The Alington Inheritance Read online

  “What are you talking about, Carter? Not the children?”

  Carter was at once shocked and impressed by the calmness of her voice.

  “Oh, no ma’am! Oh my goodness, no! I couldn’t have met you like this if there had been anything wrong with them.”

  “Well, what is it?” Mrs. Forbes was a carefully controlled woman, but the control was wearing thin. “For goodness sake, Carter-what’s the matter with you? If you’ve got anything to say, say it! Oh, I got that stuff for Meg and Joyce-it will make up very nicely, I think. I’ll go down and see Miss Garstone about it in the morning, or she can come up here. Yes, that’ll be best.”

  “Oh, ma’am, you don’t know-Miss Garstone won’t never make no more dresses! Not a shred of hope-that’s what the doctor told Mrs. Maggs when she asked him. She’ll go out tonight or in the early hours, he said. Miss Adamson-”

  Mrs. Forbes turned. She had reached the foot of the stairs, but she turned and came back.

  “What are you talking about?”

  Carter had her handkerchief out. She sniffed and choked a sob.

  “It’s Miss Garstone,” she said. “Went into the village this morning same as she has time out of mind and nobody thinking anything about it, and when Jim Stokes come home at noon he found her-”

  “Found her?”

  “Yes, he did, poor boy, and it was a shock to him. He didn’t try and move her, but he biked back to the village-he’s a sensible boy-and they fetched Dr. Williams and Miss Adamson and they brought her home. And Miss Adamson she stayed with Jenny.”

  Mrs. Forbes stood where she had turned. It was a shock. She stood there assembling all her force to meet it. Then she said,

  “The children don’t know?”

  Carter hesitated to avert, if possible, the cloud of anger which she could see sweeping up.

  “Oh, ma’am, it wasn’t me-it wasn’t indeed! Mrs. Hunt she looked in to give me the last news, knowing I’d be interested. And Meg she come peeping round the door in the middle, and what Meg knows Joyce will know, there’s no getting from it. And it isn’t as if you could keep it from them-”

  “Oh, be quiet, Carter!” Mrs. Forbes struck in with a sense of resolute strength. “I gather that the children know. I must go down there at once. It’s a nuisance-I’ve just put the car away, but it’s not worth getting it out again. I may be bringing Jenny back with me-I’ll see. Get the bed made in the little room next the children’s. Oh, and be on the look out for the telephone, because I’ll ring up when I know what’s happening.” As she spoke she came down the hall and picked up a flashlight from the table. As she finished speaking she was already at the front door. A moment later it fell to behind her with a resounding clang that echoed through the house.

  Two little girls sprang from the top of the stairs and raced down them. They each put an arm round Carter and tugged her out of the hall and into the study.

  “She’s gone down there!”

  “She said she was going!”

  “We heard her, so you needn’t mind saying!”

  “Is she bringing Jenny back?”

  “She said she was going to!”

  “Jenny will have to come if she says so!”

  “Oh, yes, she’ll have to come!”

  They hung on Carter and hopped while they spoke. When she tried to make herself heard they pulled her round and round about.

  “I’ve got to get her bed ready. Meg-Joyce-leave go of me! I’ve got to get on. Oh, my goodness-what’s that?”

  They froze where they stood, two little girls in white nightgowns with plaited hair, and Carter elderly and fat, all three of them possessed with the same fear. There was a dead silence. Everything in the house seemed to hold its breath.

  Meg moved first. She whirled about and stamped with her bare foot on the carpet.

  “You made it up! You pretended to hear something.”

  “Did you? Did you, Carter?”

  “No, I didn’t. You children will be the death of me. I’m sure I thought I heard your mother. And if it wasn’t her, we may be thankful, for she’d never understand the plague you children can be. You’re not like it with her, and I don’t know why you should be like it with me. Off to bed and no more nonsense!”

  Mrs. Forbes stood in the dark and waited for her sight to clear. In a moment she had decided not to put on the lamp, and had begun to cross the open space before the house. It was not really dark. There was a moon behind those clouds which hurried in a wind she could not feel. She saw the racing clouds, and they meant no more to her than a rising wind that might or might not bring rain.

