The Alington Inheritance (9 page)

Your loving Mother.”

When she had finished the letter she went up to the schoolroom, collected Carter and the little girls, and sent them out to the post. Mac would get the letter next morning.

Mac got it. It was lying on his table when he came out of his room whistling. He stopped when he saw the letter, picked it up, and opened it. He read it through twice. Then he lit a match and set fire to it. It burned away to a black ash. He opened the window and crumbled up all that was left of it. Afterwards when he had shut the window again he stood by it for a long time thinking and planning. It wasn’t as nice weather as it had been in the country. The thought went through his mind and was gone again. How many people knew that she had written to him? He must be careful—he must be very careful. He wouldn’t go down—no, certainly he wouldn’t go down. He frowned at his hands. Some of the black ash from the burned paper had smudged them. He went into his room again and washed off the smudges. It was easy enough to have clean hands if you took a little thought.

Mrs. Merridew had not been idle. By the same post that she had written to Miss Crampton she had also written to another cousin, a Mrs. Richardson who had a long family and a short purse.

“My dear Grace,

I shall be so glad if you will spare one of your girls on a visit. I think perhaps Miriam if she is free. I think you said that she had left Mrs. Nettleby. It’s a great pity she changes so often. A girl is apt to get a bad name. I hope that entanglement you spoke of is quite over. It doesn’t do when a girl has her way to make, as I told you in the summer when you spoke to me about it. Miss Danesworth has a girl staying with her—you remember she is next door—and her nephew who is in the Army is staying there too. So I thought it would be a pleasant change for Miriam…”

She went on to meticulous enquiries about the whole family.

Mrs. Richardson put down the letter with rather a helpless gesture. She was a large, fair, untidy woman with the vague air of one who is doing her best, but who really can’t see why she should have to do it. She had lost her husband, and though of course she was very sorry, she did find life just a little easier without him. He had been accustomed to so much and had had so little. Every year that they were married he had less, and prices went up and up, and the family grew and grew. Grace Richardson didn’t wish him dead—the idea would have shocked her very much—but she told herself after the funeral that it would be easier to manage now that there wasn’t a man in the house. One of her four girls was adopted by a cousin, and that left three to be provided with clothes, and food, and jobs. Miriam was the eldest. She was also the best-looking. She had curly dark hair, a pair of bold rather staring eyes of a bright blue in colour, and she had a most unfortunate habit of getting into scrapes. She was in a scrape just now. How bad a scrape, she wasn’t quite sure. At almost any other time she would have kicked at going to stay with Cousin Laura, but in the present circumstances it might be just as well.

Mrs. Richardson sighed and looked up from her letter.

“I suppose you wouldn’t care about paying Cousin Laura a visit?” she said.

Miriam looked undecided.

“What does she say?”

Mrs. Richardson told her.

“There’s a girl staying next door—she thinks you might be company for her. Oh, and Miss Danesworth has her nephew there too. I think you met him when you were there in the spring.”

“When does she want me to come?”

“Oh, yes—she says at once.”

Miriam’s heart gave a leap. Yes, she’d go. And she’d tell Jimmy where she was, and say she must see him. He’d come all right. She could deal with him there—or if she couldn’t… She said not too graciously,

“Well, I shouldn’t mind.”

Eleanor and Lilian, the other two girls, breathed again. They were seventeen and eighteen years of age, and they were definitely concerned with not going to stay with Cousin Laura. They avoided looking at each other until they were out of the room. They were a devoted pair, but they did not love their sister Miriam very much. It was unfortunate that at this juncture Jimmy Mottingley should have come to the same conclusion.

Mrs. Merridew heard from Mrs. Richardson on the Wednesday.

“My dear Laura,

It is indeed good of you to ask Miriam to pay you a visit. As it happens, she is at a loose end just now and very pleased to accept your kind offer. Her last employer was most unkind, and the child’s feelings were deeply hurt. I would really be glad of this change for her…”

There was a lot more, but Mrs. Merridew barely took the trouble to read it. Miriam was coming. That was really all she wanted to know. As for Grace’s supremely dull catalogue of events, they would keep. It would not be the first letter of hers which she had consigned to the waste-paper basket half read. She pursued Mrs. Richardson’s letter far enough to discover that she might expect Miriam on Friday, and abandoned the rest of it to go in next door and impart her news.

There was no sign of Richard or of Jenny. She had a good look round, but she could not see them anywhere. Miss Danesworth wondered why she had come, but she was not left to wonder for long. Mrs. Merridew, after her customary survey of anything and everything, pounced firmly on a handkerchief.

