This Merry Bond (2 page)

“For such close neighbors we’ve kept pretty clear of each other, haven’t we?” he said with a smile.

Close neighbors. Yes they were that all right, these Shands with their monstrosity of a house forever overlooking the broad acres of Nye.

“I haven’t been at home very much,” she said a little stiffly. “Neither have you, have you?” She had some vague idea that he had something to do with his father’s shoe business.

“Well, I hope we’ll remedy that now,” he replied pleasantly. “I shall be here on and off for most of the winter for the hunting.”

“For the hunting!” she exclaimed so incredulously that he smiled a little dryly.

“Yes. I can sit
o
n a horse, you know.”

She flushed again and bit her lip. There was something about him that she had never before associated with the Shands, and she remembered that Charles had told her that the old man had educated his only son with a thoroughness that was as aggressive as everything else he did. Winchester and Oxford had turned out a very passable imitation of a gentleman.

Again she was aware of those disconcerting eyes upon her, and she had the uncomfortable impression that he knew what she was thinking. As usual when she was embarrassed she rushed into speech.

“My father tells me that you’ve snaffled a bit more of Nye,” she said and then wondered if this was tactless.

He regarded her gravely. “I’m sorry you were forced to sell,” he said quietly. “Land has a different quality to bricks and mortar, hasn’t it?”

“Yes,” she agreed and almost added, “But how could
you
know that?”

“We’ve held this land for over five hundred years,” she said with a touch of arrogance in her lifted chin. “It’s a heritage that should never pass.”

“We have never had land to own until the last ten years,” he said. “Perhaps that’s why my father is so anxious to accumulate. The desire to own a patch of earth is the most primeval urge in all of us.”

She was silent, feeling herself to be gently snubbed, and presently she dozed off in her corner, the loss of sleep she had sustained since leaving France taking its toll. Simon didn’t return to his paper, but sat watching Nicky’s unconscious face, pale now as she slept, and bearing the marks of too much nervous strain. Now that the brilliant eyes were closed, she looked almost plain, and he realized that half her undoubted attraction lay in the vivacity of her waking expression. He wondered idly how old she was. Too young certainly for that long list of
affaires
with which she was credited by half the countryside. The Bredons, father and daughter—their reputation was well-established. Shiftless, played out, old John Shand had said of them. These old families were rotten at the core, he said, and the Bredons were no exception. Arrogant, charming, dishonest in their very way of life, squandering money that wasn’t theirs to spend, and robbing their inheritance when they were in a tight corner.

The train roared through Hammertye Tunnel, the last stage of the journey, and Nicky awoke with the slightly resentful feeling of those rendered defenseless by sleep. He had had her at a disadvantage.

“I don’t suppose anyone will have come to meet me,” she said irrelevantly.

“Is your father not back yet?” he asked.

“Oh, I left Charles sleeping off last night,” she laughed. “He’s staying another night. He’s so susceptible to these blondes. I’m always finding myself deserted.”

He had no immediate reply and presently the train slowed down and pulled up at Hammertye Station. A chauffeur came forward to take his
c
ases, and Nicky stood a little irresolutely blinking in the sunshine.

“Can I give you a lift?” Simon asked courteously. “We go the same way.”

“Oh, thanks,” she replied carelessly and followed him out to the waiting Rolls. She made a small grimace as the chauffeur tucked a light rug about her knees.

She didn’t speak much, looking eagerly out of the windows at the familiar countryside. Up Copper Hill, through the village with its wide gracious street, the sycamores, and the famous row of little Georgian houses, out onto the main road again. Presently there rose the high mellow walls that marked the beginning of the Nye estates.

“Put me down at the gates, please,” she said. There was a faint flush on her high cheekbones, and her eyes were brilliant.

He looked at her curiously. “It’s some way up to the house,” he objected and glanced at her thin high-heeled shoes.

“I want to see it alone,” she said and couldn’t know that one impatient little sentence quickened his interest in her and revealed so much more than she suspected.

