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Tragic Bride

<h2 id="id00211" style="margin-top: 4em">X</h2> At Lapton Huish, in the following autumn, Mrs. Payne found them. The details of what had happened in the interval are not very clear, but the effect of the change upon Gabrielle must have been considerable, for the Mrs. Considine who appeared to Mrs. Payne does not seem to have had much in common with the dazed, hysterical child we left at Roscarna. I doubt if it was the experience of her marital relations with Considine that made her grow up; from the first she had tacitly disregarded them. I suppose the change was simply the result of living in a more civilised and populous country, for South Devon was both, in comparison with her lost Roscarna. The Halbertons had been very kind to them. How much of their kindness sprang from original virtue, and how much from anxiety that the least connection of the family should be worthy of their reflected lustre, it is difficult to say. No doubt it pleased them to be generous on a feudal scale, particularly since Gabrielle, with her striking beauty and sharp wits, showed possibilities of doing them credit. As soon as the aged Dr. Harrow had been bundled out, the establishment of the Considines became a game as entertaining to Lady Halberton in the sphere of religious culture, as chemical experiments were to her husband in that of root-crops—with the delightful difference that human souls ran away with much less money than mangolds. While the Rectory at Lapton was having its roof repaired, its walls painted, and the fungus that grew in the cupboards of old Canon Harrow's bedroom removed, the Considines were housed at Halberton and instructed in the family tradition. In the case of Dr. Considine—his honeymoon activities had pulled off the degree in divinity—this was easy, for he had spent his childhood on a feudal estate in Wiltshire and his politics were therefore identical with Lord Halberton's. With Gabrielle, whom Lady Halberton took in hand, the process was more difficult. She couldn't, at first, quite catch the Halberton air, but, being an admirable mimic, she soon tumbled into it. The clothes with which Lady Halberton supplied her helped her to realise the character that she was expected to assume. Sometimes she felt so pleased with her performance that she was tempted to overdo it and suddenly found herself presenting a caricature of Halberton manners that was so acute as to be cruel. And sometimes, when she felt that she couldn't keep it up, she would suddenly drop the whole pretence and relapse into the insinuating brogue of Biddy Joyce; an amazing trick that she employed with scandalous effect in later years. But although she occasionally laughed at it, Gabrielle found the ease and luxury of Halberton House very much to her taste. She lost her thin and anxious expression and became a great favourite, not only with Lady Halberton, but also with the old gentleman and Lady Barbara, the elder daughter, who was still unmarried and likely to remain so. After six weeks at Halberton the Considines moved into the Rectory at Lapton, a square, solid building, endowed with luxuriant creepers and protected on the side that faced the prevailing wind and the roadway, with a covering of hung slates. On the three other sides lay a garden which had been too much for Canon Harrow and his gardener Hannaford. Both of them had been old and withered, and the tremendous vitality of the green things that grew in that rich red soil had overcome all their efforts at repression so that the house had been besieged and choked with vegetation and mildewed with the dampness of rain and sap. It was all very lush and generous and cool, no doubt, in summer; but when the rain that drove in from the Channel glistened on the hung slates and dripped incessantly from myriads of shining leaves, the Rector of Lapton Huish might as well have been living in a tropical swamp. To the north of them, the huge masses of Dartmoor stole the air, so that their life seemed to be lost in a windless eddy, and in the deep valleys with which the country was scored the air lay dead for many months at a time. Gabrielle, accustomed to the free spaces of Connemara, felt the change depressing, though she would not admit it; indeed, she had far too many things to think about to have time for speculating on her own health. First of all the callers. At Roscarna the reputation of Jocelyn and, above all, his relations with Biddy Joyce, had saved the Hewishes from these formalities; and the great distances that separated the houses of gentlefolk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more spontaneous and less formal affair in any case. In Devon, as Gabrielle soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades of social finesse. Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage. As soon as she was settled in at Lapton the county descended on her and she was overwhelmed with visitors from all three classes. If she had been a stranger the Devonshire people would probably have watched her with a preconceived suspicion and dislike for a couple of years, but even her questionable qualities of youth and spontaneity could not dispose of the fact that she had been born a Hewish and had lately visited at Halberton House. In that mild climate people remain alive, or, if you prefer it, asleep, longer than in any other part of England, and the visitors who came flocking to Lapton were, for the most part, in a stage of decrepit or suspended life. They drove through the steep and narrow lanes in all sorts of ancient vehicles, in jingles, victorias, barouches and enormous family drags. Their coachmen, older and more withered than themselves, wore mid-Victorian whiskers, and shiny cockades on their hats. In Gabrielle's drawing-room the visitors sat on the extreme edges of their chairs. They spoke with a faded propriety, dropped their final "g's," and specialised in the abbreviation "ain't." They stayed for a quarter of an hour exactly by the French clock on the mantelpiece, contriving, in this calculated period, to make it quite clear that they were on terms of intimacy with the Halbertons, and they invariably finished by inviting the Considines to lunch. In this way Gabrielle became familiar with a number of dining-rooms furnished in mahogany and horsehair and hung with opulent studies of still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith. The