Ruth stood by Hilary’s bed and looked at her with a supercilious gaze. ‘Are you ill, Aunt Hilary?’ she asked.
‘No,’ said Hilary. ‘I’m feeling very well indeed. But I thought I’d like a treat today, so I had my breakfast brought to me.’
‘Doris and Tessie are still in bed, too,’ said Ruth.
‘They never get up very early,’ said Hilary.
‘Do all grown-up people get lazy?’
‘I’m afraid a good many do,’
‘I shall never be lazy,’ said Ruth virtuously,
‘I hope not,’ said Hilary.
‘Aunt Hilary, is Doris frightened to sleep alone?’
‘I don’t think so. Why?’
‘Because when I went in to see her this morning, quite early, Uncle George was there with her.’
‘Well, I suppose he’d just gone in to speak to her. He’s her father, you know.’
‘But he was in bed with her.’
‘Oh, nonsense, Ruth.’
‘But he was, Aunt Hilary. I saw him, and he said, “Get to hell out of here.”’
‘Uncle George often says things that he doesn’t mean. I suppose he frightened you, and you got a little bit confused, and so you think you saw …’
‘I wasn’t a bit frightened. And he was in bed with Doris.’
‘That’s quite impossible, Ruth. You’re talking rubbish, I’m afraid.’
‘But he was! And I asked Clarice, and she said yes, he often sleeps with her. So I thought perhaps she was frightened of the dark or something.’
‘Well, run along now, Ruth, and I’ll ask Doris herself what she’s frightened of. Oh, Ruth!’
‘Yes, Aunt Hilary?’
‘Don’t talk about this to anybody else, to your mother, or the maids, or to other little girls, because Doris mightn’t like it.’
‘No, Aunt Hilary, I wasn’t going to,’ said Ruth, and closed the door behind her with ostentatious care.
‘So that’s that,’ murmured Hilary, and was grateful to Mr Peabody for his timely investigations. She tightened her lips a little to think of illicit pleasure finding house-room at Rumneys, and then she remembered Lionel’s letter, and her father’s, that he had enclosed: this might not be the first time that Rumneys had given shelter to unlicensed lovers… She had been eleven when her father died: her dutiful grief had largely consisted of shame for not having loved him: he had been a noisy domineering old man, sometimes querulous and sometimes facetious. It was curious to think he had once enjoyed emotions so human and so improper as George’s apparently cordial regard for Doris.
And what was to be done about George? If Ruth’s story were true – and there seemed no reason to doubt it, for she was a truthful child, and according to her Clarice had said that George and Doris regularly cohabited – if this were so, then Mr Peabody was right, and George was an imposter. Doris and Tessie and the children were not his: they were certainly not his by virtue of having begotten them. And so … but in any case Lionel had six children, and George’s immigrants were only five. And John had bequeathed his money to ‘whichever of the progeny of the late Jonathan Gander shall become the parent of the greatest number of children born in holy wedlock’. Those were the words. As far as she could remember there was no qualification for progeny – legitimacy was not essential – though holy wedlock was insisted upon as the prelude to a second generation. So Lionel…
Hilary bathed and dressed in a hurry. She had better see Mr Peabody as soon as possible and then she must have a long talk with Lionel. But first of all she had to listen to Mrs Arbor, who wanted to tell her about the damage to George’s room. Hilary went with her to examine it.
‘We might all have been burnt in our beds if he hadn’t taken the siphon upstairs with him,’ said Mrs Arbor.
‘That was very prudent of him,’ said Hilary.
‘But what puzzles me’, said Mrs Arbor, ‘is where he slept. Because if you feel the clothes you’ll find they’re almost dry now, so it wasn’t this morning that he set himself on fire, or they’d still be sopping. It must have been last night, just after he went to bed.’
‘You’re quite a detective, Mrs Arbor,’
‘Well, I take an interest in things.’
‘I suppose he slept in a chair. But I’ll ask him when I see him.’
