Taken at the Flood (5 page)

“Nothing,” said Lynn.

She got up with the others. As they went into the drawing-room, Rowley said to her: “You seemed to be getting on quite well with David Hunter. What were you talking about?”

“Nothing particular,” said Lynn.

“D
avid, when are we going back to London? When are we going to America?”

Across the breakfast table, David Hunter gave Rosaleen a quick surprised glance.

“There's no hurry, is there? What's wrong with this place?”

He gave a swift appreciative glance round the room where they were breakfasting. Furrowbank was built on the side of a hill and from the windows one had an unbroken panorama of sleepy English countryside. On the slope of the lawn thousands of daffodils had been planted. They were nearly over now, but a sheet of golden bloom still remained.

Crumbling the toast on her plate, Rosaleen murmured:

“You said we'd go to America—soon. As soon as it could be managed.”

“Yes—but actually it isn't managed so easily. There's priority.
Neither you nor I have any business reasons to put forward. Things are always difficult after a war.”

He felt faintly irritated with himself as he spoke. The reasons he advanced, though genuine enough, had the sound of excuses. He wondered if they sounded that way to the girl who sat opposite him. And why was she suddenly so keen to go to America?

Rosaleen murmured: “You said we'd only be here for a short time. You didn't say we were going to live here.”

“What's wrong with Warmsley Vale—and Furrowbank? Come now?”

“Nothing. It's
them
—all of them!”

“The Cloades?”

“Yes.”

“That's just what I get a kick out of,” said David. “I like seeing their smug faces eaten up with envy and malice. Don't grudge me my fun, Rosaleen.”

She said in a low troubled voice:

“I wish you didn't feel like that. I don't like it.”

“Have some spirit, girl. We've been pushed around enough, you and I. The Cloades have lived soft—soft. Lived on big brother Gordon. Little fleas on a big flea. I hate their kind—I always have.”

She said, shocked:

“I don't like hating people. It's wicked.”

“Don't you think they hate you? Have they been kind to you—friendly?”

She said doubtfully:

“They haven't been unkind. They haven't done me any harm.”

“But they'd like to, babyface. They'd like to.” He laughed
recklessly. “If they weren't so careful of their own skins, you'd be found with a knife in your back one fine morning.”

She shivered.

“Don't say such dreadful things.”

“Well—perhaps not a knife. Strychnine in the soup.”

She stared at him, her mouth tremulous.

“You're joking….”

He became serious again.

“Don't worry, Rosaleen. I'll look after you. They've got me to deal with.”

She said, stumbling over the words, “If it's true what you say—about their hating us—hating
me
—why don't we go to London? We'd be safe there—away from them all.”

“The country's good for you, my girl. You know it makes you ill being in London.”

“That was when the bombs were there—the bombs.” She shivered, closed her eyes. “I'll never forget—
never
….”

“Yes, you will.” He took her gently by the shoulders, shook her slightly. “Snap out of it, Rosaleen. You were badly shocked, but it's over now. There are no more bombs. Don't think about it. Don't remember. The doctor said country air and a country life for a long time to come. That's why I want to keep you away from London.”

“Is that really why? Is it, David? I thought—perhaps—”

“What did you think?”

Rosaleen said slowly:

“I thought perhaps it was because of
her
you wanted to be here….”

“Her?”

“You know the one I mean. The girl the other night. The one who was in the Wrens.”

His face was suddenly black and stern.

“Lynn? Lynn Marchmont.”

“She means something to you, David.”

“Lynn Marchmont? She's Rowley's girl. Good old stay-at-home Rowley. That bovine slow-witted good-looking ox.”

“I watched you talking to her the other night.”

“Oh, for Heaven's sake, Rosaleen.”

“And you've seen her since, haven't you?”

“I met her near the farm the other morning when I was out riding.”

“And you'll meet her again.”

“Of course I'll always be meeting her! This is a tiny place. You can't go two steps without falling over a Cloade. But if you think I've fallen for Lynn Marchmont, you're wrong. She's a proud stuck-up unpleasant girl without a civil tongue in her head. I wish old Rowley joy of her. No, Rosaleen, my girl, she's not my type.”

She said doubtfully, “Are you sure, David?”

“Of course I'm sure.”

