Читать книгу The Altar of Honour - Ethel M. Dell - Страница 9

CHAPTER I
THE INCUBUS

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“It’s the devil!” said old Colonel Audley, pulling irritably at his moustache.

“What is the matter?” said Griselda.

He glared at her with a kind of dumb resentment, which was the expression he usually wore when regarding his eldest daughter. “Matter!” he growled. “I can’t keep pace with things, that’s what’s the matter. Something’s got to be cut out. The question is what.” He made an angry gesture towards the correspondence beside his breakfast-plate. “It’s getting worse,” he declared. “It’s the devil, I tell you.”

“I thought you said when Sylvia got married last year that it would make all the difference,” observed Griselda, with just a hint of tartness behind her serenity.

“I was a damn fool if I did,” said Colonel Audley in a tone that somehow seemed to convey that the compliment was intended for one other than himself. “We’ll have to throw out something else now to lighten the boat—I can tell you that—or give up altogether.”

Griselda was silent. She had finished her breakfast, and now leaned back in her chair—a large woman of imposing presence with iron-grey hair, attired in riding-dress, the severity of which served to add to the air of authority which was her main characteristic. Griselda at forty possessed a personality with which few people cared to try conclusions. She ruled her father’s household with a rod of iron which did not grow lighter with the passing years. She smoked her cigarette with a man’s appreciation and no hint of feminine grace.

Old Colonel Audley fumed on. He hated Griselda, although in a fashion she suited him. “Here am I dumped down in this forsaken hole for the sake of being in a hunting country, saddled with two daughters who can’t do a hand’s turn for themselves, and expected to give ’em a good time and make ample provision for ’em when I die! Why the devil I let myself be persuaded to leave Ireland where one hunted for next to nothing and come to this infernal country where every mile one gallops over costs a fiver, I don’t know. Well, you’ll suffer for it, that’s all. What you have now, you can’t have afterwards. It’ll end in your having to work for your living, my girl, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.”

“That,” said Griselda, unperturbed, inhaling her cigarette, “I am doing now.”

It was a cry she had heard so often before that it had ceased to have much effect upon her. It had been at her instigation that they had given up their Irish home five years before, and it did not interest her to know that her father had never ceased to regret the move. It was by her arrangement also that they had settled down in this dreary little village in the Wolds, where everything had been sacrificed to enable them to hold their own in the English hunting set in which her younger sister Sylvia had ultimately found a husband. Griselda had wished Sylvia to marry, regarding her as an incubus which the establishment could ill afford to maintain. This design having at length been satisfactorily fulfilled, she had looked for an easing of a situation which had never been other than difficult; but for some reason—in spite of the fact that Sylvia had married well—the easement had not come. It was no part of Griselda’s plan to find herself compelled ultimately, when youth was past, to earn her own living. She considered, not wholly without justice, that she had done a certain amount of useful work in running her father’s establishment, and although Mrs. Dicker still bore the brunt of the housekeeping as well as the cooking thereof, there was no doubt that Griselda as its head had succeeded in attaining a position in the county to which otherwise they had scarcely aspired. But for this fact, Sylvia’s marriage to Sir Bentleigh Merrion had certainly never taken place, and Griselda took some credit to herself over the achievement.

She personally had discarded all ideas of matrimony long since as it was her fixed determination to remain the dominant factor of her own existence for all time. She despised most men as nincompoops, and towards those who were too obviously possessed of wills and characters of their own to be classed in this category she displayed a fierce antagonism. Moulded upon masculine lines, she resented all womanly weakness, disdained all womanly wiles. Even the fact that she was dependent upon her father cut deeply into her proud spirit. She looked forward almost with longing to a time when this bondage at least must in the natural course of things be removed and she left completely free and unshackled.

But his hints and threats with regard to the future had of late begun to disturb her somewhat in spite of her determination not to be unduly alarmed. There was no denying the fact that money was scarce and living expensive. It was difficult to see how further economies could be effected, but there was no doubt that the shortage existed and would ultimately have to be dealt with.

“I have no intention of panicking,” she remarked, after a thoughtful pause during which Colonel Audley swallowed the rest of his breakfast and impatiently prepared to leave the table. “There is a remedy for everything. If things have really got so much worse lately, we must find an expedient of some sort.”

“Where are you going to look for it?” growled Colonel Audley.

