Out of the crowd a diminutive dark-haired girl suddenly came rushing over to Anne. The dark girl was wearing a stunning blue gown with white ruffled trim. Her hair was done in the latest style; she was very much the elegant young lady.
Kissing Anne on the cheek, she exclaimed, “I haven’t seen you since finishing school!”
“That is so,” Anne said. “And we were such dear friends!”
“Inseparable,” the girl smiled.
Anne introduced her to everyone as Susan Gray, the daughter of a wealthy importer. Susan seemed to be intelligent but somewhat given to talking on and on rapidly. She offered opinions on the play, talked about her father’s health, which was apparently on the decline, and announced that she was going to Paris for six months to perfect her French.
“A terribly smart school,” Susan said happily. “And operated by women with great social background. My mother says every lady should know a second language.”
“I dare say she is right,” Bart Woods said.
Susan turned to Anne and asked her, “Why don’t you join me? We would have such fun together exploring Paris and meeting French society people!”
Anne said, “It would be fun. But I think not.”
Becky spoke up quickly, “Why couldn’t you take the course? I think Susan’s mother is right. French is an excellent second tongue.”
Anne stared at her mother in wonder. “You don’t speak any other language but our own.”
“And I regret it,” Becky said. “It would only take six months. And I could come over once or twice to make sure you were doing well.”
Susan implored, “Please, Anne! Tell me you’ll join me!”
Anne was blushing. “I don’t know! I’ll have to think about it.” And she turned to Donald to ask, “What do you think I should do?”
Donald said, “The decision must be yours. But it does seem a good opportunity to broaden your knowledge and experience. And I shall be very busy getting familiar with my work at the yards for the next six or more months.”
Bart now said his piece, declaring, “I vow I wish I had the same chance. Paris is a great city.”
“You see,” Susan told Anne. “Everyone wants you to go.”
Anne said, “I’ll have to give it more thought.”
“You!” Susan pouted appealingly. “Well, I shall be in touch with you in a few days. You may expect to hear from me!”
Just then, the bell sounded for the second half, and they all returned to their seats in the theatre. Becky was in a better mood now to enjoy the performance, for she was almost sure she could persuade Anne to go to Paris with her friend. They all went to The Strand Restaurant for a late supper after the show, and she noted that Anne and Donald spent quite a lot of time discussing the six month trip.
A few days later Anne decided to accompany Susan. Becky sent the two girls off on a shopping trip while she prepared to get enough clothes ready to send. She chose a good-sized trunk and brought it down to Anne’s bedroom to begin packing it. Choosing all the items to be included would take several days. Not until Anne was ready to leave would the trunk be locked and sent to the railway for transport to the channel boat.
She was busy with the trunk when her elderly housekeeper came in to inform her she had a visitor. When she went out to the parlor, she was surprised to see Vera Woods primly standing there.
She was startled to see how Vera had aged. Her face was almost as withered as Becky remembered her mother’s had been. She made a brave show of hiding her confusion by asking the thin woman in an unfashionable black suit, “Do sit down!”
Vera said, “I can only stay a few minutes.”
She smiled. “Still we may as well be comfortable.”
They sat in chairs facing each other. Vera on the very edge of hers looking most unhappy. The thin woman asked, “Is your daughter at home?”
“No. She is out shopping with a friend.”
“Very good,” Vera said, hunching a little in the chair. “I had hoped never to enter your house.”
“You are most welcome. We were all good friends once.”
“As my dear mother often says, times have changed a good deal.”
“How is your mother?” Becky asked politely.
“Poorly,” Vera said. “Very poorly. She cannot live long.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Then I shall be quite alone,” Vera said.
She lifted her eyebrows. “You have a fine son and a husband.”
Vera eyed her viciously. “My son will be leaving home in a short while. And you have taken posession of my husband!”
Becky was shocked. “I?”
“Better to understand each other from the start,” the withered Vera said. “It is a fact and we both know it. Bart is a coarse, cruel man with a nature different from mine. My mother warned me against marrying him, but I would not listen.”
Becky said, “I remember. You did it because I had married Mark Gregg, with whom you were infatuated.”
“I loved Mark,” the other woman burst out. “I shall always cherish his memory until I die!”
“You are welcome to do so,” she said. “I remember Mark as a good deal less than a saint. If you think Bart coarse and cruel, I can promise that you would have found Mark worse. He was most unfeeling where women were concerned.”
“How dare you say that! You who betrayed him!”
“It is true.”
Vera glared at her. “You will not change my memory of him. Nothing you can say will do that!”
“Then I shall say no more. Only this, had you tried harder to be a proper wife to Bart he would never have turned to me, just as I turned to him when Mark treated me with extreme cruelty. I mean—before his last illness.”
“Excuses!” Vera said with derision.
“I suppose we all seem very weak and sinful to you and your mother.”
