Inheritance Feud

Chapter 24

Chapter 24

But Morven would not dine. Later the same day, having sent no word, he strode in, with a shot hare in his hand, the blood dripping from its nose over the floorboards. He wore his oldest clothes, as if in derision; his whole manner was aggressive and wild, like an animal whose freedom is threatened.

"I'll not eat with you, Englishman," he said. Godfrey was silent with astonishment; he was unaccus tomed to open discourtesy. Presently he said, gently, "Why?" as if it were a scientific problem. Morven laughed, and showed his white wolfish teeth.

"Why? Because of my mother's Highland blood, I sup

pose; we do not sit down to meat with those who have robbed

us of our heritage."

"I took nothing from you," said Godfrey fairly; the house had, he knew, been bought of the trustees and Annabel. Dimly, he began to see in himself a protector for Annabel; this fellow wouldn't have been kind to her in the way she needed. She was gentle, more akin to the things of the south. To be English wasn't in any case a term of reproach there. Godfrey waited, but no answer came; instead, Morven Doon turned the talk his own way.

"Here's my dinner," he said, and slapped the dead hare. He saw Godfrey stare down at the gouted blood and grinned. "In the south, they tell me, you hang men or send them to Australia, or to the hulks, for stealing a hare. ave yourself the toil, sir; I didn't shoot it on Malvie ground; I took it on the high road, where it was loping."

Godfrey said nothing more about the hare, which was almost certainly his own; what did that matter? "I am sorry that we cannot be friends," he said peaceably. "I-having no Highland blood, perhaps-have no rancour towards those who have never wished to harm me, and even very little now to those who have. It-it would give me great pleasure if you'd come often to Malvie. It need not be-lost to you."

His face suffused, for he knew he had phrased all of it badly and had, no doubt, wounded this half-Highland Scot more deeply than ever. Why were the two races so different? In England, it would have been pleasant to offer Morven the run of the house, let him shoot over the grounds at any time, act indeed as if the place were still his own. But a bitter snap of hatred was all that showed in Doon's pale eyes as a result. He laid a hand lightly on the table.

"This was my father's, Richard Doon's," he said. "He bought it with his own silver, in a Cumbrian great house where the owner had broke himself, and he and my uncle found it there together. Upstairs, there is a portrait of my uncle, who stayed at home-"

"I have heard of it; we will bring it downstairs, and hang it above the fireplace. Why will you never come to see it there?" Godfrey's tone was pleading; for Annabel's kin to be friends was all he wanted; it would surely grieve her if things fell out otherwise.

"There is no portrait of my father, who rode out for the true King with his sword. If there was such, you would not dare hang it, Sassenach." Morven spat out the word as if it were customary to use it here, so far south; which it was not. "No one remembers my father now except myself, who never knew him," he said. "He should have been Doon of Malvie; so should his son. He died in a Paris attic before he was forty, of eating putrid food bought cheap in the market, there was never enough money for any of them, the exiles, there is none now for me. How can you come here, Englishman, and buy what cannot be bought? You will never bear the name of Doon or have Doon blood running in your veins, or in those of your sons."

He laughed in Godfrey's face; by now, it was white. "No, I'll not ," said Morven, "or come through the door here again until I come as Doon of Malvie." And he turned and went out.

Godfrey, left alone, felt sick for some time, as he some times did with mortification or shock; later he failed to eat any dinner. What had he said to Morven Doon to make the other hate him so? What had the last saying of all meant? Doon of Malvie... But that didn't matter, was absurd. The thing that troubled Godfrey was that he'd failed with Morven Doon, a personal failure, when he'd tried so hard-perhaps too hard to succeed. How clumsy he was!

It was not possible for Godfrey and Morven to meet again; the affray with the customs-officer happened shortly afterwards. There had for some time been disquiet in inform ed circles, following a governmental inquiry from London as to the drop in tax for liquor over the area, the previous year. A consignment of boats, manned by such of the militia as could be spared, armed and supported by shore excisemen, patrolled the channel. It was due only to the almost universal support, in the area, for the brandy-runners and salt smug glers that none were yet taken. Contraband was hidden, in such unlikely places as loose window-sills and under roof thatch and in holes dug in the moorland turf, beneath Malvie itself, there was a cave where the water rose high twice daily, and never a searching exciseman penetrated further, into the upper chamber beyond the lower. Morven Doon went there, however, knowing the tides from a boy, and Bart with him. Bart and Morven stowed the bales away where they knew where to find them, and took the boat out again when the tide was right and the night fallen; and they laughed as they sailed close between the two sets of cutter-lights and made out to open sea, and the Ayre of Man where a French vessel waited. The two of them could do all that was to be done, as a rule, between them; Aaron had charge of the shore-signals, and Abel the bestowal of goods and, also, collection of pay ment at a later date; he divided this afterwards fairly. Mean time they took on board the stuff from the Frenchman, spent two nights on Man and sailed for home; by then, there was a gale blowing.

