by Joan Aiken
“Shall you be able to find your way alone, though, Jenny?”
“Bless you, yes. I’ll ring for Jill or Fidd to guide me.”
Satisfied as to Jenny’s being able to look after herself, Philadelphia made her way back to the library, where she found Mr. Penistone impatiently walking up and down.
His eyes widened at sight of her, and he looked quite startled; he still had on his riding clothes, and she wondered if he thought it a piece of impertinence that, in her somewhat doubtful circumstances, she had behaved herself so familiarly as to change her dress for the evening.
But he said only, “How does your friend do?”
“Well enough, thank you. The doctor told her there was no danger to be apprehended if she stays indoors for another twelve hours. So I believe we must burden you with our presence overnight. I regret the necessity.”
“So I had gathered. It is of no consequence,” he said in such neutral tone that she had no clue as to his feelings. She therefore merely inclined her head in acknowledgment, and sat herself down in one of the armchairs.
“I have bespoken supper,” Mr. Penistone said presently. “But it will not be ready for an hour yet. A tray will be sent up to your friend—perhaps you would prefer to sup with her in your chamber?”
“Thank you, but that will not be necessary. She is getting up. She—she did not wish to be an extra charge on the household. She will be down by and by.”
Another of their long silences ensued; looking up, questioningly, she saw that his cool measuring gaze appeared to be making a complete survey of her, inch by inch.
Delphie saw no cause to engage in polite and meaningless chitchat; she therefore returned her gaze to the fire and sat quietly meditating.
After a short time Fitzjohn returned, looking both distressed and exasperated.
He said at once to Penistone:
“Have you spoken to her yet?”
“No,” Mr. Penistone replied after a pause. “I confess that I found it hard to make a beginning.”
Delphie raised her brows inquiringly, looking up at the two men, who were both now regarding her—Fitzjohn with what seemed surprise and undisguised admiration.
“Miss Carteret,” he said in a brisk, direct manner. “We have a proposition to make to you.”
Delphie began to feel a decided oddness about the atmosphere; as if the two men were calculating on her in some way. With considerable caution in her voice, she replied,
“Oh? Of what nature?”
“You have never met my uncle?” Fitzjohn inquired, with seeming irrelevance. It seemed to be put in the form of a question, so Delphie shook her head. He went on, “May I ask—are you acquainted with the family history?”
“A portion of it,” Delphie answered circumspectly.
“You had heard of the duel between my grandfather and his brother?”
“On the roof? Yes,” Delphie answered.
“You knew, perhaps, that Great-uncle Mark succeeded to the title—but has lately been much troubled by remorse and regret.”
“So I understand.”
“My uncle is a singular—somewhat superstitious—character,” Mr. Fitzjohn pursued, in a level, expository tone. “All his life he has been beset by a feeling that he is—in some sense—a usurper—in consequence of which he has always exercised the most stringent economy—”
“Parsimony,” remarked Mr. Penistone in a dispassionate manner.
“Parsimony, if you will; he is of an austere, puritanical turn of mind. As he has grown older, his dearest wish has been that his heir—my cousin Gareth here—should be united in marriage with the sole legitimate issue of his deceased brother—so as to make a kind of reparation for his brother’s death.”
“Yes?” said Delphie. “That issue being—”
“Ah—Miss Elaine Carteret.”
“My supplanter, you mean?” Delphie said dryly. It occurred to her to wonder whether Mr. Fitzjohn did not also, like herself, suffer from some sense of grievance at seeing such careful plans made for a reparation which certainly would not benefit him; but perhaps a financial settlement had been made in his favor; that would alter the case, of course. Certainly he seemed quite detached about it all.
“Where, then, is your problem?” Delphie inquired. “I understand that Mr. Penistone is affianced to his—to the soi-disant Miss Carteret—so my great-uncle must surely be satisfied? All his hopes are fulfilled.”
“Ay, but you see, he wanted them united in matrimony before his death!”
