Deception

  This surprised Alvey; she would have said that Sir Aydon was too dilatory and reluctant to reach a decision; but she supposed it came to the same thing in the end. He would think for weeks without coming to any conclusion, and then make a hasty plan without reference to any of his considerations.

  “Still, Lumley, Major Fenway says that my father is a changed man now that his legs no longer give him so much pain; he has become calm, collected, and reasonable.”

  “Well, well, I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  At last the day of return came. The sun had shone for two weeks, snow retreated to the upper slopes of the hills, and down below the grass was greening, the roads had begun to dry out. Birds sang vociferously. Alvey had not the heart to keep the children at their lessons for many hours at a stretch; their longing to make a first exploration up the river and examine their long-unvisited territory was so deep and evident.

  “It is always so exciting after the winter, you see, Emmy, because everything is changed; rocks have washed down and sandbanks have shifted and there are new islands and channels—”

  “Yes, of course, then, go, but you will be careful, will you not? The river is still very full, and it grows cold long before dusk . . . And, since your father is expected some time during the latter part of the day, it would be a terrible pity if you were not there to greet him.”

  Nish and Tot plainly felt that their presence or absence would be a very minor feature of Sir Aydon’s homecoming, and they skipped off in the middle of further admonitions from Mrs Slaley about not taking boots off or getting feet wet. Alvey had a deep pang of envy for them and wished that she could have gone along with them, jumping from rock to rock, climbing up beside waterfalls, crossing by stepping-stones, finding treasures in pools, floating sticks down rapids. Absurdly, she wished either one of them had said, “You come too, Sister Emmy.” Of course she could not have gone; somebody had to be there to welcome Sir Aydon; but still, she wished they had asked her . . .

  As the day went by her apprehension grew, and she could not help feeling that it was well-founded. Even if Sir Aydon’s disposition was so greatly improved as Guy Fenway alleged, he was coming home to a strange and gloomy scene of which he probably had received little conception from the letters written by Alvey and Lumley. His wife had shut herself in the pele tower, labouring under doubts and guilts, some acknowledged, some still unexpressed. Her feelings towards her husband were far from wifely; she certainly bore a deep grudge against him for all those dead and stillborn children and for the others in whom he had taken so little interest. She suspected him—still?—of having fathered Annie’s child. She herself was accused of having done away with the child. And Sir Aydon—did he believe that? How was all this to be resolved? Would Sir Aydon, now that his health was to some extent re-established, be able to grapple with such a knotty situation? Or would he sink back into the lethargy and despair that was paralysing him when Alvey first came to Birkland?

  These were not the only questions that made her nervous and despondent. As well as his relation to his wife, there was his relation to herself. Had any tale of her deception reached him? Had Mr Thropton written from wherever he and Parthie were spending their honeymoon, exposing Alvey’s impersonation of Louisa? Had Guy, at any point, thought it proper to inform James, or James’s father?

  Even if her imposture were not exposed, Alvey felt anxiety enough on her own account. Here she had been, without authority or experience, in virtually sole command of this man’s household for the last three months of his absence. No major catastrophes seemed to have occurred, so far as she knew—except, of course, Parthie’s elopement—yet how could she tell which of her actions or decisions he might choose to censure?

  When the carriage was first seen threading its way through the pine-grove, she felt half inclined to creep away and hide herself until the first home-coming should be over. But that would be stupid and childish.

  She put on a clean tucker, smoothed her hair, and went to the front hall where the upper servants, waiting in sober joy to welcome their returning master, parted to let her through.

  She would hardly have recognized the man who descended from the coach. He was straight and vigorous, his complexion many shades lighter and clearer, his hair visibly thicker, grey still, but with a reddish burnished look to it, not the ragged wispy fringe that she remembered. He looked round him alertly, with evident deep delight at being home once more.

  “Ha! the old copper beech still standing, I perceive; it managed to survive the winter gales, that is capital!”

  Then his eye lit on Alvey.

  “Ah, there you are, my dear. You, too look well, I am glad to see.”

  “Thank you, sir. I, too, have survived the winter gales.”

  He approached, shook her hand, then gave her a hearty kiss, which took her entirely by surprise. Over his shoulder she met the watchful, amused eyes of Guy Fenway, who had escorted the carriage on horseback, and now, dismounting, came to greet her.

  “You are blooming, Miss Winship, I am happy to find. And here is your brother, in much better fettle than when you saw him last.”

  James also had been on horseback, and Alvey must admire the expertise with which he swung himself out of the saddle, though Surtees was at his bridle immediately to help him. He, too, looked far better; still thin, but not so fine-drawn, still pale, but not so haggard. He greeted Alvey with, she thought, some constraint, and asked immediately after his grandmother.

  “She is impatient to see you; can hardly wait. She is in her own room.”

  Sir Aydon was greeting the little ones, Betsey capering about, Kate now almost at the walking stage but borne at the moment in the arms of Tushie. Alvey was just, in her own mind, beginning to anathematize Nish and Tot, for never being at hand when it would be suitable for them to appear; but now, by great good fortune, they did arrive, having evidently run all the way back from some distant spot. They were scarlet-faced, panting, untidy, and muddy, but at least, Alvey said to herself, no one, no one, can say they are weedy, sickly, unpromising children. They looked lively, healthy, even happy to see their father. And he seemed pleased to see them; much struck, indeed, with the improvement in their looks.

