Inheritance Feud

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

Mrs. Bowes was exclaiming, as if her son had neither ears nor understanding, as she often did, how he had happened to contract his ailment. The story had so frequently been told by her to hearers that she almost believed it herself, whether or not they did so; in fact, no physician had ever diagnosed the illness' cause. "It was at Weymouth as a child; a chill from the sea-bathing, so newly home as we were from India at that time; they shouldn't have forced him, but his dear father wanted him to be brought up without fear of the sea." She smiled mournfully, as if admitting Bowes to have been the later lapse he was; and went on to explain how for her only son, the hope of her heart (this was true enough) the purchase of a quiet place near the country or the sea had been advised, as perhaps likely to effect improvement. "He will have his books," she went on, and would have catalogued these; but Lady Berry broke in.

"Can he sit a horse?" said the old lady. She herself had ridden over today, at near eighty, a distance of some twelve miles up the coast-road from Invale; and had small sympathy for anyone young or old who could not, for whatever cause, ride to hounds. Godfrey raised his eyes sadly and let his mother answer, as she swiftly did.

"No; but he is a scholar of no mean attainment, reads Latin and some Hebrew, all such things, except that his migraine often troubles him...'

Annabel smiled at poor Godfrey; how dreadful, she thought, to have an incessantly chattering foolish mother always with one! Poor young man; he was still, although nearing thirty, not yet old; if he could be permitted to forget himself for an hour, it should be possible to remove the un happiness from his frog's eyes and interest him in things he could enjoy and do; gardening, perhaps, or drawing in crayons; she herself had been taught to do that, there was still a box somewhere in the Mains cupboard that she never now used, and would lend him. If only Morven hadn't come in,

she could pay more attention; but as it was if only he would make a suitable match; but he showed no interest in any of the young women we met in London..

Morven Doon, watching outside the circle, was suddenly aware, by a sixth sense he had, of the thoughts going on behind each face at this moment; of aunt Retford's momen tarily revealed blink of satisfaction, as if a shutter had quickly opened and closed again behind her eyes' bleak flatness; of the hopeful, beady gaze of the old woman, well aware of all this, and at the same time calculating that if she had anything to do with it, her own niece, not Agnes's little green-clad penni less nincompoop, should get all that money; they must be asked soon, this family, to dine and sleep at Invale, with per haps a card-party, to meet the county. It was known Sir Hubert Melrose had already... and so on to the girls, whose thoughts were their own, and to Godfrey, aware now of nothing but the fairylike vision Annabel presented, so that the thoughts racing unwontedly in his scholar's mind made his feeble hands sweat. Her eyes, he had noted already, were flecked green-gold; he'd never seen anyone so beautiful; could his useless body, placed here like a lump in its chair, be over come by the urgings of his mind which urged him to love her, love her? Could he ever interest her with talk, if he were less shy, if they were alone, and he-Could he, perhaps, if it turned out that they both liked and laughed at the same things, somehow make her like him also, forget his appearance? It wasn't easy, he knew; but he wanted that more than anything in the whole of his life...

"If only such a thing might happen," Mrs. Bowes was say ing with fond disregard. Aunt Retford looked down her nose to hide her satisfaction; Morven sneered; and Annabel, see ing, blushed confusedly.

Godfrey Devenham seldom spoke to anyone except briefly and with kindness; he never, at this rate, so much as men tioned his father, the nabob, who had died when the boy him self was eleven. Godfrey preferred not to remember him; the character traits which had caused the elder Devenham, at fifty-four, to be able to retire with a vast fortune acquired by way of the East India Company, in which, like most, he had started life as an articled clerk, did not make for happiness in his family circle. Godfrey, the only one alive out of the pro gression of still-born children poor Kitty had produced, was left in no doubt that he, like his vulgar and inadequate mother, was a failure. Unable to protect her a wish to protect and solace Kitty was the earliest feeling Godfrey could remember, but there was nothing in this way he might do-he had begun, almost as soon as he could walk, to lose his newly-gained balance in public. The nabob, taking this as a whim, ruled that each time it happened a servant should flog the child till he got up; in this he had royalty as a precedent. Under this treatment Godfrey, by the time he was eight years old, was still unbalanced, and also incontinent; though he differed from Queen Anne's son in that parental harshness did not, in the end, kill him.

He nearly did die, though, of childish diseases, which left him deaf in one ear, affected in eyesight-the staring eyes needed glasses when they read, as Godfrey loved to do des pite cruel recurrent headaches. There was also a glandular anomaly which made him fat; he could not, by now, take exercise to correct it. He was by this time mostly hidden away by the servants and his mother, who feared that the con temptuous rage the sight of him induced in his father might lead the latter to do Godfrey an injury or perhaps take his life. But it was nabob who died, succumbing shortly in course of an operation for the stone.

