"Why did you think that?" asked the Squire, with the sensation of treading on very thin ice.

"Oh, it was common talk of how she was going on--_had_ been, I should say, for she did seem to have calmed down within the last year.

Otherwise, I think I should have made up my mind to give Humphrey a hint, disagreeable as it would have been. Things were being hinted at about a year ago that made me think we might find ourselves involved in some bad scandal before we were much older."

"Oh, d.i.c.k," the Squire broke out, "we mustn't talk like this about a dead woman. Humphrey told me everything. It's all wiped out and done with now, for her, poor girl."

"Yes," said d.i.c.k. "But I'm not going to pretend that I think her death is a calamity. I don't; although any feeling one may have had against her is wiped out, as you say. In fact, if she had begun to pull herself up, as I think she had, and had got it all off her mind before she died, as I suppose she did, it's possible to feel kindly towards her. Still, I think she had made too big a mess of things. It would have come between them. As it is, he'll be able to think of her without bitterness. He'll get over the shock in time."

This was all so much what the Squire felt himself, summed up as it might have been in the comfortable phrase, "all for the best," that its effect upon him was much the same as if he had had the relief of telling d.i.c.k everything. He cheered up palpably, until he remembered what lay immediately in front of him; but faced even that with more equanimity, upheld by d.i.c.k's sympathetic support, and relieved of some doubt as to whether his thoughts about poor Susan were quite of the right colour.

The afternoon train, which in the course of these histories we have so often met at Kencote Station, brought the coffin and the mourners.

Humphrey looked pale and worn, but collected. He stood with his mother's arm in his while the coffin, covered with flowers, was taken out of the purple-lined van, and lifted on to a hand bier. The church was much nearer to the station than the house, and the little procession walked there, past the cottages with blinds all drawn, and the villagers standing by them, mostly in black, which only served to heighten the bright colours of the flowers with which the gardens were full. The sky was of the purest blue, and larks trilled unseen in its translucent vapours, as if to draw the thoughts of the mourners away from the earth in which they were presently to see these mortal remains laid. The elms and chestnuts whispered of life going on and renewing itself year by year until the end. The rich springing growth of early summer in this quiet country village spoke of life and of hope; and the black line of mourners moving slowly along was not incongruous with it, if the poor clay they were escorting was really only the husk from which new life had already sprung.

The Squire, sobered to becoming gravity by the sight of the coffin, yet felt his thoughts tuned to the beauty of the sky and the familiar surroundings. It was he who had planned this walking escort. There would be carriages, and a state suitable to the occasion on the morrow.

This was to be a home-coming, a token of his forgiveness of her for the trouble she had caused him, a sort of last taste of the everyday life of Kencote, into the intimacy of which she was finally to be received as a daughter of the house. It appealed also to that sense of common human life, which is the fine flower of squiredom. Death levels all; he had no feeling that the cottagers standing at their garden gates were intruding their curiosity, as was felt by Susan's mother for one, who thought this public tramp between a station and a church an outrage on her n.o.bility. The cottagers were his friends on an occasion like this, had a right to share mourning as well as festival with the family in whose interests they were hereditarily bound up. He took comfort from seeing them there. They were his people; without them this quiet home-coming would have been incomplete.

The coffin was taken into the chancel of the ancient church, and set down over the bra.s.s of a knightly Clinton who had died and been buried there five centuries before. Almost without exception those who followed it were his direct descendants, and the same stones surrounded them as had sheltered the mourners at his funeral. So many years, so little change! Christening, marriage, burial--the renewal of life in the same stock had gone on through the centuries. This new burial was only a ripple in the steady, pauseless flow, and would have been no more if the head of the house himself had lain where this poor, foolish, erring girl, now hardly regretted, and soon to be forgotten, was laid.

A few prayers were said, and a hymn sung, and then she was left to lie there alone. Shafts of sunlight would slant across the stones, and fading, give place to twilight, then to dusk, then to darkness. The church would be very still. Dawn would come, with the sweet twittering of birds, and the sun would once more strike through the armorial gla.s.s of the East window, and paint stone and timber with bright colour; and still she would be lying there, dead to the glory of a new day as she had been dead to the darkness of the night. Nothing would matter to her any more. In a little while her dust would mingle with that of long generations of Clintons forgotten, and her memory would pa.s.s away as theirs had pa.s.sed. Her life had been everything to her, her wants and hopes and regrets the centre of her being. Now it was as if it had never been--for her, lying in the still church.

But her acts lived. The ripples she had caused in the pond of life would spread, intersecting other ripples caused by other acts, until they reached the border.

When they had returned to the house Nancy went up with Joan into her room--the room in which they had slept side by side for all but a few nights in their lives until Nancy's marriage. There was only one bed in the room now.

"How odd it looks!" said Nancy. "Do you miss me, my precious old Joan?"

"Of course I do," said Joan. "I had to make them take your bed out.

It made me feel so horribly lonely."

"If John is ever unkind to me," said Nancy, "I shall come here and have it put back."

