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A Biography of Dorothy Eden
SARAH SHIVERED AND DREW her cloak more closely about her. The summer house had broken panes of glass in the windows, and the wind blew through in a cold stream. It was rapidly growing dark. Because the trees were leafless, it was possible to see the house. Already lights were blooming in the windows. Sarah could identify them as she stood there, shivering and waiting.
There was Lady Malvina’s glowing boldly, with no curtains drawn, probably because she had forgotten to ring for Bessie. She would be nodding in front of an enormous fire (her room was always grossly overheated) with her capacious skirts spread about her and her cap askew. But presently, refreshed by her nap, she would wake to renewed vitality, and probably go to the nursery to thoroughly awake and excite Titus with one of her ferocious games. Eliza winced when she heard her approach. She said privately that Lady Malvina would be the death of her, if not of Titus first.
In contrast to Lady Malvina’s uninhibited glow of light, Amalie’s windows showed a mere chink between the heavy curtains. Amalie, unlike her mother-in-law, seemed nervous of the outside darkness. She was always starting at something, always looking over her shoulder. Her thin bright anxious face was seldom relaxed. She was constantly watching her husband. Because she loved him too much? Because she was afraid he did not feel a similar affection for her? Whatever it was, the next window, Blane’s (one wondered if the communicating door was ever opened into Amalie’s bedroom) was in darkness, for Blane’s restlessness—a restlessness that was curiously different from Amalie’s, and was caused, of course, by guilt—kept him constantly on the move, and seldom indoors.
At the far end of the second floor the nursery window was alight, Sarah noticed with relief, for Titus, like his mother, disliked the dark. Eliza must have obeyed instructions and given him his tea and seen that the fire was in. She must go soon, Sarah reflected, for Titus would be waiting for her. He was a nervous highly-strung little boy, who got into fevers of apprehension if things went wrong. There was also that ridiculous fancy he had about the mouse which was lurking in the cupboard in the nursery, ready to spring when the candles were out. Since Sarah had discovered the little boy’s private nightmare she had made a point of seeing that he always had a night light.
If James Brodie didn’t come soon she couldn’t wait. What adequate reason could she produce for prolonging her walk after dark? And Titus would be waiting for her, as well as the household dressing for dinner. She would have to scramble into her dark-blue tarlatan, making an even quicker change than Blane did. For Blane spent little time over his evening toilet, and seemed to look with some derision at Amalie’s elaborate appearance. Probably never in his life before had he dressed for dinner, nor been in a position to.
He was an unscrupulous impostor, Sarah thought angrily. Presently, when James Brodie appeared, she would surely be in possession of at least one piece of indisputable proof which would enable her to unmask him.
Dear Miss Mildmay, [Brodie had written]
On instructions from Mr Ambrose Mallow who I last seed in Trinidad, I have a packet to deliver to you concerning matters you are deeply interested in. If you will communicate with me at the George and tell me where I can safely hand to you the said packet, it not to be trusted to the post, I will do my best to oblige.
Your obed’nt servant,
James Brodie
The wind was rising and rags of thundercloud, blacker than the approaching night, drifted across the sky. Sarah looked apprehensively into the darkness, and at last heard footsteps approaching.
‘Mr Brodie?’ she called eagerly.
But her voice could not have been heard, for the man who strode forward and seized her roughly, exclaiming, ‘Amalie, why do you moon by the lake in midwinter? What are you up to?’ was Blane.
Simultaneously, he realised his own mistake.
‘You!’ he exclaimed, in a voice of deep hostility, and the hard grip of his fingers on her arm held her there.
In a moment James Brodie would arrive with the letter from Ambrose that was too private and important to be entrusted to the post. It was too much to hope that Blane would respect its privacy. Already he was deeply suspicious of her. She had cleverly improvised reasons for other awkward situations, but it seemed as if this one would defeat her. She was lost…
IT SEEMED MONTHS, NOW, since that day when she had paced restlessly about Aunt Adelaide’s drawing-room, waiting impatiently for news from the court. News that either declared Blane Mallow the impostor they all believed him, or confirmed his story as true:
Aunt Adelaide had lost patience with her.
‘For goodness’ sake, child, sit down. You’re driving me mad. Fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, all the time. Can’t you keep still?’
‘I’m sorry, Aunt Adelaide. I’m so nervous. The result of the case must surely be known by now.’
‘And none of your fidgeting will make any difference to it. Come away from that window and get out your embroidery.’
