Inheritance

by Phyllis Bentley

  Francis did not trouble to answer this, but went on: “Her name is Carmine Mellor.”

  “Mellor!” cried Brigg and Charlotte together: “Is she——”

  “Yes, she is,” said Francis, who had been informed of the fact by Henry that morning, doggedly. “She’s Janie Oldroyd’s daughter.”

  “You might have spared me that, Francis!” cried Charlotte, her eyes black with rage. She sprang to her feet and paced up and down the room, the silk of her dress rustling angrily. “Yes, you might have spared me that,” she said in a tone of intense bitterness. “This from you, Francis!” She stopped by the bed and gazed at her husband. “I notice you say nothing, Brigg!” she said. “Am I to think you approve?”

  “How did you get to know this girl, Francis?” demanded Brigg.

  Francis jerkily described his meeting with Carmine in the train.

  “It sounds like something out of a penny novelette,” said Charlotte contemptuously.

  “That may be,” said Francis, beginning to be angry. “But Carmine is my wife, mother, and I must ask you to speak of her properly.”

  “You talk as though you were independent and able to indulge any whim you choose,” Charlotte told him scornfully. “Let me remind you that you are entirely dependent on your father and myself, Francis.”

  “I don’t seem to remember that I’m dependent on you, mother,” said Francis.

  “Francis!” said Brigg.

  “Well, father,” protested Francis, turning to him: “Surely Syke Mill is a matter for you and me alone. I’m over age, and my marriage is my own affair.”

  “You’re taking up a very wrong and ungrateful attitude, my boy,” said Brigg sternly. “Why didn’t you tell us you were attracted to this girl, so that we could ask her to the house? Why did you take it for granted that we should disapprove? Have we ever given you cause to think we should deny you anything unreasonably? You know we haven’t. It’s only natural that your mother should feel your want of confidence in her, deeply. Why should the girl’s parents be told, and not yours?”

  “But they weren’t told!” exclaimed Francis, exasperated.

  “It was a secret marriage?” said Brigg in surprise.

  “Yes,” said Francis, flushing.

  “Yes—and why?” demanded Charlotte. “The reason is very plain to see, I imagine. I congratulate you on your wife’s morals, Francis.”

  “Mother!” exclaimed Francis warningly.

  “Well, it’s intolerable,” said his mother, bursting into tears. “Why should you choose just that one girl out of all the girls in the world, Francis? Is she beautiful?”

  “Yes,” said Francis.

  “Is she a lady?” demanded Charlotte.

  “She’s my wife,” said Francis stubbornly.

  “You see!” exclaimed Charlotte, turning to Brigg.

  Francis also looked at him, and they both seemed to expect some pronouncement. Brigg kept an impassive face, but he was much perplexed. On the one hand he was deeply ashamed of Francis, and reproached himself for not having brought up his son better; he was also bitterly disappointed at the ruin of the hopes he had entertained of a lofty match for his son. He shrank, too, from the scandal which must inevitably follow. But beneath all this there was a kind of grim elation. So Francis had owned and married Janie’s daughter, had he? “Well, at any rate he’s got her,” thought Brigg sardonically: “It’s more than I did with Janie.” And he felt that he was in a way revenged upon his old love. Aloud he said in a stern tone: “Where is your wife, Francis?”

  “I left her at her mother’s—they’re not much better pleased than you are,” muttered his son.

  “You’d better fetch her here,” commanded Brigg, drowning Charlotte’s exclamation of incredulous contempt.

  “What, now?” said Francis, startled.

  “Certainly,” said Brigg. “We must try to have as little scandal as we can. There’s bound to be some.”

  Accordingly Francis took out a car and went to Booth Mount to fetch Carmine. He disliked the notion of returning there very much indeed, for after the first alarm of the young couple’s arrival an hour or two ago had subsided, Janie had regarded him with something like fondness, and murmured: “You should have told me, Francis! But of course I understand.” Francis, who was well aware that she did not understand and that it was essential she should not understand—now that he had seen her he sympathised more deeply with Carmine’s feelings in this respect—went hot all over and felt indescribably mean and furtive. He felt this the more because he knew that Charley was in their secret, while Matthew’s fierce eyes seemed to him full of suspicion. “Oh, damn the whole ugly mess!” said Francis, swinging the car sharply out of Booth Bank into the Mellor’s street. He found Carmine and her mother alone, and with his usual cool grace managed to convince Janie that his father and mother were anxious to receive Carmine that night.

