The Alington Inheritance

Chapter XLI

Mrs. Forbes sat at her desk. She had sat there all night and had not moved. Only her thoughts moved, sliding from picture to picture, and when they had come to the end, the terrible remorseless end, they went back again and began at the beginning.

At the birth of her child-that was always how she thought of him, as her child. The little quiet man whom she had married didn’t seem to come into it at all. The other children were his. She had borne them with impatience and without joy. But Mac was hers-hers only. He was like her people, the people from whom she herself derived her good looks, her pride, her independence. There was nothing in the other children that engaged her interest. As he grew, so her pride in him grew. When the war came he was between seven and eight years old. Her mind went back to a day in that first winter. They had just finished breakfast, and she had seen their name in the paper she had been turning over-Richard Alington Forbes. Her husband’s second name was Alington. She said on a sudden impulse of curiosity, “Isn’t that a relation of yours-Richard Alington Forbes?” Her husband said, “Yes,” in his quiet absent way, and she had gone on to ask questions.

“Weren’t they relations?”

“Oh, yes-some sort of second or third cousin-” He really wasn’t sure which.

She remembered her own impatience.

“But good gracious me, one should keep up with one’s relationsl”

He was silent for a moment, and she thought he was not going to answer her, but in the end he said,

“What did you see about him?”

“Oh, nothing. I just saw his name. He was being posted to something or other. He’s in the Air Force, isn’t he?”

He said, “Yes, I believe he is.”

That was the first time his name came up between them.

Then in the summer there came the landslide in Belgium – Dunkirk and all the excitement about that. Mrs. Forbes remembered that she had looked for news-not news of the battle, but news of Richard Alington Forbes. Her husband was the next of kin-she had made it her business to find out about that. Her husband was the next of kin, and Mac was the heir. Hope rose in her. It wasn’t as if she had ever seen the man- and so many were being killed- Was it too much to expect that he wouldn’t survive? She had so entirely made up her mind that he would die that when his name came out in the papers she accepted it as a foregone conclusion. It was perhaps as well for their future relationship that her husband was out of the country. She did not see him again while the war lasted, but she moved to Alington House, and Mac had been brought up there.

Her mind travelled slowly over the years. She remembered the first time she had seen Jenny. Miss Crampton had told her the story. “A very shocking thing,” she had said. “But I feel I had better tell you about it. We all thought that Miss Garstone would get rid of the child to an orphanage or some institution of that kind. After all, it’s not as if Jennifer Hill was a relation. I believe Miss Garstone had been her governess. Not anything to be proud of in the circumstances, I must say.” The lift of Miss Crampton’s chin came back with astonishing clearness, and the ring of her stentorian voice. She had thought the matter well over, and then she had gone to see Miss Garstone. She remembered that interview with bitterness, for, say what she would, nothing had had any effect. Miss Garstone owned her cottage, and quite politely but quite firmly Miss Garstone was not going to move.

With a kind of stunned bitterness Mrs. Forbes dwelt upon the obstinacy of Miss Garstone. If she had tried harder, if she had held out greater inducements, would Miss Garstone have yielded? If she had known at the time all that was involved? The answer to that stood out clearly. If she had known a thousand times, Miss Garstone wouldn’t have given way. The house was her own. As long as she chose to stay there no one could shift her. She had been quite polite and agreeable about the whole thing, and quite adamant. There was nothing that Mrs. Forbes could do. So she had come away and left her.

After that nothing she did would have made any difference. When her husband came home he went to see Miss Garstone. He did not tell his wife what passed between them, and she did not ask. She determined on a certain course of action and she followed it. She didn’t know, therefore, until her husband died that he had undertaken to pay for Jenny’s schooling, and that he had left her enough to bring her in a hundred a year. This had caused Mrs. Forbes bitter resentment, but there was nothing she could do about it-nothing at all. She had known nothing until her husband was beyond her influence. She had known nothing until it was too late. The only thing that the discovery did for her was to bring into the light her hatred of her husband. She realized that when he was gone where it couldn’t reach him. She had not admitted it even to herself until then.

She had shown nothing. The hurt went too deep for that. The money was paid over to Miss Garstone, and she tried to forget about it. The only person to whom she had spoken about it was Mac, and he had only laughed and told her not to worry. She wondered now what that had meant. Had he had any idea of marrying Jenny even then? She didn’t know, and now she never would know.

Never is the most terrible word in the language. This thought came in upon her, flooding her mind with bitterness. She would never see Mac again. The word rang in her head like the ringing of a bell. Never-never -never-never. Her consciousness became deadened to it. It meant nothing. And then, like a curtain rising, consciousness came back and she saw in an awful perspective, as it were, endless mountain ranges of pain.

Her mind travelled on and on. She went through the last few weeks. Mac calm and sure, with his way out all planned, all ready, and that girl behind the curtain, listening to them. The cards had been stacked against them. Luck was on Jenny’s side. You can’t fight your luck. You can’t fight it, you can’t control it.

Her mind went back to last week-end, to Mac… She hadn’t known… What was there to know? It was already too late. He wouldn’t have killed himself if there was any other way out of it. There wasn’t any other way. There was no other way for her. She did not even think of the children, or of Alan. They had never mattered to her in the way that Mac had. She opened the drawer and took out a loaded revolver. No one in the house heard the shot.