by Joan Smith
“I was careful not to say ‘lady.’ She’s one of the other sort. Thal would be happy to see him settle down with a respectable wife—of his own, I mean,” he added, with a little debonair laugh that suited him, but rather shocked me.
“I didn’t believe Millie when she said—hinted, I mean—that he was a womanizer.”
“That’s too strong a word for Homer. He visits a married woman weekly, when her husband is busy elsewhere. But pray don’t tell a soul I am the one who let the cat out of the bag. I don’t even know if the affair is still on, since he moved to Wyngate. She was one of his tenants. I don’t believe in philandering with the lower classes myself, but that is a matter of taste really, not morals. I don’t mean to imply I am a saint.”
A little pleasure went out of the afternoon. When I returned, it was not of the day’s activities I thought, but of Homer, creeping by stealth into a tenant’s house to make love to his wife. It left a bad taste in the mouth, and in the mind.
We arrived home just in time for dinner. I invited Bulow to join us, but he declined. He gave me the lace to give Millie, and drove on home to the Barrows. During dinner, I gave the family an idea of our day.
“You should not overtax yourself,” Homer cautioned.
“Rubbish. She ain’t sick. Exercise is good for her,” Millie told him.
Homer listened but made no comment. He was distracted that evening, as though holding some excitement in check. I wondered if he would announce after dinner that he was going to visit Farnley Mote. Of course he would not specify just whom he was visiting there, but after Bulow’s gossip I had a lively suspicion. It turned out, after we were seated in his office for our business meeting, that it was a different matter that excited him. He explained it to me in detail.
“Laversham’s farm is up for sale, the place that divides Wyngate from the river. It runs along Wyngate on the east side, and Farnley Mote on the north. Old Charles Laversham is retiring, and as he has no sons, he means to sell the farm and retire to Taunton.”
“That’s too bad. You will miss him,” I replied, knowing him to have been a friend of the Lavershams since childhood.
“He told me of it before calling an agent. It was thoughtful of him.”
“I see,” I said, but saw no great advantage in being the first to know.
“You know what this means. You must see the advantage in our buying it,” he went on, leaning forward in his eagerness till our hands were nearly touching.
“I’m afraid I don’t, Homer. It’s much too large for us to think of purchasing. It would be convenient to have some water frontage, I suppose, but...”
“We can manage it,” he said with conviction, and great enthusiasm.
“Why do you want it? It’s a large farm, I know—over five hundred acres, is it not?”
“Six hundred, and it’s not going cheap, but it’s prime land. It would make Wyngate one of the great estates of the county. You know I have wanted to enlarge its holdings, as did my father. The best way is to annex neighboring lands. To have miles between lots is inconvenient.”
“But how can it be afforded?”
“My father had set aside over five thousand pounds with this eventuality in mind.”
“You should have told me that first,” I said, vastly relieved, as a phantom of mortgages had reared up in my mind. “I thought you had run mad, thinking to eke such a sum out of our annual earnings.”
“Oh, but the money is gone,” he said, startled at my not knowing it. “Norman had it withdrawn from the account. I was hoping you might think the farm a good investment.”
“I don’t have the money. There was nothing like that sum in his account when the will was probated.”
“That’s impossible!”
“It’s not impossible. It’s true.”
“Davinia,” he said, adopting a stern expression, as of one doing an unpleasant duty he would rather avoid, “I know what you are thinking. Why should you put money Norman gave you into an estate whose ownership is still in question. I can understand that. The money is legally yours, certainly, but we can work something out between us. If your son inherits, there is not a better investment you could make with that money. If I inherit, I’ll repay you. I have been thinking of it all day, since Laversham told me this morning. I would sell my own smaller holding and repay your loan from that, if necessary. It would make more sense for me to have all my land together, whereas Farnley Mote is at the back end of Wyngate. The river frontage too is highly desirable. We would have Rupert draw it all up legally, with interest to be paid on the loan, and so on.”
