Inheritance Feud

Chapter 53

Chapter 53

He had half risen from his place, in a way he had not been able to do for years. The effort had caused his whole body to quiver, as though at any moment it would collapse, in igno miny, back again in the upholstered seat. His face was the colour of tallow, the brow glistening with sweat; below it, the eyes were glazed like a calf's which is dying. He surveyed the blind man. When they came, his words were mild. "Will you go from here?" was all he said. Theon laughed,

and his teeth showed white through the drying blood. "Go? Oh, ay," he said, "but I'll return. Maybe your lad

wife" he gave the word vicious emphasis-"will remembermore kindly, another time, how she gave me earlier welcome; it was warmer than your own has ever been. Do you suppose you moon-calf, that she would ever have married you save for Baron? Baron's ours, Doon heritage, for no interloper. Sybilla-"

"No!" Sybilla's mother screamed then. She heard her screams echoing down the forest paths, at the top of which, surely, a small girl on a pony must be riding soon, riding now. The child mustn't hear this, mustn't see. But above all God frey must be prevented from hearing, from knowing the truth, the brutal, undeniable truth about Sybilla. If her own scream could invade his hearing and prevent other entry, she would scream on deliberately till her throat was dry

"Sybilla is my daughter. Did you suppose you could get a child?" said Theon clearly, and turned away. Godfrey had heard. She knew, and suddenly silent and in tears flung herself across his knees where he sat, so that he sagged upon her.

"Oh God," she heard herself moaning, and presently felt him somehow drag her up to him; she felt his poor hands caress her hair; had she ever resented his touch? Still she could say nothing but, "Oh, God, oh God," and knew a sud den fear that Godfrey was dying. His face, as with one near death, had acquired a serenity, a smoothness about it; he smiled, and kept his hand on her hair.

"Don't cry," she heard him say, and then "I... knew." His breaths, as though they were someone's who has been running a long way, were growing shorter; a gasp of pain came, and his whole body grew rigid. She could see, as if in nightmare, his teeth clench against the fierceness of the pain; that he should forget her, forget or fail to hear the thing she must tell him, was intolerable. She almost shouted at him, holding him fast about the body. "I love you, I love you my darling, my own darling"

But he smiled, the face having relaxed and changed to an expression of great serenity and sweetness; perhaps he had not heard her. That he should not have done so possessed Anna bel's mind all through the hours and days that followed; after help came, after they took him away, after they laid him out for burial.

For he was dead. He had perhaps died doubting her.. Later, after she had gone away for help, the child Sybilla had come, having ridden down at speed on her pony as soon as the lessons were over. She saw her father's body slumped sideways, found him glassy-eyed and silent, not answering her kiss; and then she screamed, and looked about her for help at last; a blind man with a bleeding face stood nearby. "Do not cry, my child," he said, "he was never your father. I am.

Sybilla fell again to screaming.

Godfrey's will was read by the lawyer Fosse, who had come down from Edinburgh for the funeral. He read' it in presence of the widow, Kitty Bowes, Sir Sander Melrose and his son Paul, who had arrived with Kitty, Clairette Bowes was not present. Neither was the child Sybilla, who was, it was stated, under physician's orders and distracted with grief. So, Mr. Fosse thought, unexpectedly, was the widow; she twisted her mourning-kerchief in her hands throughout the reading, and appeared to understand very little he had to say.

The will was straightforward. The house and estate of Mal vie, with a large jointure, went to Hermione direct, without pro visions or clauses. Fosse looked at her, cleared his throat, and kept silent concerning his own thoughts on the matter; it was, he decided, no time to mention that, if she chose to marry again, the property was hers to leave or dispose as she chose. But as things were, no doubt, she herself would will Baron directly to Miss Sybilla. He would discuss that matter with her, perhaps before he left.