“It appears then that he is likely to be disappointed,” Delphie remarked coolly.
She now began to understand Mr. Penistone’s dismay at his affianced bride’s curt note announcing the postponement of her arrival. “You think Miss Carteret will not arrive in time? It is a pity she is not more considerate of her friends.”
Glancing down at her white skirts, Delphie fastidiously removed a dog hair which was adhering to the hem.
Mr. Penistone remarked in his dry tone.
“Unfortunately my uncle is of a valetudinarian turn, and has frequently been prone to imagine that he has fallen into his last sickness. In point of fact we have been summoned to his deathbed on half a dozen occasions in the course of the last five years—and each time he has sent a message when we were halfway here, to say that we need not come after all; so it is to be feared that Miss Carteret believed this to be yet another cry of Wolf, Wolf!”
“Whereas it is more serious this time?”
“We fear so,” said Fitzjohn.
“I am sorry to hear it. Just the same—forgive me—I do not quite see how this can affect me—except that it must preclude any chance I have of becoming acquainted with my uncle and pleading my mother’s case.”
“On the contrary,” said Fitzjohn, as his cousin seemed unwilling to speak. “We wish to enlist your help, Miss—er, miss, in return for which we are prepared to make a bargain with you. My uncle’s lawyer Mr. Wylye is in the house—attending to some last testamentary dispositions my uncle wished to make—and it would be a matter of no difficulty to see that a respectable annuity—say three hundred pounds a year—is, or, in certain circumstances, would be—settled on your mother—such as she would have been entitled to by her father’s will if—if matters had fallen out differently.”
Delphie was thunderstruck. She felt her head almost commence to spin. Here—offered quite simply, and, as it seemed, without the least difficulty, as a kind of minimum exchange, was all that she had ever meant to ask; for she had intended to make no extravagant claims on the estate, out of respect for her mother’s antagonistic feelings toward the family.
Concealing her surprise, however, she replied carefully,
“How could that be? If my uncle does not believe that my mother is—who she says she is—he would hardly be likely to make provision for her in his will?”
“There would not be the least difficulty about it,” said Mr. Fitzjohn calmly. “My uncle has dictated a series of legacies and annuities to various old servants and dependants of the family; your mother’s name could be slipped in there without any trouble whatsoever.”
Suppressing a natural resentment at the low status thrust on her mother by this suggestion, Delphie inquired,
“If this is so simple, where is the need for any bargain?”
“Because, ma’am, we have no reason to believe in your mother’s claim to such a provision.”
“But what is your own problem then? It must be quite acute,” Delphie said shrewdly, “if you are willing to collaborate in what you regard as an unjustified measure in order to secure my cooperation? What is to be my side of the bargain, pray? Silence as to Miss Carteret’s false declarations?”
The two men looked at each other again. Mr. Fitzjohn, Delphie noted, seemed calm enough, but Penistone looked both angry and troubled; a line creased his brow, a flush had risen on his lean, sardonic countenance.
“I must explain a little further, ma’am,” said Fitzjohn. “My uncle is s
o set on the marriage between my two cousins, that he intends to disinherit them both if the wedding does not take place before his death. He will leave his entire fortune to provide for the upkeep of his pack of hounds.”
He looked morosely at the moth-eaten animals snoring on the floor.
“Oh, indeed?” said Philadelphia slowly. She recalled Mr. Browty’s hushed voice: “... a hundred and fifty thousand in the Funds ... one o’ the warmest men in England ... owns the coal under half Derbyshire ...”
She inquired rather dryly, “And what about you, Mr. Fitzjohn? Shall you also be visited by my uncle’s displeasure in this contingency?”
“No, madam,” he said. “My uncle has made—has made what he considers a suitable testamentary disposition for me—which would not be affected—but his displeasure would certainly be a heavy misfortune for my two cousins, who, in the event of their marriage, would otherwise be his main inheritors.”
“So I am to assist a person whom I know to be a false pretender to a handsome fortune, in return for a meager annuity to be paid to my mother, paid on sufferance, as if she were the wrongful claimant?”
