Читать книгу The Fortress - Hugh Walpole - Страница 5

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Westaways was a very different place from Fell House, Uldale.

Fell House would have always, whatever were done to it, the atmosphere of the farm from which it had sprung. David Herries, John’s grandfather, had in his time made certain enlargements. He was greatly proud—and so was Sarah his wife—of his dairies, the garden with its fine lawn and Gothic temple, the parlour and the best bedroom, but both David and Sarah had been simple people, nor, since their marriage, had they travelled far afield. Sarah, for a brief while, had been bitten with the London fashion, fostered by Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto, Mrs. Radcliffe and the rest, for pseudo-mediaevalism, suits of armour, stained-glass windows and plaster gargoyles, but she was not by nature romantic and the craze had soon passed. Fell House, nestling its warm cheek against the breast of the moor, was an improved farmhouse and no more.

Utterly different from its very inception was Westaways. In the early years of the eighteenth century old Pomfret Herries, brother of ‘Rogue’ Herries, and so uncle to David, young John’s grandfather, had had it built, not because he wanted a beautiful house but because he wished to go one better than his neighbours. However, it was a beautiful house because he chose for architect old John Westaway, saturnine and melancholy hermit, one of the finest architects then alive, trained in Italy, the friend of Vanbrugh and Chesterman, famous through all the north of England not only for his skill but also for his eccentricities and savage temper.

Old Pomfret had to pay for his ambitions and grumbled at the cost for years after, but he had, in the end, a lovely house. It is true that the only room in it of any value to himself was his own apartment thronged with guns and fishing-rods. He was proud, nevertheless, for people came from miles to see the house.

It was situated between Crosthwaite Church and the town of Keswick. At that time the gardens ran down to the fringe of the Lake. The virtues of the house were its beautiful tiles of rosy red, the delicate wrought-ironwork across its front, the sash windows—at that time a great rarity—the pillared hall, and especially the saloon, whose decorations were designed and executed by John Westaway himself. The subject of the design was Paris awarding the apple, and the three goddesses were painted with extreme vigour.

After old Pomfret’s death the house passed out of the family for a while, but Will, David Herries’ money-making son, bought it back again and thought to live in it. However, London, and especially the City, held him too strongly. He found the country both dull and fruitless. His son Walter reigned in Westaways in his stead.

Walter, who had little taste but great energy and a readiness to take the advice of others (for his own profit), enlarged and improved Westaways. For a number of years workmen were always about the place. He added a wing towards Crosthwaite, doubled the stables, extended the gardens and had a grand conservatory. He also put fine things inside the house; he had a famous piece of tapestry that showed Diana hunting, some excellent sculpture, and a Van Dyck and a small but most valuable Titian. There was also over the door of the saloon a painting of the Watteau school in deep rich colours of some French king dining with his ladies—a picture all purples, oranges and crimson that the Keswick citizens thought the finest thing they had ever seen. Only old Miss Pennyfeather laughed at it and called it ‘stuff,’ and Mr. Southey, after dining with Walter, was said never even to have noticed it.

Walter Herries himself cared for none of these things for themselves, but only in so far as they represented strength and power.

At this time he was thirty years of age and his children, Uhland and Elizabeth, who were twins, were seven; they were born in the same year as young Adam and were a few months older than he.

Walter was large in girth and limb, but could not at this period be called stout. He was in appearance a survival of the days of the Regency, now swiftly slipping into limbo. He seemed already something of an anachronism with his coats of purple and red, his high thick stock with its jewelled pin, his capacity for eating and drinking, his roaring laugh, his passion for sport. But he was not really such an anachronism as he seemed. In politics, when he bothered to speak of them, he appeared as reactionary Tory as Wellington or old Lord Eldon, but in reality he stood closer to Huskisson and Canning. The fact was that he learnt much from his father, who, one of the astutest men in the City, had his eye more firmly fixed on the past. Walter, caring for nothing but his personal power and the aggrandisement of his family, loving only in all the world his crippled little son, building his edifice in part for himself but in the main for Uhland’s future, considered that future very much more deeply than anyone supposed. He suffered from the fact that no one in his immediate surroundings was of any use to him in these things. He reigned in a passionate loneliness and perhaps in that had more in common with his great-grandfather, old ‘Rogue’ Herries, than he would ever have dreamed possible. His wife Agnes he held to be an imbecile, and she was truly as terrified of him as all timid wives are supposed to be of tyrannous, loud-voiced husbands.

