Rosaleen was looking very uncomfortable.
"Oh, dear," she said. "I didn't know. I never thought... I - well, of course, I'll ask David..."
Grimly gripping the sides of her chair, Adela said, desperately:
"Couldn't you give me a cheque - now..."
"Yes - yes, I suppose I could." Rosaleen, looking startled, got up, went to the desk. She hunted in various pigeonholes and finally produced a cheque-book. "Shall I - how much?"
"Would - would five hundred pounds -"
Adela broke off.
"Five hundred pounds," Rosaleen wrote obediently.
A load slipped off Adela's back. After all, it had been easy! She was dismayed as it occurred to her that it was less gratitude that she felt than a faint scorn for the easiness of her victory! Rosaleen was surely strangely simple.
The girl rose from the writing-desk and came across to her. She held out the cheque awkwardly. The embarrassment seemed now entirely on her side.
"I hope this is all right. I'm really so sorry -"
Adela took the cheque. The unformed childish hand straggled across the pink paper. Mrs Marchmont. Five hundred pounds. Rosaleen Cloade.
"It's very good of you, Rosaleen. Thank you."
"Oh please - I mean - I ought to have thought -"
"Very good of you, my dear."
With the cheque in her handbag Adela Marchmont felt a different woman. The girl had really been very sweet about it. It would be embarrassing to prolong the interview. She said good-bye and departed.
She passed David in the drive, said "Good morning" pleasantly, and hurried on.
Chapter 6
"What was the Marchmont woman doing here?" demanded David as soon as he got in.
"Oh, David. She wanted money dreadfully badly. I'd never thought -"
"And you gave it her, I suppose."
He looked at her in half-humorous despair.
"You're not to be trusted alone, Rosaleen."
"Oh David, I couldn't refuse. After all -"
"After all - what? How much?"
In a small voice Rosaleen murmured, "Five hundred pounds."
To her relief David laughed.
"A mere flea-bite!"
"Oh, David, it's a lot of money."
"Not to us nowadays, Rosaleen. You never really seem to grasp that you're a very rich woman. All the same if she asked five hundred she'd have gone away perfectly satisfied with two-fifty. You must learn the language of borrowing!"
She murmured, "I'm sorry, David."
"My dear girl! After all, it's your money."
"It isn't. Not really."
"Now don't begin that all over again. Gordon Cloade died before he had time to make a will. That's what's called the luck of the game. We win, you and I. The others - lose."
"It doesn't seem - right."
"Come now, my lovely sister Rosaleen, aren't you enjoying all this? A big house, servants - jewellery? Isn't it a dream come true? Isn't it? Glory be to God, sometimes I think I'll wake up and find it is a dream."
She laughed with him, and watching her narrowly, he was satisfied. He knew how to deal with his Rosaleen. It was inconvenient, he thought, that she should have a conscience, but there it was.
"It's quite true, David, it is like a dream - or like something on the Pictures. I do enjoy it all. I do really."
"But what we have we hold," he warned her. "No more gifts to the Cloades, Rosaleen. Every one of them has got far more money than either you or I ever had."
"Yes, I suppose that's true."
"Where was Lynn this morning?" he asked.
"I think she'd gone to Long Willows."
To Long Willows - to see Rowley - the oaf - the clodhopper! His good humour vanished. Set on marrying the fellow, was she?
Moodily he strolled out of the house, up through massed azaleas and out through the small gate on the top of the hill. From there the footpath dipped down the hill and past Rowley's farm.
As David stood there, he saw Lynn Marchmont coming up from the farm. He hesitated for a minute, then set his jaw pugnaciously and strolled down the hill to meet her. They met by a stile just half-way up the hill.
"Good morning," said David. "When's the wedding?"
"You've asked that before," she retorted. "You know well enough. It's in June."
"You're going through with it?"
"I don't know what you mean, David."
"Oh, yes, you do." He gave a contemptuous laugh. "Rowley. What's Rowley?"
"A better man than you - touch him if you dare," she said lightly.
