* * *
The peal of 5,040 Stedman’s Triples was duly rung on Easter Sunday morning. Hilary Thorpe heard it from the Red House, sitting beside the great old four-poster bed, as she had sat on New Year’s morning to hear the peal of Treble Bob Major. Then the noise of the bells had come full and clear; to-day, it reached her only in distant bursts, when the wind, rollicking away with it eastward, bated for a moment or veered round a little to the south.
“Hilary!”
“Yes, Dad.”
“I’m afraid — if I go west this time — I’ll be leaving you rottenly badly off, old girl.”
“I don’t care a dash about that, old thing. Not that you are going west. But if you did, I should be quite all right.”
“There’ll be enough to send you to Oxford, I dare say. Girls don’t seem to cost much there — your uncle will see to it.”
“Yes — and I’m going to get a scholarship, anyway. And I don’t want money. I’d rather make my own living. Miss Bowler says she doesn’t think anything of a woman who can’t be independent.” (Miss Bowler was the English mistress and the idol of the moment.) “I’m going to be a writer, Dad. Miss Bowler says she wouldn’t wonder if I’d got it in me.”
“Oh? What are you going to write? Poetry?”
“Well, perhaps But I don’t suppose that pays very well. I’ll write novels, test-sellers. The sort that everybody goes potty over. Not just bosh ones, but like The Constant Nymph.”
“You’ll want a bit of experience before you can write novels, old girl.”
“Rot, Daddy. You don’t want experience for writing novels. People write them at Oxford and they sell like billy-ho. All about how awful everything was at school.”
“I see. And when you leave Oxford, you write one about how awful everything was at college.”
“That’s the idea. I can do that on my head.”
“Well, dear, I hope it’ll work. But all the same, I feel a damned failure, leaving you so little. If only that rotten necklace had turned up! I was a fool to pay that Wilbraham woman for it, but she as good as accused the old Governor of being an accessory, and I—”
“Oh, Dad, please—please don’t go on about that silly necklace. Of course you couldn’t do anything else about it. And I don’t want the beastly money. And anyhow, you’re not going to peg out yet.”
But the specialist, arriving on Tuesday, looked grave and, taking Dr. Baines aside, said to him kindly:
“You have done all you could. Even if you had called me in earlier, it could have made no possible difference.”
And to Hilary, still kindly;
“We must never give up hope, you know. Miss Thorpe. I can’t disguise from you that your father’s condition is serious, but Nature has marvellous powers of recuperation…”
Which is the medical man’s way of saving that, short of miraculous intervention, you may as well order the coffin.
* * *
On the following Monday afternoon, Mr. Venables was just leaving the cottage of a cantankerous and venomous-tongued old lady on the extreme outskirts of the parish, when a deep, booming sound smote his ear from afar. He stood still with his hand upon the gate.
“That’s Tailor Paul,” said the Rector to himself. Three solemn notes, and a pause.
“Man or woman?”
Three notes, and then three more.
“Man,” said the Rector. He still stood listening. “I wonder if poor old Merryweather has gone at last. I hope it isn’t that boy of Hensman’s.” He counted twelve strokes, and waited. But the bell tolled on, and the Rector breathed a sigh of relief. Hensman’s boy, at least, was safe. He hastily reckoned up the weaklings of his flock. Twenty strokes, thirty strokes — a man of full age. “Heaven send,” thought the Rector, “it isn’t Sir Henry. He seemed better when I saw him yesterday.” Forty strokes, forty-one, forty-two. Surely it must be old Merryweather — a happy release for him, poor old man. Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five, forty-six. Now it must go on — it could not stop at that fatal number. Old Merryweather was eighty-four. The Rector strained his ears. He must have missed the next stroke — the wind was pretty strong, and his hearing was perhaps not as good as it had been.
But he waited full thirty seconds before Tailor Paul spoke again; and after that there was silence for another thirty seconds.
The cantankerous old lady, astonished to see the Rector stand so long bare-headed at her gate, came hobbling down the garden path to know what it was all about.
“It’s the passing-bell,” said Mr. Venables, “they have rung the nine tailors and forty-six strokes, and I’m afraid it must be for Sir Henry.”
“Oh, dear,” said the cantankerous old woman. “that’s bad. Terrible bad, that is.” A peevish kind of pity came into her eyes. “What’s to become of Miss Hilary now, with her mother and father gone so quick, and her only fifteen, and nobody to keep her in check? I don’t hold with girls being left to look arter themselves. They’re troublesome at the best and they didn’t ought to have their parents took away from them.”
“We mustn’t question the ways of Providence,” said the Rector.
“Providence?” said the old woman. “Don’t yew talk to me about Providence. I’ve had enough o’ Providence. First he took my husband, and then he took my ’taters, but there’s One above as’ll teach him to mend his manners, if he don’t look out.”
The Rector was too much distressed to challenge this remarkable piece of theology.
“We can but trust in God, Mrs. Giddings,” he said, and pulled up the starting-handle with a jerk.
* * *
Sir Henry’s funeral was fixed for the Friday afternoon. This was an occasion of mournful importance to at least four persons in Fenchurch St. Paul. There was Mr. Russell, the undertaker, who was a cousin of that same Mary Russell who had married William Thoday. He was determined to excel himself in the matter of polished oak and brass plates, and his hammer and plane had been keeping up a dismal little harmony of their own during the early part of the week. His, also, was the delicate task of selecting the six bearers so that they might be well-matched in height and step. Mr. Hezekiah Lavender and Mr. Jack Godfrey went into conference about the proper ringing of a muffled peal — Mr. Godfrey’s business being to provide and adjust the leather buffets about the clappers of the bells, and Mr. Lavender’s to arrange and conduct the ringing. And Mr. Gotobed, the sexton, was concerned with the grave — so much concerned that he had declined to take part in the peal, preferring to give his whole mind to the graveside ceremonies, although his son, Dick, who assisted him with the spadework, considered himself quite capable of carrying on on his own. There was not, indeed, very much to do in the way of digging. Rather to Mr. Gotobed’s disappointment, Sir Henry had expressed a wish to be buried in the same grave with his wife, so that there was little opportunity for any fine work in the way of shaping, measuring and smoothing the sides of the grave. They had only to cast out the earth — scarcely yet firm after three rainy months — make all neat and tidy and line the grave with fresh greenery. Nevertheless, liking to be well beforehand with his work, Mr. Gotobed took measures to carry this out on the Thursday afternoon.