The Dwelling Place, page 27
It was as they turned the bend in the road, and her head was back laughing at a weak quip her companion had made, that her eyes took in the huddle of stone buildings in the distance at the top of a slope, and the group of people standing in front of them.
It was the first time she had been on this road since she had returned home, but it was not the first time she had thought of the girl or the stone dwelling; and now there they both were, the girl, and that shanty, which she herself had tried to wreck, and…no! No! She must be imagining things, it must be a trick of the light, because that couldn’t be Clive and the child. He would never…NEVER! She reined her horse in and stretched herself upwards in the saddle, and clearly now she saw her brother lift the child from the girl’s arms and put his own arm about her and lead her into the place; and it was only young Bellingham’s voice that stopped her from bringing her horse round and taking it up the slope at a gallop.
‘What is it,’ he asked, ‘squatters?’ His horse was prancing and he brought it to her side, and when he looked at her he was amazed to see that her face was distorted with anger; yet at the same time he was pleased to note she had a feeling for land. ‘Damn nuisance, all of them,’ he said. ‘As Father said the other day, it wants a mighty brush to sweep the whole bang lot of them into the sea. He’s right an’ all, quite right, can’t leave a yard of land open these days but they come up with some tinpot claim to it. You should get your father to enclose it.’
She didn’t enlighten him as to the fact that her father didn’t own this land; she was concerned at the moment only that he hadn’t recognised Clive over the distance, for had he done so the scandal would have swept the county like wildfire. She was already aware that he had a loose tongue and gloried in titbits of scandal.
She surprised him still further by swinging her horse about and setting it into a gallop, and she didn’t stop until she reached the North Lodge, through which she was just passing when he drew up with her. She turned in the saddle and said, ‘I’ll likely see you tomorrow. Goodbye,’ and on this she set the horse into a gallop up the drive, leaving him gaping after her.
She didn’t slacken speed until she pulled up the animal on the gravel drive. Jumping from the saddle before the stable boy could reach her to take her foot, she ran up the steps and into the hall; and there she saw Hatton and demanded of him, ‘Where is His Lordship?’ and Hatton, looking at her in some surprise, said, ‘I should imagine he…he is taking his bath by now, Miss.’ Didn’t she know that His Lordship took a bath immediately after returning from a shoot? He watched her tearing off her hat and gloves and throwing them aside together with her crop, as she crossed the hall; then he watched her lift up the dip-end of her riding skirt in no ladylike fashion and mount the stairs at a run.
When she reached her father’s room she rapped on the door, which rapping indicated to His Lordship, who was immersed in his bath, that it was no servant outside. Thinking it was his son, he said to Cunningham, ‘If that is Master Clive admit him.’
When Cunningham opened the door and saw Miss Isabelle standing there he immediately pulled it closed and allowed himself only a small aperture in which to stand.
‘I wish to see his Lordship.’
‘I’m…I’m sorry, Miss, but his Lordship is in his bath.’ Cunningham’s voice was a mere whisper, and for a moment he thought she was going to push past him. Then she said, ‘Tell his Lordship I must see him immediately…immediately. Do you hear?’ Then she raised her voice. ‘It is very important.’ As a maid passed down the corridor she dropped her voice to a whisper, and, leaning towards Cunningham, she added, ‘Tell him it is to do with Master Richard.’
‘Yes, yes, Miss, I will do that.’
‘Tell him I will wait in his dressing room.’
‘But…but, Miss.’
‘Cunnings.’ Her tone was louder now. ‘I will wait in his dressing room. Give his Lordship that message.’
Cunningham realised that His Lordship could quite clearly hear the message and when he closed the door it was to see his master getting out of the bath; and so, going hastily towards him and picking up the warm towels that hung on the rack to the side of the fire, he enveloped him in one of them, and, taking the other, he knelt down and dabbed at his legs and feet, saying hesitantly, ‘Miss Isabelle, m’Lord, she wishes to…’
‘I heard, Cunnings. Be quick. There, that’s enough. My robe.’
