Deception

  Amble met the carriage with a grave face.

  “What’s to do?” demanded Sir Aydon. “My mother? Is she still—?”

  “Yes, sir, the old lady’s still with us—thank the Lord—though I’m feared she’s still parlous—”

  “And Master Tot?”

  “No change in that affair, sir; the men are up there yet; seems there’s no way o’flushing the owd devil out, short o’ setting fire to the hut—Grand to see ye home, Miss Emmy,” he said warmly to Alvey, who felt tears spring into her eyes at what, in these distressing circumstances, she felt was undeserved kindness. And this feeling was enhanced when Mrs Slaley came out, cap-strings flying, and enveloped her in a voluminous hug.

  “Eh, Miss Emmy, hinny, ye’re a sight for sore eyes!”

  Into the middle of this scene rode Louisa, coming round the corner of the house on the Phantom; she seemed profoundly startled at the sight of Alvey, and her surprised look deepened into one of strong displeasure. It seemed that she had just returned from Tinnis Hall and still knew nothing of the disturbance that had sent her father off to Newcastle.

  “Miss Clement! Why, pray, are you here?”

  Tersely, her father told Louisa the story of Tot and old Amos.

  “I will go and talk to the old man,” announced Louisa. “I will remind him of the gospels, and reason with him. I shall very soon be able to bring him to a better state of mind.”

  “Fiddlestick, girl!” Sir Aydon moved away from her impatiently. “What use in the wide world do you think you can be? You will only do more harm than good.”

  Amble was heard to mutter, “Words is dirt cheap, hinny.”

  Nish came out of the front door. At the sight of Alvey her face went blank. She turned, as if to re-enter the house, without speaking. But, at that moment, Stridge came running through the trees, crying, “Oh, quick, come quick! He’ve stabbed Surtees wi’ a gurt knife—and he’s dragging Master Tot up on the crag, an’ he says he’ll throw him off Pike Force. He’s mad as a loon!”

  “Amble—fetch my pistols! Bring them up there!” called Sir Aydon, and started after Stridge. Then he remembered Alvey, and turned.

  “I’ll go to your mother, sir,” she said quickly.

  “Yes, do that, good girl. I must go—see what I can do—”

  Alvey nodded, swallowed convulsively, and walked into the house. Passing close to Nish, who still stood, irresolute, on the doorstep, Alvey touched her hand, and said, “Will you come to your grandmother with me?”

  But Nish angrily jerked her hand away.

  “No I won’t. I hate you. You went off and left us, and now see what has come of it. I hate you!”

  “I am sorry,” Alvey said helplessly, and then she went up to the old woman’s room. There would be not the slightest point in my accompanying Sir Aydon to Pike Force, she thought. I would only be in the way. And I was brought back, after all, because of Mrs Winship—

  Duddy was there, in the room, sitting by the old lady’s bed. For once the maid was not mending. Her hands lay idle. And her face was drawn and seamed with sadness; it looked like a grey rock on the fells, Alvey thought, and, with a shiver, remembered the crags and the sheer drop of Pike Force.

  “Eh; ye’re back then, Miss Emmy,” Duddy said in a lifeless voice.

  “How is she?”

  “Badly; I doubt she’ll no’ come out o’ this one.”

  The old lady’s breathing was slow, painful, and rasping; each long-drawn harsh sound filled the silent room.

  “Shall I sit by her for a while?”

  “If ye wish,” said Duddy ungraciously; she moved away as if she hardly knew what to do with herself, but finally left the room. Alvey sat down and watched the still figure, which was propped against a pile of pillows. She took one of the cold hands, and, as the children had been used to, gently manipulated and rubbed it.

  Half an hour went by; Alvey had the feeling that there were three presences in the room: herself, the patient, and something else, something shadowy and enormous, which was gradually overmastering the old woman—like a great fibrous forest, growing and growing, sucking up the air and light, sucking life out of the aged body. If only she could battle against it—

  I wish I could pray, Alvey thought. But not that kind of prayer, petition; no, I just cannot.

  All of a sudden the closed eyes opened and looked straight into hers.

