Taken at the Flood Read online

  “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 halfway 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 Furrowbank. 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 fitted 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 realized 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 milch cow? All of you at her—hinting, asking, begging. And behind her back? Sneering at her, patronizing 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 washleather 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 realize 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!”

  “David—don’t say such awful things.”

  “Listen,” he gripped her arm. “If ever I’m not here, look after yourself, Rosaleen. Life isn’t safe, remember—it’s dangerous, damned dangerous. And I’ve an idea it’s specially dangerous for you.”

  Seven

  I

  “Rowley, can you let me have five hundred pounds?”

  Rowley stared at Lynn. She stood there, out of breath from running, her face pale, her mouth set.

  He sat soothingly and rather as he would speak to a horse:

  “There, there, ease up, old girl. What’s all this about?”

  “I want five hundred pounds.”

  “I could do with it myself, for that matter.”

  “But Rowley, this is serious. Can’t you lend me five hundred pounds?”

  “I’m overdrawn as it is. That new tractor—”

  “Yes, yes—” She pushed aside the farming details. “But you could raise money somehow—if you had to, couldn’t you?”

  “What do you want it for, Lynn? Are you in some kind of a hole?”

  “I want it for him—” She jerked her head backwards towards the big square house on the hill.

  “Hunter? Why on earth—”

  “It’s Mums. She’s been borrowing from him. She’s—she’s in a bit of a jam about money.”

  “Yes, I expect she is.” Rowley sounded sympathetic. “Damned hard lines on her. I wish I could help a bit—but I can’t.”

  “I can’t stand her borrowing money from David!”

  “Hold hard, old girl. It’s Rosaleen who actually has to fork out the cash. And after all, why not?”

  “Why not? You say, ‘Why not,’ Rowley?”

  “I don’t see why Rosaleen shouldn’t come to the rescue once in a while. Old Gordon put us all in a spot by pegging out without a will. If the position is put clearly to Rosaleen she must see herself that a spot of help all round is indicated.”

  “You haven’t borrowed from her?”

  “No—well—that’s different. I can’t very well go and ask a woman for money. Sort of thing you don’t like doing.”

  “Can’t you see that I don’t like being—being beholden to David Hunter?”

  “But you’re not. It isn’t his money.”

  “That’s just what it is, actually. Rosaleen’s completely under his thumb.”

  “Oh, I dare say. But it isn’t his legally.”

  “And you won’t, you can’t—lend me some money?”

  “Now look here, Lynn—if you were in some real jam—blackmail or debts—I might be able to sell land or stock—but it would be a pretty desperate proceeding. I’m only just keeping my head above water as it is. And what with not knowing what this damned Government is going to do next—hampered at every turn—snowed under with forms, up to midnight trying to fill them in sometimes—it’s too much for one man.”

  Lynn said bitterly:

  “Oh, I know! If only Johnnie hadn’t been killed—”

  He shouted out:

  “Leave Johnnie out of it! Don’t talk about that!”

  She stared at him, astonished. His face was red and congested. He seemed beside himself with rage.

  Lynn turned away and went slowly back to the White House.

  II

  “Can’t you give it back, Mums?”

  “Really, Lynn darling! I went straight to the bank with it. And then I paid Arthurs and Bodgham and Knebworth. Knebworth was getting quite abusive. Oh, my dear, the relief! I haven’t been able to sleep for nights and nights. Really, Rosaleen was most understanding and nice about it.”

  Lynn said bitterly:

  “And I suppose you’ll go to her again and again now.”

  “I hope it won’t be necessary, dear. I shall try to be very economical, you know that. But of course everything is so expensive nowadays. And it gets worse and worse.”

  “Yes, and we shall get worse and worse. Going on cadging.”

  Adela flushed.

  “I don’t think that’s a nice way of putting it, Lynn. As I explained to Rosaleen, we had always depended on Gordon.”

  “We shouldn’t have. That’s what’s wrong, we shouldn’t have,” Lynn added, “He’s right to despise us.”

  “Who despises us?”

  “That odious David Hunter.”

  “Really,” said Mrs. Marchmont with dignity, “I don’t see that it can matter in the least what David Hunter thinks. Fortunately he wasn’t at Furrowbank this morning—otherwise I dare say he would have influenced that girl. She’s completely under his thumb, of course.”

  Lynn shifted from one foot to the other.

  “What did you mean, Mums, when you said—that first morning I was home—‘If he is her brother?’”

  “Oh, that.” Mrs. Marchmont looked slight
ly embarrassed. “Well, there’s been a certain amount of gossip, you know.”

  Lynn merely waited inquiringly. Mrs. Marchmont coughed.

  “That type of young woman—the adventuress type (of course poor Gordon was completely taken in)—they’ve usually got a—well, a young man of their own in the background. Suppose she says to Gordon she’s got a brother—wires to him in Canada or wherever he was. This man turns up. How is Gordon to know whether he’s her brother or not? Poor Gordon, absolutely infatuated no doubt, and believing everything she said. And so her ‘brother’ comes with them to England—poor Gordon quite unsuspecting.”

  Lynn said fiercely:

  “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it!”

  Mrs. Marchmont raised her eyebrows.

  “Really, my dear—”

  “He’s not like that. And she—she isn’t either. She’s a fool perhaps, but she’s sweet—yes, she’s really sweet. It’s just people’s foul minds. I don’t believe it, I tell you.”

  Mrs. Marchmont said with dignity:

  “There’s really no need to shout.”

  Eight

  I

  It was a week later that the 5:20 train drew into Warmsley Heath Station and a tall bronzed man with a knapsack got out.

  On the opposite platform a cluster of golfers were waiting for the up train. The tall bearded man with the knapsack gave up his ticket and passed out of the station. He stood uncertainly for a minute or two—then he saw the signpost: Footpath to Warmsley Vale—and directed his steps that way with brisk determination.

  II

  At Long Willows Rowley Cloade had just finished making himself a cup of tea when a shadow falling across the kitchen table made him look up.

  If for just a moment he thought the girl standing just inside the door was Lynn, his disappointment turned to surprise when he saw it was Rosaleen Cloade.

  She was wearing a frock of some peasant material in bright broad stripes of orange and green—the artificial simplicity of which had run into more money than Rowley could ever have imagined possible.

  Up to now he had always seen her dressed in expensive and somewhat towny clothes which she wore with an artificial air—much, he had thought, as a mannequin might display dresses that did not belong to her but to the firm who employed her.