Inheritance Feud

Chapter 56

Chapter 56

"Kill her? Oh, my dear Mrs. Devenham, not quite that, perhaps; but she is melancholy, and everything here reminds her of her Papa, and perhaps new friends and new faces and the school is very well spoken of." Jane Glover lowered her lashes, and Hermione surveyed the quiet, mittened creature wordlessly, knowing very well that Jane had been repeatedly pressed to join the staff of the school in question, but had remained here out of, no doubt, a sense of duty. Well, her life and Sybilla's must not be further spoilt; they must go together, in time for the new term. She herself would not accompany them; there had grown in her a fixed determination not to leave Baron, as though if she did so, it would be surrendered and closed to her forever: a citadel left open to the enemy who already encircled it unseen. She knew Theon was there, watching and waiting, in his darkness that to him was light; only her presence, she felt, could keep him out. Sybilla went, and her roped bandboxes with her on the

coach beside Jane's modest covered hamper. The school had demanded two alpaca gowns, four gowns of Paris muslin, several wide sashes of a blue colour, three pairs of shoes, house-slippers and shifts and hose, and a pelisse for walking. Sybilla had been sent off dowered like a little princess, in half mourning only, so that her velvet pelisse was of a pretty, sub dued dove-colour, enhancing the brightness of her hair. "The other girls will love her, and will make a pet of one so much younger than they," Jane Glover had assured Hermione, who was already fighting back her tears. The governess went on to add that she had so arranged matters with the headmistress "she is a school-friend of my own, a great advantage, you will admit, Mrs. Devenham!" that Sybilla, for the first few weeks till she no longer felt strange, should sleep with Jane in her own bed, not in a dormitory. The governess could not have done more, though doubtless it would be to her own advan tage to show zeal over a new pupil's welfare. Hermione felt this wry certainly come to her even as she waved farewell, from the steps of Baron, to her child seated docilely by Jane's side in the carriage. After it had bowled down the drive, and the little face in the new, school-approved bonnet could no longer be seen behind the glass of the window, Hermione turned away, feeling already that a part of her life, her heart, had been cut out with scissors. However it all turned out-and no doubt she would be excellently cared for at the school, and out of danger-Sybilla would never again be Hermione's carefree delightful child; Hermione herself never, never any more the respected, idolised, pampered Mama of Godfrey's day, whose least whim was law and in whose presence nothing unfore seen, nothing frightening could happen. "There will always be doubt in her mind about me now, and soon, as she must be so often elsewhere, I will have become a stranger," bel thought. How little she had heeded the happiness of those carefree days when they were all three together, Godfrey, her. self, Sybilla! How short a time she had had, by the end, to enjoy the real worth of Godfrey himself before he was taken away so cruelly! Tears fell, remembering Godfrey's death and the manner of it. And now, when dark fell tonight on Baron, she would for Anna

the first time be quite alone.

Hermione walked about the house that night. As soon as dusk fell she had lit a taper, and carried it about with her through the great empty rooms until, by the time darkness had fallen and the shadows flung themselves about beyond its flame as she moved, she found that she had carried it up to the height of the old Flodden tower. She had not meant to come here; but as she had, she made herself down the terrors that rose, and stand deliberately with the slender light in her hand, looking out to sea. Tonight she felt that the sea fashioned monsters, and so had made Theon; that a sea beast, not Richard Doon, had visited his Highland mother as the god long ago visited Danaë, alone in her tower. Theon was of the sea; its eternal crying reminded her of his presence, somewhere below; from it, tonight, a light mist had again risen, so that her vision was limited to a region of swirling, pallid wreaths in the gathered dark. It was like the last time she herself had gone down to the little beach to bathe and had seen him standing, above on the cliff, his blind eyes staring across to herself, towards Baron. Was it her fancy that to night, through the flung veil of mist, there could be seen the dim shape of a boat? "There is a lanthorn burning at sea," she thought, "he is out there now." She withdrew quickly from the window, and shaded her taper with her hand; he mustn't know she was up here, waiting, watching. But he was blind, Hermione again remembered; Theon wouldn't see a taper, even on any night so clear one could count the stars. Perhaps she should have agreed to see Theon that time he came, and she'd ordered the servants to send him away. Per

haps, if she'd received him reasonably, he-they She writhed a little, biting her lips. It had happened again; she tried not to let it happen. The fire that was resolutely for bidden, the old physical longing for Theon, flickered in her, despite her will; again, now, staring out at enveloping mist which might hold him, she had disobeyed herself, and she wanted, she wanted... Her hand sought her own breasts, the free hand that wasn't holding the taper. She pressed and solaced her own body, as if it wanted hardness, pain, touch. They mustn't see her, no one must see her do such things, she must occupy her waking time with tasks, unremitting tasks, small things, charities, anything; visiting old Ellen, still alive in the almshouse at eighty-three in recalcitrant pride; or doing embroidery, or visiting, perhaps, except that she didn't dare leave the house and grounds, in case Theon might be waiting. There were surely things about the place she could do... tomorrow, she'd tidy the roses. They needed training, pruning perhaps, and the withered blossoms could be cut off. Their petals already littered the ground of that part of the garden, like mingled snow and blood.

Next day, Hermione went to visit Kitty Bowes in her rooms as usual. The poor old woman was endeavouring to walk, balancing on two sticks. A paid attendant stayed with her. Kitty, as the old will do, noticed this and resented it, and the fact that the woman was not her daughter Clairette. She often asked where Clairette was, and why the girl wouldn't come to her, her own mother. It was impossible now to do other than murmur some palliative gentle reply. Clairette had again refused when asked to come back to Baron and bear Kitty company; but how could one remind this poor soul of that, and the underlying reason?

Hermione kissed her mother-in-law, as she did daily on greeting her. It was a discipline of the kind she had at first had to impose on herself in the early months of her marriage to Godfrey. She still found it difficult not to feel revulsion at the eager caresses of the slobbering, unaffected side of Kitty's mouth; the other side was powerless. She tried to think of caressing an old, devoted, half-paralysed dog. She continued to smile at Godfrey's mother, and sat down at her side after wards, and talked gently to her, often answering her own un important, trivial queries aloud, as Kitty could not speak clearly and one often mistook what she said. It was better to make one's own conversation. Hermione said, among other things, that she was going out today to cut the roses. "Godfrey tended them so carefully." She often, and delib erately, mentioned Godfrey aloud; she wanted Kitty to feel,

as she herself did, that he was not forgotten with burial, not a memory but a living inspiration, almost a companion. "I do not want them to revert to ramblers for lack of care, but I know so little!" she said of the roses. The new gardener whom she had, with some difficulty, at last, found was untutored, a rough stranger; he hoed and weeded carelessly, but did nothing else, and had already destroyed, through ignorance and lack of interest, many of the more delicate plants at Baron. Anna bel did not inform Kitty of this. She let only such news escape her as would not further distress the sick old creature.