Inheritance Feud

Chapter 15

Chapter 15

"A long way north from London," Mrs. Retford murmured; why where these people coming so far? The metropolis, where even as Agnes Doon she had never been taken, represented to her untold, unsavoured joys; the sight of a world where the beauteous Miss Gunnings, without either fame or fortune, had won the respective hands of a duke and an earl, and immense sums of money changed hands each night at cards. Mrs. Ret ford sighed briefly. While her brother Philip, ten years her junior, still lived, there had been occasional diversion in this way; they played for low stakes. But of late years, alone here with Annabel... If even an invalid Englishman came, it would bring other company, provided he were rich. And, provided he were rich, there was Annabel also. The pattern of things worked itself out with surprising speed inside Mrs. Retford's head, while she listened and conversed with Sir Hubert, and the night outside grew dark. Annabel, marriage able with the portion culled from the sale of Malvie . . . a neat trick to sell the man Malvie, then wed it to its erstwhile owner dowered with his price! Agnes Retford almost laughed; then thought better of it, in front of poor Hubert. One could never tell how a man would view such matters; and with his own elder son so recently dead, who might have been per mitted to wed Annabel after all if the price came in time for Malvie.. but now it was too late. Poor Peter, the coffin-dust on his bright hair already in the vault at Maddon! It was a bay horse, which they said young Morven had ridden over to him from the smith's. Ill luck accompanied Morven. It wasn't that there was anything amiss with Aaron's shoeing, but the fact that Morven came with it had brought a curse. Agnes Retford's face darkened. She'd been right, more than right, to cast that damned boy from her door, not permit him to enter here. It would have been like housing the devil, and she'd had enough trouble in her life. "The sconces," murmured Sir Hubert. A knock had come

beyond the shutter. Mrs. Retford moved quickly, going to where the hat-shaped douser leaned against the wall on its long stem. One after another she extinguished the candles in the room. With the ensuing darkness and silence a flicker showed itself beyond the opened shutter, no more; starlight, perhaps: no moon had yet risen. The shutter closed again, and instantly, without a word spoken, Sir Hubert found his tinder and relit the sconces for his hostess, the revived flames briefly etching peaked shadows on his well-fed face, making it a wizard's. A bundle lay now on the sill. Sir Hubert went and lifted it carefully, passing it to the lady; opened, it revealed a number of bottles, some of which he pocketed and the rest, speedily, were caused to vanish into a corner-cupboard. Hostess and guest then sat down and finished their wine, as though nothing had happened, and discussed the news of the day from Maddon and France, rather than London; that remained a foreign city. The matter of the doused candles, the brief interruption at the window, might never have occurred. It was late when Sir Hubert left, and the stars lit his journey past the dark, untenanted water below the road. On the opposite rock, Aaron's forge had gone out.

Long before then, something else had happened; a small figure in a hooded cloak had accosted the departing smuggler, earning a curse from him. He pulled the figure into the nearby shadows and jerked back its hood. It was Annabel. Morven swore again, looked quickly round at the silent dark; little fool that she was, he'd thought it was the gauger! "There's danger, d'you hear?" he hissed. "There'd be trouble even for those two if it was known," and he nodded to the window. "You must know nothing, nothing, d'you hear? Say to no one you've seen me tonight. How did you know?"

"Livia Mary the maid told me there was something afoot. Anyway I guessed. Uncle Hubert doesn't often stay as late. Morven, I had to see you." He was still angry, disengaging her hands which clutched at his seaman's coat. "Don't speak my name, you fool! Not

here "

"Morven, they've sold Malvie." "What?" He stood quite still; the starlight, vaguely outlin ing his face, showed it thin as a boy's. She began to cry, help less against what she knew troubled him.

"Do you suppose I'd have stopped you for less, knowing what it'd mean if-if they caught you? Morven-" she could not seem to stop, despite his prohibition, saying over his name, it was too dear to her "Morven, they've sold the house to an Englishman." She told him the man's name. "I don't know any more, except that they sent for me tonight, to tell me. That means the thing's done; they never tell me anything as a--" 

"Quickly; someone may come any minute. Did you sign anything? When does this man come?" "No. Uncle Hubert signed, I think. The lawyers have been. 1-1 couldn't stop it, Morven. Say you're not angry." She

pleaded with him, a drifted rose-petal in the dark; he shook

her off. "Angry! Malvie sold, and I not angry? What can be done, what can be?" "Can we do anything, together?"

"We? We're minors." He came back to a realisation of their danger here, and of the risk she'd run to come and tell him. He patted her, absently as though she had been an obedient puppy. "I'll do what can be done," he boasted, "never fear. If anything can be altered, it's I who must alter it. Go you back inside." He seized her shoulders and gave them a quick, absent squeeze; he was no longer thinking of her, as she knew. He watched her slip away presently in the darkness and re-enter the house; then recalled a thing she had said to him, and which in his anger he hadn't fully taken in.

Livia Mary, the maid. Where had he heard the name Livia before? He remembered now... Anyway, damn that; it was Malvie that mattered; only Malvie. He must make plans, if not to prevent the sale-too late for that-then to make it impossible for the Englishman to inherit; Doons had always owned Malvie, and always should.

He stayed there brooding for moments in the dark, oblivious now of the danger. Then he went, and within minutes the place where they had both stood was empty, as though not a soul had been there tonight, or any other.

Afterwards, Agnes Retford took some time to mount to her bed. She walked, bearing a guttered candle in its oak holder, through the silent house, telling herself it was prudent to inspect this after the nearness of smugglers, the identity of one of whom she would not, even to herself, admit. She had shut her brother Richard's son out of her heart from his birth, and out of her scheme of things from the moment poor Philip, his protector, was removed. Morven Doon no longer existed as a fact in her reckoning.

This house, Mains of Malvie, which had been allotted to Agnes for her life, on marriage, was her constant pride; it made up, perhaps, for a union so loveless that nowhere in the whole house, least of all in her curtained bedchamber, did any trace or rememberance of her short-lived husband, Neil Ret ford, remain. She wouldn't have married Neil, everyone knew, had there been the least chance of Hubert Melrose in old days. But she'd been more than twenty and one didn't want to die an old maid.

Bolts and bars being satisfactory, she went back to the corner-cupboard where the newly acquired brandy lay, and took a bottle upstairs with her. On the way, she continued to cast a sharp eye for dust, neglect, or careless polishing, visible in the raised candle's light. But every surface shone, and Agnes went up to bed pleased enough with the new maid, Mary Reid, who worked and seemed, despite her history, trustworthy. It might be a case, still, of a new broom; Mary hadn't been here four months yet. Mrs. Retford's mouth tightened, in time to reveal an unbecoming, raddled likeness of herself in a passing mirror. No matter; youth passed, also, and pretty Nancy Doon, that she'd once been, was no more; but there were other satisfactions. Work was one; she herself had never per mitted the Doon idleness in her blood to prevail. Tomorrow, she had already decided, she must send the girl Mary Reid to open up Malvie, and at least remove the upper film of dust from such articles of furniture as were left there. At Philip's death they had, of course, sold what would sell, but the pur chaser had agreed to take what remained and it would be politic, Mrs. Retford now decided, to look as though someone had cared for them a little these past years.