Though he disliked his daughter, he had considerable respect for her abilities, and he fully recognized that she was not a person to be defeated easily.

Griselda was quite aware of this, and her quiet smile said as much ere she spoke in answer. “I must think,” she said deliberately.

Colonel Audley got up with a movement of exasperation. “Well, you’d better be quick about it,” he said, “and damn’ quick at that. There’s no time to be lost, I assure you. My pension dies with me, remember, and the little I shall manage to leave behind won’t come to much when it’s divided by two.”

A cold gleam shone in Griselda’s hard eyes at this taunt. She looked across at her father with a hint of challenge. “Is that what you have done?” she said.

He stood still, glowering at her across the table, albeit with somewhat of an air of bravado. “Yes, it is!” he rapped out savagely. “What else did you expect? Think I was going to leave the child entirely unprovided for—though, heaven knows——” he uttered an angry laugh—“I may yet. Half of nothing may be her portion—and yours too!”

Griselda removed the ash of her cigarette against the edge of her cup with a perfectly steady hand. “You mean,” she said in a strictly level tone, “that you have treated Charlotte in your will exactly as you have treated me?”

“What else could I do?” he demanded.

She raised her eyebrows slightly. “I am flattered,” she said.

He stamped a furious foot. Griselda’s calm in moments of tension always goaded him in the opposite direction.

“Damnation! What else could I do?” he demanded again.

Griselda’s eyes met his, and there was something in their regard that quelled even his bluster. “I think,” she said in the same even tones, “that I proved to you a good many years ago that Charlotte was not entitled to be treated as one of the family.”

He blenched a little. It was not often that a pitched battle was fought between them, their usual intercourse being a series of running skirmishes; but when it was he generally had to quit the field in disorder. He made an effort, however, to hold his own.

“No, you never proved that,” he said. “It is still an open question—always will be.”

“There was no question as to her mother being an adulteress,” said Griselda in her voice of deadly quietness.

Colonel Audley winced again, more noticeably. “Damn it! You don’t mince matters,” he said.

“No, I don’t,” said Griselda. “It is not my way. I prefer to look facts in the face, and I repeat that Charlotte’s mother was an adulteress, and I add to it that Charlotte herself has no moral claim upon you and never ought to have been born.”

“Well, I can’t help that!” He raised his voice in a kind of desperate blare as the weakness of his position was borne in upon him. “She was born, and, whether she’s entitled to it or not, she has been called by my name all these years, and I can’t in common fairness repudiate her at this stage.”

“That,” said Griselda, “I admit. But I dispute your right to make her a joint inheritor with me of your property. Isn’t it enough that I have toiled for years to make her a respectable member of the community, have personally educated her, and have at the least succeeded in teaching her to obey your slightest word? Hasn’t this been enough—humiliation enough——” a deep tremor came into her voice—“to have her perpetually in my sight, but am I now to submit to being treated as her equal and to share with her that to which I—and I alone—am entitled?”

Colonel Audley drew back a little, for there was something actually terrible in the suppressed violence of her speech. Griselda had suddenly developed what he termed her “Boadicean” mood, and there was in it a quality quite beyond his power to fathom, against which he was no match. Detest her as he might and did—this formidable first-born of his, he could never despise her.

“Damn it!” he said, to gain time. “I own it’s a pity she ever lived to grow up. Never used to think she would. She’s young anyhow and ought to be healthy enough. Why don’t you make her do something for her living? You must have educated her enough by now.”

“I left off educating her long ago,” said Griselda. “She has no brains. I make her work, but she will never do anything useful. She was born to be a burden.”

“If girls can’t support themselves, they ought to marry,” said Colonel Audley, making the statement aggressively since it seemed unlikely that even Griselda could dispute it. “It’s what Sylvia did, and very sensible too.”

“Marry!” said Griselda, and all the bitter hatred and contempt of which she was capable was packed into the brief utterance.

But Colonel Audley here glimpsed a possibility of securing the honours of war, and pursued the point. “Well, how old is she?”

“Seventeen last November,” said Griselda.

“Just the right age!” declared Colonel Audley. “Break ’em in young, and the chances are they’ll never bolt.”

“Oh, she’s broken in all right,” said Griselda grimly. “I saw to that long ago. She hasn’t the spirit of a mouse now, and never will have again, at least so long as she is under my authority.”

