Giant’s Bread · Book I · VIII · Chapter 1 8 3

III

Walter Deyre was killed a few weeks before the war ended. His end was a gallant one. He was shot when going back to rescue a wounded comrade under heavy fire. He was awarded a posthumous V.C., and the letter his colonel wrote to Myra was treasured by her as her dearest possession.

Never [wrote the colonel] have I known anyone so fearless of danger. His men adored him and would have followed him anywhere. He has risked his life again and again in the gallantest way. You can indeed be proud of him.

Myra read that letter again and again. She read it to all her friends. It wiped away the faint sting that her husband had left no last word or letter for her.

“But being a Deyre, he wouldn’t,” she said to herself.

Yet Walter Deyre had left a letter “in case I should be killed.” But it was not to Myra and she never knew of it. She was grief-stricken, but happy. Her husband was hers in death as he had never been in life, and with her easy power of making things as she wished them to be, she began to weave a convincing romance of her wonderfully happy married life.

It is difficult to say how Vernon was affected by his father’s death. He felt no actual grief⁠—was rendered even more stolid by his mother’s obvious wish for him to display emotion. He was proud of his father⁠—so proud that it almost hurt⁠—yet he understood what Joe had meant when she said that it was better for her mother to be dead. He remembered very clearly that last evening walk with his father⁠—the things he had said⁠—the feeling there had been between them.

His father, he knew, hadn’t really wanted to come back. He was sorry for his father⁠—he always had been. He didn’t know why.

It was not grief he felt for his father⁠—it was more a kind of heart-gripping loneliness. Father was dead⁠—Aunt Nina was dead. There was Mother, of course, but that was different.

He couldn’t satisfy his mother⁠—he never had been able to. She was always hugging him, crying over him, telling him they must be all in all to each other now. And he couldn’t, he just couldn’t, say the things she wanted him to say. He couldn’t even put his arms round her neck and hug her back.

He longed for the holidays to be over. His mother, with her red eyes, and her widow’s weeds of the heaviest crape⁠—somehow she overpowered things.

Mr. Flemming, the lawyer from London, came down to stay, and Uncle Sydney came from Birmingham. He stayed two days. At the end of them, Vernon was summoned to the library.

The two men were sitting at the long table. Myra was sitting in a low chair by the fire, her handkerchief to her eyes.

“Well, my boy,” said Uncle Sydney, “we’ve got something to talk to you about. How would you like to come and live near your Aunt Carrie and me at Birmingham?”

“Thank you,” said Vernon, “but I’d rather live here.”

“A bit gloomy, don’t you think?” said his uncle. “Now I’ve got my eye on a jolly house⁠—not too big, thoroughly comfortable. There’ll be your cousins near for you to play with in the holidays. It’s a very good idea, I think.”

“I’m sure it is,” said Vernon politely. “But I’d really like being here best, thank you.”

“Ah! H’m,” said Uncle Sydney. He blew his nose and looked questioningly at the lawyer, who assented to the look with a slight nod.

“It’s not quite so simple as that, old chap,” said Uncle Sydney. “I think you’re quite old enough to understand if I explain things to you. Now that your father’s dead⁠—er⁠—passed from us, Abbots Puissants belongs to you.”

“I know,” said Vernon.

“Eh? How do you know? Servants been talking?”

“Father told me before he went away.”

“Oh!” said Uncle Sydney rather taken aback. “Oh, I see. Well, as I say, Abbots Puissants belongs to you, but a place like this takes a lot of money to run⁠—paying wages and things like that⁠—you understand? And then there are some things called Death Duties. When anyone dies, you have to pay out a lot of money to the Government.

“Now, your father wasn’t a rich man. When his father died, and he came into this place, he had so little money that he thought he’d have to sell it.”

“Sell it?” burst out Vernon incredulously.

“Yes, it’s not entailed.”

“What’s entailed?”

Mr. Flemming explained carefully and clearly.

“But⁠—but⁠—you aren’t going to sell it now?”

Vernon gazed at him with agonizing, imploring eyes.

“Certainly not,” said Mr. Flemming. “The estate is left to you, and nothing can be done until you are of age⁠—that means twenty-one, you know.”

Vernon breathed a sigh of relief.

“But, you see,” continued Uncle Sydney, “there isn’t enough money to go on living here. As I say, your father would have had to sell it. But he met your mother and married her, and fortunately she had enough money to⁠—to keep things going. But your father’s death has made a lot of difference. For one thing, he has left certain⁠—er⁠—debts which your mother insists on paying.”

There was a sniff from Myra. Uncle Sydney’s tone was embarrassed and he hurried on.

“The commonsense thing to do is to let Abbots Puissants for a term of years⁠—till you are twenty-one, in fact. By then, who knows? Things may⁠—er⁠—change for the better. Naturally your mother will be happier living near her own relations. You must think of your mother, you know, my boy.”

“Yes,” said Vernon. “Father told me to.”

“So that’s settled⁠—eh?”

How cruel they were, thought Vernon. Asking him⁠—when he could see that there was nothing to ask him about. They could do as they liked. They meant to. Why call him in here and pretend!

Strangers would come and live in Abbots Puissants.

Never mind! Some day he would be twenty-one.

“Darling,” said Myra, “I’m doing it all for you. It would be so sad here without Daddy, wouldn’t it?”

She held out her arms, but Vernon pretended not to notice. He walked out of the room, saying with difficulty:

“Thank you, Uncle Sydney, so much, for telling me.”