Transcriber’s Note:

The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE END OF

THE HOUSE OF ALARD

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

Tamarisk Town

Joanna Godden

Green Apple Harvest

The Challenge to Sirius

The Four Roads

The Tramping Methodist

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

THE END OF THE HOUSE OF ALARD

BY

SHEILA KAYE-SMITH

AUTHOR OF “JOANNA GODDEN,” ETC.

“We only know that the last sad squires ride slowly towards the sea,

And a new people takes the land....”

—G. K. Chesterton.

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE

Copyright, 1923

BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

All Rights Reserved

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

PART I
CONSTER MANOR

THE END OF THE HOUSE

OF ALARD

PART I

CONSTER MANOR

§ 1

There are Alards buried in Winchelsea church—they lie in the south aisle on their altar tombs, with lions at their feet. At least one of them went to the Crusades and lies there cross-legged—the first Gervase Alard, Admiral of the Cinque Ports and Bailiff of Winchelsea, a man of mighty stature.

Those were the days just after the Great Storm, when the sea swallowed up the first parish of St. Thomas à Becket, and King Edward laid out a new town on the hoke above Bukenie. The Alards then were powerful on the marsh, rivals of De Icklesham and fighters of the Abbot of Fécamps. They were ship-owners, too, and sent out to sea St. Peter, Nostre Dame and La Nave Dieu. Stephen Alard held half a knight’s fee in the manors of Stonelink, Broomhill and Coghurst, while William Alard lost thirty sailors, thirty sergeants-at-arms, and anchors and ropes, in Gascony.

In the fifteenth century the family had begun to dwindle—its power was passing into the hands of the Oxenbridges, who, when the heiress of the main line married an Oxenbridge, adopted the Alard arms, the lion within a border charged with scallop shells. Thus the trunk ended, but a branch of the William Alards had settled early in the sixteenth century at Conster Manor, near the village of Leasan, about eight miles from Winchelsea. Their shield was argent, three bars gules, on a canton azure a leopard’s head or.

Peter Alard re-built Conster in Queen Elizabeth’s day, making it what it is now, a stone house with three hipped gables and a huge red sprawl of roof. It stands on the hill between Brede Eye and Horns Cross, looking down into the valley of the river Tillingham, with Doucegrove Farm, Glasseye Farm and Starvecrow Farm standing against the woods beyond.

The Alards became baronets under Charles the First, for the Stephen Alard of that day was a gentleman of the bedchamber, and melted down the Alard plate in the King’s lost cause. Cromwell deprived the family of their lands, but they came back at the Restoration, slightly Frenchified and intermarried with the Papist. They were nearly in trouble again when Dutch William was King, for Gervase Alard, a son in orders, became a non-juror and was expelled from the family living of Leasan, though a charge of sedition brought against him collapsed from lack of substance.

Hitherto, though ancient and honourable, the Alards had never been rich, but during the eighteenth century, successful dealings with the East India Company brought them wealth. It was then that they began to buy land. They were no longer content to look across the stream at Doucegrove, Glasseye and Starvecrow, in the hands of yeomen, but one by one these farms must needs become part of their estate. They also bought all the fine woodlands of the Furnace, the farms of Winterland and Ellenwhorne at the Ewhurst end of the Tillingham valley, and Barline, Float and Dinglesden on the marshes towards Rye. They were now big landowners, but their land-hunger was still unsatisfied—Sir William, the Victorian baronet, bought grazings as far away as Stonelink, so that when his son John succeeded him the Alards of Conster owned most of the land between Rye and Ewhurst, the Kent Ditch and the Brede river.

John Alard was about thirty years old when he began to reign. He had spent most of his grown-up life in London-the London of gas and crinolines, Disraeli and Nellie Farren, Tattersalls and Caves of Harmony. He had passed for a buck in Victorian society, with its corruption hidden under outward decorum, its romance smothered under ugly riches in stuffy drawing-rooms. But when the call came to him he valiantly settled down. In Grosvenor Square they spoke of him behind their fans as a young man who had sown his wild oats and was now an eligible husband for the innocent Lucy Kenyon with her sloping shoulders and vacant eyes. He married her as his duty and begat sons and daughters.

He also bought more land, and under him the Alard estates crept over the Brede River and up Snailham hill towards Guestling Thorn. But that was only at the beginning of his squireship. One or two investments turned out badly, and he was forced to a standstill. Then came the bad days of the landowners. Lower and lower dropped the price of land and the price of wheat, hop-substitutes became an electioneering cry in the Rye division of Sussex and the noble gardens by the river Tillingham went fallow. Then came Lloyd George’s Land Act—the rush to the market, the impossibility of sale. Finally the European war of 1914 swept away the little of the Alard substance that was left. They found themselves in possession of a huge ramshackle estate, heavily mortgaged, crushingly taxed.