  She entered the darkness of the drive. Her finger went out to the switch of the lamp and stopped short of it. No, she could manage. She kept her thoughts on finding her way. Time enough to think what she would find on the other side of the road when she got there.

  She came out through the open gateway and crossed the road. There was a light in Miss Garstone’s bedroom. Then it was true. She did not know that she had doubted it until that moment. If it was true, how did it affect her-and hers-the boys? She saw them suddenly, vividly, Mac- and Alan. But her mind was on Mac, her thought was full of him. He must be safe-safe. She opened the door of the house and went in.

  Mrs. Forbes walked up the crooked stairs with her firm step. The door of Miss Garstone’s bedroom stood open. She saw what there was to be seen-Jenny and Miss Adamson and Miss Garstone, and two of them were alive. And the third was a dead woman. Curiously enough, she didn’t know whether that was a bad thing or a good one. It meant a change, but there are always changes. How the change would work out, she didn’t know. Something rose up in her fiercely. She would see to it that the working out should be as she had planned. She spoke Jenny’s name and came forward into the room.

  “Jenny-”

  Jenny turned. She wasn’t crying. Mrs. Forbes would have thought it more natural if she had been. She said, “She’s gone,” and she said it quite steadily. Miss Adamson would have shared Mrs. Forbes’ thought if she had not seen what she had seen and what she would never forget -Jenny’s look when she came in and found her alone with her dead.

  No one who had seen that could possibly think anything except that Jenny had been so far with Miss Garstone that it was difficult for her to realize that she was gone, difficult for her to come back.

  Mrs. Forbes took command. She said all the right things, and there wasn’t the least bit of reality in what she said. Not to Jenny. Not to Miss Adamson either. She felt her dislike of Mrs. Forbes more keenly than she had ever felt it. It almost got the better of her and made her say something that she wouldn’t be able to explain away afterwards. And yet when it came to thinking it out she was surprised at herself, because really Mrs. Forbes had done nothing to make her feel as she had felt. Thinking it over afterwards, Miss Adamson was astonished at herself- she really was.

  It was Jenny who made the move. She said suddenly,

  “We can’t talk in here- Oh, we can’t. She doesn’t hear us, but-” She left it at that and walked out of the door. They heard her step go down the crooked stair.

  “She’s upset,” said Mrs. Forbes. “I suppose it’s natural. I’ll take her back with me, and you can get on with what has to be done here.”

  “And never a word to ask me whether I minded staying!” said Miss Adamson to herself.

  Chapter III

  Jenny’s spurt of independence did not last. She packed the suit-case with Mrs. Forbes standing over her.

  “Your toothbrush, Jenny-and the toothpaste-and what else?”

  “My face-cloth,” said Jenny in the obedient voice of a little girl.

  “That’s right-put them in. Do you use a hot-water bottle?”

  Jenny stood quite still and stared at her. The pupils of her eyes were larger than usual. It seemed to her that Mrs. Forbes’ voice came from a long way off. It seemed to her as if she was floating in the air. It was with a great effort that she could come down and touch the things she needed.
/>   The voice went on. It was Mrs. Forbes’ voice. It said things like “You’ll need your bedroom slippers, and your dressing-gown, and your night things. That dress you’ve got on will do to wear again tomorrow. Now your brush and comb-and that, I think, is all.”

  Jenny placed all the things in the suit-case neatly.

  When they were walking up the drive together Mrs. Forbes asked her whether she had had anything to eat. She had to stop and think about that before she answered. Everything seemed so long ago and so far away, but when she got down to it she remembered that she and Miss Adamson had had tea at five o’clock, and that Miss Adamson had made her eat an egg. It felt like a long time ago-a long, long time. Garsty was alive then. It felt as if she had come a long way from the kettle boiling and Miss Adamson speaking cheerfully. It was a long, long way, and there was a gap in the middle of it which she could never cross over.

  Mrs. Forbes asked her question again, “When did you have anything to eat?” and this time Jenny answered it.

