Bride of Pendorric (22 page)

and after a time, I left.

I did not see the twins as I walked back to Pendorric.

The next day Nurse Grey telephoned me.

” Oh, Mrs. Pendorric,” she said, ” Lord Polhorgan has asked me to ring. He was wondering if you could come over this afternoon. He rather particularly wants to see you.”

I hesitated and said that I thought I could manage it, and asked how he was.

” Not quite so well. He had an attack during the night. He’s resting to-day, but he says that he hoped you would be able to come, if not to-day, tomorrow.”

I set out that afternoon, wondering whether to pick some flowers from the garden to take to him; but as he had so many more than we had that seemed rather unnecessary.

When I arrived he was in his usual chair, not dressed, but wearing a Paisley silk dressing-gown and slippers. He seemed delighted to see me.

” Good of you to come so promptly,” he said. ” I was afraid you wouldn’t be able to manage it.”

” I’m sorry you haven’t been so well.”

” It’s all ups and downs, my dear. I’ll get over this little bout as I have others. They’re bringing in the tea. Will you pour as usual?” I did so and noticed that he ate very little and seemed rather more silent than usual, yet in a way expectant.

And as soon as the tea was cleared away he told me what, he said, he had been longing to ever since we had first met.

” Favel …” he began, and it was the first time he had used my Christian name, ” come and sit near me. I’m afraid what I have to say is going to be a great shock to you. I told you when we first met that I was an old curmudgeon, didn’t I?”

I nodded.

“An impossible person. In my young days I thought of nothing but making money. It was the only thing of importance to me. Even when I married, my chief thought was to have sons … sons to whom I would leave my fortune … sons who would carry on my business and add new fortunes to the one I made. I had a successful business life, but I was not so successful in my domestic affairs. My wife left me for another man—one of my own employees. He wasn’t a success. I couldn’t understand why she could leave a luxurious home for him … but she did. I divorced her and I got the custody of our daughter, which was something she hadn’t bargained for. The child was six years old at the time. Twelve years later she left me.”

“Doesn’t it distress you to talk of the past?”

“It’s a distressing subject but I want you to understand. My daughter left me because I was trying to arrange a marriage for her. I wanted her to marry Petroc Pendorric, who was then a widower. His wife had died accidentally and I thought there was a good opportunity of joining up the families. I was an outsider here, and I thought that if mine was linked with one of the oldest Cornish families I should be so no longer. Pendorric needed money. I had it. It seemed to me ideal, but she didn’t agree.”

There was silence during which he looked at me helplessly, and for the first time since I had known him he seemed at a loss for words. ” There are often such disagreements in families,” I said. ” My wife went … my daughter went. You’d think I’d learned my lesson, wouldn’t you? Flattered myself that in the world of commerce I’d learned all the lessons as they came along. So I had…. But this was something I was pretty backward in. Favel, I don’t know how to explain. Open that drawer. There’s something in there that will tell you what I’m trying to.”

I went to the drawer, and opening it took out a photograph in a silver frame. As I stared at it I heard his voice, hoarse as I had never heard it before, with the depth of his emotion. ” Come here to me, my child.”

I came to him, and he no longer seemed the same man to me. Sitting there in that very luxurious room he had become more frail, more pitiable: and at the same time infinitely closer to me.

I acted on impulse, and going to him I took his frail body in my arms and held him against me as though he were a child and I was assuring him that he could rely on me to protect him.

” Favel …” he whispered.

I drew back and looked at him. His eyes were wet, so I took the silk handkerchief from the pocket of his dressing-gown and wiped them. ” Why didn’t you tell me before … Grandfather?” I asked. He laughed suddenly and his stern features were relaxed as I had never seen them before. ” Afraid to,” he said. ” Lost wife and daughter. Was making a bid for the granddaughter.”

It had been such a shock to me that I was still feeling all this was unreal. My thoughts were muddled. It did not occur to me in that moment to ask myself the explanation of that extraordinary coincidence which had allowed me to marry a man who came into my life by chance and turned out to be a neighbour of my grandfather. That was to come later.