  “Good gad, I’d hardly have recognized the pair of ye. I declare, you’ve shot up like fireweed. Well, sir! Well, miss! Are you sorry to see your bad-tempered old dad home again, eh? Eh?”

  Now he’s overdoing it, Alvey thought in anxiety, but Tot replied matter-of-factly,

  “No, sir.”

  And Nish cried, “Are you better, Papa? Are you quite better?”

  “Why, let us hope so, miss! And now I must go in and see your mother and Grandmamma.”

  “Come and walk on the terrace,” said Guy Fenway to Alvey.

  “Oh, but I—”

  “There is nothing that needs your attention, I am sure. Sir Aydon is with his wife. James is with his grandmother—”

  “And so he should be,” she said with asperity. “He never once wrote to her—”

  “Is that indeed so? I thought that he had written once.”

  “She never received a letter from him. And it would have meant so much to her. After all, her money is supporting him.”

  “Well, I am happy to see that your infatuation has come to its natural end.”

  “I was never infatuated!”

  “No? . . .” he said with a quizzical expression. “But what about Lady Winship? Tell me all about her.—How charming you look. Even more charming than I remembered. And I have thought about you a very great deal.”

  How strange, Alvey thought. I had forgotten him almost entirely. Except for those strange inquisitorial eyes. And his voice . . .

  “About Lady Winship. They are saying in the village that she murdered the baby who was drowned. And so she has shut herself up in the tower. As a kind of penance.”

  “Does she
confide in you? Did she confess to the murder? Is that why she shut herself up?”

  “No; not precisely. She seems to feel a deeper guilt for having taxed James with being the father of the child, when, all along, she did not really believe him to be so. It was Sir Aydon whom she really suspected.”

  “Yes,” he said, “that was what she told me.”

  “Of course. When she talked to you after the garden was destroyed.”

  “There have been no more incidents of that kind?”

  “No; only gossip and slander. But the season has been hard; people have been obliged to keep to their homes. What do you think will happen now?”

  “Oh; very likely it will all die away. If Sir Aydon and his lady can only straighten matters out between them.—Tell me about your writing. Did you finish your book?”

  “Yes I did, and sent it off.”

  “To which publisher?”

  She told him the name of Allgood’s cousin. “But two months have passed—nearly three—and I have heard nothing,” she said forlornly.

  “I believe it often takes a devilish long time,” he comforted her. “Publishers are invariably aged grey-bearded men. They are very slow. It takes each one weeks and weeks to read a manuscript. And then they pass it to the next; five or six probably have to read it before they reach a decision.”

  “And you? How does your work go?”

  “Admirably. I hope to sail for India during the summer, to rejoin my regiment. By then I shall be very much better informed about tropical diseases.”

  She felt a slight chill at the thought. “Tropical diseases! How disagreeable. And James? What will he do?”

  “Oh, he will remain in Edinburgh. In due course he will be a great man, a member of the Royal Society and so forth. Sooner or later his father will have to reconcile himself to having brought forth a distinguished medical man.” Guy added with more gravity, “I fear I also have to inform you that James has fallen in love yet again.”

  “Oh?” Alvey replied on a carefully lighter note. “Who is the lady?”

  “A Miss Jessie McLoughlin, a daughter of the minister in St Brendan’s church. She is very pretty and has no more brains in her head than that skylark we can hear.”

  “And will it be serious, this time?”

  “Oh, who can tell?” he said impatiently. “In any case, James cannot support a wife at present. He knows that.—Now let us talk about Parthie. Were you very much surprised when she absconded?”

  “No, I was not.” Alvey related the chain of events that had led up to Parthie’s elopement. She ended: “And so, my term of residence here is strictly limited. Any day now, when Mr Thropton and Parthie return to Birkland Rectory, I am bound to be exposed.”

  “Dear me.” Guy sounded quite perturbed. “What will you do then?”

  “Take myself off, I suppose. There will be no place for me here any longer.”

  “You had best come to Edinburgh. Plenty of young ladies there earn their living; you could teach, or find a position in a publishing office. At the very least you could get work reading, or copying.”

  Alvey had a strong revulsion against anything of the kind. Live on a pittance in the town where James Winship and Guy Fenway were so comfortably and respectably established? Not if she had any alternative!

  “I will have to wait and see,” was all she said.

  After they had taken another couple of turns up and down the terrace, she asked, “How long can you stay this time, you and James?”

  “Alas, we must return as soon as the horses are well rested. The day after tomorrow, probably.”

  “I am sorry for that.”

  He gave her a hopeful smile. But his tone was ironic as he answered, “It would gratify me if I thought that sorrow was for me. But I know full well it is for James.”

  “On the contrary! I value your counsel and opinions very highly, Major Fenway. I simply regret that you cannot be here to give them for a longer space of time.”

  “You do very well as you are. In those children you have certainly wrought a most beneficial change.—Is there any word of the wandering Miss Louisa, by the bye?”

