by Jane Arbor
“Well, I’m reluctant to be the cause of shock to her,” commented Richard a little grimly. “But it’s the sort of thing that she will have to get over, I’m afraid. Because she can’t prevent it. You realize that, don’t you, my darling?”
Lysbet had twisted about in his arms then, so that her lovely body was maddeningly close to his. “Nothing can prevent it, Richard!” she had breathed. And then, twisting away as suddenly, she had run from him across the terrace into the lighted rooms of the house, leaving him momentarily there in the darkness, still bewitched by her magic.
As it happened, Mrs. Tempest heard the news that night. After the party she, Eliot and Lysbet had lingered on around the Dig fireplace in the hall, enjoying a last cigarette and discussing the evening in general. And when Eliot had yawned at last and had gone off to bed, leaving the two of them together, Mrs. Tempest said gently: “Happy, darling? Did you have as good a party as you hoped?”
Lysbet turned shining eyes upon her. “Lovely! I—” She broke off and then had knelt impulsively beside the low fender stool on which Mrs. Tempest was sitting.
“Darling—your dress!”
“No—I won’t hurt it, I promise! Listen, Aunt Alicia—I’m so desperately happy! Richard has asked me to marry him. Say you’re glad!”
Mrs. Tempest glanced down momentarily at the slim hands clasped in almost childish supplication upon her knees. Then she looked into Lysbet’s face and if there was a slight stiffening throughout her own body it, too, was only momentary. She unclasped Lysbet’s fingers and set the girl’s palms against her cheeks, her own cool hands over them.
“If you’re happy, sweetheart, so am I! There’s no need to look so beseeching. Am I the sort of ogress aunt who would forbid the banns?”
“No, of course not. Only—well, I didn’t know how much you liked Richard. And after what you had said about Eliot, I’d wondered whether you had hoped there might be something between him and me. You do like him better than Richard, don’t you?”
“I never gave the comparison a moment’s thought,” was the cool reply. “Besides, you goose, what conceivable difference could my preferences make to you? You love your Richard presumably, and I’m not marrying him, after all!”
“Then you are glad for me?” urged Lysbet.
“Of course I am. Even if I weren’t, what could I do?”
“You could be hurt, or angry, or just unhappy about it. And that would make me miserable,” Lysbet told her, seriously.
“But there would be nothing I could do. Don’t forget you’re—of age, Lysbet.”
“I know. But I’ve never wanted to go against your wishes in anything, and I shouldn’t hate to in this, if it weren’t that I love Richard so terribly much!”
Mrs. Tempest patted the smooth cheek reassuringly before turning to take a cigarette from the box beside her on the broad fender. “Well, be happy about it,” she advised. “I shall get used to the idea of having the local G.P. as a prospective nephew-in-law, I dare say. When is the wedding to be?”
Involuntarily Lysbet flinched slightly, but she did not attempt to answer the thrust. She said simply: “Richard wants it very soon. But I want to enjoy being engaged first!”
“Wise child,” commented Mrs. Tempest. “We must make it a lovely time for you. Incidentally,” she added with an air of choosing her words with care, “has Doctor Guyse considered the idea of mentioning to anyone—to me, perhaps—just how eligible he is?”
“Yes, of course,” Lysbet assured her quickly, “He wanted to come and talk to you tonight, but I wanted to be the first to tell you—”
“—Not that he owes me any obligation in the matter,” went on Mrs. Tempest smoothly. “You are of age, as I said, and your own mistress.”
“But he does mean to come. He wants to.” Lysbet laughed a little self-consciously. “At least he isn’t under any illusions as to my eligibility—he knows I haven’t a penny!”
With an abrupt movement the older woman stood up, causing Lysbet almost to stumble as she, too, scrambled to her feet.
“Don’t be absurd, child,” said Mrs. Tempest. ‘You have always had everything which money and this house could give you. And you’ll continue to have the same until the day of your marriage. Beyond it, if necessary. There’s no need whatsoever for you to dramatize your alleged poverty. Because, so far as I am concerned, it doesn’t exist. Do remember that always.”