“Poor little devil!” said Colonel Audley almost involuntarily. “Oh yes, I know. She’s a shocking little coward and daren’t go near a horse, but you can’t have everything. She’s obedient, that’s the main thing. Well, why don’t you make Sylvia do something useful for once—give her a season in town? She’s got looks of a sort. Some fool is sure to want her, and then she’ll be off our hands anyway.”

“It seems a preposterous idea and she’d probably go wrong,” said Griselda, but she spoke thoughtfully, as though considering the matter.

Her father was quick to note the fact and to see his chance. “Oh, we’ve got to risk something,” he said. “Sylvia must see to that. I think myself it would be a good way out. Once married——”

“She would probably drag our name in the dust,” said Griselda dispassionately. “If you have no objection to that——”

“None whatever,” said Colonel Audley somewhat hastily. “I mean, what the devil does it matter? Besides, she wouldn’t. She’s all white innocence and that sort of thing—the very type to attract some rich ass who is fed up with the other kind. I tell you, Griselda, she might make quite a decent match, and if she does—by Jove, I’ll alter my will in your favour the very day she gets married.”

“Leaving me nothing—instead of half of nothing?” questioned Griselda, with a very bitter sneer.

“No, no! That was a joke!” he protested. “There’ll be something, of course. And if this comes off—as I quite think it will if you can bring Sylvia up to the scratch—there’ll be one less mouth to feed anyhow.”

“I can certainly make Sylvia have her for a time,” said Griselda coldly. “But it doesn’t follow that a penniless, brainless little ninny like Charlotte will find a husband so easily. Also, if she goes, I must have another servant in the house. Mrs. Dicker can’t do everything.”

“Oh, you can easily get a girl from the village to come in and do all that Charlotte does,” said Colonel Audley with a smile of satisfaction. It was not often that he emerged from a conflict with Griselda thus easily. “We’ll manage that all right. And it’ll be a load off my mind as well. Come, come, we must fix this up directly Easter is over.”

Griselda’s answering smile was not a pleasant one. “It will cost you some money, which will most likely be completely wasted,” she observed. “She has no clothes that she could possibly wear in London, nor are they to be bought in this neighbourhood.”

“Oh, damn!” Colonel Audley’s face lengthened considerably. “Can’t Sylvia see to all that?” he asked. “Tell her I’m bankrupt and can’t afford it! After all, I gave her a decent outfit when she married, so she owes me something.”

“I’ll put that to her,” said Griselda ironically.

“Do!” said her father. “Or wait! I will myself. I’ll write. She must be made to see reason.”

“You had better leave her to me,” said Griselda. “I think I can be more convincing. It wouldn’t greatly surprise me if she took to the idea without much persuasion. Bentleigh is not an exciting partner, and she may be glad of an excuse for a little extra amusement. Besides,”—again supreme contempt was in her voice—“I believe she rather likes Charlotte.”

“It’s a good thing someone does,” said Colonel Audley, in a tone of relief. “It isn’t the child’s fault, after all. If she wasn’t such a hopeless little coward I should be sorry for her.”

“And it would be waste of time,” said Griselda calmly. “Charlotte has no brains, as I told you before. And ever since that youthful escapade of hers five years ago, before her illness, she has never dared to show any vice.”

“Perhaps she hasn’t got any,” said Colonel Audley hopefully.

“She certainly had,” said Griselda. “But I think I managed to stamp it out. I certainly did my best.”

“Yes, she nearly pegged out that time, didn’t she?” A note of malice sounded in his voice. “Your stamping out was a bit drastic, eh, Griselda? A good thing it didn’t land you in any trouble.”

Griselda smiled sarcastically. “I was never afraid of that,” she said. “A little salutary punishment does not induce a touch of pleurisy and subsequent heart trouble. I have never regretted giving her that lesson. It was quite effectual. I have never had to repeat it. She has never disobeyed or attempted to deceive me since. I think that is on the whole an achievement to be rather proud of.”

Colonel Audley broke into a laugh and turned away. The fray had not been so serious after all, and he had come out of it somewhat better than he had expected.

“A matter of opinion!” he observed enigmatically as he reached the door, and passed out before any exception could be taken to the remark.

But Griselda merely laughed also, with intense scorn, and lighted another cigarette. She certainly ought to have been a man.

The Altar of Honour

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