Near Neighbours

by Molly Clavering

  Accordingly, still protesting, he fetched what he grandly called his baggage, which turned out to be a small cardboard suitcase and a dilapidated basket of Italian raffia-work, and was installed in the bigger of the two enormous spare bedrooms on the top floor.

  He settled in at once, as if he had lived there all his life, and Miss Balfour had to confess to herself that it was pleasant to have his cheerful company. Edna was even more delighted, and said so openly. “It makes a bit o’ life about the house having a gentleman to do for,” she told her mistress.

  When the people whom it really concerned were all content, it was a pity that young Mr. Ferrier should have been so extremely disagreeable about it. Miss Balfour had rung him up on the Monday and asked if he could see her at his office. Mr. Ferrier, making an appointment for Tuesday morning, and hearing the reason for it, had wanted to know her brother-in-law’s address in Edinburgh.

  Miss Balfour said he was staying with her at Number Four Kirkaldy Crescent. Whereupon Mr. Ferrier, with complete if temporary loss of his legal suavity, had said quite sharply that he considered it very ill-advised of her to have invited Mr. Milner to be her guest under the circumstances.

  It was bad enough to be barked at down the telephone by Mr. Ferrier, who had been so kind and helpful when Belle died, and explained everything to her so carefully that she had not had the heart to tell him she was none the wiser for his trouble. Yes, that was quite bad enough, but the thought of the interview to come had made Miss Balfour feel quite sick.

  “And it was even worse than I expected,” she thought. “I almost lost my temper with Mr. Ferrier, he was so rude to poor Montagu!”

  It was Tuesday afternoon, and Miss Balfour was so shaken by her morning at the lawyer’s office that she had retired to the drawing-room as soon as lunch was over, to spend an hour or two on the sofa with her feet up.

  She was alone in the house. Her brother-in-law had gone on some errand of his own, about which she neither showed nor felt curiosity; Edna, who always went out during the afternoon, ostensibly to get some fresh air, was quite certainly chewing caramels (so bad for her teeth) in the nearest cinema.

  The sofa was comfortable, and Miss Balfour, with a thin old Paisley shawl over her slippered feet, ought to have felt peaceful and drowsy too.

  But though her body was at ease, her mind continued to turn over the outcome of her interview with Mr. Ferrier. She must really try to make herself understand about the money, which had made Mr. Ferrier so terribly angry . . . “An iniquitous arrangement,” he had called it. . . . “My uncle should never have allowed Mr. Balfour to make such a will, leaving all his property to his elder daughter with the proviso that you were to be looked after by her, Miss Balfour! See what has come of it” he had said—as if anyone, least of all herself, could have made Papa do anything he didn’t want to—“On Mrs. Milner’s death, instead of your being owner of half the estate, you find yourself dependent on your brother-in-law!”

  Miss Balfour sighed. Of course, Papa had always treated her as if she were half-witted. She had often appeared almost so with him.

  She had said so to Mr. Ferrier, but he had only glowered at her.

  If that had been all, Miss Balfour would not have minded so much, in spite of the shock of discovering that almost all her possessions seemed to belong to Montagu; but then Mr. Ferrier had turned and rent her brother-in-law, which had been most unjust.

  “I understood you were dead,” he had said, in a tone clearly showing his indignation that this was not so. “I have always believed that Mrs. Milner was a widow.”

  “I assure you I am very much alive, my dear fellow,” Montagu answered, at his most jaunty and annoying.

  “You will have to prove your identity to my satisfaction,” Mr. Ferrier had said. “And let me tell you that though your legal rights to this estate may be adequate, in my opinion your moral rights are nil. Mrs. Milner could have divorced you for desertion any time during the past twenty years.”

  “Yes, but, you see, she didn’t,” Montagu had said. “There’s no need to get into such a temper, though it does you credit. I have no intention of depriving my sister-in-law of her property.”

  “Then it is a very great pity that you came here at all,” Mr. Ferrier had retorted. “And I must say, in spite of your protestations it looks as if you had come for just one thing—”

  “So I have. To make the acquaintance of my charming sister-in-law.”