“Do not bring my dear mother into this,” Vera said. “We all know that Anne is your bastard child by Bart.”
“Strong words from a genteel lady.”
“It’s the truth. And now it would seem you are encouraging my son, Donald who, thanks to his father, pays no attention to me, to be overly friendly with your daughter, although you know full well that the two have a common father.”
“I would rather not discuss this with you,” she said.
“I insist,” the withered Vera said. “That is my reason for being here.”
“Very well,” Becky said in a tired voice.
“What are you going to do to prevent this tragedy?”
“It has already been done,” she said. “I’m sending Anne to France for six months to study French. This will remove her from the London scene. I feel reasonably sure that both she and Donald will meet someone else to their liking during this time.”
Vera’s pale face turned scarlet. She said, “So I did not need to make this call.”
“No.”
The thin woman rose angrily. “I might have known you and Bart would arrange it in your own way. That is what you have done since the start. I have continually been left out. At least it is not a new experience.”
Becky escorted her to the door and as she opened it, she said, “I’m sorry you feel so strongly about me. I wish I could somehow make things easier for you.”
“I despise you!” Vera said with a venomous glance. Then she went out into the street.
It had been a rather shattering experience, and Becky followed it with two glasses of sherry. By that time her nerves had calmed and she had decided that Vera had merely been playing the familiar role of being her own worst enemy. She was thankful she had arranged for Anne’s trip and hoped the six months grace might offer a small miracle.
Anne left for Paris the following week. They all went to the train with her, and Bart and Becky exchanged troubled glances as they saw the ardent kisses between Donald and Anne as he put her aboard the train. Anne waved as the train started and Donald shouted to her that he would write
a letter every second day—a sign that they had only delayed a crisis, but had not solved it.
Becky was lonely without her daughter. But Donald made it a practice to come by almost daily. It was as if being in Anne’s home and talking with her mother somehow made him feel closer to the lovely blonde girl. Becky worried about his calling, but was almost grateful for his coming by since it helped her at a difficult time.
Almost every day Donald had some new complaints about the way the shipyard was being operated. Pacing up and down before her, he worried, “Father is just plain too old-fashioned!”
She smiled. “He used to say that about Anne’s father. I can’t imagine that he has lost so much ground.”
“You’re a major shareholder in the company, and you should be concerned,” the young man said. “All around us the other yards are converting gradually to the construction of steel ships. While father is busy making a new long-term committment with an iron factory.”
“Don’t you think his experience counts?” she asked.
“I think he is not well; and he has lost interest in any expansion,” Donald said.
“That could be. His arthritis has given him much trouble. I’ve even suggested he should retire.”
“I wish he would retire,” Donald said worriedly. “Then I and the other young men heading the firm could put Gregg & Kerr in step with the modern shipbuilding scene.”
She was thinking of long ago and that forged letter. How Bart had risked both their reputations by forging Mark’s name to a letter of agreement for the banks. He had badly wanted to save the company then.
She said, “Do not make any mistake. Your father fought hard to modernize the yard years ago. He risked everything. I can understand that he is weary now.”
“Then ask him to let go of the reins,” Donald begged her. “He will listen to you.”
“I’ll talk to him,” she promised. “Your father has a background on the waterfront. He was very poor and worked his way up in the world. He wasn’t always that careful about what he did. Some of it was criminal. But he left that behind when he came into the firm and eventually married your mother. He became as respectable as any Kerr. But there is still much of that early savagery left in him. He won’t give up easily. Be sure of that!”
“His marriage to my mother was wrong!”
“I agree, but it is too late to correct that now.”
Donald looked at her with admiration in the handsome face so like his father’s. “I’m glad he has you. Otherwise, his life would be meaningless.”
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Perhaps that is why I’m against Anne making too hasty a decision about marriage.”
His smile was grim. “You mean about marrying me!”
“All right,” she said. “Since you say so.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m older. I’ve seen too many hasty marriages turn out unhappily. I love you both, and I don’t want to see either of you hurt.”
“I love Anne,” he said.
“I know that.”
“And she loves me.”
“That is all too likely,” she agreed. “You’ve been so close since you were children. But I beg you to at least try a flirtation with some other young woman before you ask Anne to marry you.”
He stared at her. “You think I will find someone else I like better?”
“I think you should try.”
“I never will.”
“Try!” she urged him.
He knelt before her and took her hands in his. What is wrong with me? Don’t you want me for a son-in-law?”
“It is because I like you so much I’m frightened for you. You must believe that,” she said.
He stared at her. “I think you honestly mean that.”
“I do,” she said.
He smiled sadly. “It’s a subject on which we aren’t apt to agree. I think we’d better drop it.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I had no letter from Anne this week. What about you?”
“I had three,” he said proudly.
“Now I know why I haven’t heard from her,” Becky said with a resigned smile.
