The Prisoners of Hartling/Chapter 13

HE gates were standing open. They may have been opened in expectation of the coming of the specialist who might arrive at any minute, but even the garden wore a new aspect that morning. It was as if the wide airs of Sussex were creeping in and subtly perverting the seemly splendour of that suburban super-garden.

Old Kenyon had been unconscious for twenty-four hours. Both Arthur and Fergusson knew with almost absolute certainty what was the matter with him. A cerebral artery had been ruptured and the area of damaged tissue appeared to be slowly extending. No remedy was possible. The chances were that within another twenty-four hours he would die without recovering consciousness. But he had trained nurses in constant attendance and a specialist had been sent for. Scurr had gone with Fergusson to fetch him in the big car.

Arthur had been up with the unconscious man all night, and had come out into the garden now for a breath of fresh air. When he came downstairs he had found himself a centre of burning interest. All the family, except the one he most wanted to be with, were drawn towards him as if he were the newly found vortex of a whirlpool. They tried desperately hard to be casual and decorous, but they found it impossible to keep their eyes off him. It seemed to Arthur that they almost gaped.

They were all extraordinarily wide-awake and feverishly inactive. The women's fancy-work had not been taken out, nor the daily papers opened. The news they desired to learn that morning was not to be found in the Times. They drifted about the drawing-room and library, and held brief, useless conversations with one another. But when Arthur had passed through the suite a little after eleven o'clock looking for Eleanor, they had suddenly found a focus. He had seen the look of expectancy on their faces and had thrown them a crumb of news.

"He is still unconscious," he had said, and had understood that they asked more from him than that. Then, feeling that he could not endure the greediness of their attention, he had beckoned Joe Kenyon to come out with him into the garden.

They had come within sight of the open gates before either of them spoke.

"No hope, I suppose?" his uncle said then, as if released by the sight of the Sussex lane.

"I should say absolutely none," Arthur replied.

"Not likely to recover consciousness before the end?"

"Extremely unlikely," Arthur said. "In fact, scarcely possible, I think."

Joe Kenyon began to whistle softly between his teeth and abruptly checked himself. "If this property comes to me, I shall have that blasted wall taken down," he remarked, and continued, "You know, Arthur, I'm not going to play the hypocrite, especially to you. This isn't an occasion for mourning. It's as if we'd been living in the dark for half a liftime [sic] and some one had taken the roof off and let the air and light in. I—I feel as if I can see the sky again for the first time in thirty years. It'd be loathsome, crawling hypocrisy to pretend that I'm the least sorry."

"Oh, obviously," Arthur agreed.

"But I say, how did it happen?" his uncle asked. "We haven't the shakiest notion you know—and …"

"I just murdered him," Arthur said quietly.

"Eh! What's that?" Joe Kenyon ejaculated.

"For all intents and purposes," Arthur explained. "I opposed him, and he tried to take cover—went into one of his 'trances.' Did you know they weren't trances, by the way?"

"No. What the devil were they, then?"

"Pretences, pieces of acting, fantasies of his own making. He used to hide himself in them, as it were. Dream what a great and powerful being he was, able to keep you all in attendance, keep you waiting for ten minutes in the middle of dinner if he liked, while he enjoyed the sense of holding you there. And when he was in danger of losing his temper with me, he tried to get under that cover, to shelter himself, rehabilitate his own pride."

"And you? What did you do?"

"Treated him as if he were a case in a clinic. Began to test his reactions. And—and—well, he couldn't keep it up."

"And then?"

"Couldn't control himself. Lost his temper—frightfully. Whacked at me with his stick—and collapsed. It was losing his temper did it—first time he has done it probably for forty years. Had you ever seen him lose his temper?"

Joe Kenyon considered that question for a moment or two before he said, "No! That was something he always had in reserve, something we were afraid of. He was always terrible to us, in a way, and we felt that if he went one step further he'd be—oh! devastating."

"He wasn't, you know," Arthur said. "He wasn't terrible, I mean. Not in the least. He was essentially a weak man and not even clever. I sat up with him all last night, and everything came to me as clearly as if I'd read it somewhere. He has altered, you see, in face and expression since he became unconscious. His chin seems to have retreated and all the lines round his mouth have changed. I couldn't keep the idea of a rat out of my mind when I looked at him. I got that effect somehow—something horribly intent and voracious but essentially weak. I remember looking at a dead rat in the stables when I was a boy. It was lying on its back with its feeble little front paws stuck up and the feet dangling. … And he had just the same expression on his face—ineffectual and yet cruel—as if his one regret was that he couldn't hurt any one again. I was almost sorry that he couldn't—especially as I had murdered him."

