The Fingerprint (15 page)

Johnny’s eyebrows rose.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Mirrie, you’d better go up and lie down.”

“Not yet, she won’t!” said Sid Turner. “Not till we’ve got this clear! Mr. Field said he was going to provide for her. He told her so. And he told her he’d done it. And now she says somebody burned that will and she doesn’t get anything.”

“Not somebody—Mr. Field burned it himself.”

“Sez you!” His tone was a nasty one.

Johnny went to the door and threw it open.

“If you want that lift you can have it. And if you want to know what happened about the will you can ask Mr. Maudsley on the way to Lenton. And after that I think it would be a good plan if you were to mind your own business and leave Mirrie alone.”

Sid looked at Mirrie, who went on crying. He looked at the open door and remembered that it was three miles to Lenton. He said,

“If that’s the way it is I’ll take the lift.”

WHEN THE DOOR was shut behind them Mirrie gave her eyes a last vigorous rub and stood on tiptoe to look at herself in the oval glass which hung above the mantelpiece. It had a faded gold frame, and it didn’t give back a very good reflection. That was one of the things she didn’t understand about Field End, and Abbottsleigh, and the Pondesburys’ place, which was called Reynings. There were a lot of shabby old things in all these houses, and instead of throwing them away and getting new ones the people they belonged to seemed to be proud of how old they were. And they didn’t call them shabby, they said they were antiques. Johnny had said it to her about this very mirror. She couldn’t see herself properly in it at all, but what she did see was enough to make it quite plain that she had better stay where she was until there was a chance of getting away upstairs without meeting anyone. She had really been crying and her eyes were all puffed up. She thought she looked dreadful, and it was no good trying to persuade herself that the glass was to blame, because her eyelids were stiff and sore and even her nose felt swollen. She waited until the sound of voices in the hall had died away and then opened the door a little way and looked out.

There was no one in sight but Georgina. She had her hand on the newel-post at the bottom of the stairs and her foot on the first step, and there whilst Mirrie looked at her she stayed. Well, it didn’t matter if Georgina saw her with her eyes swelled up. She came out of the morning-room, and as she did so Georgina moved and went on up the stairs. She had reached the door of her sitting-room and was opening it, when she looked round and saw Mirrie behind her. She was tired, and she was sad, and she wanted desperately to be alone. There had been the inquest in the morning, and short and formal as the proceedings were, it had been a strain.

There had been a business talk with Mr. Maudsley. And then the relations and a few old friends from a distance who had to be given lunch—elderly people for the most part and all meaning to be kind, but expecting to be considered and to have their endless questions answered. Well, it was over now, and the funeral and that rather dreadful gathering of the mourners for tea. It was over and they were gone, and she wanted to be alone and just stop thinking. Anthony hadn’t come near her all the day, or all yesterday after Mr. Maudsley had told them about the will. That was one of the things she wanted to stop thinking about. He looked hard and stubborn, and as unhappy as she was herself. She just wanted to stop thinking about it all.

She turned her head and saw Mirrie a yard or two behind her—a little damp, tousled Mirrie like a kitten that has been out in the rain. It wasn’t in her to go on and shut the door between them. She said, “Oh, Mirrie, what is it?” and Mirrie began to cry again, not loudly, but in a piteous, heart-broken way. There seemed to be only one thing to do and she did it.

She took the little sobbing creature in and put her into a chair. When she had shut the door she came back, and sat down by her.

“Mirrie, what are you crying about?”

Mirrie said, “It’s all so dreadful—”

“I know. But don’t go on crying. Uncle Jonathan wouldn’t want you to.”

There was a fresh burst of tears.

“He was so good to me!”

“He was very fond of you.”

Mirrie gave a choking sob.

“Are you going to send me back?”

“I want to talk to you about that.”

