Inheritance Feud

Chapter 54

Chapter 54

He had come again once. Sybilla knew about it, having glimpsed him from the schoolroom window when Miss Glover had been sent for to go down to Mama. He'd come walking up the drive as if he could see, striding firmly, with a tall staff in his hand and his cloak swinging round him. He didn't seem afraid to come alone. But they hadn't let him enter Baron; Mama had sent word to the footman who replaced George, and he had shown Theon Doon the door and he had gone away as he had come, but quite untroubled; he was smiling. Sybilla had seen that, and it had increased her fear and hor ror; to smile, after everything that had happened

He had not come again. iss Glo had told Sybilla that he had been asked to leave the Mains, and would soon be going. "He says he has found another house to live in," said the young governess, wrinkling her brow. "I wonder where it can be? It will be better, far better, once he has gone from here."

Sybilla nodded and traced the answers to her sums, and let one finger stray inside the golden curl which could be coaxed now to fall on her shoulder, like a grown-up lady's. It would be better, far better, as Miss Glover had said, once the blind man had gone.

Hermione had herself tried to forget that visit of Theon's. She had tried to forget his very existence, making herself, as day followed day, pass her hours as Godfrey would have had her do, if Godfrey had still been able to speak. Often she would find herself talking to Godfrey in her own mind, though never aloud; she would roam the rooms of the house, seeing that the maids had left everything as he had been used to have it left. The garden also she tried to tend. But his gardener had already left her.

He had been the first of the servants to go; he had been waiting for Hermione one day when she came out, his ancient half-beaver in his hand; he had always been a personage of some pretensions, having trained at Kew. "But why?" she had cried, when he signified his formal intention of leaving at the end of his term. "The garden will not be the same with any one else." She tried to smile. "I'm not knowledgeable, as your master was. But I had hoped we might, between us, at least keep it as it has become." She turned to look over at the glory of flowers and rare shrubs and trees in high summer; some of them would perish in the cold sea-wind of autumn without expert treatment. Tears sprang to her eyes; did everything I have to be made harder for her? To have kept the Baron garden as it was, a memorial

The gardener cut it regretfully. He had, he said, the instant Mr. Devenham's death was known, been besieged by requests from other estate-owners, some rich, others fanciful, all in the south. "I've a notion to better myself, madam, by going back," he said stiffly; he had never been on the terms with Hermione that he had with her husband. A gardener born, Mr. Godfrey had been; knew in advance what to do with every leaf and root, not that he ever ordered one against one's ingrained ways, and they'd both kept learning as they went. But a lady, now, who hadn't the business at heart, no matter how she might sigh and weep nowadays, was different. "I'm going down to Richmond again, madam," the man said firmly. He added that it wouldn't have happened so soon, maybe, but the gentle man who'd spoken for him-he was newly home from the East, with a consignment of rare bulbs worth a fortune, and other things he wanted everything well begun before the autumn. "I'm sorry, madam." The second footman was sorry also; that had happened in the following week. One couldn't expect them to stay on here, in so remote a place, no doubt, with a widow and a child, and poor Kitty as she now was. There was no company and nowhere to go in their free

time. She sighed. Kitty-her stroke had come upon Godfrey's mother while she slept, and by the morning she had been found lying without the power of speech, and with half her limbs useless-Kitty must be looked after. Clairette had an nounced, indirectly by way of Paul, that under no circum stances would she return to Baron. It was not, accordingly, a kindness to Cecily Melrose to ask her to add to the burdens she had already, and look after an old invalid mother as well as the five young girls; and Kitty had, in the ways in which she could still manifest meaning, declared her intention of staying on in the place where her son had died, so that she could be buried with him. All things centred as always on lying in the new tomb. Godfrey,

Hermione herself knew she would not leave here. A kind of mulishness, standing in the way of what, she knew, others intended for her good, had entered her soon after the death. She refused both Sir Sander's offer of a home for herself, Sybilla and Kitty, and a later circumstance which, by itself, might have given rise to kindly laughter in everyone: Colonel Cazalet had, pompously and correctly, aided by his ear trumpet, proposed marriage. "Wouldn't have been as precipi tate, m'dear, with poor Devenham hardly cold! But your own situation here, it's-it's damned solitary! No state for a woman!" He added that he had always admired her. Hermione, had declined, kindly and formally: she would never, she assured him, marry again. Her heart-the good Colonel would, no doubt, have understood this true assumption more easily than subtler metaphors, for his was an uncomplicated intel ligence her heart was in the tomb with Godfrey. Having nderstood this fact, the Colonel left her with, she doubted not, a certain well-concealed relief; to change one's single state at sixty-odd would have taken a good deal of resolution and courage. He stumped off to his coach which waited, assur ing her of his continued esteem.

Other than that, few people had come to Baron since the funeral.

Sybilla's continued dreams troubled Hermione, and one day she caused Sam Aitken, the groom, to go down to the base of the ancient tower where, she remembered from childhood, there had been a legend of an old entrance, leading down by a shaft to the caves. She had not gone with Sam, saying to her self that she did not care to soil her gown; but truth to tell she had no wish to look at the trap-door, or what lay be

neath. The groom came back, avoiding her eyes. "Well, Sam?" She had known him from childhood; it was he who had-what a lifetime ago it seemed!-boxed Theon's ears for scaring her by making her walk along the haunted ledge. She asked him if the entry below the tower was visible.

"Not now-ma'am." He had always to think before remem

bering that she wasn't Miss Hermione these days. The thought struck her that he looked thin and somewhat yellow. "Are you well, Sam?" She had already forgotten about the trap-door. "Well enough," growled the old groom. He did not add that he'd got young William Judd, whom he knew she didn't like to see about the place, to help him roll two boulders in from the outside, and batten down the door. The dust had been disturbed lately; looking down at last through the yawning opening, one could see a dark receding shaft, and steps cut, with stanchions. There'd been someone there, that was evi dent, working at it since he was a boy; he remembered that shaft well enough as smooth and difficult to climb. With all one heard-but, the Lord bless poor Miss Hermione, she wouldn't hear it!-about the packmen calling in almost daily at Mains, and the boats there were lying in about the coast, far more by night now than in the old days, and the rumours of some great and mighty business of Mr. Theon's stretching from here to Leith, so that the excisemen hardly dared come near what wise man but would keep his mouth shut? But he'd put the boulders across, for her safety; didn't want rough entrants into Baron, while she lay asleep in her bed. As for her question about did he feel well, he didn't; he had a growth in him as big as an apple, all this year: but it was better to die in harness, for what was left, except the almshouses, may be? Mr. Godfrey would have seen him right; but one could never tell with a woman.