Mr. Penistone’s eyes flashed; he gave Delphie a furious glance and said in a low voice to Fitzjohn,
“I told you how it would be! She is hard—hard and calculating to the tips of her nails—”
Ignoring him, Fitzjohn said calmly, “Nonsense, madam. You know, as I do, that your pretensions are false; you may think yourself lucky to receive this offer, which will not be held open for long, let me tell you!”
She chose not to reply to this, but asked again, “And what is to be my side of the bargain?”
The two men glanced at one another again. Then Mr. Fitzjohn said,
“We should like you to go through a pretended form of marriage with my cousin at my uncle’s bedside.”
“What?”
She gazed at them, completely dumbfounded. They looked impassively back at her.
After a moment she said weakly,
“You cannot be serious?”
“Perfectly serious, I assure you,” replied Mr. Fitzjohn.
“But—I never heard such an outrageous proposal—every feeling must be offended—”
Mr. Fitzjohn lifted an interrupting hand.
“Please! No time should be lost in idle exclamation.”
“Idle exclamation! It was not idle, I assure you.”
“And I assure you, ma’am, that we are both men of probity; that our proposition was made in perfect seriousness. There are more, and weightier considerations dependent on this issue than the mere disposition of a fortune, are there not, Penistone?”
Mr. Penistone, who was now looking somewhat haggard, inclined his head at this. Delphie, giving him a penetrating glance, recollected that his cousin had so far done all the arguing, and he had said very little; she asked him,
“Are you really agreeable to this plan, sir?”
Reluctantly, it seemed, he said, “Yes; in the circumstances I see no alternative.” But he sounded as if he had numerous and strong reservations.
“But there must be many practical objections!” Delphie exclaimed. “The first and obvious one being that my uncle, unless he is raving delirious, must recognize that I am not the—person Mr. Penistone is affianced to.”
“No, ma’am; that is not the case. My uncle has never laid eyes on the young lady in his life.”
“What?” exclaimed Delphie again. “His own ward—for whom he has provided—and he has never even seen her?”
“He preferred not to,” said Penistone shortly. “He has a disgust for the whole female sex.” He sounded as if he shared his uncle’s prejudice.
“Good heavens,” said Delphie slowly. “I begin to see ...” Fitzjohn continued. “And it is certainly true, ma’am, that you—that you have a certain resemblance to the family physiognomy and could pass for a Penistone—”
“Thank you,” she said with irony.
She began to wish that Jenny would make her appearance. What would Jenny have to say to this amazing proposition? Delphie could imagine her friend’s robust urging—”Go on, dearie; what have you got to lose? Besides which, I never heard such a prime lark!”
“But you—but—even for a pretended ceremony—you would need someone dressed as a clergyman—something that resembled a license—”
“Madam,” said Fitzjohn patiently, “in preparation for the real marriage which we hoped would take place this evening, we are already provided with a special license and with a clergyman.”
“But you do not want a real marriage,” Delphie objected. “Mr. Penistone for sure does not wish to be married to me. And I am very certain that I do not wish to marry him.”
Mr. Penistone cast her an inimical look, and observed,
“All that needs is for some other piece of paper to be substituted for the license, and for some other person to borrow the clerical robes. Deuce take it, ma’am—the whole affair will only take five minutes!”
“But the clergyman himself cannot approve of such a scheme?”
“On the contrary,” said Fitzjohn. “He thinks it essential for my uncle’s peace of mind—otherwise he is like to die in a wretched state of agitation and useless repining, without having properly made his peace with God.”
“He sounds a most singular creature ... But if that is really so—” said Delphie slowly. It had occurred to her that here, at least, by agreeing to this bedside ceremony, she must achieve a chance, which would not otherwise be granted, of getting to see her great-uncle. She might have an opportunity to mention her mother—
“Come, miss,” said Fitzjohn. “We have—I promise you—no time to waste in arguing. Lord Bollington’s state is critical. Even now it may be too late. Is it to be yes, or no?”