“Oh, you are! Oh, Georgina, don’t—don’t—please don’t! Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace—and that dreadful Home— you don’t know what it’s like—you don’t really! And I should never see Johnny again! He likes me now, but he’ll forget me if I go away—I know he will! Oh, don’t make me go!”

Georgina said, “I’m not making you do anything. I’ve been talking to Mr. Maudsley about you.”

“What did he say?” Then, as Georgina hesitated, she went on quickly, “He doesn’t like me. He was glad about the will being burned. He won’t let you do anything—I know he won’t.”

“Listen, Mirrie. Uncle Jonathan was going to provide for you. He burned the will he made on Tuesday because it was made when he was angry with me about something. I don’t really know what was in it—he didn’t tell me. He only said that it was unjust, and that he would make another will which would be just to everyone. Well, he died before he could do that, but I want to carry out his wishes as far as I can. That is what I have been talking to Mr. Maudsley about.”

Mirrie had stopped crying. Her eyes were fixed on Georgina’s face and her breath came quickly. Georgina went on speaking.

“Mr. Maudsley says I can’t give you any of the capital, because it is left to me in trust. He and Anthony are the trustees. They will pay me the income from the money, but neither they nor I can give you any of the capital. What I can do, and what I mean to do, is to pay you over some of the income as your share of what he meant to leave you. I don’t know how much it will be, because I don’t know how much there will be altogether. There is always a heavy tax to pay when anyone dies, and I don’t know how much that will come to. But there is no question of your going back to your uncle and aunt if you don’t want to, or to the Home.”

Mirrie said “Oh—” Her mouth made the shape of it, and her eyes were quite round. She said, “Oh, Georgina!” and then, “I shall have some money of my own?”

“Oh, yes. Does that make you feel better?” Mirrie nodded vigorously. “I can give it to Johnny—for his garage.” Georgina’s voice had been warm and kind. It changed. “Has he asked you to do anything like that?” The little tousled head was shaken.

“Oh, no, he hasn’t—but I’d like to. You see, he told me right away that he was quite poor and he would have to marry a girl with a lot of money. He used to joke about it. I told him about Uncle Jonathan saying he was going to treat me like his daughter, and I said if I had any money I could give some of it to him, and he said it couldn’t be done, because men didn’t take money from girls. I did think I would be having quite a lot of money then, because of what Uncle Jonathan said, and when Johnny told me about the garage he wanted to have—” Her voice broke on a sob. Georgina said in a troubled tone, “Mirrie—when did Johnny tell you all this?”

“It was on Wednesday. It had been so dreadful all day and I’d been crying for hours, and Johnny took me out in his car. And he said the only way I could give him any money would be if we were to get married.”

Johnny certainly hadn’t let the grass grow under his feet. Georgina felt a burning indignation as she wondered how soon Mirrie would find out that it was Jonathan Field’s money that he had been making love to, and not penniless Mirrie Field. She was remembering Mirrie’s cry of “Oh, you won’t want to marry me now, will you?” as she ran away from him and from all of them when Mr. Maudsley had finished telling them about the will. Johnny had gone after her, and she was wondering what he had said, and whether it had really come home to Mirrie that it was the money he wanted, and that he wouldn’t marry her now. She said in a hesitating voice,

“Have you talked about it since?”

Mirrie nodded.

“Oh, yes, we have. I thought he wouldn’t want to marry me if there wasn’t any money, but he says he does. He says he would work his fingers to the bone for me, and he promised—he really did promise that I needn’t go back to Uncle Albert and Aunt Grace. He said he had a little money from an aunt and he was looking for a garage he could put it into, and there would be a flat over it and we could live there. Oh, Georgina, it does sound lovely, doesn’t it?”

“He knows you haven’t got any money?”

Mirrie gave a final sob.

“He says he loves me a lot and it doesn’t matter.”