In her loneliness she found herself hiring a carriage one day and going to the cemetery where Peg was buried. The past was almost closer to her than the present. The Crowns had long ago given up their tavern and gone to live with a nephew in the country somewhere in their old age. Poor Jimmy Davis had died before the tavern closed. The Crowns had let her know, and she had attended his funeral. The sight of him in a child-sized coffin had brought her to tears. So much heart in such a tiny body!
She had the carriage wait and walked in past the gray stone church to the cemetery. It was a fine, sunny day, not at all like that gloomy, wet morning on which Peg had been buried. She stepped carefully between the crowded gravestones until she came to the small one she’d had Phineas Pennifeather erect over her sister’s grave.
It was somewhat stained by leaves falling against it, but the lettering was there, clear enough for anyone to read. She knelt and touched the lettering, following each letter with her finger, tracing out the words Peg Lee. She felt love for her younger sister who had so unhappily let herself be destroyed. She had been hungry for the good things of life long denied her, so she had stumbled into a life of degradation and died before her time!
She remained there, thinking about her childhood with Peg and how happy they had been until her father’s accidental death. She could lay some blame to Mark for that! Mark who had tried to bargain with her for her father’s life with a few gold coins ! She had never truly forgiven him for that. But so much had happened since.
So many dead. Peg, Davy Brown, and Jimmy Davis, to name only those who had been closest to her. Then Mark, old Matthew Kerr, and Elizabeth, the spinster sister of Mark who had come to love Anne as if she had been Mark’s true child, and had relented on her deathbed and left her fortune to Anne. Becky knew she could not think badly of the lonely spinster, not after that.
She thought about Phineas Pennifeather and what a strong support he had given her when she badly needed it. The old man had been frail then, his body had been bent prematurely. Was it possible the venerable private detective was still alive? On an impulse, she left the cemetery and returned to the carriage to give him the address she remembered from long ago.
The stairs were just as dark and rickety as ever. And she was even more breathless than she’d been twenty years earlier as she reached the third landing. She went to the door which had led to the private detective’s office and found it locked.
“Who are you looking for?” asked an elderly man who’d emerged from another office.
“Phineas Pennifeather,” she said. “A private detective.”
The old man in the long black apron and wearing an eye-shade stared at her with his faded gray eyes. “I knew him,” he said.
“I hoped I might find him,” she said.
The old man chuckled. “Not here, you won’t. You can try the Green Road cemetery.”
She sighed. “He’s dead.”
“Yes. Not so long ago either. His business went to pot, but he still kept coming here. Habit I guess! How he climbed the stairs those last years is beyond me.”
“When did he die?”
“Only about three years ago. The office hasn’t been rented since. They’ll soon be tearing this building down.”
She nodded. “I see. I’m sorry I didn’t think about it sooner. I would have liked to talk with him.”
“Could tell a story or two, he could,” the old man said with a nod. “Claimed to have been employed by royalty at one time. But until the end his hearing was bad and his eyesight was almost gone.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He didn’t turn up one morning, so I knew he must be dead. I went around to where he had a room, and sure enough he’d died in the night. His landlady had called on a cousin to look after his burial.”
“I’m glad there was someone. He was a k
ind man.”
“Yes. I’d say that,” the old man with the eye shade said. “You don’t want anything in the line of printing? I have a small press and do fine work.”
“Not now,” she said. “But I will keep you in mind. I promise.”
“Well, I won’t be here long. Just till the building goes,” he said sadly. “Nothing lasts too long! Not even us!”
“All too true,” she agreed. And she made her way back down the stairs to the carriage. In a short time she was back home.
She did not tell Bart about Vera’s visit. He was in such pain from his arthritis of late that she hated to bother him about anything. Often when he came to spend the evening with her he would suddenly drop off to sleep. When this continued she knew he was weary beyond just ordinary tiredness. And she once again suggested he turn the business over to Donald.
“Not yet,” he said firmly. “I’m not ready yet.”
Henry Irving had revived The Bells. This play about the Polish Jew who committed murder and was afterwards haunted by the bells of the sleigh in which his victim had been travelling was a favorite of Bart’s. So he suggested that they attend one of the first performances. She never turned down these requests because she enjoyed getting out.
He picked her up in his carriage and on the way to the theatre told her, “Vera’s mother is in the hospital. Her heart. I don’t think she’ll last the week.”
“She must be very old.”
“Well over eighty,” he said grimly. “No one will miss her but Vera. I had Donald go to the hospital tonight with his mother.”
“You should have cancelled the evening at the theatre if you felt you should be there,” she said.
“Not I,” he said angrily. “I’m not a hypocrite. That old woman has been my enemy since the day I married Vera. I can’t pretend liking her because she’s dying.”
Becky suggested, “Perhaps it will be better after she’s gone. Vera may be easier to live with, not having her mother to dominate her.”
“No hope for her now,” he said darkly. “She is cast in her mother’s mold for all time. It will be like the evil old woman living on.”
Vintage Love Page 113