Inheritance Feud

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

The tower led out by a series of half-stairs and corridors to the long attics, running the length of the newer house. Morven moved stealthily, to avoid wakening the Englishman's servants who slept up here. When he had reached the attic proper he made his way to the place he had been in on that day when for the second time he saw Livia, dusting down stairs. His uncle and aunt's portrait was no longer there. Evidently Mrs. Bowes had been in the attics. Morven yawned, found a place where he could wrap his cold body in a dry old curtain, left among the dust for whatever purpose no one knew, except oblivion. He stripped off his clothes and spread them out to dry; and, n***d except for the wrapping, lay down behind where the great sloping canvas had once stood, to sleep. They wouldn't look for him here; not in the

respectable stronghold, the Englishman's house of Malvie. "But it's mine," Morven thought before he slept, "it's mine." No purchase-money and no deed could take it from him. He slept, and in his ears drummed the blood of his an cestors. Doon of Malvie, Doon of Malvie, and the spiders scurrying near him in the layers of the wall...

VI

HE woke: it was broad daylight, and he had no idea of the time. He reached out a hand to his still damp clothes where they lay; then rose, shed his wrapping, stretched, and walked n***d to the window. At the back of his mind was faint amusement at the prospect of a maidservant, or one of Mrs. Bowes's daughters, perhaps, coming up here and discovering him thus, screaming and falling in a faint; it would at least give him the advantage of surprise and a few minutes' get away.

Still smiling with his own amusement, he watched the lawn below; they were beginning to level the rough ground and plant shrubs. Morven's smile vanished, and a cruel light showed in the oblique eyes; any change made to Malvie must come from himself. He watched, resentfully, while gardeners worked on the space far below, studying their faces and know ing they were new men, strangers no doubt from the south. After a while the cold struck his skin and he wandered about the attics looking for dry clothing; there should be, some where, an old chest containing things of uncle Philip's. He found it, and rummaged through the contents, selecting in the end a worn satin coat, with a slot for a sword-belt; the braid at cuffs and edge was tarnished and frayed, and there were buttons missing. He found other garments, put them on and returned for his own shoes, which were still damp and stiff from the sea-water. Sometime, when he could get to a town with some of the money hidden by himself and Bart over the months, he'd buy new clothes. It hadn't been poverty-he grimaced, for the thing was relative-but lack of leisure which had left him shabby. Now he might dress like a lord, if he would, and could escape the eye of the revenue-officer.

He strolled in the old-fashioned clothes he had found to the stairhead, and looking down saw a maidservant go past with a coal-scoop ready filled; it must still be early morning. Perhaps, if he could contrive to get to the Mains and waylay Livia, she'd get him food and they could arrange where to meet later. He knew, early each day, she had tasks which took her out to the wood-stack or the coals, or to fetch water from the house pump. He'd go down now, skirting the main lane so nobody might see him. Arrogantly, he left his drying clothes where they were. He could hide out well enough at Malvie until the hue and cry had died down.

Livia changed colour when she saw him; they had met at the place where she came daily to draw water. "Morven Doon, you're mad," she said. "Do you know they were at the Mains looking for you, the same night it happened? You're his aunt,' they told Mrs. Retford. She gave the officer a flea in his ear, I can tell you."

She seized him by the sleeve, and drew him out of sight. "Whose old gear are you in now?" she said, laughing and crying. "Ah, Morven, Morven-"

But he had seized her and was assuaging his hunger by kisses, and more. Presently he held her away, leaving her gasping. "Will you come tonight, to the usual place?" he said. "I'll be waiting."

"It isn't safe-not now, Morven!" "Safe or not, I'll be there; we can talk after." Swiftly, in a low voice, he ascertained news about old Aaron Judd; he'd been set free, Livia told him, after the signalling-time should be over; they'd held him till then, the revenue-men, then when they found the boat inshore they let him go free. "He said he knew nothing," Livia added. "The heart was broken in him, but he said he knew nothing. He said he didn't know how Bart could ha' died."

"You knew about Bart?" he asked her, and she nodded.

"Betts told me; he saw them carry him up. Lord, that was a bad night's work! Whatever will Aaron do now, without that boy? Bart was a fine smith, they say, when he'd take

time off to do it. Why can't men mind their right business?" Morven pinched her hip, and said he'd mind his when she brought it to him tonight. "Get me a bite to eat, love," he begged. "I've lived on brandy since yesterday."

She looked round, went away quickly, and presently re turned with a loaf and meat pasty, which she thrust into his hand. "Better not wait about to eat it," she said. "The old woman's up. If she thinks I've eaten all of this for my break fast, she'll take it off my wages." She looked at him lingeringly with her grey eyes. "Morven-"

"Yes, my love?" He was biting with sharp teeth into the pasty; it tasted good. "Bring a drink of milk tonight when you come, if you can," he told her. She nodded, tears in her eyes.