“But I don’t have the money,” I repeated. He stared, not understanding, or not believing.
“What did you do with it?”
“I told you, I never saw it. It’s vanished, like the jewelry. I don’t have either one, Homer.”
“I don’t understand what’s going on,” he said, tossing up his hands. “How do a fortune and a box of jewels disappear into thin air, without a trace? You lived with Norman, his wife; surely he confided his affairs in you.”
“Not that affair. I’m sorry. I don’t have the money, and without it it is impossible for us to buy Laversham’s.”
“No, we’ve got to buy it. We’ll get the money somehow. Borrow, beg, raise a mortgage if necessary.”
“If my son inherits, I don’t want him hobbled with a mortgage of several thousand pounds. The place is already big enough to suit me. I don’t go along with this, Homer.”
“You don’t understand farming. Let me make this decision. Land, lots of it, is required for proper crop rotation, and variety of crop. If the corn does poorly one year, and you have nothing else, your income is decimated. We’ll want to turn more land over to pasture, too, when we get into improving the dairy herd with Daisy’s offspring. Land is the best investment a farmer can make. Wyngate could be a showplace.”
“Six thousand is a high price to pay for pride,” I said curtly. “How do you propose to repay this huge debt? It’s fine if you inherit. You could sell off Farnley Mote, if necessary. I have no such resource. I would be saddled with the debt. I’d never get it paid off. Money would be flowing out in mortgage payments every year, keeping me poor. No, I want no part of it.”
“You forget there is a very good house on the premises. You could rent that.”
“Who would want a house in the country with no land to work? Retired people want to live in the city, like the Lavershams themselves, who are selling for that very reason. Besides, it’s a huge house, not suitable for an elderly retired couple.”
“A city merchant...”
“When a city merchant hires a country place, he does so for the purposes of hunting, shooting, and entertaining. He does not want to sit looking at someone else’s cows and corn on his holidays. You’re not making sense, Homer.”
“You’re not!” he shouted back. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Laversham’s place will not come on the market again in our lifetime. It was my father’s dream, and mine, to buy it when it happened. It’s happened now, and I am buying it.”
“Go ahead, but you’ll not put a mortgage on Wyngate to do it. I forbid it.”
He sat glaring, his breath coming in short, shallow puffs, from anger. He looked as if he would gladly kill me.
“Was there anything else you wished to discuss?” I asked.
“What else matters, at a time like this?”
“I am fatigued. I shall retire now.”
He said nothing, just glared, while the angry frustration lent a pink hue to his neck and a dangerous glitter to his eyes. He didn’t even rise to see me to the door, but sat staring at a patch of wall across the room.
It was an unpleasant, upsetting conclusion to my busy day. I thought long about it after I went to bed, but no way of looking at it made it a good bargain for me, or a bad one for Homer. As to the mysterious vanishing bank account, I half believed it was a fabrication on his part to make me feel guilty enough to go along with
his scheme. Norman had no such vast sum of money. We had to be quite careful of our expenditures, hiring only a modest cottage and a few servants. With Norman’s pride in me, he would have given me those jewels to wear if he ever had them, which I put into doubt along with the money.
These matters must be investigated. I owed it to Norman’s son, if he had a son, and to my own reputation if he had a daughter.
Chapter 11
On Saturday, Homer was missing from the house. Hints dropped by Jarvis told me he was meeting with his banker, and if he did not drop off to see Mr. Rupert to see what trick he could work to get his own way, I would be much surprised. Perhaps he stopped in to see a real estate agent as well, about selling Farnley Mote. I paid only a brief courtesy call to Thalassa, using as an excuse the fact that Jarvis wanted to talk to me about Norman’s papers, as indeed he did. The subject of Laversham’s did not arise between us. We were both careful to avoid it.
Jarvis had the sole use of a small parlor for his work. It was a pretty room, well lit, with French doors leading to the rose garden beyond, with a view, when standing, of the topiary garden. He had one of my boxes on the floor beside him, its contents on the desk in a jumbled state. He was frowning at a handwritten sheet before him.