She said half-timidly:

“I know you don't like my laying out the cards…But they come true, they do indeed. There was a girl bringing trouble and sorrow—a girl would come from over the sea. There was a dark stranger, too, coming into our lives, and bringing danger with him. There was the death card, and—”

“You and your dark strangers!” David laughed. “What a mass of superstition you are. Don't have any dealings with a dark stranger, that's my advice to you.”

He strolled out of the house laughing, but when he was away from the house, his face clouded over and he frowned to himself, murmuring:

“Bad luck to you, Lynn. Coming home from abroad and upsetting the apple cart.”

For he realized that at this very moment he was deliberately making a course on which he might hope to meet the girl he had just apostrophized so savagely.

Rosaleen watched him stroll away across the garden and out through the small gate that gave on to a public footpath across the fields. Then she went up to her bedroom and looked through the clothes in her wardrobe. She always enjoyed touching and feeling her new mink coat. To think she should own a coat like that—she could never quite get over the wonder of it. She was in her bedroom when the parlourmaid came up to tell her that Mrs. Marchmont had called.

Adela was sitting in the drawing room with her lips set tightly together and her heart beating at twice its usual speed. She had been steeling herself for several days to make an appeal to Rosaleen but true to her nature had procrastinated. She had also been bewildered by finding that Lynn's attitude had unaccountably changed and that she was now rigidly opposed to her mother seeking relief from her anxieties by asking Gordon's widow for a loan.

However another letter from the bank manager that morning had driven Mrs. Marchmont into positive action. She could delay no longer. Lynn had gone out early, and Mrs. Marchmont had caught sight of David Hunter walking along the footpath—so the coast was clear. She particularly wanted to get Rosaleen alone,
without David, rightly judging that Rosaleen alone would be a far easier proposition.

Nevertheless she felt dreadfully nervous as she waited in the sunny drawing room, though she felt slightly better when Rosaleen came in with what Mrs. Marchmont always thought of as her “half-witted look” more than usually marked.

“I wonder,” thought Adela to herself, “if the blast did it or if she was always like that?”

“Rosaleen stammered.

“Oh, g-g-ood morning. Is there anything? Do sit down.”

“Such a lovely morning,” said Mrs. Marchmont brightly. “All my early tulips are out. Are yours?”

The girl stared at her vacantly.

“I don't know.”

What was one to do, thought Adela, with someone who didn't talk gardening or dogs—those standbys of rural conversation?

Aloud she said, unable to help the tinge of acidity that crept into her tone:

“Of course you have so many gardeners—they attend to all that.”

“I believe we're shorthanded. Old Mullard wants two more men, he says. But there seems a terrible shortage still of labour.”

The words came out with a kind of glib parrotlike delivery—rather like a child who repeats what it has heard a grown-up person say.

Yes, she
was
like a child. Was that, Adela wondered, her charm? Was that what had attracted that hard-headed shrewd business man, Gordon Cloade, and blinded him to her stupidity and her lack
of breeding? After all, it couldn't only be looks. Plenty of good-looking women had angled unsuccessfully to attract him.

But childishness, to a man of sixty-two,
might
be an attraction. Was it, could it be, real—or was it a pose—a pose that had paid and so had become second nature?

Rosaleen was saying, “David's out, I'm afraid…” and the words recalled Mrs. Marchmont to herself. David might return. Now was her chance and she must not neglect it. The words stuck in her throat but she got them out.

“I wonder—if you would help me?”

“Help you?”

Rosaleen looked surprised, uncomprehending.

“I—things are very difficult—you see, Gordon's death has made a great difference to us all.”

“You silly idiot,” she thought. “Must you go on gaping at me like that? You know what I mean! You
must
know what I mean. After all, you've been poor yourself….”

She hated Rosaleen at that moment. Hated her because she, Adela Marchmont, was sitting here whining for money. She thought, “I can't do it—I can't do it after all.”

In one brief instant all the long hours of thought and worry and vague planning flashed again across her brain.

Sell the house—(But move where? There weren't any small houses on the market—certainly not any cheap houses). Take paying guests—(But you couldn't get staff—and she simply couldn't—she just
couldn't
deal with all the cooking and housework involved. If Lynn helped—but Lynn was going to marry Rowley). Live with Rowley and Lynn herself? (No, she'd never do that!) Get a job. What job? Who wanted an untrained elderly tired-out woman?

She heard her voice, belligerent because she despised herself.

“I mean money,” she said.