  “No. For money,” Mr. Ferrier had said brutally.

  But at this stage in the proceedings Miss Balfour had interrupted.

  “Oh, please!” she had said faintly. “This is horrible! Of course, my brother-in-law must have what is due to him, Mr. Ferrier. And—and if you don’t mind, I think I must go home now. This has been very upsetting—”

  Both men had turned to her at once. Mr. Ferrier, suddenly seeming very young, had muttered an apology for causing her distress, and immediately added: “You will hear from me, Mr. Milner,” in a threatening voice.

  Montagu, all solicitude, had led her away and insisted on taking her home in a taxi.

  As they were bowling westwards over the Dean Bridge, with a glimpse of trees, green lawns and the shrunken Water of Leith far below, Miss Balfour had pulled herself together and said, “I am so sorry. I have never heard Mr. Ferrier being unpleasant in that way before. He is usually such a very polite, considerate young man. I do apologize.”

  Her brother-in-law, however, had shaken his head. “That is a very decent young fellow, Dorothea,” he had said soberly. “A bit hot-headed for a lawyer, perhaps, but he really is thinking of your interests, and I liked him for it.”

  Having muddled over the affair to its conclusion, and decided that until she knew her financial position in simple terms of pounds, shillings and pence it was no good worrying, Miss Balfour closed her eyes. She drifted into a light uneasy doze remembering Montagu’s tribute to Mr. Ferrier, and thinking, as women so often have and so often will, that men were strange creatures.

  The gentle opening of the door roused her, and she started up, blinking, to see Edna beside the sofa.

  “It’s tea-time, Miss Dorothea,” she said. “And one of the young ladies from next door says can she speak to you a minute?”

  “Yes, of course. Ask her to have some tea, Edna, please,” said Miss Balfour, patting her hair into place and kicking the shawl off her feet.

  “Will Mr. Milner be in to tea’m?” asked Edna.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say,” replied Miss Balfour. “Put three cups on the tray and then you needn’t bother about it.”

  “I think the young lady wants to see you alone’m!” said Edna.

  Her voice was so heavy with mysterious meaning that Miss Balfour guessed that the afternoon’s film had been a thriller, and with great kindness did not show any impatience, nor ask which of the Lenox girls it was.

  “Very well, Edna. Ask her to come up, and don’t bring tea for half an hour,” she said.

  “Or you could ring’m,” suggested Edna, who, for some reason of her own, adored answering bells.

  “Very well,” said Miss Balfour again, and while Edna went away, she sat wondering if it were Hazel or Rowan who had come to see her.

  When the door opened, it was their elder sister Willow who came in, looking nervous and defiant, though enchantingly pretty in spite of it.

  Miss Balfour did not know Willow as well as the other Lenoxes, but she smiled at her warmly.

  “Come in, my dear,” she said. “What a very pretty frock, and how becoming it is to you.”

  Willow’s face brightened, and she gave a swift glance at the long narrow mirror on the wall, where her slender figure in the grey glazed cotton, patterned with green and black, was reflected dimly as if under water, and her pale gold hair shone like spring sunshine.

  “It is very nice of you to come and see me,” Miss Balfour went on, doing her best to encourage her visitor. “Because I was feeling rather cross and worried, and not
liking my own company.”

  “Oh!” cried Willow. “Oh!”

  She flew across the room and fell on her knees beside Miss Balfour’s chair.

  “Oh, Miss Dorothea, that’s just how I feel—cross and worried!” she babbled. “And it isn’t a bit nice of me to come and see you. I should have come days and days ago, only when Mummy told me to ask you if there was anything I needed help about, I made up my mind I could manage perfectly well by myself!”

  “Why shouldn’t you?” said Miss Balfour, as Willow paused for breath.

  “Only you see,” Willow said dolefully, “I couldn’t. I’ve got into the most awful mess, and there’s no money left. I don’t know where it’s all gone, and Mrs. Baird said this morning she wouldn’t come back till Mummy’s home again if she couldn’t get her money regularly, and—”

  Miss Balfour listened while Willow poured out her tale of woe and mismanagement. She could not always make sense of money and business as talked about by Mr. Ferrier, but weekly or monthly tradesmen’s books and household economy were simple to her.

