He moved away from her, and was going into the dining-room when Rose’s frightened voice suddenly shuddered down the stairs.
“Dr. Mount—will you please come up at once. There’s a change in Sir John.”
§ 24
Sir John Alard died when the cocks were crowing on Starvecrow and Glasseye and Doucegrove, and on other farms of his wide-flung estate too far away for the sound to come to Conster. His wife and daughters and daughter-in-law were with him when he died, but he knew no one. His mind did not come out of its retreat for any farewells, and if it had, would have found a body stiffened, struggling, intractable, and disobedient to the commands of speech and motion it had obeyed mechanically for nearly eighty years. Death came and brought the gift of dignity—a dignity he had never quite achieved in all his lifetime of rule. When his family came in for a last look, after the doctor and the nurse had performed their offices, they saw that the querulous, irascible old man of the last few months was gone, and in his place lay Something he had never been of stillness and marble beauty. When Dr. Mount had invited them in to the death-chamber, the daughters had at first refused, and changed their minds only when they found that Lady Alard was unexpectedly ready to go. Now Jenny at least was glad. It was her first sight of death (for she had not seen George’s body and would never see Peter’s) and she was surprised to find how peaceful and triumphant the body looked when set free from the long tyranny of the soul. It comforted her to know that in its last fatal encounter with terror, pain and woe, humanity was allowed to achieve at least the appearance of victory. Her father lying there looked like one against whom all the forces of evil had done their worst in vain.
Nobody cried except Doris, who cried a great deal. She had not cried for Peter, but when her father’s spirit had slipped out after a sigh, she had burst into a storm of noisy weeping. She was sobbing still, kneeling beside the body of the father who had bullied and humiliated her all her life, the only one of his children who really regretted him.
There was the sound of wheels in the drive below.
“Is that Gervase?” asked Jenny, going to the window.
“No,” said Mary, “it’s Dr. Mount going away.”
“He seems in a great hurry to get off,” said Rose—“he didn’t wait a minute longer than he could possibly help.”
“I don’t wonder,” said Jenny.