A Change of Heir (11 page)

Confronted with this paradox of his situation, Gadberry felt a good deal discouraged. His chronic sense of the perplexing character of the moral universe descended upon him heavily. Moreover there was the awkward fact that, just as he had only a vaguely massive notion of the threat he wanted to bolt
from
, so he had no clear idea of any prospect he could now bolt
to
. He could, indeed, take money with him, so that he would be all right for a time. But what about after that? He would once more be George Gadberry, but he wasn’t very sure that he could live as George Gadberry had lived. He was like a wild creature which, after even a short period of captivity, has no clear memory of what wild nature feels like.

The party dragged on for a further gloomy half-hour, after which the Pollocks got up to go away. So thick was the snow outside, however, that their actual departure was delayed while one of the outdoor servants fitted certain clanking mediaeval contraptions, known as the chains, to the back wheels of their car. The operation was unfamiliar to Gadberry, who nevertheless felt that he must superintend it with an air of rural expertise, so that in the result he was blue and shivering by the time the doctor and his wife departed into the blizzard. Then Grimble had to be fed into the fly, the fly’s driver dug out of the kitchens to which he had repaired, and the fly’s motive power to be lashed and cajoled into a sufficient state of equine animation to trundle the conveyance down the drive. By the time these evolutions were concluded Gadberry felt fit for nothing but bed.

He returned to the drawing-room, however, if only with the idea of making sure that the place wasn’t going to be burnt down – or even, perhaps, out of a kind of dumb sense that a deft kick or two at Boulter’s enormous embers might really produce in the small hours a conflagration in which Bruton Abbey, hitherto more or less inviolate through the centuries, would disappear for ever. As it turned out, this wouldn’t have been possible. Mrs Minton was still in the room, seated in a chair on one side of the fireplace. As Miss Bostock was arranging her footstool, it was to be presumed that she had just taken her place there. And there was an empty chair opposite her. Gadberry, who didn’t like the look of this, spoke a shade hastily.

‘My dear aunt, I’m sure you must be very tired. Perhaps you should–’

‘Pray do not speculate, Nicholas, on what I ought, or ought not, to do. Nor need you to be so irrational as to claim assurance in regard to the subjective sensations of another. And now sit down. I have something to communicate to you. But, first, place a chair for Miss Bostock. Bostock, I wish you to hear what I have to say.’

‘In the course of tomorrow morning,’ Mrs Minton began, ‘Mr Middleweek will call. He is, as you know, my solicitor, and it is my intention that a number of documents shall be executed in the course of our interview. It is not, I need hardly say, merely a matter of a will – as it doubtless would be were Miss Bostock, say, desirous of settling her affairs. It is only for the poor that matters are as simple as that. Nicholas – you follow me?’

‘Well, yes – I suppose I do.’

‘If certain iniquities in the present laws governing death duties and the like are to be defeated, it is requisite that various dispositions of property should be made at a date which shall subsequently prove to have been not less than seven years before my own demise. This does not mean, Nicholas, that you will assume control of anything more than the modest allowance at present made to you. There will be trustees, and so forth. I ought to add, moreover, that I have no intention of dying within the next seven years. Nothing of the sort is in my mind. So there is not, in fact, any hurry. I wish, however, that these dispositions should be made now. The reason for this I shall presently communicate to you. Once more, you follow me?’

‘Yes, I think I do.’ Gadberry, who ought to have been all agog at this point, found himself feeling merely uncomfortable. ‘But need you tell me all this just at – ?’

‘Nicholas, you are developing a bad habit of offering me what you appear to regard as your own better wisdom on the manner of my conducting my affairs. Pray allow me to continue. I wish these matters to be understood clearly. Bostock, if I am
not
clear, you are to say so.’

‘Then I think you ought to be a little more specific now.’ Miss Bostock, although existing in a depressed station of life, commonly addressed her employer with some briskness. ‘Is Mr Comberford to understand that, in the event of your being quite mistaken as to your expectation of life, trustees would take over where you left off?’

