Inheritance Feud

Chapter 47

Chapter 47

She was kept busy, those early days of their together, by day with the work of the dower house; there was a great deal to do, almost as much as there'd been at the Fleece when she first went there. Lacking a woman, any house suffers neglect, and she found the passages were all to scrub, the beds to air, the crockery and linen to see to. It was worse than it had been when she went first to Mrs. Galadriel, long ago; but she knew where everything was at Mains. Perhaps later, when the scandal had died down a bit, she'd be able to hire a scrubbing woman or a maid, from somewhere other than Grattan; Mor ven had let her take the coach there one day to buy neces saries for herself and the house, and had given her enough money. But she'd come home early, with mud on her gown that the women had thrown, and they'd called after her for a harlot. No doubt that's what she must be now, but search her mind as she might, she couldn't bring herself to go back to Abel at the Fleece again, or even let William go to him,

and Abel hadn't, come to that, asked her to part with William. By night, often, men came to the Mains now asking for Theon. She supposed they were in the contraband-trade, and asked nothing more.

The buzz of gossip which followed the unheralded return of Theon Doon, his taking up residence at the Mains dower house, and his a*******n of Abel Judd's scarcely unwilling wife, brought no direct repercussions to Theon. For this, the protection and strength of his coloured servant, and the known fact that Samson owned a pair of duelling-pistols with which at present he shot birds, was responsible more than the fact of Theon's blindness. The zeal of certain officiating elders who made the morals of the community their affair-one was a blood relative of the recently disgraced Governor Priddy of Emmett's would not have been quelled by physical limita tions in a suspect fallen from grace.

They called, in the end, upon Godfrey as the reprobate's landlord. Hermione was not present; they were admitted to him alone. Godfrey's asthma had troubled him all summer, and made him short with the visitors; he disliked, in any case, what he regarded as the lack of charity shown by the kirk authorities here, differing greatly from conditions as he remembered them in the more tolerant south. He received the two men lying, as was his custom nowadays, in his long-chair nearby the window, his eyes watching the sunlight as it glinted on his leaves of Solomon's Seal beyond the glass.

"Well, gentlemen? How can I aid you today?" They usually came for money. Godfrey bade them be seated, and pressed them to pour themselves wine. This they did, relishing its quality, for it was from France, and some time passed in talk ing of the iniquitous taxes. Godfrey however paid his tithes handsomely, and they were studious not to offend him. At last one, whose name was Matthew Jarvie and who was a butcher by trade in Grattan, found the opening he needed.

"You have made of your garden a glory unto Zion," he told his host in the archaic language it pleased chosen vessels to employ. "It is a pity, sir, that less than a mile away-" he flung out a great red hand-"Babylon swells; ay, f*********n and a******y, a reproach unto Israel-"

"In the broad light of day," echoed the lesser Priddy. "And there is other ungodly company." He had heard, as Godfrey had not, of the gatherings at Mains of pack-carriers.

"Is it consonant with your own position here, sir, that these abominations should persist unchecked? The woman of Baby lon, the man of blood, in filthy unrighteousness one with the other-"

"My kinsman has expiated his sentence. In common law he is now a free man." "But, sir, the woman is an adultress! She-"

Godfrey held up a wasted hand, watched by the pin-point pupils which are somehow peculiar to the elect; his own ex pression showed displeasure. "Mr. Doon, who, as I have told you already, is kin to me,

is under my protection, being blind," he told them. "More over at his age, which is one of discretion, he may order his way of life, I believe, in any manner he chooses. Is there not a saying among the many you employ-" he smiled somewhat maliciously "concerning who may first cast a stone?" He watched Priddy's kinsman flush, for news of that scandal must by now, he knew well, have reached Baron. The man stared straight before him above his dark cloth coat; why were these folk dressed to resemble crows? Godfrey thought. And even a crow, come to that, minded its own affairs. He knew, though they had not discussed it together, that Hermione would have taken it badly had she heard of Livia Judd's presence at the Mains with Theon; he was uncertain whether or not she had; God knew! thought Godfrey, other company didn't press itsel and the man had been seven long years alone and blind in Botany Bay. He himself was, it was true, in some discom fort about poor Abel Judd, and had Theon been any other man, and with his eyesight, he'd have said a word to him by now. But he wasn't going to be put to it by these soberly-clad persons who wore out not only their wives-Jarvie had mar ried his fourth-but got behind cupboard doors at some poor little servant or orphan who dared not refuse them, and sel dom later admitted their due blame.

The other Priddy took up the cudgels now, using thunder ings from the Old Testament as, no doubt, an antidote to the single mention there had been of the New. Godfrey had not, Silas Priddy took it upon himself to remind him, been assid uous in his own church-attendance of late.

"Sirs, you may see for yourselves the way I am," smiled Godfrey, discounting the impertinence. He moved his hand again, seeing the transparency of the flesh and fingers against the light. Fear caught at him, as it sometimes did by night, or during one of his attacks, concerning the possibility of his own early death, or that his mind should become affected by the creeping of his disease. He closed his eyes briefly, forget ting the two watching men; the former fate, he thought, was preferable, except for Hermione and Sybilla who would be left alone. But what good would a paralytic, mindless hulk be to them?

