Inheritors

by Неизвестный

  Laughter and the chit-chat of happy people attracted their attention to young Sylvester Dennis, holding forth in a drawling voice to a group of “dear young ladies.” He was telling them an entertaining story about his return from school in England to one of his father's stations. Of course it was too bally ridiculous, but he couldn't tell a sheep from a goat. And what a bally row there'd been when he took down a photograph of some odd creature to hang up a print of his favourite Rossetti and it turned out to be the old governor's prize pet stud ram. He had “sustained existence in the wilds” for several weeks before he fled. “My dears, another week of it and I'd have been maimed for life, stretching my mouth to drink out of those cups, thick as the side of an ironclad, you know.”

  “No, I haven't got any of that blood in me,” Cash said. He walked to the railings and spat viciously into the garden, where the bobbing Chinese lanterns threw a soft, ruby light on flowers and promenading couples.

  Harriet speculated on the silhouette of his shoulders, so staunchly, comfortingly broad. “Oh, don't let us quarrel, Mr Cash. Perhaps I'm not as much of a lady as you think.”

  “Oh yes, you are,” he said anxiously, turning. “You were bred up with a thin skin. It's meant for the drawing-room and don't stand up to kicks. What wouldn't bruise a, say, Queenie, would kill you. Like it killed your old man in a way. He was a gentleman, a thin-skinned toff.” He bent over her. “Oh, don't make any mistake about that, Miss Harriet. Fire burns soft hands worst and the mud sticks harder to them.”

  Harriet tried to laugh him away. “You've got a high opinion of my skin and a mighty low one of my discretion, Mr Cash.”

  He straightened, scowling. “I think you're a young fool. You know nothing outside of books. You'll land yourself in a pretty mess.” “I don't understand you,” Harriet said faintly. “Indeed, I don't.” “You don't, eh? Well, where are your jewels?”

  She clapped her hand to her throat. “I—I—why, what is that to you? My jewels are at home.”

  “Not stolen?” he said, as if he wished they were.

  “Certainly not.”

  “They were there when you came out? You saw them? Eh?”

  Harriet's eyes shifted, then she recovered and stared back. “Yes, they were.”

  He looked hard into those cold, clear, untouched eyes and sighed.

  “Well, well. I guess you got the bit between your teeth. I don't see how I could turn you without making you hate me more.”

  Harriet rose with a thin pretence of righteous indignation. “I don't understand you at all. You're saying such horrible things. I'll tell my father.”

  Cash waved impatiently. “Sit down. Enough of this roundabout talk. I'm no hand at it. Fact is, young Geoffrey told me about the hat and your bust-up with the old man and. . .”

  Harriet held up her hand. “Oh, don't please!” She looked about nervously.

  The group around Sylvester Dennis had grown. Dr Barnett, waving his hands, discoursed. The Romans had left their blood in Britain. We were lineal descendants of that race of adventurous, colonizing Caesars. Our mission came straight down from Romulus and Remus. Consider the thin-jewelled, high-beaked Australian face—pure Roman patrician. “And now all the Romans have left England to settle the hardest countries on the earth. So England's decline has begun. Tomorrow the Empire will rule. . .” His exasperated falsetto, earnestly exculpating some unmentioned sin, dominated them. Flanagan, attentive behind a big cigar sunk in his fat, Mrs Peppiott moving her stays with the steady, breathless pant of a toad, murmured applause.

  Mrs Bowen, always in a bustling flurry even when standing still, clapped her hands. “Just what I've always thought, but never in such beautiful words, Dr Barnett. Only I didn't think it was the Romans. I thought it must be the blood of the Irish kings.” She put it to Lord Alford.

  “Demned difficult question. Have to admit my family history bit vague before Indian Nabobs. Never heard a Roman Emperor mentioned. . .”

  “I spoke only in a general, racial sense,” Dr Barnett said testily. Cash smiled. “Somebody's got the doctor's goat to-night. Your father, eh? I heard him shouting.”

  “Oh, he's terrible to-night,” Harriet said. “He makes them hate him, then he wants all your sympathy.”

  “Poor devil! If he's a bit worse than usual there's a reason. You know, don't you?”