  “How are you, Grandmamma?” Alvey asked quietly.

  The eyes flashed with fury.

  “What do you think? Not at all well. Stupid thing to ask! Ought to have more sense.” Mrs Winship brought these words out in separate gasps.

  “I’m glad, at least, that you have strength to scold me.”

  “Shouldn’t—have gone away—” the pale lips enunciated.

  “No, and I am very sorry for it. But what was I to do? Louisa had come back; there was hardly room for us both.”

  “Odious creature. As for that husband of hers, he’s a dolt, an oaf, a blockhead—has no more faculty than a soused herring.”

  Alvey burst out laughing.

  “Oh grandmother—I do love you.”

  Mrs Winship’s face worked. “A fine way you have of showing it—running off in that Drury Lane fashion.”

  “Well I promise I will stay here now. Till—till—”

  “Till what?” The brilliant, shortsighted eyes stared into hers ironically. “Till I’m gone? And then run away again? And what about Tot? Have they got him away from the madman?”

  Alvey drew a shaky breath. “Not yet.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Sir Aydon has gone up there.” Alvey said nothing about the waterfall.

  “Well, if all those fools can’t get my grandson away from that lunatic—”

  “Don’t tire yourself. Just waiting takes a lot of strength.”

  “You’re young to know that.”

  They went on waiting, in silence. Once Mrs Winship asked, “Where were you? All this time?”

  “In Newcastle. Teaching French.”

  She heard a sniff that might have been a laugh. But the old woman had no strength to spare, and was not really interested in Newcastle. I won’t distract her with red herrings, Alvey thought. She has to keep all her energy for the one thing.

  Much later, when dusk was beginning to gather in the corners of the room, Nish came stealing round the door and crept across the room to the bed. Opposite Alvey she dropped to her knees and buried her face in the coverlet, holding her grandmother’s hand against her cheek. There she stayed, motionless, as if she had run out of motive power.

  Mrs Winship’s other hand patted her head.

  “There, there,” said the deep, hoarse voice. “Don’t take on, child. The worst doesn’t always come about. And, if it does, we learn to face it.”

  After another immensely long time they heard the sound of voices downstairs, doors banging, commotion.

  “Something’s happened,” said the old woman.

  “Shall I go and find out?”

  “Don’t stir yourself. Somebody’s bound to come up here and tell me. That’s one advantage—” another sniff—“—of dying. For once, you are treated with proper consideration.”

  The door opened. Tot came in, carrying a candle.

  “Who is it? Who has come in? I can’t see. Come closer, whoever you are.”

  “It’s Tot!” said Nish in a voice of pure astonishment. “Is it really you? Not your ghost?”

  “It’s me,” said Tot. He sounded weary, but, somehow, remarkably adult, Alvey thought; almost amused. “Me, not my ghost.”

  “So what happened?” demanded the old woman. “Did the madman let you go?”

  “Louisa came and read the Bible to him. And lectured him a great deal. All kinds of bits of the Bible she read aloud—some of the Prophets, and
Revelation, and the book of Job—she went on and on and on—and in the end he began to cry and said he was a poor old man. And just let me go.”

  “Well!” said Alvey weakly. “How—how very capable of Louisa! So I suppose she really is right to want to be a missionary.”

  “You won’t die; will you, Grandmother?” said Tot.

  “Well; soon,” she said. “But not just yet. The news is too interesting.”

  Chapter XVII.

  Strangely, Louisa was not at all puffed up about what she had done. Her husband, Lieutenant Dunnifage, was odiously puffed up; he behaves, thought Alvey, as if he, personally, had organized the whole rescue, instead of remaining behind, quietly drinking sherry in the library of Birkland Hall.

  And it was Louisa who petitioned that old Herdman be allowed to go free, not charged with abduction, or assault, or trespass and damage. Or murder.

  “He truly repents,” she kept saying. “You cannot wish to transport somebody who truly repents of their sins, Papa.”

  “I certainly can. The murdering old blackguard.”

  For old Herdman had admitted, both to Louisa and to Tot in the course of that long thirty-six hours in the shepherds’ hut, that it was he who had drowned wee Geordie in the Lion pool.