‘Certainly not. As I understand these rather intricate matters, the trustees are created merely as the formal custodians of various properties during my lifetime. Were I to die next week – which I repeat I do not intend to do – their functions would lapse at once. There would be disastrous estate duties and so forth. But Nicholas would come immediately into his inheritance.’

‘That is clear,’ Miss Bostock said. She gave Gadberry one of her steady looks. ‘I am sure that Mr Comberford takes the point very well.’

Gadberry found this disagreeable, although he wasn’t quite sure why. He ought at least to be making a careful mental note of it all, if only to report to the authentic Comberford when he chose to make contact again. But he still just wanted to go to bed. He tried, therefore, to speed up this nocturnal conference.

‘Well, then,’ he said, ‘why do you want to fix things tomorrow?’

‘Because I have arranged a luncheon party, Nicholas. The Shilbottles are coming, and it is possible – indeed likely – that Arthur Shilbottle may wish to know how the land lies.’

‘Oh, the Shilbottles. Yes, of course.’ Gadberry performed a rapid mental consultation of the late Magnus Minton’s
Memoirs
, but without result. ‘That will be very nice.’

‘I cannot see that you are in a position to form such a judgment. The Shilbottles are surely unknown to you as yet. Indeed, I do not possess their familiar acquaintance myself. As you must be aware, the Marquis of Aydon’s estates lie in Northumberland. Lord Arthur Shilbottle, who is his younger brother, has only recently acquired properties in our neighbourhood – and only, I may add, as a consequence of his marriage. Lady Arthur has lately inherited a large fortune. I understand it may be termed a
very
large fortune. Lady Arthur is of American extraction, but is nevertheless substantially presentable. And the daughters have been accorded an upbringing entirely suitable to English gentlewomen.’

‘I’m very glad to hear it.’ Gadberry made this imbecile reply out of considerable perturbation of mind. It didn’t take much acuteness to see where all this was heading for. It was the Court page of
The Times
, morning clothes, grey toppers, whole barns and granaries piled with wedding presents, and a marriage ceremony performed – no doubt – by the Archbishop of York. All this had lately been hovering in a nightmarish fashion in Gadberry’s consciousness. Here it really was.

‘Did you say something about daughters?’ he asked. He might as well know the worst at once.

‘Of course they are coming to lunch with us too. Alethea and Anthea. I may say that I have already had some conversation with Shirley Shilbottle.’

‘Shirley?’

‘Shirley is Lady Arthur Shilbottle. I agree that as a girl’s Christian name Shirley scarcely commends itself. However, it possibly commemorates some kinship with the Ferrers, who were earls of Derby in the thirteenth century, and must be considered as of respectable antiquity. You will recall that Laurence Shirley, who was, I think, the fourth earl, was the last English nobleman to suffer a felon’s death. He drove to Tyburn in his own carriage, and was hanged with a silken rope. This seems to make a connection with the American colonies the more probable.’

‘It clearly does.’ Gadberry was by now well practised in receiving this sort of thing. ‘But why should you already have had some conversation with Lady Arthur?’

‘My dear Nicholas, I am, as you know, a woman of a liberal turn of mind. In the sphere which we are now considering. I cannot but act in a spirit of the greatest tolerance. The miseries of enforced marriage, as the old phrase has it, shall never be laid at my door – in relation to a young man that is to say, for it is entirely proper that a girl should marry precisely according to her parents’ wish. But a young man, I repeat, must not be constrained. Particularly if he is of good family, and so possessed of those qualities of manliness and independence which only a distinguished lineage can confer.’

‘I’m sure that’s absolutely right.’ Gadberry almost blushed as he said this, for he was quite clear the old woman was talking the most awful rot. ‘That sort of young man must be let marry the girl he fancies.’

Mrs Minton looked displeased.

‘Nicholas, you are being foolish again. It is precisely his possibly behaving in that manner that I was reprehending in young Tony Hartley. What my liberal principles require me to assert is the necessity of
choice
– of perfectly
free
choice. And this is why I had to make quite sure. Fortunately, matters are entirely propitious. Lady Arthur, who controls her own fortune, is definite about it. Alethea and Anthea are to be treated strictly as co-heiresses. It is the American custom, no doubt.’