‘There’s a cab now.’ Sarah was peering into the street. Already the fog was making it as dark as night, and the lamplighters had begun their rounds. The sound of horses’ hooves approached and passed. It was not Ambrose. In any case, why should she think Ambrose would instantly come to her with the news? Indeed, the jury might not come to a decision until the next day, for there had been so much conflicting evidence. Never would Sarah forget Lady Malvina in the box, with her great arrogant nose thrust forward, the cabbage roses on her bonnet nodding to her reiterated affirmatives. Nothing would shake her evidence. The blackbrowed adventurer in the box, whose arrogance matched her own, was her son, her long-lost son Blane Mallow.
Aunt Adelaide clucked impatiently.
‘I suppose you’re wishing you were in the courtroom again yourself, looking at that scoundrel.’
Sarah gasped.
‘How did you know I’ve been there?’
‘I don’t know anything because I’m not told,’ her aunt retorted tartly. ‘But your shopping and your supposed teas with your sisters this week have been very prolonged occasions. From which you have returned looking a great deal more animated than conversation with those exceedingly dull creatures would warrant. No, no, child, don’t look at me so accusingly. I haven’t questioned the coachman.’
‘Lady Malvina must have been telling lies,’ Sarah burst out. ‘She stood in the box and swore that that impostor was her son, although Ambrose says Blane never had features like that, or that impudence. He was a gentleman.’
‘And this man is not?’
‘Decidedly not. He was laughing all the time. Oh, not openly. But you could see the shine in his eyes. And one dimple would come into his cheek—’
‘Dimple?’
‘Well, cleft, or whatever one calls it in a man’s cheek,’ Sarah said impatiently. ‘But it was as if he was laughing inside all the time. At his mother—if she is his mother—at the judge, at Ambrose, at everybody. He knew he was running circles round them, with his plausibility.’
‘All this,’ said Aunt Adelaide consideringly, ‘doesn’t make him not a gentleman. He speaks like one, I take it?’
‘That can be learned, surely.’
‘By a clever actor, yes. Even a clever actor would give himself away now and then. Did you never detect a slipped “h”?’
Sarah shook her head with more impatience.
‘Then he may have been a gentleman of a sort. Perhaps he has constantly been in the company of gentlemen. But Blane Mallow I am sure he is not.’
Aunt Adelaide gave her niece a shrewd, assessing glance.
‘Could it be, my dear, that you believe this because you have every reason to be prejudiced against him?’
Sarah gave an alarmed exclamation.
‘Aunt! You haven’t told anybody about Ambrose and me?’
‘Of course I haven’t. Though I told you secret engagements aren’t to my liking.’
‘But it’s all because of this wretched Blane Mallow that it has to be a secret,’ Sarah burst out. ‘You know very well Ambrose can’t afford to marry me if he doesn’t inherit Mallow Hall. Under any other conditions he must marry an heiress. I love him far too well to stand in his way.’
‘Your feelings could be misjudged, my dear.’
The colour rose indignantly in Sarah’s cheeks.
‘I know that very well. People could say I was very ready to marry the new Lord Mallow, but not Ambrose Mallow without a title who must make his own way. They could say I was marrying him to be the mistress of Mallow Hall. But that isn’t true. I just wouldn’t encumber him with a penniless wife, if he is poor himself.’
‘So all in all,’ Aunt Adelaide said reflectively, ‘it becomes very important that this man is denounced.’
‘I wish I could do it myself!’ Sarah declared feelingly.
‘I believe you would if you could.’ The old lady tapped her fan thoughtfully. ‘You at least have plenty of spirit. I shall never cease to wonder how you alone of that clutch of girls your parents produced have any spirit. Or looks, if it comes to that.’
‘Thank you, dear Aunt Adelaide,’ Sarah said warmly. There was a very deep bond between the two women. The older woman’s astringency and humour appealed to Sarah, as Sarah’s somewhat daring and rash behaviour did to her aunt. She was born ahead of her time, Aunt Adelaide thought. But little harm that would do, for the present generation of simpering, swooning, meek, timid young women she could not abide. Something seemed to have happened to the good English stock. She never remembered this excess of false modesty in her youth. But things had begun to change when that brash young creature, Victoria, had come to the throne, and even more so when she had married her stiff-necked dreary Albert. Now everything was pretence and disguise. The very table legs were concealed. No one had bodies. Somehow, and prolifically, babies were produced, but apparently in some strange state of amnesia, for every decent woman shut such thoughts out of her mind.
