Inheritance Feud

Chapter 37

Chapter 37

Theon, Theon.

And he was blind. She'd never seen him like he must have become; like a child, to be led by the hand, fed, guided, super vised, ordered. No doubt now old Aaron had left him his money, Theon would be better looked after than he had been, in the place to which they'd sent him. She hadn't grud ged him the money, even though Abel, she suspected, did, after caring for his old father four years like a baby till Aaron died. Poor Abel; something about him was always unlucky, even the way he'd gone quite bald as a young man. Aaron had left her, Livia, also, a little bit. "To buy yourself a ribbon, lass," he'd told her at the end, when he was dying; he'd been fond of her. She hadn't bought ribbons, though; she'd set the money aside, to be used, some day, for William.

William would be stirring soon; he never lay long abed. He was as full of life as a small half-broken pony, Livia thought, and did nothing she or Abel bade him. Abel was good to William. Now that the Fleece was showing profits it was herself had helped him there, Abel often told her; the place was clean as a whistle, she and the girl Tib, who'd come to them before Aaron died, kept it scrubbed and wholesome; travellers could come and be assured of a welcome and a good fire and meal, and no fleas in the beds-now that the inn was acquiring fame, and some money, they should think about sending William to school and a university, perhaps, later, to become a preacher or physician. That was what Abel said, and he meant it kindly, but herself she doubted if they'd ever see William in a pulpit. He was too much Doon's son; might he not end as his father nearly had, at a rope's end; she wouldn't wonder at it.

She opened her eyes again, staring upwards at the gathered folds of the central tester; the bed itself was made of oak. Fine things... she should consider herself lucky, and in ways did so, she the half-gipsy who'd come, weary, pregnant and out of a situation, that night on foot to the inn. Abel had taken her in, as his servant, for the time; next day, she'd started on the floors. The bulk of the coming child made her groan as she scrubbed and sanded, but she'd gone on with it; only, a short while after that, Abel had asked her to marry him. She'd gaped, knowing she wasn't much of a sight, by then, for any man; and he had begun to reason with her, kindly and quietly. It was for the child's sake as well as her own, he said. From the beginning, he'd seemed prepared to take full responsibility for William. This astonished Livia, remembering Governor Priddy in like case; Abel was, she

dared say, some kind of saint. In the end, she'd married him. It was at the bar-counter, where she heard most things afterwards, that Livia had the news of the amended sentence of Theon. Before then, she'd thought of him as a dead man, or as good as dead. That they would not now hang him, that they'd be sending him, instead, to Botany Bay, was taken by most of those present to mean mercy and that the magistrate, Sir Sander Melrose, was kin to him; Livia had her doubts about the former. She knew nothing of Australia, but they I wouldn't be sending the men out there if it were a pleasant life, or a free one. She'd carried on serving ale, and said little, and no one said much to her; it wasn't generally known Mor ven had been the father of her child; as a rule, she supposed, folk thought Abel was. By then, William himself, hair already black as the King of Egypt's, was asleep upstairs in his wooden cradle with the maid, the one they'd had before Tib Willcock, rocking it with her foot; he'd been born in bed without any trouble, even choosing a time when the tavern was closed. After Abel had stated quite quietly that the child was his, nothing more, as far as Livia knew, had been said about that; though Abel had no doubt had to square the kirk folk with silver, to avoid the necessity of having to appear with Livia on public repentance-stools. That'd have been a queer state of affairs, if anyone liked; but it hadn't happened, Abel being a warm man and respected in the village. Now, folk respected Livia also.

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. Galadriel 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. Galadriel, no doubt, glad to have seen the last of her had she known. She must have been ill for a 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 Aaron 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.

Aaron 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 Theon, 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 Aaron, 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 Theon 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 Theon 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 Baron 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. Galadriel'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 Baron.

Aaron rejoined her to say the funeral had been poorly attended by the family; Mrs. Hermione 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 Hermione 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 Hermione, 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 Theon had done. His ruthless gift might well kill the recipient, such a birth couldn't be easy, for all the care and comfort Miss Hermione would receive in her silken bed. And the date was awkward.

Now, Aaron was saying he'd heard, Mrs. Hermione 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 Hermione 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? Theon's child had a father, in any case. They should be thankful for that.

Old Aaron 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 Theon. 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 Theon. Theon would be back, without a doubt, whatever they all said, and would need money; he, Aaron, 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 Aaron, was, at heart, a romantic.

Only one thing went wrong with Theon's plan, heard at the Fleece next night, after a terrible labour of Miss as they

Hermione's lasting well into the morning. It was a little lass, they said, with dark-gold hair. The old woman-Kitty Bowes qualified for no other description among the tavern-folk, who knew her at once for what she was, not for what she tried to be, and judged her not unkindly-the old woman had been overjoyed, and had cried out that it was the exact colour her own hair had been when she was a child, and the baby would be pretty. They did say, also, that Mrs. Hermione could never have another child; that was whispered, but in any case the poor gentleman, her husband, was known to be in no state now to father another in any case, so rapidly had he grown weaker over the past winter. He'd sat, as they knew, all through the labour behind a screen at the bed's head, with the tears running down his face with joy at last, when he knew his wife was saved for him. Then immediately, as soon as he'd seen the baby, he'd taken the coach and driven off, weak as he was, through the storm, and that young footman George Oakes with him. George wouldn't give it away where they'd gone, but it was, he said, at the request of Mrs. Hermione; there was some word she wanted carried, about the birth no doubt, and Mr. Godfrey would never refuse a single one of her requests, let alone now. Meantime the baby, little Miss Sybilla, had been put out to nurse, for the poor mother had no milk and was in a bad way for a day or two; but now, praise God, better and almost herself again, though never what she'd been when she was a young girl.