  “Yes, he told me something—about the mine and all that. Oh, but Mr Cash, who is to blame? Not I? I have never asked to be made the richest girl in Australia, or sent to England, or married to a duke—and all the rest of it. Is it my fault he's ruined himself trying to get too much? Is it fair?”

  Cash watched her slyly. “Ask yourself, Miss Harriet.” He prodded his chest. “Everybody knows what's fair and what isn't in here.”

  “It's not fair. It's cruel, odious tyranny!”

  “But just say you went and left him. You told me once you would if you ever fell in love with a man he wouldn't have. It might be the last straw just now. It might kill him. It'd be a bit of a problem then to say what was fair and what wasn't. You'd be asking yourself that question to the end of your days.”

  “And if I stayed? And he was poor and old? He would live for years and years and years. What would become of me? Haven't I any rights too?”

  “As I see it,” Cash said, gently, cunningly persuasive, “a lady or a gentleman is one who has the rights and doesn't press them too hard.”

  “One who gives for others to take?” She glanced up and caught the sly look in his eyes, bared for a moment of their mica shields. There was eagerness and fear in them, too. “Oh, Mr Cash,” she said, “I don't think you speak for my father at all. . .” She stopped, confused. “I mean—why do you say these things when it's nothing to you. You would leave him to-morrow without a second thought. You know you would. You told me.”

  Cash plucked at his beard. “That's true, Harriet. I'm a fraud. I'd leave him—if I could. I've been thinking of a change of scenery for a long time, but—damn it—damn it. . .”

  The music was beginning again. The group at the other end of the veranda drifted back to the ballroom, Dr Barnett still prattling. Wentworth had had the idea of founding an Australian peerage. It would be a bulwark against the menace of these democratic elements and a safeguard to British traditions in a far-flung outpost. The idea had their unanimous approval.

  “The Marquis of Indooroopilly!” Alford said. “A demned resonant title.”

  Harriet was on her feet. “You'll betray me. You'll tell Father.”

  “I won't betray you,” Cash said. “I won't have to. He will.” He nodded towards the door. Doug Peppiott was standing there beside his father. He looked sulky.

  Mrs Peppiott, left by the exodus, came swiftly between them. “Now, now, Harriet, my love. This is a nice way to enjoy your first ball. Come. Let the world see your pretty face.”

  Harriet hung back. Oh, what if she was wrong about him after all. What if he laughed at her and told everybody, so that they all laughed—all these fine, nice ladies and gentlemen! She looked around at Cash. But Mrs Peppiott had a firm grip on her this time.

  Cash, leaning against the railings, put a cigar in his mouth and watched Doug Peppiott lead her out to dance. After a while he spat a chewed, sodden rag of tobacco leaf into the garden.

  Chapter Twelve: Sad Tale Continued

  Ludmilla led Cabell out into the garden and across the lawn to a seat away from the lanterns and the crowd.

  He showed signs of bluster but she cut him short. “Sit down, Derek Cabell. I've a long story to tell.”

  He sat down tentatively on the edge of the hard rustic seat, the stiff line of his back and the white front of his shirt etched against the glow from the lanterns.

  “Shall I commence from the beginning?”

  He did not encourage her.

  “Well, suppose we start in 1851, when an English gentleman and his wife and two daughters—'pretty, soft bits of girls, with the proper roses in their cheeks'—set out from Brisbane wit
h two bullock-wagonloads of goods for the Never-Never.” Her voice dropped the lilt of badinage. “After ten weeks of hell they arrived in a valley where others had already settled. One of them was a young Englishman from a good family. At least he had been an Englishman but he had changed. . .”

  “You damn soon changed yourself.”

  “We'll come to that. You had your say, let me have mine.”

  “A damned long rigmarole. What's the point?”

  “There's a point, all right. You'll feel it,” Ludmilla said with a throaty laugh, like a man's.

  Upon the veranda between the colonnades a burly figure leant out and spat on to the lawn. Cash. “Get it over then. I can't leave Harriet.”

  “Now there's a pretty, soft bit of a girl,” Ludmilla said. “How tragic if SHE were left to shift for herself in a hard world.”

  “She won't be.”

