Inheritance Feud

Chapter 27

Chapter 27

The fiddler passed by, his strings wailing; and it was then she looked up and saw Morven. She couldn't have said what made her do it. She hadn't

even, for that particular moment, been thinking of him; only how hot it was growing in the hall, and how they'd most of them eaten too much, so that it would be not everyone's pleasure if the trestles were shortly cleared away, as they would be, for them all to dance. She herself didn't want to dance with anyone; it would, in a way, be pleasanter to stay here where she was, seated quietly by Godfrey. But that would no doubt lead to more talk.

She looked up towards the roof, where the old hammered beams were almost invisible in the mounting haze of heat from the candles. The wind sounded again beyond; and through the sound of the wind and the fiddle-music, up there in the hazy darkness, where there was the old minstrel-loft, she raised her eyes and saw, for an instant only, Morven's face; pale like the new moon, staring down on them all, and then it vanished. He'd seen that she saw him. A great rush of emotion, relief or terror, flooded Annabel, and she saw the servants come in to the hall and begin to clear. It was the right moment to go; she knew what to do.

"Excuse me, I beg," she said to Godfrey, as though he were a stranger; and leaving the hall among the stir of scrap ing benches and couples pulling one another out to the centre of the floor ready for the first dance after the bride and groom, she fled. Someone called after her, asking for a dance from the bride-attendant; some man who'd drunk too much wine. Annabel picked up her yellow skirts, and ran out alone into the darkness; through the waiting silent nether house, to find the kitchen-stairs; she passed the bridal-chamber, its bed waiting ready all decked with flowers. She ran on; in the far distance the fiddles had started up; they would be dancing.

The stairs were dark, unlit in this forgotten part of the house. But she knew her way; stumbling, groping over the landings and the places they'd once known together, she and Morven, below the ghostly attic where he wouldn't let her go. What was he doing here? Was Malvie attic the place where he was hidden? She should always have known, of course, that he'd hide somewhere in Malvie.

An arm shot out of the darkness at her, nearby the gallery; by that time the fiddles sounded again loudly below. He'd placed a hand over her mouth; no need, she wouldn't have screamed. She wrestled free and looked up at what she could see of his face in the half-dark; the eyes shone strangely. For the moment, as had often happened in her life, she was frightened of Morven; frightened of what he might mean, what he wanted, what he wanted now... it wasn't the same, in any way, as it had been between them gently in her own quiet room, down at the Mains. He was like a different person; a sudden, demanding, bitter stranger. She sobbed, as he handled and disarranged her; this wasn't, with its swift, contemptuous bundling up of skirts, Morven, her husband, her lover.

But he took her; there, in the full sound of the fiddles, almost within sight of the dancing lines of guests, of the sad gaze of Godfrey. Far below, they went on dancing; and when he'd done with Annabel, he thrust her away, laughing. She could see his teeth. She was gasping, sobbing, dishevelled, shamed; why had he taken her brutally like that? Hadn't he known she had had to come because they were man and wife, Morven and Annabel, not-not a maid and stableman in the hay? But it was over. She adjusted the London-made clothes carefully. Perhaps her skirts had got grubby on the stairs; cobwebs, dust. Why think of that? She gazed up at Morven, wordlessly. He took her by the shoulders again, gripping hard.

"Now go down and sit by him, while the others divert themselves. Don't stand up to dance. If anyone asks you, decline. You're to sit by him till the end, you hear me?"

"Morven-" That r****g of her, that rough cruel usage as though she were a servant, a chattel, and now

He smiled, seeing her fright and shame. "Is it too hard to obey me?" he asked her. He put a finger under her chin, raised it up and kissed her. Even the kiss was impersonal, as if one of the guests downstairs had given it; as if two strangers kissed. She began to shiver. "Go down," said Morven again, "into the warmth."

He patted her, a small kindly derisive gesture of farewell. "Don't look for me again here," he said. "You understand me? If I'm taken, we won't ever meet again."

"Ah, Morven-" She was trying to form words which would make it clear to him that she'd never, never tell; that nothing she might say or do would give away the fact that she'd seen him tonight, that they'd

"Then go down. Sit by him. Isn't that what I'm asking you to do?" He smiled, winningly in the way he could do always. "Do this for me, and tomorrow night, if I can, I'll come to you at Mains."

"You promise?" She was like a child; the prospect of hi coming to her, of its again being as it should always be between them, not-not like tonight, was enough for her meantime; afterwards, it didn't seem clear what would happen.

"Kiss me, Morven. Please kiss me again, and then I'll go." And he kissed her; it was a pleasant, friendly enough kiss, now he'd got her to agree to what he wanted. He waited in the shadows while she regained the hall; then watched the obed ient, yellow-clad little figure thread its way to where Godfrey Devenham still sat, and take its place by his side.