Without looking for George, Hilary went straight to Mr Peabody’s. If Mrs Arbor was suspicious of George’s nocturnal habits, the other servants might also be gossiping, and a scandal of appalling magnitude was probably imminent. George’s relationship with Doris could not be left longer in doubt, and whatever the result of further inquiry – though there could be only one – he must quickly be got rid of. And that, thought Hilary, was Mr Peabody’s duty.
He listened to her story with obvious pleasure. In his satisfaction at receiving confirmatory evidence for his case against George, the impropriety of the evidence escaped him entirely.
‘No happier discovery could have been made,’ he said. ‘I’m delighted to hear this, quite delighted. It will save us an enormous amount of trouble and expense, though it brings us face to face, of course, with the fact that George has behaved with – I say so most reluctantly – with criminal folly, and rendered himself liable to a criminal charge: he has been guilty of fraud in a very aggravated degree. I imagine, however, that the idea of bringing such a charge against him is as repugnant to you as it is to me.’
‘All I want to do is to get him and the children out of Lammiter as quickly as possible. If he decides to go back to India I’ll pay their fares myself, and do it gladly.’
‘I must have another talk with George,’ said Mr Peabody. ‘When I saw him yesterday he was inclined to be contumacious. He endeavoured to take the upper hand. So far from being apologetic, he was defiant. He actually shouted at me. My sister, in the adjoining room, heard him quite distinctly. But I do not think he will shout this time.’
‘I leave it to you, then,’ said Hilary, and rose to go. She hesitated, and asked, ‘What was the exact wording of John’s will? The money was to go to “whichever of Jonathan Gander’s progeny …”’
‘“shall have become the parent, whether father or mother’ of the greatest number of children born in wedlock”.’
‘That seems to make a distinction between the first and second generations, doesn’t it?’
‘The word progeny is not the one I would have used myself had I drawn the will,’ said Mr Peabody. ‘Its connotation is too general for a legal document. And, as you say, the fact that holy wedlock is definitely mentioned in regard to the second generation, while there is no such proviso attached specifically to the earlier generation, might well be interpreted as an intention to enlarge the application of the word progeny beyond the happily delimited eligibility prescribed for the grandchildren.’
‘In other words,’ said Hilary, ‘if my father had left any illegitimate children, and they married, their children would be acceptable in terms of the will?’
‘It’s a hypothetical case, of course, but my opinion is that the will might be susceptible of such an interpretation, and had the occasion for such interpretation arisen, it might even have been argued that Major Gander had intentionally phrased the will so as to make it permissible. And there you see how dangerous it is for a man to make his own will. A solicitor, whose training has taught him to foresee dubiety and so to evade misconstruction – and who has, if I may say so, a far more precise apprehension of the significance of words than any literary man – a solicitor would never have made such a mistake. I invariably advise my clients to consult a solicitor in any difficulty, no matter how small. It saves time and trouble, and often enough, when a client’s instructions have been somewhat vague, I have been able to essentialize or reconstruct them with the most fortunate results.’
‘Yes, it’s a great profession,’ said Hilary. ‘But I must go now. And I can leave you to look after George?’
‘I shall look after George,’ said Mr Peabody with a steely smile.
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Hilary walked briskly along the Ridge road, and having left her principal difficulty behind her, arrived at the Vicarage with a feeling of confidence so lively that it almost amounted to gaiety. The Vicar, leaning on his stick, was pacing the sun-bright terrace. He turned with a look of shame and confusion. But Hilary, ignoring his expression, advanced upon him and soundly kissed him.
‘Dear Lionel!’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry I asked you to marry me. But why did you never tell me that you were my brother?’
‘Hush!’ said the Vicar nervously. ‘Mrs Finger may be listening. She’s a very inquisitive woman.’
‘But what does it matter now? Everybody will have to be told before long.’
‘Never!’ said the Vicar. ‘Nobody will ever know, at least in my lifetime.’
With a purposeful though irregular stride he walked down the steps, and along the path to a seat that overlooked the little pond where once two Large Black pigs had taken refuge, and Lady Caroline had bravely followed. Hilary sat down beside him.
