The Lorimer Legacy

by Anne Melville

  ‘His behaviour is wise,’ said Margaret. ‘And kind, in the long run.’

  ‘What have love and wisdom to do with each other?’ Alexa’s voice revealed that she was on the brink of tears.

  ‘I understand how unhappy you are,’ began Margaret, but she was interrupted before she could apologize once again for her own part in the affair.

  ‘I am unhappy, yes, but most of all I am angry,’ declared Alexa passionately. ‘Why should I have to accept Matthew’s judgement like this? He says he loves me – but he decides that he will go without consulting me, without listening to my wishes. What right have men to take it so much for granted that women will always accept their decisions? With any other man I at least have the choice to say yes, I will marry him or no, I will not: for that one moment of his life I have power over him, even if never again. But with Matthew I have been deprived of even that one moment. Even though he may plead that it’s only for my sake that he deserts me, I’m entitled to be angry.’ She paused for a moment to calm herself down and then spoke more quietly, although with an equal firmness. ‘Well, that’s that. Finished. Just as you thought it ought to be. I’ve come to a decision in the past hour, Margaret. I propose to accept the invitation to sing in San Francisco. And there are other opera houses in the New World which are anxious to attract the best singers from Europe and whose reputations are already not to be despised. It will be possible, I think, to arrange a tour. I might even decide to settle down in America. In fact, if I’m made welcome, I think it’s very likely.’

  Margaret’s reaction to the plan were mixed. She sympathized with the feeling that a complete change of scene might prove stimulating to someone whose emotions had been under such strain. In unfamiliar surroundings Alexa might more easily forget Matthew.

  ‘You may be right,’ she agreed. ‘Although I had hoped that after such a long separation we might enjoy a longer time together.’

  ‘My wish is the same,’ said Alexa. ‘That’s why I’m asking you now to come with me.’

  For a second time since her arrival in the music room Margaret was almost too much taken aback to speak.

  ‘But Alexa, my sabbatical year is almost at an end. I shall have to return to work at the hospital.’

  ‘There must be opportunities for a trained doctor in America,’ said Alexa, sweeping the objection aside. ‘You might well meet with less prejudice in San Francisco than in London. And your experience is such that you could do nothing but good by working there. There are hundreds of people, thousands, pouring across the Atlantic every week, and most of them are poor and ignorant. The need for skills like yours must be immense.’

  ‘But I have Robert to care for. Already this year he has been left for far too long while I visited Ralph and Lydia. And on that occasion he had William to look after him during the school holiday. I have no intention of ever allowing William to do me any favour again.’

  ‘On the day of my return to London you spoke of the possibilities which a new life in America might hold for me,’ Alexa reminded her. ‘Wouldn’t they be even greater for Robert? It’s the land of opportunity. A boy of his age could grow up as an American, with a whole continent open to his ambition. Margaret, let us all three go. I will sing for a season. That much can be settled at once, and it will provide enough money for us to look around and decide where we might make a home, and what work we might do.’

  ‘Why are you so anxious suddenly for this?’ asked Margaret.

  Alexa shrugged her pale shoulders. ‘You’ve given the answer yourself,’ she said. ‘I’m in the mood to start a new life. To return to my wanderings in Europe after saying goodbye to them would seem a defeat; and since I had hoped to make a home in England as Matthew’s wife, it would be painful for me to live here in any other style. The solution seems to lie in some new place which will hold no memories, and it’s fortunate, I suppose, that I already have exactly the invitation I need. Matthew has set me free in order that I may marry, and perhaps I shall do so, although not at once. And if that is to happen, I must be respectable from the moment I arrive in San Francisco – chaperoned and decorous. What do you say? Will you come with me?’

  ‘Alexa, you are too impetuous. I cannot possibly make a decision of this sort at a second’s notice, without time to reflect.’

  ‘Then I’ll leave you to think about it. But I hope very much that you will come. I’ve been foolish in the past and run away from you, but you have never left me or ceased to love me. There is no one else to whom I can look for support.’

  She stood up to face Margaret in entreaty. The whiteness of her low-cut dress and the paleness of her skin and hair gave her an ethereal look in the cold light of the moon. Only the rubies were dark, like drops of blood falling from her neck. Troubled, Margaret kissed her goodnight. As she left the music room, the piano resumed its plaintive lament.

  By now it was almost morning and Margaret’s body longed for rest. But her mind was teeming with questions and she knew that she would not be able to sleep until she had resolved them. Instead of returning to the bedroom allotted her, she climbed the stairs to the Long Gallery which ran the full length of the Tudor core of Blaize. She paced up and down beneath the line of Glanville portraits as she attempted to sort out her thoughts.