He tapped on the window and the car drew up. The gates were beautiful examples of the old Sussex iron worker’s art, but now were rusty and ill-kept. She thanked him absent-mindedly, and he watched her slender figure swing away through the trees with an eager urgency that soon impelled her to run and leap in an uncontrollable desire to reach the house.

She ran between the spreading chestnuts that lined the long avenue to the house. Fallen leaves had already gathered in little drifts and were turning yellow, and someone had lighted a bonfire in the West Spinney. Nicky slackened her pace and unconsciously walked through the damp drifts, kicking up the leaves as she had done as a child to the anger of Mouse. Here now was the end of the line of famous trees, and she paused on the edge of that shaven expanse of green turf, which as long as she could remember had stretched smooth and miraculously green before the house.

There lay Nye, the clear brittle sunshine of early autumn spilling over its gray stone, warming it to faint apricot. Built at the close of the fifteenth century, it had all the beauty of that period with its broad, mullioned windows and gracious chimneys. In the upper storey a series of dormer windows broke up into fragments its ponderous cornice and its Doric triglyphs, giving the architecture a faintly grotesque appearance. On the west wall the creeper had already turned a vivid crimson.

Nicky pushed open the heavy front door and stood on the threshold peering up into the shadows of the great high-pitched hall, with its lovely hammer beams, its Queen posts carrying collar beams for the famous King post, and the braces pierced with quatrefoil openings.

For a moment of time Nye was a mystery of other days, withholding itself in secret dignity from the clamor of modern times. Then all at once there were the dogs rushing out and barking wildly, and there was Mouse running down the echoing staircase just as she used to do.

“Nicky, is that you?” she called in her brisk, familiar voice. “Is your father with you?”

“No. He’s coming tomorrow—Mouse—darling Mouse! How lovely to be back,” Nicky cried, and she seized Mouse in a violent embrace and nearly hugged the breath out of her.

“For heaven’s sake, child!” she protested. “You’ll be the death of me!”

She was a tiny woman, not much higher than Nicky’s shoulder, with bright, darting eyes and a button of a mouth. Dear Mouse! Once nurse to Nicky and now housekeeper and mainstay of the Bredon family for all time.

“Descending on us without any warning as usual,” she grumbled, but her eyes darted hungrily over Nicky’s thin young face, searching for any changes since she had last seen her.

Mouse took a quick look at Nicky’s shoes.

“I thought so!” she said triumphantly. “You’ve been kicking your shoes through those leaves again and the toes are all soaked. Upstairs and change them this instant.”

“Oh, Mouse darling,” said Nicky with a tearful laugh. “You make me want to cry.”

CHAPTER
TWO

C
harles didn’t come down the next morning after all. He arrived two days later looking tired and short of sleep. Nicky thought that late nights were leaving more traces on him now than a year ago.

“You might tell Mouse that Hilary’s coming down tonight,” he said to Nicky, pouring himself out a stiff whisky.

“Oh, Charles, not Aunt Alice too?” said Nicky with alarm.

“No, Alice isn’t coming,” he said, to which she replied: “Thank God for that!”

“I want to talk to Hilary about this question of the Shand agreement,” Charles continued. “The blighter apparently claims that he’s bought that piece of the river that runs through the South Spinney, and I distinctly told Banks that did
not
go with the land. The fool has mucked things in my absence, and old Shand swears it’s all down in black and white.”

“Oh, Charles—not that bit of water,” cried Nicky in dismay. “That’s always been our bathing pool.”

“Of course it’s all nonsense,”, he said impatiently. “And if Banks has exceeded his instructions, then we’ll have to get out of it somehow.”

“But did you give Banks explicit instructions, darling? You remember we were in the Pyrenees at the time and didn’t get any mail for weeks.”

“I told him to sell the South Spinney and get the best price he could for it. I didn’t say anything about the South Water. I didn’t think it necessary. The blighter has no sense if he imagined that was included in the deal.”

Nicky sighed. Charles was so hopelessly autocratic and slap-dash in his business dealings. He never seemed to see the need for precise details in any arrangement.