‘So that’s my free choice – between the Hon. Alethea and the equally Hon. Anthea?’

‘Pray do not be facetious, Nicholas – and particularly on such a serious subject as that of styles and titles. But you are correct as to the fact.’

‘What if these Shilbottles now have a son?’

‘It is a question you do very well to ask.’ Mrs Minton directed upon Gadberry one of those glances of high approval which were apt to disconcert him more than was anything else. ‘But Shirley Shilbottle is definitely beyond the child-bearing age, and any subsequent marriage by Arthur Shilbottle is neither here nor there. The money – or rather the land, since to talk about money is decidedly vulgar – is Shirley’s. Every penny of it. I mean, every acre.’

‘I see. So it’s pretty well in the bag?’

‘The expression is unfamiliar to me, Nicholas. But if its import is as I suppose, I give an affirmative answer with confidence.’

‘And tomorrow’s the day? I line them up and choose – like oranges and lemons?’

‘My dear Nicholas, of course
les convenances
must be observed. Even if your preference instantly becomes clear to you, you will upon this first occasion continue to be equally attentive to both girls. On a second meeting you may, however, make some proposal to one of them alone.’

‘A proposal of marriage, you mean?’

‘Certainly not. A proposal to go riding together, or something of the sort. After that, there should be some slight further delay. I should be inclined to say that your passion may quite properly declare itself in about three or four weeks’ time. And now, as that is settled, I will go to bed.’

In accordance with a custom which had established itself at the Abbey, Gadberry now conducted Aunt Prudence ceremoniously to her own apartments. When he returned to the drawing-room to turn out the lights – for Boulter was to be presumed by now to have signed off for the night – he found to his surprise that Miss Bostock was still in possession of it. This hadn’t happened before. Indeed Gadberry had a notion that
les convenances
as recently evoked were dead against it. Unmarried ladies quartered in country houses never sit up with the gentlemen unchaperoned. Or at least they don’t do so (unless they are very fast) in Victorian novels of high life. And current mores at Bruton Abbey appeared to hitch on more or less to that. But certainly Miss Bostock wasn’t discomposed. She made no move to withdraw. Instead, she sat tight, and gave Gadberry one of her celebrated looks. It was a look that didn’t seem to search into his heart so much as into his pockets; she might have been estimating to what extent he had loaded these with the Minton spoons and forks.

‘Sit down,’ Miss Bostock said.

Gadberry sat down – not without resenting something decidedly peremptory in Miss Bostock’s tone. Of course, one had to make allowances for the woman. To live in a household where the servants were required to address you as ‘Madam’ but where they regularly heard you addressed as ‘Bostock’ by your employer: this was something which would surely in time sour any temper. But she and Gadberry were, to some extent, fellow sufferers, after all. It was unreasonable that they should be at feud with one another. Gadberry decided to have another go at being conciliatory now. So he once more put on his ingenuous act.

‘I say,’ he began, ‘that was a bit of a facer, wasn’t it? Free choice, indeed! Still, I suppose one is bound to prove more attractive than the other.’

‘I think not.’

‘Oh come, Miss Bostock!
Less
un
attractive than the other if you like. I’ve got to look on the bright side, after all.’

‘There is no bright side, there are only two identical sides.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘Mrs Minton has a sense of humour, has she not, Mr Comberford?’

‘I can’t say I’ve much noticed it.’

‘Well, she has. But it is of a grim and private sort. In this last conversation, and while offering you your pick, as it were, between the two Shilbottle girls, she suppressed one relevant fact. They are identical twins, and it is impossible to distinguish between them.’

If this was really a joke, Gadberry didn’t think much of it. In fact he felt almost unreasonably angry – partly with Miss Bostock, whose manner he increasingly didn’t like, and partly with Mrs Minton, who suddenly stood revealed to him as unbearably arrogant and tiresomely mad. Of course he had really known the worst about Mrs Minton for some time, and it had been sheer weakness to dodge a consciousness of the fact simply because he had got into her good graces. Objectively regarded, it was humiliating that he had succeeded in this way, since it was something, surely, that only a horrid young toady could do.