  “Don't be so sure. We're a spiteful lot. Take that young Englishman. He was full to the back teeth with spite. Because the world had humiliated him and given him some hard knocks he wanted to make it hard for others. He wanted to throw mud on the honour of that fine old English gentleman and see him brought down—so that his own smarting pride would be satisfied. He used to go and taunt his neighbour till the old man was driven to some ridiculous act, and then he went home laughing up his sleeve. Oh, I understand how that young Englishman felt,” she whispered. “I came to feel the same way myself.”

  Cabell's mouth made a black gap in the grey blur of his face.

  “Ludmilla! You're stone crazy,” he said at last. “No such thing happened. I respected your father, but he was mad—mad as a hatter.”

  “Who sent him mad? You—with your taunts and gibes, telling him that the country would break and swallow him and he'd never see England again.”

  “I was trying to knock some sense into him. He was living in a fool's dream. I saw how things were going with you.”

  “You did it because you hated him—for his pride and for showing his contempt when you sent your convict wife's brother to ask, insulting brute, that I should marry him. A Southampton water-rat who turned round and married a Chinaman's woman! Deny you weren't mad with spite when you heard Father had whipped him out of the house. You can't.”

  “Ludmilla!” Cabell protested, not so much against the untruth of what she said as against the spite it laid open in her own heart. “You've let things go bad in your mind.”

  “What things?” She caught his hand and pressed it. “Go on, say them.” “You know what things.”

  “I know what lies, what filthy lies. About my father stealing regimental funds and about Aurelia. Your inventions.”

  Cabell sighed.

  “It WAS a lie. Admit it. Admit it was a lie—about Aurelia.”

  “That's something only three living people know. You and Aurelia and me. I've never put it in words.”

  “That's another lie. You told everybody.”

  “I swear I never told a soul.”

  “What about Farrar? He was going to marry Aurelia and you told him that lie and he cleared out. You can't deny that.”

  Cabell stirred. “His name wasn't Farrar. It was M'Govern. He was a blackguard. I wonder you didn't guess it. You ought to be damned glad he—cleared out.”

  “He was at your place for weeks. He sent insulting messages. Oh, don't pretend you didn't put him up to it.”

  “I told him nothing,” Cabell said, with anger suppressed. “And anyway he's dead and all that business is dead with him.”

  “It's not dead while you and your spite could resurrect it. You'll never forget that my father signed an affidavit against you when Flanagan and McFarlane took your land. Well, I've got spite too, Derek Cabell, as nasty and vengeful as your own.”

  “Come to the point, damn it, Ludmilla.”

  She laughed again. “That's the point, Derek. Just that.”

  Cabell glanced up at the house. Cash was waving a fist, arguing, but only the thin, falsetto voice of Dr Barnett, wordless and annoyed, reached them. Cabell's shoulders stooped against the light. “You mean you've lived to crow, eh? I suppose Cash told you.”

  “I mean I could crow.” She clucked her tongue. “There's no better moment for rubbing the gall in than when a man's down. YOU know that.”

  The music struck up again. The couples crunched back to the house along the gravel paths, leaving the butts of cigars in the dark shadows of the trees.

  Cabell jumped off the seat. “Enough of your bitchery, Ludmilla. Out with it—what d'you want?”

  She plucked at the tails of his coat. “Sit down, sit down, man, and stop your eternal bellowing. I didn't come here to torment you but to make friends.”

  He sat down, starched again, unconvinced.

  “Why not?” Ludmilla said. “We've both got more to gain from sticking together than from falling out and that's the arrangement which makes the best friends. And besides, well, I like you in spite of everything. Because you're my own kind, I suppose. We've got a lot in common, if it's only regrets.”

  “That's a fact,” he murmured. “I've always been sorry for you.”

  “It wouldn't have stopped you from trying to make mincemeat of me. Oh, don't bother to conceal it. I knew you had designs on the mine.”

  “My God, Ludmilla, I came here first and opened the place up.”

  “You're a pig-headed old fool,” Ludmilla said, touching his hand, “but I understand what you mean. Oh, only too well. A stroke of luck which comes twenty years too late is a bitter pill—worse than no luck at all.” “It's not for myself. I've lost the taste for what money buys. Up there,” he nodded towards the house, “I'm all at sea. They wouldn't believe it if you told them I came from a good family. Alford didn't.” He was lost in thought for a minute or two, fingering his scar. “But there's Harriet. . .”

