The Lorimer Line (48 page)

At first he tried to cosset her, insisting that she should rest for part of each day. But just as the contentment of her marriage had made her look young again, so her pregnancy brought with it a surge of new energy. Hunting had become Charles's recreation since he moved to the country. Margaret had never been taught to ride, and he would certainly not allow her to learn at such a time, but she walked with him to every meet for the sake of the exercise, and followed the hounds for part of the way on foot. He rejoiced in her good health, which showed itself in the springiness of her step and cheerfulness in every occupation: he noted with satisfaction that the lines of responsibility and strain which the orphanage work had etched on her forehead were being smoothed away by serenity.

As the old year ended and the new one began, Charles remembered how his life had been on the last New Year's Eve - in a bleak house, with only a lunatic for company, and Margaret seemingly lost to him for ever. His heart filled with thankfulness for his good fortune. How different 1894 would prove to be!

The year had a cold beginning, but by the end of February the last of the snow had melted. March was wet and blustery. The wind tossed the trees like sailing ships and whipped the rain against the windows. Prevented from taking her daily walk, Margaret helped Betty prepare a nursery for the baby. Charles recognized his wife's need to do something constructive at a time when she seemed to have more rather than less energy than usual. When the nursery was ready, he suggested that he would be requiring a bedroom of his own during the period of her confinement.

‘Which will you choose out of this great mansion of ours?' she asked. They were talking after dinner in the evening, sitting in front of a crackling log fire with no other light than its flames. Alexa had gone up to her own room, leaving them to a cosy, intimate half hour, the time of day which Charles most enjoyed. The shutters were closed against the rain, the curtains drawn across, even the dog
cured of his restlessness by the drowsy warmth of the fire. Later they would light the gas and Charles would read aloud to his wife as she rested on the chaise longue with her feet up. But for the moment he was happy with their murmured conversation and thought himself the luckiest of men.

‘There is a small room next to Alexa's,' he suggested: ‘I need nothing but a bed. There would be no point in preparing one of the grander rooms for such a short period.'

‘Let us look at it together now,' she said. ‘You can tell me how you would like it and I will set to work tomorrow morning.'

He was reluctant to move from the warm room, but already Margaret was on her feet, holding out a hand to tug him towards the door. Laughing, he allowed himself to be bullied into lighting a candle and following her upstairs.

The room had a musty smell, suggesting that many years had passed since the sash windows were last opened. Margaret tugged at them to let in a little fresh air, and the force of the gale outside extinguished the candle at once, and slammed the door. The laughed together in the darkness, teasing each other with ghostly howls like a pair of children until Charles had succeeded in closing the window and relighting the candle.

By its flickering light they examined the room. It was certainly small, but would serve well enough. At the moment it was cluttered with pieces of unwanted furniture - a pair of cane-seated chairs, a roll of carpet, a marble-topped wash-stand.

‘You are not to move any of these things yourself,' said Charles severely. ‘If Betty needs help, she must apply to me.'

‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.' Margaret dipped a mock curtsey and Charles put his arm around her waist and hugged her gently. Then he looked curiously at a large picture in a heavy black frame which stood propped on the floor with its face to the wall.

‘What is that?' He turned the picture round as he spoke and recognized the subject at once, although twenty years had passed since his last sight of John Junius Lorimer. Margaret did not say anything as he steadied it and stepped a little back for a better view.

‘It was tactful of you not to ask that it should hang in this house,' he said. For a moment he wondered whether he could make the gesture of offering the portrait a place downstairs. The man was, after all, Margaret's father. She never spoke of him, but it was reasonable to imagine that just as Charles himself had struggled to retain his affection for a father who was deranged, so Margaret might have continued to love the memory of a father who was no better than a criminal. Much as he wanted to make her happy in every possible way, when it came to the point this was a way which stuck in his throat. His father's frenzied hatred of John Junius Lorimer, however irrational, had instilled in Charles himself an instinctive antipathy to the same man - not so much because of his family's financial ruin, but as the cause of his father's mental disintegration.

‘Would it not be more appropriate,' he asked, trying not to make the question sound critical, ‘if you were to make William a present of this? In Brinsley House it would have its proper setting.'

A moment ago Margaret had been laughing like a child. Now he was conscious of a sudden chill in the atmosphere. Not because she was angry - he was sensitive to her moods and could distinguish delicately between them - but because there was something that she was trying both to say and to suppress at the same moment. The battle was won by speech.

‘The portrait is not my property,' she said. ‘If it were, I would have given it to William long ago, as you suggest.'

‘Then how did it come here?'

‘It belongs to Alexa. Her mother left few possessions behind her when she died, but this was one. I have always
felt that a child who is orphaned needs some tangible object, however valueless, to remind her that she was once the beloved daughter of her natural parents. Rightly or wrongly, it seemed to me that I had no right to dispose of this, when she had so little else.'

‘But …' Charles was confused - ‘how did Alexa's mother come to own it? I am not mistaken, am I? This is surely a portrait of your father?'

Again the silence, again the chill. Margaret gave an almost imperceptible sigh.

‘Yes,' she said. ‘It is my father. And Alexa's.'

She faced him steadily as he struggled to understand. There was no sort of defiance in her look. A hint of relief mingled with her evident determination not to be ashamed.

‘Why did you not tell me this before?' he asked.

‘At least I told you no lies. Her father died when she was little more than a baby: that was true. Her mother was a patient of mine: that also was true.'

‘But hardly the whole truth.'

