The Alington Inheritance

Chapter XII

They drove along without speaking. He had to swallow his anger, and that wasn’t easy. It was in fact quite surprisingly difficult. Surprisingly? Yes, that was it. Why should he have flashed into that sudden state of anger with Mac? He had a hot temper, but it very seldom got away with him like this-not since he had learned to control it. Jenny sat beside him quite quiet. He was glad she didn’t chatter. Instantly, indignantly, the thought came pushing up-she wouldn’t. He stopped being angry in his surprise. What did he know about her to be sure what she would or wouldn’t do? He had a quick answer to that, a factual answer. He did know. He knew her as she had known him. There was kinship between them, and something more than kinship. He drove on in silence, thinking.

Jenny did not say a word. It all seemed quite natural, as things feel in a dream. She had put her case in at the back. It was a comfortable car. She was very lucky to have found a cousin. She felt as if she knew him quite well-as if she had known him always. It was very strange, but in a way there was nothing strange about it. It had just happened.

When they had gone three or four miles, he turned a little and said,

“What were you going to do?”

She said,

“I was going to go as far as I could. Because they’ll look for me, you know-they’re bound to. And then I was going to get a cottage to take me in, and try and get some work to do.”

He was appalled. She had said it before. He remembered that now. He said,

“No one would take you in like that.”

“Wouldn’t they?”

“Not respectable people-not the sort of people you ought to be with.”

She said, “Oh-” and then, “Are you sure?”

“I’m quite sure.”

There was a little pause. She said,

“Then what am I to do?”

He said, “I’m going to stay with an aunt. She’s a very nice person. She’s not a Forbes. She’s from the other side of the family. My father and mother were killed in an air raid-she looked after me. You’ll like her. Everyone does. Her name is Caroline Danesworth.”

Jenny said, “Won’t she think it rather odd your turning up with me?”

“She won’t when she sees you.” He felt so sure of this that it wasn’t until afterwards that he thought it was rather a strange thing to say.

Jenny looked at him earnestly.

“Are you quite sure?”

He was quite, quite sure. He said so in a matter-of-fact way that carried conviction.

Jenny gave a little sigh. She had begun to feel dreadfully tired. She wondered how much farther she could have walked. She leaned back and felt at peace. He was Richard Alington Forbes. He had her father’s name. She could trust him-he would look after her-she hadn’t got to bother about anything more… She fell asleep.

Richard drove on through the night. He had taken on an obligation, and he knew it for what it was. It was a very serious obligation. She wasn’t really his business-that was what anyone would say. She wasn’t really a relation. A hundred years had gone by since Lady Georgina had been painted in her wedding-dress. That picture he knew only from a photograph of it in his father’s album. It was a good photograph. He wanted very much to see the original. And now he was driving away from Alington House and from the portraits.

Jenny-he thought about Jenny. He had never seen her before, and he had the familiarity which only comes with years. Lady Georgina had had two sons, just the two, and they were George and Stephen. Jenny descended from George, and he descended from Stephen. The two sons had fought bitterly about this and that, and finally about a girl. She was engaged to George, and she ran away with Stephen. There had been the father and mother of a row and a complete separation of the brothers. Stephen and the girl, whose name was Susanna Cruickshank, lived long and happily on the estate which they inherited from his mother. George married a sickly heiress with whom he was neither happy nor unhappy. She was a nonentity with a large fortune, and when you had said that you had said everything that was known of her. The brothers never met, and the quarrel was never made up. There was no communication at all between the elder and the younger branch. What turn of fancy had made his father go back to the beginnings of the family for his name, he wondered. Richard Alington Forbes had been the son of an earlier Richard who married the only daughter of John Alington, Esq., by which marriage came wealth and an extraordinary tradition of happiness. There was no picture of him. The pictures began with his son, Richard Alington Forbes, who had built the house. That was the family history so far as he knew it. Odd that he himself should be a throw-back to the first Richard Alington Forbes whose name he bore. He drove on mile after mile, thinking.

After a while his thoughts turned to Jenny. He was taking her to his mother’s sister, Caroline Danesworth, who had brought him up. It was a complete give-away of course, but he couldn’t help that. Caroline would understand.

He looked down at Jenny sleeping like a baby beside him, and he was surprised at his rush of feeling. He supposed it was because one was used to seeing girls in every possible mode of activity, but one was not accustomed to seeing them asleep. Jenny slept deeply. Her hands were on her bag. Her face, against the side of the car, looked shadowy. He had the feeling that she wasn’t all there, that she was really somewhere else and he didn’t know where. He would like to know where she was, and what she was dreaming.

She smiled suddenly in her sleep. Her eyes half opened, looked at something he did not see, and closed again. Her lips moved. They said his name-“Richard Alington Forbes.” But was it his name that they said. Her father had borne it too, and the first Richard Alington Forbes who had married Jane and built Alington House.

Jenny went on dreaming. She dreamed that she was flying and she was not alone. There was someone with her, caring for her, someone with a strong arm which held her. If he let her go, she would fall down, down to the ground. But he would not let her go. She felt perfectly safe, and she felt perfectly happy. She could not see who was holding her. She knew who it was. It was Richard Alington Forbes. She was quite safe, because she was with him and he was helping her. She half opened her eyes and said his name. Then the dream closed round her again and she slept. The time went on.