Inheritance Feud

Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Then he saw Annabel. And, ever since, events inside the private door had been only the folly of an idle hour, and science and knowledge only a way of passing time, until ... until she came to him again. For the first time in his life, with all the passion of a nature starved and smothered in its physical needs from birth, Godfrey loved.

V

NEXT time Livia came to Morven her eyes were red, as though she had been crying. When he tried to make love she turned away.

"It's happened," she told him sullenly. warned you it'd happen, if-" Her voice trembled into silence; what was the use? Even now, on seeing his pale intent face again, she felt the flame rise; it'd go on, doubtless, till Mrs. Retford showed her the door. The forty days by law wouldn't count here. As it was, a wonder the old b***h hadn't complained of her already, with her creeping out night after night to the spinney, and half asleep mornings. No doubt Mrs. Retford was too taken up with Miss Annabel's concerns at the moment, going on with that poor young man up at the big house. Well, young Miss could have a man like that if it was what she wanted; as for her

What was to happen to her, when Morven tired, as he surely would now? Within Livia herself there had always been the wonder that she, a waif, a servant lass without grand manners or book-learning, could keep Morven Doon longer than a day. Say what they liked, he was a gentleman born and had many things in his mind ordinary folk hadn't; the best company wasn't too good for him. He couldn't live out his life in this way, out most nights in the boat with Bart Judd, asleep by day in Bart's father's cottage, and somewhere in between in a barn or spinney with herself, while the revenue cutters cruised up and down the near water and, any day now, an order would come for the Excise to ride out here and round up a few culprits for the look of the thing, as they often did; everyone knew the tax was wrong and nobody but what went round it somehow... but there'd be trouble for Morven soon if they had to find a scapegoat. He'd have to go

into hiding or else it'd be the colonies for him; and she The thought of being abandoned, for whatever cause, made her give way to rare tears, and Morven consoled her in the way he always used. Afterwards he said, "Why don't you trust me, Livia Mary?" and smiled while he nibbled her ear lobe; she felt the altering curve of his mouth against her neck. She laughed bitterly. "Trust any man?" she said. "Here am I, the same way's I was before, and this time it'll be the road for me and the baby born under a hedge, for go back I will not." Her eyes flashed; they shouldn't kill Morven's baby. It shouldn't be, either, brought up the way she'd been, in Emmett's on gruel, flogging, laundry and the Bible. To gether they'd make a life somehow, if "There's only one gait for a woman, Morven," she said sadly. "Either she's a lady or she isn't; and if she isn't, there's not one of your grand madams will give her houseroom when she's in trouble, scrub and polish and launder as she may."

She drew her shawl back over her shoulders with the age old acceptance of fate of the outcast, the gipsy woman. It had grown cold. He stroked her and rubbed her limbs to warm her. Her hair had fallen loose by now and hung down her back, like a great shining dark blanket under the shawl. "You have the tresses of Zenobia," he told her.

"Who's Zenobia?"

"A queen. Trust me, I said, Livia; I'm not any man." He laughed; the notion that he could be in any way ordinary was, today, absurd; were not all things moving his way, as though he'd cast a spell on everyone? Annabel forever up at the house, or down on the shore with poor Devenham in his car riage, shell-collecting; he'd watched them once unseen from the back window of Aaron's; pretty, it had been.

"Give me a little while," he said, "lace yourself tight. A week or two, maybe even a month, two perhaps; then I'll make you a queen on Man. We'll go there together." "You're mad. You'd leave the sight of Malvie?"

"Even that," he said, and ran his fingers through her hair.

"Malvie will wait for me now."

She stared at him; what could he mean? When he spoke so, as if he knew everything that was in the world and beyond it, a shiver overcame her, she didn't know why. She turned her head to look at small things, which she knew; the myriad springing golden lances of the late moss their two bodies had crushed; the waiting trees. All the time he was whispering in her ear, seducing her; she wasn't herself, she hadn't her wits, when Morven was with her; she'd believe anything, then after... "Trust me, only trust me, Livia. We'll go off to gether, in the boat... have your gear ready... there's a little place I know of at the Ayre of Man, where you can lie snug in time, and have your child. It'll be as if we were married over there, Livia; nobody cares where anyone came from."