Sir John had four sons—Hugh, Peter, George and Gervase—and three daughters, Doris, Mary and Janet. Hugh and Peter both went out to fight, and Hugh never came back. George, following a tradition which had ruled in the family since the days of the non-juring Gervase, held the living of Leasan. Gervase at the outbreak of hostilities was only in his second term at Winchester, being nearly eighteen years younger than his brother George.

Of the girls, only Mary was married, though Doris hinted at a number of suitors rejected because of their unworthiness to mate with Alard. Jenny was ten years younger than Mary—she and Gervase came apart from the rest of the family, children of middle age and the last of love.

§ 2

A few days before Christmas in the year 1918, most of the Alards were gathered together in the drawing-room at Conster, to welcome Peter the heir. He had been demobilised a month after the Armistice and was now expected home, to take on himself the work of the estate in the place of his brother Hugh. The Alards employed an agent, and there were also bailiffs on one or two of the farms, but the heir’s presence was badly needed in these difficult days. Sir John held the authority, and the keenness of his interest was in no wise diminished by his age; but he was an old man, nearly seventy-five, and honourably afflicted with the gout. He could only seldom ride on his grey horse from farm to farm, snarling at the bailiff or the stockman, winking at the chicken girl—even to drive out in his heavy Wolsey car gave him chills. So most days he sat at home, and the work was done by him indeed, but as it were by current conducted through the wires of obedient sons and servants.

This afternoon he sat by the fire in the last patch of sunlight, which his wife hankered to have shut off from the damasked armchair.

“It really is a shame to run any risks with that beautiful colour,” she murmured from the sofa. “You know it hasn’t been back from Hampton’s a week, and it’s such very expensive stuff.”

“Why did you choose it?” snarled Sir John.

“Well, it was the best—we’ve always had the best.”

“Next time you can try the second best as a new experience.”

“Your father really is hopeless,” said Lady Alard in a loud whisper to her daughter Doris.

“Sh-sh-sh,” said Doris, equally loud.

“Very poor as an aside, both of you,” said Sir John.

The Reverend George Alard coughed as a preliminary to changing the conversation.

“Our Christmas roses are better than ever this year,” he intoned.

His wife alone supported him.

“They’ll come in beautifully for the Christmas decorations—I hope there’s enough to go round the font.”

“I’d thought of them on the screen, my dear.”

“Oh no! Christmas roses are so appropriate to the font, and besides”—archly—“Sir John will let us have some flowers out of the greenhouse for the screen.”

“I’m damned if I will.”

Rose Alard flushed at the insult to her husband’s cloth which she held to lie in the oath; none the less she stuck to her coaxing.

“Oh, but you always have, Sir John.”

“Have I?—Well, as I’ve just told my wife, there’s nothing like a new experience. I don’t keep three gardeners just to decorate Leasan church, and the flowers happen to be rather scarce this year. I want them for the house.”

“Isn’t he terrible?” Lady Alard’s whispered moan to Doris once more filled the room.

Jenny laughed.

“What are you laughing at, Jenny?”

“Oh, I dunno.”

She was laughing because she wondered if there was anything she could say which would not lead to a squabble.

“Perhaps Gervase will come by the same train as Peter,” she ventured.

“Gervase never let us know when to expect him,” said her mother. “He’s very thoughtless. Now perhaps Appleby will have to make the journey twice.”

“It won’t kill Appleby if he does—he hasn’t had the car out all this week.”

“But Gervase is very thoughtless,” said Mrs. George Alard.

At that moment a slide of wheels was heard in the drive, and the faint sounds of a car coming to anchor.

“Peter!” cried Lady Alard.

“He’s been quick,” said Doris.

George pulled out his watch to be sure about the time, and Jenny ran to the door.

§ 3

The drawing-room was just as it had always been.... The same heavy dignity of line in the old walls and oak-ribbed ceiling spoilt by undue crowding of pictures and furniture. Hothouse flowers stood about in pots and filled vases innumerable ... a water-colour portrait of himself as a child faced him as he came into the room.

“Peter, my darling!”

His mother’s arms were stretched out to him from the sofa—she did not rise, and he knelt down beside her for a moment, letting her enfold him and furiously creating for himself the illusion of a mother he had never known. The illusion seemed to dissipate in a faint scent of lavender water.

“How strange you look out of uniform—I suppose that’s a new suit.”

“Well, I could scarcely have got into my pre-war clothes. I weigh thirteen stone.”

“Quite the heavy Squire,” said Sir John. “Come here and let’s have a look at you.”