On a certain fine September morning of this year, 1822, a long-legged, supercilious individual named Posset (William Posset, son of William Posset, coachman at Levons Hall) brought into Walter Herries’ dressing-room a large tin bath. The floor of this dressing-room drooped in its centre into a hollow and in the floor of this hollow was a small iron grating. Over the hollow the bath was inserted. A pinch-faced youth in a uniform of dark red and brass buttons then arrived with two vast pitchers so large as almost to conceal him. With an air of extreme relief and under the cold eye of the lengthy Posset, young Albert emptied the pitchers into the bath. Posset then with delicate tread stepped into the next room, pulled back the curtains and approached the four-poster. Walter, his mouth wide open, his chest bare, his nightshirt pulled down over one shoulder, was snoring loudly. Posset, with a gravity worthy of a tax-collector, shook the bare arm. Walter woke, gave one glance at Posset, sprang from his bed, tugged his nightshirt over his head, rushed into the next room and plunged into the bath. Young Albert, accustomed to the fierce eruption of water, always at this point retired to the farthest corner of the room, where he stood, towels over his arm, admiring, with an amazement that custom never seemed to lessen, that great body, that splutter of exclamations, grunts and oaths, and that sudden magnificent figure of a man withdrawn from the water, suffering the lusty (but always reverent) towelling of Posset—and water dripping everywhere, running in little streams and eddies into the hollow and away safely through the iron grating. Albert always informed those less privileged that there was no sight in the world quite so fine as his master as he plunged into his bath—no lion in a show, no tiger in Indian jungle, could have the energy and vigour of his master at this moment. It was Albert’s top moment of his day—a pity that it came so early; every event was a decline from it.

Walter had long ago insisted that any visitor in the house—his mother, his wife, very definitely included—must, unless a doctor forbade them, be present at the family breakfast table. It was the beginning of his patriarchal day. Only thirty years of age, he already felt himself founder of the whole of the Herries stock, and nothing pleased him better than to have Herries collected from all over the country and seated at his table.

This was not at present easy, for Keswick was tucked away in the North and travelling was difficult. Nevertheless, this was not a bad halting-place on the way to Scotland, and the number of Herries ‘bagged’ for Walter’s dining-table in the last five years was remarkable.

Walter liked further to collect Herries who were oddities and to encourage them in their idiosyncrasies—granted, of course, that these idiosyncrasies did not inconvenience himself. Here he was instigated by the old motive of the King and his Court Jester. Walter might be said to have a great sense of fun, if no very strong sense of humour. He liked, for example, to indulge old Monty Cards in his femininities (Monty painted his cheeks and powdered his nose), in his little meannesses and his nervous terrors. He enjoyed the company of old Maria Rockage (for whom he had a real liking) that he might shock her Methodist principles. He even was childish enough to play on his wife’s terrors by laying a book on a door that it should fall on her when entering a room. He was not at all above practical jokes and horseplay. They were part of his ‘Regency’ manner.

He had just now as his guests, Phyllis, Maria Rockage’s daughter, her husband, Stephen Newmark, and three of her children—Horace aged three, Mary aged two, and Phyllis only one. She was anticipating a fourth. They were all very healthy children and Mr. Newmark looked upon them as just rewards tendered to him by a grateful Deity.