She checked herself. No vestige of a joke was to be allowed until after to-morrow. She thought herself unfeeling for even inclining to light speech. To her and Joan the death of someone not much older than themselves was a startling thing; and the death of anyone so close to them, in their inexperience of death, would have subdued them for a time.

"Let's go and talk in the schoolroom," Nancy said. "n.o.body will come there."

They sat together on the old comfortable sofa, arms entwined. The absence of sentiment with which they had been accustomed to treat one another had given place to frequent signs of affection. They had hardly been more together during their childhood than since Nancy had come to Kencote after her honeymoon the day before. Their stream of talk flowed unceasingly. Oceans of separate experience had to be bridged.

Now they put aside for a time their own affairs of the past and future, and talked about the immediate present.

"Did you speak to Humphrey?" Joan asked. "I didn't; but I thought he looked awful."

"He kissed me when we came in," said Nancy, "and said he was glad I had come back in time. He spoke much the same as usual, but went away directly. Joan, how awful he must be feeling! Just think what John would feel if he were to lose me!"

"You haven't been married so long," said Joan; but immediately added, "I suppose that wouldn't make any difference, though. I do feel frightfully sorry for Humphrey. I almost think it would have been better if the funeral had been at once, instead of making it like two.

It must be awful for him to think of her lying there all alone in the church. You know, Uncle Tom wanted to have tapers and somebody to watch; but father wouldn't."

"No; I didn't know that. Why?"

"He said candles were Roman Catholic; and that there would be n.o.body who wanted to watch. I think he was right there. You know, Nancy, I think the saddest thing about it is that there is n.o.body who is very sorry for poor Susan's death--except Humphrey. I don't think her own people are. None of them looked it."

"Lady Aldeburgh cried."

"She pretended to. Her eyes were quite dry."

"I liked Susan. So did you."

"Yes, in a way. Perhaps not very much. I wish I had liked her more, now. I _am_ sorry, of course. But I feel much more glad at having you again, than sorry because she is dead."

Nancy gave her a squeeze. "I can't realise that she is dead," she said, "that she was in that coffin. I felt just a little bit like choking when Uncle Tom read that part about a place of rest and peace.

It was so dreadful to think of her being dead; but that seemed to alter it all. If she is somewhere alive still--and happy!"

"Yes," said Joan seriously. "I hope Humphrey is thinking about that."

On the morrow there was a difficult time to get through before the funeral, at twelve o'clock. The Squire took the "Times" into his room when it came, but only glanced over it, standing up. He made occasion to go to the Rectory, and to the Dower House, and spent some little time at each; and the hour came round.

It was over quickly. The large company walked and drove back to the house, which stood once more normally unshuttered, and ate and drank.

There was a buzz of conversation in the crowded dining-room, which at times swelled beyond the limits of strict propriety, and suddenly subsided, only to rise and sink again.

Departures began to be taken. This was the hardest time for the Squire to go through, for he had to say something in answer to the words of each. The end came with a rush, when most of those who had been staying in the house, with those who had come down that morning, left to take the special train back to London.

When the last carriage had departed the Squire turned back into the hall with a great sigh of relief. He went into his room and stood by the open window, breathing deeply of the soft summer air, as if his lungs had been cleared of some obstacle. "Well, that's over," he said aloud as he turned away.

The sound of his words checked him. He went to the window again, and looked across the garden and the park to where the church tower showed between the trees. "Poor girl!" he said slowly. And then, after a pause, "Poor dear girl!"

This satisfied him, and he went briskly to the table where the newspapers were laid in order.

BOOK IV

CHAPTER I

A RETURN

The Squire shut to the gate in the garden wall of the Dower House and stepped out across the park. His face was lit up with gratification, his step was as light as that of an elderly man of seventeen stone very well could be.

He had been to see Virginia, and she had given him the news that had caused this elation.

She had just come down from Scotland, where John Spence had taken a moor, leaving d.i.c.k amongst the grouse. Mrs. Clinton was there too, and Joan, and a large house-party besides. The Squire had been asked, but it was many years since the twelfth had caused a stir in his movements, and he had refused. Didn't care much about it; might come to them later, when they moved down, for the pheasants. It was a not unpleasant change for him to have the house entirely to himself. But he had got a little tired of his solitary condition after a fortnight, and had been extremely glad to see Virginia, who had come South to meet a friend on her way from America to Switzerland.

It seemed that young Inverell--the Earl of Inverell, twenty-seven years of age, master of mines as well as acres, handsome and amiable as well as high-principled--in fact the very type and picture of young Earls--whose Highland property marched with that which John Spence had rented, had been constantly of their party, even to the extent of putting off one of his own.

The attraction? Joan.

There could be no doubt about it, Virginia had said. He was head over ears. And Joan was as gay as a lark. It was the sweetest thing to see them together--a picture of adorable youth, and love, unspoken as yet, but shining out of their eyes and ringing in their laughter for everyone to see and hear.