  Her first reaction to Alexa’s suggestion was to dismiss it as impossible. She was forty-eight years old. That was hardly the time to begin a new life. Yet Alexa, whether she intended it or not, had spoiled the friendship with Lord Glanville which provided the chief warmth of her life in London. And with Ralph in Jamaica, Margaret had no family ties to keep her in England. She had never been close to William, and now to past resentments was added the belief that none of Alexa’s present difficulties would have arisen had he been frank both with Alexa herself and with Margaret. Alexa’s account of the letter which had never been delivered had brought to the surface of her memory other half-forgotten lies. She had learned, long after the event, how William had engineered David Gregson’s flight after the collapse of the bank, and she had often wondered whether she had been misled in any other way, never revealed, in order that her relationship with David might be ended. William was, to put it bluntly, a deceitful man, and her anger with him made it easy for her to break all her ties with Brinsley House.

  It was true, in addition, that Robert was of an age to find adventure in a new country, and might well discover opportunities open to him there as he grew up. There was nothing in his case or her own which would decide the question either way.

  Alexa’s situation was a different matter. No one could force her to marry Lord Glanville, however much he wanted it and however advantageous such a marriage might seem. It was not her own fault that her hopes of happiness with Matthew had been doomed to disappointment – in fact, Margaret herself was mainly to blame, for the situation could not have arisen had she spoken out sooner. It was a responsibility which must be taken into account in considering Alexa’s appeal. The angry disappointment caused by her enforced parting from Matthew might well have directed her into a way of life even wilder than had been offered her by the Duke of Caversham. If instead she was prepared to continue her career and at the same time to consider settling down in a respectable society, the choice was to her credit and deserved support. She had made the decision on impulse, no doubt, but there was good sense in what she said.

  One question Margaret still had to put to herself. Accepting the fact that it would be desirable to make the journey, had she the courage? She abandoned her pacing of the gallery and threw open one of the windows, staring out at the quiet woodlands as she considered this most important point of all. Once before, as a young girl, she had been prepared to begin a new life with the man she loved – in any part of the world to which he wished to take her. But that was a long time ago, and she had put all such plans behind her when she knew that there would be no loving arm to support her in a strange country.

  As vividly as though it were yesterday she remembered the names and the date
s which William had written down so that she might question the captains of his ships when they returned from their long voyages. The Rosa from Australia; the Diana from Jamaica; the Flora from San Francisco; the Stella from New York. She had crumpled the paper up and thrown it away on the day she was accepted as a medical student, and had done her best never again to think of David Gregson or any of the cities in which he might now be living.

  It was a coincidence that one of those cities should now be offered to her for a second time – but a coincidence which strengthened her growing resolve. When she was young she had faced disaster with determination. She was not yet too old to accept change with an equal courage.

  Through the open window she could hear Alexa singing at the piano in the music room, the pure voice of her girlhood matured by her training and experience. The whole world deserved to hear such a voice. Was it possible for a woman to appear on the stage and yet to live a respectable life? It was difficult for Margaret to free herself from the prejudices of her upbringing, but the challenge stiffened her determination. If it could be done, she would help Alexa to do it. Together they would make a new life in the New World.

  PART IV

  San Francisco

  1

  Men and women, like other animals, instinctively establish themselves in a strange territory by covering the ground and delineating boundaries on foot. On the day after her arrival in San Francisco with Robert and Alexa, Margaret went for a walk. She felt confused and unwell -but there were no symptoms which would enable her, as a doctor, to diagnose her own case. No doubt the main cause of the turmoil in her mind was the strain of turning her back on all her well-loved friends and the familiar scenes of her past life. The future, uncharted, invited apprehension as well as excitement by its unpredictability. The only certainty was that the long journey by sea and railroad had left her under-exercised. She needed movement and fresh air. It would be a relief to experience the ordinary tiredness caused by physical exertion instead of the exhaustion brought on by the discomforts of travel.

  From the moment, twenty-four hours earlier, when the ferry left the railroad terminal at Oakland to carry them across the Bay, everything about their reception had come as a complete surprise to Margaret. How could she have anticipated that Alexa would be welcomed by crowds and cheered all the way to a hotel room filled with flowers from admirers who could only distantly know of her reputation? Nor had Margaret expected the brisk helpfulness of strangers who had borne Robert off to school on his very first morning in the city and had arranged for Alexa to visit the Opera House on that same morning. To Margaret herself, they had revealed that a furnished apartment – and the servants to run it -awaited her inspection in the afternoon. In London, the reputation of the New World had been one of self-help, in which newcomers were expected to fend for themselves. It was ungrateful, Margaret knew, to wish that they, could all have been allowed just one day in which to rest before being rushed off their feet by friendliness.

  In the meantime, left alone for an hour or so, she used the mechanical movements of walking to calm her disordered system. Her years as a medical student had accustomed her to explore new areas on foot, and there would be time enough after she began to make acquaintances in San Francisco to discover whether the conventions of the city approved such freedom. She was equally accustomed to steep slopes – and indeed, as she climbed the switchback hills she found herself irresistibly reminded of Bristol. True, most of the roads in San Francisco climbed straight up the hills, while the narrower lanes which tackled the gradient from the Avon waterfront to the Clifton heights curved in a manner more considerate to the horses which plodded up them. But there was the same feeling of exhilaration as the brow of a hill was approached, the same freshening of the wind, the same smell of the sea. The skies, too, were grey here today just as they so often were in Bristol, filled with clouds which did not bank oppressively but scudded across the sky like the sailing ships which Margaret remembered from her youth. They promised rain, but were in too much of a hurry to deliver it. An illogical association of ideas had caused Margaret, before she arrived, to connect California with gold and gold with brilliant sunshine. She had expected brightness of San Francisco and did not find it, but the misty dullness which greeted her instead did not come as a disappointment. Rather, it seemed almost a welcome, an invitation to feel at home.

