Distant Choices (56 page)

The next morning, on her advice, he sent for his daughters and explained to them his exact position; Morag, who had heard a great deal about bank failures from her friend in Penrith, springing at once to defend him, declaring she would help in any way possible, do his book-keeping if he could no longer afford a secretary, run errands, go out – if it came to it – and earn money herself as a governess. While Elspeth, who understood nothing of banks and did not think it the business of a young lady even to carry money in her pockets, much less earn it, threw her arms around him nevertheless and – quite forgetting how all this might damage her position with Tom Landon – offered her father the contents of her trinket box.

‘Keep it for now,' he told her gravely, realizing the sacrifice she believed herself to be making. ‘I'll come to you at need.' And even Morag showed no temptation to point out to her the true worth of her few strands of pearl and coral compared to their father's need. Although both girls appeared somewhat chastened and thoughtful when he pointed out to them that had it not been for Oriel's intervention they might well have found themselves back in Scotland harvesting the herring.

‘I couldn't have borne that,' Elspeth kept on whispering to Oriel, sitting very close to her on the train journey home, holding her hand as they walked along the platform at Lydwick, following her around the house for several days to make sure she was still there, had not changed her mind, or had it changed for her by her relations who would surely advise her to take the money her husband had offered while it still existed and go away.

‘I suppose it is even wrong of us to try to keep you,' she said, once or twice, her scared eyes pleading with Oriel to say ‘No.

Absolutely not. You have every right', and then squeezing her hand in a burst of gratitude when she did say, ‘Well, I don't know about that, but I'm staying anyway.'

‘Let me get you a cup of tea?' murmured Elspeth, still living in the world where all she meant was ‘Let me ring and order it, in your favourite china with a little posy of spring flowers on the tray.'

Elspeth was scared, eager to please since she doubted her ability to do anything of a more practical nature, eager to let her father know how much she trusted him to restore her to a position where Tom Landon of Watermillock would feel safe to go on wooing her; or, failing that, how much she trusted her father's wife to teach her how to become a most enchanting Cinderella. And although Morag had far less to say about it and seemed uneasy, at times, in Oriel's company, experiencing some difficulty in meeting her eye, she placed herself, nevertheless, entirely at Oriel's service, working quietly beside her through long hours – some of them painful to Oriel – making an inventory of the valuables in both the Keith house and Evangeline's which, at need, she would be able to sell.

A pair of Meissen vases to settle a week's wages at the site of a Welsh or Scottish tunnel, a Crown Derby dinner service to do the same elsewhere, a Turkey carpet or two to settle the account of a local brickmaker and encourage him to take the risk of supplying more; a diamond solitaire for which Evangeline had paid a fatal price to Lord Merton to buy perhaps half a mile of iron track.

Listing each item with an estimated value beside it, Oriel knew, very well, that in her place her mother would have considered no alternative except to bolt as fast and as far as she could, taking her crystal and china, her child, certainly her diamonds very firmly with her.

‘Why, I ask myself,' and she could hear the cold and furious amazement in her mother's voice, ‘… Why, Oriel, are you giving away my prizes, my wages for which I worked and suffered, to that man you married against my wishes? Oh yes indeed, I know he could take them all by force, with the law on his side, since he is your husband. But such laws are to be evaded, my love –
got around
– as you know very well. So what is stopping you from hiding a good half of them away and selling them for yourself, later …? Good Heavens, all you have to do – if he asks – is tell him my china is smashed, my pictures worthless, or that a thief broke in and stole the best … How do you think I got them in the first place? And I gave them to you, Oriel. Only to you. So that whatever happened to anybody else you would be safe – and free.'

‘What is the matter?' Morag asked suddenly, a silver statuette of Artemis the Huntress in her hands, a near naked figure which Evangeline. suddenly declaring it to be an embarrassment to Letty who had grown most puritanical since she had stopped having babies, had decided to ‘whisk it away to the attic where your sister will not have to look at it, dear Matthew,' bringing it. instead, to Lydwick Park.

‘What should be the matter?' said Oriel.

