This Merry Bond (5 page)

“No. Simply to tell you one of your front tires is flat.”

She began to laugh.

“It’s perfect! You get a rise every time,” she said, and when he asked her what she meant she replied, “Nothing. Have some tea.”

He hesitated. “Well—”

“Oh, don’t if you don’t want to,” she said hastily.

He smiled and sat down opposite her.

“You are a silly child,” he said.

“Child?”

“Yes, child. You’re a frightful child at times. Why do you suppose you should have got off with a smaller fine than anyone else this afternoon?”

“I always have before.”

“But why? Think it out for yourself. The law isn’t constituted differently for one person more than another.”

“Oh, don’t let’s discuss it. I’ve been enraged enough for one day as it is.”

He looked at her thoughtfully and under his grave gaze she became suddenly restive.

“Why do you look at me like that?” she demanded childishly. “Is my nose shiny or something?”

“I wonder if at the bottom of your heart you really do think the world revolves entirely around the Bredons?” he said softly.

She stared at him, blinking a little, and presently she said in a
t
one of voice: “That doesn’t sound very pretty. Is that
you really
think of me?”

“That’s
how you generally behave,” he countered.

S
h
e p
u
shed away her plate and let her tea grow cold
.
“
I
don't know what it is about you, Simon Shand,” she said
,
“that always gets me on the raw. And yet I beli
e
ve—I
believe
I
’
d like you to like me.”

She looked at his grave, still face and thought of him for once entirely divorced from, his family and his family associations. She wanted to say in spite of herself: “You are a real person—you’ve got something that I haven’t. What is it?” Instead she said: “I talk a lot of rubbish at times. You’re really rather an overbearing person, don’t you think?”

He watched her flushed little face propped between her slender hands, her bright, tilted eyes appraising him with faint perplexity, and he smiled suddenly and rose to his feet.

“No, I don’t think so,” he said pleasantly. “Not nearly so overbearing as you are. I’ll tell them about your tire on the way out. Good night.”

“You haven’t ordered any tea after all,” Nicky said a little blankly.

“I don’t want any, thanks. I think I hear your friends outside. Good night again.”

He picked up his hat and went out, meeting Liza and Freddie Whiteman in the hall.

CHAPTER
FOUR

It
was Mouse who opened Nicky’s eyes.

She was lying on her stomach in the old nursery one wet November afternoon, sticking scraps into an old half-finished book of her childhood.

Mouse, knitting vigorously beside the fire, said suddenly:

“Your father’s riding for a fall, Nicky.”

“Do you mean that Mrs. Beamish he’s always around with?” Nicky said without looking up. “Oh, I think he can handle her.”

“No, I didn’t mean Mrs. Beamish,” said Mouse with something like a snort. “I was referring to finance,” she continued with that occasional pomposity that always made Nicky laugh. “Nye’s in a bad way, Nicky, and your father’s more concerned than I’ve ever seen him.”

“Nye’s been in a bad way so many times, darling Mouse. I don’t suppose it’s any worse than usual,” said Nicky carelessly.

Mouse looked at the slim young body stretched at her feet and sighed. It seemed such a little time ago that another Nicky had lain there, a thin excitable child, her red hair falling over her face in wild elf-locks just as it did now. To Mouse, Nicky was still a precocious child, wilful, a little stubborn, her strange little heart as yet untouched.

“This isn’t like other times,” she said, and her voice sounded tired and unlike herself.

Nicky carefully pasted a highly colored kitten at a rakish angle in a corner of the book, then rolled over on to her back.

“I believe you’re really worried, Mouse,” she said.

“If things get any worse, your father will be selling Nye,” Mouse said bluntly.

“We can’t sell Nye,” Nicky said automatically. “It’s entailed. Mouse—you don’t really think—”

“I don’t think, my dear. I know, and so does the whole neighborhood. Bills will have to be settled some time, even if it means bankruptcy.”

The room was suddenly very quiet and Nicky looked with frightened eyes upon the familiar surroundings. The worn linoleum, the dearly loved prints and the tiles in the old-fashioned fireplace painted with fairy-book characters. Outside the rain drove against the windows, and the firelight shone on Mouse’s needles clicking and twinkling in the dusk.

“Is there really any danger?” she said in a whisper. “Mouse, you don’t think—”

“I should talk to your father if I were you, Nicky. You may be able to think of something.”

But when Charles looked into his daughter’s set, strained, little face, he said with affectionate impatience: “Who the devil’s been talking to you, Nick? We’re not down the drain yet, so take that starved-ghost look off your silly little mug.”

Nicky relaxed and some of the strain went out of her face.

