“You…deliberately did that!”
“Now don’t look at me like that, Jessie. It was all fair and above board. He had as much chance of winning as I had. I wasn’t staking all I’d got though. He was the more reckless. Gamblers both—I was staking a fortune; he was staking his house, and he lost. He had to sell, and I got Oakland Hall. They never forgave me for that…particularly your grandmother. It was no use trying to be neighborly after that. Now I’ve told you.”
“Ben,” I said earnestly, “you didn’t cheat? That’s what I want to know. I couldn’t bear it if you had.”
He looked straight at me. “Cross my heart…as we used to say when I was a little ’un.” He put his forefinger to his lips and chanted:
“See my finger’s wet
See my finger’s dry (he wiped it on his coat)
Cross my heart (waving his hand across his chest)
And never tell a lie.”
He grinned at me. “No. It was a gamble…nothing more. I just won.”
“And my grandmother knew this?”
“Yes, she knew, and she’s hated me ever since. Not that I care for that, but I shouldn’t like it if you took against me because of it.”
“No, I don’t, Ben. It was a fair game and he lost.”
“Goodo. Now we understand each other. I reckon I could arrange for you to come to Australia with me.”
“It sounds so exciting I can’t believe it.”
“Well, we’ll start hatching plots, shall we?”
“They’d be horrified, I know.”
“That makes it all the more exciting, doesn’t it?” he retorted mischievously.
He would sit there laughing to himself, and I wondered what was in his mind. He talked a great deal about the Company, the town which had grown up and was known by the name of the Fancy or Fancy Town. He often mentioned Joss; in fact he seemed to be obsessed by Joss, which I suppose was natural, since he was his son, but the more I heard of that arrogant gentleman the less I was able to share Ben’s enthusiasm for him.
It was always: “When you’re in Australia…” But nothing was said about how I was going to escape from my family. I had only turned eighteen that June, so I was still not my own mistress.
I did enjoy our talks though. I loved hearing about his home out there and I felt I knew the ostentatious house already…for I was sure it was ostentatious with a name like Peacocks. I could never picture it without the peacocks on the lawn and the human Peacock strutting with them. There was a housekeeper, a Mrs. Laud, to whom Ben referred now and then and who seemed to be a most efficient woman for whom he felt some affection. She had a son and daughter—Jimson, working with the Company, and Lilias, who helped her mother in the house; there were also a number of other servants, and among them were several what he called “Abos,” the term for aborigines.
I would listen avidly and again and again I asked: “Yes, Ben, but how am I going to get there?”
Then he would give his sly laugh. “You leave that to me,” he would say.
I saw Hannah now and then and was still on good terms with the servants at the Hall, for I always found time to visit them.
“Mr. Henniker’s told me he’ll be leaving soon,” said Mrs. Bucket. “He’s told Mr. Wilmot too. So then we’ll arrange to shut up again and it’ll be as it was before he came back without his leg. I don’t think it’s right for a house like this. The servants don’t like it. That’s what comes of people who don’t belong. You’ll miss him, I reckon.”
I almost blurted out that he had plans, but I realized then how wild those plans were, and it occurred to me then that he talked of them to placate me and that he knew as well as I did that I should never be able to leave.
***
There was a knock on the door of my room and Miriam came in. She looked quite pretty.
“I want to talk to you, Jessica,” she said. “What do you think? Ernest and I are going to get married.”
I put my arms round her and kissed her, because I was so pleased that she had at last come to her senses. I didn’t remember when I had last done that, but I knew it pleased her because she went pink to the tips of her ears and nose.
“I’m very happy,” she went on. “We decided that no matter what Mama said we would wait no longer.”
“I’m so glad, Miriam,” I cried. “You should have done it years ago. Never mind. You have at last. So when shall you be married?”
“Ernest says there is no sense in waiting. We have waited long enough. We were waiting, you know, for him to get St. Clissolds, because the vicar there is very very old, but he just goes on living and could live for another ten years.”
“No use waiting for dead men’s shoes or dead vicars’ vestments. I think it’s wonderful, and I’m glad you’ve come to your senses. It’s lovely and I hope you’ll be very happy.”
“We shall be very poor. Papa can give me nothing, and I still have to tell Mama.”
“Don’t let her stop you.”
“Nothing could stop me now. It’s rather a blessing that we have been so poor lately—though not as poor as Ernest and I shall be. It means that I have learned how to make everything go a long way…”
“I’m sure you’re right, Miriam. When is the wedding to be?”
Miriam looked really frightened. “At the end of August. Ernest says we’d better put up the banns right away and then no one can stop us. There’s the little curate’s cottage in the vicarage grounds where Ernest lives alone. But there’ll be room for two of us.”
“You’ll manage very well, Miriam.”
I was glad she had made the decision, and the change in her was miraculous. My grandmother was naturally angry and skeptical. She referred slightingly to “our lovesick girl” and how some people seemed to think they could live like church mice on the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table. I bubbled over with mirth at that and pointed out that she did not know her Bible, as it certainly was not the mice who had devoured those very special crumbs.