Peter went over and stood before his father’s chair—rather like a little boy. As it happened he was a man of thirty-six, tallish, well-built, with a dark, florid face, dark hair and a small dark moustache. In contrast his eyes were of an astounding blue—Saxon eyes, the eyes of Alards who had gone to the Crusades, melted down their plate for the White King, refused to take the oath of allegiance to Dutch William; eyes which for long generations had looked out on the marshes of Winchelsea, and had seen the mouth of the Rother swept in spate from Romney sands to Rye.

“Um,” said Sir John.

“Having a bad turn again, Sir?”

“Getting over it—I’ll be about tomorrow.”

“That’s right, and how’s Mother?”

“I’m better today, dear. But Dr. Mount said he really was frightened last week—I’ve never had such an attack.”

“Why didn’t anyone tell me? I could have come down earlier.”

“I wanted to have you sent for, dear, but the children wouldn’t let me.”

The children, as represented by George Alard and his wife, threw a baffled glance at Peter, seeking to convey that the “attack” had been the usual kind of indigestion which Lady Alard liked to enoble by the name of Angina Pectoris.

Meanwhile, Wills the butler and a young footman were bringing in the tea. Jenny poured it out, the exertion being considered too great for her mother. Peter’s eyes rested on her favourably; she was the one thing in the room, barring the beautiful, delicate flowers, that gave him any real pleasure to look at. She was a large, graceful creature, with a creamy skin, wide, pale mouth, and her mother’s eyes of speckled brown. Her big, beautifully shaped hands moved with a slow grace among the teacups. In contrast with her Doris looked raddled (though she really was moderate and skillful in the make-up of her face and hair) and Rose looked blowsy. He felt glad of Jenny’s youth—soft, slow, asleep.

“Where’s Mary?” he asked suddenly, “I thought she was coming down.”

“Not till New Year’s eve. Julian can’t come with her, and naturally he didn’t want her to be away for Christmas.”

“And how is the great Julian?”

“I don’t know—Mary didn’t say. She hardly ever tells us anything in her letters.”

The door opened and the butler announced—

“Dr. Mount has come to see her ladyship.”

“Oh, Dr. Mount” ... cried Peter, springing up.

“He’s waiting in the morning room, my lady.”

“Show him in here—you’d like him to come in, wouldn’t you, Mother?”

“Yes, of course, dear, but I expect he’ll have had his tea.”

“He can have another. Anyhow, I’d like to see him—I missed him last leave.”

He crossed over to the window. Outside in the drive a small green Singer car stood empty.

“Did Stella drive him over?—She would never stay outside.”

“I can’t see anyone—Hello, doctor—glad you’ve come—have some tea.”

Dr. Mount came into the room. He was a short, healthy little man, dressed in country tweeds, and with the flat whiskers of an old-time squire. He seemed genuinely delighted to see Peter.

“Back from the wars? Well, you’ve had some luck. They say it’ll be more than a year before everyone’s demobbed. You look splendid, doesn’t he, Lady Alard?”

“Yes—Peter always was healthy, you know.”

“I must say he hasn’t given me much trouble. I’d be a poor man if everyone was like him. How’s the wound, Peter? I don’t suppose you even think of it now.”

“I can’t say I do—it never was much. Didn’t Stella drive you over?”

“No—there’s a lot of medicine to make up, so I left her busy in the dispensary.”

“What a useful daughter to have,” sighed Lady Alard. “She can do everything—drive the car, make up medicines——”

“Work in the garden and cook me a thundering good dinner besides!” The little doctor beamed. “I expect she’ll be over here before long, she’ll be wanting to see Peter. She’d have come today if there han’t been such a lot to do.”

Peter put down his teacup and walked over again to the window. Rose Alard and her husband exchanged another of those meaning looks which they found a useful conversational currency.

§ 4

Jenny soon wearied of the drawing-room, even when freshened by Dr. Mount. She always found a stifling quality in Conster’s public rooms, with their misleading show of wealth, and escaped as early as she could to the old schoolroom at the back of the house, looking steeply up through firs at the wooded slope of Brede Eye.

This evening the room was nearly dark, for the firs shut out the dregs of twilight and the moon that looked over the hill. She could just see the outlines of the familiar furniture, the square table on which she and Gervase had scrawled abusive remarks in the intervals of their lessons, the rocking chair, where the ghost of Nurse sometimes still seemed to sit and sway, the bookcase full of children’s books—“Fifty-two Stories for Girls” and “Fifty-two Stories for Boys,” the “Girls of St. Wode’s” and “With Wallace at Bannockburn”—all those faded gilded rows which she still surreptitiously enjoyed.

Now she had an indefinite feeling that someone was in the room, but had scarcely realised it when a shape drew itself up against the window square, making her start and gasp.

“It’s only me,” said an apologetic voice.

“Gervase!”

She switched on the light and saw her brother standing by the table.