“I thought Mouse must have been frightening me,” she said.

“Blast her!” said Charles, but his brilliant eyes slid away from Nicky’s and wouldn’t hold her gaze.

“Charles—” She snatched at his restless fingers and imprisoned them in her own. “You wouldn’t lie to me? I—I’d much rather know the worst!”

“Darling, don’t look so gloomy! No one’s going to foreclose on the mortgage, if that’s what you mean.” He tried to laugh it off, but his eyes betrayed him. “Though I may as well tell you that I’ve got to raise five thousand immediately.”

“Five thousand
...
” For a moment she was unimpressed. The sum didn’t sound so very large in comparison to Charles’s earlier gambles on the market. “Well, you can raise that, can’t you?”

“And where from, my pretty? Out of my hat together with a few rabbits?”

“Well, anybody would lend it to you. You’ve borrowed often enough before.”

“I’ve borrowed too often,” he said
with unwonted bitterness. He didn’t add that many of the loans hadn’t been repaid and he had at long last reached the limit of his friends’ endurance. “I’ve tried every soul I know, and can’t raise even a couple of hundred.”

“You’ll have to sell the horses,” said Nicky in a queer taut little voice, but Charles withdrew his hands impatiently from hers.

“Don’t talk such nonsense, Nicky,” he said. “What would be the good of that? Sell the best blood I’ve had in the stable for years. You’ll be suggesting I lease the shooting to old man Shand next.”

“Well, we’ve got to do something.”

He jumped up with a quick nervous gesture and began pacing
.
“I know we’ve got to do something. Don’t keep on telling me so. I’m not a half-wit!” he cried. “I’m nearly off my head as it is. This is the first time in my life I haven’t been able to raise the money somehow.”

Nicky watched him anxiously. She had never before seen him so wrought up. She went to him and caught his shoulders between firm insistent young hands.

“I’ll find a way,” she said with feverish intensity. “I’ll raise it for you. Don’t worry, darling. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“You? How can you raise five thousand when I can’t?” he said incredulously.

“Never mind. I think I can. You’re
not
to worry. Everything’s going to be all right,” she said again.

He looked down at her with tired, restless eyes, then, like a child, he relaxed in perfect and amazing trust of someone’s ability to get him out of a hole.

“If you think so, darling, then set about it quickly,” was all he said. “Time’s running short.”

He asked her no further questions. Indeed he seemed to prefer to forget the whole unpleasant position, and turned with relief to other topics.

Nicky was never quite sure if the thought of the Shands came to her while Charles was talking or when she herself was in bed that night sleepily trying to evolve a way out. Upstairs in the fastness of the room she had known since childhood, with its wide windows and high moulded ceiling, the situation took on a sense of unreality. What, when all was said and done, was five thousand pounds? A small enough sum to stand between the Bredons and bankruptcy. Anyone would be glad to lend it. But anyone hadn’t. Yet they had friends with bank balances that could well stand such a temporary strain as this. Sooner or later Charles was bound to bring off a lucky speculation that would more than repay the loan.

Nicky was growing sleepy. The fire had died down to a faint glow, and through the uncurtained west windows she could see the lights of Hammertye Towers on the distant ridge. She would ask the Shands. They would be glad enough to help a neighbor. Wasn’t that true north-country hospitality? Not John Shand, the old dragon. He would probably be quite glad of an opportunity of downing the Bredons. But Simon was a reasonable being. He at least was brought up in decent surroundings and would understand that one must hang on to the necessities of life before surrendering completely to clamoring creditors. And to Nicky, as to all the Bredons, horses in the stable, game in the preserves, and an irreproachable cellar did constitute the necessities of life.

She would go and see Simon Shand tomorrow. What difference would five thousand pounds make to Shand’s Shoes, anyway? It was only a loan to be paid back at the first reasonable opportunity. There was no need to worry any more, the affair was already settled. With a little contented grunt, Nicky rolled over on her side and fell asleep.

But the next day as she walked through the sodden woods and climbed the boundary fence that marked the limit of the Nye coverts, she didn’t feel so sure of herself. There was something a little unapproachable at times about Simon Shand. It wasn’t going to be altogether easy to meet those direct eyes and make such a request to a comparative stranger.

“Oh, well, it’s not for myself,” she said aloud and rang the doorbell with determination. But they told her that Simon was out, though he was expected back for lunch.

“I’ll wait,” said Nicky, her courage ebbing a little.

It was the first time she had ever been inside the Towers and she looked with interested distaste about the room into which she was shown. This was evidently the drawing room, large and square with bow windows and filled with suites of furniture. Brass and silver, gleamed everywhere, and photographs adorned every spare inch of space. Nicky subsided into a suffocating mass of silk cushions and feeling alien and unhappy, prepared herself to wait.