  “You’re forgiven, then?” said Janie, her face bright.

  “More or less,” laughed Francis.

  While Carmine was upstairs dressing Janie asked him questions about his father. She seemed concerned to hear that Brigg was ill.

  “I should like to see him again,” she mused. “Is he much changed, I wonder?”

  Francis, thinking of his mother, perceived that the intercourse between the Oldroyds and the Mellors was going to be altogether damnable.

  During his absence from Emsley Hall Charlotte had been lectured by Brigg on the necessity for receiving their son’s wife with a decent warmth, and Charlotte, though her eyes seemed sunk in her head and she looked an old woman, stood in the hall to greet Carmine, kissed her cheek and with a friendly word (which nearly choked her) led her upstairs to make the acquaintance of her father-in-law. Carmine had been through a wedding, a long journey, and a harrowing scene with her family already that day, and she looked white and haggard. “She’s not even pretty,” thought Charlotte contemptuously. “What do men see in women of that type?” Brigg, who took Carmine’s hand in his and kissed her gravely on the forehead, made more allowance for her fatigue and nervousness, and thought he saw some elements of beauty in her. He was rather horrified by her accent, but liked her deep husky tones. Her hand trembled in his, and he felt genuinely sorry for her.

  “Well?” said Charlotte later, as she shook up her husband’s pillows and settled him for the night: “What: do you think of her? Is she like your old flame?”

  “Not in the least,” said Brigg emphatically. This was not quite true, for in her delicate ears, her rich lips and her clear complexion he could see a likeness to Janie in Carmine, but he did not intend to increase Charlotte’s jealousy if he could help it. He debated within himself whether to tell his wife of Henry’s letter to him and his reply, but decided not to do so; women’s minds were rarely clear, thought Brigg, and she might work it round to seem like complicity in the marriage on his part. Instead he said firmly: “I shall get up to-morrow. We must put the best face on it we can.”

  “It will be difficult,” said Charlotte bitterly. “The whole thing’s so obvious. He doesn’t even love the girl now, or she him. He’s married her because he had to, that’s all.”

  Chapter IV

  Climax

  1

  As the months went on the necessity for concealing the true reason for her marriage from her mother, already painfully impressed upon Carmine’s mind by the shifts and deceptions she had been obliged to practise before her wedding, became an obsession with her. The young couple were installed at Stanney Royd, an attractive Elizabethan residence in the country a few miles south of Emsley, owned by the Stancliffe family; and Carmine was plunged into the usual life of young people in Francis’s position. She dined out, she received guests, she called, she had herself motored into Annotsfield to shop, she danced. It was a life new to Carmine and full of lively occupation, but she went about it all mechanically, she hardly saw it; or rather, she was always looking through it; it was but a mere coloured mist, torn in places, which veiled bu
t scantily her immense and terrible preoccupation. Even her husband was but part of this coloured mist; with frowning brows she seemed to look through him, to be concentrating on something beyond. To Charlotte she seemed capricious and incalculable almost to the point of madness, but in reality everything she did was done to an end; whether she danced or did not dance, ate or went hungry, walked or drove, it was always done to protect her secret.

  When she thought it at last safe to tell her mother that she was with child, Janie, delighted, counted on her fingers and said she supposed the birth would be at the end of February. It was really due in the early part of December. Carmine, white, with the sweat standing on her forehead, agreed vaguely that she supposed February was the time. When she returned to Stanney Royd after this interview she looked so ill and distraught that Francis, who was not enjoying himself with a wife who, as he put it to himself, looked like a prophetess out of the Bible, insisted upon her going to bed and summoning the doctor. Carmine went to bed but declined to have the doctor. “He’ll know,” she panted: “And then mother will know too.”

