Tell Me My Fortune (2 page)

“One would hardly count so remote a connection as a relation, my dear,” her father said, smiling faintly and scornfully. “And by marriage, too,” he added, as though marriage were a dishonourable state.. Though, in point of fact, he had a groat and solemn regard for the bond.

“He must be very, very old, if he’s a cousin of Great-Aunt Tabitha,” Alma said thoughtfully.

“He seems to feel young enough to undertake the journey to England,” Mrs. Greeve said doubtfully.

“In any case, cousinships are such queer things when you begin to get into the third and fourth dimension,” Morley pointed out. “I never can remember if second-cousins are the children of first cousins, or whether the children of one are second cousins to the original cousin and third cousins to the children.”

“Say that again, slowly,” Alma begged, concentrating almost audibly.

But her sisters cried, Oh, no! in chorus, and Leslie added,

“What did you say about this cousin coming to England, Mother? You said he felt young enough to undertake the journey. Here, do you mean?”

“Yes.” Her mother nodded. “He proposes to come here, to Cranley Magna. He wants to make our acquaintance. I thought”—she glanced doubtfully at her husband—“it was rather nice and friendly of him.”

“Did you, my dear?” said her husband with deceptive mildness. “Personally, I asked myself if he were not merely following Tabitha’s money to England. But perhaps I am of a nasty, suspicious nature.” And he gave a beautiful bass-baritone laugh which invited everyone else to join in mirth over such a preposterous suggestion.

“Perhaps,” said Alma, and the moment lost much of its value.

“When is this old man coming?” enquired Katherine.

“Within the next few days, I imagine. I must speak to Mrs. Speers about having a room ready,” murmured Mrs. Greeve. And, with a faint, sweet smile round on her family, she drifted out of the room again, in search of her very efficient housekeeper.

Almost immediately her husband followed her, for one of the simple and really endearing things about him was that, although he might pontificate and bluster in her presence, he thought her the loveliest thing in the world, and was never happy long away from her. One could forgive him much for that, Leslie had often thought.

Left to themselves once more, the young Greeves broke into animated discussion. All except Morley, that is to say, who leant back in his chair once more and listened amusedly to what his sisters had to say.

“This really is going to make a difference to us, as Father says,” Katherine observed. “Being really rich is quite a different thing from merely having prospects, however good. I wonder if Father will let me go to Italy now and study?” For Katherine had singing ambitions, though so far of a rather dilettante quality.

“Curb your notions of our probable worth, my pet,” Morley advised her. “The money comes to Father and, by the time he has taken toll of it for what I trust will be a very long life, we shall probably all have to ‘turn to and earn our own living in advanced middle-age.”

“You do think of the most disgusting things,” declared Alma, giving her brother a small thump. “And, anyway, I mean to be married long before I’m middle-aged.”

“Opportunity is a fine thing, as the offensive old saying has it,” Morley reminded her.

At this, however, Alma looked scornful and said,

“I should make an opportunity, stoopid.”

“I wonder how long this old cousin of Aunt Tabitha’s will stay,” exclaimed Katherine, who had been following her own thoughts all this time. “Maybe Father is right, and he just, wants to park himself here.”

“Then, after a suitable interval, during which all the demands of hospitality will have been scrupulously fulfilled, Father will hang out an unmistakable ‘no parking’ sign, and he will have to go,” Morley replied.

“Poor old man,” said Alma, with what they all felt to be exaggerated and possibly unnecessary sympathy.

“Anyway, I’ve already told you, he won’t necessarily be an old man,” Morley declared. “He may be young and handsome, and fall in love with Kate and marry her.”

“Why me?” Katherine wanted to know.

“Because you’re the prettiest, I suppose,” her brother said. “Anyway, I have an idea it wouldn’t be any good his falling in love with Leslie, and Alma is a bit young.”

“Why wouldn’t it” began Alma.

But Leslie tossed aside her needlework and interrupted firmly.

“I’ll leave you to your romantic planning,” she said, her colour just a little high. “I’m going to the village to get some ribbon and other odds and ends. Anyone else coming?”

No one else was coming, it seemed.. And without bothering to fetch either a hat or coat, for it was a beautiful, golden August, afternoon, Leslie stepped out of one of the long windows, which served, as did most of the windows in that room, as a garden door, and crossed the lawn to a wicket gate almost hidden in flowering bushes.

She was not at all sorry to b& alone. She liked her o’ company, especially on an afternoon of such absorbing loveliness, and her father’s news had provided enough food for thought inevitably pleasant and speculative thought without the need for conversation.

She walked slowly, thinking first of the legendary old lady who had just died with that faintly remorseful, impersonal regret which is all that any of us can achieve for the death of someone we have never seen then of the immense and welcome difference which the newly acquired wealth was going to make in their lives.

No more worrying about the essential insecurity of their outwardly comfortable existence. No more dreading the occasional, but violent, outbursts of her father on the subject of any bills other than his own. No more wondering how the family would manage without her when she and Oliver married.

Although to anyone as literal-minded as Alma or even her father it might seem that nothing absolutely definite had been arranged between Oliver and herself, to Leslie it had been obvious for some while that, as soon as he had a practice, or the reasonable prospect of one, they would be married. The rest of the family might build their futures round the name of Great-Aunt Tabitha. To Leslie, the future meant Oliver Bendick, whom she had loved for longer than she could remember.

Even in the days when they were schoolchildren, and Oliver was the Doctor’s son who knew Morley rather well, while Leslie was merely Morley’s sister—even then there had been a degree of understanding and friendship between them which had not existed between any of the other young people of the district. And more than once, after he had got over the inarticulate teens, Oliver had said, “There’s no one like you, Leslie. I just couldn’t imagine life without you to talk to and plan with.”

