Inheritance Feud

Chapter 20

Chapter 20

She lay passively in disarray; she had forgotten about the blacksmith, and the caressing eyes of Bart as she'd passed by. She had forgotten everything but Morven himself; and, she knew, she always would. If he whistled, any time, she'd come. There had been hardly a night this summer she'd spent altogether in her bed; lying out with him till all hours in the spinney under the moon, under the wild cherry trees whose

tiny green fruit were like peppercorns. He rolled off her now, again fulfilled, and yawned and stretched himself. "That was good," he said, and continued to fondle her breasts above the pulled-down shift. "It's always good with us, Livia Mary." He laughed; she had told him long ago how she came by the name. 

"Maybe it won't always be so," she said, and moved away. Her happiness was like a great caged bird within her, tremu lous and still fearful. Morven was, she knew, a natural adept, with every cunning version of the art of love laid bare; who had bequeathed it she didn't know, but she did know what could happen, and might soon. If he'd got her, again already, with child

"What is it?" he asked, for she was shivering. Fear was not, in his estimate of Livia, a natural thing; she was as it should be, unafraid as an animal. Morven nuzzied her revealed shoulders; they were magnificent. "They ought to be in a low cut dress, such as fine ladies wear," he said. "One day I'll buy you one, and candles to sit under; then you'll look like a queen."

A queen! "What's that to do with me?" she said angrily, and thrust him from her; why did he make a fool of her when he'd had what he wanted? "I'll be in the family way then, most like, and you aunt'll have shown me her door. Fine talk of queens that day." She began to cry.

He laughed, and pulled her again to him. "Never fret, I'll be careful," he said. "I'm always careful, aren't I?" But some times, he knew, he forgot; it was generally impossible by the end not to renew himself in her totally, savour the wonderful release and well-being that came when he was with her, as now. He took her again, briefly and fiercely, and then looked up; there was a rumbling on the distant road, heavy enough for a coach to be coming. But it was not the time of day for the post-coach.

"What is it?" asked Livia drowsily; he had solaced her. Morven did not answer; quickly buttoning his own clothes he stood up, so that he could see the coach as it passed by. It did so, travelling at too high a speed for the road, and sway ing a little. It was borne by four horses, all grey and evenly matched, and there was a coachman and footman. Morve could not see the inmates before it came past, thundering on towards the gate of Malvie.

He gave an oath, and ran out and across the sward. He did not even hear Livia cry after him; he had already forgotten her. The coach had stopped now at the tied iron gates and because there was no lodge or keeper, the footman got down, untied the rope and climbed up again on the box; the gate was left swinging. The coach itself travelled on, growing smaller till it was the size of a beetle; presently the curve of land hid its arrival before the door of the great house. Mor ven began to run. Then he stopped, wiping his hot forehead with his sleeve. No need to appear in haste, dishevelment and shirt-sleeves to greet the new purchaser of Malvie, the hated, moneyed Englishman! He himself must go and wash, and put on his coat, and get his hair smooth again. Then he'd go up, properly mounted on Aaron's brown cob, and see.

He dived back towards the smithy once more, and in a quarter-hour was on the road. Livia, left behind, had not moved for a while from her place in the byre straw. He would always be off, whenever there was some matter that interested him more, for the time, than herself; she'd need to get used to it. A small, wise smile curved her mouth as she brushed herself down, then laced up her bodice and smoothed her own dishevelled hair. As long as the old b***h didn't notice straw on her back when she got home... She hesitated the forge door, shy of going in so soon to ask about the hammer. But Aaron, soul of tact, had left it lying ready on the outside bench. Livia lifted and tried it, set it in her waiting basket and set off. On the way back to Mains she met another car riage on the road. It was slower than the last had been; a dray, drawn by a patient horse. The man seated at the reins wore a broad hat and countryman's smock. His dark eyes were already fixed on Livia.

She knew the man, and did not stop for him, making her own way back up the lane to Mains in the languor that fol lows prolonged making of love. The dust was thick on the hedgerows and the green herbs, Good King Henry and ragged robin and the rest, were whitish grey. There hadn't been rain for weeks, and the carriage wheels-She turned, unthinkingly, again to survey the dray.