For Stephen Newmark, tall, long-nosed, sanctimonious, was a perpetual joy to Walter. He took life seriously. He enjoyed Family Prayers. Walter, therefore, indulged his fancy and insisted that all of them, Agnes his wife, his mother (who was staying just then with him), his own two children, and all the household should be present on the stroke of eight and offer up, under the leadership of Mr. Newmark, thanks to the Creator for the dangers of a night safely past and the glories of another day vouchsafed. It puzzled Mr. Newmark a little that Walter should be so truly determined on Family Prayers. This determination did not altogether ‘go’ with his cock-fighting, horse-racing, card-playing, but Newmark had long ago decided (and confided to Phyllis) that his Cousin Walter was ‘a strange fish.’ In that conclusion he was perfectly correct.

On this morning, however, Walter had a small matter of business to discharge before breakfast. Rosy, scented, his stock starched until it glittered, his pantaloons of dark purple hiding his magnificent legs, ‘rings on his fingers and bells on his toes,’ he descended, like Jove from Olympus, to the study where he transacted his affairs.

Here his agent, Peach, was waiting for him. Peach was a short, stocky, beetle-browed little man who had been in the service, for most of his days, of the Duke of Wrexe. He came, therefore, from the South and hated the North and the Northerners with a dreadful passion. He would not have stayed here a day had it not been for the odd power that Walter Herries exercised over him. He could not be said to love his master—he was not known to love any human being; he was not deferential, showed no servitude, disputed his master’s wishes hotly and was grudging in thanks for benefits, but he seemed to have found in Walter Herries a man who had stung, reluctantly, his admiration—the only man in the world it might be. He appreciated Herries’ dominating roughness, coarseness, liking for horseplay, and then something more—outside and beyond these.

In any case he made a wonderful servant and was hated cordially throughout the countryside.

He was standing now, his legs, that were slightly bowed, apart, his hand gripping the shoulder of a slim fair-haired boy who, his hands tied behind him, his eyes wide open with fear and apprehension, stayed there, his heart beating like a terrified rabbit’s.

‘This is the boy,’ Peach said.

‘Yes,’ said Walter, looking at him.

The boy’s eyes drooped. In his heart was the terror of death. He knew that he could be hanged for what he had done.

‘I discovered him,’ Peach went on, ‘last evening. He had a small wheelbarrow and was placing in it some logs from the pile outside the further stables.’

‘What did he say?’ Walter asked.

‘He said nothing. At least not then. Later when he was shut into the cellar for the night he admitted that he was hungry and had a mother who was hungry and a small brother who was hungry.’ Peach gave a click in his throat, a favourite noise of his, and it resembled a key turning in a door. ‘They all say they’re hungry now.’

‘What’s your name?’ asked Walter.

‘Henry Burgess.’

‘Well, Henry Burgess. . . . You know what the Keswick Justices will say?’

The boy was understood to mutter that he didn’t care.

‘You don’t care? Well, all the better. It’s a hanging matter, you know.’

‘I gave him food and drink,’ Peach remarked reluctantly. ‘He wouldn’t have held up else.’ Then he added: ‘His mother’s been waiting outside all night.’

There was an interruption. The door opened and Uhland came in. It was his habit to find his father here before breakfast. For a boy of seven he was tall and very spare and his face was grave and sadly lined for a child. One leg was longer than the other and he walked aided by a little ebony cane. When he saw that there was company he stopped at the door. It was characteristic of him that he stood there looking at them solemnly and said nothing.

‘Well, what’s your defence?’ asked Walter.

The boy was understood to say they were all hungry.

‘All hungry, were you? That’s not much of an excuse. Couldn’t you work?’

No work to be found. Hard times. Had been working for a hostler. Turned away for fighting another boy who insulted his mother.

‘Young ruffian,’ said Walter complacently. He stood, his chest thrust out, his thumbs in his arm-holes. Then he nodded to Uhland, who came limping forward. Walter put his arm round his son and held him close to him.

‘Uhland, this boy has been stealing my wood. He says he did it because he was hungry. If he goes before the Justices it will be a hanging matter. Shall I send him or no?’

