Goldcrest

Chapter 8

Chapter 8

"Sybilla is my daughter. Did you suppose you could get a child?" said Si Kasparian clearly, and turned away. Godfrey had heard. She knew, and suddenly silent and in tears flung herself across his knees where he sat, so that he sagged upon her.

"Oh God," she heard herself moaning, and presently felt him somehow drag her up to him; she felt his poor hands caress her hair; had she ever resented his touch? Still she could say nothing but, "Oh, God, oh God," and knew a sud den fear that Godfrey was dying. His face, as with one near death, had acquired a serenity, a smoothness about it; he smiled, and kept his hand on her hair.

"Don't cry," she heard him say, and then "I... knew." His breaths, as though they were someone's who has been running a long way, were growing shorter; a gasp of pain came, and his whole body grew rigid. She could see, as if in nightmare, his teeth clench against the fierceness of the pain; that he should forget her, forget or fail to hear the thing she must tell him, was intolerable. She almost shouted at him, holding him fast about the body.

"I love you, I love you my darling, my own darling-" But he smiled, the face having relaxed and changed to an expression of great serenity and sweetness; perhaps he had not heard her. That he should not have done so possessed Anna bel's mind all through the hours and days that followed; after help came, after they took him away, after they laid him out for burial.

For he was dead. He had perhaps died doubting her..

Later, after she had gone away for help, the child Sybilla had come, having ridden down at speed on her pony as soon as the lessons were over. She saw her father's body slumped sideways, found him glassy-eyed and silent, not answering her kiss; and then she screamed, and looked about her for help at last; a blind man with a bleeding face stood nearby.

"Do not cry, my child," he said, "he was never your father.

I am."

Sybilla fell again to screaming.

Godfrey's will was read by the lawyer Fosse, who had come down from Edinburgh for the funeral. He read'it in presence. of the widow, Kitty Bowes, Sir Hubert Melrose and his son Paul, who had arrived with Kitty, Miriam Bowes was not present. Neither was the child Sybilla, who was, it was stated, under physician's orders and distracted with grief. So, Mr. Fosse thought, unexpectedly, was the widow; she twisted her mourning-kerchief in her hands throughout the reading, and appeared to understand very little he had to say.

The will was straightforward. The house and estate of Mal vie, with a large jointure, went to Tessa direct, without pro visions or clauses. Fosse looked at her, cleared his throat, and kept silent concerning his own thoughts on the matter; it was, he decided, no time to mention that, if she chose to marry again, the property was hers to leave or dispose as she chose. But as things were, no doubt, she herself would will Malvie directly to Miss Sybilla. He would discuss that matter with her, perhaps before he left.

Sybilla herself was generously provided for; Kitty and Miriam received life-annuities. The trusteeship of Sybilla's fortune was, as was prudent, under Sir Hubert's care as well as that of the child's mother. There were one or two benefits to servants, in particular to the footman George Oakes. "Nothing and no one was forgotten by him," said Sir Hubert afterwards, gruffly to disguise the emotion he felt. He was compelled to add that if Tessa cared to make her home with them at Maddon, and to bring Sybilla with her

Tessa shook her head; she was, the old man thought, in a state of shock, and could not rightly decide her course of present action. He tried to persuade her; would she, perhaps, desire him to remain here for a day or two with her, till she should have had leisure to think what her future arrangements might be? "It will be solitary for you here, niece," he said kindly.

"Mama Bowes has offered to stay," said Tessa dully.

Kitty's choice had surprised her, for with her two daughters now at Maddon one would have thought that she preferred to remain there, now Godfrey was gone; but she would, she said, like best to remain with Tessa and little Sybilla. Miriam refused to return. It might not be long, everyone thought, till Kitty herself would need the attentions due to an invalid; her painted face sagged, and she seemed to have aged ten years since Godfrey's death; she was still given to un controlled outbursts of weeping. But Tessa did not weep; not even at night, when she was alone on her pillows. She had, after all, been for some years alone in such a way.

Her solitude was like a wall about her; nobody, she resol ved, should break it down. After Sir Hubert and Paul and the lawyer had gone she walked restlessly about the house, the great empty house of Malvie. Godfrey had filled it with beautiful and rare things, and his garden; she must always tend his garden, though not as he

"Let me keep it worthily, as he would have wished. Let it be a memorial to him."

Outside, she already knew, Si Kasparian would be coasting about, waiting; it was like the onslaught of a chess-army, red against white. If she'd think for herself, think what she was doing, Godfrey had once told her, she'd sometimes win. She'd win this game. Godfrey had left Malvie to her; she herself had signed a will, lately before Fosse rode away, leaving everything to Sybilla. Si Kasparian, who had killed her saint, her love, Godfrey, should not have Malvie. She and Kitty and Sybilla, three women together, should resist him alone.

She clenched her white hands, and felt the stiff ridged stuff of her mourning-gown yield under them; but she herself would be unyielding, in this war. With every one of the resources left to her starved and lonely body, Tessa made ready to fight funeral, a request to him to vacate the Mains at the earliest Si Kasparian Doon. She had already sent, the day after Godfrey's opportunity.