‘No,' she agreed. ‘When you came so unexpectedly to Bristol, when you first enquired about Alexa, I told you what I had promised William I would tell everyone. The girl does not even know herself, you see. I had no right to give her secret away, particularly to someone I had not seen for so long, who might be gone again the next day. Then afterwards, when you showed so quickly that you wished to marry, I lacked the courage to change the story. I was frightened already that you might retreat from your proposal when you discovered that I had made myself responsible for Alexa. If you had learned at the same moment that she was my father's daughter, you might have walked away from me, or forced me to part from her. But I was committed to care for her. And I loved you so much, Charles. How could I risk losing you?'

‘You did not have to bring Alexa under my roof. She could have stayed with William.'

Margaret shook her head.

‘He gave her shelter most unwillingly and only so that I might be persuaded to stay in Brinsley House. It offended his family pride that I should live and work independently. He has never liked Alexa. But she has found herself alone in the world once already. How could I suddenly snatch away from her the little security she enjoys now? It is not her fault that she is my father's daughter. She could not choose her parentage. There are really no illegitimate children, are there, Charles: only illegitimate parents.'

Charles forced himself to be calm, reminding himself how unhappy he would have been if Margaret had placed any obstacle in the way of their marriage. He recognized that his reaction to the news now had been unreasonable. If he loved one daughter of John Junius Lorimer, there was no reason why he should dislike the other. He held both hands out towards his wife.

‘I ought not to have suggested that you lied to me,' he said. ‘I am sorry, Margaret.' He turned the face of the portrait back to the wall and began to return downstairs with her. ‘Tell me about her mother?'

‘She was a friend of mine. My old music teacher. A patient, too, as I told you, although I was called too late to save her.'

‘So she left her daughter nothing but a portrait?'

For the third time that evening he felt a barrier rising between them. Margaret's hand tightened on his arm and she stood still, half way down the stairs. There was a long pause before she answered, and when she did her voice was husky with anxiety.

‘I did not lie to you before and I will not now,' she said. ‘You asked the question, so I will answer it. Yes, there was something else besides the portrait.'

‘I would like to see it,' he said.

He recognized the alarm in her eyes and was even aware of the almost imperceptible shake of the head with which she seemed to beseech him not to press the request. It was enough to tell him that he was acting unwisely. But if he
retreated now he would always wonder what had been concealed from him and the barrier would remain. He stared in puzzlement into Margaret's eyes, desperately trying to solve the enigma.

She did not flinch, but after a moment or two bowed to his determination with a shrug of resignation.

‘I will bring it downstairs to show you,' she said quietly. Taking the candle from him, she turned back towards their bedroom. There was still time for Charles to stop her. It had been Margaret's fear which first chilled him: now it was his own. Irresolute, he slid his hand down the polished banisters to guide him as he felt his way slowly down the stairs.

The fire was low. He threw on more logs. They spat and crackled before resigning themselves to the flames. The dog, disturbed, growled in his sleep but did not wake. Charles stood with his back to the fire, warming himself as he waited for Margaret to come down.

When she rejoined him, she was carrying a black leather box. Unlocking this, she drew out its inner shelves one by one. Then she moved her sewing from a low table and set out the contents of the box, like a priest reluctantly unveiling his holy relics.

The jewels glowed in the firelight like the heart of a furnace. Earrings, a necklace, a tiara whose tremblers revealed that Margaret's hands were shaking as she set it out.

‘This is Alexa's inheritance,' she said quietly.

Charles stared for a moment without speaking and then turned away to light the gas mantles on either side of the fireplace. The blood had rushed to his head at the sight of the jewellery, flooding him with anger - although he could not yet be certain that anger was justified. He struggled to control himself, knowing that the wrong words might wreck his happiness; yet it was impossible to remain silent.

In the gaslight the jewels looked different. The diamonds,
if they were diamonds, were yellower: the rubies, if they were rubies, flat and lifeless.

‘Arc they real?' he asked, his voice carefully soft and even.

‘I believe so. I have never shown them to anyone who could value them, but yes, I think so.'

‘A gift from your father?'

‘To Alexa, yes.'

‘Stolen from his estate.'

‘No,' said Margaret. Her voice seemed to plead for his understanding. ‘They were given before his death - before the collapse of the bank.'

‘The Lorimer rubies! Don't think that I haven't read what has been written about them,' Charles said. ‘My father kept cuttings from the newspapers in a scrapbook. The jewels could not have been given to Alexa until after the ball at which your mother wore them. By that time your father already knew that his fortune was doomed.'

‘Whether he knew or not, that was not the reason for the gift. It is true that he was forced to act surreptitiously -but only because he would not have wanted to hurt my mother and the rest of the family by allowing us to learn of his indiscretions. It was affection for his love-child which prompted his generosity.'

‘How do you know?' asked Charles. ‘What do you know about your father? What have you ever known? I have never blamed you, Margaret, for anything that happened to the bank, or for any of the consequences of its collapse: how could I? But you must have realized, as soon as you saw all this wealth, that your father had no moral right to dispose of his money at such a time and in such a way.'

‘I learned of the jewellery's existence only eight years ago. By that time the bank's affairs were long settled. It was surely too late to reopen the whole matter. In any case, that aspect didn't occur to me then. What concerned me was that the jewels belonged to Alexa, a gift from a man who wished to make what provision he could for his
baby. He was old, and must have known that he would not be able to support her mother for much longer. And Alexa has nothing else by which she may remember her parents when she is grown. How could I possibly have broken my promise to Luisa, and deprived the child of her only possessions?'

Her lips trembled as she spoke, and she turned her face unhappily towards him. Charles could see that she was on the verge of tears, but his anger could not be contained.

‘It was a promise you had no right to make!' he cried. ‘Eight years ago my father was still alive. Eight years ago he had not yet reached the state of frenzy in which he died. He was demented, certainly. Oh yes: everyone recognized that! He had a fixed idea that somewhere in the world John Junius Lorimer had concealed a treasure. Everyone who suffered under his obsession thought him mad, and so he became mad. And all the time — all the time - ‘