Yet the sly meek creatures, Aunt Adelaide thought, had developed the art of catching a man to an almost sublimated degree. It was done somehow beneath downcast eyes and such a look of innocent virginity that the wonder was every man was not frightened off to the South Pacific or far-off China to look for a warm-blooded uninhibited bride.
Thank heavens Sarah was too honest and spirited for all this posing. She loved and frankly wanted Ambrose Mallow, and made a secret of it only because of this tiresome litigation as to the ownership of Mallow Hall. How extremely inconvenient it had been of Blane Mallow to arrive home just at this moment, after an absence of twenty years. It was so inconvenient as to be highly suspicious.
No one entirely believed he had come because of seeing the advertisements for him which had been printed in almost every paper on the face of the globe. He couldn’t have become conscience-stricken about his widowed mother. He was not the man, popular opinion declared, to have a conscience. On the other hand, he was most definitely the type of man to be an adventurer, a seeker after easy reward, title and position. He may also, conceivably, have been born a gentleman, for there was arrogance and confidence in every inch of him.
But Lady Malvina’s son? Heads were shaken sceptically. How could that foolish garrulous posturing woman have got a son like this?
The paradox was that she had identified him unhesitatingly, she had swept aside his strange lapses of memory about certain events, and declared only that he was her son. As added and indeed indisputable proof, there was the little boy, the five-year-old child of this assumed impostor. If his father, to all other people, had changed beyond recognition, this child was the living image of the very good portrait painted by Josiah Blake thirty years ago of Blane Mallow at the same age.
In this way the evidence became overwhelming, and it seemed that Ambrose, because of the return of the rightful heir, would lose Mallow Hall. And poor Sarah with her vivid stubborn face would lose Ambrose.
‘Did anybody recognise you in court?’ Aunt Adelaide went on, eyeing Sarah sharply.
‘Oh, good gracious, no! I stayed right at the back. Even Ambrose didn’t know I was there.’ She began to giggle with reminiscent mirth. ‘James was quite horrified when I asked him to wait for me outside a courthouse! But the dear faithful creature obeyed. Oh, no, Aunt Adelaide, no one saw me. I wore my grey cloak with the high collar that I drew right across my face. I expect I was thought to be an unknown admirer of the claimant. Heaven forbid!’
‘I believe you enjoyed yourself, you shameless girl!’
‘Indeed I should have if it hadn’t been a matter touching myself so deeply. It was a most novel experience. And the wife, Aunt Adelaide. I wish you could have seen her. The deceitful thing, with those great eyes opened so wide, so innocently. She must have known the truth, if anyone did.’
‘Is she beautiful?’ Aunt Adelaide asked interestedly.
‘She’s thin and sallow, not like English women at all. I suppose it’s from living in tropical countries. But she has a queer brilliant look. I don’t know how to describe it. Perhaps she is beautiful.’
‘They sound a well-matched pair.’
‘Oh, indeed. They well look as if they could scheme together. Yet when the judge asked her questions it was all meekness. Yes, my lord. No, my lord. As if lightning would strike her dead if she told a lie.’
‘How would she know if her husband were not what he said he was?’
‘He may always have deceived her,’ Sarah conceded.
‘But why? Until this opportunity presented itself, presumably by seeing the newspaper advertisement, would he ever have heard of Blane Mallow and Mallow Hall?’
‘No, I suppose he wouldn’t. So that means his wife is as guilty as he.’
‘If he is guilty.’
‘Oh, he is! I know he is! There were so many questions he couldn’t answer, obvious ones. They were excused because of this fall he once had from his horse, getting concussion badly. But it was a too convenient excuse. If it were not for his mother, who isn’t to be swayed, he would have been in trouble long ago.’
‘And the child,’ Aunt Adelaide added thoughtfully.
Sarah frowned.
‘Yes. There is the child. It’s very strange about the child.’
A little later Ambrose arrived. He flung off his cloak, handing it to a maid, and came striding into Aunt Adelaide’s drawing-room. One look at his face told Sarah his news.
‘He’s won!’ she whispered.
‘Yes, he’s won.’ Ambrose made belated greetings to Sarah’s aunt, then flung himself angrily into a chair. In contrast to his cousin Blane, he was fair, with rather pale thickly-lashed eyes and a slight stature. He was fashionably dressed, and had an elegance that Sarah found intensely pleasing. He belonged at Mallow Hall, there was no doubt of that. He would have been an ideal master, and his life, for the last ten years, when it seemed that Blane was surely dead in some foreign country, had been shaped to that end. True, he had continued his studies and been called to the bar, but only because he was an earnest young man with few frivolities. Indeed, so far, falling in love with Sarah, the third daughter of a destitute gentleman, had been his only frivolity. Now it seemed that if he wished to live in suitable style, with a house in town and his own carriage, he must sacrifice Sarah and find a wife with money.