Morven smiled to himself; the sweetness of revenge had been his in full measure tonight, taking his will of Godfrey's girl in, almost, full view of that poor incapable creature, of them all, all the sycophants who'd come to gape and dine now money, and gilding, and flowers, and the prospect of social gain, had come to Malvie. But he'd found his way already under the petticoats of the chief player, the feminine lead. He could, in time, find his way to bed, board and hall again at Malvie. It wouldn't, judging from that sorry hulk downstairs, be long, perhaps no more than a year or two; in the meantime, Man, and, always, Livia, his own dear woman. He'd never desert Livia or her child. That hand fasting to Annabel had meant nothing without witnesses,

but the little goose wouldn't know that, He left the throbbing of the fiddles shortly and went to his own place, and slept more soundly than the bridal-couple till morning.

Livia had to cross a part of the vegetable-plot at Mains to carry the house-ashes to the heap; some days this couldn't be done till the afternoon. As she picked her way across between the rows of young growing kale and late beans she glanced, almost shyly, over to the yew-arbour; Miss Annabel was in there, had been there now for an hour, ever since she left her aunt's room. It'd happened once or twice that way, lately. The figure in the arbour did not respond or smile and she had, Livia saw, her flushed cheek averted, so that she must be staring at the close dark wall of yew. God knew what that'd tell her. There was nothing to do but get on with one's work, and-and think of Morven.

She emptied the ashes and saw, as if with half her eye, the smoke-like drift eddying and settling in fine dust, some of it on her skirts; she shook them fastidiously. Life was queer, if you thought of it; queerer the harder you thought, and neither she nor Miss Annabel was a lightskirt, if one had to think of skirts at all... yet both of them, most like by now, in the same way, and to the same man, and yet she hadn't the strength to tell him what was the truth, that he should leave the poor little devil alone, she'd enough to put up with; her aunt, and that pop-eyed poor creature at Malvie who wasn't a man at all, wanting to marry her. That was, of course, what all the trouble was about; Livia had heard Miss Annabel before now, sobbing and crying out in her aunt's study, not willing any more to go to the shore with Mr. Godfrey, go up to Malvie and the like. There'd been more trouble, lately, because the old woman said she'd made a show of herself last month at that wedding-feast, sitting beside poor young Godfrey Devenham all night, and why, if she didn't intend to accept his offer and make fools of them all... and so on.

Livia picked up her pail grimly. Mrs. Retford had spoiled one thing, she thought; Miss Annabel wouldn't be sitting a pony for a while, after the way she'd whipped her again today. She'd heard it herself, and the sounds that came; wicked it was; some folk could bear more than others.

She made her way back out of the garden quietly, not making any further greeting to Miss Annabel. In a way, each knew there was something the matter with the other; they weren't, even in the ordinary way, at ease; it wasn't as if she herself had even known too much, until one morning, a while ago now, she'd found a coat button of Morven's in Miss Annabel's room. That had decided it, but she'd had her own notions, before then, of what was going on. That first morning, it must have been, she'd seen fit to take away the sheets, although it wasn't the day for laundry.

She wasn't asked to think, that was it; servants didn't, except to themselves; even Morven, when she'd said nothing and handed him the button, with an offer to sew it on, hadn't told her much. "I said to you I had a plan," he reminded. her. He'd let her repair the button, in the manner he had as though he were a king, and she an attendant putting the jewels back in his crown; then he'd turned away to the window; yes, he'd been with her in her own room by then, having come up, straight up, from Miss Annabel, whom he'd left sleeping that time, he said. She herself had been aghast at sight of Morven; supposing the old woman saw him, mooning through the early morning passages and up the stairs?

"I needed you," he'd told her on arrival, and fallen on her although it was by then dawn. But later, staring beyond the window at the sunrise, as though he'd forgotten her again and was once more with that other,

"She shall bear me a son. He will be born at Malvie.

Later, he will inherit."

"Oh, you're mad, you're mad," she had cried, flinging him back his mended coat. With her own belly grown so big someone was bound to notice it soon, couldn't they be off, to Man or wherever he'd said he was taking her?

But Miss Annabel still would not conceive.

It was over a year since Annabel had sat with her embroi dery in the yew-arbour. That thought drifted through her mind now, among others, staring at the tiny, close dark needles of the yew. The yew had been here for two hundred years. It had outlasted that prim, unaware little creature who'd once sat here, who had been clear of bewilderment in body and mind, not as now, a burning battlefield of assaulted flesh and, within, a medley of mixed sensations, some of which still came strongly.