” Well,” he asked, ” what do you think of your old ‘grandfather?”

” I

don’t know yet what to think. I’m so bewildered. “

” I’ll tell you what I think of my granddaughter, then. If I could have chosen just how I wanted her to be, she wouldn’t have been different in one detail. Do you know, Favel, you’re so like your mother that when you’ve been sitting there playing chess with me I’ve often found my mind slipping back … and I’d be thinking she’d never gone away. You’ve got the same fair hair, though she didn’t have that white streak in it; and your eyes are the same colour … sometimes blue, sometimes green. And you’re like her in your ways .. the kindest heart and the impetuosity. Rushing in before you’ve had time to consider. I often wondered how that marriage of hers would work out. Used to tell myself it couldn’t last, but it seems it did.

And she chose a Cornish name for you. That shows, doesn’t it, that she didn’t think of the past always with regret. “

” But why was I never told? She never spoke of the past, and you”

” She never told you? Nor did your father? You’d have thought they’d have mentioned it now and then. And you never asked, Favel. How was that?”

I looked back to those sunlit days of my childhood.

“I think that they felt all that had happened before their marriage was unimportant.

That’s how it strikes me now. Their lives were so . entwined. They lived for each other. Perhaps they knew she hadn’t long to live. I suppose that sort of thing makes a difference. As for myself, I never thought of things being other than they were. That was why, when she died, everything changed so much for us. “

“And you were fond of your father too?” he said wistfully. I nodded.

” He came down here to paint one summer. Rented a little place a mile or so away along the coast … little more than a shack. When she told me she was going to marry him I thought it was a joke at first.

Soon learned it wasn’t. She could be obstinate. I told her she was a fool. Never stopped to think. Told her I wouldn’t leave her a penny if she married this man. Told her he was after her money anyway. So they just went away one day and I never heard from her again. ” He was thinking of all the years that had been lost to him. Here he sat in the midst of his opulence—the loneliest old man I had ever met. And it need never have been.

Now he had learned that he was the one who had been foolish—not my mother and father. And pitiably he was reaching out to me to give him, for the short time left to him, the affection which more than twenty years ago he had rashly thrown away.

I turned to him impulsively and said: “Grandfather, I’m glad I came home to you.”

” My dear child,” he murmured. ” My dearest child.” Then he went on:

“Tell me about her. Did she suffer much?”

I shook my head. ” There were several months when she knew and we knew…. They were terrible months, particularly for my father, but it wasn’t really long—though it seemed so.”

” I could have paid for the best attention for her,” he said angrily.

“Grandfather,” I replied, “it’s over. It doesn’t do any good to reproach yourself—or them—or anyone. You’ve got to put that behind you. I’m here now. Your own granddaughter. I shall see you more often now. I shan’t feel like waiting for a reasonable period before calling again. You’re my very own grandfather and it’s wonderful that my home is so close to yours….” I stopped, picturing myself coming into the studio and seeing Roe there with my father. ” It seems so strange that Roe should have come to my father’s studio … and that we should have married,” I said slowly. ” I mean, it seems too lucky to be true.”

My grandfather smiled. ” It wasn’t just a matter of chance, my dear.

Your mother never wrote to me. I had no idea where she was or what was happening to her. I had told her that if she married her artist I wanted nothing to do with her, and she took me at my word. But . your father wrote. It was a month or so before Roe went abroad. He told me that your mother was dead and that they had a daughter:

Favel. He asked me if I would like to see you, and he gave me the address of that studio place of yours. “

” I see,” I said. ” I wonder why Father wrote.”

” I had my suspicions. I thought he was after something. People often say that men in my position are comfortably off. Having money isn’t always comfortable, I can tell you. You’re constantly watching in case you’re going to lose something; you’re for ever on the alert for ways of increasing what you have; and you’re always suspecting that people are seeking your acquaintance because they want a little of what you’ve got. No. I’d say I’m uncomfortably off. In any case I was wary of your father. I said: He wants to borrow something. Lilith wouldn’t let him write when she was alive—too proud. But now she’s dead he’s after something. I put his letter on one side and didn’t answer it.