She wasn’t left alone for long. The door opened and an elderly woman came into the room. Nicky rose a little uncertainly.

“Mrs. Shand?” she said, and found her hand taken in a firm cool clasp.

At first glance Mary Shand was nothing like the vague picture Nicky had formed of Simon’s mother. She was a big woman with deliberate movements, and she spoke in a slow, pleasant voice with just a trace of north-country accent. The features of her calm face were still fine with a hint of delicacy that was perhaps unexpected.

“You’ve come to see my son?” she said. “He’ll not be long, so sit down by the fire and we will have some tea and biscuits while you’re waiting. I like to have my c
u
p of tea at eleven o’clock.”

“I’d love some tea,” said Nicky, feeling unaccountably shy.

Mrs. Shand stopped to put another lump of coal on the fire, then with a little brush, tidied up a hearth bristling with brass fire irons.

“I’m glad to have met you at last, my dear,” she said, and, when she had touched the bell, sat down by the fire. “Neighbors should be friendly, don’t you think?”

“I suppose they should, only sometimes it’s difficult,” said Nicky frankly.

Mary Shand smiled, and her smile was like the rest of her personality, a tolerant indulgence toward a world peopled with wayward children.

“You mustn’t mind my husband,” she said. “His bark’s worse than his bite, as they say, but men—especially when they’ve never had time to play in their youth—like to strut a little like small boys.”

Nicky, utterly charmed by her hostess, sat down comfortably o
n
the floor and hugged her knees to her chin. The tea came Mary Shand talked on as she poured the tea. Nicky began to see that Simon was very like his mother, and she thought that here must lie the answer to what Uncle Hilary had designated the good blood in Simon.

“Where did you live before you married, Mrs. Shand?” she asked impulsively, but Simon’s mother gave her a curious look as if she had read her thoughts and said tranquilly:

“I come of yeoman stock, my dear. My father farmed his own land, and his father before him, and I never had but one party dress until I married John.”

Nicky felt herself flushing a little.

“Oh,” she said, “do tell me about it. When I was a little girl I always wanted to live on a farm and poke the hams in the chimney and eat new bread straight from the oven.”

“If you come up to tea one of these days, I’ll make you a girdle scone,” said Mary Shand, smiling.

She began to talk of her life as a child on the old Cumberland farm, and Nicky had a picture of a great kitchen full of children of whom Mary was the eldest. Mary’s mother was a tiny woman full of darting energy and her six-foot-four husband could recite great slices of Shakespeare with never a book to prompt him.

Nicky was so engrossed that she didn’t hear Simon come in, but his mother looked up at once and saw his raised eyebrows as his glance fell on the girl’s slender body crouched by the fire.

“Miss Bredon wanted to see you, Simon,” she said. “Would you like to go along to the den where it’s quiet? Perhaps when you’ve finished your business, my dear, you’ll stop and have some lunch.”

“Oh, no, thank you,” said Nicky rather hastily and scrambled to her feet. “What I want to say won’
t
take very long.”

She faced Simon, and the sight of his grave, faintly quizzical expression made her wish she hadn’t come. Her task wasn’t going to be very easy.

“Well, come along, then,” he said, and led the way out of the room and across the wide tessellated hall.

The den was entirely masculine, with old leather armchairs, guns ranged around the walls and a large ugly office desk taking up most of the center of the floor.

“Won’t you sit down?” Simon said courteously, indicating a chair, and whether by design or accident seated himself behind the desk.

Nicky said nervously: “I like your mother. Why did you never tell me about her?”

“Why didn’t you come and find out for yourself?” he retorted. Nicky relapsed into silence, striving in vain to think of a suitable opening. He studied her curiously. She seemed different today. Less sure of herself and definitely nervous about something.

“What did you want to s
a
y to me?” he asked.

Now that the moment had come, it seemed more difficult than ever. What right had she to demand such a favor from the Shands? There wasn’t even the excuse of friendship to justify the claim.

“It’s—it’s rather difficult,” she said. “May I have a cigarette?”

“Of course.”

He held a light for her and watched her while she sat a little desperately inhaling smoke.

“I’m afraid I’ve come to beg,” she said then.

“To beg?” He raised his level eyebrows in gentle surprise. “But I seem to remember you telling my father some weeks ago that you would never ask a favor of a Shand as long as you lived.”

He was clearly not going to make things easy for her.

“Well, you don’t suppose I like doing it now, do you?” she retorted, driven back into her old rudeness with him.