Minutes later he opened the door into his dressing room, and he saw his daughter with an expression on her face that he hadn’t seen since the day he raised his hand and slapped it. Yet the anger and venom in it weren’t, he recognised, turned against himself now. ‘What is it?’ he asked sharply.
‘Clive.’ Her mouth was so dry that she had to wet her lips before she could go on. ‘He’s…he’s taken the child to that…that woman on the fells.’
The muscles of his face seemed to drop, then contract sharply, ‘What!’
‘I saw him as I was coming back. She…she was holding Richard in her arms. He took him from her and’—now she bit on her lip—‘he escorted her into that place, that shanty. And there were others about, children.’
He looked closely at her and was about to say, ‘You’re mistaken; you have become so obsessed with the child that you have dreamed this up,’ because he knew she was becoming obsessed with the child, even more so than himself, and he was aware that he was jealous of the child’s affection for her. Although the child was not less pleased to see him now than before, he always wished her to accompany them on their walks, and was forever touching and fondling her, and she him. But about this happening she would have no illusion. Yet he must make sure. Stepping back, he opened the door and said, ‘Cunnings!’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Bring the nurse, immediately.’
He watched his daughter striding up and down the room like someone demented and he said to her sharply, ‘Stop that prancing. If this is true then it has deeper implications.’
‘She is a low, wanton hussy.’ Isabelle, following her own train of thought, now took her fist and banged it against the top of the high-backed leather chair. ‘She’s scum! A harlot. After what happened she encourages him again.’
‘Be quiet! Do you hear? Don’t raise your voice. You don’t know the ins and outs, the circumstances. On the two occasions I spoke with her she did not appear to me to be a loose creature; poor, common, ignorant, but I don’t think immoral.’
‘How do you know? They live like vermin.’ She was bending towards him now, her aggressiveness aggravated by the fact that he should speak well of the girl in any way.
He said coldly, ‘Use your sense. She could not have approached him; any advance would have been made by him.’ He turned and, looking at Cunningham, who was standing in the doorway, said, ‘Yes?’
‘The nurse, m’Lord.’
He walked now into the bedroom to see the girl standing just within the doorway, her face white, her eyes wide.
‘Where is your charge?’
‘Mr…Master Clive took him for a walk, m’Lord.’
‘At what time?’
‘Shortly after two, m’Lord.’
‘Without having their dinner?’
‘Master Clive ordered a light meal beforehand, m’Lord.’
‘Did he say where he intended to take the child?’
‘No, m’Lord. I…I thought it was just into the park. I…I’ve been waiting for them.’
‘Very well.’ He turned from the girl and she sidled out. Then looking through the doorway to his daughter, he said, ‘Go and change and meet me downstairs within the half-hour. If he hasn’t returned, then be prepared to accompany me in the coach.’
It was almost dark when he came across the sunken garden and mounted the steps to the drive, there to see a coach driving out from the stable yard, its lights blazing, and Hatton ushering his father and Isabelle through the house door and on to the terrace.
‘Grandpapa! Aunt Isabelle!’ The child bounced excitedly in his arms and made as if he wanted to be put down; but he held him tightly, saying, ‘Now, now. Wait until we get inside.’ He paused a moment at the bottom of the steps and through the lights held by the footmen he looked upwards and into his father’s eyes, then watched him turn abruptly about and, pressing Isabelle before him, enter the house again.
When he went past Hatton, who was holding the door wide, he put the child down on the floor and, tapping his bottom, said, ‘Go with Hatton. Go on now.’ And the child stopped and looked to where his grandfather and aunt were walking away from him across the hall; then he looked again at his father, and when his father nodded at him, he held out his hand to Hatton, and Hatton walked him to the bottom of the stairs where he handed him to Mrs Hatton. She took his hand and led him up the stairs to where the tearful nursemaid was standing, and he went with her. And there was no-one to tell about the exciting adventure he had had with his papa because his nanny kept weeping all the time and would not listen. Everyone was weeping today.
