4
The affair involved all the family in very disagreeable publicity. The papers made a good deal of it, and shortly after Eustace’s arrest a number of little paragraphs appeared, chiefly in local and evening papers, with melodramatic headlines, such as son finds father hanging; found in the river; wife’s terrible discovery in barn, and so forth. Most of Eustace’s victims were small men who had put their life’s savings into what appeared to them a safe and remunerative market, and when these little men of Highgate and Peckham and Barnet were forced to realise that nothing would ever be recovered, numbers of insignificant anonymous tragedies were reported in little towns and suburbs and the remoter districts of London. Isobel and Laura said candidly that what Eustace was known to have done was worse than any murder, but Richard told them bitterly to stop that folly. It did no good to anyone, and it blackened the case against their brother-in-law.
Richard was paying his share of the general expense and it was proving a heavy one. The appointment for which he had run such risks and schemed so dearly went to Pollenfex after all. (In point of fact, though Richard never knew this, he would have been defeated in any case, the history of Eustace’s defalcations not affecting F——’s decision. Ironically enough, it was the very expense and luxury into which he had plunged that had destroyed Richard’s chances, F—— shrewdly observing that a man so reckless with his own money would be even less temperate when he had control of public funds.) Laura took the affair far more phlegmatically than he, but then she had nothing to lose—except her lover, who retired completely after the débâcle, leaving her to put the pieces of her life together in what proved to be a quite satisfactory pattern. Anyway, she was happier after this than she had been since her marriage. One or two people, including Miles Amery, were privileged to hear a point of view so unconventional and so much at variance with her husband’s interests that the majority would have been shocked at her heartlessness and lack of co-operation with Richard’s ambitions.
“All these years, Miles,” she said, “I’ve never had any life of my own. Richard’s friends have come crowding in, claiming my attention and my hospitality and my brain-force. There’s never been anything left over for my own enjoyment or profit. Now all that crowd will disappear; we’re pretty sure to be more or less ostracised in the fashionable and influential circles Richard loves. I doubt if he’s ever able to climb back. Besides, it’s been such a blow to him, I think it will be a long time before he recovers his second wind. And this is my turn. Now, at last, I shall have my house to myself, where my friends can come in, and where I can be alone.” (But she didn’t, of course, refer here to any house made with hands.) “It’s what I’ve dreamed of, hoped for, prayed for, for years.”
Olivia made the Manor House intolerable by her hysterics and the numberless scenes in which she insisted on implicating every member of the family. She fainted, she cried, she raved about traitors and plots and snares. She called perpetually for her sons to come to her, but they were spending their holiday in Switzerland and could not be reached at a moment’s notice. When she was not fainting or screaming, she went about like a madwoman, silent for long stretches of time, and then suddenly bursting into wild and unfounded accusations against each member of the household in turn, even abusing the servants, to the effect that he or she was responsible for a diabolical trap into which her innocent and unsuspecting husband had been enticed.
Amy was too much enraged at her own position to pay much heed to anyone else. Blind with passion at the cruel trick her father had played upon her, she demanded ferociously whether she was expected to find some remunerative employment at her age, she who was trained for no particular work, and who had, naturally, expected to be left provided for.
“What am I supposed to do?” she cried in turn to each of her embarrassed relatives. “I’m a woman of forty and I haven’t been taught to earn a living. It’s all very well for young girls; their position’s quite different. I suppose you all expect me to take a post as a working housekeeper somewhere, doing floors and emptying slops and peeling potatoes.”
In due course, she addressed this rhetorical question to old Mrs. Gray, who replied in a remote and tranquil voice, “I’m sure I don’t know why you should expect anything so foolish, Amy. You will live with me, of course. Mr. Frobisher says he can find just enough to pay the rent of a little flat somewhere—at the seaside. I’ve always hoped I should die by the sea—Felixstowe, perhaps, or Worthing, or Bournemouth, but that’s rather expensive. I’m sure we shall manage quite well. We’re accustomed to one another, and at my age I should have to have some kind of companion.”
She actually smiled as she spoke. Amy had become something very remote in her imagination, of little more consequence, really, than the furniture among which she moved. Miles was astounded at the eagerness and warmth in the old voice. He had, like everyone else, taken