  “Didn’t you keep an account of what you were spending?” she asked, when it became plain, from Willow’s muddled statements, that she had succeeded in spending the money left by Mrs. Lenox for the first month in just under a fortnight.

  “Well, I did, at first, but it was such a bore,” said Willow. “I hate adding and subtracting, and anyway, the money I had left never came out right with what I’d written down.”

  “It has a nasty habit of not squaring,” Miss Balfour agreed, remembering how anxiously she used to work over her household accounts before submitting them to Belle’s sharp eyes and acid comments.

  She looked at Willow, kneeling among the crumpled folds of her pretty frock, and thought hard.

  “Have you any ideas about what you are going to do, my dear?” she asked, in a brisk, business-like way.

  Willow’s beautiful grey eyes widened. “I—I thought perhaps you would help me,” she murmured trustingly.

  “So I will, if I can. But we must think what would be the best way.”

  “If only Archie weren’t on that horrid long run I could ask him for the money,” said Willow. “But he won’t be home for weeks.”

  “That wouldn’t be very fair to Archie,” was Miss Balfour’s comment, and she spoke rather drily. “He gives you an allowance, I suppose?”

  “Oh, yes, of course! But I seem to have spent nearly all of it already—”

  Miss Balfour sighed. She was beginning to see why Mrs. Lenox worried about her eldest daughter’s lack of responsibility. “I think,” she said, “that we should see just what you have. Is there any of the housekeeping money left?”

  Brought down to hard facts, Willow became much less helpless, produced the remnants of the housekeeping money, and after some shrewd questioning from Miss Balfour, remembered that she had a Post Office Savings book with quite a respectable sum in it.

  “Then you must use that,” said Miss Balfour. “The only alternative that I can see is to ask your brother and sisters to help you out.”

  But Willow not unnaturally was against this. “They’ll be horrible about it, and never let me hear the end of it,” she said, and she sighed. “I’ll just have to use my Post Office savings. I meant them for a new fur coat.”

  “Perhaps your husband will give you a fur coat some day,” said Miss Balfour. “Would you mind ringing the bell? I think we would both be the better for a cup of tea.”

  Willow, feeling a little aggrieved and looking a little sulky, because she felt that the sacrifice of her fur coat had been treated altogether too lightly, went over to the fire-place and pushed down the handle of the old-fashioned bell, with its garland of small bright flowers painted on a white china surface. She had hoped, without putting it into words even to herself, that Miss Balfour would have offered to lend her enough to carry on. Archie would have paid it back as soon as he came home. It seemed unfair that she should have to use her own savings, when, after all, she had spent the housekeeping money on Murray and Hazel and Rowan far more than herself . . . well, of course, she had borrowed enough to buy the grey glazed cotton. . . . Everything was a muddle, and so boring that she could scream.

  Turning impatiently from the bell, Willow saw Miss Balfour standing by the window with the hard light of an August afternoon full on her face. She looked old and frail and tired. Compunction smote Willow so hard that she bundled the fur coat and her boredom to the back of her mind, and crossed the room to stand beside Miss Balfour.

  “I’m afraid I’ve made you tired,” she said. “I’m sorry, truly I am. I am very selfish and thoughtless, and you’ve helped me out of my muddle, and I’ve never thanked you.”

  “My dear child!” Miss Balfour smiled, and now the tired look had gone, to Willow’s relief. “You haven’t tired me at all. I was thinking how much pleasanter it would have been if I could just have given you the money you need. But I know your mother wouldn’t like it, and—”

  Willow broke in impetuously, quite forgetting that she had been thinking exactly the same only a minute earlier.

  “Of course, Mummy would have had a thousand fits!” she cried. “Of course, you couldn’t give me the money. It’s my own fault for being so careless and extravagant and—and my old fur coat will do another winter perfectly well!”

  “You mustn’t feed your household so nobly,” suggested Miss Balfour, laughing openly.

  “At least, we won’t be down to porridge and kippers and bread,” Willow said.