  “At five. We had tea. Miss Adamson boiled me an egg.”

  “Then you had better get straight to bed,” said Mrs. Forbes briskly. “Carter can bring you up a cup of hot milk.”

  They came into the lighted hall. There was neither sight nor sound of the little girls, only Carter stout and flurried.

  “I’ve brought Jenny back with me,” said Mrs. Forbes. “You’ve got the room ready? Now just get her a cup of hot milk, and she’ll be going to bed at once. She’s had a trying day. Miss Garstone is dead.”

  The words went with Jenny and up the stairs into the little bedroom which she was to have. Mrs. Forbes threw open the door, put on the light, and said in a clear, firm, practical voice,

  “Now, Jenny, no fretting if you please. We’ll talk things over tomorrow. Get into your bed and go to sleep. I told Carter to give you two hot bottles.”

  Jenny stood in the middle of the floor and looked unseeingly at the door which had closed behind Mrs. Forbes. She was still standing there when it opened again. Carter stood there with a cup of milk and a piece of cake on a plate beside it.

  “Oh, Jenny!” she said. “Oh, my dear, I know how you feel indeed, for I was just your age when my mother went, and I’m sure Miss Garstone’s been a mother to you, hasn’t she? You never remembering your own mother and all. And how should you when she died the day you was born, poor dear. But I’m sure you favour her something quite out of the way. Now you drink this up, and you eat the little bit of cake, my dear, for it’ll do you good.”

  The kindness came in amongst Jenny’s scattered thoughts and gathered them together. She crumbled the cake and drank the milk, sat when Carter told her to sit, and stood when Carter told her to stand. She was vaguely aware of her clothes being taken from her and her shoes and stockings being removed, and of Carter’s soft country voice which never stopped talking but always said kind comforting things.

  In the end she went into the warm bed, the clothes were tucked round her, the window thrown open, and the curtain drawn back. Did Carter actually say, “God bless you, my child?” or was it an echo of something she felt-and knew…

  The light was gone. There was a little moonlight outside. Jenny slept. She slept without a dream or any conscious waking. There was an enfolding sense of comfort and peace. That was all, and it was enough.

  She came back gradually to morning light and her strange bed. Those were the first of her thoughts. The light had the hushed look which means the early morning. She waked and remembered, but even as the memory flowed into her mind there was a whispering sound on either side of her.

  “You’re awake at last.”

  “We thought you would never wake up.”

  “We’ve been sitting here as quiet as mice.”

  “We promised ourselves we would.”

  “But you’re awake now, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, darling, do be awake!”

  Jenny put out bare arms and stretched them. Somehow the arms became entangled with two plump little forms in teddy-bear dressing-gowns. They finished up, Jenny scarcely knew how, in the bed with her, one on each side, their arms about her neck, their little cold noses burrowing into a cheek on either side.

  “We were frozen, but we waited till you were awake,” said Meg on the right.

  “Oh, yes-we promised ourselves we wouldn’t wake you up. And we didn’t, did we?” said Joyce. She wiggled her cold toes into a warm chink as she spoke.

  Jenny sat up and hugged them both. The little warm bodies and the little warm ways of them were just what she needed. They brought her back to an everyday world.

  “Nearly half past six,” said Meg. “At six we came in, and you weren’t awake, so we waited very patiently.”

  “We didn’t make a single sound,” said Joyce “-not a single one.”

  “And what we want to know is, have you come to stay-are you here for good? Because we want you-don’t we, Joyce?”

  “We want you dreadfully,” said Joyce.

  “And we’ve got it all fixed up,” said Meg on her other side. “Joyce isn’t supposed to go to school, or to do very much in the way of lessons -not since she was ill, you know. And first of all Mother had the horrid idea of sending me to school and keeping Joyce here with a governess. And you were to be the governess-lucky Joyce! But then she thought again. And this time she thought of having Joyce like a drip round her neck all the time, and she decided not to do it.”

  “Oh, Meg!”

  “Well, you know what you are without me to brisk you up and keep you in order.”

  “Oh, Meg!”