“Well, we’ll have to bluff him out of it,” she said carelessly. “Though I expect it’s all right really. Why don’t you go and see old Shand after lunch?”

“
I
suppose I’d better,” he agreed reluctantly. “Though I never seem able to talk to the perisher. He has an entirely different language.”

After lunch Charles drove over to Hammertye Towers, but he returned at tea time fuming.

“I just can’t talk to the fella,” he told Nicky. “The man’s a bombastic little bounder and doesn’t begin to understand any point of view but his own. He had the nerve to tell me a bargain was a bargain and because the Bredons had been at Nye for five hundred years it didn’t give them the right to back out of
our
agreement.”

“Oh, the poor little man,” said Nicky lightly.
“
What a frightful inferiority complex!”

“Well, I can’t do business with him and I told him so,” Charles said. “But the son seems a decent sort of chap—been properly educated at least. He seems to be dealing with most of his father’s affairs now, so I asked him along to dine tonight, and Hilary can talk to him.”

Nicky stared at him, her delicate eyebrows raised high in incredulity.

“You’ve asked Simon Shand to dine at Nye?” she said.

“Yes, why not?” Charles said irritably.

“I don’t want him here,” said Nicky childishly. “I don’t want any Shands at Nye.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, Nick,” her father said with affectionate impatience. “And for heaven’s sake be polite to the fella when he comes. We must get this affair settled once and for all.”

“I see,” said Nicky quietly. “I’d better go and tell Mouse.”

But when Simon Shand was shown into the library before dinner, he had the fleeting impression that the Bredons w
e
re ranged against him in silent hostility. They stood together before the vast stone fireplace, father and daughter and old Hilary Bredon, designated uncle by Nicky, but in actual fact a first cousin of Charles and over twenty years his senior.

Charles came forward holding but a hand and saying with his charming smile, “Nice of you to come at such short notice, Shand. You’ve met my daughter, I think.” Then he was shaking hands with Nicky and meeting the shrewd forensic eye of Hilary Bredon. He knew very well that this was to be no social evening. In fact he doubted very much that he would ever have dined at Nye, if it hadn’t been for his father’s business relations with Sir Charles. A stiff-necked, arrogant crowd, his father had called them, dishonest in outlook and fundamentally shiftless, but with a charm that had got them out of most awkward situations all their lives.

The dinner was poor. Simon knew that in his father’s house he would have had a far better meal perfectly served. Dishes arrived cold at the table; there had never been money enough to install lifts and hatches to the old-fashioned kitchens, or staff the place with adequate servants. But the table was heavy with old glass and silver, the wine was impeccable, and Nicky Bredon, her high cheekbones softened in the candlelight, talked amusingly, her complete ease of manner a sure indication that she was far more used to the company of men than of women.

The talk was much of things and people in which perforce he had no share, the girl’s interest frequently returning to someone called Michael who seemed to have been brought up with her and who subsequently proved to be Hilary Bredon’s son. At length Nicky rose, and Simon intercepted a significant glance directed at her father before she left the table. The three men rose and stood while she walked the length of the long room with easy grace, and Simon was aware of a momentary sense of unreality. The panelled walls dark in the shadows, the candlelight flickering on the heavy silver, and the three Bredons drawn together in courteous hostility.

Nicky turned at the door.

“Don’t hurry,” she said in her clear high voice. “I’ll have coffee sent in to you.”

Then she was gone, and presently the faint sounds of a piano came to the three men as they drew closer together around the table.

Nicky played Debussy in the high panelled drawing room. No fire had been lighted, for she and her father seldom used the room, and the air struck chill on her. She found to her surprise that she was nervous. How were things going in the room she had just left? Would Charles’s charm of manner, Uncle Hilary’s forensic wit and the famous Cockburn ’96 combine to mellow the hard-headed Shands into agreement?

She had abandoned Debussy for Granados, and Granados in turn for Brahms before she heard voices in the hall, and she broke off in the middle of the
Wiegenlied
and left the drawing room, realizing for the first time that her fingers were cold and stiff.