“What do you think of Norman’s scholarship, Jarvis?” I asked, walking in.
“I cannot find any evidence of it,” he replied. “All I see in these boxes is handwritten copies of various famous extracts. I wonder he did not just buy the books and magazines from which they come. It must have cost him more to have these copied than to buy the books. I cannot imagine why he would have done such a thing. Handwriting, even neat handwriting such as this, is always harder on the eyes than the printed word is. And he has made no notations either, nothing to indicate what in the articles caught his interest.”
I recognized the writing for my own, and frowned at his speech. “No, no, you are mistaken. Norman wrote those articles, and I made fair copies for him. The originals were a jumble of notes, where he had crossed out and made corrections and improvements. Are they good enough you mistook them for professional work?”
He lifted his eyes and stared, as though trying to comprehend my reply. Then he shook his head slowly, sadly. “This article appeared in an antiquaries’ publication two years ago, my dear. It was written by a good friend of mine, Sir Oswald Fencombe. It deals with Roman remains in the City of London. I went with him to do some of the investigating.”
I walked to the desk and looked over his shoulder to see exactly what he was examining. It dealt with London ruins, as he said. I remembered very well discussing it with Norman. He told me he had done the investigating work just before coming to Norfolk, and finished the writing there. While I stood puzzling, Jarvis arose.
“I can show you the original,” he declared. While he rooted along the bookshelves, I remembered the laborious hours, transcribing Norman’s crabbed handwriting. Soon Jarvis had an open magazine under my nose, pointing out that the article in question was the acknowledged work of Sir Oswald Fencombe. I felt faint; some premonition of nausea was present too, but mostly I was muddled, as though I had wandered into someone else’s dream, or nightmare. I began weaving on my feet, swaying back and forth. A thin film of moisture formed on my brow and my upper lip. The window’s view was obscured, enveloped in a dark purple cloud, bright yellow around the edges, then it disintegrated into tiny dots of light. I felt Jarvis’s arms around me, catching me before I fell to the floor in a faint.
A few moments later I was on the sofa in the corner, most reluctant to open my eyes and face reality. Norman, my beloved Norman, had been an impostor.
“Davinia! Davinia!” Jarvis exclaimed. He was chaffing my hands, his voice tense with worry.
I opened my eyes to see his worried face leaning over me, with one strand of white hair failing forward. The lamp struck his bald pate, winked a cozy light. “Are you all right? You fainted. What an old fool I am, to have sprung this on you with no warning. Let me get you a glass of wine.”
He flew to the wine table in the corner and returned, a half glass trembling in his fingers. He held it to my lips and I drank, welcoming the sharp, vitalizing liquid. I was soon able to sit up. I restrained him from sending for help. I wanted no servants or other family present when I learned what I had to know.
“Was all his work like that, Jarvis? All copied, all plagiarized?”
He drew a chair up beside me and held my hand in a painfully tight grip—a true Blythe in that respect. “There wasn’t an original word in the lot. All copied, and from famous sources. He cannot have intended ever printing it. Any editor would recognize the stuff.”
“He had a publisher interested in it. He received letters from him, asking him to hurry up with the work.”
“Then he certainly deceived the publisher with regard to what he was doing.”
“Why did he have me copy all this stuff? What a deal of work he went to, first making rough copies of it himself, and adding markings to it to show corrections. He must have spent hours. He did. Many an evening he sat at his desk working while I sat at another, copying out that work. Oh, I’m so angry to think of the waste of time! Why would he do it? It makes no sense. He must have been mad.”
A shadow clouded Jarvis’s brilliant blue eyes. “It’s a mystery. I made sure, when you told me of his work, that he was working on the Roman canals that abound in Norfolk. Even that surprised me, as he never displayed much interest in my hobby. He had been exposed to it from his youth. I thought it odd he should suddenly be so keen. Did you not say something about his taking monthly excursions to the canals?”