Delphie looked at him. His square face was impassive; he did not seem as if he personally were greatly interested in the outcome of her deliberations, but merely wished a tiresome problem to be resolved; he gave her a brief, encouraging smile, however. Penistone seemed much more agitated; he slightly loosened his carefully tied neckcloth, and drew a short, weary breath.
“Very well,” said Delphie. “I do not approve—I do not at all condone your scheme—but—in the circumstances—and if it is truly for the welfare of a dying man—I am prepared to co-operate with you.”
“In that case,” said Fitzjohn, “be so good as to come with us. There is no time to be lost.”
He led the way out of the room and, after an instant’s hesitation, Philadelphia followed him, with Mr. Penistone close behind her.
4
The distance from the library to Lord Bollington’s chamber was by no means so great as the way that Delphie had been taken to the West Wing; within a very few minutes they were standing in a broad carpeted anteroom, while Mr. Fitzjohn tapped on a paneled door; then they passed through another antechamber, in which a thin man in a close snuff-colored suit and an old-fashioned wig—presumably the lawyer—sat writing busily at a table in a corner, while two others—the elderly Fidd, and a black-clad man, no doubt the doctor—conferred in low voices. Fitzjohn stopped to say a word to them and they glanced at Delphie with a kind of apathetic, gloomy curiosity; then Fitzjohn passed through yet another door and led them into the room beyond.
This was an enormous chamber; it had mullioned windows, a high ceiling with elaborate moldings, and bosses suspended from its plasterwork, a thick carpet, and a few massive pieces of furniture at large distances from each other. An immense pile of coal on the hearth had burned down to a hot red glow; two oil lamps supplied a shadowy and insufficient light. Fitzjohn, with a nod of his head, signaled Delphie to approach the roomy four-poster bed which stood on the far side of the hearth.
For a few moments she found it difficult to distinguish the man who lay on the bed from the shadows surrounding him; then as her eyes by degrees became accustomed to the somber light, she slowly began to take in his appearance.
Her great-uncle lay propped against a pile of
pillows; despite the pains that had evidently been taken to ease his position, he drew each breath with a harsh rattle, as if the effort gave him severe pain. He looked to be about seventy years of age; his face was much lined, and all the color and blood seemed to have been drained away from it. His hair was a shock of coarse white, like a thistle head; his eyebrows, too, bristled white above the closed eyes, deep sunk in their hollows. He looked all skin and bone; the hands that lay inertly before him on the counterpane might have been carved from grainy, weather-beaten wood.
It was hot and close in his chamber; a smell of burnt paper and Russia leather hung in the air, and the lingering aromatic fumes of some vinegary medicament; Delphie began to wish herself elsewhere; she felt it very oppressive in there, as she stood silently waiting for the man in the bed to open his eyes.
“Ahem!” said Fitzjohn, quite loudly. “I have brought my cousin, sir—my cousin Miss Carteret.”
The small eyes under the frosty brows flew open. Delphie was uncomfortably reminded of a spider, couched motionless in a shadowy corner, waiting for its prey, as the head slightly moved, and the sparks in the deep-socketed caverns traveled slowly around toward her. She fancied that there was an expression of considerable malice in them.
“Found your way here at last, then miss, have you? A moneyless mare trots fast to the market! Heh, heh, heh!” He spoke in a kind of whispering rattle, but his laugh was disagreeably loud and shrill.
Delphie opened her lips to reply, but he gestured her to silence with one of the gray, bony hands. “Quiet, miss! I want no parleying! I do the talking here. Silence is a woman’s best garment.” His face wrinkled into a scowl; his lower lip thrust out. She thought that he looked a most evil old scarecrow.
“Ay,” he muttered, “they’re all alike; bright eyes and hard grasping hands, lying tongues and mouths that will suck the life’s blood out of you. Hearts like stones; she-hyenas who would eat their own children if no other food offered.”
