Down among the dead men,
Down among the dead men,
Down among the dead men
Let him lie.
Only it would have been, ‘Let her lie.’ If she hadn’t slipped behind the curtain in the schoolroom she would have been over the edge. As it was, she had saved herself. No, she hadn’t planned to do it. She had been saved, and she wasn’t going down over the edge. She was going to escape.
TEN
SHE SAID GOOD-NIGHT when the time came. It was the last good-night that she would ever say to these people in this room. If they were ever to meet again it would be different for them all. Perhaps they would never meet again. She didn’t know, and there was no one to tell her. She went slowly up to her room and shut her door. She thought about locking it. And then she thought, ‘I mustn’t do anything different – not tonight. I mustn’t do anything to make them say, “Why, did she do it?”’ So she left the door unlocked. It wouldn’t have made any difference, because nobody tried it to see whether it was locked or not.
After she had waited for a little she took off her dress and hung it up in the great gloomy cupboard which ran across all one side of the room. It looked very lonely there. Such a big cupboard and only that one little lace dress, her everyday skirt, and the dark grey coat and skirt which she wore on Sundays. There was room in it for a hundred dresses. She had pleased herself sometimes by imagining that they were hanging there – dresses for every possible occasion, grave and gay. But not tonight. Because tonight her mind was full of other things.
She hung up her black lace dress and considered. She would take the grey coat and skirt. It was new, and it would be useful. And she would wear a white silk shirt and take the other one with her. She set her mind to what she would take. Brush and comb. Toothbrush and toothpaste. Face-cloth. Soap and nailbrush. She had a little case which she had used for week-ends when she was at school. It would hold these things, and the silk shirt and her pyjamas and two pairs of stockings. It wouldn’t hold anything more. It wouldn’t hold a change of underclothes – it was no good trying. She could tuck half-a-dozen handkerchiefs round the edge, and that was all.
As she turned from the packed case she saw her mother’s little Bible on the pedestal by the bed. She couldn’t part with that. It was a small book, and it slipped in beneath the pyjamas and was hidden there. She shut the bag and laid it on the chair by the window.
Then she put on her black laced shoes. She would have to leave her other two pairs behind, the spare pair of outdoor shoes and the indoor ones. No, she must have an indoor pair. A vision of getting sopping wet and having nothing to change into rose uncomfortably in her mind. She made a parcel of both pairs, and felt somehow safer. But even at that moment she had a horrid feeling about leaving the little black satin pair she had worn that evening. There was no sense in taking them – not the least atom of sense – and she wasn’t going to take them, and that was that. But they were the nicest shoes she had ever had, and she didn’t know whether she would ever see them again. She had got them from Heather Peterson, who had got them from a cousin in a fit of hopefulness and because they were so pretty, and then found that they were too small and unless she wanted to take the chance of being disabled by cramp she couldn’t wear them.
Jenny held the shoes in her hand and looked at them. They were so pretty, and they must have cost a lot. Heather Peterson’s cousin was rich, and she had bought these shoes in Paris. They were very cleverly cut, and they had a single brilliant very cunningly placed to make your foot look small. Jenny knew that she was being foolish, and she was stern with herself. When you are running away you can’t afford to be sentimental about a pair of shoes, no matter how pretty they are, or how much you feel that you will never have anything like them again. She put them inside the big dark cupboard and shut the door on them resolutely.
Time passed slowly. She was all ready to go. She didn’t know where. She only knew that she must go, and she must get as long a start as possible. She waited until twelve o’clock. All the sounds in all the rooms came to an end. The house was still. The house was very still. It was an old house – early seventeenth century. Jenny’s thoughts went back to its beginnings – the handsome young man who had built the house and his lovely wife.
He was Richard Forbes, and she was Jane. Jenny always wondered if they had called her that, or if it had been, like her own name, turned into Jenny. She liked to fancy that it was. Only of course her name wasn’t from Jane, but from Jennifer. Still it did make a kind of link, and they were her own ancestors – her own lawful ancestors. Their portraits hung in a place of honour in the hall. Their son and his wife, painted half a century later, looked old after their radiant youth. There were portraits of them all, some by famous painters. Jenny’s heart leapt up as she realised that she wasn’t a foundling, an illegitimate child, but the real inheritor of all these other Forbes. She would go, but something in her said, ‘I shall come again.’ In that moment she knew that the inner voice spoke truly. She would come again.
She put out the light and sat down in the dark to wait. She must have fallen asleep, for she woke with a start and the air was colder. She put on the light and looked at her watch, the watch she didn’t wear openly because it was a family one given by her father to her mother, or so Garsty had said, though how she knew was more than Jenny could say. It had lain there among Garsty’s treasures until she died, and then Jenny had taken it. The astonishing thing was that after all these years of not being used it kept very good time. There was a long slender gold chain with it.
Jenny opened the bottom drawer and took out the things that she had put ready – gloves, a little black hat, the parcel with her two pairs of shoes. She put on the hat and put the gloves into the pocket of a dark prune coat which she took out of the cupboard. She was going to be too hot in it, and it was heavy, but at this time of year you didn’t know what the weather might be going to do. And it was a good coat, new last winter. She remembered getting it in the January sales with Garsty. It had cost more than she had planned for, but Garsty had said, ‘It will go on for years, and you will always look nice in it, my dear.’