It was an impossible position, and he was bitterly angry and aggrieved about it. It should not have happened at the last minute like this when his succession to the title had seemed certain. Moreover, it was doubly galling when he was so convinced that this fellow from the West Indies was an impostor.
But how to unmask him?
‘It was my aunt, Lady Malvina, who finally swayed the jury,’ he said. ‘She stuck absolutely to her story that this fellow is her son.’
‘She wanted him to be,’ Sarah said indignantly.
‘Exactly. Now she can live at Mallow Hall, all her debts will be paid, everything is fine. She knows it would have been quite different if I—and you, my dear Sarah—had been the new owners.’
‘No one knows about me,’ Sarah said quickly. Her eyes rested in anguish on Ambrose’s pale angry face. There was no denying it, secretly, as well as being Ambrose’s wife, she had longed to be the mistress of Mallow. Why had this wretched thing had to happen?
‘You aren’t bound to consider me,’ she went on, making herself speak the painful words. ‘That was always understood. I set you free, if you wish it.’
‘But I don’t wish it, my love.’
‘Tut, tut!’ said Aunt Adelaide. ‘Sarah has been indiscreet enough already. She should now have her position made clear.’
‘You must marry an heiress,’ Sarah told Ambrose earnestly. ‘It’s the only way.’
‘If your own father, Sarah, had not been so irresponsible,’ put in Aunt Adelaide, ‘you, too, could have been an heiress. As well as your stupid sisters who, I might say, need a dowry much more than you do, my dear.’
Sarah was too honest for modesty or shame. ‘I’ve told you that my father was a desperate gambler,’ she explained to Ambrose. ‘He lost all his fortune and my mother’s as well. That’s why I’ve been dependent on dear Aunt Adelaide. But now I must make some sort of a future for myself.’
‘With me,’ said Ambrose firmly.
Sarah’s face began to light. Then sadly she turned away. ‘No, that can’t be. There’s no way.’
‘Yes, there’s no way,’ Aunt Adelaide agreed. ‘Unless you’re both content to live in obscurity. That, I promise you, neither of you will be. Ambrose has lived for the last twenty years in the belief of inheriting a fortune. And, if Sarah will allow me to say so, I know her better than she does herself. She’s not meek or self-sacrificing. She’s too strong-willed. Oh, I warn you, Ambrose, even with an estate Sarah would not be an easy wife. But as a contented housewife in poor circumstances—no, a thousand times.’
Sarah’s chin went up.
‘Be quiet, please, Aunt Adelaide. All she means, Ambrose, is that I, like my father, am a gambler. I do love you, but what might I do to you? Besides, you deserve so much better than struggle and poverty.’
Ambrose had appeared to be detached from the two women’s conversation. He was looking into the distance, his eyes narrowed and thoughtful. He was so handsome, Sarah thought with a pang. A little austere, perhaps, but with all the signs of good breeding. So different from the buccaneerish look of that impostor in court.
‘You’re both wrong,’ he was saying in a dry, cool voice. ‘There is a way out of this trouble. I’m sure there is. But you, Sarah,’ his eyes flew up suddenly, taking her off her guard by their intensity, ‘will have to help me.’
‘What can I do?’
‘You can help prove this man an impostor.’
‘Why, I’d like to, Ambrose. Nothing would give me greater satisfaction. But the judge and jury have made their decision. Whoever would believe a British jury at fault?’
‘They’ve made their decision because of the weight of evidence. Evidence this scoundrel has had months, perhaps years, to prepare.’
‘But he has a certain look of your cousin Blane, hasn’t he?’
‘Vaguely, as far as one can remember. But there are too many discrepancies, too many things he forgets and conveniently attributes to his amnesia. My Aunt Malvina, whatever her ulterior motives, helped him over the worst patches. So did the head groom Soames. I never did trust him, and he knows where he would be if I became master of Mallow. Can you explain Blane forgetting the day I locked him in one of the attics? I left him there until long after dark and he came out as white as a sheet. It’s the first time I’d seen him frightened.’
‘Why was he frightened?’ Sarah asked.
‘Because that was the room where a maidservant once hanged herself. She was—in trouble. Oh, a long time ago, in my grandfather’s time. But they say that room has been haunted since.’
