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Tragic Bride

<h2 id="id00155" style="margin-top: 4em">VII</h2> The inquest at Roscarna was Biddy Joyce's affair. It was the next best thing to a wake, and she took the opportunity of having a dhrop stirrun'—as she put it. The sergeant of the constabulary, an erect Ulsterman with mutton-chop whiskers, had spread a wide net for his jury. They came from Joyce's Country, from Iar Connaught, from islands of the Corrib, like dusty pilgrims. Biddy housed them in the stables, where they slept it off for a couple of nights. Jocelyn himself entertained the coroner. He seemed particularly anxious that nothing in the way of scandal should appear, though he really had no cause for anxiety, since a man who takes the risk of scrambling down a mountain-side with his gun loaded, supplies an obvious explanation for disaster. Naturally it was Gabrielle who suffered most. From the first she had behaved extraordinarily well. Nobody had seen the poor child's first agony of passionate grief; but she had pulled herself together quickly, leaving Radway's body where it lay, and had hurried down to Roscarna where she found Jocelyn dosing [Transcriber's note: dozing?] on the terrace. She had been tight-lipped and pale and awfully quiet, showing no emotion but an unprofitable desire for speed when she led the stable-hands up the mountain to the place where she had left her lover. She did not cry at all until the work was done. Then, in the rough arms of Biddy, she collapsed pretty thoroughly. Biddy put her to bed, but she would not stay there. Later in the day she was found wandering along the passages to the room where Radway had slept. She told Biddy that she only wanted to be left alone; and in that room she stayed until the time came when she had to give her evidence. In the court she did not turn a hair, though Biddy stood ready with a battery of traditional restoratives in case she faltered. Jocelyn had a very thin time of it. The strain made him more shaky than usual, and when telegrams began to flutter in from Radway's relatives a few days later—Radway had left no address and so they had been forced to wire to the Halbertons—he threw up the sponge altogether. His weakness was Considine's opportunity. Considine undertook the whole management of the Radways' visit, received them, conducted them to the room in which their son's remains were lying and did his best to explain to them what he had been doing in this outlandish place. I suppose that this kind of solemn condolence is part of a parson's ordinary duties, but it must be admitted that Considine performed it well. He impressed the Radways as being solid and dependable and a gentleman. His capability and discretion made them feel that Roscarna was not so disreputable and outlandish after all. He scarcely mentioned Gabrielle, except as the only witness of the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halbertons, and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had any part in the tragedy. On their return they wrote Considine a long letter in which they thanked him for his courtesy and regretted that their son's last moments had not been rejoiced by his ghostly ministrations. As a little thank-offering (not for their son's death, but for Considine's kindness) they proposed the erection of a stained glass window in his church, a proposal that Considine gladly accepted. It was not until the Radways had disappeared and Roscarna began to recoil into its old routine of life, that Gabrielle collapsed. The blow to her imagination had been heavier than anyone dreamed, so staggering, in its first impact, that for a time she had been numbed. In a week or two, with returning consciousness, her sufferings began to be felt. She could not sleep at night, and when she did sleep she dreamed perpetually of one thing, the endless, precarious descent of a slippery mountain-side in the company of Radway. The dream always ended in the same way, with a fall, a laugh, a shattering report, and a flash of light which meant that she was awake. In her disordered eyes the woods of Roscarna, the river, and the lake took on a melancholy tinge. Though this aspect of them was new to her, it is hardly strange that she should have seen them thus, for the beauty of Roscarna is really of an elegiac kind, an autumnal beauty of desertion and of decay. As for Slieveannilaun, she dared not look at it. Jocelyn tried hard to cheer her up. With an effort he whipped up enough energy to take her out with his dogs and his gun, until her look of horror made him suspect that the sound of a gunshot was a nightmare to her, as indeed it was, reminding her of many dreams and one unforgettable reality. She did her best to hide this from him, for she saw that he was really trying to be kind. Considine also tried to interest her in new things and to distract her mind. His methods were tactful. He knew perfectly well that the official manner of condolence that had gone down so well with the Radways wouldn't do for her. He just treated her as the child that he knew her to be, trying to induce her to join in a game of pretending that nothing had happened. Gabrielle realised his humane attempt from the first and even, for a time, tried to play up to him, but the affair ended disastrously in a flood of bitter, uncontrollable tears for which neither the parson nor the man could offer any remedy. It seemed to him that this was a woman's job, and so he and Jocelyn met in solemn consultation with Biddy Joyce. At this point an easy solution seemed to offer itself in an invitation from the Halbertons. They had heard all the details of the affair from Radway's people and wrote inviting Gabrielle to stay with them in Devon for a month. The two men prepared the bait most carefully, but when their plan was disclosed to her, Gabrielle rejected it with an unusual degree of passion, imploring them to leave her alone … only to leave her alone. They resigned her to the care of Biddy, who had always considered it her proper function and privilege to deal with the affair. She set about it clumsily but with confidence, tempting Gabrielle to eat with carefully prepared surprises, obviously