Uhland stared at the boy, who suddenly raised his eyes, glaring at them all.

‘He doesn’t look hungry,’ he said quietly.

‘No, upon my word he doesn’t,’ said Walter with boisterous good-humour. ‘That’s good for a child, Peach, is it not? He does not look hungry. You are right, Uhland, my boy.’ He laughed, throwing back his handsome curly head. ‘Well, what shall we do with him?’

‘Let him go, Papa,’ said Uhland. His voice was cold, but he looked at the boy with interest. ‘We have plenty of wood.’

‘Yes, but we shall not have,’ said Walter, ‘if all the young vagabonds——Very well, let him go, Peach. He shall have the dogs on him if he comes this way again.’

Without a word Peach, pushing the boy in front of him, took him from the room.

Walter laughed, yawned, stretched his great arms.

‘Well, my boy, how are you?’

‘Very well, Papa, thank you.’

‘Slept? No headache?’

‘No, Papa, thank you.’

‘Will you come with me into Keswick this morning?’

‘Yes, Papa.’

There was a pause; then Uhland said:

‘Elizabeth wishes to come.’

‘She can go with Miss Kipe.’

‘Yes, Papa.’

A roar like a wild beast’s cry for his food filled the room. It was the ceremonial gong—a gong brought from India, purchased by Will and given by him to his son, a superb gong of beaten brass and carved with the figures of Indian deities.

So they went to breakfast, Uhland’s small bony hand in his father’s large one.

They were all assembled in the bright, high room whose wide windows looked out on to the garden with the plashing fountain, the Lake and the hills beyond. Stephen Newmark was there, standing behind a reading-desk; Phyllis his wife; two of her children; Elizabeth with her governess, Miss Kipe; Christabel Herries, Walter’s mother; Agnes, Walter’s wife; Montague Cards and the whole household—Posset, young Albert, the cook, the maids and the little kitchen-help.

Walter took his place beside his wife and instantly they all knelt. A long row of upturned boots met the interested gaze of two robins on the window-sill. After a while, with creaking of knees, rustling of aprons, they all rose and sat down while Mr. Newmark read a selection from the New Testament. The sun flooded the room. A large fat tortoise-shell cat came stealthily down the garden path, its green eyes fixed on the robins. On the bright road beyond the house the Burgess family began to trudge in silence towards Carlisle. Walter put out his hand and laid it on Uhland’s shoulder. The cook, who was fat and had trouble with her heart, began to breathe heavily, Posset caught the eye of the prettiest of the maids and instantly looked away again. Little Elizabeth, looking out, saw the cat and the birds. Her eyes widened with apprehension.

‘Let us Pray,’ said Mr. Newmark, and down on their knees they all went again.

‘May the blessing of the Lord rest upon us all this day,’ said Mr. Newmark. There was a pause, then a rustle, a knee-cracking, a boot-scraping, and they were all on their feet again.

The domestics were in line—Mrs. Rains the cook, Posset, the maids, Albert, the little kitchen-maid who had a round rosy face and a neat waist—all in their proper order.

‘Fresh country girls you succeed in getting, Walter,’ said Newmark after they were gone, his mind meditatively on the kitchen-maid.

‘Anybody wanting the barouche this fine morning?’ said Walter genially. He was in an excellent temper, which fact the three ladies perceived and brightened accordingly. Christabel Herries, Walter’s mother, was fifty years of age and thin to emaciation. She wore gowns of black silk with a purple Indian shawl thrown about her narrow shoulders. She moved with timidity, as though she were ever expecting a rude word. She adored her son but feared him. She had been, all through her married life, under the domination of Herries men. Her husband had never treated her with unkindness, but the City had swallowed him, leaving Christabel alone on shores of domesticity so barren that she occupied half her London evenings talking to herself in a large drawing-room all yellow silk and mirrors. Will, her husband, had hoped to make her a social success. But after a disastrous Ball that they gave in the summer of ’96, a Ball that had ended with a scene between Christabel and Jennifer, then a radiant young beauty, Will, with a shrug of his shoulders, had reconciled himself to her disabilities. He very quickly saw that the thing for him to do was to make the money so that his son Walter might carry on the family glory.

