“Damn it all! Are you going to teach me how to bring up my own son?”
“No, Sir. But what I feel is that you’re not bringing him up as you brought up George and me and poor Hugh—you’re letting him go his own way. You don’t bother about him because you don’t think he’s a chance of coming into the property. And two of the three of us have got out of his way since he was sixteen.... He’s precious near it now. And yet you let him have his head over that engineering business, and now you’ve given way about his religion.”
“The engineering business was settled long ago, and has saved us a lot of money—more than paid for that fool Mary’s fling. What we’ve spent on the roundabouts we’ve saved on the swings all right. As for the religion—he’ll grow out of that all the quicker for my leaving him alone. I got poor George to talk to him, but that didn’t do any good, so I’ve decided to let him sicken himself, which he’s bound to do sooner or later the way he goes at it.”
“The fact is, Sir—you’ve never looked upon Gervase as the heir, and you can’t do so now, though he virtually is the heir.”
“Indeed he isn’t. The heir is master Peter John Alard, whose christening mug I’m going to buy next Christmas”—and Sir John made one or two other remarks in his coarse Victorian fashion.
Peter knew he was a fool to be thinking about his heir. His father, though an old man, was still hale—his gout only served to show what a fighter he was; and he himself was a man in the prime of life, healthy and sound. Was it that the war had undermined his sense of security?—He caught uneasy glimpses of another reason, hidden deeper ... a vague sense that it would be awful to have sacrificed so much for Alard and Starvecrow, and find his sacrifice in vain—to have given up Stella Mount (who would certainly not have given him a book instead of a baby) only that his brother Gervase might some day degrade Alard, sell Starvecrow and (worst of all) marry Stella.
§ 2
For in his heart Peter too expected Gervase to marry Stella. He knew there was a most unsuitable difference in their ages, but it weighed little against his expectation. He expected Gervase to marry Stella for the same reason that he expected to die without leaving an heir—because he feared it. Besides, his family talked continually of the possibility, and here again showed that obtuseness in the matter of Gervase that he deplored. They had no objection to his marrying Stella Mount, because he was the younger son, and it wasn’t imperative for him to marry money, as it had been for Peter. Another reason for Peter’s expectation was perhaps that he could not understand a man being very much in Stella’s society and not wanting to marry her. She was pretty, gentle, capable, comfortable, and oh! so sweet to love—she would make an excellent wife, even to a man many years younger than herself; she would be a mother to him as well as to his children.
This did not mean that Peter was dissatisfied with Vera. His passion for her had not cooled at the end of a year. She was still lovely and desirable. But he now realised definitely that she did not speak his language or think his thoughts—the book of poems was a proof of it, if he had required other proof than her attitude towards Starvecrow. Vera was all right about the family—she respected Alard—but she was remarkably out of tune with the farm. She could not understand the year-in-year-out delight it was to him. She had even suggested that they should take a house in London for the winter—and miss the ploughing of the clays, the spring sowings, and the early lambing! “The country’s so dreary in winter,” she had said.
This had frightened Peter—he found it difficult to adjust himself to such an outlook ... it was like the first morning when he had found she meant always to have breakfast in bed.... Stella would never have suggested that he should miss the principal feasts of the farmer’s year.... But Stella had not Vera’s beauty or power or brilliance—nor had she (to speak crudely) Vera’s money, and if he had married her Starvecrow would probably now have been in the auction market.