With All My Worldly Goods Page 4

  But under his cool gaze she said at last: “No. I have no objection.” Then, after a moment, she added as casually as she could: “How long do you expect to stay in England?”

  She didn’t look at him as she asked the question. She didn’t want him to see how important the answer was.

  “How long?” He repeated the words just as casually as she. “Oh, I shall not be returning to Mexico at all.”

  He didn’t seem to think it necessary to add anything to the bare statement of fact. And during the rest of breakfast Leonora found neither the courage nor the opportunity to pursue the subject.

  It was half-way through the morning when a message was brought to her in her room—Would she come down to the lounge if it was convenient? Mr. Mickleham and his sister were waiting to see her there.

  Swallowing her misgivings as well as she could, Leonora ran the comb through the thick waves of her hair, glanced a little nervously at herself in the mirror, and went downstairs to the two people who seemed likely to have the ordering of her life, at any rate for the next year.

  When she came into the lounge they were absorbed in their conversation, so that she had a moment to observe them before they noticed her.

  She was not surprised to see that Agatha Mickleham was an exceedingly good-looking woman—Bruce’s sister could scarcely be anything else, she supposed a little reluctantly—but Leonora guessed her age at a good ten years older than her brother.

  Miss Mickleham was apparently doing most of the talking just then, but, silent as he was, Bruce still somehow dominated the scene in that disturbingly inevitable way of his.

  He turned his head at the sound of Leonora’s step, and as he stood up—dark and tall yet curiously graceful—she had the inescapable impression that he dominated his sister too.

  Miss Mickleham’s manner was courteous and even kind, as the introductions were made, but Leonora noticed that she was inclined to glance from time to time at her brother, as though expecting to take her cue from him.

  That too was not at all surprising, Leonora thought.

  “Bruce has been telling me about you,” Miss Mickleham said, “and I’m afraid everything must seem very sad and bewildering to you just now. But I hope we shall be able to make you happy.”

  It seemed to Leonora the first natural and kindly remark that had been made to her since Bruce Mickleham had walked into her life, upsetting everything, and she felt a warm rush of gratitude.

  “It’s very kind of you to trouble about me at all,” she said earnestly. “Especially as—as Mr. Mickleham tells me you came back from Scotland on purpose.”

  “Well, I should have come back anyway as Bruce is here,” Miss Mickleham assured her. And, having seen them together, Leonora felt quite sure that was true. Agatha Mickleham appeared more than willing to dance attendance on her brother. “And as, of course, my home is also his home when he is in England, I hope you, as his ward, will come there too,” she added a little formally.

  “Miss Lora has already intimated that she has no objection to living in our house,” Bruce observed dryly.

  Leonora, who had been touched by his sister’s more gracious way of putting things, flushed with resentment at the interruption.

  “All the same,” she said sharply, “I naturally feel happier to have Miss Mickleham’s own invitation to stay in her house.”

  Miss Mickleham seemed more agitated than grateful at this polite distinction.

  “Oh, it’s Bruce’s house, too, of course, you understand,” she explained nervously.

  While her brother merely remarked imperturbably: “It isn’t exactly an invitation. It’s an arrangement.”

  “In any case, we are very pleased to have you, my dear,” Miss Mickleham said quickly, evidently anxious to avoid any friction.

  To which Bruce added: “Oh, very pleased,” with a grim little smile that rather disconcerted Leonora.

  It was all such a curious and disturbing position, she thought unhappily. If anyone had told her twenty-four hours ago that the next day would find her preparing to make her home with two strangers, she would have been completely incredulous.

  But so it was, and there didn’t appear to be any help for it. Even seventy thousand pounds seemed inadequate to save her from the humiliating position of having to do more or less what Bruce Mickleham told her. But then, of course, the seventy thousand pounds didn’t seem very real to her. She felt that five pound notes in her handbag would have been a great deal more convincing.

  Which reminded her how little there actually was there.

  However, it was beyond her to ask her guardian (how strange that seemed!) for money at the moment. She supposed there would be some arrangement about an allowance later, but if possible she would rather leave it to him to take the initiative. She had told him the evening before that she had practically no money. He would be bound to do something about it soon.

  Leonora felt her resentment against him growing every minute. It somehow seemed insulting that she had to stand by and see him pay her hotel bill as well as his own; she hated having to climb meekly into the taxi while he directed everything and issued orders in that arrogantly efficient way of his; and, as she sat there, silent but seething, while they drove through the smooth greenness of Regent’s Park, she thought for the twentieth time:

  “Oh, Daddy—I don’t want to be undutiful, but I think you must have been mad, dear.”

  It didn’t take very long to reach the Micklehams’ house—a moderately large, moderately handsome and more than moderately gloomy place on the north side of the Park.

  Miss Mickleham appeared to see nothing wrong with it. As they came into the hall she said rather eagerly: “Are you glad to be home, Bruce?”

  “Yes, very glad,” he replied. But to Leonora’s ears his tone was unenthusiastic. However, she was not interested in his home-coming reactions or anything else about him, she told herself. All she wanted was that she need never see him again.