Walter had always been kind to his mother, but for family rather than personal reasons. He thought her ‘a poor fish,’ but then he had no opinion of women unless they were handsome. Christabel was, however, the mother of Walter Herries; she must therefore be honoured by the outside world. And he saw that it was so.

Agnes, as the wife of Walter Herries and the mother of his children, should also have secured honourable treatment had the thing been at all possible. But in this Walter saw that the world was not to blame, for a more miserable woebegone sickly female was not, he was assured, to be found in the civilised globe. When he married her she had been something of the type of that new rosy-cheeked kitchen-maid (whom he had noticed, and saw also that Newmark had noticed). She had been merry at first with a certain rather kittenish charm. But she was ‘cold.’ Marital relations had terrified her from the first. Their marriage-night had been a horror, and after the birth of the twins they had occupied separate bedrooms. Then she had had one sickness after another, now did not choose to trouble to talk; ‘sulky,’ Walter told himself. She pretended to be fond of the children but, he was happy to say, Uhland had already as much scorn of her as his father had.

He felt (and with justice surely) that Fate had dealt unfairly in giving so magnificent a man so wretched a partner. He was fair to her, he gave her everything that she needed; all that he asked of her was that she should keep out of his way and not interfere with his plans for Uhland. With Elizabeth she should do as she pleased.

Phyllis Newmark was tall, of a charming pink and white complexion, and had a laughing eye.

Her father, Lord Rockage, in his place, Grosset in Wiltshire, had given her love and kisses combined with general disorder, poverty and Methodism. On these mixed virtues she had thriven. She was kindly, cheerful, intelligent and quite uneducated. She was born to be a mother, and a mother she was most assuredly proving. She did not mind how many children she had. She adored them all. Newmark, having helped to provide her with three, must receive her grateful thanks. She gave him her obedience, laughed at his foibles and understood him better than anyone else in the world. She too had noticed his glance at the kitchen-maid although at the same time she was murmuring (with real devotion) the Lord’s Prayer and observing a pimple on the neck of little Horace and wondering whether Walter would allow them the barouche that morning or force them into the post-chaise or order them to walk. She knew, however, exactly how to deal with the kitchen-maid, the pimple and the walk (if that were compulsory). Nothing could defeat her; she inherited from both her parents courage, honesty and an insatiable zest for life.

Soon they were all around the breakfast-table and set to with an eagerness that spoke well for their digestions. Rounds of beef; pies; fish, broiled and fried; eggs, baked, fried, boiled; hams, tongues, jams, marmalades, buns, scones—everything was there, and tankards of ale, tea, coffee. . . . Agnes Herries alone pretended to eat but did not.

‘Yes, you may have the barouche,’ Walter observed, ‘and Phyllis shall have the barouche box if she chooses—I know that it gives her the greatest gratification both to see and be seen.’ Then, having paused sufficiently to catch all their attention, he added:

‘But first I have a visitor.’

‘A visitor?’

‘Yes. At ten o’clock precisely a lady is to come and see me.’

‘A lady?’

‘A friend of you all—Mrs. Judith Paris.’

He allowed his words to sink in. And indeed they caused a stir. Both Christabel and Phyllis Newmark had the deepest affection for Judith. To Phyllis she had been a familiar friend since her babyhood, for Judith had once lived at Grosset, and to Christabel she was perhaps the only woman in the world who had never failed her, the one human being who did not patronise her, cared for her as she was, knew with tenderness and perception the barrenness of her life.

Yet Christabel had only seen her once in seven years. Only once since the night when Judith had dined at Westaways, the night of the news of Napoleon’s escape from Elba. After that Judith had fled to Paris, borne her illegitimate son there. Since her return to Uldale there had been war between the two houses. Whenever Christabel came up from London to stay with her son she hoped that there would be some chance meeting, in a lane, in a street. She had not dared herself to prepare a meeting.

