“Certainly. It’s a tradition in the family.”
“And therefore a good foundation on which to build a marriage.”
“You have an example before you.”
Had I? Lady Menfrey was serenely happy, yes. But how had she lived through the years of humiliation when Sir Endelion’s affairs with other women had been the talk of the neighborhood? Was that Bevil’s idea of a good marriage? An unfaithful husband was perhaps one order of life; wifely complacence another.
No, I thought, it should not be so with me. I was not another Lady Menfrey. But I was too content with the immediate prospect to concern myself with the future.
“The kidnaping will not be necessary,” I said. “So you need not go ahead with your plans for that. Instead tell me more reasons why you want to many me.”
He put his head on one side and regarded me with mock seriousness. I thought: We shall always be able to laugh together. That had been the essence of my relationship with Gwennan—our minds were hi tune. Fleetingly I thought of Gwennan, who had run away on the eve of her marriage. I heard Fanny’s voice of grim prophecy: “You can’t trust those Menfreys.”
“As the daughter of an M.P. you’ll make a good M.P.’s wife.”
“A very practical consideration.”
“Why not be practical? Choosing a wife is a matter worthy of the utmost consideration. Far more than selecting a Member, you know. They can be out after five years. A wife must last for a lifetime. So, an M.P.'s daughter is the perfect wife for a rising M.P., particularly when it was for the same constituency.”
“So you will expect me to help you in elections, and the necessary nursing process in between.”
“Certainly I shall. You’ll be excellent.”
I felt the tears in my eyes then and I could not stop them. I was so ashamed, for he had never seen me cry before. In fact I couldn’t remember when I had.
He drew away from me, and I have never seen tenderness such as his as he took a handkerchief and wiped away my tears.
“At such a time” he scolded. “Tears … and Harriet!”
“They don’t go together, do they? Don’t imagine I’m going to be a weeping wife. It’s because I’m happy.”
He too was moved, and he sought to hide it.
“You don’t know anything yet,” he said. “This is only the beginning. We’re going to be known throughout the duchy as the happy Menfreys.”
Before I left for Cornwall I went to see Mr. Greville of Greville, Baker and Greville that he might explain my financial position to me. He told me that the death of my stepmother had made me the heiress to a considerable fortune. Everything would now be mine when I reached the age of twenty-one or on the occasion of my marriage, which must have the approval of himself and the other executor of the will.
“I have already heard from Mr. Menfrey that you have promised to marry him, and I can set your mind at rest without delay. There will be no objection, and your fortune will pass into your hands almost immediately after the marriage has taken place.”
“What of the second executor?”
“Sir Endelion Menfrey.” Mr. Greville’s rugged features were as near a smile as they could come. “I think your father would be very pleased by your engagement. It was a match which was talked over by him and Sir Endelion when you were a child.”
Then,” I said blankly, “we are doing what was expected of us.”
The plump white hands were spread out on the desk, and their owner surveyed them with satisfaction. “I am sure,” he said, in his dry, precise manner, “that this is a highly desirable union, and I can tell you, Miss Delvaney, that it simplifies matters greatly.” He picked up some papers on his desk as though weighing them, and looked at me over his gold-rimmed pince-nez. “Now, your allowance will go on as usual until we have the formalities settled. I hear that you will shortly be traveling down to Cornwall hi the company of Lady Menfrey. Excellent! Excellent! And the marriage will take place there. Congratulations I I do not think there could have been a more satisfactory finale to these unfortunate happenings.”
I felt as though I were being neatly filed away in a cabinet labeled “Heiress safely disposed of as prearranged. Unfortunate matters satisfactorily settled.”
And as I went out to the carriage I wished that my father and the Menfreys had not discussed my future so thoroughly. I wished that Bevil and I had met a few months before and been swept off our feet by an irresistible passion.
I was beginning to suspect that, for all my display of cynicism, I was at heart a romantic.
“Here is no reason for postponing our departure for Cornwall,” said Lady Menfrey. “There you will be able to plan what you intend to do about the house … about everything. Bevil will naturally see that what you want is carried out, when you have made your decision.”
I thought of the house where life would be going on as it had before the accident. It would be a silent house. I imagined the servants speaking in whispers, tiptoeing past the room where Jenny’s body had been found. They would be wondering what the future held for them, and it was unfair to keep them in suspense.
Fanny would, of course, come with me, but the others would have to find fresh places and were no doubt anxious about their future. I discussed this with Bevil and as a result I again went along to see Greville, Baker and Greville, and it was decided that annuities should be arranged for Mrs. Trant, Polden and the elderly servants, and gratuities for the younger, and that although they should remain in their posts for the next two or three months, they should begin making other arrangements, and if any succeeded in finding new places they would be released.
I felt relieved having settled this and went along to the house the day before I was due to leave for Cornwall.
I asked Mrs. Trant to summon all the servants to the library, and there I told them of my situation and what had been arranged. I felt deeply moved to see their relief, and on behalf of them all Polden expressed gratitude and their wishes for my happiness.
“You’ll be selling the house, I reckon. Miss Harriet,” said Mrs. Trant.
“Certainly.”
“Well, Miss, if ever you and Mr. Menfrey should be needing the services of any of us … you would only have to say so, and speaking on behalf of us all, we should be glad to leave what posts we had and return to you.”
I thanked them all and then went up to my old room with Fanny to discuss what I wanted her to bring to me in Cornwall when she came down a few days after me.
I tried to be practical when we reached my room.
“I shall discard most of these things,” I said. “We shall pass through Paris on our honeymoon, and I intend to buy some clothes there. So just a few things will be needed, Fanny.”
“There’ll be your books and some of the little things you cherished.”
I thought of them. My postcard album; letters which I had always kept; little things which had pleased me; a box covered in shells in which I kept buttons and needles; a musical box which played Widdicombe Fan- and which William lister had bought for me when he had taken a brief holiday in the Devon village; a row of pearls which my father had given to me—his Christmas present (he preferred to forget my birthdays) over the years, one pearl added each year. I had never liked it although now looking at the perfectly shaped beads of that deep, creamy color, at the flashing diamonds in the clasp, I realized that it was a beautiful ornament and probably worth a great deal But to me it had been symbolic of bis lack of interest. Custom demanded that he give me something, so there was the pearl, costing so much more than the baubles Fanny had given me, yet far less precious.
I thought again of how much I owed Fanny, who had understood how a child would have felt on waking on Christmas morning and looking in vain for the bulging stocking. She it was who had told me the Christmas legend; she who had bought those oranges, nuts, bags of fondants, fascinating cutout cardboard marvels, penny plain and tuppence colored, those sixpenny dolls. Fanny had put the happiness into my Christmases when she roamed among the market stalls looking for gaudy, glittering objects which would delight a child, not my father in the thickly carpeted jeweler’s salon selecting the pearl to add to my necklace, which would prove an investment.