  “It was all arranged,” said Meg, nodding.

  Jenny had an odd mixture of feelings. It was so exactly like Mrs. Forbes to plan all this and not to say a word to her. Had she just gone on her own way and planned it all without a word to Garsty, too? Perhaps she hadn’t gone quite as far as that. Perhaps Garsty knew. But how did these children know? She said,

  “Nonsense!”

  “It isn’t nonsense,” said Joyce, and Meg said,

  “Didn’t you know?”

  “What I want to know is how you knew anything about it.”

  “You can’t keep things from us. We always find them out,” said Meg. “And this time-this time we were playing at being mice in the drawing-room, and Mother came past with Mac, and she said, ‘I’ve decided not to send either of the girls to school for another term. That girl Jenny can come in and teach them. As a matter of fact she might just as well come and live in.’ And Mac whistled and said, ‘Garsty won’t let her.’ ”

  “And then they went away. We sat ever so still and held our breath, and they went right away. Wasn’t it fortunate?”

  “We stayed like mice without a single twitch until they had gone. We thought we should have died,” said Joyce.

  They both shuddered.

  Chapter IV

  The next few days were got through as days of that sort are got through. You have to live them, and know them, and feel them, and when they are over you have to get on with the business of living again. It was all rather like a dream. The disturbing thing was that Miss Garstone’s sister suddenly appeared on the scene. Miss Garstone had met her once a year. She was ten years the younger of the two, and there was a certain dreadful likeness which made Jenny feel angry. But the younger Miss Garstone was hard and dictatorial where her sister had been patient and kind. She disapproved of Jenny and made no bones about it

  “Let me see now, you’re seventeen, aren’t you? Well then, we must find you a job! What could you do?”

  Jenny was thankful to be able to say, “I have a job.”

  The sharp grey eyes looked her over.

  “Indeed? Will it keep you? What is it?”

  “I’m to be governess to the two little girls at Alington House.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s quite suitable. As you know, under my sister’s will made twenty years ago everything comes to me.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  Her thoughts went bac
k a week to Garsty talking-“I really ought to see about making a will, Jenny. It doesn’t do to put these things off too long. If I died tomorrow, you’d have only the hundred a year that Colonel Forbes left you. No, I must make an appointment with Mr. Hambleton and get it all fixed up. I can’t leave you very much because I haven’t got very much to leave, but if you’ve got something at your back it does make all the difference. I’ll make an appointment with Mr. Hambleton and get it all fixed up.” But she hadn’t made the appointment, and next day she had been killed.

  Jenny’s eyes had been heavy with tears as she remembered dear Garsty. She helped Miss Garstone’s sister to sort and pack the things she was going to keep. There were not a great many. Garsty’s sister was a mistress in a big school. Most of the things were to be sold. Jenny remembered the little chest with her father’s letter in it. She asked for it, and was met with a cool, suspicious look.

  “Why do you want it?”

  “There’s a letter in it from my father to my mother.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Garsty told me when she was dying.”

  The hard grey eyes looked at her. The hard voice said,

  “You may look and see if it is there. We will go up together. If there is a letter from your father there you may have it, but I should say you would be wise not to count on finding it. If my sister was dying when she spoke of it, it is quite likely that she imagined the whole thing.”

  Jenny said nothing. She kept herself from speaking, because if she were to say anything at all she would say too much.

  They went up the narrow twisting stair, Miss Garstone ahead, as if she were afraid that Jenny might come upon something and keep it.

  “I mustn’t,” said Jenny to herself “-I mustn’t think of her like that. She doesn’t know me, and I don’t know her, but she must have known some horrid girls to think like she does.”

  They came into the room where Garsty had died, and it wasn’t like the same room at all. The bed had been stripped and taken to pieces. It stood up on end now between the two little windows, and Jenny kept her eyes from it because it looked so strange and she remembered sitting on the bed when she was very small indeed and learning to count on her fingers and toes. Against the opposite wall there was a chest of drawers, and on the top of it, right in the middle, there was the little chest which held the letter. Jenny went to it at once.