‘Oh, Judith!’ Phyllis cried joyfully. ‘I had been intending to ask. . . .’

‘She is coming,’ Walter said, greatly amused at the disappointment that his womenkind would suffer, ‘solely on a business matter. The visit is only to myself.’

Then Christabel showed courage.

‘Walter, you should invite Judith to dinner. Bygones are bygones. You should most certainly invite her to dinner.’

‘And Jennifer?’ asked Walter, laughing.

Christabel’s pale cheek flushed. No, she could never forgive Jennifer. That old quarrel, twenty-six years old, could never be forgotten. It had too many consequences. It had split the family; it had been the close of Christabel’s social life. She had never had the courage to give a real party again. And then Jennifer had behaved scandalously. She had been another man’s mistress under her husband’s nose. That poor Francis had shot himself in London was all Jennifer’s fault. No, Jennifer was another matter.

‘Well, then,’ said Walter, observing his mother’s silence. ‘You see, ma’am. And you cannot have Judith here without Jennifer. Judith rules that house. She has become, I hear, a perfect Turk. . . . Well, well, it may not be for long.’

He added these last words in a half-murmur to himself. With a final pull at his tankard of beer, wiping his mouth, with a bow to the ladies, he got up, walked for a moment to the window and stood there, looking out, then left the room.

As soon as he was gone the children broke out into little pipings and chirrupings. The two Newmark children (who should have been in the nursery, but their father wished them to take their part, even thus early, in the morning ceremony) rolled decorously on the floor at their mother’s feet. You felt that already their infant eyes were cautiously on their father. Uhland sat without moving, one leg over the other, an attitude protective of his deformity. Elizabeth, shyly, crossed the room. She was a beautiful child, most delicate in colour and build. She had none of the high bones of the Herries tribe. She did not seem like a Herries until suddenly with a lift of her head you saw pride and resolve, two of the finer Herries characteristics. Her mother took her hand and they stayed quietly together, remote, in a world of their own, without speaking. . . .

Judith was shown into the little parlour next the saloon. It had not been long since she had had a talk with Walter there—last Christmas-time it had been. Now, as she sat on the red morocco chair waiting for him, she thought of that, and how there had been a bowl of Christmas roses. A petal had fallen lazily, wistfully to the carpet. Their talk then had been almost friendly. She had gone with him afterwards to the nursery to see the children, and she had been touched by his protective love for his son.

But now all was changed. In the interval between that meeting and this she had had proof enough of the serious danger that this big laughing man offered to her and to hers.

She was here to defend her own, and a wave of hot fierce pride beat into her cheeks as she sat there, a small unobtrusive woman in a black bonnet, her hands in a black muff, waiting for him to come in. It was he who had written to her, a short polite note asking her whether she could give him a few moments on an important matter. She would not have come, but she also had something of her own to say. She would see that she said it.

When he came in she got up and bowed, but did not offer her hand.

‘Well, Cousin Walter,’ she said grimly. ‘What do you wish to see me about?’

His own tone changed when he saw her attitude. He had intended to be friendly, jolly, a mood that he preferred, for he liked himself in that rôle. But he was like a child if anyone affronted him. It might be, too, that Judith was the only person in the world of whom he had some fear. Still, his ground was sure and he began confidently enough.

‘Forgive my asking you to take this trouble, Cousin Judith. You will agree, however, that I should be deceiving myself if I fancied that my presence would be welcome at Uldale.’

‘Nevertheless,’ she answered, ‘you have paid us already at least one visit this year.’

‘Indeed?’

‘Last February I believe it was. You did us the honour to ride over and even to inspect our garden.’

He was confused. He had not thought that she knew of it.