  She heard the front door close behind her. Evidently all the luggage was in. But she would not turn to face her guardian. She had nothing to say to him, and no desire that he should speak to her. She wished they would all just leave her alone, so that she could go away and cry by herself.

  And then she became aware that he was standing just behind her.

  “Lora,” he said, but still she would not turn. “I didn’t say so before”—he was speaking quite quietly, almost gently—“but I want you to be happy here too, you know.”

  It was so entirely different from anything she had expected that she swung round to stare at him with startled eyes, her easily-touched heart beating with quick remorse.

  “You!” she said, and put her hand timidly on his arm. “But I thought—you didn’t care—at all.”

  Suddenly she began to cry, and then she was weeping quite unrestrainedly, though she scarcely knew whether it were with grief or bewilderment or a sort of strange relief.

  Without a word he put his arm round her, and without a word she hid her face against his shoulder. The extraordinary thing was that it all seemed perfectly natural.

  Presently she felt him gently take off her hat and smooth her hair. And after a while she stopped sobbing, although she didn’t move.

  “How bright your hair is,” she heard him say, and there was a note of something like wonder in his voice. “It’s like light—the brightest thing that ever came into this place.”

  Leonora wondered a little if she were dreaming. But the light touch of his hand on her hair was real enough, even if it were also inexplicable. And for some unknown reason it comforted her beyond description.

  At last she looked up and smiled faintly. He didn’t smile. He looked at her with that sombre attention that so oddly fascinated her.

  “I think my sister is coming back,” he said, before she could make any remark, and gently but quite firmly he put her away from him.

  “Will you come upstairs and see your room now, Lora?” Miss Mickleham said. And then
added: “I think it will be best if I call you by your Christian name, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes, of course. Please do.”

  “Am I included in this permission?” Bruce asked gravely, as though he had quite forgotten they had already had a little dispute about her name.

  There was a second’s pause. Then Leonora said: “I suppose so.” And—without looking at him, because she didn’t want him to see her smile—she followed Miss Mickleham upstairs.

  The room intended for her turned out to be large and comfortable, with a good deal of solid elegance about it Aunt Sophie, she knew, would have greatly admired the heavy mahogany “period” furniture, but to Leonora’s mind it was faintly gloomy, like most other things about the house.

  However, she was anxious not to be critical, and she thanked Miss Mickleham and assured her that she would be very comfortable there.

  When she had been left alone, Leonora unpacked her few belongings. She put her various little personal treasures about the room, where they promptly seemed to become lost, and hung her clothes in the enormous fitted wardrobe.

  She stared thoughtfully at the two or three dresses swinging in the vast spaces of the wardrobe.

  “Heiress to seventy thousand pounds,” she said aloud. Then she looked at her reflection in the mirror and shook her head. It didn’t seem any more real simply because she put it into words.

  It was just as dreamlike as everything else in her life now.

  Oh, if only she could wake up and find it was all a dream, she thought passionately. Find that she was still in the train on the way to Southampton. She would willingly have given every penny of the seventy thousand pounds in exchange for the certainty that she was on her way to meet her father once more.

  Leonora sat down slowly at the writing desk by the window. And then the remembrance of the journey to Southampton and the sight of a writing-pad on the desk combined to bring the comforting thought that there was always Martin—and she could write to him and tell him everything.

  It was quite easy describing the actual events. Her pen flew over the paper. But it was when she came to write about her guardian that she began to find it difficult to put her thoughts into words.

  “In a way, he is terribly attractive,” she wrote. That at least was true. “And even when he is horrid, I don’t know that he exactly means to be.” She was not so sure about the accuracy of that and, after sucking the top of her pen thoughtfully, she decided to modify it. “That is to say—I think, for some reason, he is not a very happy person, and that makes him hard. He is a man of terrifically strong personality, and I suppose that’s why you can’t help noticing everything about him in a slightly exaggerated degree.

  “To be quite frank, at the moment I would just as soon never have to see him again. But from one or two little things that have happened, I have an idea that he is a person you might like immensely if you had to get to know him better. So, since it seems I must go on living in this house, I am hoping we shall end by liking each other very well.

  “If not, I’m afraid it will be a case of hating each other most cordially, for I don’t think half measures are possible with him.”

  Leonora read over what she had written, and wondered a little guiltily if she had been altogether too eager to put her feelings on paper. But if she could not write frankly to Martin, what could she do? For there was absolutely no one with whom she could talk things over.

  In the end she wrote a hasty last paragraph, signed herself simply “Yours—Leonora,” and despatched the letter without alteration. And, once it was safely out of the house and in the pillar box, she felt much better about it.

  During the next few days, Leonora did her utmost to adjust herself to the change in her life. By nature, she was eager to please and eager to be loved. “But there doesn’t seem a great deal to get hold of here,” she thought worriedly.