That was Abel Judd, she knew. He'd be over in his circum spect way to pick up a few free bales for the Fleece, which Morven had said Abel had bought, in the end, with his own saved money. A careful good man, Abel. "How'd he make the money?" she'd said suspiciously to Morven at the time. He'd laughed; he was always laughing now. "Saved it on wine and on women," he'd told her. "Others spend theirs, but Abel well, he had a wife once, but she died; now he never spends a drop of his money, even on ale. Forget him," and he'd seized her hand then and pulled her after him up the spinney rise.

She could forget Abel again quite easily now; but he was still watching her. He had, in his slow way, seen her already and taken note of her from the first; repeated sights of her gave him, he found, repeated pleasure. The garnered, shining beauty of the moments when he had gazed at her, or thought about her, had a quality Abel himself had never met before it hadn't been like what he could remember of courting poor Emmy, whom he'd known anyway since their childhood. This young girl, with her raven's wing hair, the bright carnation colour showing in her cheeks with the heat of the day, her fine eyes and trim, comely figure, had by now stayed in Abel's memory a long time; he was beginning to think he wouldn't be able to forget young Morven's wench. With a peasant's perception, he was apprised of that situation, and resented nothing; they were young, they loved one another, it was a pretty thing. He passed a slow tongue over his lips as the pony jogged off, and continued to remember Livia, after he'd turned the corner to Mains. He'd be surprised, thinking it over, if that Mrs. Retford knew what went on. He'd not tell her, never fear; no need to get the little maid in trouble before it came. And come it would, soon or late, knowing young Morven.

Morven arrived to find the coach at a standstill outside the door of Malvie and, beyond, his aunt's little calèche; she must have driven over already by the path round the field. No doubt she had brought Annabel with her.

Morven scowled, earning a similar welcome from the English coachman, who in the absence of superiors was standing at his ease with a toothpick; the footman was no where to be seen. The first fellow openly considered the advisability of asking Morven's business, but thought better of it in face of that young gentleman's haughty light-eyed stare. Doon strode up the steps and in at the great door, find ing himself in what should have been his father's hall of Malvie.

A long oak table remained of such things as he remem bered. About this, grouped on straight-backed chairs, a assembly was already seated; he caught sight of his aunt and polite Annabel, and old Lady Berry who could never bear not to know anything that was going on in the county. The rest, strange to Morven, had come out of the coach, and first among these was the new master. The young footman, whose disappearance Morven had already noted, stood now behind an invalid-chair of a light kind which could be carried in. In it a stout, pale young man sat; his prominent eyes slewed round to view Morven on entry, in the manner of one who finds it a matter of some pain, perhaps, or trouble, to turn the head. He smiled.

No one else gave Morven Doon any welcome; Mrs. Bowes looked fussed and bewildered, her two daughters surveyed the ground; old Lady Berry, whose forebears had been noted Whigs, glared beneath her grey wig as if at an interloper, such as all Morven's kind had been to her since the Revolution of 1688. Mrs. Retford frowned beneath her second-best bonnet; she had attired her young niece carefully today, not in the very best but in green, with a narrow blonde trim at bonnet edge and throat. The girl sat by her, in her shadow; but Mor ven felt Annabel's intense awareness of himself, though she dared show nothing.

"This," said aunt Retford's small cold voice into the silence, "is my nephew, Morven Doon."

Her mean, flat-eyed face surveyed his attire a brief instant, and in that instant found it wanting; he'd taken, after all, some care in changing his clothes back at Aaron's, but was made now to feel that he was too carelessly dressed to meet the incomers from London. Unwonted colour stained Mor ven's cheeks; they themselves were no great sight!

But he bowed to the company; and when it came to God frey Devenham's turn was filled with pity and triumph. The pity, never uppermost in Morven, was no more than any strong, normal being would feel for so weak and pitiful a sight. The goggle-eyes, like a frog's, Morven thought, were set in flesh so soft and useless it seemed without foundation, like a shape in dough. The dwindling of muscular power which, since a very early age, had prevented young Devenham from walking, made his ankles slender and narrow as a lady's be neath stout calves, grown so for lack of exercise. His body was flabby, his narrow-fingered hand like a fish's. Morven felt his thoughts grow cruel. His own triumph, the prospect of realisation of a hope which had still been shadowy, rushed upon him so that his eyes shone, and he smiled openly at the company; months, years, it might have been, before what was

in his own mind came to fruition! But now For he had already seen the way Godfrey looked at Anna bel.