“When did you come?”

“Oh, twenty minutes ago. I heard you all gassing away in the drawing-room, so thought I’d come up here till you’d finished with Peter.”

“How sociable and brotherly of you! You might have come in and said how d’you do. You haven’t seen him for a year.”

“I thought I’d be an anti-climax—spoil the Warrior’s Return and all that. I’ll go down in a minute.”

“How was it you and Peter didn’t arrive together? There hasn’t been another train since.”

“I expect Peter came by Ashford, didn’t he? I came down on the other line and got out at Robertsbridge. I thought I’d like the walk.”

“What about your luggage?”

“I left that at Robertsbridge.”

“Really, Gervase, you are the most unpractical person I ever struck. This means we’ll have to send over tomorrow and fetch it—and Appleby has something better to do than tear about the country after your traps.”

“I’ll fetch ’em myself in Henry Ford. Don’t be angry with me, Jenny. Please remember I’ve come home and expect to be treated kindly.”

He came round the table to her and offered her his cheek. He was taller than she was, more coltish and less compact, but they were both alike in being their mother’s children, Kenyons rather than Alards. Their eyes were soft and golden-brown instead of clear Saxon-blue, their skins were pale and their mouths wide.

Jenny hugged him. She was very fond of Gervase, who seemed specially to belong to her at the end of the long, straggled family.

“I’m so glad you’ve come,” she murmured—“come for good. Though I suppose you’ll be off to a crammer’s before long.”

“I daresay I shall, but don’t let’s worry about that now. I’m here till February, anyway. Who’s at home?”

“Everybody except Mary, and she’s coming after Christmas.”

“I wish she’d come before. I like old Mary, and I haven’t seen her for an age. Is Julian coming too?”

“I don’t suppose so. He and Father have had a dreadful row.”

“What about?”

“He wouldn’t lend us any of the money he profiteered out of those collapsible huts.”

“Well, I call it rather cheek of Father to have asked him.”

“It was to be on a mortgage of course; but I quite see it wouldn’t have been much of an investment for Julian. However, Father seems to think it was his duty as a son-in-law to have let us have it. We’re nearly on the rocks, you know.”

“So I’ve been told a dozen times, but the place looks much the same as ever.”

“That’s because Father and Mother can’t get out of their grooves, and there are so few economies which seem worth while. I believe we need nearly fifty thousand to clear the estate.”

“But it’s silly to do nothing.”

“I don’t see what we can do. But I never could understand about mortgages.”

“Nor could I. The only thing I can make out is that our grandfather was a pretty awful fool.”

“He couldn’t read the future. He couldn’t tell the price of land was going down with a bump, and that there would be a European war. I believe we’d have been all right if it hadn’t been for the war.”

“No we shouldn’t—we were going down hill before that. The war only hurried things on.”

“Well certainly it didn’t do for us what it did for Julian—Seventy thousand pounds that man’s made out of blood.”

“Then I really do think he might let us have some of it. What’s Mary’s opinion?”

Jenny shrugged.

“Oh, I dunno. He’s had a row with her too.”

“What?—about the same thing?”

“No—about a man she’s friends with. It’s ridiculous really, for he’s years and years older than she is—a retired naval officer—and awfully nice; I lunched with them both once in town. But it pleases Julian to be jealous, and I believe poor Mary’s had a hideous time.”

“Lord! What upheavals since I was home last! Why doesn’t anyone ever write and tell me about these things?”

“Because we’re all too worried and too lazy. But you’ve heard everything now—and you really must come down and see Peter.”

“I’m coming in a moment. But tell me first—has he changed at all? It’s more than a year since I saw him.”

“I don’t think he’s changed much, except that he’s got stouter.”

“I wonder what he’ll do with himself now he’s home. Is there really a rumour, or have I only dreamed, that he’s keen on Stella Mount?”

“Oh, I believe he’s keen enough. But she hasn’t got a penny. Father will be sick if he marries her.”

She switched off the light, and the window changed from a deep, undetailed blue to a pallid, star-pricked grey, swept across by the tossing branches of trees.

§ 5

At Conster Manor dinner was always eaten in state. Lady Alard took hers apart in her sitting-room, and sometimes Doris had it with her. On his “bad days” Sir John was wont to find Doris a convenient butt, and as she was incapable either of warding off or receiving gracefully the arrows of his wrathful wit, she preserved her dignity by a totally unappreciated devotion to her mother. Tonight, however, she could hardly be absent, in view of Peter’s return, and could only hope that the presence of the heir would distract her father from his obvious facilities.

