Inheritors

by Неизвестный

  Chapter Two: The Dutiful Son

  The news that Harriet had run away uprooted James from London.

  Julia was annoyed. “Leave civilization and comfort again—whatever for?”

  “My father's an old man,” James said. “It will be a terrible blow to him—terrible.”

  “You mean you hope it will.”

  He strode about the room muttering, “I foresaw it. I tried to prevent it. I reasoned with her. But she'd have none of my advice. And now! Poor Father. How he spoilt her. Every wish anticipated. She could do no wrong. Little did he think. . . poor old Dad.” He turned his eyes up. “But God disposes.”

  He looked the picture of misery, but that was his normal look these days. His face, framed in mutton chops already sprinkled with grey, was long and lugubrious, with vertical wrinkles, like the wire basket of a muzzle, round his tight mouth. He was as thin as a rake and a martyr to indigestion and colds in the head. Impossible to imagine that recklessness had ever sparkled in those yellow eyes, or happy boyish laughter rung from that thin throat with the drooping Adam's apple, from which his voice came in a fluty monotone that gave his most complacent utterances a baffling note of complaint—impossible yes, for any one except James. He still fought nightly battles when his devils danced before him the pageant of a gay, brave, defiant lad and he buried his face in the pillow and moaned, “Say, could that lad be I?” It was some comfort, some little bitter comfort to reflect then upon the Will of God which excuses and justifies the will-lessness of men.

  “You seem to overlook the fact that Harriet is apparently very happy,” Julia interrupted, “although she neglected your advice.”

  James stopped in his striding and re-read Harriet's letter.

  DEAR JAMES,

  You will be surprised to learn that I have run away from Father to marry Jack Cash. No, you shouldn't be surprised, Jimmy, because I always told you I would. Oh, how glad I am. How happy, happy, happy. Jack was just the man for me. It took me a long while to find out, that is, it took me a long while to find out what other men were like and what a priceless, dear gem of a man he was. Be pleased for me, Jimmy. I'm going to have a baby. If it's a boy, one of its names shall be yours. Oh, Jimmy dear, hasn't everything turned out right after all. Hasn't it?. . .

  “The ungrateful little beast!” James muttered. His hands trembled on the letter and his upper lip shook like a leaf on the sharply intaken breath.

  “But she'll pay for it. Such selfishness won't go unpunished.”

  “Otherwise what reward for Esau?” Julia said with a wry smile.

  “I know my duty if that's what you mean,” James said loftily.

  “FAUTE DE MIEUX!” Julia said. “So I must go and live amongst sheep and cattle and stupid people again.”

  “Naturally my place is at my father's side.”

  “Oh, James,” she pleaded, “try to tell the truth for once. You know you hate the Reach as much as I do. You know you hate him too. He's a horrid old man. He bullies you.”

  “Indeed!” James's surprise was almost genuine, so far had the oftrepeated story of the noble Australian CONQUISTADOR, and the tales of Mr Kipling, and the reverence of investors sunk in. “Father is human like the rest of us,” he said in that studiously equable way he had cultivated for intercourse with Julia, as though she was a very irritating child he was determined to treat kindly, “and he has his—er. . .”

  “Eccentricities?”

  “Moods,” James said judicially. “But they are justified by his position, his age, and the stupendous work he has done for his people. It's not for us to judge him. If he spoilt Harriet he has had to suffer for it. Ahem.”

  “He's an old brute,” Julia said, “and I'm not going to live under the same roof with him.”

  This was very bad psychology on Julia's part, for if anything was needed to turn James's pleasant little dream of confronting a penitent and broken father with forgiveness it was the additional satisfaction of making Julia do something she did not want to do.

  “Of course you will live under the same roof. Where else is there to live at the Reach?”

  “I won't go. I won't leave this house.”

  “I shall put this house in the agent's hands to-morrow,” James said, and he did.