  “And what about James?”

  “James?” he said, as if he had to recall that James was his son. “Oh, he's in Sydney learning to be an engineer.”

  “He's a steady lad. I had a good look at him the last time he was home.”

  “He's a pup. Like the rest of them—thinks we should've opened the country with kid gloves on.”

  “Oh, let them bury the past,” Ludmilla said. “Maybe it's more painful to them than to us even.”

  “If they can,” Cabell said grimly.

  “They can. They will. They must. They can't live in spite and hatred and regret as we've done. And that's what I brought you out here to talk about. I've got a niece, Aurelia's daughter. She's just coming back from a finishing school in England. It's time she had a husband. Why shouldn't she marry James.”

  “Aurelia's daughter!”

  “Isn't he Cabell's son?” But she calmed herself. “Now you listen to me. He SHALL marry Julia. Next year. Then he'll go to work at the mine and learn how to control what will come to him and Julia when we're gone. I'll see you through the mess you've got yourself into. Larsen will retire. He's getting too old and, anyway, he's not got the head for the business it's become—too simple and honest. You'll be chairman of the company as you wanted. And I—I'll take a rest. I'm over fifty now. There are troubles ahead. Sooner or later the boom will burst properly. The unions will be troublesome. I'm sick and tired of it. I'd like to go and see the Old Country while I've time.” Her voice was a little faded all at once. “I'm not holding any gun at your head, Derek. Say yes and you'll take a load off my shoulders. They were never expected to carry such loads, you know.”

  Cabell did not answer at once. She saw his grey face turn and peer at her.

  She smiled. “Suspicious old Rusty Guts. You can't believe I haven't got something up my sleeve.”

  “It all sounds mighty fine, but dash it all, woman, a minute ago. . .”

  “If it needs explaining,” Ludmilla said, “then first of all I'd rather have the devil I know than the devil I don't, and you've got a head for business. Everybody says that. That's one thing. Then there's the bad old past. Only one man can help J
ulia to bury that—you. If she marries James I can trust you to bury it deep. See, I'm frank, aren't I? And the third thing is I like you, because we both got something from life we didn't bargain for. Has it ever struck you,” she said, mocking again, “that we might have met and married each other if we'd stayed in England. Or even here, if you hadn't already. . .”

  “That's true enough, too.”

  The garden, festive but deserted, looked forlorn with the stars and the darkness taunting its flimsy lanterns. Under the music the drumming of frogs in the black lily-pond was harsh and lonely.

  Ludmilla sighed. “Well, it's no good bemoaning. Let us finish this off and see how Harriet's enjoying herself. Is it yes or no?”

  “When d'you want me to tell James?”

  “As soon as you like.”

  “I'll send for him at once.”

  “Perhaps they could go to Europe for their honeymoon,” Ludmilla said.

  “James wouldn't refuse that.”

  “He won't refuse.”

  They returned to the house arm in arm.

  Ludmilla looked up at the stars. Their tremulous summer light blurred the hard angles of her face. “The Southern Cross,” she said sentimentally. “He's seen some wicked things. May what we've done tonight wipe some of them out!”

  “Amen!” Cabell said piously, but he was thinking of other things. His step had a spring in it and his lips the shadow of a friendly, forgiving smile as he re-entered the ballroom.

  Chapter Thirteen: Diversion at a Vice-Regal Ball

  Holding herself close to Doug with her vinelike arms, Harriet cried excitedly through the music, “I've found a way. You won't laugh at me, will you?”

  On the contrary. “Don't hang on like that. They're all looking at you,” he said.

  It was true. In the corners the wallflowers and dowagers were whispering behind their fans. There she was—Cabell's daughter, that one dancing with young Mr Peppiott. Haven't you heard? The Peppiotts are breaking their necks to make a match of it. Of course he's got money, the old miser. Mrs Peppiott tries to make out he's related to a peer, but you only need to see him. Such a bushwhacker—and such coarse language. The way he was talking to dear Lord Alford just now! Well, he married a convict woman, you know, and they say Black Jem the bushranger was some relation.