  There were other resemblances between San Francisco and her childhood home, sometimes requiring a subtle eye for their recognition. The houses she passed, built of shingled wood, were less substantial than the solid stone crescents and squares of Georgian Bristol, and more colourful in their various choices of paint. Nevertheless, they had the same smell of money about them. As she climbed Lombard Street Margaret – a stranger to the city – had no means of knowing whether Russian Hill was an area more or less wealthy than the average; but the atmosphere was one which she found instantly familiar. The merchants who had lived in the terraced tiers of the Bristol hills had for the most part been in the third generation of wealth, pausing for a few years before -like one of Margaret’s own ancestors – they took the final step in the hierarchy of trade and built themselves mansions on the Clifton heights. The residents of this part of San Francisco, she felt instinctively, were poised in exactly the same way – rich already, but not yet quite prepared to take the final step into ostentation. She wondered where that final step, when it came, would take them.

  There would be plenty of time to find out. Meanwhile, she took a few steps more herself and was brought to a halt in delight. In front of her now the ground fell away, and if she allowed her gaze to drop to the nearest part of the coastline, where scores of ships were busily loading and unloading, she could have pressed even further the parallel with Bristol and its prosperous trade. But instead she stared at a view far more beautiful than anything her home port had ever been able to offer, of a wide vista of wooded heights rising on the far side of the bay.

  As though in welcome, the wind gave a last strong scurry that tugged her hair untidily from its imprisonment under her hat and at the same time parted the clouds above to reveal a canyon of clear sky. The water of the bay responded, changing before her eyes from grey-green to sparkling blue. Margaret breathed deeply in the crisp, fresh air, taking the city to her heart. The atmosphere was at the same time reassuringly familiar and excitingly new. She could be happy here.

  Half reluctantly, she turned to go back. Alexa would be returning to the hotel soon, and then they must go together to inspect the apartment. As she began the steep descent, she noticed someone coming up the hill towards her. He was dressed as smartly as any English gentleman – although his high hat and frock coat were of a style which had gone out of fashion in London a good many years ago: a fit resident, she thought idly to herself, for this district which she had identified as a prosperous one. As they approached and passed each other, he raised his hat.

  ‘Morning, ma’am.’

  He continued on his way with a briskness which made it clear that he did not expect any acknowledgement, but the effect upon Margaret was one which he could not possibly have imagined. Taken aback, she stood still. Did he know her? Did she know him? She turned back to look at him, but he was continuing on his way without any pause. It must simply have been a courtesy. Margaret was well aware that she would need to accept new social conventions in a foreign country. Until she learned what they were, she must try not to be surprised. And yet this small matter disturbed her, nagging at her mind as she walked on. Was the gentleman perhaps one of the many who had welcomed them on the previous day? She had been too tired at the time to be properly conscious of names or faces. He might have seen non-recognition in her eyes even as he spoke, and hurried on to avoid embarrassment to either of them.

  But there was another possibility. Abruptly, Margaret changed direction, turning towards the harbour. It was time to bring out of the back of her mind the thought which she had pushed aside throughout the long journey.

  It was po
ssible that, just over twenty-seven years ago, David Gregson had landed at the very harbour which she was now approaching. And if he had done so, if he had stayed in San Francisco and made his fortune, he might at this moment be living in one of the shingled houses on Russian Hill. He could even have been the gentleman who raised his hat to a woman whose red hair was blowing untidily in the wind, because he recognized her as the woman he had once wanted to marry.

  He could have been – but in fact he was not. The man had been a stranger, and in any case too young to be David Gregson, who would be fifty-six by now. On that point at least Margaret could be definite with herself. The only importance of the stranger was the reminder he had brought that at any moment she might come face to face with her one-time suitor.

  It was time to put the probabilities to herself methodically, and to accept them. There was only one chance in four that David had come to San Francisco at all. Even if he did come, there was no reason why he should stay. As a man without fortune, he might have looked for land in some less developed part of the continent. Or he might have been tempted by the prospect of gold to travel north to Alaska. He might even be dead.

  Suppose all these guesses were wrong. Suppose he were alive and living in San Francisco, what could it mean to her? He had had plenty of time to make a life without her. Long ago he would have acquired a wife, children, a career of some sort. If he were to meet Margaret in the street by chance, the first likelihood was that he would not even recognize her. And if he did, he would not raise his hat to her, with all the risks that such a greeting would entail. He would cut her dead, and would be quite right to do so. Margaret herself would have no right to complain. David had parted from her in well-justified anger. She had no claim on his loyalty – and had not even been faithful to his memory herself. Her husband, Charles, had monopolized her love not only for the brief period of their marriage, but through all the unhappy years when it seemed that the feud between their two families would separate them for ever.