The Lorimer Legacy

by Anne Melville

  At last Alexa seemed to realize the uselessness of talking to him. But as she turned towards the door, making no further attempt to control her sobs, he called out to her. ‘You are forgetting these.’

  She looked back, but was not in time to catch the necklace that he sent spinning through the air towards her. It hit her in the face, just above the eye: the edge of the pendant cut her eyebrow open. Darker than the rubies themselves, drops of blood began to scar the white rug on which she stood.

  ‘Take them away,’ Greg ordered. ‘Your father had no right to give them to you. They were bought with money stolen from those who had once believed him to be an honest man. But he is dead, and so no doubt are most of the people he ruined. You have made it clear enough how much you value your baubles. Take them away.’

  Alexa did not seem to be listening. She had put a hand up to the cut on her face and now looked incredulously at the blood which covered it. With her other hand she stooped to pick up the necklace. Then, in an action which was almost that of a madwoman, she rushed towards Greg, snatching the rest of the jewellery which lay on the table in front of him and holding it up as though she intended to dash it down on his head. Margaret recognized that she had moved from grief and shock into hysteria, and was in time to grasp her hands and pull her away.

  ‘Come dearest,’ she said. Alexa began to scream as she was led firmly towards the door, gasping out a series of short, piercing sounds. She broke away and ran out on to the verandah, allowing Margaret to turn back for a moment.

  With his head pressed down on the table, Greg was weeping. Margaret was in tears herself as she looked at him. In her first glimpse of him here, at the opera, it was his prosperous, well-dressed good looks which had instantly revived all her old feelings for him, making her long to show her pleasure in his success. Seeing him now, crumpled and distraught, she was overwhelmed by an even greater longing to love and comfort him.

  ‘David,’ she said quietly, forgetting in the stress of the moment to abide by his change of name. ‘Please, David.’

  She touched his hand, and as though he had felt the cold skin of a snake he pulled it abruptly away and used it to cover his face. Margaret looked down at him, as unhappy on her own account as on his. Her heart ached with the realization that he would never again be able to look at her with anything but hatred in his eyes. It had been possible to explain away all their old misunderstandings, but nothing could alter what had happened within the past week. Just for a moment she put a finger on the shoulder of his jacket, so lightly that perhaps he would not feel it. Then she went outside to look after Alexa, whose screams were gradually subsiding into gasps.

  It was necessary to be brisk. Margaret sent a messenger to find Brad and Robert. By the time they came, she had already packed together the few possessions with which they could leave. Robert looked in astonishment at the two tear-swollen faces which greeted him, and his bewilderment turned to bad temper when he learned that he must say goodbye to his friend at once.

  ‘If ever you come to London, Brad, I hope you’ll come and visit us,’ Margaret said. It was the polite formality of the departing guest, but its effect was to trigger off a new outburst from Alexa.

  ‘I can’t return to London. I came here to work. I must stay here.’

  ‘There’s no work for you to do here,’ said Margaret firmly. ‘The opera house is burned. The whole world will know what has happened to San Francisco. There will be no disgrace in abandoning our plans and returning home. In London we have friends who will help us to start again. We have no friends here. Get inside, and let us be off.’

  She had already asked for the use of the carriage to take them to the station, and had guessed from Cassie’s surprised look that the news of her brother’s death had not yet been broken to her. Now their young hostess looked even more puzzled as she came running to catch them before they left.

  ‘My father asked me to give you this.’ She held out a purse which was heavy with silver. ‘When you say you’re from San Francisco, you’ll get free travel on the railroad right across the continent to New York. But you’ll need food on the journey, and then the cost of your passage home.’

  Margaret hesitated for a moment; but it was true that they could not manage without some immediate supply of money.

  ‘Thank your father from me, and tell him that of course I’ll repay it when I get back to England,’ she said.

  Cassie’s embarrassment increased. ‘He told me you’d likely say that,’ she agreed. ‘And if you did, I was to tell you –’

  Margaret recognized that Greg’s daughter was too kind-hearted to speak the words she had been given.

  ‘You were to tell me that he never wanted to hear from us again,’ she suggested bitterly, and recognized the truth of her guess in Cassie’s silence. ‘I think your father needs you now, Cassie. Goodbye.’

  There was a moment more of delay. Alexa, still hysterically bright-eyed and flushed, was fitting into the box brought up from the safe deposit the rubies which Margaret never wanted to set eyes on again. With her own emotions as near to breaking point as were her sister’s, Margaret looked through the window of Cassie’s sitting room. It was easy to see that Greg had broken the news now, for he and his daughter were gripping each other in a long, unhappy embrace.

  There were explanations which could have been made. Margaret knew that she could have justified her own behaviour, even if not Alexa’s. But as she stared, an outsider, at the father and daughter who were attempting to comfort each other, she recognized that she could never again expect Greg to be reasonable as far as the Lorimers were concerned. She had reminded herself when she first arrived in San Francisco that the man she had once loved would have a life of his own which could leave no room for her, and it would have been better for both of them if that assurance had never been put to the test. The interlude in which they had seemed to have carried their old affection over such a long gap of years had been very brief; and it was over. They were strangers again, and this time it would be for ever. The whip cracked and the wheels of the carriage began to roll.