In the study Clive looked at his father and Isabelle standing almost shoulder to shoulder, for once in complete harmony in their rage against him. He did not think they knew where he had been; he thought their anger was occasioned by sheer fright at his having taken the child outside the precincts of his small world at a time when the cholera was known to be raging not only in Sunderland but also in Jarrow, which was much nearer home. But when his father, his voice trembling with his anger, said, ‘Explain yourself, sir,’ he felt for the first time that the matter went deeper with them than the mere fact of his taking the child outside the gates. And then he had it, the explanation, because Isabelle, unable to contain herself any longer, spat at him, ‘How dare you? How dare you take the child to that filthy hovel?’
Oh. He nodded his head at her. So that was it. They knew. How it had come about he didn’t know, but they knew. And in a way he was pleased because it had saved him thinking up a way to break the news to them. Now his father was speaking, grinding out his words through his thin lips. ‘Have you no decency, sir? Have you no feeling for what is right and proper? Even after your four years’ chastisement?’
Now it was Clive’s turn to rear. The twisted smile went from his lips, the grey of his eyes turned bottle-hard, and his voice was the deck voice, the voice of the first mate as he cried, ‘You, to talk of decency! You, to talk of what is right and wrong! You took the child away from her by force…’
‘That is a lie.’
‘All right then, you paid for it, but by playing on the feelings of a simple girl and her ignorance of law, you bought the child for two pocket handkerchiefs. Isn’t that so, sir? Not for twenty-five shillings a week, as you would have me believe, but for two pocket handkerchiefs that her sister stole. You saved her sister from the House of Correction and the payment for it was her son…Don’t talk to me of the correct thing to do, and decency. I raped the girl. You doled out punishment for my act but you couldn’t erase it from my mind, for it’s been with me ever since. And now I wish to atone for it. I am going to atone for it by giving her back the fruits of my sin—as I remember your words for my act, sir.’
‘You can’t! You can’t! You’re mad.’ It was Isabelle shouting at him now. ‘I won’t let you. The child is…’ and she substituted the word ‘father’s’ for ‘mine’ and went rushing on, ‘He has looked after him, given him this environment; the child will die up there.’
‘He is not going up there; I am providing a home for his mother and him.’
‘No. No.’ The words were soft, quiet, as if from someone about to faint, and the look on His Lordship’s face indicated that this could indeed happen at any moment; and the tone still quiet, he said, ‘You can’t do this.’
‘Can’t I? You were very anxious, sir, that I should prove my right to the boy by making everything legal. I did just that. The boy is my responsibility, his life is mine to order; and after consideration I think the best place for him would be with his mother. The arrangements have been in motion for some time now; they should be settled within the next week. And you, sir, can do nothing about it.’ He turned his head. ‘Nor you, my dear sister.’
‘You won’t! You shan’t! I won’t allow it.’ She had stepped in front of him, her bust, that had once been as flat as a boy’s, big now, was almost touching his coat. She was the termagant, domineering Isabelle that he remembered, out to make him fall in with her wishes, to frighten him into doing her will. But she was forgetting to take into account his four years’ education on a sailing vessel; and when she now cried at him, ‘I’ll see him dead before I’ll let him go to that dirty, stinking whore,’ his forearm came out and, with a chopping movement, hit the top of her breasts and knocked her flying. It was only her father’s arms that saved her from falling full length on the floor, and when he had steadied her his own rage was subdued by the sight of his son’s blazing face. He didn’t recognise him or the voice that cried at Isabelle, ‘Don’t you dare put that name to her! Huh!’ He was bending forward, all his muscles taut, his voice coarse sounding and guttural as he cried, ‘On your own admission you’re worse than any whore. You encouraged the antics of the parson and his straying hands, or you wouldn’t have let it go on for four years. And you enjoyed torturing Aunt Anne. You’ve been unnatural all your life. You’ve only been saved from the pillory or worse because you were born in this house, and I’m sick in my stomach when I think I was in the same womb as you.’
