The Light Heart (2 page)

Not that the other men in the family were weaklings or misfits. But they didn’t run things. They didn’t cope. And except for Fitz, none of them made any money. The Dabney Days lived at Charlottesville and were University-minded innocents. And the Williamsburg bunch never left the
Peninsula
if they could help it. True, Fitz Sprague had worked on the paper in New York for a while before he went with Bracken to Cuba as a war correspondent—but all Fitz really wanted to do was to write songs and musical comedies, which he was very successful at, and he could do that just as well in Williamsburg, and Gwen wanted to give up the stage and raise a family in a real home. Sue, with her invalid father to care for, had gone
abroad just once, with the Murrays the summer of the Jubilee. If she hadn’t, Bracken wouldn’t have had to drop everything in New York and come to Williamsburg now.

The news he carried wasn’t the kind you could set down callously in a letter, or deliver in a casual aside during a birthday party for a pretty young cousin. The news he had to tell Susannah Day was confidential, and he wondered if there was any way to cover up its arrival by saying he had been in Washington anyway, and so forth. She would have to decide about that herself. The family was always sublimely incurious, but a letter would have been more private—if you could have put it in a letter. You had to tell her this, as gently and tactfully as you could—hold her hands, produce a clean handkerchief, advise her what to do now—cope. He supposed she would want to keep it from Cousin Sedgwick, if possible, but how?

Walking thoughtfully through the quiet green streets from the railway station to Ransom Day’s house, he appreciated even now the lost, sleeping-beauty charm of the little town. Williamsburg had been the capital of Virginia once, when the Royal Governor lived here and gave Royal Birthday Night balls in his handsome red brick Palace on the Green. George Washington went to those balls, wearing powder and a blue militia uniform with red facings, and a sword. Bracken’s
Great-great
-grandmother Tabitha Day had had the whole French Army at her wedding ball at the Raleigh Tavern here in Williamsburg after Yorktown. But the capital had gone to Richmond by then, and the little Peninsula town with its red brick College buildings after Wren, and its low white painted houses behind white picket fences had got drowsier and drowsier. Disastrous fires had taken the Palace and the Capital and the Raleigh. Another war rolled over it in the ’sixties, wiping out whole families and their fortunes. The railway came in, and put its depot where the Palace gardens had once been. A young ladies’ seminary stood on the site of the Capitol Building. What was left of Williamsburg now was shabby and charming and pathetic, and held its chin high—like the Days
and the Spragues. Bracken loved the town, and he loved his relations who lived here. But Aunt Sue had really dealt him a handful of deuces this time.

She was so sweet. She was so pretty, with her neat little figure and her fading coppery hair and the misplaced dimple in her childlike smile. But she was a deep one. That year when they took her to England for the Jubilee, because his mother was convinced the darling should see something of the world while she was still young enough to enjoy herself—that summer was when Aunt Sue really went and did it.

How those mocking-birds sang….

And what was he going to say to her? He would be there in a minute, and Pharaoh would be opening the door and blessing his soul, and Aunt Sue would be so glad to see him, and he would kiss her on both cheeks and say—well, not straight off, not the first thing. And yet, why else had he come, with no warning? She would be so pleased to be surprised—But Bracken, what does this
mean,
why didn’t you let us
know,
you’re a week
early
,
Bracken, for the birthday, and when can we look for Eden, and why didn’t you bring your Dinah—?

What was he going to say then? Honey, you know that summer you went to England with us—? Well, of course she did, that wouldn’t get him anywhere. Honey, you know that house I bought from a fellow named Forbes-Carpenter, the house Virginia’s living in now with Archie, the one
Great-great-
grandfather St. John was born in—? Naturally she knew it, she had lived in it herself for weeks. Honey, you remember Major Forbes-Carpenter—the man you wouldn’t marry because of Cousin Sedgwick—? And Aunt Sue would probably get a little pink, and glance over her shoulder, because Gratian Forbes-Carpenter wasn’t mentioned in Williamsburg, though all he had done was fall in love with Aunt Sue the summer of the Jubilee….

Bracken was at the gate, at the steps, at the door—Pharaoh opened it with appropriate exclamations—Aunt Sue came running out of the dining-room—“Bracken, you
darling
,
where
have you sprung from, have you had breakfast, where’s Dinah, aren’t you going to kiss me, that’s better, are you
starving,
why didn’t you
tell
us, does anyone else know you’re here—?”

