‘I can assure you that all of the money left to Mrs Leander is perfectly safe,’ Mr Cobbold said smoothly. ‘You need have no fears that the sum is not precisely as it was left.’
‘I am sure it is. But I wonder if she would have enjoyed the full amount of interest in that – well, let it be. I have no power in this matter, except in that it was my father’s money. I do, however, have some moral authority, I hope.’
‘We all have that, Mrs Quentin,’ Mr Cobbold murmured, once again his unctuous self, and she looked at him unsmilingly.
‘I am glad to hear you agree with me. Then you will make vigorous searches for her daughter?’
‘Her daughter?’ Mr Cobbold frowned. Clearly he had not given much thought to the matter of Mrs Leander’s issue. ‘Indeed, yes. You know where she is to be found?’
‘If I had known that, I would of course have told you,’ Tilly said scathingly. ‘Since I am clearly more anxious than you appear to be to see right done.’
That is quite a disgraceful thing to say!’ Mr Cobbold said, his cheeks shaking with anger. ‘I hope I know my duty as a Christian gentleman and –’
‘I am more concerned with what is right than what is merely dutiful.’ Tilly was now very angry too. ‘To have been so lax in making searches for Mrs Leander all these years while I believed you were being most industrious in your efforts – I believe that to be disgraceful! Now I trust you will repair the errors of omission you have committed and seek diligently for Mrs Leander’s daughter.’
He got to his feet and dusted down his black coat with an air of rectitude that made the normally equable Tilly want to throw something at him. ‘I will forgive you, Mrs Quentin, for your intemperate speech, as it is my duty to forgive,’ he said. ‘And put it down to the sad megrims with which so many of you of the gentler sex are afflicted. If you will tell me what you know of Mrs Leander’s daughter I will see to it that advertisements are put in the usual organs and –’
‘But that doesn’t work,’ Tilly cried. ‘You first advertised for Mrs Leander five years ago and that brought no satisfaction! Now you are proposing to go down the same road again? It is really not good enough.’
He bent his head in a frosty little bow. ‘It is as far as my duty goes, Ma’am. I will see to it at once. Good afternoon.’
He did not wait to be shown out but moved majestically across the drawing-room to the door, but she was after him at once, holding on to his sleeve.
‘I must insist that you do more. It is not right that she should be kept in ignorance of either her mother’s death or of her legacy.’
He looked down at her hand on his sleeve and then with an air of fastidiousness stepped back from her so that she had to let go. ‘Madam, I acted in all good faith and I must say, in generosity, in coming here today. It is not incumbent upon me to tell you of these matters at all. The legacy is not yours. I told you only because I believed you would be interested to know what is happening to your father’s money. I happened to be in the neighbourhood and, out of my sense of Christian benevolence, called upon you with this news. But that does not give you the right to harangue me. And I must say, Ma’am, that I find it most unseemly that any gentlewoman should behave in such an importunate manner. I understand that your need to occupy yourself making money will inevitably have coarsened your sensibilities, but –’
‘Coarsened my –’ Tilly could go no further and clapped her hands together in her rage. ‘How dare you, Sir! I show a proper concern for the rights of a legatee of my father, and you put this down to my – you are the outside of enough, Sir, and I wish you to leave my house forthwith! Any future legal business I have to pursue will be taken elsewhere, you may be sure. I allowed you to deal with my affairs after Mr Conroy’s death since I believed you to be an honourable man. I now know better!’
She ran across the room to the fireplace and tugged on the bell, and then stood there glowering at him as he brushed down his sleeves and coat front, and with what dignity he could muster opened the door. He was in time to meet Eliza who was about to open it from the other side.
‘Eliza,’ Tilly said loudly. ‘Show this – person – to the street. And if he ever appears here again, I will not receive him!’