"Oh, nonsense, Arthur; nonsense," his uncle interposed. "Don't say that."

"True, though, in a way, isn't it?" Arthur said. "Truer than you guess, because I had known that it might kill him if he had a great shock. I'd even said so to Hubert, a few days ago—Sunday, I think it was. But I'd forgotten it. When I was telling him that I meant to go and take Eleanor with me whatever he did, I never once considered that it might be too much for him. And that was criminal carelessness in a medical man. I've been thinking about it more or less ever since."

He paused and looked ahead of him, out through the gate into the Sussex lane, and it was manifest that he was confessing to himself rather than to Joe Kenyon as he continued: "Not that I propose to take any responsibility for his death. That wouldn't help any one. It happened so, and I shan't forget it, but that's all. Fergusson knows. There's no need to worry about it. Only—I've grown up. I'm not quite the same man I was twenty-four hours ago. I came down here to get back some of the years of youth that I'd lost in the war. Well, they're gone for good and all. I shall never be able to recover them now."

"Oh, nonsense!" his uncle repeated, taking his arm. "You've got a thundering good time ahead of you."

Arthur smiled. "I've got the best time any man could have ahead of me," he said, "but I shall enjoy it as a man, not as a boy. I didn't say that I regretted the passing of my youth, uncle."

"No, no, of course not," Joe Kenyon agreed. "And look here, old boy, we've been talking about you since yesterday morning, about you and Eleanor, that is; and Turner and I—and Hubert, of course—are quite agreed that if the old man has, after all, overlooked you in his will, that we shall take it for granted that it was just an oversight—though probably Eleanor will be left pretty well off. If he had a favourite, it was Eleanor."

"Good of you, uncle," Arthur replied warmly. "Awfully good and generous of you, but you must see that I couldn't take a farthing, even if the old man left it to me."

"I don't see why not," Joe Kenyon began, but Arthur stopped him by saying.

"No! Absolutely! In no circumstances whatever! It isn't simply that I could not bear to profit now by his death—though that counts. But—well—perhaps it needn't apply to you and the rest of them—but last night, while I was watching that poor thing on the bed, I realised so profoundly that his one source of power had been his money. I assure you that he was a weak man and not clever. If you can't believe me, go upstairs and look at him. And without his money he would have had no authority, no power over you of any sort. It was just his money that gave him the chance to spoil all your lives. Oh, Lord! I'm talking like a father to you. Honestly, uncle, I feel nearly old enough for that, this morning. Want of sleep, perhaps. It does clear the head in a queer way sometimes."

"Hm! I dare say you're right, Arthur, about the money," Joe Kenyon mumbled. "I—I hope we shall make a better use of it. I don't think any of us has got the old man's cruelty—he was damned cruel, that's true enough."

"Not even Miss Kenyon?" Arthur put in.

"Esther? Oh, well! I don't know. Perhaps a little. But she has suffered like all the rest of us, and learnt her lesson."

There was no time to reply to that; for while Joe Kenyon was still speaking, the car turned in at the front gates, and they both hurried forward to meet it. When it stopped at their signal to Scurr, the specialist was introduced, and then both Arthur and his uncle got into the car, and they all went on together up to the house.

The conference in the old man's bedroom was a very short one, and the specialist had nothing to add to what they already knew, save the prestige of his authority. He was a tired, gray-looking little man of fifty or so, with an absent-minded manner, but when his anticipated acceptance of the diagnosis had been given, he looked keenly at Fergusson and said,—

"Made a lot of money, didn't he? All by his own efforts."

"It's more than half a million I've been told," Fergusson answered.

The specialist faintly shrugged his shoulders. "Wouldn't think it to look at him now. What?" he commented, and with the indifference of his profession he carelessly pinched the retreating chin of the little lax figure in the great bed.

"The predatory type, I presume," he added thoughtfully.

"Ay; he was that," Fergusson agreed. "More cunning than clever, though he had eyes that made you think of the eyes of a kite when he was roused. But he has altered greatly since this seizure. Maybe you'd hardly credit it now, but he has been a rare autocrat with his family."

"You see," Arthur put in, "he had them so absolutely in his power. He could leave his money as he liked, and they were all dependent upon him."

"And yet he must have had a certain generosity," Fergusson added, "for he kept the whole lot of them."

The specialist looked shrewdly at Arthur and slightly pursed his mouth. "That was his one interest and amusement, perhaps," he said. "The love of power of a naturally weak man. It's common enough if you care to look for it. Who succeeds?"

"We don't know yet," Arthur replied. "His lawyer is coming down by train this afternoon, and will stay here until the end—in case of a possible return to consciousness. But I suppose he'll tell us nothing until the old man's dead."