Sybilla herself was generously provided for; Kitty and Clairette received life-annuities. The trusteeship of Sybilla's fortune was, as was prudent, under Sir Sander's care as well as that of the child's mother. There were one or two benefits servants, in particular to the footman George Oakes. "Nothing and no one was forgotten by him," said Sir Sander afterwards, gruffly to disguise the emotion he felt. He was compelled to add that if Hermione cared to make her home with them at Maddon, and to bring Sybilla with her

Hermione shook her head; she was, the old man thought, in a state of shock, and could not rightly decide her course of present action. He tried to persuade her; would she, perhaps, desire him to remain here for a day or two with her, till she should have had leisure to think what her future arrangements might be? "It will be solitary for you here, niece," he said kindly. "Mama Bowes has offered to stay," said Hermione dully.

Kitty's choice had surprised her, for with her two daughters now at Maddon one would have thought that she preferred to remain there, now Godfrey was gone; but she would, she said, like best to remain with Hermione and little Sybilla. Clairette refused to return. It might not be long, everyone thought, till Kitty herself would need the attentions due to an invalid; her painted face sagged, and she seemed to have aged ten years since Godfrey's death; she was still given to un controlled outbursts of weeping. But Hermione did not weep; not even at night, when she was alone on her pillows. She had, after all, been for some years alone in such a way.

Her solitude was like a wall about her; nobody, she resol ved, should break it down. After Sir Sander and Paul and the lawyer had gone she walked restlessly about the house, the great empty house of Baron. Godfrey had filled it with beautiful and rare things, and his garden; she must always tend his garden, though not as he "Let me keep it worthily, as he would have wished. Let it be a memorial to him."

Outside, she already knew, Theon would be coasting about, waiting; it was like the onslaught of a chess-army, red against white. If she'd think for herself, think what she was doing, Godfrey had once told her, she'd sometimes win. She'd win this game. Godfrey had left Baron to her; she herself had signed a will, lately before Fosse rode away, leaving everything to Sybilla. Theon, who had killed her saint, her love, Godfrey, should not have Baron. She and Kitty and Sybilla, three women together, should resist him alone.

She clenched her white hands, and felt the stiff ridged stuff of her mourning-gown yield under them; but she herself would be unyielding, in this war. With every one of the resources left to her starved and lonely body, Hermione made ready to fight Theon Doon. She had already sent, the day after Godfrey's funeral, a request to him to vacate the Mains at the earliest opportunity.

I

SYBILLA had been having nightmares since her father's death. She would wake in trembling silence, bathed in sweat; what the form of the dream had been she could not, she said, remember, except that it had brought with it the sound of the sea, pounding against rock. Often those who waited with her would come by with a shaded candle, and find the child wide eyed, watching the vibrations of the wall-lamp which floated in oil and gave off a tiny flame from a wick of rushes. Anna bel had hung it nearby Sybilla's bed so that she should not wake and find it dark. She was afraid of the dark, nowadays; and afraid of her mother.

"What is it, my darling?" Hermione would say, bending over her, and would receive no answer; Sybilla would turn her head away. Only to the governess, Jane Glover, who now shared her room, she would sometimes say, "The lamp. It shakes when they move." And her eyes held terror; in the dream, which she could not remember now, she had heard those who ham mered and cut, hammered and cut at the rock deep under Baron. With each blow, the lamp flickered. But why should they always come in the dark?

Papa was underground. Papa was where they had buried him, in a coffin covered by a stone slab, in the new tomb dug in the grounds. He would be lonely, Sybilla thought; only, of course, he wasn't there. Mama, crying, had tried to persuade her of that; but she wouldn't listen, or yet believe that Papa was now where he could walk and run, and pick the flowers he had loved to grow. Papa wasn't anywhere, except in the tomb and the coffin: lying in it with glazed eyes. Without him, the house was empty.

Cousin Paul had come, with his father, and had tried to comfort Sybilla. She liked Paul; he was so solid and calm and strong, like Papa would have wanted to be, able to ride a horse and shoot and stride about, like other people. Paul and Uncle Sander had wanted Mama to come and bring Sybilla with her, and live always at Maddon. But Mama wouldn't go.

She spent all day, Sybilla supposed, walking from room to room, or going alone into the garden, always in her black dress. Sometimes she would go to the room where Papa had kept his shell-collection, and would lock the door and, Sybilla knew, give way to bursts of dreadful crying, which could be heard beyond. It made one, almost, sorry for Mama, though it had been all her fault. Her fault, and the blind man's.