George and Rose had stayed to dinner in honour of the occasion or rather had come back from a visit to Leasan Vicarage for the purpose of changing their clothes. Rose always resented having to wear evening dress when “just dining with the family.” At the Rectory she wore last year’s summer gown, and it seemed a wicked waste to have to put on one of her only two dance frocks when invited to Conster. But it was a subject on which Sir John had decided views.

“Got a cold in your chest, Rose?” he had inquired, when once she came in her parsonage voile and fichu, and on another occasion had coarsely remarked: “I like to see a woman’s shoulders. Why don’t you show your shoulders, Rose? In my young days every woman showed her shoulders if she’d got any she wasn’t ashamed of. But nowadays the women run either to bone or muscle—so perhaps you’re right.”

Most of the Alard silver was on the table—ribbed, ponderous stuff of eighteenth century date, later than the last of the lost causes in which so much had been melted down. Some fine Georgian and Queen Anne glass and a Spode dinner-service completed the magnificence, which did not, however, extend to the dinner itself. Good cooks were hard to find and ruinously expensive, requiring also their acolytes; so the soup in the Spode tureen might have appeared on the dinner-table of a seaside boarding-house, the fish was represented by greasily fried plaice, followed by a leg of one of the Conster lambs, reduced by the black magic of the kitchen to the flavour and consistency of the worst New Zealand mutton.

Peter noted that things had “gone down,” and had evidently been down for a considerable time, judging by the placidity with which (barring a few grumbles from Sir John) the dinner was received and eaten. The wine, however, was good—evidently the pre-war cellar existed. He began to wonder for the hundredth time what he had better do to tighten the Alard finances—eating bad dinners off costly plate seemed a poor economy. Also why were a butler and two footmen necessary to wait on the family party? The latter were hard-breathing young men, recently promoted from the plough, and probably cheap enough, but why should his people keep up this useless and shoddy state when their dear lands were in danger? Suppose that in order to keep their footmen and their silver and their flowers they had to sell Ellenwhorne or Glasseye—or, perhaps, even Starvecrow....

After the dessert of apples from Conster orchard and a dish of ancient nuts which had remained untasted and unchanged since the last dinner-party, the women and Gervase left the table for the drawing-room. Gervase had never sought to emphasise his man’s estate by sitting over his wine—he always went out like this with the women, and evidently meant to go on doing so now he had left school. George on the other hand remained, though he rather aggressively drank nothing but water.

“It’s not that I consider there is anything wrong in drinking wine,” he explained broad-mindedly to Sir John and Peter, “but I feel I must set an example.”

“To whom?” thundered Sir John.

“To my parishioners.”

“Well, then, since you’re not setting it to us, you can clear out and join the ladies. I won’t see you sit there despising my port—which is the only good port there’s been in the Rye division since ’16—besides I want a private talk with Peter.”

The big clergyman rose obediently and left the room, his feelings finding only a moment’s expression at the door, when he turned round and tried (not very successfully) to tell Peter by a look that Sir John must not be allowed to drink too much port in his gouty condition.

“He’s a fool,” said his father just before he had shut the door. “I don’t know what the church is coming to. In my young days the Parson drank his bottle with the best of ’em. He didn’t go about being an example. Bah! who’s going to follow Georgie’s example?”

“Who, indeed?” said Peter, who had two separate contempts for parsons and his brother George, now strengthened by combination.

“Well, pass me the port anyhow. Look here, I want to talk to you—first time I’ve got you alone. What are you going to do now you’re back?”

“I don’t know, Sir. I’ve scarcely had time to think.”

“You’re the heir now, remember. I’d rather you stayed here. You weren’t thinking of going back into Lightfoot’s, were you?”

“I don’t see myself in the city again. Anyhow I’d sooner be at Conster.”

“That’s right. That’s your place now. How would you like to be Agent?”

“I’d like it very much, Sir. But can it be done? What about Greening?”

“He’s an old fool, and has been muddling things badly the last year or two. He doesn’t want to stay. I’ve been talking to him about putting you in, and he seemed glad.”

“I’d be glad too, Sir.”

“You ought to know more about the estate than you do. It’ll be yours before long—I’m seventy-five, you know. When Hugh was alive I thought perhaps a business career was best for you, so kept you out of things. You’ll have to learn a lot.”

“I love the place, Sir—I’m dead keen.”

“Yes, I remember you always wanted.... Of course I’ll put you into Starvecrow.”

“Starvecrow!”

“Don’t repeat my words. The Agent has always lived at Starvecrow, and there are quite enough of us here in the house. Besides there’s another thing. How old are you?”

“Thirty-six.”

“Time you married, ain’t it?”

“I suppose it is.”

“I was thirty, myself, when I married, but thirty-six is rather late. How is it you haven’t married earlier?”

“Oh, I dunno—the war I suppose.”