“Sh!” he said, and laid his finger on her parted lips. “I’m incognito. I’ve come straight here from the station.”

“Is anything wrong?” She caught at him. “Is Eden—?”

“Mother is perfectly well, and she knows where I am. So come into the drawing-room and I’ll tell you about it.”

“But you must have something to
eat,
Bracken, if you’ve been travelling all night—”

“Later.”

With his arm around her waist he took her into the
drawing-room
and closed the door behind them. She stood quietly then, looking up at him, her eyes large and frightened.

“Bracken, I know it’s something dreadful, don’t break it gently, will you!”

“Very well, my dear, here it is.” He took both her hands. “I’ve had a letter from Partridge in London.” (Partridge was their solicitor.) “Honey, I don’t know how else to tell you—Sir Gratian has been killed in South Africa.”

Slowly, while he stood watching, her eyes filled with tears. Her hands gripped his, for steadiness. Then with a little sound, half gasp, half moan, she hid her face against his coat, and he laid his arms around her. “It was just one of those things that needn’t have happened,” he went on gently, to give her time. “The war down there is practically over—this was part of the necessary mopping-up campaign, and they’d put down a cordon at a place called Tarkastaad. The Boers rushed the Lancers and the British losses were heavy. It was a soldier’s death, honey—very quick, and with his boots on. He would have wanted it that way.”

Bracken gave her his handkerchief, which she accepted gratefully. They moved together to a sofa and sat down, and she held to him still, shaking a little, her breath coming
unevenly
while she fought for self-control.

“I don’t—mean to take it so badly,” she got out. “It’s only
that there was so little I could do for him—and he deserved so much—and I gave him nothing—”

“You gave him a very bright memory,” Bracken said firmly. “He had a beautiful time with us, that summer. It was probably his last leave in England, and he had a great deal to look back on. Don’t think he wasn’t grateful.”

“If only I could have managed—if there had been two of me, so that one could have come back here, I—would have stayed with him—he would have retired by now—to raise dahlias, he said—”

“Don’t cry, honey, he’d hate that. He wanted you to be happy. He did what he could about that. You see—in his Will he left you everything he had.”

“
What?
”
Sue lifted a shocked, tear-stained face.

“You aren’t mentioned in the Will. He was too tactful for that. I am, though. The money is left in my name, with a sealed letter to me, putting it in trust for you. Apparently he went to Partridge in the Temple and arranged for everything before he left England that summer. His letter to me sounds as though he had had some sort of premonition that his time was about up—soldiers often do, I think. He arranged that if and when he was killed in action everything of which he died possessed would come to you—and this consists largely of the lump sum I had just paid him for the house. He never touched a penny of it. It makes a nice little nest-egg, you know.”

“B-but I don’t want it.”

“I’m afraid you’ve got it, my dear.”

“But it’s
your
money, Bracken, that you gave him for Farthingale.”

“Then I gave Farthingale to Virginia and Archie when they were married, and the money certainly isn’t theirs.”

“But it—it would be in
pounds,
wouldn’t it? I can’t—”

“The exchange is pretty good. We can have it transferred to your account here and—”

“
No!
Oh, please don’t do that, Sedgie would be sure to find
out! You’ll just have to keep the money yourself, Bracken, I don’t want it, truly I don’t.”

“My dear soul, Wills are sacred things, we have to do as they say. And his says you are his heir—heiress, I mean. It gives you a good back-log in case the time ever comes when you don’t want to go on writing books. You could live on the income anywhere in the world, very comfortably indeed.”

“Oh, Bracken, please help me out of this, don’t let Sedgie know, I’ll
die
if Sedgie ever hears about it!”

“Cousin Sedgwick isn’t a fool, Aunt Sue. He won’t think anything scandalous just because—”

“But I’d
rather
he didn’t know—don’t you see, there was nothing between me and Gratian, really, except a fancy on his part. We were all so gay that summer, and he had been ill and dull, and it must have gone to his head a little. I thought he would have forgotten all about it by now.”

“Had
you?
”

“No-no, but—”

“You were the nicest thing that ever happened to him, Aunt Sue. Don’t take away his pleasure now.”