meal was usually served by the whiskered coachman, who wore, for the occasion, a waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, and there was always cake for lunch. After the port, which generally made her feel sleepy, Considine would be taken off to see the stables, and Gabrielle conducted to a walled garden, heavy with the scent of ripening fruit, where there was no shade but that of huge apple trees, frosted with American blight, that reminded her, in their passive mellowness, of the people who owned them. Nothing more violent than archery, in its old and placid variety, ever invaded the lives of these county families. If it had not been for the headaches with which their society always afflicted her, Gabrielle would have been tempted time after time to scandalise them, but the example of Considine, who was always frigidly at ease, restrained her, and so she allowed herself to be lulled to sleep, recovering slowly as they drove back through the green lanes to Lapton. Her symptoms of boredom were taken, in this society, for evidence of her good breeding, and since she was too tired to be scandalous, Gabrielle became a social success. Her success is important, not because it changed her in any way, but because it paved the way for the development by which she became acquainted with Mrs. Payne, and the most intriguing episode of her life began. It was notorious that Considine's parochial labours occupied very little of his time. The parish was small and scattered, Lapton Huish itself being a mere hamlet, and the neighbouring farmers so soaked in respectable tradition and isolated from opportunities of vice that their souls lay in no great danger of damnation. The activities of Considine were practically limited to his Sunday services, but though the softness of the climate might eventually have transformed him into a likeness of the ancient automaton who had preceded him, it was not in his nature to take things easily. He came of a vigorous stock. The clear, thin air of the Wiltshire downland that his ancestors had breathed makes for energy of temperament. At Roscarna he had given vent to this in the education of Gabrielle, the acquisition of his doctor's degree, and the management of his father-in-law's estate. His capacity for management, of which he had shown evidence in his winding-up of the Roscarna affairs, appealed to Lord Halberton, and it was not long before he proposed a series of improvements to the Lapton property that took his patron's fancy. In Considine's ideas there was not only imagination, but money, and Halberton was getting rather tired of his own expensive agricultural experiments. The big house of the parish, Lapton Manor, had lain for several years unoccupied, for no other reason apparently but that it was isolated and out of date. To Lord Halberton it represented at least a thousand pounds a year in waste. When Considine had been at Lapton Huish for a little more than six months this deserted mansion suggested itself to him as an outlet for his energies. He told Gabrielle nothing of this—he was not in the habit of discussing business matters with Gabrielle—but he rode over to Halberton House one day with an elaborate and practical paper scheme. He proposed, in effect, to vacate the Rectory, and take over Lapton Manor as it stood. The idea had been suggested to him at first by one of the consequences of Gabrielle's social success. The wife of a neighbouring baronet had fallen in love with her—the fact that her husband had followed suit made things easier. This woman was the mother of two sons, of whom the elder, the heir to the title, was delicate. She did not wish to separate the boys, and realising that it was impossible to send them together to an ordinary preparatory school, the notion had come to her of asking the Considines if they would take them into their house at Lapton. Doctor Considine, no doubt, would find time to equip them with a good classical education, while Gabrielle could supply the feminine influence which was so essential to real refinement. She was not only tired of tutors—their equivocal social status was so tiresome!—but sufficiently Spartan to feel that her sons would be better away from home for a little while. Away, but not too far away. Gabrielle had thought it would be rather fun to have a couple of boys, even dull boys like the Traceys, in the house. She had told Considine that she would like the arrangement if only the Rectory were bigger. As it was they couldn't possibly entertain the proposal. This set Considine thinking, and from his deliberations emerged the much more ambitious scheme of taking over Lapton Manor, and equipping it as a special school for the education of really expensive boys. He decided that he would not take a greater number than he could educate by himself. His pupils must all be well-connected or wealthy. He would teach them not only the things with which a public school might reasonably be expected to equip them, but the whole duty of a landed proprietor. The neglected Manor lands, already a drag on the Halberton property, should be his example. His pupils should see it recover gradually with their own eyes. The fees they paid should go to its development, and provide at the end of three or four years' work the satisfaction of a model and profitable estate. All Considine's heart was in the plan. He loved teaching, and he loved the land. He had a natural aptitude for both, and the opportunity of developing them seemed too good to be missed. Lord Halberton agreed. A lease was signed in which Considine, paying a nominal rent for Lapton Manor, undertook to restore the lands and house to the condition from which they had fallen. Both landlord and tenant were delighted with their bargain. In six weeks the Rectory had been vacated and relet to an old lady from the north of England who wanted to die in Devonshire, and the Considines had moved to the Manor, under the benignant eyes of Lady Halberton. In another fortnight the first pupils, the Tracey boys, arrived, and Considine was advertising in The Morning Post and The Times for three at fees that even Lord Halberton considered outrageous. "There's plenty of money in the country," said Considine. With the insight of genius he added to his advertisement, "Special care is given to backward or difficult pupils." <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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