“You have become impossible, Jessica,” she told me. “I don’t know what this household is coming to. How different things might have been if some people had taken their responsibilities more seriously. Perhaps then we shouldn’t have foolish old maids making laughingstocks of themselves in the mad rush to marry anybody—just anybody—before it is too late.”
Miriam was wounded and wavered, but only slightly. She was Ernest’s future wife now, not merely my grandmother’s daughter, and she quoted him whenever possible. I was delighted. I talked to her often and we grew more friendly than we ever had been. I told her she was doing the right thing in escaping from my grandmother’s tyranny, that she was fortunate to be able to and that she was going to be very happy.
“I wonder what will happen here when I have left,” she said on one occasion. “Jessica, what of you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re going a great deal to Oakland Hall. Sometimes that frightens me. It’s what your mother did.”
“I enjoy going there. Why shouldn’t I go? You must admit life is not exactly hilarious at the Dower House.”
“Her trouble began there.”
“It’s going to be quite different with me. Stop worrying, Miriam. Think of the future. I know you’re going to be happy.”
“I’m determined to be,” she said defiantly, as though she was thinking of her mother.
Miriam was married, as she had said she would be, at the end of August. My grandmother went to the wedding because it would look unsuitable if she did not, and this seemed to be her sole reason for going. My grandfather performed the giving-away ceremony, and I was a bridesmaid. It was a quiet wedding—necessarily so, my grandmother pointed out about a hundred times after the banns had been called, in our reduced circumstances.
There was no wedding feast. “What is there to celebrat
e?” demanded my grandmother. “Just an old maid’s folly.”
She was cruel, but Miriam seemed impervious to her insults; she was so happy to be married at last and to have made the decision which had hung over her for so many years. There was a permanent sneer about my grandmother’s lips when she referred to the married pair, and she took to calling them “the church mice,” gloating over their future poverty and making it out to be so much worse than it was.
There was no honeymoon. “Honeymoon,” sneered my grandmother. “You know what their honeymoon will be—a piece of bread and cheese eaten from that cottage wooden table which my daughter will have to learn to scrub. Then she will discover her folly. A honeymoon in that miserable little hut…for it is no more! I wish them joy of it.”
My grandfather spoke up: “Sometimes there can be more joy in a humble cottage than in a mansion. It says something like that in the Bible, and it seems to me that Miriam can only congratulate herself that she has escaped from this place.”
My grandmother stared at him, and he picked up The Times and walked out of the room.
Change indeed when my grandfather stood his ground with his wife.
It was a week after Miriam’s wedding when the accident happened. Ben was walking in the grounds one morning when his crutch apparently slid on some damp leaves and he fell. He was in the grounds for an hour before he was discovered. He was carried in by Banker and Wilmot, who called the doctor. It seemed that his injuries were by no means slight. The wound on his leg had burst open and he would have to remain in bed until it was healed.
He was looking not only disgruntled but ill when I called.
“Look what the old fool’s done, Jessie,” he grumbled. “There was I sprinting along you might say one minute and the next my crutch has gone flying and I’m rolling on the grass and there’s the old leg letting me know it was once there and mad because they’d lopped it off and it’s there no longer. Why weren’t you there to save me this time?”
“How I wish I had been.”
“Well, you’ll have to come and see me now and then.”
“As often as you like, Ben.”
“You’ll get tired of this sick old man. But I’ll be up and about soon, you see.”
“Of course.”
“It means postponing our going to Australia. Why, that doesn’t seem to upset you.”
“I couldn’t bear to think of your going.”
“Not when you were coming with me.”
“I don’t think I ever really believed I would.”
“That’s not like you, Jess. You wanted to come, didn’t you? You didn’t want to stay in that house. You’d be stifled there. What’s going to happen to you if you stay there? It’s no place for a bold spirit like yours. You want to live, see the world, spread your wings…You’re a gambler, Jessie. Oh yes you are. It’s in your blood, the same as it’s in mine. Look at it like this. It’s a postponement. One day you’re going off to Australia. I promise you.”
“Are you going to gamble with them for me this time?” I laughed.
“That’s not a bad idea, I’d take your grandfather on any day.” He grimaced. “But suppose I lost, eh Jessie? What then?”
“You’re a gambler. You’d take a risk.”
“There are some things too important to take a chance on.” He gripped my hand firmly. “You’re going to Australia. That’s something I’ve made up my mind about.”
“Well, Ben, all you have to do is get well.”
“Leave it to me. Next week I’ll be on the hobble again.”
But he wasn’t.
September passed and October was with us, and still the wound did not heal. Until it had, the doctor insisted, he must stay in bed.
