South Riding (73 page)

“Yes, by blustering and swearing and driving Muriel till she was set on it.”

“She?”

“Did she run away to Carne, or did Carne carry her off?”

“He hung round in the village.”

“Of course. Do you think he could have run away and left her, so unhappy, and you shutting her up? He wasn’t that sort.”

“He’s run away now, hasn’t he?”

“Oh, we don’t know. We don’t know. We shall never know,” she wailed. The facade of her righting courage almost cracked. She made a terrific effort. “Listen,” she said. “Never mind how or why they did it. Let’s take it they were young and loved each other. But the moment they were married, I can tell you this. Robert set himself to do his best for her. At first it was change she wanted and foreign travel. Baden-Baden, Monte Carlo, Vienna.”

“Yes,” he nodded, almost absent-mindedly. “Her mother was like that.”

“Hunting all winter. Fishing sometimes in Norway. Well. He could afford it those days. He had the house done up; he entertained, or he took her away when there was no hunting or sport here. He and his fathers had been first-rate farmers, and the farm’s a good one. He spent more than he should have done, but they could manage. Then the War came. He joined up. They put him in charge of a remount depot. He knew everything there was to know about horses. First, he was in England, then in France. She couldn’t go abroad so easily. She stayed on here and hunted. She kept open house for the young officers. She entertained. They used to play poker here at nights. One heard stories. Then she took to going up to London. Some sort of war work, she said. We never knew what. I say she missed Carne. He always steadied her. Then he came on leave in 1917 and found her in London with a lot of officers. I believe there was a scene. She enjoyed scenes, you know. Not like a Yorkshire woman. Then the child was to come. She was back here with the groom and servants. She was rather queer. But she wouldn’t go away. He came on leave again and was worried to death. It was then he asked me to look after her. Believe me, she had every attention. But when the child came we could tell at once that something was badly wrong. We sent for Carne. He got leave somehow. He did everything. Got specialists from London, nurses, treatments. He told us to spare no expense. I came over here and did what I could. He had to go back. It was—awful. I never knew a man more torn. Never think, never think, Lord Sedgrnire, he didn’t love her.”

“Well?”

“Well, since then, everything has been done for her. It’s not been a good time for farmers since the War, and Carne had already spent too much of his capital. The old foreman who looked after the place during the War was a good man on the land, but not so good at business. Carne came back. The doctors ordered Muriel to nursing homes. He sent her here, there, anywhere that they thought held the ghost of a hope for her. He drained the farm of every pound he could get from it. He cut down every expense.”

“I understand that he was able to hunt and all the rest of it.”

“He schooled and sold hunters. It was one of his most profitable lines. He had a name for them.”

“Humph.”

“If you don’t believe it, come with me. I’ll show you something.”

She rose and he followed her.

“As things got worse,” she said, “he started to sell property. A bit of timber here, a pasture there. Then he got a mortgage on the farm. I suppose you know it all belongs to the bank now? Then he began to sell his own possessions, the silver cups, the family portraits.”

“Portraits?”

“Yes, you know. Even farmers have faces, and the Carnes were handsome. They had a Lawrence and a Raeburn, and some others by not such well-known artists. I don’t know much about pictures, but I do know a bit of good furniture when I see it. You came through the drawing-room? You saw it was empty? I suppose you thought we’ve got rid of the furniture since—the—the accident? You’re wrong. Carne did that. There were some gilt chairs and a bureau belonging to his great-grandmother. He sold them.” She led him into the hall. “Do you see those ledges? They were covered with china. Old blue Minton, double dinner service, and Spode, very valuable. He got rid of those too. This was the smoke-room. There was oak panelling—four hundred years old. That went to America. He had a collection of old fowling pieces in the gun-room. Some museum took those. Come upstairs.”

Up the stairs they went, the shallow uncarpeted steps creaking beneath them. She opened a door from the bare boarded passage.

“I want you to see that your daughter didn’t come here into hardship.”