“The war seems to have had the opposite effect on most people. But my children don’t seem a marrying lot. Doris ... Hugh ... there’s Mary, of course, and George, but I don’t congratulate either of ’em. Julian’s a mean blackguard, and Rose——” Sir John defined Rose in terms most unsuitable to a clergyman’s wife.

“You really must think about it now,” he continued—“you’re the heir; and of course you know—we want money.”

Peter did not speak.

“We want money abominably,” said Sir John, “in fact I don’t know how we’re to carry on much longer without it. I don’t want to have to sell land—indeed, it’s practically impossible, all trussed up as we are. Starvecrow could go, of course, but it’s useful for grazing and timber.”

“You’re not thinking of selling Starvecrow?”

“I don’t want to—we’ve had it nearly two hundred years; it was the first farm that Giles Alard bought. But it’s also the only farm we’ve got in this district that isn’t tied—there’s a mortgage on the grazings down by the stream, but the house is free, with seventy acres.”

“It would be a shame to let it go.”

Peter was digging into the salt-cellar with his dessert knife.

“Well, I rely on you to help me keep it. Manage the estate well and marry money.”

“You’re damn cynical, Sir. Got any especial—er—money in your mind?”

“No, no—of course not. But you ought to get married at your age, and you might as well marry for the family’s advantage as well as your own.”

Peter was silent.

“Oh, I know there’s a lot to be said against getting married, but in your position—heir to a title and a big estate—it’s really a duty. I married directly my father died. But don’t you wait for that—you’re getting on.”

“But who am I to marry? There’s not such a lot of rich girls round here.”

“You’ll soon find one if you make up your mind to it. My plan is first make up your mind to get married and then look for the girl—not the other way round, which is what most men do, and leads to all kinds of trouble. Of course I know it isn’t always convenient. But what’s your special objection? Any entanglement? Don’t be afraid to tell me. I know there’s often a little woman in the way.”

Peter squirmed at his father’s Victorian ideas of dissipation with their “little women.” He’d be talking of “French dancers” next....

“I haven’t any entanglement, Sir.”

“Then you take my words to heart. I don’t ask you to marry for money, but marry where money is, as Shakespeare or somebody said.”

§ 6

Peter found a refreshing solitude in the early hours of the next day. His mother and Doris breakfasted upstairs, his father had characteristically kept his promise to “be about tomorrow,” and had actually ridden out before Peter appeared in the morning room at nine. Jenny, who was a lazy young woman, did not come down till he had finished, and Gervase, in one of those spasms of eccentricity which made Peter sometimes a little ashamed of him, had gone without breakfast altogether, and driven off in the Ford lorry to fetch his luggage, sustained by an apple.

The morning room was full of early sunlight—dim as yet, for the mists were still rising from the Tillingham valley and shredding slowly into the sky. The woods and farms beyond the river were hidden in the same soft cloud. Peter opened the window, and felt the December rasp in the air. Oh, it was good to be back in this place, and one with it now, the heir.... No longer the second son who must live away from home and make his money in business.... He stifled the disloyalty to his dead brother. Poor old Hugh, who was so solemn and so solid and so upright.... But Hugh had never loved the place as he did—he had never been both transported and abased by his honour of inheritance.

As soon as he had eaten his breakfast Peter went out, at his heels a small brown spaniel, who for some reason had not gone with the other dogs after Sir John. They went down the garden, over the half melted frost of the sloping lawns, through the untidy shrubbery of fir, larch and laurel, to the wooden fence that shut off Conster from the marshes of the Tillingham. The river here had none of the pretensions with which it circled Rye, but was little more than a meadow-stream, rather full and angry with winter. Beyond it, just before the woods began, lay Beckley Furnace with its idle mill.

And away against the woods lay Starvecrow ... just as he had dreamed of it so many times in France, among the blasted fields. “Starvecrow”—he found himself repeating the name aloud, but not as it was written on the map, rather as it was written on the lips of the people to whom its spirit belong—“Starvycrow ... Starvycrow.”

It was a stone house built about the same time as Conster, but without the compliment to Gloriana implied in three gables. It lacked the grace of Conster—the grace both of its building and of its planting. It stood foursquare and forthright upon the slope, with a great descent of wavy, red-brown roof towards the mouth of the valley, a shelter from the winds that came up the Tillingham from the sea. It seemed preeminently a home, sheltered, secure, with a multitude of chimneys standing out against the background of the woods. From one of them rose a straight column of blue smoke, unwavering in the still, frost-thickened air.

Peter crossed the stream by the bridge, then turned up Starvecrow’s ancient drive. There was no garden, merely an orchard with a planting of flowers under the windows. Peter did not ring, but walked straight in at the side door. The estate office had for long years been at Starvecrow, a low farmhouse room in which the office furniture looked incongruous and upstart.