Sarah had a brief recollection of the tall black-haired man standing so straight and arrogant in the courtroom. Had those piercing black eyes ever held fear? She had a moment of complete incredulity that this could have been so.
She did not comment directly on Ambrose’s statement. She said in some perplexity, ‘Why did you do that to your cousin?’ Ambrose’s voice held unrestrained bitterness and dislike. ‘Because he deserved it. He was always fooling about with the maids himself.’
‘He was only sixteen,’ Sarah said involuntarily.
‘But a grown man.’
‘Tut, tut,’ said Aunt Adelaide. ‘The question doesn’t seem to be why Ambrose did this curious thing to his cousin, but why his cousin shouldn’t remember it. Did he flatly deny it had happened, Ambrose?’
‘No. He was too clever for that. He said perhaps it had. But that so many extraordinary things had happened to him since, a few hours in a presumably haunted room were merely trifling. Anyway, he said in that mocking way of his, who believes in ghosts in these enlightened times?’
‘So the question was cleverly evaded.’
‘Yes. But I saw he couldn’t remember. Just for a moment he looked quite blank. Then there were the names of servants that he couldn’t remember, his classmates, the master who taught him Latin…’
‘On the other hand,’ said Aunt Adelaide drily, ‘he could describe Mallow Hall to the last detail.’
‘Oh, Lady Malvina could have coached him on that. He must have had other accomplices besides. This is the task ahead of us now, Sarah, to unmask these people.’
‘Wasn’t it the task of the prosecuting counsel today?’
‘No, not at all. That’s just a detached courtroom scene. These things can only be done by someone who lives with these people and watches them day by day to catch them out in small things. That’s the true way to build up evidence.’
‘And who is to carry out this extraordinary task?’ enquired Aunt Adelaide. ‘Are you going to bribe the butler, or one of the maids?’
‘One of the maids, yes. In other words, you, my dear Sarah.’
‘Me!’ exclaimed Sarah in astonishment.
‘Yes, you. For you say you won’t marry me if I’m a pauper.’
‘You’re not a pauper, Ambrose. But no, I won’t marry you and ruin your future for lack of money. I’m quite determined about that.’
‘Then there’s this other thing you can do for me. For us both.’
‘Spy!’ whispered Sarah.
‘It would be very simple. I know already that they want help with the little boy. Blane—I mean the claimant—had the nerve, when the verdict was announced, to invite me to drink with him. To his good fortune, if you please!’
‘And you did?’
Ambrose grimaced.
‘One has to behave outwardly like a good loser. All the time I was longing to wring his neck. We had a pint of ale at the Three Crowns. I had to listen to his impudent plans for the future. The family intends to move down to Mallow Hall almost immediately. They think the country air will be better for the child, who isn’t strong. Since he’s too young yet to be sent to school, he’s to have a governess. It was then that the idea came to me.’
‘That I should go?’ Sarah cried. ‘But—granted I must now begin to earn my own living—how am I to get the opportunity to find out anything if they know of my connection with you? They’ll be doubly on their guard.’
‘But they won’t know of it. No one will tell them. Fortunately we’ve kept our attachment a secret. Only you and I and Lady Adelaide know of it.’
‘She’s been visiting the court every afternoon,’ Aunt Adelaide put in. ‘If she was noticed, won’t she be recognised again?’
‘Sarah, you fool!’ Ambrose exclaimed.’
Sarah’s colour rose. She defended herself heatedly.
‘But I would never be recognised again. I was right at the back among all those gaping people, and I kept my collar high round my face.’
‘But what on earth made you go there?’
‘Because it was my future at stake as well as yours.’
Ambrose’s voice grew softer.
‘It was, of course. Though you could have trusted me to report the proceedings to you.’
‘I wanted to watch those people. They fascinated me.’
‘Fascinated?’ The quick suspicion was in Ambrose’s voice.
‘In a repellent kind of way. They lied so smoothly, as if it were second nature to them.’
‘Then you didn’t believe them?’
‘Of course I didn’t. Not even Lady Malvina. Although she is your aunt, Ambrose, I couldn’t trust her one inch.’
‘She prefers a stranger at Mallow,’ Ambrose said bitterly. ‘She’s always disliked me. It wouldn’t surprise me if she concocted the whole plot herself, except that she isn’t clever enough.’
‘She talks a great deal,’ Sarah said thoughtfully. ‘One could encourage her in that. Sooner or later she must say something significant.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean. If you were in the house day after day you must discover things.’
‘Listen at keyholes?’ Sarah said distastefully.
