The Love Child

“You are wrong there, Prim Priscilla. The little girl is on fire for me. You should know I have a special way with women. I am irresistible. You couldn’t resist me, could you? You had better take care. I have a fondness for you because it was such a pleasant night we had together, but I could be angry with you. Now keep out of my affairs. Carlotta and I are going to marry. There is nothing you can do to stop that.”

“What are you doing here … in this house?”

“Staying here for a while until we leave. We shall be going soon and then there will be that belated ceremony.”

“She knows you are here … in this house?”

“Yes, in her house. It will be our house soon.”

“As you hope her fortune will be.”

“It is customary for a man to take charge of his wife’s affairs, you know.”

“Please, please go away. She is young and you are old … old.”

“Experienced,” he corrected. “That is what she likes. She wants no green boys, that one.”

“Have you no shame?”

“No,” he answered, “none.”

“What are you proposing to do?”

“Ha! You come here trying to probe our secrets. I am mad with love for Carlotta.”

“And her fortune.”

“It is part of her charm. I am mad with love for all that but otherwise perfectly sane.”

I felt limp with helplessness. What could I do? One thing I could not do was bear to stand there any longer and bandy words with him while I looked at his mocking face.

I turned and went out to my horse.

I rode back in a kind of daze. I had to do something. What?

Whichever way I looked I saw only one thing. Nothing could save Carlotta but the death of Beaumont Granville. Whatever else happened he would always be there. He would never give up. And he had bewitched her. He would have to die.

When the idea came to me, oddly enough, I felt better. I went along to the gun room. I used to watch Carl and Benjie at shooting practice and I had now and then joined them.

“Not a bad shot for a girl,” Leigh had once said.

It’s the only way, I told myself. I took a small pistol. It was one I had used before.

It seemed like an old friend.

I took it up to my bedroom and hid it in a drawer.

Could I possibly do this? Could I commit murder? I suppose in certain circumstances anyone could, if it was the only way out of an intolerable situation.

It would be over in a few minutes. I would go into the house. I would call him. He would stand on the stairs. All I had to do was raise the gun and fire straight at him.

It would be the end … and it was the only way if Carlotta was not going to be launched into a life of misery.

I owed this to her. I had not owned her when she was born. I had let another woman take her. I must save her from this sadistic brute, for I could clearly imagine what he would do to her.

What he had done to me had scarred me, I believed forever. I had done that for my father and I would do this for Carlotta. I would choose my moment as he stood there on the stairs mocking me.

I felt better now.

There was the day to be lived through. It seemed so long. In the early afternoon I passed my father on the Starrs. He looked at me intently.

He said: “You don’t look well.”

“I’m surprised that you noticed,” I answered.

“I noticed. You’re fretting about that girl of yours, I suppose?”

I did not answer.

He took me by the arm and drew me into the room which was called his private study because he did his estate work there.

He looked at me quite kindly.

“She’s a girl who can look after herself,” he said. “She has a will of her own. If she wants to marry this man, she will, you know. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“There is something I can do.”

“What?”

“I can stop the marriage and I will.”

“We can keep them apart for a while but that may not work. She’s a determined young woman.”

“And he is determined to get her fortune.”

“He’s got something of a reputation. But it could work. Sometimes a man gives up his old ways and settles down.”

I knew he was thinking of himself.

I said: “Not this man.”

“How do you know?”

“I do know something of him.”

“Reputations get exaggerated.”

“You said we had parted them. We haven’t. He’s at Enderby Hall.”

“At Enderby Hall!”

“Yes. I saw him there this morning.”

My father laughed. “Her house, of course. Well, I suppose if she says he can be there he has a right to be. You’ve led a sheltered life. You’ve heard tales of him and you’re upsetting yourself and everyone else because of it. If she’s set her mind on him and he on her … well, let them marry. It’s experience for her. It’ll be a taste of life.”

“You don’t know the sort of man he is.”

“Look, daughter, all men have certain experiences in their youth. You don’t expect them to behave like monks, do you?”

Then suddenly I was shouting at him. “I know this man. Do you remember lying in a filthy prison in Dorchester? Do you remember being taken to a room of your own and the next morning being released?”

He looked at me in surprise. “Of course I remember. It’s something I shall never forget. What has it to do with …”