity which struck her as being faintly irreligious and painfully human. But he was so young and so beautiful, however evil and pernicious. To die down there in the eternal darkness, caught like a rat in a trap by the vengeance of Heaven, that was a pitiable fate. That it would assuredly descend Gundred could no longer entertain a doubt, and, when she remembered that it was her own prayers that had jogged Heaven into this intervention, she felt a dim pricking of remorse. During the few hours that remained she would be kind to the predestined victim. Ivor was pleasantly surprised by the suavity with which Lady Gundred offered him a second cup of tea.

‘Do have some more,’ pleaded Gundred; ‘you will want to be properly prepared for this wonderful expedition of yours. Shall I tell them to make you up a little lunch?’

In her heart of hearts she knew that he would never need lunch on earth again, and her economical temper grieved to think of the hard-boiled eggs and the cress sandwiches that would be wasted if her offer were accepted. But, as he could not be expected to know how profitless Heaven intended to make any packets of lunch that she might provide, she felt that the kindness must in common decency be offered.

Ivor, however, replied that he hoped to be back at Ivescar in plenty of time for tea, and that he would not trouble about food till then. Gundred smiled and sighed to think how tragically he was mistaken. Her feelings were firm and rigid. Long thought and long anxiety had crystallized now into a mystic ecstasy of certainty. In the previous weeks she had known sore vacillations and distresses. But now the friendly Powers had made everything plain once more. Until this morning she had felt a certain weakness and need of earthly counsel; as a sound Evangelical Protestant, she had, of course, a proper pious horror of the priesthood and the confessional; and yet there had been times when she would have liked to pour forth her troubles to a fellow-creature. Had she consulted a doctor rather than a priest, he might have told her that an idée fixe is not the healthiest companion for a woman of self-contained and secret nature, and that the previous generations of March and Brakelond, feeble-minded or eccentric, held out a special prospect of disaster when such an idée fixe was cherished by herself. However, by now, the time for warnings and advice was past. Gundred was fully possessed by the mania that had arisen so naturally from her devout habits and her weak mind, wrought on by jealousy and by a tyrannous consciousness of being herself the chosen of Heaven. Now she faced what she foresaw to be the punishment of her enemy, with the cold calm of Jael. She was glad that Heaven had taken the affair so promptly into its own hands.

Once before, her Celestial Ally, she remembered, had intervened by a miracle to relieve her from the perilous presence of Isabel Darrell. Now the same prodigy of favour was to be repeated in a different form, and who was she to carp at the tender mercies of the Almighty? With folded hands and placid heart she sat by to let matters take their appointed way. Nothing in all the world would so utterly have horrified her as the statement that she desired the death of Ivor Restormel. She repeated to herself again and again that she wanted nothing of the sort, but had perfect trust in the wisdom of the All-wise. She had no desires of any kind; nothing but pure faith. And to wish for anyone’s death, how very abominable and unchristian and unwomanly! Far, far from her gentle mind was any such truculent passion; the utmost that she would own to herself was that she would find it impossible to grieve when Heaven had taken her enemy to its mercy. And, as for altering the course of events, that was clearly out of the question. She could only await what Heaven should send. She now forgot that she herself, as it were, had given Heaven a nudge in the matter. She deliberately disclaimed all responsibility, and plumed herself on the mildness and resignation that her conduct showed. Stiff and calm in what by now was nothing short of monomania, the unfortunate woman sat and smiled, as her own damnation passed onwards to its accomplishment.

Meanwhile, however, her husband was making a suggestion. She came back out of her dream to hear it.