‘Do you realize that you’re the heir to seventy thousand pounds?’ she asked; and explained to him the peculiar phrasing of the Major’s will, and Mr Peabody’s interpretation of it.
‘That makes no difference,’ said the Vicar. ‘I’ve known, or supposed, for a long time that I had a good claim to the money. But no amount of money could persuade me to reveal the circumstances of my birth. From boyhood I’ve been made miserable by the shame of it, and ever since I grew up I’ve done my utmost to conceal it. Till now I’ve been successful. I never even told Caroline. She always believed that my father was Charles Purefoy – as everybody else believes. And after a lifetime of pretending to have been respectably born, I’m not going to be bribed into confessing my illegitimacy now. Think what rny friends would say, what Caroline’s relations would say!’
‘And think what you could do for Rupert and Denis and the children with seventy thousand pounds,’ said Hilary.
Slowly the Vicar shook his head. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘I can’t do it.’
‘Then I’m going to,’ said Hilary. ‘I’m certainly not going to let you lose all that money simply in order to flatter your silly pride.’
‘But your own name, your father’s reputation…’
‘The family name is ruined already, or will be as soon as my maids have had a chance to talk,’ said Hilary; and told him about George.
‘Some men will do anything for money,’ said the Vicar. ‘But I’m not one of them. You’re trying to persuade me to be as shameless as George.’
‘There’s all the difference in the world between you and George. He’s an impostor …’
‘So am I, and I don’t intend to confess it.’
After a little while Hilary said, ‘I thought of a very good plan while I was coming here. It’s a plan that really makes things much easier for both of us. You see, we can’t get married now – and perhaps that’s just as well – but as I’m your sister, or your half-sister, I can come and keep house for you, and help you to look after the children. It’s going to be very expensive to educate Rupert and Denis – I know exactly what we should do with them – and probably the others will be just as difficult when they get a little older: but we shall be quite well off with your seventy thousand and my…’
The Vicar said,’ My seventy thousand will do us no good, for I shall never claim it.’
‘But suppose I claim it for you? I still have your father’s letter.’
‘I forbid you to make any use of it whatever.’
‘But Lionel…’
‘You don’t know the whole story of your father’s misconduct.’
‘Then tell me.’
The Vicar hesitated: ‘I’m not the only one who would suffer if it were made public. He was guilty of immoral association on more than one occasion. And there are men living today …’
‘In Lammiter?’
‘Not only in Lammiter. One is a well-known peer, a leader of political opinion, and a millionaire. I believe Lord Fosgene…’
‘Not Hubble-Bubble?’
‘His name was Hubble. The poor man who was supposed to be his father made lemonade. But it was your father – and his – who gave him his real start in life, and so helped him to become prominent during the War: our most effective gas-shells were produced in his factory, if you remember. Your father – my father – was very generous to all his children.’
Hilary was silent for some time. Then she said, ‘I’m not particularly interested in Lord Fosgene. I don’t admire him, and I don’t see why we should worry about his peace of mind or his reputation. I’m going to take the letter you sent me, the one my father wrote, to Mr Peabody …’
‘No, no,’ said the Vicar, ‘not to Peabody!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’
‘Well?’
‘Because he’s another.’
’Mr Peabody!’
‘Yes. Both he and his sister.’
Hilary sat aghast.
‘You see,’ said the Vicar, ‘my father – your father …’
‘Their father,’ said Hilary.
‘Was a most remarkable man,’ said the Vicar.
Chapter 22
George’s attempt to defend himself against the new weapon with which Fortune had armed Mr Peabody was not even half-hearted. It was less than quarter-hearted. It was the duodecimo edition of an attempt. Compared with the large flamboyance of his previous defiance, it was a Persian miniature set beside the Antwerp Baptism of Peter Paul Rubens. Mr Peabody swept it aside, ignored it, refused to look at it, and told George that unless he proffered a full confession, and withdrew all claims to the Major’s estate, he would be liable to immediate arrest. ‘But,’ he added, ‘if you do confess, and if you do withdraw your claim, then I am authorized to say that there will be no prosecution, and the cost of your return to India will be defrayed by my fellow-trustee.’