‘In what better cause, my love. Don’t you care enough for me to want to right this injustice?’
‘You know very well that I do.’
‘All this plotting,’ said Aunt Adelaide disapprovingly, ‘isn’t quite seemly.’
‘Ah, Aunt, hush! I believe Ambrose is right. This is what we must do.’ Sarah was growing excited and enthusiastic. Life since her father had died and they had been so poverty-stricken had seemed without zest. Then she had met and fallen in love with Ambrose, only to find that brilliant future also taken from her. The prospect she had faced, if this case were lost, of obtaining a position as companion to some perhaps eccentric and bad-tempered elderly lady, such as her sisters had been forced to do, was bleak in the extreme. But the kind of position Ambrose suggested would be entirely different. It would be stimulating and perhaps a little dangerous. She would be able to pit her wits against that impudent black-browed impostor and his sallow-faced wife, and also against the garrulous Lady Malvina. She would be living in that beautiful old house which should have been her own. And indeed one day would be, if she were skilful enough. Yes, Ambrose’s idea was a brilliant one. It appealed to her enormously, even though the thought of it also made her heart flutter nervously. She did not know how good an actress she could be. But she had inherited her father’s gambling spirit. She would not be easily deterred.
‘Then you’ve recommended me to the new Lord Mallow?’ she asked.
‘Oh, no, I’ve not been as indiscreet as chat. You must appear to be a complete stranger. You know of the family only by reading this celebrated case. You have taken a great interest in its outcome and congratulate them on its success. Knowing their child is five years old you are sure they will be requiring a governess. The rest, my dear Sarah, is up to you. I’m sure you’re clever enough and charming enough to be successful.’
It was Aunt Adelaide who expressed shocked disapproval.
‘And what, Ambrose, may I ask, will you be doing while my niece belittles herself in this way?’
Ambrose smiled faintly.
‘I, dear Lady Adelaide, will be on my way to the Caribbean. I intend to arrange a passage at once.’
‘To the Caribbean!’ Sarah exclaimed. ‘You mean to find what evidence you can there? But a deputation has already been.’
‘I’m aware of that. And I’m not saying they didn’t discover evidence. Superficial evidence. That would have been there by plan. But this investigation requires something more. It requires a dedicated interest. Did it matter to the deputation who eventually owned Mallow Hall, whether it was this stranger or myself? Not in the slightest.’
‘None of the cross-examination could shake Thomas Whitehouse’s evidence,’ Sarah pointed out.
‘Exactly. Yet this same Thomas Whitehouse has been remarkably elusive. Each time I’ve discovered where he’s staying he has moved, and today, at last, when I thought I had run him to earth, I found he had just sailed for Trinidad.’
‘Already? With the jury not back!’
‘His part was done. It was advisable to get him out of the way quickly, no doubt with a fat fee in his pocket.’
‘Ambrose, you mean his evidence has been false? That he has not known Blane since he arrived as a boy in the West Indies twenty years ago? But I thought the deputation who went to Trinidad completely verified that.’
‘Then why is Mr Whitehouse so elusive? Why have I never been able to talk to him? Because he isn’t such a good liar after all? I promise you I’ll run him to earth in his own country. And not only that. I’ll discover other evidence. There are things I mean to search for. Blane Mallow’s tombstone, for instance.’
‘Heavens!’ gasped Aunt Adelaide. ‘Do you think he’s dead?’
‘He could be. I don’t know.’
‘Then if that’s so, this scoundrel and his wife must be denounced.’
‘The little boy’s name is Titus,’ Sarah said inconsequentially.
Ambrose’s eyes narrowed angrily.
‘It was my grandfather’s name. I wonder if he was called it at birth, or only recently.’
‘But there’s his extraordinary likeness to that portrait. Everyone agreed on that.’
For the first time Ambrose showed uncertainty.
‘I admit that. It’s the strongest piece of evidence they have. It’s difficult to explain. But there must be an explanation,’ he added decisively, ‘and I intend to find it. With your help, Sarah. You won’t refuse to help?’
‘Spying!’ muttered Aunt Adelaide, with the greatest distaste.
‘I have no references,’ Sarah said. ‘No one is employed by respectable families without reference.’
‘I won’t comment on that word respectable,’ Ambrose said in a scathing voice. ‘But I agree that these people will intend to behave in the most correct way. Therefore I’m sure your aunt will be happy to give you a reference, Sarah.’
‘A forgery!’ exclaimed Aunt Adelaide, scandalised.
