Inheritance Feud

Chapter 55

Chapter 55

For Sam's wife had left him thirty years back, and he was accordingly a misogynist, apart from his devotion to the mem bers of the family, whom Aitkens had served for three genera tions.

Hermione was troubled about Sybilla's distrust of her, and had discussed it with the governess. Here however she found herself at a loss; Jane Glover was a wise, cold, provident young woman, a credit to her profession; she could by no means be informed of the full progress of events leading to Godfrey's death, or, hence, be brought to understand Sybilla's changed feelings towards her mother. The solution she put forward was simple enough; Sybilla missed her father; Anna bel herself must spend more time with the child.

By now the spring and the height of summer were over, and there were already cool days with a hint of mist or early frost. On one of these, Hermione wrapped herself in a shawl, shod herself stoutly, and called to take Sybilla for a walk through the woods. These had changed in colour from that other fate ful, too-bright day when their foliage had been virgin green; they would avoid the larch woods today, and would make for the brakes, where Godfrey had latterly stocked young pheasants. In May the place had been a mass of bluebells; by now, the bracken had grown up, and was already dulled over pend ing October changes to yellow, brown and flame. They fol. lowed a path above it, at first in silence. Then Sybilla said, a trifle primly, as if speaking to a stranger, "Papa and I found scarlet toadstools last year, down there," and she pointed, taking a hand out of her muff. "May I go down, Mama, and see if I can still find them?"

She turned her face, rosy with the walk, to Hermione; the eyes were still wide and remote, but perhaps with time the constraint might lessen; so her mother thought, and watched the small dark-clad figure in its neat hood venture down the slope, beyond which pines reared blackly. Watching, Hermione thought sadly that all of her own life now revolved round that young, tentative one; if anything befell Sybilla, what would be left to her of Godfrey? "Can you see the toadstools, darling?" she called. "Do not go too far; there may be adders in the bracken." Sam Aitken, she recalled, had killed one here abouts when she was a child; it had been as long as one's arm, marked with diamonds as big as a rajah's; an old one, Sam had said. Since then she herself had been afraid to go down there; how many things there were to be afraid of! If one were to give way completely to folly, life would be no more than a waking round of fear upon fear.

Sybilla's answering cry came soon; she had found the toad stools. She bent down among the fronds, and presently emerged carrying the garish, deceptive fungi in the overskirt of her gown; she began to clamber up towards the path again, and Hermione kept silent about the danger of poison. Godfrey had reared Sybilla to have both enough knowledge and enough sense not to put her fingers in her mouth after touching any unknown object, or to try to taste it because of its colour.

The child turned her enchanting face up and briefly, trust fully smiled. Hermione felt her own heart fill with joy; and it was then that the thing happened. She could remember after wards hearing a small ping, an alien sudden sound, from among the trees. She then saw Sybilla fling up both hands to cover her face, while the forgotten toadstools scattered among the bracken like bright beads. The child was screaming. Anna bel picked up her skirts and ran, stumbling down over the rough slope of unseen ground between bracken-stems and dwarf sloe, catching and tearing her clothes on thorns. At last she knelt by her daughter.

"Sybilla, darling, darling, let me see..." When she could bring the child's rigid hands down free of her face, a great wave of relief took Hermione; there was only a weal, a bright weal where something, a stone, had lately struck the smooth, rounded cheek below the eye. The flesh was already swelling; but the eye itself was safe.

"Come. Quickly, my darling; we must take you straight home." Fear rose in her now for more attacks upon them both, by whoever waited still among the nearby pines, she was ignorant of what precise means had been used to launch the stone. She seized the child, now crying with fright and pain, by the hand and half dragged, half carried Sybilla up the bank; on the way back to the house she tried, vainly, to comfort her. "It was a stone, my love. Only a little stone. We will bathe

your face and it will be well tomorrow." All the time, through her desperate talk, she was thanking God the eye was saved; an inch higher and Sybilla might have been disfigured for life. Who would do such a thing to a child, an innocent child? Evil was pressing closer about the house of Baron, waiting already in the nearer trees. She felt such evil everywhere, rolling towards them now like a great cloud; soon she herself would not be able to stir hand or foot abroad without risk of danger. For Hermione knew well it was herself against whom the evil moved for Baron's sake, and not Sybilla; they had victimised her daughter as a means of weakening herself. They would know that, filled as she would be by now with fear for Sybilla, a particle of her own resistance would have flaked away, like stone from a corroded wall; that gradually the wall itself would grow so weak as to be fit in the end to destroy with a thrust, a motion of purposeful hands. What would they do next to herself, to Sybilla, to obtain Baron? But on no account would she leave here. They should never

drive her out.

Young William Judd, after they had both gone, slid back again between the trunks of the pines, stowing his newly acquired catapult away in his pocket. He was not yet perfectly expert with it; it had been the woman, Mrs. Devenham, he had in fact hoped to hit. He owed her a grudge for trying to keep him away from Baron stables, and denying him the familiar company of the horses and of Sam. But William still went there in any case, mostly after dark when she'd be indoors; and meantime it had at least been something to have hit, even by mistaken timing, the dressed-up doll of a little fair-haired girl. Honour satisfied, William took himself off to where four or five packmen, who came to Mains regularly nowadays, would be assembled ready to leave again by dusk. They'd promised to let him ride a Welsh pony he fancied, and felt a yearning for, at least part of the way, till its chargeman joined them as arranged by night, four miles beyond Grattan. William would go any distance to have dealings with horse flesh, even though it meant he'd have to walk back. After wards, when he returned to Mains, it was likely enough, the boy thought without sentiment, that nobody there would even notice he'd been away. The blind man-William was begin ning to feel a curious fascination for Theon, despite what he'd done to him, and wished that, like Samson the n***o, he could go with Theon Doon to his boat on which both men spent most of their time nowadays. As for William's mother, she sat by the fire looking into it, hour after hour, and took no heed of William.

Sybilla fell ill with fever following the shock of that ex perience, though her eye took no harm; by the end of it all she was pale and thin, and had grown two inches. She had never, until recent months, encountered grief, shock or vio lence in the whole of her short life, and now all three worked upon her to make of her a changed, silent, alien being. Only to the governess would she give any trust; it was as much as to say, "Mama persuaded me to go for a walk with her, and that happened; I must take as little as possible, apart from politeness, from now on to do with Mama." The politeness was heartbreaking; it was after the third or fourth exercise of question and answer, the formal presentation after dinner of a quiet, pale little girl in a plain muslin gown tied with rib bons, but with no spark of life or joy in her, that Hermione began to consider a measure Jane Glover had been urging, gently but persistently, for some time; although it was so early, and she was young, Sybilla must be sent away to school. To stay here would kill her. Hermione was convinced of this; the governess only smiled slightly.