Isabelle was standing alone now. Her father had taken his support from her when his brother-in-law’s name had been mentioned, and now he stood apart as if from the whole concern, looking first at his son and then at his daughter; and the thought that he had tried to bury rose again: Why had he been plagued with such offspring?
‘ENOUGH!’ His voice seemed to shudder the walls. There followed a heavy, telling silence, and it was finally broken by Clive turning abruptly and stalking out of the room.
His Lordship now walked around his desk and sat down. He felt very tired, old, ineffectual, useless. The only human being he had ever really loved in his life was to be taken from him and he could do nothing about it. And that’s what he said when his daughter, leaning over the desk towards him, asked between short, hard breaths, ‘What are you going to do?’
‘There is little we can do; in fact, nothing.’
‘There must be something.’ So far was she leaning across the desk that her face was on a level with his, and he saw again, as he looked into her eyes, the face he had struck, and he wanted to put out his hand and push it from him, far, far away. Once again he wanted to push both of them far away, away out of his life.
What peace he had experienced during the past few years in this house, just the child and him. Happiness had pervaded the place, the workings inside and out had gone without a hitch. The child, he thought, had cast a spell over all his domain. He certainly had tempered his own attitude towards the peasantry, for he had made work for extra hands on his estate, he had given liberally to the charities in both Jarrow and Shields, and he knew that his generosity had kept the soup kitchens going for two winters. All this since the child had come into his life. And now he was to go back from where he had come.
‘Isn’t there any legal way? He is your heir once removed.’
‘Yes, once removed. That is the crux of the matter: once removed. As things stand his father has legal right to him, and he is of age.’ His tone was full of regret and he made a sound in his throat. ‘And I was the one who insisted upon this. And you, too’—he moved his head towards her—‘were all for having legal recognition. Well, we got what we desired, we got legal recognition for the boy—and this is the result.’
She moved away from the desk holding her face in both her hands now. He watched her walk the length of the room twice before stopping near the table on which a lamp stood, and when she took her hand and passed it over the tall glass funnel, which emitted quite a severe heat, he felt himself shudder.
She walked back to the desk and, her voice more controlled and her body straight now, she said, ‘If you can do nothing legally, what can you do illegally?’
He remained still. The suggestion disturbed him but he did not refute it. Then, her face close to his again, she whispered, ‘I…I could take him away.’
He got sharply to his feet, saying, ‘No, no. That would be ridiculous, and fruitless.’
‘Then what do you suggest? That he should just walk out of here with the child and hand him to that creature?’
As he moved to the fire and stood looking down into it she said, ‘I once heard Mr Bellingham making a statement about land. Fence it in, he said, enclose it, and let them fight it out from there. Possession is nine points of the law.’
He turned and looked at her. Possession is nine points of the law. If the boy were out of reach for a time then Clive might be brought to his senses through cool argument and discussion, not in heated passion as had happened tonight. Of course he could take the matter to court under the heading of abduction, or kidnapping, but he didn’t think that his son would do this, for he imagined that underneath the crude shell that his four years of voyaging had built round him, there must still remain the indolent, sensitive creature, who would take the line of least resistance and would be open to reason. He sighed now and said, ‘We’ll discuss this further tomorrow. In the meantime, stay with the boy as much as possible, and should Clive show any sign of carrying out his threat you will, of course, inform me at once…and,’ he added, ‘make the necessary arrangements with the nurse.’ He then made a motion with his head and turned from her, and she went quickly from the room.
Ten minutes later, standing before her dressing-table mirror, she picked up a strand of white silk cord that was used for binding her hair before it was dressed, and slowly she began to pull out single threads as if she were drawing sinews from a body.