  But when the time came to leave his home in Westminster, his club in Carlton Terrace, his dinners with Imperialist statesmen, his nodding acquaintance with peers of the realm who borrowed money from him, he weakened a little. Even the joy of having his father all to himself now promised hardly to balance the ordeal of eating at the same table with Julia and his mother. He put his departure off from month to month. Then came the news of Emma's death. He wrapped a crape band round his arm, received the condolences of his friends with a resigned melancholy, and sailed for Australia.

  In advance he savoured the homecoming to the lonely and desolate old man who would understand at last which of his children really loved him. As the ship ploughed with aggravating slowness across the Indian Ocean James paced the decks and planned magnanimous speeches. His father had been unjust, cruelly unjust, but far be it from James to tell him so. He would say, “Father, I have given up my beautiful home in London and all my friends and a most congenial life to come back to you when others, in whom you wrongly confided your trust, have deserted you. What more can I do for you? Don't be afraid to lay your burdens on my shoulders. I am young and strong and willing. I will take over your work while you spend the evening of your days in peace.”

  Of course it did not work out that way at all. The first newspaper James opened on landing at Sydney told how Larry was in jail waiting to be charged with feloniously wounding Cabell with intent to murder, and that Cabell was to give evidence against him as soon as he was well.

  “Another scandal in the family?” Julia said. “Dear me, what will your dear Lady Beavershank say?”

  James put his hands under his coat-tails and cracked his knuckles, but his face, as always when Julia spoke in that mocking voice, leaning her own towards him as though inviting him to slap it, was blank except for the slight uplifting of an eyebrow at an incomprehensible impertinence.

  A week later he was in his father's room at the Reach, not supporting a tottering ancient with assurances of devotion but absorbing through wide eyes and tingling ears and gaping mouth the forgotten form of a hateful and obscene old tyrant.

  “Don't talk to me, you young jackanapes,” Cabell said. “I'll see the bastard gets his deserts if I have to drag myself to the court on crutches.” His face was blue and lop-sided with contusions, his mouth fell in on his bare gums, and his brow was gone from his sound eye where the toe of Larry's boot had flayed it.

  “But the scandal!” James protested, his high, smooth voice slightly mincing after Cabell's. “Think what people will say—a father sending his son to jail!” He pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed his perspiring forehead. A faint perfume struggled through the room's stench of horse medicines and greasy old harness.

  Cabell looked at him blackly and spat on the floor. “What's scandal to me!”

  “But my friends in London!” James wailed. “It might leak out. Have some consideration, sir.”

  “What do I care for your friends,” Cabell said, eyeing him again, jealously—his stylish clothes, his appearance of a highly respected gentleman. “They're not my friends. I can't lose any more than I've lost.” He ranted around the room. “His bitch of a mother robbed me of the only thing I'd ever loved. She poisoned Harriet's mind against me. Well, I'll show her. I'll show her. If she's got fifty thousand devils in league with her she can't do any worse now.”

  “How can you say it, sir!” James said shocked. “Mother is dead.”

  “Aye, and damned!” He stumbled back to his chair and sat down.

  “Perhaps you do her an injustice,” James said cautiously. “Of course, far be it from me to say anything to Harriet's discredit, but she was always extremely wilful and a trifle spoilt. She was always talking about
running away. God knows, sir, I argued with her. If she'd listened to me you'd've been spared, but she'd made up her mind long, long ago. You can see from this.” He showed Cabell Harriet's letter. “I only show it to ease your own mind, Father. You may think that there was something, some kindness you neglected. Also to disabuse you of any feelings against Mother.”

  Cabell read the letter, snarling. “I heard about the brat. So it's true. Says he married her. I don't believe it.”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” James said quickly. “I'm sure they're married. I'm sure it's perfectly regular.”