  Miss Mickleham was quite likeable but scarcely lovable and her brother—Well, of course, one didn’t think the word “lovable” in connection with Bruce Mickleham either. But there was some quality about him that made him vital and disturbingly interesting.

  From Martin she received a letter by return post It was full of sympathy—rather indignant sympathy—and was a great deal more affectionate than Leonora had let herself expect.

  She read the letter several times, and each time she dared to look into a not too distant future in which Martin played a very large part, and Bruce Mickleham no part whatever.

  “I hate to take your thoughts from anything so obviously pleasant, Lora—”

  “What?” Lora looked up quickly, to find her guardian watching her rather amusedly across the breakfast table. She flushed deeply, and then could have kicked herself.

  “What is it you want?” she asked a little coldly, as she folded Martin’s letter and put it back again in the envelope.

  “If you are free this morning”—he paused politely, although he must know that she was singularly without engagements—“I think it would be just as well if you came with me to the lawyer.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, don’t you think you had better know just how you stand financially? Inspect your father’s papers—and my credentials, too, come to that. They haven’t all arrived yet, of course, but there is plenty for you to see to, you know.”

  “I see,” Leonora said slowly. “I hadn’t thought—Oh, well, I suppose there are a lot of tiresome formalities?”

  “A good many, I am afraid,” her guardian admitted, still slightly amused, she could see. “You take rather too much on trust, Lora. Now you are a woman of property you must develop a more worldly outlook. I might be an impostor, for all you know.”

  “Oh—” Leonora looked at him thoughtfully. “I don’t think you’re that, somehow,” she said with rather naive emphasis.

  “Many unpleasant things, but not that?” he suggested, in amplification of her remark.

  Leonora bit her lip and looked slightly confused.

  “Well, I’m not, as a matter of fact,” he told her coolly, as he got up from the table. “But don’t forget there are adventurers about, my child—even if they write the most charming of letters.”

  “How dare you!” she exclaimed angrily, lifting her flushed face to his.

  “I really don’t know,” he said with a smile, and he just touched her cheek again in that electrifying manner, before he turned away, leaving her wordless.

  Leonora caught her breath quickly. It was extraordinary that she was unable to decide whether that touch was a caress or an unwelcome sign of guardianly patronage.

  In any case, she resented the way it made her heart beat. And for that reason she tried to maintain a cool, remote manner to him during the interview with the lawyer.

  But her efforts were not made specially easy by the fact that he seemed entirely unaware of her annoyance.

  She was not a little surprised to find that it was the attitude of Mr. Meerwell—senior partner in the firm of Messrs. Meerwell & Roup, Solicitors—which finally brought home to her position as heiress to her father’s fantastic fortune.

  Hitherto her only dealings with a solicitor had been when her aunt had died. Then she had just been Aunt Sophie’s insignificant little niece who wanted to sell up a houseful of old-fashioned furniture.

  But now Mr. Meerwell’s air of genial but respectful congratulation established her unassailably as “a woman of property,” as Bruce had said.

  The sensation was odd, but by no means unpleasing.

  Leonora listened with great attention while he explained the meaning of certain share certificates, deeds of sale and so on. Some of it she understood. Some of it she certainly did not. But, because Bruce Mickleham was sitting there with that slight smile of amused interest, she tried to appear as though the whole business were quite clear to her.

  It was a little disconcerting when Mr. Meerwell ended by saying: “But, of course, Mr. Mickleham will attend to most of this for you until you are twenty-one.”


  She realized then that her guardian had scarcely said a word during the whole interview. It was as though he wished to leave the matter entirely between her and the lawyer, and not say anything that would prejudice or confuse her.

  Possessed of a keen sense of honor herself, Leonora was touched and pleased at this entirely disinterested attitude. And at that moment she even found it in her heart to forgive him for his remark about “adventurers”, for she felt now that it was probably his own scrupulousness which made him critical.

  When they were outside once more, driving homewards, she made an effort to put her feelings into words.

  “Thank you very much indeed for—for taking me,” she said a little diffidently.

  He looked surprised.

  “It was a necessary formality,” he told her with a shrug.

  “Yes, I know. But—oh, well, I suppose there are very different ways of doing these things.”

  “Are there?” He laughed at that “Then thank you, Lora, for mentioning it.”

  She liked him when he laughed, Lora decided suddenly. It was not just that she felt he was less disagreeable or anything. She did definitely like him then. In fact she could almost have explained about Martin.

  But the next moment she realized how absurd that impulse was. And, in any case, what was she thinking of? she asked herself sharply. There was nothing about Martin for her to explain—except silly, happy thoughts which were entirely her own.

  Then two days later, something happened which suggested that those thoughts about Martin had not been so silly, after all.

  Leonora had been most of the afternoon in the library, which was her favorite room in the house. Not that it was any less gloomy than the rest of the place. But long, lonely hours in Aunt Sophie’s house had made her an ardent reader, and there were more than enough books here to satisfy even her appetite.

  The servant’s knock brought her back from a world entirely her own, and for a moment she could scarcely take in what the girl was saying.