The Coral Tree (3 page)

“I was quite pleased with myself. I did not realize then that I was the only one who would stay.”

“Why did you stay and why did others leave?”

“I stayed because I had nowhere else to go, Mr. Beynon, and others left because—because—”

“Yes, Miss Porter?”

“Because it was an unhappy place.” The words had come out in a rush. “Mrs. Marlow was—well, she was just impossible. First Ian left—”

“Her son?”

“Yes. Then Megan; then Alison soon after Meg.”

“Why did they leave?”

Cary had looked down at her fingers.

“It
’
s hard for me to tell. Have you ever been in a house and felt frustration and contention and—and joylessness, Mr. Beynon? Have you ever felt that?”

“Go on, Miss Porter.”

“Well, that was Clairhill. I don
’
t know its story. I do believe it might have been happy once, but it must have been many years ago. Not while Mrs. Marlow was there.”

“You mean Mrs. Marlow was the frustration, the contention, the joylessness?”

Cary had hesitated. “She was—difficult,” she admitted, determined to be generous, and again she looked down on her hands.

“Mr. Marlow—” suggested the solicitor.

“He had left his wife before I went to her. I know that later he died. Perhaps that was what had narrowed her. The failure of their marriage, I mean. I could never tell. I only knew that she was an embittered woman and that her bitterness drove her children from Clairhill.”

“You say it drove employees away, too?”

“Yes, in the end there were only Mrs. Heard and myself.”

Cary had sat remembering the housekeeper who had put up with the selfishness and cantankerous moods as she had. “She
’
s
p
romised me a remembrance,” Mildred Heard had admitted
h
onestly, “and with Joe not so strong and only able to potter around as a handyman, and young Maysie still to rear, I must stop on. Besides, in a way I
’
m sorry for the old lady.”

“In a way” Cary had been sorry, too. She knew that even had she been equipped for another position she could not have deserted Mrs. Marlow. Loyalty is a strange thing. It gives no choice, it simply binds you, and there is no breaking the bond.

So she had stayed on in that big unhappy house, and when Mrs. Marlow had decided to come to England she had helped Mrs. Heard close the house, travelled with Mrs. Marlow from the house, but all the time Clairhill had been with her because Mrs. Marlow, she had soon realized,
was
the house, she was the frustration, the
c
ontention, the brooding joylessness, she was Clairhill itself.

Then Mrs. Marlow had died, and she was released at last.

She told all this to Mr. Beynon, hoping he understood even a little. It was such an odd, unsatisfactory story. He did. He was a shrewd man. He also had understood many things as he had listened to Mrs. Marlow telling him what she wanted in her will. He had sensed what Mrs. Marlow had left unsaid.

Now he told the details to Cary.

Sitting opposite to her in his London office he told her that if she so wished she could refuse the money and accept, instead, Clairhill—but not to be sold, not to be rented, but to be lived in and to be ... At that juncture he had stopped. The next part, he thought troublously, would be difficult to express to her in detached legal phrasing. To recite to this girl: “To be devoted morally and beneficially, to be rebuilt in soul and spirit, with sufficient finance available but only if used for the purpose as defined,” would have been cold and uninspired and not as Mrs. Marlow had meant it. Instead, then, he had handed Cary the personal letter. Mrs. Marlow
’
s last letter. The letter to her young employee that was to make the reaching of a decision for Cary so doubly hard.

For up to this moment Cary had known no doubt of her future moves. She would accept the money, but never Clairhill, of course. Nothing on earth would have induced her to return to Clairhill, she had thought. Nothing on earth—and yet as she read the opening lines she had known the first faint unrest.
’

“Dear Cary”—that alone was unsettling, for never in their five years of close proximity had Mrs. Marlow permitted herself anything but a coldly correct “Miss Porter.”

“Dear Cary, This is the last request of a selfish, bitter old woman. If you refuse it you cannot be reproached. Clairhill can mean nothing to you but ugliness and disenchantment, just as it has meant nothing but spite and tyranny to me. I should say
from
me, for spite and tyranny are all I have given it—first to Ian
...
”

Ian, Cary had thought quickly, that tall, blue-eyed boy with his heart on the sea but financially compelled by his mother, who held the purse-strings, to take law instead, until at last he had rebelled and left.

“
...
then Megan
...
”

Megan—lovely, lissome-limbed Megan; Megan the dancer who had run away because the career she wanted was denied her—and Megan who later had died in another state without ever coming back.

“
...
Allie.”

Alison, the baby, who soon followed Megan, who had married against her mother
’
s will, who had gone to live in America. They knew nothing more of her after that.

Cary looked again at the letter.

“There is the sum total, mine and Clairhill
’
s, unhappiness, despair, the end of all dreams. Yet the old home, if not Ellen Marlow, deserved better than this. All trees are made to blossom, so a roof-tree should blossom as well.

“I am asking you to bring the flowering to it, Cary, the harvest, to open its windows and let out the bad years, to usher the new years in.

“I have set aside money for this purpose, for the rebirth of Clairhill. If you cannot face the task, I do not blame you. I only beg you at least to consider the thought.

“I
h
ave nothing to suggest regarding its moral rebuilding; it is entirely your own prerogative, under certain supervision, of course. Mr. Beynon can explain all that.

“I have nothing more to say either, Cary, except—God bless you if you can do this for me. E.M.”

Cary had put the pages down and looked at the solicitor.

“You know about this letter, Mr. Beynon?”

“Yes, Miss Porter. Mrs. Marlow gave it to me to read before she sealed it. She wanted me to understand why she had instructed me to draw up that curious will.”

“Then you agree it is curious?”

Mr. Beynon had paused. “I mean curious in the sense of being unlike other wills.”

Cary had wet her dry lips.