"I've no doubt he's a better man than me - but I do dare. I'd dare anything for you, Lynn."
She was silent for a moment or two. She said at last:
"What you don't understand is that I love Rowley."
"I wonder."
She said vehemently:
"I do, I tell you. I do."
David looked at her searchingly.
"We all see pictures of ourselves - of ourselves as we want to be. You see yourself in love with Rowley, settling down with Rowley, living here contented with Rowley, never wanting to get away. But that's not the real you, is it, Lynn?"
"Oh, what is the real me? What's the real you, if it comes to that? What do you want?"
"I'd have said I wanted safety, peace after storm, ease after troubled seas. But I don't know. Sometimes I suspect, Lynn, that both you and I want - trouble." He added moodily, "I wish you'd never turned up here. I was remarkably happy until you came."
"Aren't you happy now?"
He looked at her. She felt excitement rising in her. Her breath became faster. Never had she felt so strongly David's queer moody attraction. He shot out a hand, grasped her shoulder, swung her round...
Then as suddenly she felt his grasp slacken. He was staring over her shoulder up the hill. She twisted her head to see what it was that had caught his attention.
A woman was just going through the small gate above Furrowback. David said sharply: "Who's that?"
Lynn said:
"It looks like Frances."
"Frances?" He frowned.
"What does Frances want?"
"My dear Lynn! Only those who want something drop in to see Rosaleen. Your mother has already dropped in this morning."
"Mother?" Lynn drew back. She frowned. "What did she want?"
"Don't you know? Money!"
"Money?" Lynn stiffened.
"She got it all right," said David. He was smiling now the cool cruel smile that flitted his face so well.
They had been near a moment or two ago, now they were miles apart, divided by a sharp antagonism.
Lynn cried out, "Oh, no, no, no!"
He mimicked her.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"I don't believe it! How much?"
"Five hundred pounds."
She drew her breath in sharply.
David said musingly:
"I wonder how much Frances is going to ask for? Really it's hardly safe to leave Rosaleen alone for five minutes! The poor girl doesn't know how to say no."
"Have there been - who else?"
David smiled mockingly.
"Aunt Kathie had incurred certain debts - oh, nothing much, a mere two hundred and fifty covered them - but she was afraid it might get to the doctor's ears! Since they had been occasioned by payments to mediums, he might not have been sympathetic. She didn't know, of course," added David, "that the doctor himself had applied for a loan."
Lynn said in a low voice, "What you must think of us - what you must think of us!"
Then, taking him by surprise, she turned and ran helter-skelter down the hill to the farm.
He frowned as he watched her go. She had gone to Rowley, flown there as a homing pigeon flies, and the fact disturbed him more than he cared to acknowledge.
He looked up the hill again and frowned.
"No, Frances," he said under his breath. "I think not. You've chosen a bad day," and he strode purposefully up the hill.
He went through the gate and down through the azaleas - crossed the lawn, and came quietly in through the window of the drawing-room just as Frances Cloade was saying:
"- I wish I could make it all clearer. But you see, Rosaleen, it really is frightfully difficult to explain -"
A voice from behind her said:
"Is it?"
Frances Cloade turned sharply. Unlike Adela Marchmont she had not deliberately tried to find Rosaleen alone. The sum needed was sufficiently large to make it unlikely that Rosaleen would hand it over without consulting her brother.
Actually, Frances would far rather have discussed the matter with David and Rosaleen together, than have David feel that she had tried to get money out of Rosaleen during his absence from the house.
She had not heard him come through the window, absorbed as she was in the presentation of a plausible case. The interruption startled her, and she realised also that David Hunter was, for some reason, in a particularly ugly mood.