“Money?” said Rosaleen.

She sounded ingenuously surprised, as though money was the last thing she expected to be mentioned.

Adela went on doggedly, tumbling the words out:

“I'm overdrawn at the bank, and I owe bills—repairs to the house—and the rates haven't been paid yet. You see, everything's halved—my income, I mean. I suppose it's taxation. Gordon, you see, used to help. With the house, I mean. He did all the repairs and the roof and painting and things like that. And an allowance as well. He paid it into the bank every quarter. He always said not to worry and of course I never did. I mean, it was all right when he was alive, but now—”

She stopped. She was ashamed—but at the same time relieved. After all, the worst was over. If the girl refused, she refused, and that was that.

Rosaleen was looking very uncomfortable.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I didn't know. I never thought…I—well, of course, I'll ask David….”

Grimly gripping the sides of her chair, Adela said, desperately:

“Couldn't you give me a cheque—now….”

“Yes—yes, I suppose I could.” Rosaleen, looking startled, got up, went to the desk. She hunted in various pigeonholes and finally produced a chequebook. “Shall I—how much?”

“Would—would five hundred pounds—” Adela broke off.

“Five hundred pounds,” Rosaleen wrote obediently.

A load slipped off Adela's back. After all, it had been easy! She was dismayed as it occurred to her that it was less gratitude that she
felt than a faint scorn for the easiness of her victory! Rosaleen was surely strangely simple.

The girl rose from the writing desk and came across to her. She held out the cheque awkwardly. The embarrassment seemed now entirely on her side.

“I hope this is all right. I'm really so sorry—”

Adela took the cheque. The unformed childish hand straggled across the pink paper. Mrs. Marchmont. Five hundred pounds £500. Rosaleen Cloade.

“It's very good of you, Rosaleen. Thank you.”

“Oh please—I mean—I ought to have
thought
—”

“
Very
good of you, my dear.”

With the cheque in her handbag Adela Marchmont felt a different woman. The girl had really been very sweet about it. It would be embarrassing to prolong the interview. She said goodbye and departed. She passed David in the drive, said “Good morning” pleasantly, and hurried on.

“W
hat was the Marchmont woman doing here?” demanded David as soon as he got in.

“Oh, David. She wanted money dreadfully badly. I'd never thought—”

“And you gave it her, I suppose.”

He looked at her in half-humorous despair.

“You're not to be trusted alone, Rosaleen.”

“Oh, David, I couldn't refuse. After all—”

“After all—what? How much?”

In a small voice Rosaleen murmured, “Five hundred pounds.”

To her relief David laughed.

“A mere fleabite!”

“Oh, David, it's a lot of money.”

“Not to us nowadays, Rosaleen. You never really seem to grasp that you're a very rich woman. All the same if she asked five hun
dred she'd have gone away perfectly satisfied with two-fifty. You must learn the language of borrowing!”

She murmured, “I'm sorry, David.”

“My dear girl! After all, it's
your
money.”

“It isn't. Not really.”

“Now don't begin that all over again. Gordon Cloade died before he had time to make a will. That's what's called the luck of the game. We win, you and I. The others—lose.”

“It doesn't seem—right.”

“Come now, my lovely sister Rosaleen, aren't you enjoying all this? A big house, servants—jewellery? Isn't it a dream come true? Isn't it? Glory be to God, sometimes I think I'll wake up and find it
is
a dream.”

She laughed with him, and watching her narrowly, he was satisfied. He knew how to deal with his Rosaleen. It was inconvenient, he thought, that she should have a conscience, but there it was.

“It's quite true, David, it is like a dream—or like something on the pictures. I do enjoy it all. I do really.”

“But what we have we hold,” he warned her. “No more gifts to the Cloades, Rosaleen. Every one of them has got far more money than either you or I ever had.”

“Yes, I suppose that's true.”

“Where was Lynn this morning?” he asked.

“I think she'd gone to Long Willows.”

To Long Willows—to see Rowley—the oaf—the clodhopper! His good humour vanished. Set on marrying the fellow, was she?

Moodily he strolled out of the house, up through massed azaleas and out through the small gate on the top of the hill. From there the footpath dipped down the hill and past Rowley's farm.

As David stood there, he saw Lynn Marchmont coming up from the farm. He hesitated for a minute, then set his jaw pugnaciously and strolled down the hill to meet her. They met by a stile just halfway up the hill.