The three men were standing in front of the library fire in a strained little silence, but Simon looked up as Nicky joined them.

“You play well, Miss Bredon” he said with friendly pleasure. “Do you sing
lieder
too?”

“No,” said Nicky automatically. “Those are Michael’s songs.” She looked enquiringly at her father, but his face was enough to tell her he had failed. His charming rather weak mouth was set in a tight line of controlled temper and he didn’t meet her eyes. Hilary Bredon stood puffing at his cigar, his eyes narrowed in his
familiar courtroom manner, his cynical mouth drawn down at the corners in thoughtful contemplation.

Charles moved suddenly.

“Would you excuse us for half an hour, Shand?” he said abruptly. “There is something rather urgent that I must discuss with my cousin, and he returns to town tomorrow morning. Nicky, will you—”

He broke off, and Nicky, knowing her father so well, interpreted the rest of the sentence as: “Will you deal with this blighter and see if you can knock any sense into him?”

The two older men left the room, and Nicky knelt down on the wide hearth and held out her cold fingers to the blaze. “So my father hasn’t succeeded in convincing you,” she said.

Her back was toward Simon, but her voice was carefully schooled, friendly and light.

“I’m afraid not,” he said.

“And yet, you know, that piece of water never was included in the agreement.”

“Have you seen the agreement?” he asked gently.

“No. But I know exactly what my father’s intentions were.”

“I’m afraid your father can’t have made them equally clear to his agent in that case.”

She looked up swiftly, the heavy hair falling back and exposing her small, pointed ears. His voice had been perfectly courteous, but there was an inflexible quality in it that didn’t escape her.

“But surely, if Banks muddled things, that’s something that can be put right between us—as one friend to another,” she said quickly.

He stood looking down at her thoughtfully and there was a faint smile at the corners of his rather grave mouth.

“A gentleman’s agreement,” he said softly, and she felt herself flushing for no apparent reason.

She rose and stood facing him, and not for the first time that evening he was reminded of her likeness to some picture he had once seen. In her long, slender dress of dark green velvet with its tight wrinkled sleeves and jewelled girdle she might have been one of those strange enchanted ladies drawn by Dulac or Neilson. Her thick hair, smooth and scarcely curled, swung against her neck, burnished in the firelight, accentuating the pallor of her skin.

“It’s a pity they shortened your name,” he said idly. “You look much more like a Nicola.” Nicola—Nicolette—that was it! She was like the illustrations in an old French edition of
Aucasin and Nicolette
he had owned as a boy.

“You can call me Nicky, if you like. After all we’re neighbors,” she said with an obvious effort to be friendly, but the regard of her bright, slanting eyes was antagonistic.

“Thank you,” he replied simply. “As you say, we are neighbors.” Suddenly Nicky smiled—that wholehearted engaging smile which made her rather haggard young face look friendly and childlike. Simon had to smile back.

“Now we
can
settle this—just between the two of us, can’t we?” she said and her slender frame relaxed in obvious relief at a foregone conclusion t
o
the argument. After all it was to be a bloodless battle. Poor old Charles! He had probably shown his impatience much too early and only succeeded in antagonizing the enemy.

“Why do you suppose my father should have wished to buy the South Spinney without the South Water?” Simon enquired so mildly that she was deceived into a friendly reply.

“Well, it’s a nice little piece of wood,” she said, spreading her narrow hands in a deprecating gesture. “Also there’s a certain amount of game there.”

“So is Wet Wood a nice little piece of wood,” he said, “and the land bounding the north side of the Towers. We’ve taken the shooting at Bassetts Ponds, so I should think the game in the South Spinney is negligible.”

“Well, then—” Nicky’s voice had hardened.

“Well, then—” he echoed. “The value of the South Spinney is the mile or so of river running through it, as you very well know. That was my father’s sole reason for purchasing.”

She stared at him without speaking. His reasoning was only too palpably logical and she could think of nothing with which to refute it.