  “Think so, do you? Well, I don't. Mark my words, he'll leave her. He's a tramp. He's deserted women before. One day the coach'll drive up and out will step your precious sister. That's how it'll be. Out she'll step, with a brat on her hip—if it hasn't died of starvation before that. And she'll come in here and beg me to forgive her. She'll stand there and confess what a mistake she made. Oh, yes, she will. I know it. I know it.”

  “Ah, Father,” James said soothingly, “hope deferred maketh the heart sick. Harriet will never come back.”

  “Who said anything about hope? She's got whore-house blood in her. Let her go there when he abandons her.” Then his head sank into his hands and a heavy sigh shook him.

  It was the cue for James's little piece. “Believe me, sir, I know how these events must have distressed you, but it's not right to say that you have lost everything. In London some very distinguished gentlemen expressed their HIGHEST esteem for you. Mr Joseph Chamberlain himself. . .”

  Cabell seemed not to hear. He was sneering down at the letter.

  James's speech died in his throat. Was this really the man Mr Joseph Chamberlain esteemed? Was this the man who “kept the Light burning in the Outposts of Empire?” It would be putting it mildly to say that James was shocked at re-discovering the little details sentimental memory had repressed during the last three years—the tilt at the corner of the mouth, for example, the indecent tongue, and worst of all the stamp, on every feature, of an equivocal past. He was revolted, outraged, and, finally, speechlessly angered. Why, this man was by no means at the end of his wicked days, James thought, as he watched his father crush the letter into a ball and throw it across the room. He still had the energy for black deeds, and the inclination too.

  But comfortingly, as he looked at the grey beard, the skin almost transparent on the ravaged skull, the back humped under the weight of sorrow, he realized that the hard years had left their mark, and he thought of those gum-trees which flower long after the ants have eaten to their heart, strong-seeming, till one night the wind comes and smashes them and everybody marvels to see how only a little fibre was left intact to sustain them. This thought quite melted his heart again and he said, feelingly, “Besides, I hope that you don't doubt my anxiety to serve you and my deep affection, sir.”

  “Affection be damned,” Cabell snorted. “Take your starched pants where they belong. There's no place for them here.”

  James was hurt. “Indeed, Father, I'm no less of a man for trying to look and behave like a gentleman. And as for where I belong, sir, that's here. I wish to take up your work where you leave it—this glorious work of an empire-builder for which you are so esteemed abroad.” He got this interpretation of his father's purpose in life over quickly and looked up anxiously to see how Cabell took it.

  His head sunk in his shoulders, blinking on vacancy, Cabell said nothing, so James expanded, “If I may say so, sir, the country is now beginning a new phase of its history. The work of the pioneer is done, and we have now entered the epoch of politics and culture. Australia and the Empire will never forget what they owe to those who blazed the trail, but even those deficient in physical strength, like myself, may now take a part in the work. In fact, as I see it, what is most needed now is not physical strength but the moral and civilizing influence of the—ah. . .” A light in his father's eye choked the words back again. He gestured and added less rhetorically than he had begun, “gentleman.”

  Cabell's eye flickered at him for several seconds. “I don't understand long words,” he said, “but it sounds mighty like as if you were telling me I ought to go and bury myself.”

  “I hope you'll be spared to us many years yet,” James said quickly, jutted his jaw, and added, “but. . .”

  “But what?”

  “Why, sir, you can't go on like this for ever,” James said, furiously. “The business between you and Larry—it's barbaric. Decent people don't do such things. The times are changed. You—yes, you ought to retire.”

  Cabell stood up and kicked his chair away. “So that's what's brought you back. Thought you could smell dead meat, eh? You were wrong. Understand? I'll see you all under the ground.” He marched the room again, waving his hands, cursing, and repeating, “I'll see you all out. I'll live to a hundred.”

  Then a surprising thing happened. The chair he had kicked aside was standing in the middle of the room. He blundered against it and knocked it over. James picked it up and put it out of the way. When Cabell returned he swerved away from where the chair had fallen and blundered into it again. “Is the old fool blind?” James wondered irritably, and as he picked the chair up a second time and stood it against the wall, he looked at his father's swollen, blackened eye. Cabell was coming down the room. As he passed where the chair had been he hesitated and put out a hand to feel his way.