Beside her Lysbet stood, a newly rigid figure, as she listened to the cold tones and blamed herself for the light words which had evoked them. Once again she had broached the forbidden topic—money. Why was it that her aunt could seemingly never forgive her for the fact of the dependence she could not help?
She said humbly: “I’m sorry. It’s true. I’m not really poor at all while you do so much for me.” For a moment it had been in her mind to ask her aunt to tell her the truth—just why Eliot, the son of her father’s partner should appear so well off while she herself had nothing. But she dreaded to brook again that cold withdrawal on her aunt’s part. So she had said nothing and presently they had said good night and had gone up to their rooms.
Eliot’s reception of the news had been much as Lysbet expected. He smiled mockingly: “Well, well! And my bush telegraph had informed me that there was no courtship in progress!”
Lysbet flushed. “I said that because I didn’t consider that Richard’s affairs and mine were any concern of yours,” she replied shortly.
“But there wasn’t any need to lie about it, my sweet. After all, Mrs. Tempest has done her best all summer to cultivate our brother-and-sister love, so that you might have supposed I had your best interests at heart, mightn’t you?”
“I dare say I might—if I had thought about it,” agreed Lysbet. And wondered, as she had often done before, just what purpose—what real friendship or feeling—lay behind Eliot’s mocking, indulgent treatment of her. There wasn’t any sympathy at all between them, she decided. How could Aunt Alicia have supposed otherwise?
She did not know that, unconcerned as he appeared, Eliot saw in her news something of a crisis in his own affairs. Now he found himself in a situation where he must act, and act quickly.
His discreet inquiries in and around Fallsbridge had yielded no more than that which lay on the surface for everyone to see. Lysbet was an orphan, dependent solely on her aunt’s goodwill, said rumour. And no private line of communication—not even Caroline Ware’s, which, Eliot shrewdly judged, would be as good as most—said anything different.
There was only one thing to do, decided Eliot, and today he must go into Fallsbridge and do it. There was only one source from which he could obtain the truth, accurate and undeniably official. That source was in South Africa. It would mean a cable to someone he could trust. That was easy... But the answering cable must not come to Falcons; it must come no farther than the Poste Restante at Fallsbridge. For the information it brought would be for his eyes alone—until such time as he should see fit to use it...
A week or two later he found himself able to use it with smooth, accurately aimed and deadly purpose.
Lysbet, setting out to have tea with Richard at the County Club, paused at the door of the library where Eliot was sitting with his feet stretched out before the blazing logs of one of the first fires of the autumn.
“Are you coming over with me, Eliot?” she asked as she drew on her gloves.
He stood up, looked approvingly at the slim figure in faultlessly cut tweeds, but shook his head.
“Almost I’m tempted,” he said gallantly. “You’ll look so dazzlingly Tatler at the wheel of the Jaguar, that I couldn’t but collect a mort of reflected glory in the eyes of the Fallsbridge denizens. But my native indolence holds me back. I’ll probably have a nap and later I’ll take tea with Mrs. Tempest. But don’t try to persuade me—”
“Don’t worry. I won’t. Because if you will entertain Aunt Alicia I needn’t have any conscience about leaving her alone. Give her my love when she comes down, and tell
her I’ll be back by six. So long!” Lysbet waved at him airily and was gone. Eliot helped himself to a cigarette and returned to his chair to smoke thoughtfully, but not to sleep. And Mrs. Tempest, conscientiously taking the after-luncheon rest prescribed by her beauty specialist, lay upon the divan in her private sitting-room, thinking, thinking, thinking in ever narrowing circles, not realizing that thought could scarcely save her now...
At half-past three precisely she rose, wiped the rich skin feeding cream from her face and made up her flawless complexion once more. Then she gave herself a leisurely manicure, put on a dress of fine grey wool and went down to tea with Eliot When the gleaming silver of the tea-tray had been removed he offered her a cigarette and they sat on before the fire, talking desultorily.
“Did Lysbet say what time she would be back?”
“By six, she said as she went out.”