Nobody mourned him other than openly. When the funeral was over Godfrey could remember being led downstairs carefully by his mother, all in black, the diaphanous veils she wore enhancing what remained of her blonde, plump beauty -and the harsh face in the coffin was covered, a new life

began for the boy. From being an object of scorn and derision. -servants copy their master, and he had often found himself a whipping-boy and scapegoat Godfrey was now the heir, come into his own; the nabob's will had been provident of his immense riches, and it was all, save for Kitty's jointure, left to his son. By the time Kitty had made a fool of herself with Bowes, and had gone abroad with him and had first Cecily, and then Clairette, the boy Godfrey had long ago made his own inner life.

He had always had something of this, even in the days when he was concealed high up beneath his father's roof to avoid the swift, terrible cut of that gold-topped cane, brought down in anger. He had been used to crawl away, sobbing, if that happened, and presently find solace in the pages of a book; and books still solaced Godfrey. They became, as time passed, more real than the world outside; and this was merciful. After his father's death, for a year and more before the Bowes elope ment, he continued to suffer physically, though, for a different cause; a physician had advised his mother to put the boy in an iron frame to strengthen his legs. Accordingly, they never did bear Godfrey's weight for the rest of his life; he would always remember the cage. It encompassed his ribs and limbs, preventing him from walking, breathing or moving freely; it even, while he was standing in it all day, prevented him from holding a book. As a compensation he had asked them, tim idly, to place his cage nearby the window, far enough back for him not to be seen, but near enough to see the street. In this way he would watch life as it went by. It was always, as far back as he could remember, manifest to Godfrey that he could never be a part of ordinary life, never join the laughing, thoughtless, richly dressed young people he saw passing in carriages, or walking below in the street. Small things, instead, had become diverting and important; he could recall the colours in a fly's wings as it stayed preening its antennae on the casement-sill behind which he had been put, while the summer sun grilled him inside his irons. Later, after Godfrey was free of them, he was to extend his interest in anything natural; he knew insects, shells, plants, birds and stones. His mother, returned by now briefly from abroad with Josiah Bowes revealed for what he was, laughed, for she could still laugh, and called him her queer boy, and did her best and worst for him. In the intervals of varying treatments and spa visits, some good, some bad, she displayed one glimmer of sense; she found Godfrey an excellent tutor, who cultivated his mind.

This young man he had already taken holy orders, to which he was to return much later, when Godfrey had ceased to need him, and was at present a parson in a Wiltshire living: they still corresponded-was not only a scholar but, like Godfrey himself, a naturalist and scientist; besides the Latin and Hebrew Mrs. Bowes extolled, they would discuss together the proceedings of the Royal Society, and follow with interest the affairs pertaining for instance to Hudson's Bay, as well as the daily papers. Well or ill, Godfrey was encouraged to let no single moment of the day go by idly; even when he appeared to be doing nothing, he would be turning over some thing in his mind. As Mrs. Bowes told everyone, he knew the whole of Shakespeare intimately. It was not by any means all he knew; but his health continued wretched.

He had been sent on a course of sea-bathing at thirteen, shortly after emerging from the cage. This, the origin of Mrs. Bowes' Weymouth story, was only one contributory factor out of many. The repeated dousing of Godrey's shivering, fat, un prepared body in the icy sea-water-the weather on the south coast was peculiarly spartan that year-brought on a con gestion of the lungs, delaying his puberty. On recovery, God frey caught mumps, the one childhood disease from which he had not yet suffered. Its results were dire and remained with him. Later, with his s****l development still delayed, he showed signs of a phthisis; was despaired of, recovered, caught enteric fever due to the London bad water, was whisked off to Paris afterwards, then back again for the season at home, unnecessarily. Mrs. Bowes, continually hope ful that, with the passing of time and the tactful death of Bowes, her lapse would be forgotten by polite society, suffered one rebuff after another with equanimity; then, as such folks do, she suddenly crumbled. "For God's sake let us leave," she wailed, and Godfrey could see her face, once plumply pretty, now a sad, defeated network of spidery lines the years had etched below the paint. He never forgot this view of his mother; over the years, while he'd been dreaming his life away with Shakespeare and shells, she'd been suffering, and he'd done very little.

"Whatever you choose," he told her gently, and, because he was now the master, made a show of listening and weighing decisions regarding the place, the site, the new property, its prospects and price. But he knew it did not greatly matter to him where he was, provided his library and rare plants could go with him, and he could be left alone, for the most part, in his own private world, as society had no charms for him that he knew of; he'd tried it, briefly, and shuddered at it more than it did at the sight of him, which was something. He'd learned long ago to shut a private door, to allow nothing from outside to enter and disturb him.