‘Is it a forgery to say that Miss Mildmay has been with you for the last eighteen months and is of the most pleasant disposition? Of course it isn’t. Come, Sarah. Kiss me, and tell me that you’re with me. Are you going to be my wife or not?’
Sarah hesitated the merest second. Then she went happily to receive the brush of his lips on her cheeks. It was such a little kiss. And there would be months, and the seas of the Caribbean between them before she could be kissed properly, as a husband kisses his wife.
But she was immeasurably heartened by Ambrose’s definite action, and the future was full of excitement. As reckless now as Ambrose, she could pay no attention to Aunt Adelaide’s disapproval.
OUTSIDE THE HOUSE IN South Kensington, built in the new fashionable area, another carriage drew up. It was dark now, and Lady Malvina, peering through a parting in the heavy curtains, could not see who alighted. But it must be Blane. Blane? She nodded her head slowly, looking sly and satisfied. What a fine figure of a man he had grown. Tall, handsome, a little swashbuckling. Just the type of man she secretly admired. So different from his cousin, that narrow-minded disapproving dandy Ambrose.
She would never forget the moment when the news had been brought up to her that her long-lost son Blane was downstairs waiting to see her. She had gone down in the greatest trepidation. She could not admit to anyone, not even pompous old George Trethewey, her late husband’s solicitor, that she was an old woman now, and had almost completely forgotten what her wild young son had looked like twenty years ago, or indeed how he could be expected to look now.
She was in such a state about the unexpected arrival that she would scarcely have had the wit to reject him even had his skin been black! But the moment she set eyes on the little group waiting in the hall, she knew.
For there was the little boy.
The breathless maid, stupid Bessie with never a brain in her head, had omitted to tell her that not only the man claiming to be her son but his wife and child were downstairs.
Lady Malvina had taken a perfunctory look at the dark thin young woman in the unsuitable too-thin travelling cloak and rather shabby bonnet. She had not, at the moment, spared much more than a glance for the tall man at her side. Because the little boy, dark-haired, pale and quiet in his travelling clothes, clutching his mother’s hand and looking at her with the blankness of exhaustion, was her baby over again. That much was perfectly clear to her. It was as if, miraculously, the years had rolled back and she was young and gay, as she had loved to be, and the mother of a perverse, high-spirited, difficult but enchanting little boy.
‘Oh, my little darling! Come to me!’ she exclaimed, reaching out her arms.
The child shrank back. Lady Malvina did not realise what an alarming figure she must have made, swooping down like this in her voluminous dark-purple gown, with her lace cap nodding on an elaborate erection of stiff grey curls. Protuberant pale-blue eyes, a large haughty nose, and a mouth that seemed, when she smiled so welcomingly, overfull of yellowed teeth, were not reassuring to a nervous child.’
‘His name’s Titus,’ said the tall man. ‘Have you nothing to say to me, Mamma?’
‘Titus!’ said Lady Malvina happily. ‘You named him for his grandfather.’
The little boy cast a swift unhappy glance at his mother. He seemed about to speak, but the young woman quickly drew him to her, partially concealing his face in her skirts.
‘My husband decided on his name, ma’am,’ she said primly. ‘I confess I thought it an odd name for a little boy. But then my husband has talked incessantly about everything English for so long.’
‘Mamma,’ said the tall dark man, ‘this is my wife Amalie. Or should I say’—he hesitated a moment, as if testing the atmosphere—‘the new Lady Mallow.’
An expression of triumph passed fleetingly over the young woman’s face. Then her eyelids dropped, and she curtseyed demurely.
Lady Malvina decided at once that she did not like her. A sly ambitious miss. What was her background? Where had Blane picked her up?
Blane?
At last, in her state of bemused excitement, she looked fully into the features of the tall man beside her.
Brilliant dark eyes, magnificent black brows, a nose as arrogant as her own, an expression of inscrutability and—could it be amusement? Skin burned dark with seawinds or tropical suns, a spare strong body with, at this moment, a kind of lazy lounging grace.
Was this the hot-tempered boy who had quarrelled so violently with his father and run off to sea, never to be heard of again?
She was too confused to decide, or to care about making a correct decision. She only knew she most urgently wanted her son home. It was a matter of vital importance.
Everyone had said for years that Blane must certainly be dead. His father had reiterated it with gloomy anger until the day of his own death. Admitted, Blane had a violent temper, and as a boy was impulsive and thoughtless. But no grown man would turn away from an inheritance such as his. Had he been alive he would have returned home ten, fifteen years ago, and made his peace.