His eyes opened again and fell upon Sybilla herself, newly come into the garden with the governess, Jane Glover, nearby. The child was chasing a butterfly. Godfrey continued to smile, with a lightening of his heart; whatever befell him now, he'd had Hermione and Sybilla to love, and love was what lasted after one's body decayed even while still living. He returned to the watchful, tight-mouthed faces of the two elders again. "You are satisfied, I hope?" he asked them patiently.

They conferred together, and nodded; their prying was, he knew, part of their office, and had Baron been nearer a town there would have been incessant surveillance of a kind he did not believe he could have endured. "And Mrs. Devenham?" Priddy said presently. "She has likewise been remiss, all this year, in attendance. It does not set an example to her servants or her child." His voice gritted; Godfrey was aware of the rare springing of anger in himself. How dared they criticise Hermione?

"Mrs. Devenham's health has not been good for some time," he told them coldly. This was true; Hermione's head aches had returned in frequent severity, since... since when? Since the return of Theon Doon and the rout-party's failure, he remembered, she was often ill.

He called for the servant, and had the two elders shown out, with no pressing invitation to come again. He guessed their carriage would drive past the turn to the dower house, without stopping; but he did not see Theon, and would have no opportunity of asking, if he had cared to do so concerning the matter. He called now to Sybilla from the garden, and she came running in, and put up her flower-like face for him to kiss her. "At least you are high on the approved list of the gentlemen who have just visited me," he told Jane Glover with solemnity. Jane, a devoutly reared young woman, never missed her church-attendance, and as a rule the child went in the carriage with her.

The setback to her social life suffered by young Mrs. Devenham following the collapse of her rout-party was, after all, minimal except for Mrs. Lagardie, whose sense of the proprieties had been permanently offended. They could afford to ignore her; invitations continued to arrive at intervals, for Hermione and Godfrey, who went out less and less; sometimes for Kitty and Clairette, and rarely all four. In the summer after Theon's return to the dower house, though they had not seen him again, Godfrey called the physician in for Hermione. He was the same who had presided at her confinement, and put most of her ills down to the results of that difficult birth and also-and about this he kept his own counsel-her marriage. In any other society, in the south perhaps, a young woman tied to an impotent invalid would have taken a lover by now; the headaches alone were a sign, to the cynically informed physician. One could not, however, in this circum scribed and polite northern group, prescribe any such relief. The doctor prescribed, instead, clysters and seabathing. The latter benefit was after all at Mrs. Devenham's own doorstep.

Hermione therefore, after a week spent in bed following the clysters, which had left her shockingly weak, ventured out, in the very early morning, to where the little beach lay at the foot of stone steps cut out of the rock, which Godfrey, while he could still get about the garden grounds, had caused to be planted delightfully with scarlet valerian, pink and white thrift, and sea-lavender. The dry leaves rustled in the stillness of dawn as Hermione walked down barefoot with her hair loose, clad only in a wrapper. There would of course be no watchers at this hour to espy the elegant Mrs. Devenham, arbiter of all that was tasteful, forget herself so far as to plunge in the sea and bathe. The water was still opaque, with a sea-mist rising from it whitely. Later in the day it would be hot.

She set foot on the narrow strip of sand and disrobed, leaving her wrapper on the lowest steps; the beach was screen ed on two sides with cliffs, on one of which Aaron's cottage still stood, a ruin. This was unseen now in the thick mist; and the sea, like glass, lay invitingly, with its horizon invisible, and the tide scarcely thrusting at the shore. As Hermione stepped in to the shallows, a slight, cool breeze arose and stirred her loose hair. Seen thus, she was Aphrodite, if anyone had been watch ing; the pleasure of standing n***d, letting the breeze and water play upon her, filled her with sudden, glad elation, not entirely by reason of the absence of tight-lacing and formal attire in what would, later, be enervating heat. For this hour, Hermione was an animal; a high-bred, nervous, but still physi cal creature, and her trials of the flesh slipped from her like

a discarded garment and she became young again. She closed her eyes, unthinkingly laving the water over her thighs and breasts. How clear one's thoughts became at this time of day, at this pastime, unwatched, unhurried! Now, she could assure herself that it was no disloyalty to Godfrey that his poor, flabby, stoutening body had become a trial to her and to himself, so that she could not endure the touch of his fingers. She could esteem Godfrey, now that they no longer made even the pretence of marriage, the more, and have a deep regard for the qualities of his mind. The old, hot longing for Theon which she had once known, which had overcome her again briefly at the renewed sight of him, and had since troubled her in the night hours, could be locked away once more in that part of her recollection which must never, never again let it out. Not even in her innermost soul did Hermione now admit that Godfrey was not Sybilla's father. The girl's golden hair was the colour of Kitty's, of Godfrey's own when a boy. He loved the child dearly, was educating her after his own pattern, helped by Jane Glover, and told her facts of natural history as well as myths, legends and fairy-stories. When Sybilla went away to school next year there would be a gap in Godfrey's life, which she herself must fill by being more than ever attentive to him.