‘Something. You looked as if you were going to cry.'

‘I was thinking of my mother.' And, Evangeline having always been a delicate subject, she was surprised – and then pleased – when Morag, uncomfortable with her sympathy, muttered, ‘Yes, I thought that must be it – these being her things. I'm sorry. I didn't like her but you did, so – I'm sorry.'

The girl was really saying, ‘If I had a cat that scratched everybody but me then I expect
I'd
like it too. I'd be bound to wouldn't I – maybe very much.' And had Oriel dared she would have reached out and drawn the thin, unyielding girl towards her in a comfortable, woman-to-woman embrace.

Yet, although such daring still seemed a shade premature, it was to Morag she turned for practical, always willing help as the household prepared itself for war, ready not only to withstand a siege but to provide a solid base of operations and creature comforts whenever their soldiers, their fighting-men – Garron, his agents and foremen, his irrepressible son Jamie – required them.

All social engagements were cancelled, all accounts with local tradesmen settled so that there should be no embarrassment about milk or meat or eggs, all members of the household staff called together and informed – as Oriel thought only decent – that although she could pay their wages now and in the foreseeable future she would bear no grudge against any who chose to take up an advantageous situation elsewhere. Evangeline's house in Lydwick Park was sold, its contents being stored away for the present, all separately wrapped and labelled in Morag's neat hand. The Keith house, in Lydwick Green, was mortgaged, to the hilt, of course, as everyone was rightly saying, only the lakeland cottage remaining free of debt because – it was generally assumed – no one would care to lend on it.

‘How dreadful for you, Oriel dear,' said Maud and Letty, driving over together. ‘Your poor mother would turn over in her grave.'

‘I'm here,' said Kate, having returned by no means apologetically from France. ‘Use me. I don't know what for but whatever it is I'll do it. Remember.'

Francis Ashington wrote a dignified letter of condolence to Garron whom he hardly knew, and, in a private moment with Oriel offered services which she – despite an untimely interruption by Susannah – understood to be those of a knight in immaculately shining armour, available the very moment she became a lady in distress.

Quentin Saint-Charles made some discreet murmurings which she interpreted as a request – should her husband go completely under – to allow him to employ his legal expertise on her behalf, thus salvaging as much as a clever lawyer could, for her personal use, from the wreckage. These various offers of support giving Oriel a deep pleasure hardly spoiled at all by Susannah's frequent, vaguely Biblical mutterings about guilt or the bringing of the spiritually tainted to justice.

‘What is the matter with
her
?' enquired Elspeth who rather hoped it might be something unpleasant.

‘Old age and virginity,' said Jamie to whom the latter word was, nowadays, of considerable interest.

‘Nothing,' said Morag sharply, so nervously, that it crossed Oriel's mind to wonder if Susannah had done something, or confided something, about which Morag was worried.

Surely not? For what else could it be but the old, old story of the curate Mr Field who had been engaged to Susannah for almost five years? Poor man. Oriel had always felt sorry for him and rather guilty when, just before her mother died, she had persuaded Francis – entirely on Susannah's behalf – not to give Mr Field the living of Dessborough's church. Susannah had wished to be a fiancée from whom no mother could expect too much in the way of domestic assistance, rather than a bride for whom domesticity would be inevitable and, considering Mr Field's earning power, lamentably single-handed. But Matthew Stangway's death, by releasing Maud to take up permanent residence at the vicarage, had also released Susannah from her remaining obligations. Mr Field, therefore, had been given his marching orders, whereupon Oriel, entirely in a spirit of making amends, had driven over to Dessborough, only a week after Matthew's funeral, and secured for him the post of Francis Ashington's vicar which was still vacant. A good deed in her opinion, which had caused both her and Francis a great deal of amusement. An unpardonable interference, somehow or other, to Susannah, possibly – suggested Francis – because the living was reasonably paid with not too much work attached to it, and because, at the very beginning of his occupation, Mr Field had made the acquaintance of a healthy, solid, very cheerful Dessborough girl, only nineteen years old and terribly flattered to have caught the new vicar's eye.