Now his father had been dead a year, and the legal machinery had been set in motion to have Blane also assumed dead. So that the correct cold ambitious young man, Ambrose Mallow, who would bring neither shame nor glory to the name, should inherit.
Lady Malvina, for various reasons, had stubbornly refused to admit that this must happen.
And now, like an answer from heaven, this handsome black-browed stranger stood in front of her.
Why should she hesitate to acknowledge him?
‘Blane I My dearest son! Welcome home!’ she cried.
Later, of course, there had to be the endless questions, for the trustees of the estate, pompous intolerably stupid George Trethewey, and Martin Lang, demanded certain proof that this man, arrived as if he had dropped from the sky, was indeed Blane Mallow. The triumphant evidence of the small scar beneath his left ear, acquired after a fall from his horse, was not sufficient. Anyone, they said dourly, could have a scar. And against this were the man’s strange lapses of memory. Vital things seemed to be forgotten where quite irrelevant ones were remembered.
When acquiring the scar he had also suffered a fairly severe case of concussion which, several doctors in consultation agreed, could produce amnesia. But it was a curious amnesia, lightened by flashes of complete memory. As an impostor, he could never have seen Mallow Hall. Shown a plan of it, he could identify each room, even to the attic rooms. Yet later in court he had no recollection of being locked in the supposedly haunted room, a terrifying experience for any child. He could name his schoolmasters and several of his school fellows, and described journeys taken to the seaside and with whom. He unhesitatingly identified his old nurse, but this lady was now so old that she herself suffered from an amnesia too great for her evidence to be of any worth.
The trustees considered the estate too valuable for a decision to be lightly given. A claim must be made and heard in a court of law. A deputation must be sent to the West Indies, from which the man claimed to have come, and evidence sought there. For the purposes of the child Titus’s succession, proof of the marriage to Amalie must be produced.
It all took an endless time, and Lady Malvina was beside herself with impatience. Why couldn’t they all go down to Mallow and live normally? This was her son and her grandson. Surely that she should say so was sufficient. Surely the final unanswerable proof was sufficient—the astonishing likeness the little boy bore to the portrait of Blane at the same age.
No, there didn’t seem to be much doubt about the outcome, especially since the claimant had conducted himself with such superb almost impertinent confidence.
The marriage to Amalie had taken place in a small church, started by a quite respectable Anglican missionary, in Trinidad, and this was duly proved. Amalie was the daughter of a sea captain and a young Spanish woman from Teneriffe. Unfortunately she was not all one would have desired, but she had a certain vivid handsomeness, and a wish, so far at least, to be the kind of English wife of whom Lady Malvina would approve. And her crowning achievement, of course, was producing the next heir to Mallow Hall, the little boy who was the image of his father, and bore his grandfather’s name. This surely made his father’s claim incontestable. Now, peering out into the foggy gloom, Lady Malvina saw the tall figure of the man she had, for the past few months, been calling her son. Wheezing a little as her heart palpitated with excitement, she hurried to ring the bell. When Bessie appeared she said eagerly, ‘Tell Lord Mallow I would like to see him at once.’
Then she plumped up the cushions in her overheated sitting-room and sat down to wait.
This she had not long to do. Presently the door swung open and the young man strode in.
‘Well, Mamma, thanks to you, we won.’
He stood in front of her fireplace, very tall, very confident, full of triumph. If he were not her son, she thought confusedly, she would dearly like to have such a son. He made all his contemporaries look languid and anaemic.
She was equal to the moment. For she, too, had her triumph. Now she could return to Mallow Hall. How soon, she wondered, could she tactfully request her son to pay her debts?
‘Blane, my dear, I’m so happy! Not that I doubted for a moment. Truth must be acknowledged.’
‘It can also be twisted. My cousin Ambrose would have liked to do that.’
‘With his crafty legal mind! And you realise I might have lost my home to him?’
‘Yes, we all realise what you haven’t lost, Mamma.’
The deep voice, full of amusement and significance, made Lady Malvina lift her head haughtily.
‘And you, too, my son.’
Blane began to laugh, his head thrown back, his laughter hearty and uninhibited. Reluctantly, because she was still so unsure of him, she joined in. Then the humour of the situation struck her, and her raucous voice sounded above him.
‘What are we laughing at?’ she demanded at last.
‘The fact that all our differences are over. You’ve forgotten what an unpleasant child I was, and you’re truly happy to have me home.’
Lady Malvina nodded, quiet for a moment.
Then she asked, ‘Have you told your wife?’
‘Not yet.’