"If I can," she said. "Oh, Morven, take care! If I come and don't find you, how will I know where you are? How can I reach you, if-"She bit her lip on it; word would mean his arrest, and being marched away by the militia and perhaps hanged, and her belly was getting to show beneath the apron no matter how she covered up, and one day soon

He kissed her. "I'll be at our place, never fear," he said. He would not tell even Livia of his hiding-place in Malvie. That was private, for himself only, a thing to be assessed in his own soul. Besides, somehow at sight of the tame shrubs planted by that Englishman he'd had a notion, imperfect yet, as to how he could get back Malvie. Annabel, and the pear tree at her window, and Livia to take word, and then the wedding, and

But Livia, he knew, would take some persuading about that. Tonight should be for her only. He waited, in due course, among the wild cherry trees, and she came, and brought the milk, and he drank it. Then he lay down with her and they made love as they had never made love before; the very earth and trees seemed to tremble with it, and Livia, transported, forgot everything, forgot the coming child and that Morven was a wanted man, and what might become of her if they took him. She only knew that she was in his arms, and in his arms was all she need ever know of heaven; after they were both dead, if there was nothing more for her, she thought, they'd had that.

The tears were wet on her cheeks and he kissed them. "What is it love?" he whispered. Then he talked to her again of Man, where they would live, he said; only a little while, and then he'd come, when there was a boat again, and take her away, and they'd live in a cottage on the rough north shore, as he'd said, and she could have her baby.

"There's a thing I want you to do for me before that, my darling," he said, fondling her breasts which were swollen a little; "I won't tell you now; tomorrow, perhaps, tomorrow."

Livia sighed and trembled with ecstacy under his hands. She didn't ask more about the other thing she would have to do for him. There would always be some thing or another to do, for Morven, and she'd do it. She'd do anything. Tomorrow he'd perhaps tell her what it was.

She left him when the dew had already risen, and he vanished again along the path towards Malvie.

Annabel turned her reddened eyelids into the pillow and sobbed quietly, as she'd done each night this week. The past few days had been the worst in her whole life; worse even than when Papa had died.

First, and worst, had been the matter of Morven, hearing the shots and knowing some danger had befallen him, and that there was nothing she could do. She hadn't, of course, seen Bart's body carried back to the smithy cottage, but she'd glimpsed Aaron Judd, a changed, aged, trembling old man, helped in by Betts again today for a meal and a drink of spiced ale before he went back to his lonely dwelling now the funeral was over. Bart's funeral . . . it might have been Morven's. Nobody knew where Morven was.

An excise-officer had come to ask all of them questions; he had been fussed little man with a cutlass and a face like an angry plum. He'd questioned them all, herself and aunt Retford and Livia Mary and the Betts couple and Aaron. Aaron, who was the only one who could possibly know any thing, had known nothing, nothing. He'd kept silence even among them all in the kitchen, Betts had said. "He'll not do a day's shoeing again," Betts had added. "They'll need to get their horses shod from now on beyond Maddon." But Aaron, nevertheless, had refused to go and stay with his son Abel, over at the Fleece; it had been the sea he'd always lived for, the sea and young Bart. If he had his way, he'd die by the sea where Bart had died.

Annabel had heard it all, and listened to hardly any of it. Where was Morven? The awareness of his danger beat against her mind like high springtide waves; nothing else was real. All that might have partly accounted for her cruelty, only yesterday, to Godfrey.

For Godfrey had, at last, asked her to marry him. It had happened on the shore road where they had gone as so often together to collect and catalogue shells and weeds. Usually she listened and was interested, but yesterday

She hadn't wanted to go, in the first place; she'd wanted to wait at home for news of Morven. But aunt Retford had made her put on her habit, and go up to Malvie as usual dressed ready to ride. So she'd obeyed, and listlessly led the pony, and only half attended to what Godfrey was saying;and then, realising that his sad pop-eyes had something at the back of them which was not any longer about weeds and shells, she had said, gently as always, "I beg your pardon, Godfrey; I was not attending. There

has been some trouble, as you know."

"That was why I asked you to marry me today," said Godfrey, flushing beneath his straw hat. He always wore such a wide Italian hat, summer or winter, if there was sun; it shaded his weak eyes. Poor Godfrey. It looked eccentric; but, of course, he couldn't look otherwise. The realisation of what he'd been saying was borne in on Annabel suddenly, making her blush deepest rose. "Oh, no," she said, and then, although she had of course known this was coming, that aunt Retford had meant it to happen from the beginning, "Oh no, no, no, no! I-I cannot, I cannot!"

She had fallen silent then, miserably tongue-tied; she hated hurting anyone. Go rey's expression had not altered except that, she thought, he looked on her now with great kindness, sadness, understanding; all three; it all made her cry, and she'd gone on crying afterwards at home, when aunt Retford had scolded her to a degree she wouldn't have believed pos sible, even for that resolute lady. "Refused him? Refused so rich an offer; and to live at the

great house?"