“That’s not yours!”

Miss Danesworth smiled.

“No, it’s Jenny’s—careless child.”

Mrs. Merridew sniffed.

“Is she still with you?”

“Oh, yes. I hope she will stay with me for some time.”

Mrs. Merridew resumed.

“I asked because I have a cousin’s daughter coming to stay. Such a nice girl.”

Miriam would have been astonished, and with reason. She had never had any occasion to observe that her cousin Laura thought her a nice girl.

Miss Danesworth said everything she could. She had met Miriam, and she did not like her very much. She was conscious of a certain pressure from Mrs. Merridew. She did not know of any particular reason for this pressure, but it made her uneasy. She thought she would not encourage too much intimacy. And she felt that in Mrs. Merridew she had an opponent.

Jenny and Richard were up on Hazeldon Heath. It was the sort of day that is not an everyday. There was a lark singing. It went up and up, and its song came floating down. The air was cool with the wind which always blows over the Heath, and it was warm in the sun. Richard looked at Jenny, and Jenny looked away to the May trees which stood in a thick clump over against them. She said,

“I wish I had seen them in flower. Are they all white?”

“There’s a pink one right in the middle.”

Jenny looked where he pointed.

“I didn’t know there were ever pink ones except in gardens.”

He laughed.

“I expect it escaped! Or perhaps someone planted it.”

“Things are interesting, aren’t they?” said Jenny with a sigh of contentment.

Richard looked at her. He went on looking until he thought he had better say something. What he said was not what he had meant to say. He said it because he couldn’t help himself.

“Do you know that when you look that way it makes me want to kiss you?”

Jenny gave a comfortable little laugh.

“You mustn’t say things like that, you know, or I shall have to go home.”

“Did you mind?”

“Oh, no. You didn’t mean anything.”

“Didn’t I?”

She was watching a little green and white spider that kept on climbing to the top of a stalk, and when it got there it seemed to have forgotten why it had come and it ran all the way down again. She said,

“Of course you didn’t. And I don’t want to go home a bit.”

“Then why go?”

“I won’t. Unless you go on talking nonsense.”

“Suppose it wasn’t nonsense—” he said.

“It couldn’t be anything else, could it? Not when we’ve only known each other for two or three days.”

He said slowly, “I suppose not.” Then with a sudden sense of having said something which he didn’t mean, which he never could mean, he broke in,

“Jenny—does time mean all that to you? It doesn’t to me.”

She gave him a hasty look over her shoulder. He was in earnest. A sense of standing on the brink of something she didn’t quite know what came upon her. She was afraid—not of him, or of herself. She didn’t know why she was afraid. She looked at him with startled eyes, and he saw that he had spoken too soon. She wasn’t ready.

“Jenny, don’t look like that. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Jenny sat up straight. She said in a voice which she tried to keep quite steady,

“It’s nothing.” She looked at her watch. “I—I think we ought to go home now—I really do.”

“No! I won’t do it again, I promise. Look, you can see the spire of Chiselton Church. There. No, a little more to the left—straight in line with the thorn trees. You can only see it when the weather is going to be very fine, and then only in the middle of the day.”

Jenny said, “Oh, why?” She didn’t really want to go home. She was quite ready to talk about a distant church spire. It seemed a very safe subject.

“Because—” said Richard, “because there’s a spell on it. If you see it with someone in the middle of the day and the sun is shining and you don’t tell anyone, it makes a spell.”

“Richard!” She looked at him between laughter and disbelief.

“It does. If you don’t believe it you must wait and see.”

Jenny turned back to her spider.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said.

Miriam Richardson sat in the train and thought. She didn’t really want to go to Hazeldon. She didn’t want to stay at home either. She had told Jimmy she was going, and he hadn’t exactly said that he would come down and see her, but she thought she could count on it. She could make things very unpleasant for him if he failed her. Oh, yes, they might be unpleasant for her too, but she could certainly guarantee that they wouldn’t be pleasant for him. Mr. and Mrs. Mottingley were very strict. They belonged to the local church, and Jimmy had been brought up to belong to it, too. Miriam’s lip curled a little as she thought of what the Mottingley family would say if they knew. Well, they were going to know, unless Jimmy came to heel.

She thought about that. They would have to get married at once. Yes, that would be best—a register office, and then break it to the parents on both sides. If they wanted a church wedding they could have one. She didn’t mind. What she wanted was to tie Jimmy up so that he couldn’t get out of it, and whether it was church or register office that did it was nothing to her. All she wanted was to make things safe.