She took her bag and considered the other things. There was the case which she had put under the counterpane on the chair by the window. Oh, she couldn’t leave the room like that – untidy! She must put the bedspread back. Then she took up her things, the parcel with the shoes slipped over the handle of the little case, and her left hand free for the handbag. She stood with the open door of the room in her hand and looked round. Everything was quite tidy. Now she must go.
She lifted the hand with the bag in it and switched off the light. With the door shut, no one would come near her until half past seven. She had seven and a half hours start of any search that might be made. She felt her way to the head of the stairs and began to go down.
It was like going down into deep waters. Deep, dark waters. The darkness wasn’t frightening. It felt very safe. And behind the darkness there were all the people of her blood and her name who had lived in this house since it was built. That made her feel very safe indeed. She didn’t know where she was going or what she was going to do, but she knew who she was. She wasn’t any longer a nameless come-by-chance brought up by charity. She was Jenny Forbes, and the house and the pictures were her own.
She was half-way down the stairs, when the moon came from behind a cloud. The house faced south-east, and the moon was full. The moonlight shone in through the windows above the door and to either side of it. It was so bright that it made the portraits on which it fell look as if they were alive. Jenny thought, ‘They are saying good-bye to me. But I shall come again.’ She stood still on the hall-landing and looked at the pictures. Some of them hardly showed at all, some were just shadows. Then as she turned this way and that the brightness of the moon shone down the hall to the portrait which she liked the best of all, Lady Georgina Forbes, painted by a famous artist in the year of the Crimean War. A hundred years ago and she was still beau
tiful without a mark of age or sorrow on her, painted in her wedding-dress with flowers in her hair, smiling. Jenny said under her breath, ‘Good-bye great, great-grandmother. I’ll come back some day.’
ELEVEN
THE YOUNG MAN in the car was enjoying himself. It was a fine night very heartening to behold. The moon was out now, quite clear of the clouds. He would have liked to switch off his lights and drive through all this country by moonlight. He shook his head a little mournfully. There were so many things he would like to do, and you couldn’t do them. Not because they were difficult or impossible, but simply because you had been brought up hedged in by laws and by-laws until they had got you down. He laughed a little and considered what a modern world would be like with everyone doing as he pleased. Come to think of it, no one was ever free. Different times had their own restraints, personal, political, what have you. You were brought up in a certain code, and you kept to it. If you kicked over the traces you came to a sticky end. Each generation made its own rules, and the next one altered them. What was quite unacceptable in one generation was the fashion in the next, and so you went on.
He liked driving alone, and he liked driving by night. If you kept off the beaten track you didn’t meet anyone much after twelve o’clock. His plan was to drive within a strategic distance of Alington House and sleep out the night in the back seat of his car. Then in the morning, when a country inn would be open, he would have breakfast and from there on follow the reasonable inspiration of the moment. He wanted to see the house and the portraits. He wanted it very much. After all, if they were in any way decent people they couldn’t object to him. It wasn’t as if he was claiming anything, or wanting to claim anything. He was simply a distant connection of the family who had come into possession of some papers about the house and the people to whom it had belonged. It was natural enough that he should want to come down and see the place for himself.
He had turned rather an abrupt corner just out of a sleeping village, and a long flat stretch of road lay before him. Quite suddenly there was someone in the road. It stretched flat and open at one minute, and the next there was something there. Something? No, someone. He braked and brought the car to a standstill.
The someone was a girl. She had a case in one hand, and with the other she had signalled him to stop. He leaned out, frowning.
‘You shouldn’t do that, you know.’
‘But I wanted you to stop.’
‘Why?’ He was terse because for a moment he hadn’t been sure that he could stop in time and the road was narrow.
The girl moved from the front of the car and came round to the door on his side. In the moment that she stepped across the lighted patch of road in front of the car he saw her, and he saw that she was young and pale – or perhaps that was just the lights of the car. She came up to the window on his side and said,
‘Will you please give me a lift?’
The anger had gone out of him. He said,
‘Where do you want to go?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I mean, just anywhere will do.’
‘Are you running away?’
It was quite obvious that she was. What does one do with a stray girl who asks one to help her? He said,
‘You’re running away, aren’t you? Why?’ It wasn’t in the least what he had meant to say.
The moonlight shone on her face. It looked sad and rather tired. There were dark marks like smudges under her eyes. She said very earnestly,
‘I’ve got to – I really have.’
It was the sort of thing that any girl would say if she had had a row with her people or with her school.
He said, ‘Why?’ and she came nearer and dropped her voice.
‘I can’t tell you. You wouldn’t believe me.’
‘You might try.’
Jenny considered. All this time he was in the shadow – she couldn’t see his face. She must see him. You can’t tell whether you can trust a person whom you can’t see. She said quickly and a little breathlessly,
‘Will you get out for a moment? I want to see you.’