‘Well—it happened that I rode that way. . . . But come, Cousin Judith. I am certain that we have neither of us time to waste. . . .’ Then he added, a little awkwardly: ‘I am sorry that you are already determined that our talk shall be unfriendly.’ (What was there, he asked himself, about the little plain woman in the homely bonnet that made him feel like a scolded schoolboy? She had, in the last six months, acquired the devil of a manner—as though she were already Queen of Cumberland. Well, he would show her that she was not.)

She regarded him sternly.

‘Cousin Walter, I was in this same room Christmas last. We had a conversation that was not altogether unfriendly. Since then facts have come to my knowledge. I know that it was through you that Francis Herries left home and put an end to his life in London. I know that it was because you bribed and suborned that the riot occurred at Fell House—the riot that ended in the undeserved death of the best friend I had in the world—Reuben Sunwood. And since then,’—she spoke without emotion and without removing her eyes from his face,—‘since I have been in charge of things at Fell House, your hand has been everywhere. Those fields towards Ireby that we intended to purchase—you paid an absurd price for them, although you could not need the ground. You bribed the cattle-man whom we had last March from Mungrisdale to poison our cows. Within the last month you have attempted to bribe Mr. Rackstraw, who has been with us all this year as tutor, to spy upon us as Mr. Winch did before him. Mr. Rackstraw has been gentleman enough to show us loyalty. After these things—and I have no doubt that there are many more with which your conscience can charge you—it is perhaps a little without meaning to speak of friendliness between us.’

Walter did not move, did not shift his great bulk, did not turn his eyes away. He admired her. By God, he admired her! There was someone here worth fighting.

‘Very well, then,’ he said at last. ‘We know at least where we stand, you and I. I will not, however, admit responsibility either for Francis’ weakness or Sunwood’s rashness. Francis would not have shot himself had he been another sort of man. It was his whole life condemned him, not I. As to the riot, no one regretted more than myself its most serious consequences. And what evidence have you that I was concerned in that matter?’

‘The evidence of Mr. Winch,’ Judith answered.

‘Faugh! A wretched little time-server who cheated me quite as steadily as he cheated yourself, Judith. As to other more recent matters, well—do you recollect our last conversation in this room?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘Then you will remember the challenge I laid down. I told you—what I trust you sincerely believe—that I had no animosity whatever towards yourself. I told you also that for reasons both private and public I was resolved that Jennifer and her children should vacate Fell House, and that if I could not see to it by fair means that they went, then I would see to it by unfair. I was honest in that. I gave you warning.’

‘And on what ground,’ Judith cried indignantly, ‘had you the right? Fell House is Jennifer’s place. It is where her husband was born and his children after him.’

‘My father also was born there,’ said Walter quietly. ‘As you may have observed, Judith, I have a great sense of family. It is perhaps the greatest quality in me. Jennifer with her rotten public history offends my sense of family. There is also an old quarrel between her and my mother that possibly you have not forgotten. In any case, I made you a fair offer then. I make you a fair offer now. Let Jennifer and her children leave Fell House and go to live in the South—and the matter is for ever ended.’

‘We are only beating the old ground,’ answered Judith impatiently. ‘There is nothing to be said on that score. We defy you now, Cousin Walter, as we defied you then. There is only now this difference—that they have me to fight for them, and life has made me a determined woman, not easily moved.’

‘No,’ he answered quickly. ‘I am aware that you are not. We are alike at least in that. But you know that my quarrel is neither with you nor your boy. Indeed, it has never been. That is one matter on which I wish to speak to you.’

He hesitated, then went on:

‘It seems that my boy, Uhland, has met your boy Adam on several occasions.’

‘Yes, I know it.’

‘They are only babies, but Uhland is old for his age. He has taken an unaccountable liking for your Adam.’ He paused, laughed, continued: ‘Forgive me for that word “unaccountable.” But for children as young as they are——’ He broke off.

She felt herself, against her will, touched. When Walter mentioned his son a different character seemed to speak from his eyes, his mouth, his very hands. He was young and proud when he spoke of his son. Some better light shone through his coarse texture. But she did not want to be touched.