Mr Cobbold opened his mouth to speak, caught her glare and closed it again and without a word turned and went. Eliza, her face alive with interest, stepped back to show him the way, as the small figure who had been peering from behind her skirts darted out and ran into the drawing-room. Tilly held out one hand and the child ran to her. He was as excited and interested as Eliza, and stared with wide eyes at the man whose back was now receding down the stairs.
‘Is that a bad man, Mamma?’ he said and tugged on Tilly’s arm as she did not reply. ‘Shall I go after him with my stick? I will hit his legs and hit his legs till he skips and shouts and –’
‘Now, Duff, hush,’ Tilly said absently. ‘You must do no such thing to the gentleman.’
‘You said to Eliza he was a person, not a gentleman at all!’ Duff protested, and tugged on her skirts instead of her arm. ‘Do let me hit him with my stick, Mamma, for he has made you cross and you don’t like being made cross.’
She managed a smile and reached down and picked him up, straining a little, for he was well filled out for a child not yet five. ‘Darling Duff, you must not be so fierce! There are a lot of things that make Mamma cross, but they do not mean that you must come and hit people. This was a private grown-up matter and –’
‘You always say that when things are interesting.’ Duff wriggled and pushed her away. ‘Put me down, Mamma! I’m too old to be carried like a baby!’
She put him down and sighed. ‘Yes, indeed you are, my darling. Too heavy too – you have been eating too much of Eliza’s cake.’
‘You can’t eat too much cake.’ He ran to the window to look out into the street. ‘There he goes – he walks like that great fat dog from the house on the corner, Mamma. So important and all side to side, like my boat on a windy day when I sail it on the Long Water in the park – who is he, Mamma?’
‘He is a lawyer,’ Tilly said. ‘And you mustn’t ask so many questions. Have you done your pothooks this morning as I told you?’
‘Yes, Mamma,’ he said sunnily and came back to join her on the sofa, where she was now sitting very straight staring into the fire, lost in thought. ‘You won’t think them good enough, I dare say, but I like them. I left my book in the kitchen. I shall get it later and show you – Mamma, why are you still so cross? He’s gone now.’
She roused herself and put her arms about him and hugged him. ‘You ask too many questions for a small person! Now, fetch your book and I shall look at your work. We must be it is right before Miss Knapp sees it.’
‘I suppose I must go to school with the Misses K and F?’ Duff said gloomily. ‘It’s so much easier to do pothooks and read here at home with you.’
‘You must not call them so,’ Tilly said. ‘Miss Knapp and Miss Fleetwood, young man, and don’t you forget it!’
‘Eliza says –’
‘What Eliza says has nothing to do with what you may say. You must not speak so of them,’ Tilly said firmly, making a resolve to try yet again to put a curb on Eliza’s tongue when she was with Duff, and knowing it to be a waste of time. ‘You just mind your manners. And yes, of course you are to go to school. It will be great fun for you. Lots of other little boys to play with.’
‘I have Archie and Tom from the house on the corner,’ Duff said, and curled up closer to her. ‘Though I’m not speaking to Tom at the present, for he broke my hoop and is quite quite hateful.
‘It is wicked to hate people,’ Tilly said reprovingly. ‘You know that we must love our friends.’
‘You hated that horrid man,’ Duff said, all sweet reasonableness. ‘And you aren’t wicked. And anyway, Tom was wicked to break my hoop. If I go to school there’ll be lots of other boys to break all my things. My whips and my tops and my cart.’
‘Of course they won�
�t. Miss Knapp and Miss Fleetwood would never let people break your toys at school!’
‘I don’t suppose they’ll let me play at school at all,’ Duff said with an air of misery. ‘I shall have to work and work all day until I get thin and ill and have to go to bed with Dr Gregory’s powder and you know how much I hate that. You won’t send me to school to make me ill, Mamma, will you? You wouldn’t do that to me, Mamma? Of course you wouldn’t.’
She laughed and released him. ‘Duff, you are a wretch, and very good at changing subjects. It is some time yet before you have to go to school but we must be sure you are ready when the time comes. So, to return to the subject, go and fetch your book from the kitchen and we shall look at your pothooks. Off you go, now.’