  “By jove,” James thought, “so he is.”

  Chapter Three: Poor Old Dad

  Cabell was not blind, not quite. He could recognize James across the table, could read a letter if he held it close to his face, but ten paces away forms were capricious. He refused to admit it. The doctor warned him that Larry had injured his sound eye, which had been doing double work for years, and that his only hope of keeping the bit of sight he had was to stay in his room with the blinds down; so he got rid of the doctor. “See as far as ever I could.” Even to himself he pretended that he could see the top of Black Mountain, the road across the valley, the cattle he heard splashing in the river mud. He bathed his eye in salt water, sat up till the early hours figuring over mining reports and stock lists, and fearfully watched the circumference of light contracting about him every day.

  To spy out what went on behind the fog, cover for thieves and conspirators, he kept Geoffrey at his side. “Looks like rain,” he would say, staring at the sky he could not see.

  “Looks a bit that way,” Geoffrey would agree. “There's a cloud on Black Mountain.”

  “I can see it,” Cabell would say testily.

  Geoffrey took care he did not see him grin.

  No hint of blindness passed between them. For months Cabell had been swearing that he would go and belt the life out of Cash as soon as his detectives tracked Harriet down, but Geoffrey knew that all the time he had in his drawer a report from the detectives telling him that Harriet and Cash were in Sydney, married, and that he could do nothing. Geoffrey listened to his father's rambling, savage threats and helped him to curse the stupidity of detective agencies.

  But Cabell was not mad. When Geoffrey was least expecting it Cabell would pounce and grab him by the collar. “That's a new suit you've got on.”

  “It's not. I got it last year.”

  “Don't lie to me. Where'd you get the money?”

  Geoffrey argued, swore, and fought in vain.

  “You're skinning me, you young leech. I know. You and Custard have been selling cattle.” Cabell clouted him till he howled for mercy.

  “Ow, Pa, don't hit me. I'll tell you. We sold the Durhams on Stony Creek.”

  “Where's the money?”

  “Let me go and I'll tell you. You're choking me.”

  Cabell let go his collar and he skipped around the table. “It's a lie. We didn't sell anything.”

  Cabell went for him again, but he kept just within the grey fringe of the fog. “Go and see for yourself, why don't you,” he squeaked, impudent in his safety while Cabell groped after him. “Who wants your rotten Durha
ms? I could've had all the money I wanted, couldn't I?”

  The old man paused. “Eh? What d'you mean by that?”

  “I needn't've called Inspector Carmody, need I?”

  “You dog. Wait till I get a fist on you.”

  “There you are, that's all the thanks a bloke gets. A bloke saves your life and you're always picking on him. I could've been having a good time now. I could've owned my own racehorse. I could go to America. But a bloke tries to be a good son and you treat him like this. All right, Pa, next time I'll know better.”

  Cabell threw the inkstand at him. “Get out of this before I kill you.”

  “All right,” Geoffrey said in a hurt voice. “I'm going. I'll get a job in Brisbane. I'll go at once.” He faded from the doorway.

  “Come back here,” Cabell growled. There was no answer. Geoffrey's feet pattered away along the veranda. “Come back here, I tell you,” Cabell shouted. A door slammed. The house was silent. “Geoffrey! Geoffrey! You young sod, come back here at once.” He heard Geoffrey go whistling down the slope.

  He returned to his table, piled with letters to be answered, ration sheets to be checked, confidential orders to brokers to be written. . . and no amanuensis, nobody he could trust. At the end of the day when Geoffrey came in to dinner he said, wheedling, “What was that horse you said was for sale?”

  “Thunderlight.”

  “Yes. How much did you say?”

  “Eight hundred guineas.”

  “I might buy it for you. A little Christmas present, eh?”