Her husband nodded.
"I see."
She was silent a moment, thinking. She herself did not really care about money at all - but she knew that Jeremy was quite incapable of realising that. Money meant to him a four-square world - stability - obligations - a definite place and status in life.
Money to her was a toy tossed into one's lap to play with. She had been born and bred in an atmosphere of financial instability. There had been wonderful times when the horses had done what was expected of them. There had been difficult times when the tradesmen wouldn't give credit and Lord Edward had been forced to ignominious straits to avoid the bailiffs on the front-door step. Once they had lived on dry bread for a week and sent all the servants away. They had had the bailiffs in the house for three weeks once when Frances was a child. She had found the bum in question very agreeable to play with and full of stories of his own little girl.
If one had no money one simply scrounged, or went abroad, or lived on one's friends and relations for a bit. Or somebody tided you over with a loan...
But looking across at her husband Frances realised that in the Cloade world you didn't do that kind of thing. You didn't beg or borrow or live on other people. (And conversely you didn't expect them to beg or borrow or live off you!)
Frances felt terribly sorry for Jeremy and a little guilty about being so unperturbed herself. She took refuge in practicality.
"Shall we have to sell up everything? Is the firm going smash?"
Jeremy Cloade winced, and she realised she had been too matter-of-fact.
"My dear," she said gently, "do tell me. I can't go on guessing."
Cloade said stiffly, "We went through rather a bad crisis two years ago. Young Williams, you remember, absconded. We had some difficulty getting straight again. Then there were certain complications arising out of the position in the Far East after Singapore -"
She interrupted him.
"Never mind the whys - they are so unimportant. You were in a jam. And you haven't been able to snap out of it?"
He said, "I relied on Gordon. Gordon would have put things straight."
She gave a quick impatient sigh.
"Of course. I don't want to blame the poor man - after all, it's only human nature to lose your head about a pretty woman. And why on earth shouldn't he marry again if he wanted to? But it was unfortunate his being killed in that air raid before he'd settled anything or made a proper will or adjusted his affairs. The truth is that one never believes for a minute, no matter what danger you're in, that you yourself are going to be killed. The bomb is always going to hit the other person!"
"Apart from his loss, and I was very fond of Gordon - and proud of him too," said Gordon Cloade's elder brother, "his death was a catastrophe for me. It came at a moment -"
He stopped.
"Shall we be bankrupt?" Frances asked with intelligent interest.
Jeremy Cloade looked at her almost despairingly. Though she did not realise it, he could have coped much better with tears and alarm. This cool detached practical interest defeated him utterly.
He said harshly, "It's a good deal worse than that..."
He watched her as she sat quite still, thinking over that. He said to himself, "In another minute I shall have to tell her. She'll know what I am... She'll have to know. Perhaps she won't believe it at first."
Frances Cloade sighed and sat up straight in her big armchair.
"I see," she said. "Embezzlement. Or if that isn't the right word, that kind of thing... Like young Williams."
"Yes, but this time - you don't understand - I'm responsible. I've used trust funds that were committed to my charge. So far, I've covered my tracks -"
"But now it's all going to come out?"
"Unless I can get the necessary money - quickly."
The shame he felt was the worst he had known in his life. How would she take it?
At the moment she was taking it very calmly. But then, he thought, Frances would never make a scene. Never reproach or upbraid.
Her hand to her cheek, she was frowning.
"It's so stupid," she said, "that I haven't got any money of my own at all... "
He said stiffly, "There is your marriage settlement, but -"
She said absently, "But I suppose that's gone too."
He was silent. Then he said with difficulty, in his dry voice: "I'm sorry, Frances. More sorry than I can say. You made a bad bargain."
She looked up sharply.
"You said that before. What do you mean by that?"
Jeremy said stiffly:
"When you were good enough to marry me, you had the right to expect - well, integrity - and a life free from sordid anxieties."
She was looking at him with complete astonishment.
"Really, Jeremy! What on earth do you think I married you for?"
He smiled slightly.
"You have always been a most loyal and devoted wife, my dear. But I can hardly natter myself that you would have accepted me in - er - different circumstances."
She stared at him and suddenly burst out laughing.
"You funny old stick! What a wonderful novelettish mind you must have behind that legal facade! Do you really think that I married you as the price of saving Father from the wolves - or the Stewards of the Jockey Club, et cetera?"
"You were very fond of your father, Frances."
"I was devoted to Daddy! He was terribly attractive and the greatest fun to live with! But I always knew he was a bad hat. And if you think that I'd sell myself to the family solicitor in order to save him from getting what was always coming to him, then you've never understood the first thing about me. Never!"
She stared at him. Extraordinary, she thought, to have been married to someone for over twenty years and not have known what was going on in their minds. But how could one know when it was a mind so different from one's own? A romantic mind, of course, well camouflaged, but essentially romantic. She thought: "All those old Stanley Weymans in his bedroom. I might have known from them! The poor idiotic darling!"
Aloud she said:
"I married you because I was in love with you, of course."
"In love with me? But what could you see in me?"
"If you ask me that, Jeremy, I really don't know. You were such a change so different from all Father's crowd. You never talked about horses for one thing. You've no idea how sick I was of horses - and what the odds were likely to be for the Newmarket Cup! You came to dinner one night - do you remember? - and I sat next to you and asked you what bimetallism was, and you told me - really told me! It took the whole of dinner - six courses - we were in funds at the moment and had a French chef!"
"It must have been extremely boring," said Jeremy.
"It was fascinating! Nobody had ever treated me seriously before. And you were so polite and yet never seemed to look at me or think I was nice or good looking or anything. It put me on my mettle. I swore I'd make you notice me."
Jeremy Cloade said grimly: "I noticed you all right. I went home that evening and didn't sleep a wink. You had a blue dress with cornflowers..."