  “He kept saying that he was going to drown me too; that he’d drown all the Winship boys until there wasn’t one of that name left in the country. He said it was a pity James wasn’t killed at Waterloo,” said Tot.

  “But Geordie wasn’t a Winship boy; Sim Whittingham was his father.”

  “But Annie had put it about that he was James’s child. Old Amos said our family deserve to have everything taken away; he told me about smashing up Mamma’s garden, too.”

  “Weren’t you frightened?”

  “Yes,” said Tot judicially. “I was, when I first came to and found myself tied up in his hut. If he hadn’t hit me on the head with something he’d never have got me in there. Yes; then I was frightened. But part of the time he wasn’t very mad; not altogether. He talked about when he was a boy; on and on. Sometimes he was quite sensible. I told him the poem about the Assyrian coming down like a wolf, and he liked that. I could have got away then if he hadn’t tied my hands behind my back, because he was walking about the hut, shouting ‘Purple and gold, purple and gold.’ Then, when the men outside began shouting, he turned wild again and got out his knife. I thought he would cut my throat.—How is poor Surtees?”

  “Oh, it is only a flesh wound on his ribs,” Alvey said. “He will mend fast enough.”

  She could not help smiling at the thought of Tot reciting “The Destruction of Sennacherib” to the old madman. What a boy he is, she thought proudly. Sir Aydon caught her eye and smiled also.

  “Well, well, perhaps I will not take proceedings against the old devil. Perhaps, if his brother at Riding Mill, will undertake the care of him—What do you say, Charlotte?”

  “Yes, that will be best,” faintly agreed Lady Winship. “We want no more anger and destruction.”

  “I am bound to say, Louisa,” pronounced her father, “that you did very well; very well indeed. Must confess I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Louisa smiled at him with calm self-approbation.

  Lieutenant Dunnifage and his wife left next day, greatly to Alvey’s relief. The Lieutenant regarded Alvey, if ever he was obliged to notice her existence, in a most singular fashion, with disapproval, almost with detestation, as if he were trying, with all his power, to make her disappear from his line of vision. Well, it must be strange and disagreeable, thought Alvey, to know that your spouse has a duplicate; that you had the ill-luck to pick not a unique object, but one of a pair. And, furthermore, that she hatched that discreditable plot; it must tend to devalue what you have chosen.

  The couple had, however, been finally successful, she gathered, in wheedling Louisa’s full dowry out of her father.

  “I reckon she earned it, at the last,” said Sir Aydon. “To begin with, I won’t deny, I had been minded to halve it, as I had planned to for Parthie; but then, when Louisa came up to the mark so over old Herdman, I thought: well, why not let her have the whole? But that’s the very last penny you’ll have from me, my girl, I told her; don’t think you can come soft-soaping me to pay out for that Mission of yours, for I don’t hold with such things; a decent lodging-house is all that sailormen need, not a plaguy Mission.”

  “Thank the Lord they have left again,” said Old Mrs Winship. “I couldn’t die in peace and comfort with that Dunce-Face in the house; nor with Mrs Saintly-Airs Louisa. Now that it’s just the family again, I’ll take myself off.”

  And she did, on the following night.

  “Don’t you go blaming Alvey now, miss,” she said to Nish, “for I’m due to go, and glad to. You’ll see, by and by; when it’s your own turn. And I leave you my cat Maudge, and mind you comb him properly, and see that he gets plenty of yeast; you know how fond he is of yeast.”

  “Yes, Granny.”

  “Parthie ran off with my best Paisley shawl. When she comes back—if she comes back—with that Thropton—you can tell her she may as well keep it. That’s all.”

  And Mrs Winship died.

  All the family were grouped around her bed, and Duddy; and she went off so collectedly that no one could regard it as a tragic event; it was simply a happening, the end of a period.

  Though I shall miss her horribly, Alvey thought; Charlotte is no substitute at all; especially now that she has begun planning for her renovated garden.

  “What’s this I hear? Is Mr Thropton back in the Rectory?” Sir Aydon asked Amble next day at breakfast.

  “Yes, sir. He returned yesterday it’s said. But I reckon he’s scared to come and see you.”