It was she who had been the recipient of his confidences from the earliest days, she who had sympathized with and encouraged his every ambition. It was to her even before his parents he had come with the news that he had passed his final examinations as a doctor.

And, now that he was working as a locum less than fifty miles away, she saw him most weekends.
She hoped he would be home this weekend, so that she could tell him the news about Great-Aunt Tabitha. To know that the family’s future was so clear and satisfactory could not fail to make their own future seem happier.

Leslie had several places to visit in the village, and as she entered the little Post Office, which also served as a general haberdashery store, Miss Meeks popped up from behind the counter to enquire personally after the health of the family.

Having reported satisfactorily, Leslie was about to go on to the purchase of stamps when Miss Meeks, leaning towards her in as confidential a manner as her rather rigid corsets would permit, asked, “Did the telegram arrive safely?” as though all sorts of perils might have beset a telegram on its short journey from the Post Office to Cranley Magna.

“The telegram?”

“I sent it up only ten minutes ago, and told Bob to go straight to the house without any loitering.” A frown began to gather on Miss Meeks’ brow and the faint creaking of her corsets indicated that she was beginning to breathe deeply and with displeasure.

“He probably passed me while I was in Farmers’, Miss Meeks. I called in for a paper,” Leslie explained, anxious to shield Bob who was Miss Meeks’ rather down-trodden nephew.

Miss Meeks suspended judgment for the moment.

“I didn’t know you were expecting a visitor,” she said casually, as she flicked over her supply of stamps.

“Was the telegram about someone arriving to visit us, then?” Leslie spoke with interest, and never questioned Miss Meeks’ inalienable village right to digest and discuss the contents of all telegrams which passed through her hands, either outgoing or incoming.

“I think so. I seem to remember something of the sort.” Miss Meeks became falsely reticent all at once.

“Who was it from?” Leslie asked.

“Well, I did notice the name, as it was a strange one. It struck me quite forcibly,” Miss Meeks explained, giving the expression almost a physical meaning. “It was signed Reid Carthay. And it said, ‘Arriving Thursday.’ Which, of course, is today,” Miss Meeks pointed out. “That’s why I told Bob to hurry.”

“Then he’ll be coming by the six-twenty, I suppose.” Leslie glanced at her watch.

“A friend of the family?” enquired Miss Meeks delicately, as she counted out change.

“More sort of a relation,” Leslie said. And then thought how much that would have annoyed her father. “I’ll have to see about having him met at the station. He won’t know that it’s a mile and a half from the village, with no chance of a taxi.” And she bade Miss Meeks good-bye and went out into the afternoon, sunshine once more.

It was still not more than four o’clock, and Leslie reckoned that she had plenty of time to carry out. her last commission, which was to collect some honey from a small farm half a mile beyond the village, on the other side from Cranley Magna. And as she walked along the dusty road between the sweet-smelling hedges, she thought about Mr. Reid Carthay and his imminent arrival.

As Morley had said, there was no need to assume that he was an elderly man. But, whatever his age, Leslie hoped he would be sufficiently tolerant in outlook not to mind the various foibles of the Greeves, and not so tender of his dignity that he would resent the slightly hectoring manner which her father would undoubtedly adopt towards one whom he considered to have done him out of the duty and privilege of supervising Great-Aunt Tabitha’s funeral.

Leslie collected her honey—two combs of it, dark and of an intoxicating scent and started homewards. But, before she had gone fifty yards, the sound of a high-powered car coming behind her made her move on to the narrow grass verge at the side of the road.

The car swung round a bend in the lane, passed her at speed, and then drew to an abrupt standstill a little way beyond her. It was a long, low, shining black car of un-English design, and as Leslie came nearer she saw it contained only the driver, a tall, broad-shouldered man, who was obviously waiting for her to come up with him.

Indeed, as she drew abreast of the door, he leaned his arm on the ledge of the open window and said, in a deep voice with a faint accent which she could not quite identify,

“Pardon me. Can you tell me if I’m anywhere near Cranleymere?”

“Yes. That’s the village straight ahead.” She pointed to the small cluster of houses and two or three village shops which made up Cranleymere.

“That?” The man half smiled, with a sort of good-humoured contempt for anything so small. “Is that the whole of it?”

“That’s the main part of the village,” Leslie said, rather resenting this slight on her home village. “There are a few big houses scattered around as well.”

“Including one called Cranley Magna?”

“Why—why, yes.” Leslie stared at him, surprised doubt crystallizing into not very pleased certainty. “Are you Mr. Carthay?”

“Sure. I’m Reid Carthay.” He smiled completely then, showing strong, even teeth. “Don’t tell me you’re one of my cousins?”

She had no intention of telling him anything of the sort.

“I’m Leslie Greeve,” she said, much more distantly than she usually spoke to anyone. “But we’re hardly cousins, are we?”

“Near enough,” he assured her easily, and opened the door of the car. “Jump in, Leslie, and I’ll drive you up home.”

Leslie was not an unfriendly girl, but she felt herself prickle with resentment at this casual familiarity. However, she could hardly refuse a lift from someone who was going to her own home. So she said, ‘Thank you,” coolly, and got into the car.

“Are you the only girl in the family?” he enquired, as he started the car again, and he spoke as though it were his natural right to ask questions about her.

“No. I have two sisters.”

“Both as pretty as you?” He flashed an appreciative smile at her.

Leslie did not take that up. She permitted a slight’ pause in the conversation, to indicate her opinion of his line of talk, and then added, “And I have one brother.”

“A matter of minor interest,” he assured her.

“Not to me. I happen to be fond of my brother. He has nice manners, for one thing,” she retorted, surprised to find herself speaking like this.

She was no more surprised than her companion, however. He gave her another quick glance an amused one and said,