But the thought of my granddaughter kept bothering me. I wondered what she was like . how old she was. Your father hadn’t said. And I wanted to know more about her. “

He paused and looked at me reflectively, and I said: “So you asked Roe to … spy out the land?”

He nodded.

“I knew he was going to Italy, so I asked him to do me this favour. I couldn’t go myself. I wanted him to find out what this studio place was like and what my granddaughter was like. My plan was that when he came back, providing I liked what he told me, I’d invite my granddaughter to Polhorgan … her father too, perhaps, if she wouldn’t come without him.”

“So that was why Roe came to the studio.”

“That was it. But you’re impetuous like your mother. You fell in love with him. So instead of his bringing back a report to me, he brought you back as his bride.”

” So Roe … knew … all the time?”

” He knew.”

” But he didn’t give me a hint … in fact he never has.”

” Well, you see, I’d asked him not to. I didn’t want you to come over to see your grandfather. I wanted us to meet as strangers. I wanted to know what you thought of me and I wanted to know what I thought of you. But the minute I saw you—you were so like your mother—I felt she’d come back to me. My dear child, I can’t tell you what a difference this has made to me.”

I touched his hand, but I was thinking of Roe . Roe as he had come into the studio. Roe lying on the beach talking about Pendorric, about the Folly and the man who lived in it, who, he knew all the time, was my grandfather.

” So Roe was carrying out your wishes,” I said.

” He did even more than I asked. He brought you home.”

” I can understand his not telling me that in the beginning, but later”

” I told him that I wanted to break the news to you yourself.”
” I was silent. Then I said: ” You wanted my mother to marry Roe’s father.p>

“

” Ah, that was in the days when I thought I could manage people’s lives better than they could themselves. I know different now.”

” So I’ve pleased you … by marrying a Pendorric.”

” Had you wanted to marry a fisherman. Granddaughter, I’d have made no objection. I learn my lessons … in time. All the lonely years need not have happened if I’d not tried to interfere. Fancy, if I’d raised no objections to their marrying, I’d have had them with me all those years. She might never have died. I shouldn’t have had to wait till my granddaughter was a married woman before I knew her.”

“Grandfather,” I insisted, “you wanted my mother to marry a Pendorric. Are you glad I’ve married Roe?”

He was silent for a few moments; then he said: ” Because you’re in love with him … yes. I shouldn’t have wanted it otherwise.”

” But you spoke of linking the families. My mother left home because you wanted her to marry Roe’s father.”

” That was years ago. I suspect those Pendorrics wanted not so much my daughter as my money, and your father wanted her for herself … must have done, because she knew me well enough to understand that when I said there’d be nothing for her if she ran away, I meant it.”

I was silent and he lay back in his chair and closed his eyes though he had taken my hand and kept it in his. I could see how the veins stood out at his temples and that he was more flushed than usual. Such excitement was not good for him, I was sure.

My grandfather! I thought, watching him. So I had a relative after all. My eyes went round the room at the paintings on the wall. They were all of the old school. Grandfather would not buy modern paintings, which he loathed, but all the same he would have an eye for a bargain. I guessed that the pictures in this room alone were worth a fortune.

Then I thought of the studio, and my mother who had bargained so fiercely over my father’s work; and it seemed to me that life was indeed ironical.

I was glad that I had a grandfather. I had liked him from the moment we met; but I wished—oh, how I wished that he were not such a rich man. I remembered what he had said about being wncomfortably off.

Although it was less than an hour since I had discovered I was the granddaughter of a millionaire, I understood very well what he meant.

I sat with him for an hour after that; we talked of the past and the future. I told him incidents from those early days which I had not thought of telling before, because I now understood how vitally interested he was in every seemingly insignificant detail. And he told me that Polhorgan was now my home and that I must treat it thus. I walked back to Pendorric in a state of bewilderment, and when I was midway between the two houses I looked from one to the other. My homes, I murmured. And my pride in them was spoilt by an uneasy suspicion which was beginning to grow within me.