  “Really, Carmine,” protested Francis, standing at the foot of the bed and playing with some old silver spurs which Brigg had had refitted and given to him when he was gazetted captain in the new territorials: “I do think you might tell your mother now. What does it matter after all? We’re married. I’ll tell her if you like.”

  “If she gets to know I’ll kill myself,” panted Carmine, staring at her husband from dilated eyes.

  Francis sighed and turned away.

  “Don’t you believe me?” cried Carmine on a rising note of hysteria.

  “I believe you right enough,” said Francis. “It’s just the sort of idiotic thing you would do.”

  His words were harsh but his tone was caressing; for though he had not wanted to marry Carmine, though he winced daily at her social faults and was exasperated by her air of gloom, yet he had a feeling for her—it was not love, it was not hate, it was just a feeling, a feeling that he could not do without her, that their lives were indissolubly bound together, and that this was an infernal nuisance but could not be helped, like being left-handed. He threw the spurs down now, sat on the edge of the bed and drew his wife to him so that her head rested on his shoulder. Like this they were happy, and Francis began to murmur soothing words in Carmine’s ear, to the effect that everything would be all right when the baby came.

  “It’ll be all right if mother doesn’t get to know,” whispered Carmine.

  Francis perceived that she was hopelessly obsessed on this subject, and that it might be dangerous to cross her. He therefore’took an early opportunity to hint caution to his father and mother.

  “We’re not likely to betray anything so discreditable to you,” said Brigg sternly.

  Francis made a moue to himself at this, and glanced at his mother. Charlotte did not like Carmine any better now than she had done when she first saw her, and her son’s marriage was still an open sore to her. But she was glad to have had the Janie myth killed in her husband’s mind, and she thought that it was so killed. She had been present at the meeting of Janie and Brigg after so many years, and had seen, instead of her bright dazzling rival of a quarter-century ago, a shrewish, naive, narrow-minded woman of middle age and few personal attractions. She did not mention this view of Janie to Brigg, but he was so bad-tempered for a few days after the meeting that she imagined he felt as she did, and chuckled to herself with affectionate malice over his disillusionment. She therefore said coldly now:

  “I think it’s very silly of Carmine not to confide in her mother, Francis, but of course I shall respect your father’s wishes.”

  The time for Carmine’s confinement drew near, and nurses and doctors had to be engaged and clothes prepared. Each one of these details had to be lied about to Janie by the wretched Carmine, who usually fell back upon the difference in custom between Booth Mount and Emsley Hall, for explanation. But after once or twice Janie’s common-sense revolted at this.

  “It’s ridiculous. Carmine,” she said angrily. “You seem to think I don’t know what goes on in the world at all. Emsley Hall is not the standard of perfection you seem to imagine. Let me tell you that in my uncle’s house we despised the taste of the Oldroyds.”

  “Yes, mother,” agreed Carmine, simulating docility. “I daresay you’re right. But I must do as Francis says.”

  “Oh, certainly,” said Janie, only half mollified. She was silent for a moment, then burst out: “Francis has not been to see me for nearly three weeks now. I don’t think it’s nice of him, Carmine. It’s not respectful, it’s not kind.”

  Carmine, who knew how Francis loathed the network of lies in which they were involved, smothered a painful sigh and made suitable excuses. That evening as husband and wife sat together in the galleried hall of Stanney Royd, with the rain and wind lashing the mullioned windows, Carmine wept silently to herself until Francis could stand it no longer.

  “Don’t go on snivelling to yourself like that, Carmine,” he urged. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

  “I’m not snivelling!” flashed out Carmine, with something of her old spirit.

  “Well, it sounds dashed like it,” said Francis good-humouredly. “What’s up? Is it your mother again?”

  Carmine dissolved in tears by way of assent, and Francis decided that he had had enough of this. Next evening before returning home he drove round to Booth Mount and told Janie that the doctors said Carmine’s confinement would probably be premature—she was so young, it was her first child, and she had not been at all well during her pregnancy. Except the last item these were such thumping lies and so contrary to probability that his heart was in his mouth as he brought them out, and Janie did indeed gaze at him with an astonished expression and very wide eyes. But luckily Charley, who was sitting at the table having his meal before setting out to work, was inspired to say thoughtfully that one of his sisters had been just like that, and the simple Janie was deceived.