She entered the whispering shadowed room. He paused on the threshold, blinking, but she went forward and pulled aside the soft green taffeta curtains with a rattle of rings along the thick brass pole. First through the south window and then the east, all the green May landscape to the Leame and to the sea lay spread before them, framed in the faded silk.

“Look,” she said. “This was the room he furnished for her. It’s not been touched till now. Look—here’s the bathroom. Here’s his dressing-room. He bought this suite for her. Look at the wardrobe. Here are all her clothes. Velvet, fur, satin. Do you call this hardship? Look at the linen, fine as cobwebs. And thirty pairs of shoes. Tell me, Lord Sedgmire, could you have done much better for her?”

“Oh, God,” said the old man.

“In a way, I don’t blame you. She was the only child, wasn’t she? It must have been hard. But you see—what about Robert? Mind you, I think he was a fool. He’d have done better if he’d not tried to give her everything that she thought she wanted. But it’s difficult to refuse when you’re in love. Before she was ill, she always could get round him. He felt he owed her so much because in marrying him she’d cut herself off from all her family; and after she was ill, he felt he couldn’t do enough for her because it was all his fault.”

“His fault?”

“He thought that by making her have a child, he’d sent her out of her mind. It wasn’t true. I don’t believe for a minute it was true.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the doctors were never sure it was the child. And if it was . . .”

“You mentioned something about a lot of young officers. And that it was the talk of the place.”

She said nothing.

“Mrs. Beddows.”

She faced him, her lips compressed.

“Did you mean anything by that?”

“You’re her father.”

“So I know her inheritance. Is this child Carne’s?”

“He claimed it.”

“Is it like him?”

“Not in any way. But that’s nothing. He claimed Midge. He doted on her. He’d have done anything for her except sacrifice Muriel.’ He always accused himself of having forced a child on her.”

“I see. And you. What do you think?”

“I think we shall never know.”

“I see.”

He sighed heavily, standing gaunt and old in the faded finery of his daughter’s room. Suddenly Mrs. Beddows felt sorry for him. Her antagonism abated. He was an old man, and he was, she believed, fundamentally both honest and decent.

He turned to her.

“You want to keep this child? I shall, of course, see that you don’t suffer financially. We too,” he half smiled, mimicking her. “We’re not too well off—land values, you know—but we’re not paupers.”

“I told you we could manage,” she said sullenly.

“Of course. But you must see that it would be impossible for me to let you. There’s another thing. Do you really want to keep the child? I quite see I can’t force you to give her up. My son-in-law left you her guardian. He obviously thought you would be good to her. But I came here with an idea in my head.”

He sighed again. All this was exhausting and saddening.

“What was that?”

A sudden fear caught at Emma Beddows’ heart. He wanted Midge.

Now that she saw that she might lose the child, she knew she wanted her. Not that she found her lovable; she was too much like Muriel who had ruined Robert. But she was the pledge of Robert’s trust and love, the one thing left that she might hold of him.

“My nephew and his wife live with me now, since my wife died. He really manages the estate for me. They have one child, a girl, a little younger than Midge. It’s lonely at our place. Not many neighbours. My great-niece is delicate. We haven’t sent her to school. She has governesses. Then perhaps Paris or Vevey. One of those finishing places. Then a season or two. It would do her good to have companionship.”

Emma Beddows thought. She thought of the High School. Sarah was good for the child in one way. But then there would be all the talk. Kiplington was full of gossip. Had Carne run away? Had he committed suicide? Was it an accident? She had not dared to let Midge go back to school yet.

“I think,” she said slowly, “it depends upon Midge herself. She’s old enough now to know what she wants. She’s sixteen. Small for her age. Delicate. Backward. But she has something in her.”

And even as she spoke, she knew that already she had lost the child. Midge would never make a professional woman, or the sensible wife of a lawyer or auctioneer. Mrs. Beddows knew her insatiable taste for grandeur. She might be elegant; she might even make a successful social hostess. She would never fit into the plain provincial society of Kiplington.

