Secrets and Billionaires

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

She hadn't changed much. Those who, if any, were still on the lookout for trouble-there had been one or two forward fellows at the bar, at the beginning, looking down her dress and so on, but Abel had soon altered that those who still watched her saw only a tall, calm, comely young woman in a drab gown, spotless apron, and clean linen cap covering her black hair. She'd become famous for her laundering and the way she trained her maids, who told each other Mistress Judd was a demon for work, but didn't spare herself. The rest of life could have gone on in such a way, evenly enough, though something, Livia thought, had died in her till that tune of Kenmure in the dream came, to bring it to life. Then, if only briefly, she lived again.

After her first few weeks at the Fleece a fresh item of gos sip had come to the taproom; first someone heard the dead bell ring; Mrs. Retford at the Mains had been taken. Livia, as may be imagined, felt some relief, for never now would the dead woman come demanding her runaway serving-maid; not that it would have happened, with herself big as a gourd at the time and Mrs. Retford, no doubt, glad to have seen the last of her had she known. She must have been ill for a long time never to notice, for her eyes were as a rule sharp enough; she was not much regretted. Abel, because the dead woman was a Doon and of the old family, ordered that the tavern door be left shut on the day of the funeral. Old Max stub bornly determined, in addition, to go and pay his last respects; Bart would be there, he said. He often spoke of his dead younger son by then as if he were still alive; he had forgotten recent events and treated Abel, who looked after his needs with devoted tenderness, as though he were some paid hireling. Livia's company he enjoyed, he said, and she offered to drive the old man over in the dray that day, taking William with them.

Max set off in his best blacks, his teeth for once shoved in his head; the grim necessity of wearing them reduced his speech to a minimum, and on the return journey he carefully took them out. Livia waited for him-women did not attend funerals at the deserted smith-cottage, bestowing William by her in the straw. He was beginning to crawl and she found, with attending to him, that she had no time for sadness or, very much, for memory of herself and Gavallan, hurrying towards one another across a space of green summer grass here long, long ago, in another life. Perhaps when she was an old woman she'd be like Max, confusing the past with the present; as it was she'd had more, far more, than most women ever knew of; in herself, she was whole. Where was Gavallan now, in some ship on unimaginable seas? She thought of him as already afloat; had she known he was still lying in prison after so many months, she would have gone to him. But Livia was ignorant of the slowness of the law, and thought of Mor ven as far away, far further than the distance of a coach journey. Nor could she write; and Gavallan being blind, they could send no word to each other. Would he know that, nevertheless, she thought of him constantly? Did he also think of her?

"It'll be the house he thinks of most," she told herself with out bitterness, seeing Malvie black against the winter sky. with a single light burning, and a few flakes of snow begin ning to come down. It would be a white funeral. She gathered William to her, and hushed him to keep him warm; and pic tured Mrs. Retford's hearse, its sable plumes already sodden, driving towards the church, and later the snow lying whitely on the mourners' shoulders, as they saw her buried at last in the family tomb at Malvie.

Max rejoined her to say the funeral had been poorly attended by the family; Mrs. Annabel was fallen in her labour, and the physician had been sent for.

"She's early, they say." Livia had been thinking that it was late, the birth. She'd seen Annabel only once, in the carriage driving with her mother-in-law, and Miss Clairette; they hadn't noticed her where she was in the street. Miss Annabel, she'd thought then, from the look of her, was too big; the baby was misplaced, perhaps, and strained the small body till it seemed to draw away all its strength, leaving the limbs like thin sticks; and she'd lost all her pretty colour. Pity had assailed Livia, bringing fully home to her for the first time what Gavallan had done. His ruthless gift might well kill the recipient, such a birth couldn't be easy, for all the care and comfort Miss Annabel would receive in her silken bed. And the date was awkward.

Now, Max was saying he'd heard, Mrs. Annabel had slipped and fallen while she was walking in the garden on the snowy path. That'd help things, Livia thought; a late-born baby supposed to be premature. Folk would gossip still, with out a doubt; they always did, and they'd say Miss Annabel and the poor invalid gentleman had done what they shouldn't, perhaps, on the shore last year when they were supposed to be gathering shells, but what did it matter? Gavallan's child had a father, in any case. They should be thankful for that.

Old Max watched her as she gathered the reins; she was a pretty young woman, and he liked those. Shyly, at that mom ent, he went over in his own mind the provisions of his will. He'd already left a small something to Livia, who was a good wife to his son, and had loved Gavallan. The latter was more important to the old man than the former; now, as the old do, he remembered clearly that Bart was dead, and that the bulk of his own savings, which were considerable and which Bart would have had, and the boat, and the cottage, he'd willed to Gavallan. Gavallan would be back, without a doubt, whatever they all said, and would need money; he, Max, had seen him right about that; it was wrong that Richard Doon's son should go without this world's goods when his father had ridden out that time for the true King.

For Max, was, at heart, a romantic.