"You interested?" the specialist asked.

"No," Arthur said. "Not even to the extent of a five-pound note."

"You know that much, then?"

"I know that for certain, " Arthur affirmed.

Fergusson whistled softly under his breath, but made no other comment.

They were quite a large party at dinner that night. Ken Turner had been telephoned for, and had come down by the same train as Mr Fleet, the solicitor. Joe Kenyon had taken his father's place at the head of the table, but occupied it as deputy only, for his sister and not his wife faced him from the other end.

They had nearly finished, when one of the trained nurses entered the room and made a sign across the table to Arthur. He jumped up at once and fol- lowed her. He knew even before she spoke to him just outside the dining-room door why she had fetched him.

There was nothing more to be done, but he sat for a few minutes beside the dead, remembering that he had promised some kind of autopsy to insure the body against premature burial. He would keep that promise, although he knew that the precaution was quite unnecessary. Also he thought again of the dead rat in the stable at home. The likeness was more pronounced than ever.

He found them all collected in the drawing-room when he returned to make his expected announcement.

"Yes! It's all over. He is dead," he said gravely, in answer to the look of inquiry they thrust at him.

And with that statement his function in the household ceased. They had eyes for him no longer. The centre of interest had shifted from the doctor to the lawyer. …

His head drooped, he was very tired, and he went over and sat down by Eleanor. They had made no new plans, but he did not want to discuss their future just then. He wanted nothing but to be near her, to rest in his confidence of her love for him. She alone could give him peace and quietness, and he felt worn out.

They sat close together in silence, happy in each other's company, and attentive to nothing that was going on around them until their interest was aroused by the voice of Mr Fleet, speaking in a raised tone that was evidently meant to carry. He was a tall, spare man, almost completely bald, with a long thin nose and an expression of careworn good nature. He looked, Arthur thought, rather like a benevolent old stork, and he kept clearing his throat as he spoke with a queer little croak that was curiously birdlike.

It seemed that he was painfully aware at this moment of the importance of what he had to say and that the knowledge embarrassed him. Whether by accident or design, a certain grouping had been effected that gave him the centre of the stage. He was standing with his back to the great carved stone mantelpiece that was one of the features of the Hartling drawing-room, with a clear space between him and the eight people who in their characteristic ways were exhibiting the various indications of the intense excitement that was stirring them. After all those years of waiting and uncertainty they were about to learn the truth, at last. They had awakened from their long nightmare of impalpable, inoppugnable resistances to the grateful sanity of everyday life. And they hoped. They had good cause for hope. After all, it could not be so bad for them now. The old man had never had any spite against them. He had been generous in his own quiet way. He would have done the right thing by them.

Only Miss Kenyon, Arthur thought, looked doubtful and uneasy. She sat a little apart from the others and something of her habitual resolution and confidence had gone from her. For the first time since he had known her, Arthur saw her truly as her father's daughter. She too, perhaps, suffered from some intrinsic weakness of character, a weakness that had been hidden by the commanding office she had held in the household. …

"No need in this case," the embarrassed lawyer was saying, "to await any formal occasion. I have, as a matter of fact, the will in my bag upstairs. But it is so unusually simple and—and I might almost say drastic, that no direct reference to it is necessary."

Arthur and Eleanor looked at each other with a little start of surprise. They had never before doubted the legend of that untidy will.

"Er—er—er—in short," Mr Fleet continued, wiping his forehead, "the will could, in this case, certainly have been written on a half-sheet of note-paper. Er—er—it was made in '84, thirty-six years ago, soon after Mrs Kenyon's death. And—er—er—" his hesitation and distress became positively painful—"er—in short—he—he left everything absolutely to Miss Kenyon—to Miss Esther Kenyon—at her absolute disposal—er—there were no legacies of any other kind, and Miss Kenyon is the sole executrix."

Eleanor's hand had crept into Arthur's and at this announcement clasped his with such a sudden grip of anguish that he almost cried out. Then his heart seemed to miss a beat as realisation burst on him, and his eyes turned as the eyes of every other person in the room inevitably turned, to stare at Miss Kenyon.

She was sitting very upright in her chair, gazing out before her with a look of rapt contemplation. Her right hand was lightly clenched as if she grasped a sceptre, and her widely opened eyes had the cruel, predatory stare of a hawk.

And clear and bright, a text from the Old Testament leapt into Arthur's mind. How did it go? "Whereas my father did lade you with a heavy yoke, I will add to your yoke: my father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions."

Eleanor had suddenly leaned upon him and the grasp of her hand was relaxed.