“Then you are definitely holding us to that?” she said at last.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied, and added gently, “You see, the price has already been paid.”

She stood very still and straight in the firelight, and he looked away, not wanting to see the suspicious brightness of her eyes.

He glanced around the high room with its richly lined walls. There were many rare volumes and first editions at Nye he knew, and he wondered idly did these Bredons care for such things, or were they legacies from some other more cultured day? Nicky’s voice came to him, a young unhappy voice without any of its old imperiousness.

“But that’s always been a special place—Michael’s and my bathing place. We’ve used it since we were children.”

He turned and said with a complete change of tone, “But of course you can go on using it—whenever you like.”

She shook back her hair and when she next spoke all the softness had gone from her voice. As if she had felt herself betrayed into a sentimentality she was ashamed of feeling, she attacked him bitterly.

“You’re all alike, you Shands!” she cried. “You think money can buy everything. Well, let me tell you it can’t, Simon Shand! It would pay you better in this world to observe the unwritten law as well as the law that is laid down.”

“
I
fail to see why a purely business agreement should be treated in any but a business sense,” he said in a voice that was now as cold as hers was passionate.

“But when you realized that it was all a mistake—that my father never intended—”

“Your father should have been a little clearer at the time. It is not reasonable that we should pay the very high price Sir Charles asked for a piece of land that was valueless. Even you must see that.”

“I’m sure my father would willingly refund the purchase price,” she said, beginning to tremble.

“Unfortunately,” Simon replied meeting her gaze steadily, “Sir Charles doesn’t appear to be in a position to do so. But in any case, my father wouldn’t consider re-selling. He’s a businessman and was brought up in a hard school. What he’s paid for he likes to keep, and I was reared in the same tradition.”

Nicky didn’t as yet understand defeat even when it was under her nose. She opened her mouth to attack him afresh when Charles and Hilary Bredon came back into the room.

Charles glanced at his daughter’s stormy face and said with a graceful shrug of his narrow shoulders, “The Bredons seem singularly inexpert at advocacy. Can’t think how you ever achieved silk, Hilary. Shand, will you have a whisky and soda?”

“No thanks, Sir Charles. I think I’ll be getting along,” Simon said gravely.

Charles made no attempt to dissuade him, although it was only a little after half past ten. Simon held out his hand to Nicky and his eyes were kind.

“Good night—Nicky,” he said. “And I’m sorry.
”

She hesitated, then put her hand into his
,
her fingers barely touching.

“Good night,” she said and turned abruptly back to the fire.

As the door closed behind Simon and Charles, Hilary Bredon said in his slow dry accent, “There’s something I like about that fella. He has integrity and he has breeding—yes, Nick, he has breeding.”

“The whole thing is monstrous!” Nicky cried. “Can’t we upset the agreement somehow, Uncle Hilary? Surely you can think of some way out.”

He looked at her a little sadly.

“No, my dear,” he said with a sigh. “It’s all perfectly watertight, and there are some things even a Bredon can’t get out of.”

That week saw the last of the warm September weather, golden days with the brittle softness of early autumn. Nicky sneaked down to the South Water to bathe.

On the third morning as she pulled herself up on the bank and reached for her towel, she became aware of being watched, and looking across the river she saw a man standing on the opposite bank.

“What do you mean by watching me?” she shouted angrily.

“You’re trespassing,” he called back immediately.

“Trespassing!” she cried, shaking the wet hair out of her eyes. “Do you know who I am?”

“I know well who you are, and I say you’re trespassing,” he retorted.

John Shand of course! He was a broad-shouldered stocky little man dressed in tweeds of doubtful cut and color, and his rugged, bulldog face held nothing but hostility.

“I’ve bathed in this piece of water ever since I can remember,
Mr. Shand,” she said. “And I’ve never before been told I was trespassing.”

“There is no such thing as trespassing on your own ground, my girl,” he replied in his strong North Country accent. “This water belongs to Hammertye Towers now and once you leave your own bank you’re trespassing.”