"Oh, David," she said easily, "I'm glad you've come. I've just been telling Rosaleen. Gordon's death has left Jeremy in no end of a hole, and I'm wondering if she could possibly come to the rescue. It's like this -"
Her tongue flowed on swiftly - the large sum involved - Gordon's backing - promised verbally - Government restrictions - mortgages -
A certain admiration stirred in the darkness of David's mind. What a damned good liar the woman was! Plausible, the whole story. But not the truth. No, he'd take his oath on that. Not the truth! What, he wondered, was the truth? Jeremy been getting himself into Queer Street? It must be something pretty desperate, if he was allowing Frances to come and try this stunt. She was a proud woman, too -
He said, "Ten thousand?"
Rosaleen murmured in an awed voice:
"That's a lot of money."
Frances said swiftly:
"Oh, I know it is. I wouldn't come to you if it wasn't such a difficult sum to raise. But Jeremy would never have gone into the deal if it hadn't been for Gordon's backing. It's so dreadfully unfortunate that Gordon should have died so suddenly -"
"Leaving you all out in the cold?" David's voice was unpleasant. "After a sheltered life under his wing."
There was a faint flash in Frances' eyes as she said:
"You put things so picturesquely!"
"Rosaleen can't touch the capital, you know. Only the income. And she pays about nineteen and six in the pound income tax."
"Oh, I know. Taxation's dreadful these days. But it could be managed, couldn't it? We'd repay -"
He interrupted:
"It could be managed. But it won't be!"
Frances turned swiftly to Rosaleen.
"Rosaleen, you're such a generous -"
David's voice cut across her speech.
"What do you Cloades think Rosaleen is - a milk cow? All of you at her - hinting, asking, begging. And behind her back? Sneering at her, patronising her, resenting her, hating her, wishing her dead -"
"That's not true," Frances cried.
"Isn't it? I tell you I'm sick of you all! She's sick of you all. You'll get no money out of us, so you can stop coming and whining for it? Understand?"
His face was black with fury.
Frances stood up. Her face was wooden and expressionless. She drew on a wash-leather glove absently, yet with attention, as though it was a significant action.
"You make your meaning quite plain, David," she said.
Rosaleen murmured:
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry..."
Frances paid no attention to her. Rosaleen might not have been in the room.
She took a step towards the window and paused, facing David.
"You have said that I resent Rosaleen. That is not true. I have not resented Rosaleen - but I do resent - you!"
"What do you mean?"
He scowled at her.
"Women must live. Rosaleen married a very rich man, years older than herself. Why not? But you! You must live on your sister, live on the fat of the land, live softly - on her."
"I stand between her and harpies."
They stood looking at each other. He was aware of her anger and the thought flashed across him that Frances Cloade was a dangerous enemy, one who could be both unscrupulous and reckless.
When she opened her mouth to speak, he even felt a moment's apprehension. But what she said was singularly noncommittal.
"I shall remember what you have said, David."
Passing him, she went out of the window.
He wondered why he felt so strongly that the words had been a threat.
Rosaleen was crying.
"Oh, David, David - you oughtn't to have been saying those things to her. She's the one of them that's been the nicest to me."
He said furiously: "Shut up, you little fool. Do you want them to trample all over you and bleed you of every penny?"
"But the money - if - if it isn't rightfully mine -"
She quailed before his glance.
"I - I didn't mean that, David."
"I should hope not."
Conscience, he thought, was the devil!
He hadn't reckoned with the item of Rosaleen's conscience. It was going to make things awkward in the future.
The future? He frowned as he looked at her and let his thoughts race ahead. Rosaleen's future... His own... He'd always known what he wanted... he knew now... But Rosaleen? What future was there for Rosaleen?
As his face darkened, she cried out - suddenly shivering:
"Oh! Someone's walking over my grave."
He said, looking at her curiously:
"So you realise it may come to that?"
"What do you mean, David?"
"I mean that five - six - seven people have every intention to hurry you into your grave before you're due there!"
"You don't mean - murder -" Her voice was horrified. "You think these people would do murder - not nice people like the Cloades."
"I'm not sure that it isn't just nice people like the Cloades who do do murder. But they won't succeed in murdering you while I'm here to look after you. They'd have to get me out of the way first. But if they did get me out of the way - well - look out for yourself!"