humouring her in everything she did. From the very first she had viewed the Radway affair with suspicion, and now she found it difficult not to say, 'I told you so,' though, as a matter of fact, she had done nothing of the sort. Altogether her methods were too transparent to be successful; and since her own robust habit of body made it difficult for her to divine any subtler cause for Gabrielle's condition, she leapt at once to the physical explanation suggested to her by her own experience of the consequences of love-making in Joyce's country. She watched Gabrielle with a keen and matronly eye, collecting her evidence from day to day after the anxious manner of mothers. When she had dwelt upon the problem for a couple of months she prepared the results of her scrutinies and offered them in a complete and alarming dossier to Jocelyn. In her opinion—and on this subject at least her opinion was of value—there could be no doubt as to Gabrielle's condition. To Biddy Joyce this seemed the most natural thing in the world, but to Jocelyn the announcement came as a tremendous surprise. He knew well enough that this sort of accident was an everyday affair, in effect the usual prelude to matrimony, among the peasantry of Connaught; but that such an ugly circumstance should intrude itself into the Hewish family—in the case of one of its female members—seemed a monstrous calamity. He was in no condition to stand another shock, and Biddy's pronouncement completely knocked him over. In a case of this kind it was idle to doubt her authority. He only wondered how he could make the best of a desperate job. Distasteful as the business was to him, he decided to tackle Gabrielle herself. It was a very strange interview. On Jocelyn's part there were no recriminations. He was growing gentle in his old age, and in any case he regarded Gabrielle as the victim of a tragedy. All that he wanted to do was to get at the truth, and than this nothing could have been harder, for in Gabrielle he found not only an amazing ignorance—or if you prefer the word, innocence—but a flaming, passionate determination to keep silence on the subject of her intimacies with Radway. To her the story was sacred, and far too precious to be bruised by the examination of any living soul. It is probable that Jocelyn tackled the matter with the utmost delicacy. Fundamentally, he had the instincts of a gentleman, and, as Gabrielle knew, he loved her; but on this one subject no amount of entreaties or tenderness could make her speak. In the end, when he could get nothing out of her, he compelled himself to tell her of Biddy's suspicions. It seemed to him that this might force her into a full confession of her relations with her lover. It did nothing of the sort. She simply stood clutching a tall oak chair and looking straight out of the window over the dark woods. Then she said: "Does Biddy really think I am going to have a baby?" And Jocelyn nodded his head. Then she said nothing more. She simply went out of the room like a sleep-walker, leaving poor Jocelyn overwhelmed with misery by a silence that he interpreted as an admission of guilt. For him, at any rate, the matter was settled and the acuteness of Biddy Joyce finally established. And there one must leave it. Gabrielle herself accepted the verdict without question, but whether from her own secret knowledge or out of an innocence that is almost incredible but not, in her case, impossible, I cannot say. Naturally enough, in that other strange interview with Mrs. Payne, she did not go into details, and as far as we are concerned the truth will never be known. Not that it really matters. The only thing that concerns us is the effect upon her fortunes of this real or imaginary catastrophe. All that we can say is that when she walked out of the Roscarna dining-room after her hour with Jocelyn she was subtly and curiously changed. From that moment she became, in fact, a person hypnotised, possessed by the contemplation of her approaching motherhood. She was no longer restless or tearful. She began to sleep again, and her sleep was no longer troubled by that recurrent dream. A strange calm descended on her, the calm of a Madonna thrilled by an angelic annunciation—a hallucinated calm that made her remote and independent, utterly unmoved by the commotion into which the household of Roscarna had been thrown. Her acceptance of the situation crumpled up Jocelyn entirely. He could not for a moment see any way out of the difficulty. As usual he fell back on Biddy, who brought her practical knowledge to his rescue. Biddy was emphatic. In the circumstances there was only one thing to be done. Gabrielle must be married—somehow—anyhow—and the sooner the better. It was the sort of thing that happened every day of the week and the resources of civilisation had never been able to find another solution. Jocelyn shook his head. It was all very well to talk about marriage, but where, in the neighbourhood, could a bridegroom be found at such short notice? Biddy's suggestion of half a dozen available Joyces failed to satisfy him. However suitable the Joyces might be for casual relations the idea of marriage with one of them was unthinkable. After all, whatever she had done, Gabrielle was a Hewish and the heiress, whatever that might mean, of the Roscarna mortgages. Biddy, impatient of his obstinacy, gave him up. With feelings of sore humiliation he consulted Considine. It was a hard confession for Jocelyn and the awkwardness of Considine did not make it easier. It seemed as if the two of them were up against a stone wall. Considine blushing and monosyllabic, begged for time to consider what might be done; and the fact that he did not seem to be utterly hopeless cheered Jocelyn considerably. Gabrielle, in the meantime, continued rapt and passive. In a week the result of Considine's deliberations emerged, and, in a fortnight, Gabrielle, only daughter of Sir Jocelyn Hewish, Baronet, of Roscarna, County Galway, was married to the Rev. Marmaduke Considine at the church of Clonderriff. The Irish Times described the wedding as quiet. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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