Morven remembered afterwards that he had let the boat slightly off course, buffeted by a wind; a wall of rock reared ahead, and by the time veered the hull round he had misplaced Aaron's signal. It took a quarter-hour to right their course, and by then the smithy fire glowed clear orange above the rock, with no one about. Aaron would, if all had not been well, have shut the door to or let the fire out. As it was, Bart shouted against the wind and Morven let the small boat run hard in to shore... they heard the gravel grate before they became aware of dark, grappling figures in the water and, ahead, a lit flare from a lantern. Someone fired; and Bart, who was never slow to answer, pulled out his pistol.

Morven could never tell for certain what happened then. There were two more shots; both went wide, and he heard the swish of a cutlass and felt Bart's weight slump over against him, vomiting warmth; presently he lay quite still in the bottom of the boat. The men were everywhere nearby: Mor ven decided to abandon the boat and bales, and Bart, who was clearly dead. He shoved the vessel back with a sudden force that unbalanced the few men clinging to the prow; writhed back, dived over into the dark water and away, swimming for a while under the surface; great areas of sub merged rock met him, and he knew them all like the lifelines on his hand. Within moments, guided by his knowledge of. the shore, he was striking out for Malvie cave, where the tide rose high in the outer chamber.

Shouts died behind him as he swam on, in the end treading water to look back briefly; their lantern-light would not penetrate so far. He could see, dimly, a cluster of dark shapes like crows; the boat, the customs-men and Bart's body. He'd been sorry to abandon Bart, but knew the latter would have had no sentiment about doing so to himself, if dead; what was a corpse worth? The boat he grudged more, and the bales... the bales would damn him. They contained brandy, gin, tobacco and lace. He grinned in the darkness. Difficult to overlook that, even in the dark... he'd have to disappear for a while.

He scowled, realising for the first time that he had lost his freedom of movement by day. He'd go in the end, no doubt, to Man, and take Livia. They'd leave together as soon as he could find a boat, and meantime . . . meantime he must hole up in the cave, and find out what had happened to old Aaron, and wait to hear the court-verdict on himself. Uncle Hubert Melrose would do nothing, except save his own face; he wasn't even Morven's kin, but Annabel's.

Annabel. She'd be snug in her bed now at the Mains, perhaps having heard the shots. Perhaps all of them, all the women, were sitting up agog in their beds. Well, he'd see them again.

The cave was full and cool. Morven stepped up, dripping, on dry land at last at the inner end of the cave-mouth, then using his hands to grip knowledgeably, climbed up the further rock-wall. At the north-east corner, not seen from the open mouth by day, was a small aperture sealed tightly by a stone from within. Morven pushed the stone away, and it revealed a wider, ascending tunnel, leading off into further dark. He felt his wet tinder which still lay in his breeches-pocket, cursed, ascended, and vanished inside the cleft. Once inside be found the stone and replaced it as it had been. No one, entering the cave by now, would look for him.

The dark inner passage was long and rough, sloping always upwards; several times he almost stumbled. As time passed, however, he became aware of a lightening at the far end, almost like a shaft of daylight coming down; the moon had risen. He hastened towards the shaft and, as before, set feet and hands with familiar ease in the clefts and fissures as he climbed; it was about thirty feet in height, and if he took trouble to remember this fact and did not look down, he forgot Annabel, long ago forced by him into almost such case not far above. For this passage, as he well knew, led up to Malvie; to the oldest part of all, built centuries before the Caroline front and great outer rooms. This led to the old, central tower, built in the year of Flodden, perhaps on the foundations of an older house still, a house where men had no doubt lain in wait to strike for the Bruce or, before that, against the Dane. What the original purpose of the passage had been God knew, Morven thought, for the days of exces sive dues were recent enough. No doubt it had been used for arms-carrying.

He hoisted himself to the top at last, and sat for a moment with legs swinging over the dark void. He was now inside Malvie itself; a trap-door lay above. Morven thrust, and presently the hinge, not used lately, gave protestingly and he came up and out, replacing the door behind him. The room he stood in was empty, no more than a cellar now; to one side curved ancient stone stairs against the tower-wall. He climbed these, seeing the light of the moon strike, at each narrow window, his sodden sleeve. He had had time to remember that he was chilled, now the exertion of the climb had worn off. He had no food except-he laughed a little, remembering, and fingered a comforting hardness in his pocket, the one which didn't hold the tinder. The brandy-bottle had stayed with him all through the swim; it was good French stuff. He sat down there and then and undid the cork, and swilled deeply. How many days could one live on brandy, and no more? But it had warmed Morven; he felt better already.