On the day Francis called at Lydwick to offer Oriel his help, they had still found a moment to laugh about Mr Field and had been heard to do so by Susannah who, since she ought not to have walked unannounced into Oriel's drawing-room, had felt unable to complain – at least not to Oriel – of what she found there. But she had complained to others, putting around a discreetly worded opinion that Mrs Oriel Keith's pleasure in her ‘friendships' – with those of both sexes – had always diverted her so much that her sudden devotion to her husband in his time of trouble, although no doubt just as ‘saintly'as people were saying, might also have its share of guilt.

‘Ask her exactly what she means by that,' advised Kate, who would certainly have tackled Susannah herself had she not been fully ostracized by Gore Valley Society, thus making her intervention of no use at all.

Nevertheless. ‘You ought to have this out with Susannah,' she said. ‘You ought to invite her to tea with at least a dozen'other people and ask her, straight out, in front of everybody, just what she has against you. That's bound to settle it.'

But when Morag heard this suggestion she turned chalk-white and, after a moment of strangled silence, gasped out, ‘Oh no – I wouldn't do that. No – I wouldn't. She's been under a lot of stress lately …'

‘Hardly more than we've been under, Morag,' murmured Oriel.

‘Oh – I know. But – you see – it may not be you she's annoyed with. It may be somebody else – really …'

‘Morag.' And, driven by the spirit of defence for those with whom one has laboured in cheerful adversity, Oriel felt herself to be bristling. ‘If Susannah is bothering you – or bullying you – in any way, and I mean any way, then you have only to say so. And I'll sort her out double quick.'

‘No,' said Morag, closing her eyes as if she were praying. ‘Please – absolutely not.'

Was Susannah jealous, wondered Oriel, of the new rapport between Morag and herself, the natural ease with which – when it really mattered – one strong woman could recognize and turn to another? Or jealous, quite simply, because the Keith household, in its time of crisis, was pulling together without her help? Had it hurt her to discover that, when it came down to it, Morag's love and loyalty belonged exclusively to Garron and to those
he
trusted best to help him? It seemed highly likely, and so highly like Susannah that Oriel let it slip easily from her mind, taking no steps other than to keep Morag out of Susannah's way. ‘Morag is a tremendous help to me,' she told everyone and it was true. Morag, the proud and loving daughter who, having coped with the realization that Oriel was on her father's side, Susannah only scheming for herself, had placed her own very useful energies entirely at Oriel's disposal, becoming a valuable part of the façade of calm and confidence Oriel was, day by day, creating.

She had never realized how much money Garron kept in the house, would never have slept easily if she had, but during those first taut weeks following the collapse of the Milne, Morrissey Bank – further complicated by the suicide of Mr Morrissey, the bank's founder – she carried the keys of the strong-box all day in her pocket, concealing them all night under her pillow, ready to pay out, with a charming smile, any man who presented himself to her with Garron's authorization.

‘My navvies have to have their wages,' Garron had told her before setting off for London. ‘And it's not only because they might gang together and kill me if they don't. I have to keep them working, and since they work for money then, if it takes the last penny … You understand?'

She understood. And, taking her understanding beyond their need of this week's wages to some reasonable assurances about next week and the week after – when a man and his family would have an identical need to eat and drink – she received each one of the site managers Garron sent to her with half an hour's rational discussion, before settling his wages'bill, over an excellent pot of tea, demonstrating not only her confidence in her husband's ability to retrieve the situation but that she had enough intelligence to appreciate what ‘the situation'actually.was.

‘If the men take fright and run off,' Garron had warned her, ‘then we're finished.' Therefore
she
– he was busy with lawyers and bankers and railway officials – took it upon herself to see that they did not, presenting herself to the visiting site managers not as a drawing-room lady, the kind of ‘contractor's luxury item'they may well have been expecting, but a level headed, competent, thoroughly decent woman who sent them back to their work-force looking cheerful, feeling, often in spite of themselves, that if Mrs Keith thought the job was safe then perhaps it was.