Patricia Wentworth - The Alington Inheritance

The feeling that he was so close came upon Jenny with an intolerable force. She had been so near, so near to loving him, and it was gone-it was all gone away for ever. How was she to endure having him so near?

She must, she must endure it. Just for this once. Until she could get away. For this one evening she must play her part. And then-oh, then she would be done with them all.

He was speaking now, looking down at her with the smile she had thought a loving one.

“You’re very fine tonight.”

“Am I? I don’t often dine with you, do I? This is the only evening dress I’ve got.”

“And very nice, too. A little old for you perhaps, but you’re young enough to take that as a compliment. It’s quite a sincere one.” He bent nearer. “Jenny, will you come for a walk with me tomorrow afternoon?”

She lifted her eyes to his face and said gravely,

“I don’t know.”

“I want you to. Just you and me. Please, Jenny.”

And with that the door opened and Mrs. Forbes came in. She was talking over her shoulder to Alan, who was behind her. When she straightened up and saw Mac and Jenny she came forward with a determined smile.

“Oh, there you are, you two! Well, Jenny, that’s a very pretty dress. Have I seen it before?”

“I had it last Christmas,” said Jenny. “Garsty had the stuff, and I made it up.”

“You made it very nicely.”

Mrs. Forbes was gracious with a deliberate graciousness that was hard to put up with. Jenny thought, “If I didn’t know that she hated me, and why she was putting up with me, should I have seen that?” And she knew that she wouldn’t. It would have been just Mrs. Forbes with her grand manner. She wouldn’t have thought anything about it.

They went in to dinner. It was a long evening, and for Jenny it went with intolerable slowness. Alan’s wretched look went to her heart. He was suffering, and so was she. And so was Mrs. Forbes. Jenny knew that. She could even admire in a sort of way the manner in which Mrs. Forbes was carrying the whole thing off. There was a part to be played, and she was playing it very well. She was playing it very well indeed. And Mac? She knew now that he didn’t love her. She even knew that he didn’t love anyone but himself. She wondered whether it would have been easier if she had found that he did love someone else. It was dreadful to know that he didn’t love anyone at all, that he was wholly set on his own advantage. She felt as if there was nothing left to love. She had not quite loved him, but she had come very near it. She had once had a dream in which she had been running lightly over a wide heathery space, and suddenly, quite suddenly, she had checked herself, and only just in time. Because the cliff ended. It ended right there before her feet. If she had taken one more step she would have been over the edge.

“Down among the dead men,

Down among the dead men,

Down among the dead men

Let him lie.”

Only it would have been, “Let her lie.” If she hadn’t slipped behind the curtain in the schoolroom she would have been over the edge. As it was, she had saved herself. No, she hadn’t planned to do it. She had been saved, and she wasn’t going down over the edge. She was going to escape.

She said good-night when the time came. It was the last good-night that she would ever say to these people in this room. If they were ever to meet again it would be different for them all. Perhaps they would never meet again. She didn’t know, and there was no one to tell her. She went slowly up to her room and shut her door. She thought about locking it. And then she thought, “I mustn’t do anything different-not tonight. I mustn’t do anything to make them say, ‘Why did she do it?’ ” So she left the door unlocked. It wouldn’t have made any difference, because nobody tried it to see whether it was locked or not.

After she had waited for a little she took off her dress and hung it up in the great gloomy cupboard which ran across all one side of the room. It looked very lonely there. Such a big cupboard and only that one little lace dress, her everyday skirt, and the dark grey coat and skirt which she wore on Sundays. There was room in it for a hundred dresses. She had pleased herself sometimes by imagining that they were hanging there-dresses for every possible occasion, grave and gay. But not tonight. Because tonight her mind was full of other things.

She hung up her black lace dress and considered. She would take the grey coat and skirt. It was new, and it would be useful. And she would wear a white silk shirt and take the other one with her. She set her mind to what she would take. Brush and comb. Toothbrush and toothpaste. Face-cloth. Soap and nailbrush. She had a little case which she had used for week-ends when she was at school. It would hold these things, and the silk shirt and her pyjamas and two pairs of stockings. It wouldn’t hold anything more. It wouldn’t hold a change of underclothes-it was no good trying. She could tuck half-a-dozen handkerchiefs round the edge, and that was all.

As she turned from the packed case she saw her mother’s little Bible on the pedestal by the bed. She couldn’t part with that. It was a small book, and it slipped in beneath the pyjamas and was hidden there. She shut the bag and laid it on the chair by the window.

Then she put on her black laced shoes. She would have to leave her other two pairs behind, the spare pair of outdoor shoes and the indoor ones. No, she must have an indoor pair. A vision of getting sopping wet and having nothing to change into rose uncomfortingly in her mind. She made a parcel of both pairs, and felt somehow safer. But even at that moment she had a horrid feeling about leaving the little black satin pair she had worn that evening. There was no sense in taking them-not the least atom of sense-and she wasn’t going to take them, and that was that. But they were the nicest shoes she had ever had, and she didn’t know whether she would ever see them again. She had got them from Heather Peterson, who had got them from a cousin in a fit of hopefulness and because they were so pretty, and then found that they were too small and unless she wanted to take the chance of being disabled by cramp she couldn’t wear them.

Jenny held the shoes in her hand and looked at them. They were so pretty, and they must have cost a lot. Heather Peterson’s cousin was rich, and she had bought these shoes in Paris. They were very cleverly cut, and they had a single brilliant very cunningly placed to make your foot look small. Jenny knew she was being foolish, and she was stern with herself. When you are running away you can’t afford to be sentimental about a pair of shoes, no matter how pretty they are, or how much you feel that you will never have anything like them again. She put them inside the big dark cupboard and shut the door on them resolutely.

Time passed slowly. She was all ready to go. She didn’t know where. She only knew that she must go, and she must get as long a start as possible. She waited until twelve o’clock. All the sounds in all the rooms came to an end. The house was still. The house was very still. It was an old house-early seventeenth century. Jenny’s thoughts went back to its beginnings-the handsome young man who had built the house and his lovely wife.

He was Richard Forbes, and she was Jane. Jenny always wondered if they had called her that, or if it had been, like her own name, turned into Jenny. She liked to fancy that it was. Only of course her name wasn’t from Jane, but from Jennifer. Still it did make a kind of link, and they were her own ancestors-her own lawful ancestors. Their portraits hung in a place of honour in the hall. Their son and his wife, painted half a century later, looked old after their radiant youth. There were portraits of them all, some by famous painters. Jenny’s heart leapt up as she realized that she wasn’t a foundling, an illegitimate child, but the real inheritor of all these other Forbeses. She would go, but something in her said, “I shall come again.” In that moment she knew that the inner voice spoke truly. She would come again.