Inheritance Feud

Chapter 19

Chapter 19

She watched through the door while the footman, who catered for all his needs and had been with them for long, helped Godfrey Devenham upstairs. When the feeble, valiant frame had removed itself Kitty turned back to the fire, and ordered spiced ale for them all. When it came she made every one drink, the servants also, and toasted Malvie. "To our new home!" And might it be happier than the last, she thought; that wouldn't be hard; perhaps, in this remote part, they could start again like other people

Clairette drank, Cecily drank. As they were doing so a visitor was announced, and bowed in by the landlord; Sir Hubert Melrose, who had intended to be in time to meet the coach, but now would join them in spiced ale Kitty had him served, and watched him with eyes well used to assessing the world, and its opinion of her family. This seemed a kind gentleman, a thought middle-aged perhaps; he was staring at Cicely a good deal, between compliments. It was time Cecily found a husband; there hadn't been any suitable proposals in London for her, as things were. Kitty sighed inwardly. Cecily, at nineteen, was almost exactly as she herself had been at seventeen, a plump golden-haired lamb led to the s*******r, in her own case the care of an uncle and aunt in India when her parents died. It had been a matter of finding as rich a husband as possible, as there wasn't much money; this was easier in India. Kitty remembered the shudder she'd felt at first sight of the stern, cold official of the East India Com pany, his aspect early observed beneath a fringed sunshade carried by a native servant on the way to a reception to which she'd been taken in her first low-cut evening-gown. It had been horrifying when he proposed for her, and his proposal was of course accepted, because, as Aunt said, he was a senior official and had great prospects, and her niece could at last be rich. Young women were in short supply in hot countries; at home, he'd have married someone else.

"What is your name?" he had asked her coldly, on the wedding-night. As if you wanted, in the usual way, to marry a girl without finding out her accustomed name . . . hers, in those days, had been Amanda. Amanda Catherine. She'd known, for somebody back in England had once told her, that Amanda meant she-who-must-be-loved; it seemed absurd and pitiful, in the circumstances; this man didn't, never would love her. So she'd said, on a sob, "Kitty, sir," and Kitty she'd been, to herself and everyone, ever since. She'd fulfilled her destiny, miserably, as the wife of the nabob, who wanted heirs; she gave him one each year, but the heat didn't agree with her and they were all born dead, except, at the last, Godfrey

Godfrey. Why had it to fall out so, that he was as he must always be, in spite of his father's fine incisive mind which had made him what he, in his own time, had been? Godfrey could never have stayed on in India. He hadn't, with the cruelty of society what it was, even been able to stay in London. She'd tried it, in spite of everything, for five years, for the sake of the girls. Cecily and Clairette must find proper husbands, not like their father. For that second marriage of her own to Josiah Bowes had come too late, and mistakenly.

Kitty moved her full white shoulders in the burgundy vel vet travelling-gown. Love, for that's what it had been for her, could be a cruel thing ... cruel, and she a widow at last, rich beyond dreams, but with figure, teeth and complexion gone, and along had come an Irish money-seeking scoundrel; oh, she knew Jos now for what he was always. She hadn't married him soon enough, though he'd known very well what he was doing in getting her with his child, that time she'd been off guard one night on the sofa; she'd had to marry him, there was no other way of arranging matters, and then they'd gone across to France and pretended things had all happened four

or five months sooner, but nobody was deceived. Josiah hadn't made her happy, any more than the nabob had ever done. Not a maidservant in the place had been safe, and he'd spent all of her jointure he could lay his hands on; Godfrey's money, thankfully, was safe by his father's will. Five years after Cecily's birth, to her own surprise and Jos's, there had come Clairette.

Society had never accepted them in London. In a thousand snobbish cruel ways she'd been made to feel, even while they accepted her cheques for charities, that she was beyond the pale, that they all were, even the poor girls, even poor God frey in his chair, with his books and collections of plants that he loved, which grew about him indoors, like a green sun shade. They weren't ever asked to anything; invitations to the right places, to balls, would never come for the girls or for her. Even after Josiah died, providentally, of an infection of the bowels in the house in Bloomsbury, where they were staying at the time, nobody called, or ever would call, and she'd been left at the funeral with hired mourners only, and the hearse with nodding plumes... poor Josiah.

It was the lawyer who'd suggested that they ought to clear out. He didn't put it like that; but Kitty knew. A suitable property in the north... an old family, fallen on hard times ... county society

Well, she'd thought of Godfrey as well as the girls. It was Godfrey's money. If he couldn't ever meet a girl he fancied, and some of the young London misses would have done any thing to be rich, well, he'd be happy enough with his plants and his shells, and any other thing he could find growing wild, or lying about on the ground. She'd never known any one who lived so much inside himself, using the things in his mind and saying nothing at all, for shyness. His stepfather had used to twit him about it, and then she for once had turned on Jos and told him to hold his tongue.