“Mr. Beynon, I couldn
’
t do it, I couldn
’
t do what is asked, not if Mrs. Marlow had written a hundred letters, not if there was a fortune waiting for the reopening of Clairhill.”

“There is no fortune,” had said Mr. Beynon evenly, “but there is a sufficiency. Even then, the sufficiency would depend entirely on our carrying out what Mrs. Marlow stipulates—living in the
h
ouse
, bettering it,
‘
developing
it morally and beneficially
’
, as the will says.”

“What exactly does that mean?” Cary remembered asking.

“Your interpretation would be as good as mine, Miss Porter,” Mr. Beynon had
r
eturned.

The girl before him had not replied for a thoughtful moment.

“I would interpret,” she had murmured in a low voice at last, “that Mrs. Marlow would wish it to be reopened in some charitable capacity—perhaps as a convalescent or even a children
’
s home—something like that.”

“Exactly,” nodded the solicitor, and he had waited significantly.

“If—I really mean
when
I refuse this appeal,” broke in Cary on his thoughts, “what will happen to Clairhill?”

“It will be auctioned.”

“And the money?”

“It will go to certain named charities.”

Cary had brightened at that. “Then there is the answer,” she had said triumphantly. “Someone will benefit, someone worthy. What more blossoming could Mrs. Marlow want than that?”

Mr. Beynon had not answered. He had just sat looking at Cary. He looked a long time. In agitation at last she had turned on him.

“I can
’
t, I can
’
t, I tell you. It
’
s a brooding house. It has the ghosts of Ian and Megan and Allie. It has the ghosts of a thousand broken dreams.”

As she had spoken the names of
the Marlow children a thought had struck her. Here was a loophole. The Marlows composed the loophole. They had a right to their mother
’
s home. Megan was gone, but Ian and Alison were left.

As though reading her thoughts, Mr. Beynon had spoken quietly. “Ian died four years ago, at sea.”

“Ian—” Cary had barely whispered the name. She had liked Ian very much. Then another thought had come to her, a frightening, disturbing thought.

“Alison—” she had breathed unevenly.

Mr. Beynon had taken a letter from his desk.

“This is from Alison Greer
’
s husband. On Mrs. Marlow
’
s request I eventually traced her daughter.”

“Allie—” repeated Cary starkly.

“Died last year. There were no children.” The letter dropped back to the drawer.

Mr. Beynon said. “They were an ill-fated family, Miss Porter.”

“As Clairhill is ill-fated,” said Cary. She was not aware that her eyes were bright with tears.

Mr. Beynon was aware, though, and his own eyes pricked rather embarrassingly.

Aloud he corrected Cary: “As Clairhill
was
ill-fated, Miss Porter. In the future, who knows?” Once more he waited for her response.

Desperately at last Cary had asked: “Mr. Beynon, when can I have my money? I want to train for a position—shorthand, book-keeping, something like that.”

As he had still sat silent, waiting, she had added unhappily: “After all, it says in this letter
‘
if you refuse you cannot be reproached
’
.”

“It also says,” had pointed out the solicitor, “
‘
I only beg you at least consider the thought.
’
” He continued, “I want you to go home and consider it. I want you to consider it for a week, and then come and tell me, my dear.”

In the end she had agreed, but the week had brought no solution, and she had told Mr. Beynon so at her next visit.

It was then he had taken out the tourist ticket to Mungen, confessed he had booked her in at the Palace Hotel.

“If you don
’
t reach a decision there you will never reach it,” he had smiled. “Those snowy giants inspire calm”
...
And perhaps they did, admitted Cary now, stemming expertly down her own especial “giant,” perhaps if they did not bring a solution they did bring calm—then all at once she was finding herself anything but calm. It was not because of the big decision yet to be made, it was simply because she was descending much too quickly. In her preoccupation she must have accelerated her speed and not noticed. Trees seemed to be rushing past her, but of course it was she who was racing, and not the trees
.

Before her was another skier. Only a miracle, she realized, could prevent a collision.

The man—in her blind speed his height and bulk alone told her he was that—looked quickly over his shoulder and veered sharply. He evidently was an accomplished skier, but even then the suddenness of his altered course was too difficult and he fell.

With a cleared path in front of her, Cary tried the Christy stop that Jan had consistently impressed upon her, but she was running badly. Like the other skier, she took a tumble in the sno
w.

It was unpleasant, of course—tumbles were always unpleasant—but one learned to take such punishment and come up smiling.

Car
y
came up smiling now, and apology waiting until she had enough breath to utter it. The unwelcome discovery that she had seen this man before, that he was indeed that unfriendly person who had listened derisively to Miss Maud
’
s extravagant acclamations in the hall this morning, made the act no easier. It had to be done, though, she commanded herself. She really had been running much too fast.

The other skier did not give her a chance, however. He did not even extend her a helping hand.

As she clambered clumsily to her feet he said coldly and deliberately: “That was a stupid and dangerous thing to have done. For the sake of other runners I shall certainly put in an adverse report. In the future,
m
adam, I would advise you to stick to the nursery slopes. Without your
amatory guide
you are a menace on the snow.”

With that he turned, leaving Cary deflated but furious, the apology that had been on her lips swallowed along with a childish resentful sob.

Adverse report
...
nursery slopes
...
amatory guide
...
She stared after him confused and bewildered, wondering what he meant. He had not lingered to explain. Evidently he had expected her to understand.

Then she did understand.

She understood that he had watched her not only in the lobby of the inn but somewhere else as well. She understood the absurd conclusion he had gathered
...
and what such an implication could mean to Jan.

With mounting indignation and sudden concern for the instructor on whom an adverse report might rebound, she hurried after the man just in time to miss the downward sleigh that bore him, a trip before her, back to the hotel.