Mrs. Tempest’s finely pencilled brows were raised. “Not staying on to dinner with Richard? Oh, well, she’ll ring up if she changes her mind, I dare say.”
There was a pause, Then:
“When is the wedding to be?” asked Eliot idly.
“I don’t think they’ve decided. Not until after Christmas, probably. Lysbet refuses to be hurried. In a way it’s a pity—I’d have liked it to be before you went home, Eliot.”
It was the first reference made by anyone at Falcons to the matter of his departure. Eliot made to it no reply but a musing “M’m.”
But after a moment or two he went on meaningly: “Funny, that. I should have thought it was to Guyse’s best advantage to get things clinched as soon as possible.”
Mrs. Tempest stiffened. “What do you mean, Eliot?”
Eliot shrugged significantly. “Well, that man’s human, I take it. He can’t be altogether indifferent to the change that marriage to Lysbet will bring about in his bank-balance.”
With slow deliberation the woman opposite stubbed out her cigarette, grinding it upon the tray until every glowing spark was dead. Then she set her hands apparently calmly in her lap, and there was nothing to show that the pointed nails of each were pressing cruelly into her palms.
She said carefully: “I don’t think I quite understand?”
“No?” There was a vulgar note in Eliot’s short laugh. “Well, I dare say Guyse understands very well what he’s doing in taking Lysbet to wife! After all, even if you’ve got your own good reasons for your jeune fille treatment of her as if she were a school-girl with her first dress allowance—I dare say Guyse has made himself fully aware that she’s worth—”
“Please, Eliot, you forget yourself!” Mrs. Tempest’s voice was icy. “What possible right have you to criticize my relations with Lysbet? Or to arrive at conclusions as to the calculations Doctor Guyse may or may not have made when he asked Lysbet to marry him?”
Eliot laughed again. “None, probably none! Except the right of an ordinary man-of-the-world to use his own common sense! Come, Mrs. Tempest—why blame me for having used mine? You know—as I do, if not perhaps as accurately—that Lysbet has got a packet of her own! D’you suppose for one minute that Guyse doesn’t know it too?”
“Doctor Guyse can scarcely know what isn’t true,” was the quiet reply. Deeply involved as she was, there was nothing for Alicia Tempest but to plunge deeper yet.
“Not true!” With a gesture of impatience Eliot stood up, thrusting his hands into his trouser pockets as he did so.
Standing, he seemed a more formidable enemy, and for the first time Mrs. Tempest lowered her eyes before his.
“Not true! When I know just what figure her father sold out to mine for? When I even know how it was invested, and that Lysbet was her old man’s sole heir? Really, Mrs. Tempest, you insult my intelligence!”
The woman seated before him passed her tongue over dry lips.
“Apparently you know a great deal, Eliot. What you don’t seem to know is that Lysbet was heiress to her father’s fortune only under the guardianship of her Uncle Everard and of me—”
“What sort of guardianship? ‘Cradle to grave’ or something? Damn it, die girl’s no longer a minor! Nor a halfwit! Oh, no, Mrs. Tempest, it won’t do—it won’t do at all! Look here—”
Eliot reached over, drew the chair in which he had been sitting to his companion’s side, sat down and laid a hand upon her knee.
“Look here,” he repeated, this time with a smooth persuasion in his voice, “why bother to dissemble with me? Lysbet is nearly as rich as Croesus, isn’t she?”
Mrs. Tempest looked up at him. She said nothing, but there was full admission of the truth in her wide, frightened stare.
“Then why not tell the world? Where’s the harm?”
She spoke then in a gasping, hesitant whisper. “Because—it’s too late!”
Eliot sat back, his sharp white teeth biting at his underlip as he regarded her calculatingly.
“You mean—Lysbet should have had her rights a couple of years back—and hasn’t had them yet?”