He raged a good deal, cursed doctors, declared they didn’t know what they were talking about, but he was uneasy. Why wouldn’t the miserable wound heal? He was not going to stay in bed. He had plans. He tried to get up, but the effort of attempting to walk was too much for him and he had to admit defeat.
I went in every day to see him and I knew that he watched the door at half-past two every afternoon, so I made a point of never being late, and it made me happy when I left him more cheerful than I found him.
Then one day—it must have been towards the end of October—the doctor arrived with another member of his profession whom he had called in, and there were grave faces at Oakland Hall. There was something wrong—something more than a wound which obstinately refused to heal. This was indeed a symptom of something else.
Ben at first insisted that it was all a lot of nonsense and wanted to get up to prove it; that was where he was proved wrong. He simply could not get up and in time he had to admit that the doctors were right.
Being Ben he insisted on knowing the truth and when I called he told me what he had got out of them.
“I’m going to talk to you very seriously, Jessie,” he said. “I made them tell me the truth. They didn’t want to but they soon saw the sort of man I was. ‘It’s my body,’ I told them. ‘Now don’t you go treating me as though I’m a child or a weak old woman. If it’s the end of Ben Henniker then that’s Ben Henniker’s business. I want to leave everything in order!’ Well, they told me I’ve got some blood disease. That’s why the old leg won’t heal. If I hadn’t had the fall it would have shown itself sooner or later. That just gave them the clue they wanted. They reckon I’ve got a year at the most and that I’m not going to get up from this bed. You might think that there goes all Ben Henniker’s fine plans…but if you think that you don’t know Ben Henniker. It means an adjustment, and I made them tell me the truth because I wanted time to make this adjustment. You follow me, Jess?”
“Of course,” I said.
“All right then. I’ve not got long. I’ve got to be prepared. So I’ll make preparations. Don’t look so sad. I’m an old man. I’ve had my day and a pretty good day it’s been. The point is, I don’t want to be snuffed out like a candle. You know, there was a light there and then suddenly there’s no light…and that was Ben Henniker that was. No. It’s not going to be like that. It’s always been a dream of mine to see my grandchildren peacocking on my lawn.”
“You mean Joss’s children.”
“That’s right. I used to picture them…sturdy little ’uns…looking just like him. Not just one of them…I wanted lots of ’em. Little boys and little girls. He’d have pretty girls if they inherited his eyes. I’m glad he’s shown no signs of marrying yet and there’s a reason for it.”
“What reason? He’s not so very young is he?”
“He’s the other side of thirty. To think it’s all that time since he came strutting across that lawn with his suitcase. ‘I’ve come here. I like it here. I like peacocks…’ What a boy! I reckon he’s liked it there ever since. I want him to marry the right woman. That’s important. So I’m glad he hasn’t married yet.”
“You were going to tell me the reason.”
“Oh, he’s been involved here and there. He’s a man who likes women and they like him.” Ben chuckled in that fond way which I always found irritating in this connection. “Everything Joss does is done with more energy than ordinary people use. So it’s like that with women. He’s got the roving eye all right, but he never seemed anxious to settle.”
“He gets more attractive than ever,” I said sarcastically. “He’s now added promiscuity to his arrogance.”
“Joss is a man, remember. He’s strong, proud, sure of himself. He’s all that a man should be. He’s myself made tall and handsome and got the right education too, which was what I missed. I sent him to school over here when he was eleven years old and he stayed here until he was sixteen. I was a bit worried about that. Afraid it might change him too much. Not a bit of it. An English education just gave him something more. When he was sixteen he refused to stay at school any longer. He was raring to get to work. He was mad about
opals and mining and all that went with it. When I showed him the Flash that night I remember the look in his eyes…But that’s past. What I want to talk about is now. A year at the most, they say. Well, perhaps old Ben can make it a bit longer. But before I go everything will have to be in order. Now you can do all sorts of things for me. You can write letters and such like.”
“I’ll do everything I can. You know that, Ben.”
“Well, the first letter I want you to write is to my solicitors. Now they’re in London and in Sydney. I want you to write to the London address right away and tell them their Mr. Vennor is to come and see me down here without delay. Will you do that?”
“Of course. Immediately. You must give me all particulars.”
“It’s Mr. Vennor of Vennor and Caves, and they’re in Hanover Square and you’ll find the complete address in a book in that drawer over there. That’s the first thing.”
I wrote the letter and said I would post it.
I sat by his bed, and he said: “I’m glad there’s some time left to us, Jessie.”
“The doctors could be wrong,” I insisted. “They have been known to be.”
“That’s so. I wonder if it is the curse of the Green Flash after all. I told you that misfortune dogged those who owned it, didn’t I?”
“But you don’t own it. You—lost it…nearly twenty years ago.”
“Yes. Yes, of course. But there was my accident in the mine…and there’s the suggestion that I might have caught this infection of the blood, or whatever it is, in those mines. Perhaps that’s the price you have to pay for gouging those beauties out of the rock, taking them from where they belong—a sort of revenge they have.”