There was silence for a moment or two, then Jeremy cleared his throat.
"Er - all that is a long time ago..."
She came quickly to the rescue of his embarrassment.
"And we're now a middle-aged married couple in difficulties, looking for the best way out."
"After what you've just told me, Frances, it makes it a thousand times worse that this - this disgrace -"
She interrupted him.
"Let us please get things clear. You are being apologetic because you've fallen foul of the law. You may be prosecuted - go to prison." (He winced.) "I don't want that to happen. I'll fight like anything to stop it, but don't credit me with moral indignation. We're not a moral family, remember. Father, in spite of his attractiveness, was a bit of a crook. And there was Charles - my cousin. They hushed it up and he wasn't prosecuted, and they hustled him off to the Colonies. And there was my cousin Gerald - he forged a cheque at Oxford. But he went to fight and got a posthumous V.C. for complete bravery and devotion to his men and superhuman endurance. What I'm trying to say is people are like that - not quite bad or quite good. I don't suppose I'm particularly straight myself - I have been because there hasn't been any temptation to be otherwise. But what I have got is plenty of courage and -" (she smiled at him) "I'm loyal!"
"My dear!" He got up and came over to her. He stooped and put his lips to her hair.
"And now," said Lord Edward Trenton's daughter, smiling up at him, "what are we going to do? Raise money somehow?"
Jeremy's face stiffened.
"I don't see how."
"A mortgage on this house. Oh, I see," she was quick, "that's been done. I'm stupid. Of course you've done all the obvious things. It's a question then, of a touch? Who can we touch? I suppose there's only one possibility. Gordon's widow - the dark Rosaleen!"
Jeremy shook his head dubiously.
"It would have to be a large sum... And it can't come out of capital. The money's only in trust for her for her life."
"I hadn't realised that. I thought she had it absolutely. What happens when she dies?"
"It comes to Gordon's next of kin. That is to say it is divided between myself, Lionel, Adela, and Maurice's son, Rowley."
"It comes to us..." said Frances slowly.
Something seemed to pass through the room - a cold air - the shadow of a thought.
Frances said: "You didn't tell me that... I thought she got it for keeps - that she could leave it to any one she liked?"
"No. By the statute relating to intestacy of 1925..."
It is doubtful whether Frances listened to his explanation. She said when his voice stopped:
"It hardly matters to us personally. We'll be dead and buried, long before she's middle-aged. How old is she? Twenty-five - twenty-six? She'll probably live to be seventy."
Jeremy Cloade said doubtfully:
"We might ask her for a loan - putting it on family grounds? She may be a generous-minded girl - really we know so little of her -"
Frances said: "At any rate we have been reasonably nice to her - not catty like Adela. She might respond."
Her husband said warningly:
"There must be no hint of - er - real urgency."
Frances said impatiently: "Of course not! The trouble is that it's not the girl herself we shall have to deal with. She's completely under the thumb of that brother of hers."
"A very unattractive young man," said Jeremy Cloade.
Frances sudden smile flashed out.
"Oh, no," she said. "He's attractive. Most attractive. Rather unscrupulous, too, I should imagine. But then as far as that goes, I'm unscrupulous too!"
Her smile hardened. She looked up at her husband.
"We're not going to be beaten, Jeremy," she said. "There's bound to be some way... if I have to rob a bank!"
Chapter 3
"Money!" said Lynn.
Rowley Cloade nodded. He was a big square young man with a brick-red skin, thoughtful blue eyes and very fair hair. He had a slowness that seemed more purposeful than ingrained. He used deliberation as others use quickness of repartee.
"Yes," he said, "everything seems to boil down to money these days."
"But I thought farmers had done so well during the war?"
"Oh, yes - but that doesn't do you any permanent good. In a year we'll be back where we were - with wages up, workers unwilling, everybody dissatisfied and nobody knowing where they are. Unless, of course, you can farm in a really big way. Old Gordon knew. That was where he was preparing to come in."
"And now -" Lynn asked.
Rowley grinned.
"And now Mrs Gordon goes to London and spends a couple of thousand on a nice mink coat."
"It's - it's wicked!"
"Oh, no -" He paused and said: "I'd rather like to give you a mink coat, Lynn -"
"What's she like, Rowley?" She wanted to get a contemporary judgment.
"You'll see her tonight. At Uncle Lionel's and Aunt Kathie's party."
"Yes, I know. But I want you to tell me. Mums says she's half-witted?"
Rowley considered.
"Well - I shouldn't say intellect was her strong point. But I think really she only seems half-witted because she's being so frightfully careful."
"Careful? Careful about what?"
"Oh, just careful. Mainly, I imagine, about her accent - she's got quite a brogue, you know, or else about the right fork, and any literary allusions that might be flying around."
"Then she really is - quite - well, uneducated?"
Rowley grinned.
"Oh, she's not a lady, if that's what you mean. She's got lovely eyes, and a very good complexion - and I suppose old Gordon fell for that, with her extraordinary air of being quite unsophisticated. I don't think it's put on - though of course you never know. She just stands around looking dumb and letting David run her."
"David?"
"That's the brother. I should say there's nothing much about sharp practice he doesn't know!" Rowley added: "He doesn't like any of us much."
"Why should he?" said Lynn sharply, and added as he looked at her, slightly surprised, "I mean you don't like him."
"I certainly don't. You won't either. He's not our sort."
"You don't know who I like, Rowley, or who I don't! I've seen a lot of the world in the last three years. I - I think my outlook has broadened."
"You've seen more of the world than I have, that's true."
He said it quietly - but Lynn looked up sharply.
There had been something - behind those even tones.
He returned her glance squarely, his face unemotional. It had never, Lynn remembered, been easy to know exactly what Rowley was thinking.