  The relief to Carmine was at first immense, and she looked so bright and happy that even Charlotte grudgingly admitted that she had a certain charm. But unfortunately Janie’s maternal anxiety was aroused by the irregularities Francis had invented, and she insisted on coming to stay at Stanney Royd till Carmine should be through her trouble. Short of downright rudeness Francis could find no way of excluding her from his house; and he could not find the heart to be rude when she gazed at him pleadingly from her good anxious face. Accordingly Janie packed up and came to stay with her daughter, who at once sank again into a state of nervous fear which was very bad for her health. Moreover, Janie, who was enjoying herself staying in a gentleman’s establishment again after all these years, and was not in any case a personality to be overlooked or left in a corner, talked a good deal to the various guests, Stancliffes and others, who came to Stanney Royd; and when their degree of intimacy was sufficient to warrant it, retailed Francis’s inventions about Carmine’s condition to them with anxious emphasis. The facial expressions with which these details were received showed Charlotte only too clearly what the result would be, and she was maddened by Janie’s ineptitude and naïveté. The whole affair was so disgustingly vulgar, thought Charlotte, that to carry it off at all needed the greatest firmness and skill. One afternoon when Janie had, as Charlotte thought, exposed herself particularly foolishly to a bundle of Stancliffe relations, Charlotte lingered behind the departing guests to say, as she drew on her gloves:

  “Wouldn’t it be wiser, Mrs. Mellor, not to discuss Carmine’s health so much?”

  “Why?” said Janie, colouring—she was not at all disposed to lower her crest to this fair fading woman, who, as she now chose to think, had taken Brigg from her.

  “Well, I think it-would be wiser,” said Charlotte in her cool authoritative tones. “For Carmine’s sake, you know.”

  “I think you must allow me to judge of what is best for my own daughter,” said Janie angrily.

  Charlotte suppressed an exclam
ation. “Then perhaps you’ll allow me to judge of what is best for my son,” she said. Her voice was low, but full of passion, and the two women exchanged a fiercely hostile look.

  Carmine now came back into the room from speeding her other guests; Charlotte kissed her cheek and bade her farewell decorously, with no further allusion. But immediately she had left Janie turned to Carmine and cried vehemently:

  “That woman shall not dictate to me what I am to say about you!”

  Carmine turned white and sick, and clung to a chair.

  “Don’t quarrel with Mrs. Oldroyd, mother,” she begged. “Please! For my sake.”

  “That’s all very well,” cried Janie angrily: “But to tell me that I’m not to say what I like about my own daughter! The woman must be mad !” She turned upon Carmine, and struck by the look of anguish and alarm in her daughter’s eyes, said, astonished: “Why, Carmine, what’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” said the wretched Carmine, turning aside. “But I can’t bear it if you’re going to quarrel with Mrs. Oldroyd, mother.” She burst into tears, and Janie, remorseful, said:

  “Well, I won’t, I won’t, Carmine. I promise you I won’t. But all the same I don’t see why,” she was beginning—when suddenly the fearful truth flashed upon her. “Carmine !” she cried in a terrible voice. “Look up ! Look at me !”

  “No, no !” shrieked Carmine wildly, backing away from her mother with hands outstretched to repel her. “No, mother, no ! Not that !”

  “Carmine !” cried Janie. “It’s true ! Oh God ! We’re disgraced, disgraced for ever ! You wicked, wicked girl !” She flew at her daughter with hand upraised as though to strike her.

  “No ! Mother !” screamed Carmine, throwing herself face downwards on a settee.

  “Oh, what infamy ! We’re disgraced ! How shall I ever face your father !” moaned Janie, burying her face in her hands. Just then there was the sound of a car at the front door; Francis was returning from the mill. Janie flew out into the hall, and with chalk-white face and staring eyes threw out at him in a loud wild tone: “Seducer ! Villain !”