“I’ll change all this,” thought Peter to himself—I’ll have a gate-legged table and Jacobean chairs.

The room was empty, but the agents wife had heard him come in.

“That you, Mr. Alard? I thought you’d be over. Mr. Greening’s gone to Winterland this morning. They were complaining about their roof. He said he’d be back before lunch.”

Peter shook hands with Mrs. Greening and received rather abstractedly her congratulations on his return. He was wondering if she knew he was to supplant them at Starvecrow.

She did, for she referred to it the next minute, and to his relief did not seem to resent the change.

“We’re getting old people, and for some time I’ve been wanting to move into the town. It’ll be a good thing to have you here, Mr. Alard—bring all the tenants more in touch with the family. Not that Sir John doesn’t do a really amazing amount of work....”

She rambled on, then suddenly apologised for having to leave him—a grandchild staying in the house was ill.

“Shall you wait for Mr. Greening? I’m afraid he won’t be in for an hour at least.”

“I’ll wait for a bit anyway. I’ve some letters to write.”

He went into the office and sat down. The big ugly rolltop desk was littered with papers—memoranda, bills, estimates, plans of farms, lists of stock-prices. He cleared a space, seized a couple of sheets of the estate note-paper, and began to write.

“My loveliest Stella,” he wrote.

§ 7

He had nearly covered the two sheets when the rattle of a car sounded in the drive below. He looked up eagerly and went to the window, but it was only Gervase lurching over the ruts in the Ford, just scraping past the wall as he swung round outside the house, just avoiding a collision with an outstanding poplar, after the usual manner of his driving.

The next minute he was in the office.

“Hullo! They told me you were over here. I’ve just fetched my luggage from Robertsbridge.”

He sat down on the writing-table and lit a cigarette. Peter hastily covered up his letter. Why did Gervase come bothering him now?

“I wanted to speak to you,” continued his brother. “You’ll be the best one to back me up against Father.”

“What is it now?” asked Peter discouragingly.

“An idea came to me while I was driving over. I often get ideas when I drive, and this struck me as rather a good one. I think it would be just waste for me to go to a crammer’s and then to Oxford. I don’t want to go in for the church or the bar or schoolmastering or anything like that, and I don’t see why the family should drop thousands on my education just because I happen to be an Alard. I want to go in for engineering in some way and you don’t need any ’Varsity for that. I could go into some sort of a shop....”

“Well, if the way you drive a car is any indication——”

“I can drive perfectly well when I think about it. Besides, that won’t be my job. I want to learn something in the way of construction and all that. I always was keen, and it strikes me now that I’d much better go in for that sort of thing than something which won’t pay for years. There may be some sort of a premium to fork out, but it’ll be nothing compared to what it would cost to send me to Oxford.”

“You talk as if we were paupers,” growled Peter.

“Well, so we are, aren’t we?” said Gervase brightly. “Jenny was talking to me about it last night. She says we pay thousands a year in interest on mortgages, and as for paying them off and selling the land, which is the only thing that can help us....”

“I don’t see that it’s your job, anyway.”

“But I could help. Really it seems a silly waste to send me to Oxford when I don’t want to go.”

“You need Oxford more than any man I know. If you went there you might pick up some notions of what’s done, and get more like other people.”

“I shouldn’t get more like other people, only more like other Oxford men.”

Peter scowled. He intensely disapproved of the kid’s verbal nimbleness, which his more weighty, more reputable argument could only lumber after.

“You’ve got to remember you’re a gentleman’s son,” he remarked in a voice which suggested sitting down just as Gervase’s had suggested a skip and a jump.

“Well, lots of them go in for engineering. We’re in such a groove. I daresay you think this is just a sudden idea of mine——”

“You’ve just told me it is.”

“I know, but I’ve been thinking for ages that I didn’t want to go to Oxford. If I took up engineering I could go into a shop at Ashford.... But I’ll have to talk to Father about it. I expect he’ll be frightfully upset—the only Alard who hasn’t been to the Varsity and all that ... but, on the other hand, he’s never bothered about me so much as about you and George, because there’s no chance of my coming into the estate.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure,” gibed Peter.

“Yes, of course, you might both die just to spite me—but it wouldn’t be sporting of you. I don’t want to be Sir Gervase Alard, Bart.—I’d much rather be Alard and Co., Motor-engineers.”

“You damn well shan’t be that.”

“Well, it’s a long time ahead, anyway. But do back me up against Father about not going to Oxford. It really ought to help us a lot if I don’t go—a son at the ’Varsity’s a dreadful expense, and when that son’s me, it’s a waste into the bargain.”

“Well, I’ll see about it. My idea is that you need Oxford more than—hullo, who’s that?”

“Dr. Mount,” said Gervase looking out of the window.