“He went away about once a month, stayed for three or four days, and came home. He went with another man. I never actually met this man. Norman picked him up along the way. He wasn’t visiting canals, Jarvis. What was he really doing, I wonder.”
“God only knows. God only knows,” he said, patting my hand in a comforting way. “He was always a bit of a wild buck.”
“No, he wasn’t. You think he was off with a woman. I don’t believe it.”
I remembered too well his tender lovemaking before he left, and after his return. But actually I could not remember any evidence of his having been trekking over rough terrain either. There was never any mud on his boots or jackets, nothing like that. As I considered it further, I knew I had never copied any notes relating to those trips. The work was too rough yet, he had said. But as nothing was ever to be published, why had he set up this elaborate charade? It was to fool me. I was the one he wanted to think him a scholar. Why? Was it to win my approval, my love? He already had that. Surely he knew it.
“You’re probably right,” Jarvis said, but I knew he only wanted to calm me. He thought Norman was a philanderer.
“Jarvis, there is no need to tell the family about this, is there? He would be so ashamed.”
“It’s our secret. We’ll burns the notes, and that will be the end of it. If anyone asks, we shall say I am working on it. The work will be too far from completion for me to prepare for publication, and soon it will be forgotten.”
“Not by me. I won’t rest till I learn what this is all about. There has to be a reason.”
“It will be best to forget it. You have your child to think about now. Don’t do anything to upset yourself, and it, at this time. Finish up your wine. You should rest after this shock. Go upstairs and lie down.”
“I’m going out to the garden for a breath of air,” I said. I dragged myself up from the couch, got a wrap, and went out to wander amongst the trees in the topiary garden. The strange, deformed shapes, out of tune with nature, made me think of Norman. It was a flighty conceit, but it occurred to me that these trees, if left to their own devices, would be normal, beautiful trees. A human hand had done this to them, turned them into odd and unnatural-appearing specimens. Had there been some human cause to have so perverted Norman’s behavior? It was strange, his utter refusal to return to Wyngate, even after he inherited it. �
��It will destroy me,” he had said. “I hate the place.”
People do not usually hate places. They hate people who live in a place, or things that happened to them in that place. My father complained of the heat of India, and folks might complain that a certain city is ugly or dirty or too industrialized. But Wyngate was beautiful. So he hated someone here. His father? He had spoken of that great thundering row. And he was, I thought, jealous of Homer, because his father had remarried. Thal admitted she didn’t get along with him. He had liked Jarvis enough to ask him to manage the estate, when Homer was the logical choice. Millie? One had to ignore Millie. She hardly counted, being so strange, almost a lunatic really.
I had wandered out of the topiary garden. The barns and the icehouse were behind me, the dower house ahead, and above me on the hill stood the motionless windmill, its arm spread out against the sullen sky. It drew me like a magnet, that windmill. I felt some urge to go there today, but was arrested by the sound of footfalls behind me and, turning, saw Woodie. He was smiling, with those strangely tilted eyes, set into his child’s wrinkled face—another anomaly, out of tune with nature. He reached his hand out to me, causing me to shiver. I am not so ignorant as to believe superstition, but it darted into my head, the old theory that an unpleasant sight or a scare endured by a pregnant woman can be reflected in her child. How horrid, to bare an innocent babe with that telltale face, presaging idiocy. I turned to run from him, but he clung to my fingers, making some hardly human grunt in his throat.
“Woodie go with pretty lady,” he offered, smiling hopefully.
I could not face the prospect of a long walk in his company, but didn’t want to hurt his feelings. “I’m just going home, Woodie. Will you walk with me to the door?”
“I’ll walk,” he answered shyly, and trotted along beside me, as I made my strides long and swift to be rid of him quicker.
At the door he smiled and waved, and waited with his finger in his mouth till I disappeared from view inside.
