stepmother did.'
'No,' said Ellie, 'I don't suppose he would. He was pretty conventional I think.' Then she gave that funny little girl smile again, 'so I suppose I'd have had to be like Desdemona and deceived my father and run away with you.'
'Why did you want to see my mother so much, Ellie?' I asked curiously.
'It's not so much I wanted to see her' said Ellie, 'but I felt terribly bad not doing anything about it. You haven't mentioned your mother very often but I did gather that she's always done everything she could for you. Come to the rescue about things and worked very hard to get: you extra schooling and things like that. And I thought it seemed so mean and purse-proud of me not to go near her.'
'Well, it wouldn't have been your fault,' I said, 'it would have been mine.'
'Yes,' said Ellie. 'I can understand that perhaps you didn't want me to go and see her.'
'You think I've got an inferiority complex about my mother? That's not true at all, Ellie, I assure you it isn't. It wasn't that.'
'No,' said Ellie thoughtfully, 'I know that now. It was because you didn't want her to do a lot of mother stuff.'
'Mother stuff?' I queried.
'Well,' said Ellie, 'I can see that she's the kind of person who would know quite well what other people ought to do. I mean, she'd want you to go in for certain kinds of jobs.'
'Quite right,' I said. 'Steady jobs. Settling down.'
'It wouldn't have mattered very much now,' said Ellie. 'I dare say it was very good advice. But it wouldn't have been the right advice ever for you, Mike. You're not a settler down. You don't want to be steady. You want to go and see things and do things – be on top of the world.'
'I want to stay here in this house with you,' I said.
'For a while, perhaps… And I think you'll alway want to come back here. And so shall I. I think we shall come here every year and I think we shall be happier here than anywhere else. But you'll want to go places too. You'll want to travel and see things and buy things. Perhaps think up new plans for doing the garden here. Perhaps we'll go and look at Italian gardens, Japanese gardens, landscape gardens of all kinds.'
'You make life seem very exciting, Ellie,' I said. 'I'm sorry I was cross.'
'Oh, I don't mind your being cross,' said Ellie. 'I'm not afraid of you.' Then she added, with a frown: 'Your mother didn't like Greta.'
'A lot of people don't like Greta,' I said.
'Including you.'
'Now look here, Ellie, you're always saying that. It's not true. I was just a bit jealous of her at first, that was all. We get on very well now.' And I added, 'I think perhaps she makes people get rather on the defensive.'
'Mr. Lippincott doesn't like her either, does he? He thinks she's got too much influence over me,' said Ellie.
'Has she?'
'I wonder why you should ask that. Yes, I think perhaps she has. It's only natural, she's rather a dominant personality and I had to have someone I could trust in and rely on. Someone who'd stand up for me.'
'And see you got your own way?' I asked her, laughing.
We went into the house arm in arm. For some reason it seemed dark that afternoon. I suppose because the sun had just left the terrace and left a feeling of darkness behind it.
Ellie said, 'What's the matter, Mike?'
'I don't know,' I said. 'Just suddenly I felt as though someone were walking over my grave.'
'A goose is walking over your grave. That's the real saying, isn't it?' said Ellie.
Greta wasn't about anywhere. The servants said she'd gone out for a walk.
Now that my mother knew all about my marriage and had seen Ellie, I did what I had really wanted to do for some time. I sent her a large cheque. I told her to move into a better house and to buy herself any additional furniture she wanted. Things like that. I had doubts of course as to whether she would accept it or not. It wasn't money that I'd worked for and I couldn't honestly pretend it was. As I had expected, she sent the cheque back torn in two with a scrawled note. 'I'll have naught to do with any of this,' she wrote. 'You'll never be different. I know that now. Heaven help you.' I flung it down in front of Ellie.
'You see what my mother's like,' I said. 'I married a rich girl, and I'm living on my rich wife's money and the old battleaxe disapproves of it!'
'Don't worry,' said Ellie. 'Lots of people think that way. She'll get over it. She loves you very much, Mike,' she added.
'Then why does she want to alter me all the time? Make me into her pattern. I'm myself. I'm not anybody else's pattern. I'm not my mother's little boy to be moulded the way she likes. I'm myself. I'm an adult. I'm me!'
'You're you,' said Ellie, 'and I love you.'
And then, perhaps to distract me, she said something rather disquieting.
'What do you think,' she said, 'of this new manservant of ours?'
I hadn't thought about him. What was there to think? If anything I preferred him to our last one who had not troubled to conceal his low opinion of my social status.
'He's all right,' I said. 'Why?'
'I just wondered whether he might be a security man.'
'A security man? What do you mean?'
'A detective. I thought Uncle Andrew might have arranged it.'
'Why should he?'
'Well – possible kidnapping, I suppose. In the States, you know, we usually had guards – especially in the country.'
Another of the disadvantages of having money that I hadn't known about!
'What a beastly idea!'
'Oh, I don't know… I suppose I'm used to it. What does it matter? One doesn't really notice.'
'Is the wife in it, too?'
'She'd have to be, I think, though she cooks very well. I should think that Uncle Andrew, or perhaps Stanford Lloyd, whichever one of them thought of it, must have paid our last ones to leave, and had these two all lined up ready to take their place. It would have been quite easy.'
'Without telling you?' I was still incredulous.
'They'd never dream of telling me. I might have kicked up a fuss. Anyway, I may be quite wrong about them.'
She went on dreamily. 'It's only that one gets a kind of feeling when one's been used to people of that kind always being around.'
'Poor little rich girl,' I said savagely.
Ellie did not mind at all.
'I suppose that does describe it rather well,' she said.
'The things I'm learning about you all the time, Ellie,' I said.
Chapter 17
What a mysterious thing sleep is. You go to bed worrying about gipsies and secret enemies, and detectives planted in your house and the possibilities of kidnapping and a hundred other things; and sleep whisks you away from it all. You travel very far and you don't know where you've been, but when you wake up, it's to a totally new world. No worries, no apprehensions. Instead, when I woke up on the 17th September I was in a mood of boisterous excitement.
'A wonderful day,' I said to myself with conviction. 'This is going to be a wonderful day.' I meant it. I was like those people in advertisements that offer to go anywhere and do anything. I went over plans in my head. I had