Underneath this smooth flow of efficient planning there were terrifying currents. She hardly knew what they were, but she felt the drag of them every now and then—the drag and the pitiless horror that it brought. She made a great effort, and was aware that every time she fought the realization of what would happen if Jimmy let her down—every time the effort was greater, and the realization of it was clearer. She turned away from it with a determined effort and thought about a plan of campaign.

Mrs. Merridew met her at the station. Unusually gracious, she kissed the air in the neighbourhood of Miriam’s cheek, summoned a porter with a peremptory wave of her parasol, and accompanied Miriam to the luggage van to pick out and claim her shabby little box. Miriam stood by with an impatience thinly disguised.

“Is that your box? Atkins, it’s that one! Dear me, Miriam, hadn’t your mother a better box to send you with than this? That strap is quite dangerous, I declare. It looks as if it might come off at any moment.”

Miriam hated her fiercely. She knew very well that her luggage was fairly shabby. If you looked as if it didn’t really belong to you you could carry that sort of thing off with a high hand, but Cousin Laura had no sense at all. She hated her, and if it hadn’t been for Jimmy she wouldn’t have come.

Chattering all the time, Mrs. Merridew superintended the collection of the box, repeating all she had said before about its shabbiness, and interspersing her remarks with a perfunctory enquiry about Mrs. Richardson’s health and well-being and a passing query as to what Eleanor and Lilian were doing now that, she supposed, they had left school.

“They haven’t left,” said Miriam shortly.

“Dear me!”

Mrs. Merridew got into the taxi and made room for Miriam beside her.

“No, Atkins, the box can come in here perfectly well! What were you saying, Miriam?”

“I said that neither Eleanor nor Lilian had left school,” said Miriam in a bored tone of voice. She was thinking that Cousin Laura was the absolute end.

As they drove away from the station Mrs. Merridew said brightly,

“Now, I want you to make a special effort to be friendly with the girl whom Miss Danesworth has got staying with her just now. I have a particular reason for wanting you to be friends.”

She began to explain the particular reason, but until she mentioned Richard Forbes, Miriam’s attention was of a very haphazard nature.

“He actually turned up with her at half past six on Sunday morning!”

Miriam came out of her thoughts.

“Who did?”

“My dear, you weren’t listening! I was telling you! Why, Richard Forbes, to be sure. You remember he was here when you were before, and I thought—”

Miriam’s shoulder gave a twitch of exasperation. She could have done very well with Richard Forbes, but she knew that he had no use for her. She didn’t put it quite as baldly as this, but that was what it had amounted to. All the same, she might be able to use him. If Jimmy could be made jealous… She gratified Mrs. Merridew by paying a good deal more attention.

They got back to Hazeldon in good time for tea, and as soon as they had finished Mrs. Merridew led the way next door. Miss Danesworth discovered them without pleasure. Then her heart smote her and she went out of her way to be kind.

Richard heard the change in her voice and groaned inwardly. There was nothing to be done about it either, for the front door gave directly into the passage which divided the house. Left to himself, he could have escaped through the back window, but he was not quite mean enough to abandon Jenny. Or was he? The moment of indecision was fatal, but he might have known that it would be. Miss Danesworth turned, preceded her guests down the passage, and stood aside for them to enter the sitting-room. Miriam saw Jenny, and Jenny saw Miriam. Both disliked the impression they received. Mrs. Merridew’s voice, which had not been silent for more than a moment, took up its tale again.

“Well, here we are. Richard, you remember Miriam? But of course you do. You met her here in the spring. You saw a good deal of each other, I remember. And Jenny—you haven’t met Miriam before, have you? This is my cousin’s daughter, Miriam Richardson. I hope you will be great friends. This is not a place where there is a great deal going on, but I always say that if young people can’t amuse one another, well, what is the world coming to? I’m sure I don’t know.”

Jenny did not like Miriam, but that was no reason for not being polite. She did what she could without much help from Miriam herself. Miriam was bored. She hadn’t come here to talk to Jenny. She showed her boredom so visibly that conversation became very difficult. But when Richard joined in, impelled by a pleading look from Jenny, Miriam’s manner changed. She flashed into a spirited and not unamusing account of her journey.

“There were two dreadful children,” she announced. “The sticky sort —they positively oozed peppermint drops. I do think there’s something sickening about children who eat in trains, and these were thoroughly nasty little toads.”