Peter rose and looked out too, in time to see the doctor’s car turning in the sweep. This morning he himself was not at the wheel, but was driven by what looked like a warm bundle of furs with a pair of bright eyes looking out between collar and cap.

Peter opened the window.

“Stella!” he cried.

§ 8

A minute later Stella Mount was in the room. Gervase had not seen her for several years; during the greater part of the war she had been away from home, first at a munition factory, then as an auxiliary driver to the Army Service Corps. When last they had met the gulf between the schoolboy of fourteen and the girl of twenty had yawned much wider than between the youth of eighteen and the young woman of twenty-four. Stella looked, if anything, younger than she had looked four years ago, and he was also of an age to appreciate her beauty which he had scarcely noticed on the earlier occasions.

In strict point of fact Stella was not so much beautiful as pretty, for there was nothing classic in her little heart-shaped face, with its wide cheek-bones, pointed chin and puckish nose. On the other hand there was nothing of that fragile, conventional quality which prettiness is understood to mean. Everything about Stella was healthy, warm and living—her plump little figure, the glow on her cheeks, the shine of her grey eyes between their lashes, like pools among reeds, the decision of her chin and brows, the glossy, tumbling masses of her hair, all spoke of strength and vigour, a health that was almost hardy.

She came into the room like a flame, and Gervase felt his heart warming. Then he remembered that she was Peter’s—Jenny had said so, though she had not blessed Peter’s possession.

“How d’you do, Stella?” he said, “it’s ages since we met. Do you know who I am?”

“Of course I do. You haven’t altered much, except in height. You’ve left Winchester for good now, haven’t you?”

“Yes—and I’ve just been arguing with Peter about what I’m to do with myself now I’m home.”

“How very practical of you! I hope Peter was helpful.”

“Not in the least.”

He could feel Peter’s eyes upon him, telling him to get out of the way and leave him alone with his bright flame....

“Well, I must push off—they may be wanting the Ford at home.”

He shook hands with Stella, nodded to Peter, and went out.

For a moment Peter and Stella faced each other in silence. Then Peter came slowly up to her and took her in his arms, hiding his face in her neck.

“O Stella—O my beauty!...”

She did not speak, but her arms crept round him. They could scarcely meet behind his broad back—she loved this feeling of girth which she could not compass, combined as it was with a queer tender sense of his helplessness, of his dependence on her——

“O Peter,” she whispered—“my little Peter....”

“I was writing to you, darling, when you came.”

“And I was on my way to see you at Conster. Father was going there after he’d called on little Joey Greening. I wouldn’t come yesterday—I thought your family would be all over you, and I didn’t like....”

She broke off the sentence and he made no effort to trim the ragged end. Her reference to his family brought back into his thoughts the conversation he had had with his father over the wine. She had always felt his family as a cloud, as a barrier between them, and it would be difficult to tell her that now he was the heir, now he was home from the war, instead of being removed the cloud would be heavier and the barrier stronger.

“I’m so glad you came here”—he breathed into her hair—“that our first meeting’s at Starvecrow.”

“Yes—I’m glad, too.”

Peter sat down in the leather-covered office chair, holding Stella on his knee.

“Child—they’re going to give me Starvecrow.”

“O Peter!”...

“Yes—Greening wants to leave, and my father’s making me agent in his place.”

“How lovely! Shall you come and live here?”

“Yes.”

The monosyllable came gruffly because of the much more that he wanted to say. It was a shame to have such reserves spoil their first meeting.

“I’m so awfully, wonderfully glad, Peter darling.”

She hid her soft, glowing face in his neck—she was lying on his breast like a child, but deliciously heavy, her feet swung off the floor.

“Stella—my sweetheart—beautiful....”

His love for her gave him a sweet wildness of heart, and he who was usually slow of tongue, became almost voluble——

“Oh, I’ve longed for this—I’ve thought of this, dreamed of this.... And you’re lovelier than ever, you dear.... Stella, sweetheart, let me look into your eyes—close to—like that ... your eyelashes turn back like the petals of a flower.... O you wonderful, beautiful thing ... And it’s so lovely we should have met here instead of at home—the dearest person in the dearest place ... Stella at Starvecrow.”

“Starvycrow,” she repeated gently.

For a moment he felt almost angry that she should have used his name—his private music. But his anger melted into his love. She used his name because she, alone in all the world, felt his feelings and thought his thoughts. Perhaps she did not love Starvecrow quite as he did, but she must love it very nearly as much or she would not call it by its secret name. They sat in silence, her head upon his shoulder, his arms about her, gathering her up on his knees. On the hearth a log fire softly hummed and sighed. Ages seemed to flow over them, the swift eternities of love.... Then suddenly a voice called “Stella!” from the drive.