Barbara Cartland - Look with the Heart

They stayed on in the house that Erlina loved and which had always been her home.

It was so heart-breaking to see the garden going to rack and ruin and to realise that their four hundred acres of land was now growing nothing but weeds.

It meant too that she and Gerry had very little income to live on.

Now that he was eleven, she knew that in a year’s time he ought to be going to Eton as it was where their father had been educated and most of their relations.

She would lie awake night after night wondering what on earth she could do.

Then in the morning she would struggle to keep the house clean and she had to drive nearly two miles to buy the small amount of food that they could actually afford.

She kept asking herself how they could go on like this, but could not find an answer.

The Garnets at the Vicarage were the only people who she could talk to.

But they could find no solution for their own problems let alone those of anyone else.

Every time Erlina drove through the village and could see the abandoned cottages and their weed-filled gardens, she hated the Marquis more and more.

It was quite impossible to tell him what she felt as he had not deigned even to answer the plaintive letters written to him by the Vicar.

It was Mrs. Garnet who was most voluble about it.

“The man is a murderer, that is what he is!” she said when she and Erlina were alone. “I know that the old people would have lived longer if they had kept their pensions and, if my husband did not receive a pittance from the Bishop, we too would starve to death!”

“Surely something can be done?” Erlina asked her.

“My husband thought of going up to London and speaking to the Marquis himself,” Mrs. Garnet said. “But it would be very expensive and I doubt if his Lordship would even trouble himself to see him!”

“Why is he behaving like this?” Erlina enquired.

“That is what we are all asking,” she replied. “There is plenty written in the newspapers about him enjoying himself, racing his horses at Newmarket, hunting in Leicestershire and attending parties given by the Prince Regent, all of which cost thousands and thousands of pounds.”

Erlina knew that Mrs. Garnet had a sister who lived in London and she would send her the newspapers from time to time and this was why she knew so much about the Marquis’s movements.

The more Erlina heard about him, the more she felt that he must be growing horns like the Devil himself.

He so obviously never gave a thought to the people who had always depended upon his family for employment and their pensions when they grew older.

“I hate him! I hate him !” she would say night after night.

But she was quite certain that, however violent her feelings were, they would not disturb the ‘Wicked Marquis’.

Now as Mrs. Garnet came back to the breakfast table to put a poached egg in front of Erlina, she said to her husband,

“Have you thought of where Erlina and Gerry can go? Much as we love them, you know, Piran, there is no room fit for them to stay here in the Vicarage.”

“I am aware of that,” the Vicar said quietly, “and there is only one place that they can go.”

“Where can that be?” Erlina asked him with some surprise in her voice.

She did not believe that he could be clever enough to find somewhere suitable for her and Gerry.

“Mr. Cranley must accommodate them at The Hall,” the Vicar responded.

If he had dropped a bomb on the table, Erlina could not have been more surprised.

“Do you mean – Meldon Hall?” she gasped.

“Why not? As you are well aware, there is really nowhere else,” the Vicar said. “There is not a cottage in the village that does not have leaks and, while we would love to have you, you know yourself that there is no room here unless you sleep on the floor.”

“I think that is a very sensible suggestion,” Mrs. Garnet said. “After all, Mr. Cranley is alone in that big house as he has been for the last five years and so he has had to look after himself since Lucy died.”

Lucy had been the last remaining servant, Erlina knew, who had stayed on at The Hall after all the other servants had been given notice to leave.

She was crippled with arthritis, had no relatives who anyone knew about and nowhere else to go.

She had been the Marquis’s nursery maid when he was a small boy and then, when Mr. Cranley had told her that she had to leave, she had answered him firmly,

“This be my home and the only way I’ll be leavin’ here be in a coffin!”

Mr. Cranley had not been able to pay her anything and he himself received only a very small wage from the Marquis’s Solicitors. And this was for acting as caretaker at Meldon Hall and managing the estate what was left of it.

It was the same money that he had received twenty years earlier when he had first gone there and he had hoped when the new Marquis took over that it would be increased.

What had happened was that his wages did arrive, but now he had to pay for his food and anything else that he required, which he had not had to do in the past.

He had stayed on because, as for Lucy, it had become his home and he had nowhere else to go as well.

Erlina had often thought that it was a miserable and lonely existence for him.

Mr. Cranley was an educated man who had served the family to the best of his ability for more than twenty years.

He had then been left to a life of loneliness on what was almost a starvation diet.

Still the house was there and, as she thought about it, Erlina just knew that the Vicar was right.

“It will give you a respite, Erlina,” he said now, “to write to your relatives and tell them what has happened. I feel sure that one of them will be able to take you in.”

“I very much doubt it,” Erlina answered. “As you know, Papa’s brothers and sisters are all dead. The few cousins that are left live in Yorkshire and I think there are two still alive in Cornwall.”

The Vicar knew without her saying anything more that she and Gerry certainly could not afford to travel such long distances.

“The first thing that you have to do is to have somewhere to sleep,” he said in a practical voice, “and after that we must think about your future.”

“You are so kind to me,” Erlina smiled.

She had noticed while they had been talking that Mrs. Garnet had no egg for breakfast and she was eating only toast with a thin scraping of butter.

She knew only too well that she and Gerry must not impose on their hospitality.

Yet she had never imagined for one moment that she might live at Meldon Hall, which was an enormous house.

It had been largely re-built in the last century and it was most impressive to look at from all directions.

Yet Erlina had heard that the whole top floor of the house was now uninhabitable.

In several of the State bedrooms, the ceilings had fallen in through years of untreated damp.

At the same time the structure of the building was strong and resilient.

It would take very much longer to destroy it than the cottages, which had all collapsed within five years or less without any attention or repairs.

The village inn, once it was closed, had quickly begun to fall into decay.

Aloud she now said,

“You are quite right, Vicar. Gerry and I will go up to The Hall and ask Mr. Cranley to take us in. At least we will have plenty of room there to move about in.”

She tried to speak bravely and with a smile.

But the tears were very near to the surface as she thought that she would never again be able to go home.

She drank a little coffee.

Then she said,

“I suppose I had better take the Dawes’s with me as well.”

“There is nowhere for them to stay in the village,” the Vicar said, “and they might be useful in cleaning up The Hall.”