§ 1

George Alard’s death affected his brother Peter out of all proportion to his life. While George was alive, Peter had looked upon him rather impatiently as a nuisance and a humbug—a nuisance because of his attempts to thrust parochial honours on his unwilling brother, a humbug because religion was so altogether remote from Peter’s imagination that he could not credit the sincerity of any man (he was not so sure about women) who believed in it. But now that George was dead he realised that, in spite of his drawbacks, he had been a link in the Alard chain, and that link now was broken. If Peter now died childless, his heir would be Gervase—Gervase with his contempt of the Alard traditions and ungentlemanly attitude towards life. Gervase was capable of selling the whole place. It would be nothing to him if Sir Gervase Alard lived in a villa at Hastings or a flat at West Kensington, or a small-holding at his own park gates, whatever was the fancy of the moment—no, he had forgotten—it was to be a garage—“Sir Gervase Alard. Cars for hire. Taxies. Station Work.”

These considerations made him unexpectedly tender towards his sister-in-law Rose when she moved out of Leasan Parsonage into a small house she had taken in the village. Rose could not bear the thought of being cut off from Alard, of being shut out of its general councils, of being deprived of its comfortable hospitality half as daughter, half as guest. Also she saw the advantages of the great house for her children, the little girls. Her comparative poverty—for George had not left her much—made it all the more necessary that she should prop herself against Conster. Living there under its wing, she would have a far better position than if she set up her independence in some new place where she would be only a clergyman’s widow left rather badly off.

Peter admired Rose for these tactics. She would cling to Alard, even in the certainty of being perpetually meddled with and snubbed. He lent her his car to take her and her more intimate belongings to the new house, promised her the loan of it whenever she wanted, and gave her a general invitation to Starvecrow, rather to Vera’s disquiet. He had hated Rose while his brother was alive—he had looked upon her as a busybody and an upstart—but now he loved her for her loyalty, self-interested though it was, and was sorry that she had for ever lost her chance of becoming Lady Alard.

He made one or two efforts to impress Gervase with a sense of his responsibility as heir-apparent, but was signally unsuccessful.

“My dear old chap,” said his irreverent brother—“you’ll probably have six children, all boys, so it’s cruel to raise my hopes, which are bound to be dashed before long.”

Peter looked gloomy. Gervase had hit him on a tender, anxious spot. He had now been married more than a year, and there was no sign of his hopes being fulfilled. He told himself he was an impatient fool—Jewish women were proverbially mothers of strong sons. But the very urgency of his longing made him mistrust its fulfilment—Vera was civilised out of race—she ran too much to brains. She had, to his smothered consternation, produced a small volume of poems and essays, which she had had typed and sent expectantly to a publisher. Peter was not used to women doing this sort of thing, and it alarmed him. If they did it, he could not conceive how they could also do the more ordinary and useful things that were expected of them.

His father laughed at him.

“Peter—you’re a yokel. Your conception of women is on a level with Elias’s and Lambard’s.”

“No, it isn’t, Sir—that’s just what’s the matter. I can’t feel cocksure about things most men feel cocksure about. That’s why I wish you’d realise that there’s every chance of Gervase coming into the property——”

“My dear Peter, you are the heir.”

“Yes, Sir. But if I don’t leave a son to come after me....”

“Well, I refuse to bother about what may happen forty years after I’m dead. If you live to my age—and there’s no reason you shouldn’t, as you’re a healthy man—it’ll be time to think about an heir. Gervase may be dead before that.”

“He’s almost young enough to be my son.”

“But what in God’s name do you want me to do with him? Am I to start already preparing him for his duties as Sir Gervase Alard?”

“You might keep a tighter hand on him, Sir.”

“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.