  “Eh? How so?”

  “Poor Miss Parthie—”

  “What about poor Miss Parthie?”

  “Seems she passed away on their wedding journey, sir. Word just came. She caught a low fever and died at Greenlaw, two months agone. Mr Thropton stayed away till now.”

  “Good god. What a—oh, well, no use going into that, I suppose. Wretched man,” said Sir Aydon at length, gruffly. “How will he ever find the courage to look me in the face?”

  Everybody was startled and shocked. But no one could pretend to feel great grief.

  “It’s not as if it were Grandma,” said Nish.

  “I wonder where he buried her?” said Tot.

  “I suppose I’d best go down and call on the poor devil,” said Sir Aydon. “In the circumstances, I can hardly summon him here to discuss arrangements for Mamma’s funeral.”

  He had, however, underestimated Mr Thropton, who came up to the Hall shortly after breakfast. Red-faced, with an appropriately lugubrious expression, twisting his black gloves about—had he a supply of black gloves always at hand? wondered Alvey, or did he buy them on the journey?—he was there, almost before the cloth had been removed from the table.

  “Ah, my dear Sir Aydon—doubly dear to me now—we must endeavour to console one another in our mutual loss; I speak now, Sir Aydon, not only as your pastor and minister of God, but as your son, and, may I say it, as the grandson of the dear and venerable lady who has left us—”

  “No, you mayn’t say it,” barked Sir Aydon irascibly. “Mrs Winship would have seen you further before she’d have permitted you to address her as grandmother. Nor do I regard you as a son. I’m amazed at your impudence, sir, indeed I am!”

  Mr Thropton opened his eyes wide. He seemed sincerely grieved and astonished.

  “I am surprised at you, Sir Aydon! But I make allowances. This is a time of sorrow and mourning for you. Your beloved daughter, your cherished mother, in one grievous swoop!—For myself, I do not repine. The Lord has chastened me, and because of this, I know He loves me. I know it well, and I rejoice in my chastening—I am happier, I may say with truth, than I
have ever been.” He looked it indeed. His fish-mouth smiled benignly, opening and shutting as if it took in plankton from the atmosphere. Had Parthie become such a trial to him already? wondered Alvey unkindly. He went on, “My beloved Parthenope has left me, but I know she is in a better place, interceding for me there. And I am rejoiced at this evidence of my great Father’s care for me—He goes before and behind me, He watches over me all the times, never for one moment forgets me. In this chastisement I am reminded of His great love—”

  Alvey thought: he hardly seems to look at the matter from Parthie’s point of view; and she resolved to record his words in her notebook as soon as she could find the opportunity to do so.

  Only, for what purpose?

  Sir Aydon looked as he might explode, but restrained himself. “Humph! As to that—but what’s the use of talking? My daughter, I understand, is interred at Greenlaw?”

  “Alas, sir, she is. An appropriate headstone is in preparation—humble, as befits her scanty years.”

  And I wager I know who will have to pay for it, Alvey thought.

  Arrangements were discussed and devised for the old lady’s funeral; then Mr Thropton’s protruding eye allowed itself to rest on Alvey.

  He said: “It gives me great concern, Sir Aydon, to perceive that you still retain under your roof a person who, as I learned from incontrovertible evidence shown me by my late, dear wife, has no shadow of a right to be here, eating your crumb, drinking of your cup—”

  “Odds fish, sir!” burst out Sir Aydon, unable to contain himself any longer. “Will you stop preaching on at me like some wretched dissenting hedge-orator? I will have whom I choose under my own roof. And Emmy ain’t drinking out of my cup but out of her own, and so she shall continue to do. I bid you good-day, Mr Thropton.”

  Red with indignation, he stamped out of the breakfast-parlour, leaving Mr Thropton to cast up his eyes in a forgiving manner, and then favour Alvey and the children with pitying glances, as if regretting the fact that there was no chance of their rescue from eternal fire. Then he took his own dignified departure.

  “If he thinks he’ll ever get a penny out of me for Parthie’s portion, he’s mightily mistaken,” said Sir Aydon at dinner.