‘Why do you want to do that?’
He had a nice voice, but she must see him. She said,
‘I want to know whether I can trust you.’
‘Do you think you would know?’
‘Oh, yes, I should know if I could see you.’ There was a confident ring in her voice.
Without a word he pushed open the door and got out. He shut the door behind him, leaned against it, and said,
‘Well, here I am. Take a good look and make up your mind.’
She said,
‘It’s you who have to make up your mind, isn’t it?’
They stood looking at one another in the bright, clear moonlight. He heard her draw in her breath.
‘Who – who are you?’ she said.
‘My name is Richard Forbes.’
She echoed him in a faint whisper, ‘Richard Forbes—’
‘That is my name.’
Jenny stood still. It was unbelievable, but it had happened. Unbelievable things did happen. This one had happened. He stood there with the moonlight across his face, and she saw feature for feature the Richard Forbes who had built Alington House. The Richard Forbes in the picture had had long curling hair, and he had worn fine clothes, not a raincoat and slacks. But it was the same face, it was the same expression – the laughing look in the eyes, the humorous quirk of the mouth. And then the humour faded. He had the air of being very much in earnest, and he said,
‘Why do you look at me like that?’
Jenny said, ‘Because I’ve seen you before.’
‘Where? When?’ He had never seen her before, he was prepared to swear to that.
‘All my life. You’re the portrait in the hall – the picture of Richard Alington Forbes.’
He caught his breath and said,
‘But that’s my name.’
He saw her colour rise, not as colour, but as a shadow, because they were all black and white in the moonlight. He could only just catch the tremor in her voice when she said,
‘Is it?’
‘Yes. What’s yours?’
‘I’m Jenny Forbes. I’m from Alington House.’
It was the first time she had given her name as Jenny Forbes – the very first time. She had been Jenny Hill all her life, but she wasn’t Jenny Hill any more. She was Jennifer Hill’s daughter, but she was Richard Forbes’ daughter too – Richard Alington Forbes. She was their lawful daughter. She held her head up and looked Richard Forbes in the face and said her name.
Something in that straight look of hers got through. He said in a puzzled voice,
‘I don’t understand. I thought the sons were grown up, but the daughters – they’re little girls, aren’t they?’
‘Yes. I don’t belong to that family. I’m the daughter of Richard Forbes, the one who was killed at the beginning of the war. They said he wasn’t married to my mother. She was ill. There was an air raid – it was the day my father was killed. Her head was hurt – she didn’t talk. She came down here to Garsty.’ She went on looking at him straight. He had never seen such truthful eyes. ‘Garsty had been her governess. She came to her because that was her home – she hadn’t any other. That’s how she met my father. But no one knew they were married. I only found out last night.’
‘What did you find out?’
She had put down her case on the ground. It had weighed heavy. She put out her hands with the little shabby bag in them and said,
‘Don’t you believe me? I’m telling you the truth because you’re Richard Forbes. I wouldn’t tell about this to anyone else – I wouldn’t really. But you are different.’
That struck home in a most curious way. He felt it with every nerve of his body. And he felt it because it was true. There was a deep relationship between them – kinship, and something more than kinship. They were two of a kind. That was the difference which she spoke of.
She was speaking again.
; ‘I’ll tell you – because you’re Richard Forbes. I was upstairs in the schoolroom, and Mac came in and his mother.’
‘That’s the eldest son?’
‘Yes. I was behind the window curtain. The room was dark. I’d been crying because of something that had happened, and I didn’t want to see anyone, or anyone to see me … Where was I?’
He said gravely, ‘Mac had just come into the schoolroom.’
She nodded.
‘Yes. I thought he’d come to see me. I didn’t want to see him, so I stayed quiet. And then Mrs Forbes came in, and she shut the door and they began to talk. She said, “What did you want to say to me, Mac?” and when he didn’t answer she said, “Mac, what is it?” And he said, “All right, you can have it.” He said he had only known for a week. And then he went on, “It’s Jenny.” And then he said, “She’s legitimate. He married Jennifer Hill.” Mrs Forbes said, “What do you mean?” and he said, “I’m talking about Jenny.” And she was angry – she was very angry. She said. “You’re talking nonsense! There was no marriage!” And he said, “There was a marriage. And I’m not asking you to take my word for it. I’ve seen the certificate at Somerset House.”’
‘What!’
Now that it was said, Jenny felt better. It was like a calm after the storm. She said,
‘They went on talking. There was a letter from my father, Garsty talked about it when she was dying. She said it was in a little chest. She said my father called my mother his wife. She said she didn’t read any more, but she kept it for me. Poor Garsty – she loved me so much – she was so good to me. She wasn’t sure about the marriage, and she didn’t like to make sure because she was afraid that I should be taken away from her. That was how it was. You didn’t know Garsty. Nobody who didn’t know her could tell how good she was. She died ten days ago, and I went up to Alington House to look after the little girls. That was how I came to be there in the schoolroom. So I waited till they would all be asleep and came away.’
The Alington Inheritance (The Miss Silver Mysteries Book 31) Page 6