  Then, rather hesitantly, she bent and kissed Miss Balfour’s faded cheek. “You’re a darling, Miss Dorothea!” she said. “The others always say so, but I’ve never quite believed it until now.”

  “It is very sweet of them, but perhaps they have rather rammed me down your throat,” said Miss Balfour. “And one is usually apt to dislike the unfortunate person whose praises one hears sung too often.”

  “Yes, like the books people say you must read because you’ll be certain to love them,” agreed Willow.

  And then Edna came in with the tea, and shortly afterwards Willow went home full of good resolutions and feeling a somewhat unmerited glow of virtue because she was giving up her new fur coat.

  “Well,” thought Miss Balfour, when she went to change her dress for dinner—since Montagu Milner had come to stay the evening meal had blossomed into dinner—“Well, I haven’t had such a day for a very long time, if ever, and at my age these emotional disturbances are a little tiring. I am glad it is over.”

  No conversational effort was required of her during dinner, for her brother-in-law, who appeared to be in very good spirits, talked throughout, and only polite murmurs of assent were necessary.

  Afterwards, when they were sitting in the drawing-room, one on each side of a cheerful wood fire—the evening air grew chill after sunset—and Miss Balfour was knitting peacefully, her brother-in-law said suddenly:

  “I expect you have been wondering where I’ve been all afternoon, Dorothea?”

  “Not in the least, Montagu. Why should I?” replied Miss Balfour.

  Then, seeing that he seemed dashed by her polite lack of curiosity, she added kindly: “I hope you enjoyed yourself, whatever you were doing.”

  “Enjoyment was not my aim,” he said reproachfully. “But I think I may say that I have succeeded in arranging our affairs satisfactorily—that is, if you approve of my idea, of course.”

  Miss Balfour’s knitting needles ceased their gentle clatter, and she looked across at him, her attention and her apprehension roused.

  “Where have you been, Montagu?” she asked.

  “I went back and saw young Ferrier,” he said. “And told him what I thought was the fairest way of settling everything. After a good deal of argument, I managed to talk him round.”

  “Well, go on! Can’t you see that it’s most unkind and thoughtless of you to keep me in suspense like this?” said Miss Balfour, with most unwonted sharpness. This slow recital was almost t
oo much for her self-control. Her future depended on what he and Mr. Ferrier had agreed upon, and he sat there rolling out his pompous phrases at her!

  “I didn’t mean to keep you in suspense. I’m sorry,” he said, startled. “But—it’s a little difficult to put it to you. I—it seemed such a good idea in Ferrier’s office, and now I’m not sure it isn’t just infernal cheek on my part.”

  Miss Balfour had herself in hand again. She saw that it was useless to try to hurry him, and she resumed her knitting, though with shaking hands.

  “First of all, I want you to believe that I had no idea, no idea at all, that your father had left everything to Belle,” he said earnestly. “What I was hoping for was a slice off her half of the estate. It was a frightful shock when I found that the whole thing was hers. I do hope you believe me—”

  “Yes. I believe you,” said Miss Balfour quietly.

  “Thank you, Dorothea. That makes it easier for me to tell you my plan. It is just this—that I should join forces with you, and come and live here permanently. I’d try not to bother you—you’d hardly need to see me except at meals—”

  Miss Balfour found his humility both touching and embarrassing.

  “If you lived here, I should be glad of your company,” she said. “But would you not find it very dull? There is no need for you to tie yourself down. The money is yours—and please don’t think that I am blaming you, it is something neither you nor I can help—and you must not consider yourself in duty bound to look after me. Yes, I know that Mr. Ferrier said it ought to be mine by moral right, but that has really nothing to do with it.”

  She stopped, smiled at him, and went on knitting.

  “I made my will this afternoon,” said Montagu Milner abruptly. “That was what took the time. I wanted it drawn up, signed and witnessed before I came back here. Of course, I’ve left everything to you, but it isn’t likely to do you much good, for we must both be about the same age.”

  “I am sixty-eight,” said Miss Balfour.

  “And I’m sixty-seven, so there’s very little in it. I only told you because I wanted you to understand I’m doing my best.”