‘Good old Hilary,’ said George.
‘So you are going to be sensible?’ said Mr Peabody.
George leaned back in his chair and thoughtfully whistled a little tune.
‘I’m tired of this bloody place, anyway,’ he said at last. ‘You’ve never been East, have you? Well, about the middle of the Red Sea you generally run into a following wind, and you begin to get hot. Then your pores open, and you sit on deck in a sweet and lovely muck-sweat, and you begin to feel things, and smell things. You begin to live! You’ve got nothing but a remnant of weather out of God’s bargain basement in this country, and I’m tired of it. All your lousy virtues come from ignorance and fog and frustration; and virtue, to be honest, isn’t suited to my constitution. So if you warble Hallelujah! when I sail away, you’ll have the doubtful satisfaction of knowing I’m singing seconds to you in the Bay of Biscay. I don’t envy you, Peabody. You’re a dry stick. But Hilary’s a damned good sort, and I’m going right away to say thank-you to her with all the stops out.’
Human traffic to India falls to a minimum in July, and when Mr Peabody discovered that the Mahadeo was sailing from Liverpool to Bombay in five days’ time, he had no difficulty in booking second-class passages for George and his pseudo-family. This brief but necessary interval between dénouement and departure was not so embarrassing as it might have been: except for a tendency to jeer at Mr Peabody, George showed no ill-will, and took disgrace, the failure of his plans, and the loss of a fortune with commendable resignation. Pride in his defeated scheme outweighed the shame of discovery.
‘It was a great idea, wasn’t it?’ he said to Hilary. ‘And if I’d never been found out, you’d never have known how good it was. I’ll tell you all about it, shall I? Well, to begin with, Doris and I are practically Darby and Joan: our lives have been romantically entwined for at least a year: no, we can’t get married, because I did that once before, under the influence of boot-leg mint-juleps, and so far as I know the lady’s still alive. But Doris and I get on quite well together, and we’re lying to a sea-anchor as snugly
as to permanent moorings.’
‘But whom do the children belong to?’
‘I’m just coming to that. You see, about seven or eight months ago I got into a bit of a bother with one of the Native States – though actually it was a friend of mine who started the trouble – and I went down to Goa and lay low for a while till the horizon cleared. And when I came back I found that Doris had brought in her mother and the rest of the family to live with her. Well, it was a bit of a nuisance, but I didn’t say much. They’d nowhere else to go, and I’d got my old job back: a clerical appointment in the Traffic Manager’s office of the B.&R.R., grossly underpaid at two hundred and fifty rupees per mensem, but better, as you’ll agree, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. So we all lived together in our salubrious chawl at Parel, and presently it looked as though my lavish hospitality was going to pay handsome dividends. Because when I heard from Peabody that children were the essential ante in Uncle John’s poker game, I took steps to adopt the whole litter. Their mother was agreeable – I promised her a good rake-off – but we had some trouble with the younger ones: Clarice and the bachche had a rather dingier father than the others, and they weren’t very clever at learning their parts. But we gave them some intensive drill, and presently sailed for England, Home, and Booty. Now honestly, Hilary, don’t you think it was a damned good bandobast?’
‘How did you get the birth-certificates?’
‘You can get anything you want on this earth, if you know where to go for it,’ said George.
As though to demonstrate the truth of this daring aphorism, George, on the day of his departure, entertained Arthur to lunch at the Green Dragon. Neither had heard anything of the latest pretender to the Gander fortune – for Hilary, not yet having persuaded the Vicar to publish his claim, had said nothing about it – so both believed that Arthur was once again a probable winner. Arthur, indeed, was now convinced of his title to at least thirty-five thousand, and in such a faith it was easy to be generous and to forgive George for the impudence of his would-be fraud; while George was not insensible of the fact that a man who has money may, on occasion, be induced to part with some ofit.
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