“Good morning,” said David. “When's the wedding?”

“You've asked that before,” she retorted. “You know well enough. It's in June.”

“You're going through with it?”

“I don't know what you mean, David.”

“Oh, yes, you do.” He gave a contemptuous laugh. “Rowley. What's Rowley?”

“A better man than you—touch him if you dare,” she said lightly.

“I've no doubt he's a better man than me—but I do dare. I'd dare anything for you, Lynn.”

She was silent for a moment or two. She said at last:

“What you don't understand is that I love Rowley.”

“I wonder.”

She said vehemently:

“I do, I tell you. I do.”

David looked at her searchingly.

“We all see pictures of ourselves—of ourselves as we want to be. You see yourself in love with Rowley, settling down with Rowley, living here contented with Rowley, never wanting to get away. But that's not the real you, is it, Lynn?”

“Oh, what is the real me? What's the real
you,
if it comes to that? What do
you
want?”

“I'd have said I wanted safety, peace after storm, ease after troubled seas. But I don't know. Sometimes I suspect, Lynn, that
both you and I want—trouble.” He added moodily, “I wish you'd never turned up here. I was remarkably happy until you came.”

“Aren't you happy now?”

He looked at her. She felt excitement rising in her. Her breath became faster. Never had she felt so strongly David's queer moody attraction. He shot out a hand, grasped her shoulder, swung her round….

Then as suddenly she felt his grasp slacken. He was staring over her shoulder up the hill. She twisted her head to see what it was that had caught his attention.

A woman was just going through the small gate above Furrowbank. David said sharply: “Who's that?”

Lynn said:

“It looks like Frances.”

“Frances?” He frowned. “What does Frances want? My dear Lynn! Only those who want something drop in to see Rosaleen. Your mother has already dropped in this morning.”

“
Mother?
” Lynn drew back. She frowned. “What did she want?”

“Don't you know? Money!”

“Money?” Lynn stiffened.

“She got it all right,” said David. He was smiling now the cool cruel smile that fitted his face so well.

They had been near a moment or two ago, now they were miles apart, divided by a sharp antagonism.

Lynn cried out, “Oh, no, no,
no!
”

He mimicked her.

“Yes, yes, yes!”

“I don't believe it! How much?”

“Five hundred pounds.”

She drew her breath in sharply.

David said musingly:

“I wonder how much Frances is going to ask for? Really it's hardly safe to leave Rosaleen alone for five minutes! The poor girl doesn't know how to say No.”

“Have there been—who else?”

David smiled mockingly.

“Aunt Kathie had incurred certain debts—oh, nothing much, a mere two hundred and fifty covered them—but she was afraid it might get to the doctor's ears! Since they had been occasioned by payments to mediums, he might not have been sympathetic. She didn't know, of course,” added David, “that the doctor himself had applied for a loan.”

Lynn said in a low voice, “What you must think of us—what you must think of us!” Then, taking him by surprise, she turned and ran helter-skelter down the hill to the farm.

He frowned as he watched her go. She had gone to Rowley, flown there as a homing pigeon flies, and the fact disturbed him more than he cared to acknowledge.

He looked up the hill again and frowned.

“No, Frances,” he said under his breath. “I think not. You've chosen a bad day,” and he strode purposefully up the hill.

He went through the gate and down through the azaleas—crossed the lawn, and came quietly in through the window of the drawing room just as Frances Cloade was saying:

“—I wish I could make it all clearer. But you see, Rosaleen, it really is frightfully difficult to explain—”

A voice from behind her said:

“Is it?”

Frances Cloade turned sharply. Unlike Adela Marchmont she had not deliberately tried to find Rosaleen alone. The sum needed was sufficiently large to make it unlikely that Rosaleen would hand it over without consulting her brother. Actually, Frances would far rather have discussed the matter with David and Rosaleen together, than have David feel that she had tried to get money out of Rosaleen during his absence from the house.

She had not heard him come through the window, absorbed as she was in the presentation of a plausible case. The interruption startled her, and she realized also that David Hunter was, for some reason, in a particularly ugly mood.