‘You must know,’ she said impatiently, ‘that it was through no wish of mine that they met. It was in the woods beyond Portinscale—pure accident.’

‘Oh, I know, I know. . . . I was not charging you with any intention. But my boy speaks of him, wishes to see him——’

‘Yes,’ Judith answered, ‘that is a mischance that we must correct.’

‘A mischance?’

‘Yes. It would be good for neither of them, things being as they are, that they should be better acquainted.’

Walter choked back some reply that he was about to make. His control was remarkable.

‘I had hoped,’ he said steadily, ‘that you would allow the children occasionally to meet. We elders may have our divisions. There is no reason——’

She broke in, jumping impetuously to her feet:

‘No reason! No reason! There is this reason, Cousin Walter—that you are our enemy. You have killed Francis Herries, you would rob his children of the very roof over their heads. Only a moment ago you threatened me. And yet you wish that my son and your son——’

She stopped, sat down quietly, smoothing her skirt.

‘I have still some of my old temper remaining although I am near fifty. . . . In fact, I may tell you, Cousin Walter, that I was never in better health in my life. Aye,’ she nodded her bonnet, ‘that is what I had come to say. You may think me an old woman, but I am young enough yet to keep my son from your influence and, pray God, I ever will be.’

He was angry; she had touched him. His hand fingered the jewelled pin in his stock. But his voice was level as he answered: ‘Very well, then. You are confident, Cousin Judith. I am an impatient man by blood, but in this case I can school myself to waiting.

‘Now hear my offer. It was to make it that I asked you to visit me. Last week I purchased the land at High Ireby. It was my intention, unless we come to some agreement together, to build a house there.’

High Ireby? At once she grasped the implication. The High Ireby land was on the hills above Uldale. It was at some distance, but nevertheless it overlooked Fell House. Walter there in some big place of his planning, with his fields, his cattle, his servants. . . . In spite of herself she showed some agitation.

‘That would be done,’ she said at length slowly, ‘to spite us.’

‘It would be done,’ he answered, smiling (for he saw that she grasped the consequences), ‘because I admire the view. It would not be perhaps altogether happy for Jennifer and her children to have me so neighbourly.’ He looked at her closely. She gave him back look for look. ‘But,’ he went on, ‘you have not heard my proposition. This house here is now too small for me, but there are other sites that I could choose, other than High Ireby. Then it is one of two things. Either Jennifer sells me Fell House—I will give her a good price for it—and removes herself South. And in that case I would make you the offer of it. You should be my tenant at a most moderate rental. Or I build on High Ireby. There is no necessity for an immediate decision. I only wished that you should know what I had in mind.’

Judith saw then his plan; that this should hang over them night and day. If Walter built a house at High Ireby, it would kill Jennifer. And John? His nature being as it was, he could not endure it. Nor would it stop at Walter’s living there. He would be able, in a thousand ways, to molest them at Fell House, to spy upon them, to break their privacy. . . . Yes, it was a clever notion.

‘At any time, Cousin Judith,’ he said, moving towards the door, ‘that Jennifer is ready for me to have Fell House at a good price——’

She got up, putting her hands in her muff.

‘You are clever, Walter,’ she said. ‘I grant you that. You are clever.’

‘I am flattered,’ he said, bowing. ‘I must be clever to fight so brilliant an adversary.’

‘Stuff!’ she answered, tossing her head. ‘None of your fine manners. Time’s wasted by them.’

Outside the door she turned.

‘You are a strange man. So much trouble to persecute two weak women.’

‘One weak woman,’ he corrected her.

At the top of the stairs he said: ‘You understand my offer?’

‘Oh yes, I understand.’

‘Well, good day.’

‘Good day to you, Walter.’

As she climbed into the chaise she was surprised to find herself trembling. Her desire at that moment was to hasten home and find them safe. Then to gather them all into her arms—Jennifer, John, Dorothy and Adam.

But all she said aloud for the benefit of Bennett’s broad back was, once again, ‘Stuff!’