  Greg did not lift his head to watch them go.

  10

  The most useful members of society are those who have the fewest ties of love and family to distract them. So at least Margaret tried to persuade herself as the train chugged interminably across the whole width of the continent. But it was no easy matter to come to terms with the griefs she was leaving behind and the bleakness of spirit which she carried with her. Separately and silently, Alexa was no doubt occupied in much the same way.

  Margaret’s misery was tinged with bitterness. How much kinder it would have been, she thought, if fate had not allowed her the brief hope of happiness before snatching it away again. But she recognized that what had happened was irrevocable. There was nothing to be gained by looking back; and if the future appeared desolate compared with the life which she had briefly imagined for herself – well, she had been lonely before, and survived it. She must try once again to find her satisfaction in the service of others.

  She hoped that her sister would be equally successful in putting the disaster behind her. Alexa had more to mourn than herself – death instead of disappointment -but that might make it easier for her to recognize the finality of what had happened. The months in San Francisco must be considered as a time out of their lives. Even though they would never be able to forget the events which had taken place, they must go on as though nothing had happened.

  Even before they reached London, Margaret was reminded that this was too facile an approach – that no part of life could be completely without consequences. Margaret herself was not a good sailor. She had none of that love of the sea which had driven her Lorimer forebears to seek their fortunes in ocean-going ships: the slightest swell could upset her. Alexa, though, on the outward voyage – excited by the thought of new worlds waiting to be conquered – had seemed able to enjoy even the roughest day. When now she took to her cabin to ride out a mid-Atlant
ic gale, it seemed possible that her illness was caused as much by her state of depression as by the motion of the water. But the steamship entered the calmer coastal waters of England, and still Alexa was sick. Margaret recovered sufficiently from her own misery to worry about her sister’s inability to take any food, and was able almost at once to guess the cause. She stared at Alexa in dismay.

  ‘It is not yet certain,’ said Alexa, when Margaret at last put her question into words. ‘Everything that has happened in the past month – the shock of the earthquake, the expose to the weather, Frank’s death, jolting about on the railroad, the storm – all these things, surely, must upset one’s system.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Margaret. ‘But they wouldn’t cause you to be sick in this continuing way. I agree that you will need to wait for another month before you can be quite sure. But it is not too soon to begin thinking about what you should do. The baby is Frank’s, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, of course.’ Unwell and worried, Alexa showed her apprehension by snapping.

  ‘So there is no possibility of marriage. Unless, of course, you could find someone in England, quickly, who would be willing –’

  ‘No!’ Alexa sat up in her berth. Pale and bedraggled, she looked very different from the glamorous creature who charmed audiences and dominated balls and parties, but her eyes flashed with all the energy which had carried her so quickly to the top of her profession. ‘I’m not prepared to bend my life ever again to fit in with that of a man. I am able to earn my own living and to manage my own affairs. Men may come to me if they wish, but I will not take a step out of my way to go to them. I have had too many disappointments.’

  ‘You speak as though Frank deliberately let you down,’ exclaimed Margaret. ‘It was not his fault that he died.’

  ‘Of course not. It was not Matthew’s fault that I was born his aunt: not Caversham’s fault that he needed to marry an heiress. I am not concerned with fault or blame. I am saying only that I do not propose ever again to be the victim of circumstances – of other people’s circumstances. I intend to keep my life in my own hands from now on. To marry is always to surrender to a man’s selfishness. He sets out a style of living, and his wife is supposed to conform to it in every way.’

  ‘It is what most women wish for,’ Margaret said gently, attempting to soothe down her sister’s uncontrolled emotions.

  ‘Then most women are welcome to it. What I am saying is that I am not most women. I depend on no one for my income. I can do whatever I like.’

  ‘It sounds as though you are merely claiming the right to be as selfish as the men you criticize.’

  ‘Yes!’ cried Alexa. ‘That is exactly right. What is selfishness in them is selfishness in me. But if it is praiseworthy for a man to maintain himself, to preserve his independence, to be successful in his career, then it must be equally praiseworthy for me to do the same. You must understand that, Margaret. For twenty years I have admired you because you have managed your life with as much strength and efficiency as any man could do, and have been more use to the world than most of them.’

  Margaret made no answer to that. In her heart she knew that she was no different from the majority of women whom Alexa professed to despise. She could have been happy as a wife and mother, and it was not from her own choice that she had enjoyed only the briefest taste of domestic life. It was true that she had used ambition and a wish to be of value to the world as a means of conquering her disappointments, just as she would now need to do again: Alexa’s declaration, although it emerged from a deeper bitterness, was not so very different. Nevertheless, there was still one circumstance which she seemed to be overlooking.

  ‘You are not taking the baby into account,’ she pointed out. ‘Oh, Alexa, how could you be so foolish?’

  ‘Do you think it was intended!’ Alexa’s temper flared up again. She made an attempt to laugh. ‘At least there will be no difficulty in choosing a name. The child of Frank, conceived in San Francisco at the moment when the earth moved. It will have to be Francis, won’t it? If it is ever born.’