He went and she was able to sit quietly and think at last. She put more coal on the fire and then curled herself up on the footstool close beside it, staring down into the flames, glad of the warmth on this chilly November day.
Mrs Leander dead. It seemed hard to believe. It was not merely the fact of her death that had shaken Tilly so when Mr Cobbold told her of it; it was the manner of her dying. Tilly had hated the woman cordially, had been delighted when she was driven from the house by Freddy’s intervention; but to hear now that her life thereafter had been so – well, sordid was the only word that came to Tilly’s mind – was dreadful. She felt wretched about it, and undoubtedly guilty. Had she been a little more tolerant Mrs Leander would have remained in the house and her father would not have gone in search of her and died so dreadfully.
Tears welled up in Tilly’s eyes and she rubbed them away angrily. She had been through all this, many times, this past five years since her father’s death. When her mother had died in her sleep three years ago, slipping out of life as quietly and unobtrusively as she had occupied it, Tilly had been quite devastated with distress; Mr Fildes had been most concerned for her well-being and dosed her heavily and put her to bed for several days. He and Eliza thought her grief was over the loss of her mother but it wasn’t that at all; how could she begrudge her mother the peace of death when her last years had been so dreadful for her? No, it was guilt about her father and her husband that consumed her so during those painful days. If she had not behaved as she had, both of them, she had told her sodden pillow, would still be alive.
She had come to her senses eventually of course, realizing that she did not hold the entire world in her own hands and also that she had a duty to care for her baby son, which she could not do if she indulged her emotions to this degree. So, she had applied her common sense. Whatever she had done, her father would no doubt still have suffered his apoplexy. Mr Fildes had assured her of that: ‘Too much port and too much hard living, Ma’am,’ he had said to her. ‘His constitution was sorely damaged.’ And as for Frank’s death – well, she had long ago taught herself not to think about that. It was the only way she could live with the situation.
Now, however, sitting on this cold November afternoon and staring into her fireplace, all the old guilt came flooding back, and she hugged her knees and let the tears run down her cheeks unchecked. Until she heard Duff’s thudding steps on the staircase and rubbed them away and composed her face to turn a smile to him. He deserved only the best of everything, she had told herself fiercely the day he was born, and that included a mother who was sweet-tempered and kindly. She would never let her boy suffer the loneliness and fear that had been her own lot as a child.
‘Here they are, Mamma,’ he said a little heavily as he came in, plopped himself down on the hearthrug and put his exercise book on her lap. She looked down at it and then at him and she did not have to force her smile, for he looked so woebegone that his small face was adorable to her fond eyes.
‘I don’t suppose it is so very bad,’ she said and kissed the top of his head.
‘It is dreadful, Mamma. I looked again and now I know they are quite the worst pothooks I’ve ever done, and you will be so cross and make me do them ten times over and then I shan’t have time to eat my supper and I shall be very miserable and –’
‘We shall look,’ Tilly said firmly, well accustomed to her son’s flights of fancy, designed to distract her attention from the matter in hand, and she opened the book and looked down at its inky pages.
The rows of pothooks trailed across the pages, shaky at first and then a little more certain and then finally and quite clearly dashed off in a great rush; and she smiled even more widely.
They are not perfect,’ she allowed. ‘But you tried hard. At first. This one and this one – why, they are really quite good!’
He looked brighter. ‘Are they, Mamma? There, and I was sure you would be cross with all the blots!’
‘Oh, indeed, I dislike the blots. I dislike, too, the way you rushed at the last ones. You must always be as careful with the last as with the first, you know.’
‘Well, it gets so dull,’ Duff said and jumped to his feet. ‘Oh, Mamma, guess what I have in my pocket? I got it from Charlie, when he fetched the order.’
‘Fetched the order?’ Tilly lifted her head. ‘He came himself, and did not send his boy?’