He sat up, narrow cheeks flushed and eyes brilliant with his own conviction. She watched him, knowing, as she'd known from the beginning, that she would always follow this man; there'd never be another for her. She rose presently to go back and for instants, standing together in the wood, they were like a king and queen of faery, tall light-eyed Oberon and Titania with loose hair blowing; the wind sang in the geans for them, then presently tore on. Livia twisted up her hair and went down to the house.

The advent of Mrs. Bowes and her two daughters, and her invalid son, gave rise at first to a natural stir of interest in the county, fomented energetically by old Lady Berry, so that a number of calls were exchanged. In course of these, however, someone took up the pen to write to a friend living in Lon don, to ask further particulars about the Bowes family; these having been duly ascertained, there was a certain cooling off on the part of the more excessively virtuous matrons, who withdrew to watch events. It might have been the worse for poor Kitty had not a providential circumstance intervened to save her from total ostracism here also and include her, however vicariously, among the county families. Sir Hubert Melrose proposed shortly for Cecily, and the betrothal was gazetted in the new year.

This hurdle achieved the wedding would not take place for some months, to allow for the preparation of the bride clothes, which must of course come from London-Kitty and her daughters, rather than her son, set themselves to trans form Malvie. This had, in everyone's memory, always been a shabby house, for fines and, before that, gaming-stakes had ensured that no Doon would have money to spend on its interior any more than its roof. The latter had by now been slated in great part; later, with the rooms fired and dry, rich varied hangings, many of them brought by the nabob from India, were unrolled, to cover the walls; there were carpets woven and tufted of silk, prayer-rugs and embroidered shawls; one of these transformed the drawing-room, casting its rain bow fringes over the great gilt harp which had once belonged to Susannah Doon, and had been found in a neglected state in the attic. With its gilding newly freshened and its pegs re strung, it was a pretty sight to watch young Clairette, who fancied herself briefly as a performer, play it in the evenings, though the child's fingers were too short and her arms and stance not graceful, and she had no talent.

Kitty Bowes would watch, sum up her younger daughter's known limitations, and sigh for the day when Annabel Doon, as Godfrey's wife, should sit by her own great-grandmother's harp and, perhaps, play; and even if she did not, what a plea sure it would be to watch the pretty thing seated there! For Kitty's sentimental heart was now, like the revived furniture of Malvie, in a state of nourished, shining splendour where hitherto only dust and neglect had lain. She had seen at once that her poor boy was smitten; and being Kitty would do everything in her power, and some things which should have been beyond it, to grant him his heart's desire. It would, after all, be a rich marriage for Miss Annabel, and she would regain her old home. More did not, for it could not, manifest itself to Kitty; why, the child met nobody, never had met anybody, down there with her aunt!

And Mrs. Retford was agreeable. From the beginning, it had been evident that that small, punctilious lady-of whom Kitty had found herself, from the first, afraid, for she could see that she was often in danger of putting a foot wrong, and you never knew with these blue-blooded folk-was not only agreeable but entirely determined on the marriage; and as that made two of them with the same determination, and it was what poor Godfrey wanted also, the matter would seem to be, almost, except for propriety, resolved. Propriety of course demanded that there should be a period of acquaintance, and it was desirable that the two young people should come to know one another in any case; but Mrs. Bowes, without words spoken, had entered into an alliance with Mrs. Retford, and each separate minor campaign was planned to capture first one point of vantage, then the next. Already, Kitty knew, the man-hungry daughters of the county no longer hoped, if they ever had, to capture the interest of Godfrey with a view to marriage. No more need to be said at present; let things take their course, and she always glad to welcome Annabel to tea or to their informal supper, and to play at bezique with the girls by the fire after Godfrey had been carried upstairs, tired with his exhilarting afternoon on the shore . . . There had, of course, been the initial matter of the pony.

Clairette had unwittingly helped here; on first arrival, Kitty had ordered a splendid little Welsh pony for her youngest, easy, they'd promised, for a young lady to ride. But Clairette was scared of animals, and had such rigid hands she would have spoiled the poor beast's mouth, and Kitty had vexa tiously considered selling it again; she'd so wanted Clairette to cut a good figure among the Berrys and the rest, if invita tions came. But, as so often, Providence had intervened, and had turned the entire transaction to great advantage. It had been Godfrey who had spoken up; Annabel, he said, loved ponies and hers had been sold. It should be kept for Annabel to ride, if she wished.