  ‘Alexa –’

  ‘There are ways,’ said Alexa stubbornly. ‘You are a doctor, Margaret. You must know how to end a pregnancy.’

  ‘I chose to be a doctor so that I could learn how to preserve life,’ said Margaret. ‘You can’t ask me to kill your baby.’

  She met her sister’s defiant look with a steadiness of her own, and probably Alexa had known even before she asked that it was too much to expect, for now she shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘There are other doctors.’

  ‘It is illegal,’ said Margaret. ‘No reputable doctor will do it. And it is extremely dangerous. You must not interfere with nature.’

  ‘You interfere with nature every time you cure someone who has been afflicted by nature with an illness,’ Alexa pointed out, but the anger seemed to have gone out of her voice. ‘Very well, then, suppose it is to be born. I have two choices, I imagine. I can disappear from London at once and move around Europe from one opera house to another with such speed that no one will notice the time when I am not to be found in any of them. Or I can make no attempt at concealment and receive sympathy for my misfortune in being widowed in the San Francisco disaster.’

  ‘How can you say such a thing when you were not married?’

  ‘And who will ever be able to discover that?’ countered Alexa. ‘Do you think there is a single official document left unburned in the city? Even the names of all the dead are never likely to be known. The bodies of a good many people who were killed in the first shock must have been consumed in the flames afterwards. I never intend to return to the city. As long as I make no claim on anyone, there can be no harm done.’

  ‘Alexa, you cannot lie about something as important as this.’

  ‘What solution do you propose that doesn’t involve some deception? A moment ago you were suggesting that I should look hastily for a husband. Even though you presumably expected me to tell the truth to the man concerned, you would not have made such a suggestion unless you were intending that the child should be passed off as his in the eyes of the world. A big lie or a little he, what is the difference? What I suggest would protect the reputation of the child throughout its life, at no cost to anybody. I will keep my own name and refuse ever to mention my husband’s, on the grounds that it would distress me too much.’

  ‘And the child himself?’ asked Margaret. ‘What will you tell him when he is old enough to ask about his father?’

  ‘I shall not be there to be asked. I shall find someone to adopt him.’

  During the past hour Alexa had managed to shock her sister with almost every sentence she uttered, but this last announcement was so much more horrifying than the rest that for a moment Margaret could only gasp incoherently in her attempt to protest.

  ‘Alexa – you cannot possibly – your own child!’

  ‘Do you seriously see any alternative?’ Alexa’s voice was weak and flat with depression. ‘If Frank had lived to marry me I would have taken pleasure in giving him an heir. But as things are, I don’t want the baby. I have no maternal feelings at all. The birth will be a nuisance. The existence of a baby would be an impediment to my career, and I cannot believe that to be dragged from one opera house to another all over Europe is the best upbringing for any child. I cannot face it, Margaret, now that I am completely alone.’ She lay back again in the berth and began to weep, turning her face to the pillow as Margaret stared down at her with a worried look.

  ‘You know you are not alone, Alexa, I’m here to help you.’

  ‘You have refused to help me.’ Alexa’s voice, like her sobbing, held an undertone of hysteria. ‘You criticize every suggestion I make, but you have nothing to offer in its place. And if you had come with me to the Opera Ball, none of this would have happened.’

  With an effort Margaret restrained her indignation at the attack. It was true that she did feel some guilt in this respect. But Alexa, although it had suited her to pret
end to a younger age, was twenty-nine years old, perfectly well able to know right from wrong and to look after herself. The chaperonage for which she had asked had never been more than a social device.

  Margaret was used to dealing with pregnant women. She knew how easily they became upset even when the babies they expected were wanted and would be born into a happy home, and how very much more terrifying their condition became when there was no husband to support them. She considered the situation for quite a long time while Alexa continued to sniff into the pillow.

  It was not difficult to guess what Alexa wanted her to say. But a simple offer and promise, quickly spoken, could involve twenty years’ responsibility. Margaret reminded herself that she was nearly fifty: too old to play the part of a natural mother to a young child – too old to be certain even that she would live to see the child become an adult. And she, just as much as Alexa, had a living to earn.

  Neither of these facts proved, in the end, to be strong enough to influence her decision. Margaret had never felt quite the same sense of family responsibility which had prompted her elder brother to offer his support whenever she was in need, and which had apparently also made him feel justified in interfering in the most personal affairs of his brother and sister just because he was the head of the family. Margaret remembered, in fact, how she had stood twenty years earlier in a filthy farmyard in France, looking at a yellow-haired boy who was Ralph’s son, her own nephew, and recognizing that she must not acknowledge the relationship.

  But that had been for the boy’s own sake. When Alexa talked of having her baby adopted, she was speaking out of adult selfishness. Margaret’s appalled reaction to the idea revealed to her the strength of family feeling that she still retained. This baby would be her own niece or nephew, the grandchild of her father, John Junius Lorimer. The child could not be abandoned to strangers. There was no choice.