‘He is very excited about something to do with the shop. He came to tell Eliza and he gave me this because of it, he said.’ He held out a small red cardboard box and she took it and looked inside. It was filled with comfits made of boiled sugar and she smiled indulgently and gave it back to him.
‘Not to be eaten till after supper,’ she said firmly. ‘Well, I wonder what his news is? I dare say Eliza will tell me in due course. Now, young man, those pothooks –’
‘But you said they were splendid, Mamma! The best I ever did.’
‘I said no such thing, naughty one. I said some of them were not too bad. Now, they must be done again – no, not today. I am not such a hard taskmistress as that. Tomorrow, you must try again and we shall show them to Miss Knapp. I am sure she will be very pleased because soon when you are five you will be ready to go to school with her. And it will be lovely for you, indeed it will.’
‘Oh, Mamma, I never want to go to school, not ever. I’ll have to leave Archie and Tom and –’
‘But you’re not speaking to Tom!’
‘Oh, I am now. He came to play this afternoon and we did a hopscotch square in the garden and he fell and made his knee all bloody, it was lovely. Mamma –’
‘Darling Duff,’ she said and got to her feet. ‘I cannot sit and talk now. I have something I must do. I have to go out.’
He stood with his legs set well apart and his arms akimbo, staring at her over his pouting lower lip. He looked decidedly mulish. ‘Why must you go out? I get lonely when you go out.’
‘Eliza is here –’
‘Eliza is always here. It’s you I want to be here.’
‘Dearest, I’m sorry, but I must go out. I have to look for someone.’
‘Who?’
‘No one you know, darling. A – someone who was my friend, long ago.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Her name is Dorcas.’
‘That’s a funny name.’
‘No it isn’t. It’s rather a pretty name.’
‘Well, who is she?’
‘I told you. An old friend.’
‘Where are you going to look for her?’
She sighed and took his hand and led him to the door. ‘That’s the problem, darling. I don’t know. But I have an idea where I might begin. It is still only just four o’clock, and if I hurry I think I might be able to – well, never mind. Off to the kitchen now, and tell Eliza I must speak to her to arrange things with her before I go out. Off you go, now.’ She gave him a gentle slap on his small round rump, resplendent in dark green knickerbockers, and sent him from the room.
It was probably absurd not to wait till tomorrow, but she had to start now, she told herself firmly, she really had to. She could think of no other way to assuage her guilt than to do what she knew Mr Cobbold most certainly would not do; find Dorcas. She could never change what had happe
ned in the past to Dorcas’s mother, any more than she could change what had happened to her own father; but she could do something about making the future better. And do it she would.
Chapter Twenty-four
SHE STARTED WITH the Knightsbridge Barracks. The ugly, ramshackle building with its busy population of men and horses – some six hundred of the former and five hundred of the latter – had long been a malodorous blot on the landscape, as far as the more elegant new residents of the district were concerned. Looking about her she understood for the first time just why a petition to have them demolished had been got up and hawked around the streets as far away as her own modest home. The huge central square, even at this dark time of the late afternoon, was aflame with light from naked naphtha flares as well as great hissing gas jets and the reek of horses made her throat constrict and her eyes smart. She did not dare lift her gaze from her feet as she picked her way over the wet, greasy cobbles towards the doorway that seemed to lead into the main building.
When she found herself at length at the guard-house she was greeted with raucous jeers by some of the soldiers, and cold disapproval by the officer who saw her hesitating in the doorway and came bustling out to see what she wanted. She tried to explain, and had to be led into a private office before she could get the tale out completely.
‘She is a distant cousin,’ she extemporized a little wildly, ‘who suffered so much from the power of her feelings as a girl that sadly she left the security of her home and went away. We knew only that she – er – that she intended to marry a soldier. Now we wish only to find her so that she may – um – return safely to the bosom of her family. Her mother is ailing, you see.’
London Lodgings Page 25