She looked at him doubtfully, gravely.

“Do you—think he’d
know?
”
she breathed.

“What do
you
think?” There was a silence while their eyes held. “I wouldn’t risk it if I were you,” he said.

“But—Gratian wouldn’t want to make things difficult for me here—” She flashed a doubtful, confidential look at him. He was very young, but after all, Cabot’s son was the head of the family now. “I don’t know if anyone ever told you, Bracken, but at one time Sedgwick and I were very much in love, and—”

“And they wouldn’t let you marry him because you were double first cousins. Yes, I’ve known that for a long time. It stood between you and Sir Gratian, didn’t it? But you came back here, Aunt Sue, surely that’s the answer to that. Anyway, Cousin Sedgwick is grown up now. It isn’t going to break his heart to learn that a very gallant soldier of the Queen thought
so highly of you that he wanted to endow you with all his worldy goods!”

“Sedgie would think I had—well,
given
up
something, when I came back to Williamsburg. It would worry him. I won’t have him upset. I could never make him believe, for sure, that I
wanted
to come home. We’ve got to find some way—”

The screen door of the verandah at the side of the house slammed heedlessly, and Phoebe’s voice floated in from there: “Cousin Sue! It’s me—Phoebe! Where are you?”

Sue seized Bracken’s shoulders. Her eyes blazed up at him, wet and radiant.

“I know!” she whispered. “We’ll give it all to Phoebe!”

“But—”

“Keep still. Let me tell her. You keep still.” Then Sue raised her voice. “We’re in the drawing-room, honey. Come and see who’s here!”

B
RACKEN
spent the next half hour keeping still, by main force.

He kissed Phoebe’s cool pink cheek, and took note of the clean shine of her brown hair and her pretty teeth and the really entrancing cleft in her chin, which came from the Murray side. And he watched Susannah Day, the authoress, spin her yarn.

According to Sue, he had come to Williamsburg solely on account of Phoebe’s birthday, because Phoebe’s present from the Murrays was going to be—guess what!—a trip abroad with them this summer!

At that point Bracken felt about as flabbergasted as Phoebe looked. It was true that he and Dinah and his mother were going to England within a month’s time. It was true that this summer in England would be the gayest since the Jubilee Year, because the gay Prince of Wales was going to be crowned Edward VII. It was true that Virginia had urged them to spend all the time they could at Farthingale, which was not far from
the Hall, where Dinah had lived before she married Bracken, and where her brother still lived with his wife and baby heir to the earldom. But it was not true that Phoebe had been included in his mother’s plans.

They would be very glad to have her, naturally, and they might have thought of it themselves before now. Phoebe was a very presentable young woman, and had hardly been out of Williamsburg in her life. Undoubtedly it would do her good. And he saw what was in Sue’s mind. She thought that by sending Phoebe abroad with a lot of pretty clothes and paying her expenses out of the legacy, she would have disposed of the embarrassing problem of Sir Gratian’s Will. It was evident that Sue had no faintest idea of what Bracken had paid for that house called Farthingale down in Gloucestershire.

Phoebe was shaking her head, and looking bewildered and a little frightened.

“But, Cousin Sue, I’m not—not
ready,
I’m not equipped for a trip like that, I’d have to have new things to wear, and I—”

“Eden means to outfit you in New York before you go. I’ll come along as far as that with you, I think, and help choose your clothes,” said Sue recklessly. “If I can get away for a few days, I will.”

“B-but it will cost so much money, Father couldn’t—we can’t just let Aunt Eden—”

“Nonsense, it’s for your birthday present—your twenty-first birthday. The boys always have something special when they turn twenty-one! Eden wants to provide everything you need—entirely at her own expense, of course.”

Phoebe looked at Bracken.

“It’s awfully nice of Aunt Eden but I’m afraid—”

“So was I afraid once,” Sue interrupted briskly. “And it didn’t hurt
me.
In fact, it gave me a great many new things to write about, and increased my income.” Suddenly, to Bracken’s agonized inner amusement Sue flushed and stammered. “From my books, I mean, of course—they’ve sold much better ever since. It broadens your viewpoint, and—you’ll be much more
likely to turn out something worth publishing if you take this chance now, while you’re young.”