Mrs. Tempest bowed her head. “She—Elliot, there wasn’t anything I could do, once it had all begun. It would have been easy if she had known or suspected that she had money. But Everard, my husband, wouldn’t allow her to be told; he hated the idea that, as a child, she should ever get what he called ‘pride of money’. Then he died and I carried on as her guardian, and I allowed her twenty-first birthday to come and go like any other—except, of course, that I gave her pearls and she had a special party—Eliot, why are you looking at me like that?”
Eliot Bradd’s lips had twisted into a sardonic smile. “I was merely amused at the thought of young Lysbet being handed a special party and a string of pearls with one hand, while you hung on firmly to the cash with the other. But go on. You’d better tell the tale in your own way. You did nothing at all?”
“Nothing. The money continued to come in from the investments and I went on signing for it, as I’d always done. Lysbet had no inkling, and I’ve never let her talk about money—just given her everything, everything she has ever wanted!”
“Except what was her own,” put in Eliot softly.
The woman opposite suddenly flared into defiance, the desperate defiance of the cornered animal. “Oh, you can mock,” she said bitterly. “You may not know what it means to have nothing of your own, as Everard and I had when we married. Or what it meant to me to have the sole handling of all that meant real comfort, real luxury—and to know that it was mine only for the short time it would take for Lysbet to grow up!”
Eliot’s glance travelled slowly round the exquisite appointments of the room before it returned to rest upon Alicia Tempest’s hair, the jewels at her throat, her gown.
“Well, it seems to have brought quite a lot while you had it,” he commented insolently. “Couldn’t you have trusted Lysbet to carry on the good work?”
“But you don’t understand! It was mine—it had been, ever since Everard died! It meant that I must hand it over to Lysbet—and I should have nothing! I should have been utterly dependent on her!”
“No more than she has had to be on you,” Eliot pointed out.
“But that’s different! Lysbet was a mere child, without the needs I’d learnt to have—the things that made life possible!”
“Well, surely you could have trusted her to do the right thing by you—made you a settlement, or something?” persisted Eliot. “She’s a generous enough kid, after all.”
The woman’s head went down into her hands. “I could have. I realize that. But don’t you see that with every week, every month that went by, it became more and more too late to do anything? Over and over again I’ve told myself that time would solve it—though how it was going to, I don’t know.”
“And then Lysbet ups and wants to get married! Didn’t that give you a jerk?”
“Yes—oh, yes! But what was there I could do? What is there I can still do? She—she could prosecute me, couldn’t she?”
Eliot ignored the last question. “You are in a jam, aren’t you
?” he commented. “Precious little you can do, so far as I can see. But let’s think.”
He stood up, and moving over to the fireplace looked reflectively into the fire ay if all his ‘thinking’ were not already done, down to its finest point.
“I shall have to tell her now of course,” said Mrs. Tempest out of her misery. “The longer it goes on the worse it will be. And it will have to come out on her marriage. I couldn’t—”
“No. Wait—” There was a pregnant pause. Then: “There could be another way,” he said slowly.
“What—what do you mean?”
“Well, let’s talk about me for a little while.”
“About you?”
“Yes. You implied that I didn’t know what it was to have the handling of money—and then not to have it any more. If I assured you that I know only too bitterly, would that perhaps ring any bell of connection?”
Mrs. Tempest shook her head. “I don’t understand. You’ve got money—”
“Have I?”
She looked up at him, too startled to speak at first. Then she stammered: “You must have. There—there’s your business!”
He laughed. “It doesn’t support me, I assure you. It might have, if I’d been careful of it and nursed it. But care and nursing are not in my line, I’m afraid.”
“But your father!”
“Oh, there was plenty then! It’s simply that money and I never travel very far together, and now we rarely get the chance. But let’s return to our theme. To borrow a slogan—‘I need money.’ ”
He stopped short, for even his effrontery was abashed before the look of horror in her eyes.
She whispered at last: “You mean that for money you’d help me to hide what I’ve done? But that’s—blackmail, Eliot!”
He looked at her without pity. “Since we’re not mincing words, may I remind you that the other is ‘conversion of funds to the defendant’s own use’? It doesn’t sound pretty—or does it?”
There was a silence. Then:
“What do you want?” asked Mrs. Tempest.
