§ 20

At about seven o’clock that evening a message came up from Conster, and as Peter was still out, it was brought to Vera. It was marked “immediate,” so she opened it.

“Who brought this, Weller?”

“The gardener’s boy, Ma’am.”

“Tell him Mr. Alard is out at present, but I’ll send him over as soon as he comes home——Sir John’s had another stroke,” she told her mother.

“Oh, my dear! How dreadful—I wish you hadn’t opened the letter. Shocks are so bad for you.”

“It wasn’t a shock at all, thanks. I’ve been expecting it for weeks. Besides, one really can’t want the poor old man to live much longer. He was getting a perfect nuisance to himself and everybody, and if he’d lived on might have done some real damage to the estate. Now Peter may just be able to save it, in spite of the death-duties.”

“But, my dear, he isn’t dead yet!” cried Mrs. Asher, a little shocked. She belonged to a generation to which the death of anybody however old, ill, unloved or unlovely, could never be anything but a calamity.

“He’s not likely to survive a second stroke,” said Vera calmly. “I’m sorry for the poor old thing, but really it’s time he went. And I want Peter to come into the estate before he’s quite worn out and embittered. It’s high time he was his own master—it’ll pull him together again—he’s been all to pieces lately.”

“And it’ll quite settle the Stella Mount business,” she added secretly to herself.

The next hour passed, and Weller came up to ask if she should bring in the dinner.

“What can have happened to Peter!” exclaimed Vera.

“I daresay he met the messenger on his way back, and went straight to Conster.”

“Then it was very inconsiderate of him not to send me word. Yes, Weller, bring the dinner up here. You’ll have it with me, won’t you, Mother, as Peter isn’t in?”

They were eating their fruit when Weller came in with another “Urgent.” It was from Doris, and ran—

“Hasn’t Peter come back yet? Do send him over at once whenever he does. Father is dying. Dr. Mount does not expect him to last the night. We have wired to Jenny and Mary and even Gervase. Do send Peter along. He ought to be here.”

“How exactly like Doris to write as if we were deliberately keeping Peter away! I don’t know where he is. Doris might realise that I’m the last person who’d know.”

Her hands were trembling, and she whimpered a little as she crushed up the note and flung it across the room into the fireplace.

“Don’t be upset, Vera darling. Nothing could possibly have happened to him—we should have heard. He’s probably accepted a sudden invitation to dinner, the same as he did to lunch.”

“I know nothing’s happened to him—I’m not afraid of that. I know where he is....”

“Then if you know ...”

“He’s with Stella Mount,” and Vera hid her face in the pillow, sobbing hysterically.

Mrs. Asher tried to soothe her, tried to make her turn over and talk coherently, but with that emotional abandonment which lay so close to her mental sophistication, she remained with her face obstinately buried, and sobbed on. Her mother had heard about Stella Mount, chiefly from Rose, but had never given the idea much credit. She did not credit it now. But to pacify Vera she sent over a carefully worded message to Dr. Mount’s cottage, asking that if Mr. Peter Alard was there he should be told at once that he was wanted over at Conster.

The boy came back with the reply that Mr. Alard was not at Vinehall, and had not been there that day. Everyone but the maid was out—Dr. Mount at Conster Manor and Miss Mount in church.

“That proves nothing,” said Vera—“he needn’t have met her at the house.”

“But if she’s in church——”

“How do we know she’s in church? She only left word with the maid that she’s gone there——” and Vera’s sobs broke out again until the nurse begged her to calm herself for the sake of the child. Which she promptly did, for she was a good mother.