Godfrey would be in bed now upstairs. She'd go in, her self, before they all lay down, to make sure he slept and wasn't in pain. Meanwhile there was this pleasant gentleman, Sir Hubert Melrose, paying quite marked attention to Cecily. She'd been brought up strict and proper, Cecily had, not permitted to see too much of what went on with Jos in the house, being kept mostly away at a young ladies' exclusive school. She'd make a good wife to someone. Clairette was different, Clairette had her Irish father in her and could turn nasty, if she'd a mind; one never knew what was going on inside her head, though she was the cleverer of the two. But men didn't want a clever girl, only a good wife and mother.

"Will you have another round of spiced ale, my dears?" said Kitty. She already included Sir Hubert Melrose as her dear; Cecily's cheeks were quite flushed with his attentions, she hadn't had much opportunity of meeting the right kind of man before. If it could come to anything, it'd be most suit able.

The smithy cottage had once been a part of the Malvie estate; it had been purchased by Aaron out of his savings at a time when the trustees were also selling the outlying farms. He had lived in it all his life and his father before him. They had always been blacksmiths, and they had always worked for Doons.

He straightened from his anvil now, a thin, frail-seeming old man with the outward air of an Old Testament prophet. His younger son Bart, who seldom did a hand's turn at the forge, was with him. Bart had the old man's height and lean ness, but none of his stern air; he was an idle, lascivious creature, with an eye for the women. His sleepy dark gaze focussed now on the green space beyond the smithy door, presented through a transparent screen of wavering heat from the forge. Across the grass, moving hesitantly, came a young woman; the maid from the Mains, carrying some repair-job in a basket. Bart Judd's eyes widened in appreciation. A fine bosom, a good tight belly and thigh! He murmured of the

matter to his father, who did not turn. "Away to it, then," muttered Aaron, surlily; that was always the way it was with Bart, off at a minute's fancy and back the next. He'd never settle. For this reason Aaron loved Bart best; better than his kindly, God-fearing, well-doing elder son Abel, who'd lost his young wife four summers back. But neither sor. row nor joy made Abel a part of Aaron, as Bart who cared nothing would always be. There was only one creature who lay as near Aaron's heart as his own younger son, and that was Morven Doon. A fierce, silent protectiveness emanated from Aaron to young Morven, scion of the old stock and deprived of his birthright. Aaron had, without saying any thing, ridden off himself in former days to the 'Forty-five; but had come quietly home after Derby. He'd seen the way things were going by then; and a man had his living to earn. But young Morven could always find bite and sup with him, and

a roof over his head though it wasn't much. A short laugh from Bart caused the latter's father to look, at last, beyond the door, laying down the harness-nails he was forging. Morven himself had come out meantime from the cottage, which lay beyond, to meet the girl; they were stand ing regarding one another and smiling. The sun grilled down. "No room for me," said Bart, apropos of the last state "He's got her."

ment.

"Do you say so?" said Aaron, who knew already. He had been uncertain of the identity of the woman, but knew Mor ven had found one, and was now himself a man. The matter pleased Aaron. He turned an experienced eye to look over Morven's wench. "Ay," he said presently nodding. She was, he thought, comely; exactly what he himself would have chosen. "They're in the spinney, nights," said Bart know ledgeably.

"Maybe so. Quiet, now; the young wench is comin' in." And with that Livia's shadow darkened the forge-door, and Aaron pretended to be busied over his fire. The bellows lay nearby; he used them, and the heat blew from cherry-red to vermilion.

"Would you róast us, father?" yelled Bart, over the noise of the bellows. "Here's a lady." He winked, unable to help it, at Livia, who blushed becomingly. Aaron laid down the bel lows and turned majestically, waiting; Morven skulked still beyond the door till Livia should have done her errand.

"Mrs. Retford says will you please repair her hammer?" said Livia to Aaron, and took the broken object from her basket. He accepted it with the air of a Marshal of France receiving his baton from the Queen; he still said nothing, and turned away again to the forge; presently he said over his thin shoulder, "It'll be a minute, if you wait outbye." When he turned again, the forge was empty of anyone but himself; Bart had also gone, but only down to the shore to caulk his boat. He couldn't, the father reflected, thole being second fiddle. That lass hadn't even seen the pair of them, in here. She'd already gone off with young Morven.

They were lying together on the straw which still lined a disused byre of Aaron's. It had happened so quickly that there not been time for more, today, than a survey of her by him with half-shut eyes gleaming through their slits, and a turning of her knees to water. It was always the way with her at sight of Morven, now; what was to become of her? But the present was sweet. "What'll he think of me?" she

muttered into his shoulder. "What'll that old man think?" Morven laughed. "He'll think what I tell him, and no more," he told her, "and he remembers what'd have happened were he thirty years younger, and he-Ah, damn him and everyone, Livia, Livia!"

Afterwards they sat up. Still holding one another close, they could look out from the byre-door straight across the curve of the bay to Malvie, where the road wound up to the gate past the lower shore. The gate itself, once an elegant double affair in light wrought-iron, had been fashioned by Aaron's grandfather who had been a craftsman. It hung now on a broken hinge, mended with rope like an old cow-gate, to make it stay shut. The sight angered Morven; he could feel the anger creeping up through the late satisfaction of his body, so that he almost forgot to look at Livia. He turned and looked, and presently thrust her down again.