“Oh, David,” she said easily, “I'm glad you've come. I've just been telling Rosaleen. Gordon's death has left Jeremy in no end of a hole, and I'm wondering if she could possibly come to the rescue. It's like this—”

Her tongue flowed on swiftly—the large sum involved—Gordon's backing—promised verbally—Government restrictions—mortgages—

A certain admiration stirred in the darkness of David's mind. What a damned good liar the woman was! Plausible, the whole story. But not the truth. No, he'd take his oath on that. Not the truth! What, he wondered,
was
the truth? Jeremy been getting himself into Queer Street? It must be something pretty desperate, if he was allowing Frances to come and try this stunt. She was a proud woman, too—

He said,
“Ten thousand?”

Rosaleen murmured in an awed voice:

“That's a lot of money.”

Frances said swiftly:

“Oh, I know it is. I wouldn't come to you if it wasn't such a difficult sum to raise. But Jeremy would never have gone into the deal if it hadn't been for Gordon's backing. It's so dreadfully unfortunate that Gordon should have died so suddenly—”

“Leaving you all out in the cold?” David's voice was unpleasant. “After a sheltered life under his wing.”

There was a faint flash in Frances' eyes as she said:

“You put things so picturesquely!”

“Rosaleen can't touch the capital, you know. Only the income. And she pays about nineteen and six in the pound income tax.”

“Oh, I know. Taxation's dreadful these days. But it
could
be managed, couldn't it? We'd repay—”

He interrupted:

“It
could
be managed.
But it won't be!
”

Frances turned swiftly to Rosaleen.

“Rosaleen, you're such a generous—”

David's voice cut across her speech.

“What do you Cloades think Rosaleen is—a milch cow? All of you at her—hinting, asking, begging. And behind her back? Sneering at her, patronizing her, hating her,
wishing her dead
—”

“That's not true,” Frances cried.

“Isn't it? I tell you I'm sick of you all!
She's
sick of you all. You'll get no money out of us, so you can stop coming and whining for it? Understand?”

His face was black with fury.

Frances stood up. Her face was wooden and expressionless. She
drew on a washleather glove absently, yet with attention, as though it was a significant action.

“You make your meaning quite plain, David,” she said.

Rosaleen murmured:

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry….”

Frances paid no attention to her. Rosaleen might not have been in the room. She took a step towards the window and paused, facing David.

“You have said that I resent Rosaleen. That is not true. I have not resented Rosaleen—but I do resent—
you!
”

“What do you mean?”

He scowled at her.

“Women must live. Rosaleen married a very rich man, years older than herself. Why not? But
you!
You must live on your sister, live on the fat of the land, live softly—on
her.
”

“I stand between her and harpies.”

They stood looking at each other. He was aware of her anger and the thought flashed across him that Frances Cloade was a dangerous enemy, one who could be both unscrupulous and reckless.

When she opened her mouth to speak, he even felt a moment's apprehension. But what she said was singularly noncommittal.

“I shall remember what you have said, David.”

Passing him, she went out of the window.

He wondered why he felt so strongly that the words had been a threat.

Rosaleen was crying.

“Oh, David, David—you oughtn't to have been saying those things to her. She's the one of them that's been the nicest to me.”

He said furiously: “Shut up, you little fool. Do you want them to trample all over you and bleed you of every penny?”

“But the money—if—if it isn't rightfully mine—”

She quailed before his glance.

“I—I didn't mean that, David.”

“I should hope not.”

Conscience, he thought, was the devil!

He hadn't reckoned with the item of Rosaleen's conscience. It was going to make things awkward in the future.

The future? He frowned as he looked at her and let his thoughts race ahead. Rosaleen's future…His own…He'd always known what he wanted…he knew now…But Rosaleen? What future was there for Rosaleen?

As his face darkened—she cried out—suddenly shivering:

“Oh! Someone's walking over my grave.”

He said, looking at her curiously:

“So you realize it may come to that?”

“What do you mean, David?”

“I mean that five—six—seven people have every intention to hurry you into your grave before you're due there!”

“You don't mean—murder—” Her voice was horrified. “You think these people would do murder—not nice people like the Cloades.”

“I'm not sure that it isn't just nice people like the Cloades who do do murder. But they won't succeed in murdering you while I'm here to look after you. They'd have to get me out of the way first. But if they did get me out of the way—well—look out for yourself!”

“David—don't say such awful things.”

“Listen,” he gripped her arm. “If ever I'm not here, look after yourself, Rosaleen. Life isn't safe, remember—it's dangerous, damned dangerous. And I've an idea it's specially dangerous for you.”