  Alvey frowned. “No, there is not; the last letter I had from her was many weeks ago. I hope—I hope that no misadventure has befallen her—”

  “Dear me. If she were to perish in a shipwreck—or be murdered by incensed Hindoo or Muhammedan priests who resented her attempts to proselytize—how would you ever learn of the event? You might never hear at all. And that would place you in a grave moral dilemma, would it not, and a most equivocal legal position. In theory you might stay here for ever—”

  “Oh, but I should not wish to!” she cried out loudly, in denial of that part of herself which asked nothing better in life.

  Two days later the young men left to return to Edinburgh. James and Alvey had hardly spoken to each other. From pride, she had kept out of his way as much as she could; feeling Guy’s observant eye on her, she did not wish to give him the slightest grounds for thinking that she courted James’s company; which indeed was far from being the case. In fact James had spent a large portion of his time out with the children, they walking, he riding old Phantom; the three were evidently very happy together, and the children showed and felt straightforward sorrow at his departure.

  “If only James could live here always,” sighed Tot.

  “He has to go off and make his way in the world. Boys do. I wonder why?” said Nish. “I shall never leave Birkland.”

  “Meg and Isa and Parthie have.”

  “Isa means to come back.”

  “And, when Papa dies,” said Tot matter-of-factly, “James will come back and be squire here, as Papa did when Grandfather died.”

  “You will have to leave some time, Tot, and go to school. And earn your living.”

  “No I shall not!” cried Tot furiously. “I shall never leave Birkland.”

  “Some day you will have to.” Nish was sad but resigned.

  “No I shall not, because of my fits. I shall stay here always and run the estate for James.”

  The children were now on far better terms with their father. They talked to him more freely at mealtimes and he even formed the habit of going out with them, as James had done, he on horseback, they on foot, for he still found it hard to walk fast. As these excursions proved highly agreeable to all parties, he soon procured a pair of ponies for the children, so that they could all go farther afield.

  Meanwhile Lady Winship remained in her self-imposed confinement. Alvey sometimes went down to wander mournfully about in the wrecked garden; here now, spring flowers, snowdrops, daffodils, crocuses, were beginning to push their way through the tangle of broken bushes and upheaved rocks. Several times Carey had asked Alvey if her leddyship wouldn’t like him to begin putting the place to rights, and Sir Aydon had also carried the request to the pele tower room after his return; but a negative answer always came back.

  “She feels, so long as she is under suspicion, that she has no right to reclaim the garden,” said Sir Aydon.

  He had had, Alvey knew, a number of interviews with his wife; what the purport of them had been, Alvey could only guess.

  Had Charlotte told him that she believed him to be the dead child’s father? And what could he have told her in reply?

  It is strange, Alvey thought, how, when I first came to Birkland, all this shroud of woe and suspicion and mystery had but newly entangled the family. And yet I had so little awareness of it. All I thought was, what a comfortable home! Because I was so engrossed in my own tale I had no eyes to look about me. Yet the belief is very commonly held that writers are more observant than ordinary folk! It seems to me just the reverse. I think I must have less perception than anybody else in the household. In the same way I misread Parthie—or, at least, failed to divine the real grounds for her bad nature.

  ?
??So long as Mamma is under suspicion! But that is so indefinite!” she said now, helplessly. “How can such a thing ever be proved, or disproved, now that it is all in the past?”

  Sir Aydon sighed. Plainly he was not at all happy about the way matters stood; but at least he bore it better than he would have six months ago.

  “Can you not talk to her, Louisa? Put her in a better frame? You are such a good, clever girl! Indeed, I am greatly impressed with the manner in which you have taken hold of affairs while I have been away. You are a better daughter than I deserve.”

  “Oh, sir, don’t say so!” cried Alvey, colouring deeply in confusion at his commendation. “I don’t deserve your praise, indeed I don’t.”

  “Well,” he said, “I think you do. But can you not talk to madam, persuade her that she is immolating herself all to no purpose?”

  Alvey felt that some much more radical conducive factor was called for, but she promised to think about the matter.

  “Yes, yes!” he said. “Some time when the children and I are out, you know. You and she could have a good long confabulation . . .”

  Alvey sighed. People do not change entirely, she said to herself. That they should do so is too much to expect.

  On a day when Sir Aydon and the children had gone out early, and Alvey was wondering if this was the moment when she should at least attempt to carry out his hopeful suggestion in regard to Lady Winship, a note was brought to her, which, said Amble, had been delivered by Whin Billy the clock-mender. It was penned in an unfamiliar masculine hand. In formal but civil terms it requested Alvey to go into Hexham and meet “a friend” there at the White Horse Inn.

  Perplexed, curious, her head buzzing with conjectures, Alvey asked Surtees to saddle old Phantom. Could this be some business relating to her book? Might it be a message from Mr Allgood’s cousin?

  “Would ye wish for me to go with ye, Miss Emmy?”

  “No, no, thank you, Surtees, that is not at all necessary. It is a fine warm day, and you have dozens of tasks to perform for Sir Aydon; I shall be very well on my own.”