Emma had lost her last link with Carne. Midge would go to Shropshire. Maythorpe would be sold to the county council. It would become an institution. I shall never visit it, Mrs. Beddows thought. I will not go on this committee. She was an old woman, and yet she would survive the young, the strong, the beautiful.

“Granny!”

The girl’s shrill voice rang up the stairs. Midge had come to an end of her weeping, washed her face, and gone to Elsie full of plans and graces. She knew quite well what she desired to do.

“Granny! The tea’s made.”

“All right. We’re coming.”

She gave one look at the old man. They did not speak. They went downstairs together to the dining-room.

Midge was seated by the chipped japanned tea-tray. The spout of the brown pot was broken, but she had found an old silver cream jug, and the china was Crown Derby.

“I thought you were never coming. Aren’t you thirsty? Grandfather, do you take cream? Sugar?”

“You seem to have established your claim to me all right, young woman. What do you suppose I came here for, eh?”

“Why, to take me home to Shropshire, of course,” said Midge.

A
CROSS
the fields in the fresh bright May morning, the Holly children went to picnic, Lydia, Daisy, Alice, Kitty and Len. Len was very small. They had to carry him sometimes. But he had protested with screams against being left behind.

They had planned to walk to the Leame foreshore from Cold Harbour. Early that morning the Cold Harbour lorry, which Geordie Hicks was to drive and Sawdon owned, called round at the Shacks on its way from taking milk to Kiplington Station, and brought the children to Mrs. Brimsley’s cottage. She had given them milk and bread and butter and furnished them with a large two-handled basket. “Put Lennie on it if he gets tired,” she said, “and I’ll tell you something. Don’t dare to look inside till you touch the water. That’s what my mother used to say. ‘Now if you begin to eat before you’ve seen the sea, you get stomach-ache.’ You get along now, and then you’ll get back again.”

It was the first Saturday of the summer term. Miracles had happened. Lydia was at school again. All the complexity of the situation which had kept officials wakeful, sent teachers scouring the country, and driven aldermen grey-headed, had been solved by the charm of Barnabas Holly’s voice and the maternal instincts of Mrs. Brimsley.

Already she had the baby with her at Cold Harbour. She and Holly on Sundays went by bus to look at the little bungalows near Minston. They were going to take one. She had her bit of capital. He would get a job on the new Housing Estate there; the small children could go to Minston School; Lydia could still cycle out to, Kiplington, and in winter or bad weather go by bus.

It might be thought that Mrs. Brimsley got nothing out of this deal, but the fact was that she was getting what she wanted —a man to court her, a baby to hold in her arms, a family to need her. Already the baby turned to her with fat bubble-blowing smiles; already Lennie held out thin little arms to her; already Alice and Kitty brought to her their woes and triumphs, holes in their shoes, tales of their teacher, cuts and bruises.

The only person whom she had not yet won was Lydia— Lydia who had everything to gain from her father’s marriage.

Lydia’s brown face was set and sullen now as she trudged in her torn tight velveteen frock, with her little brother. The tawny wicks on the banks scratched their bare legs; their broken sandshoes trod numbly on hard-baked furrows.

“Now, you leave that basket alone, Dais,” Lydia commanded sharply. “If you start peering, you’ll start eating, and then there’ll be nothing left for our dinners.”

“There’s boiled eggs an’ oranges an’ cheese cake. I
saw,
” Kitty gloated.

“Greedy guzzler.”

“Greedy yourself!”

“Oh, stop it. Both of you!”

The huge shallow sky cupped over the wide green landscape. White clouds like the ghosts of mountains moved across it. Down in the flat fields the children could see nothing but the fierce bluish green of the young spring corn, or the brownish grass and stubble. There were growing lambs on the grass, now rough and venturesome, with blunt black faces and curly foreheads like little hornless bulls. They pretended to be ferocious and Alice and Kitty pretended to be frightened.