“You don’t like children?” said Jenny.

“I like properly brought up children. But these were horrid little brats —the sort you would like to drop out of the window and leave behind on the railway track.”

Richard had an amiable smile for that.

“You weren’t tempted to oblige?”

“Well, I was. But of course it wouldn’t have done. Their mother obviously didn’t mind, and she’d have been peeved with me.”

Jenny faded out of the conversation.

“How you could!” she said to Richard when their visitors had gone away.

“How I could what?”

“You played up to her—you know you did. I think she’s a horrid girl.”

“Now I wonder why?” said Richard innocently.

“Richard, you can’t like her!”

He said, “Can’t I?” in rather an odd tone of voice.

They were tidying up the drawing-room. Jenny stood with a cushion in her hand and looked at him.

“Richard—do you?”

“Frantically!” he said, laughing.

Jenny threw the cushion. The minute she had done it she was afraid. But she wasn’t sorry. He dodged the cushion and caught her by the wrists. There was a tense moment. And then he kissed her. He couldn’t help it. And yet the moment he had done it, and whilst he was still wanting to do it again, he was afraid, because Jenny didn’t blush, or tremble, or laugh. She just went white and still with his hands on her. And he was afraid of what he had done. He let go of her.

“Jenny—”

“It’s all right.”

“Jenny—”

She stamped her foot.

“I said it was all right!” And with that she turned and ran out of the room.

Miriam and Mrs. Merridew let themselves in to the house next door.

“I thought you got on very well with Richard,” said Mrs. Merridew. “Where’s that cat? Here, Timmy—Timmy!… Yes, very well indeed. He must be dreadfully bored with that little cousin they’ve got staying there.”

“Oh, she’s a cousin, is she?”

“Some sort of. Of course, you know, her name isn’t really Forbes at all. I know all about her because my cousin Miss Crampton lives in the village this girl comes from. Her father—Miss Crampton’s father, that is —was the Vicar there—my old Uncle Thomas—and this girl is the illegitimate daughter of the last Forbes, the one who was killed in the war. Her mother died when she was born, and she stayed on with her mother’s old governess who lived just at the gates of the Forbeses’ house. Most awkward. I believe Mrs. Forbes did try very hard to get the governess to move away, but she wouldn’t budge. That will show you the sort of bringing up the girl had. And now that the governess is dead she’s had some sort of a row with Mrs. Forbes, and she turns up here with Richard at seven o’clock in the morning, if you please!”

“What a joke!” said Miriam.

“Well, I call it disgraceful— Oh, there you are, pussy! Now come along and see what I’ve got for you!” As she left the room she turned round to say, “A girl like that just doesn’t understand that Richard would never think seriously of her for a moment. I don’t know what she was doing gadding about with him as she was, but I wouldn’t put up with it if I were Miss Danesworth and Richard was my nephew.”

Jenny was very quiet all the evening—very quiet and very still. She didn’t come down again until just before supper. Then she excused herself and went to bed as soon afterwards as she could.

As soon as the door was shut on her Miss Danesworth turned on her nephew and said,

“What have you been doing?”

“I?” Richard’s tone was one of conscious innocence.

“Yes, you. And it’s no good your being like that about it. If you don’t want to tell me about it you needn’t. But don’t pretend that there is nothing to tell.”

Richard was standing by the fireplace. He had his back turned to Caroline. He was very fond of her. She was absolutely to be trusted. It was too soon to say anything. And then suddenly he was saying it.

“It’s Jenny,” he said.

“Yes?”

There was something in the tone of her voice that made it easier. He said,

“I’ve gone right overboard for her. I expect you know that.”

“Yes.”

There was a long pause. Then he said,

“I’ve rushed things, I’m afraid.”

“Yes?”

“I—I’m afraid I kissed her.”

“Well, that’s not the end of the world.”

“It might be.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it was all very light-hearted, and then suddenly she threw a cushion and I kissed her and it wasn’t light-hearted any more. She turned as white as a sheet and ran out of the room. I suppose now she thinks I kiss every girl I meet.”

“Probably.” After a pause she went on. “You are really serious about this?”

“Of course I am.”

“Well then, I should leave it all tonight. She’s had a shock. I think you’ve got to be careful what you say and do.”

“I think I have.”

“Well then, I shouldn’t do anything tonight. In the morning you can apologize for kissing her. See how she takes it. Don’t rush things. I think she’s had a fright. You want her to trust you.”