JOHNNY FABIAN came back with that lightening of the spirit which comes from the feeling that a lot of very disagreeable and trying things now lie behind you, and that you can get back to ordinary ways again. He considered Sid Turner to be one of the disagreeable things. He was a good and easy mixer, but even on a desert island he didn’t feel as if it would be possible to mix with Sid. He saw him follow Mr. Maudsley into a first-class carriage and wondered how long it would take a ticket-collector to find out that he had only paid a third-class fare. The thought of Mr. Maudsley’s feelings when it happened cheered him all the way back to Field End.

He went up two steps at a time and along to Georgina’s sitting-room. She had changed into a house-coat and was sitting with her hands in her lap and only one shaded lamp turned on. There was a pleasant small fire, the room felt warm and peaceful. He came over and dropped into a chair on the other side of the hearth.

“Well,” he said, “they’ve gone. Hand in hand so to speak— the revolting Sid and the respectable Maudsley. I don’t somehow feel that a lasting friendship will develop.”

Georgina’s brows drew together.

“I can’t think why he came down.”

“Can’t you, darling? That’s your nice pure mind. Mine tells me he came down to nose out how much Mirrie had come in for and to cash in on it.”

Her eyes rested upon him with rather a curious expression.

“She is afraid of him.”

“Darling, if she hasn’t got any money, I shouldn’t think he would have any designs. I feel we may count on Sid fading out with or without soft music.”

“I don’t think she is fond of him.”

“I’m quite sure she isn’t.”

“But it isn’t very nice for a girl to feel that a man is only wanting her money. Even if she isn’t fond of him it would leave a kind of bruise, don’t you think?”

Johnny said; “Has she been talking to you?”

“I’ve been talking to her.”

“What did she say?”

“What was there for her to say?”

“That I had made love to her?”

“Could she have said that? Would it have been true?”

“Oh, yes.”

“You’ve always been quite good at making love, haven’t you, Johnny?”

He gave a rueful laugh.

“I suppose I have. And anyhow why not? Girls like it. I like it. A good time is had by all, and no harm done.”

“No one who really knew you would take you seriously. Mirrie doesn’t know you very well. It’s a game to you, but it mightn’t be a game to her.”

There was a pause. After a moment he said,

“Suppose it wasn’t a game to me—this time. It isn’t, you know.”

There was another pause and a longer one. He was sitting forward with his chin in his hand looking away from her into the fire. She couldn’t really see his face. In the end she said,

“Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“Surprising, isn’t it? I—I’d like to talk to you if you don’t mind.”

“No, I don’t mind, Johnny.”

“It began when Jonathan brought her here. You know how she strikes you, how she would strike anyone—little stray thing trying to ingratiate itself, hoping it’s going to be allowed to stay. It seemed only natural to make a bit of a fuss of her. Then when I saw she liked it I began to have ideas. Jonathan was falling for her like a ton of bricks, and I thought—well, I suppose you can guess what I thought.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Mind you, I’d have been good to her. I mean—”

He found it impossible to say what he meant. He had lived under the same roof as Georgina for nineteen years and there really wasn’t much they didn’t know about each other. She knew very well what he meant, and she said so.

“You thought Uncle Jonathan would set you up in a business of your own and say, ‘Bless you, my children.’ ”

“Something like that. Mind you, I wasn’t in a hurry. I was looking about for a nice little going concern, and I thought he would be getting used to the idea of my being fond of Mirrie. And then all this had to happen. One minute everything was going on all right, and the next it was all in the melting-pot and nobody knew where anybody stood. Mirrie told me that Jonathan had made a new will. She said he had told her he was treating her as if she was his daughter. I didn’t mean to say anything to her then, but the conversation just came round that way. She thought she was going to have a lot of money, and she wanted to give me some of it. I said it couldn’t be done, and—oh, well, I expect you can see the way it went. I suppose I lost my head—I suppose I didn’t try very hard not to lose it—and before we knew where we were we were talking about the flat over the garage I was going to get! I have got old Aunt Eleanor’s two thousand pounds—”

Georgina said, “Oh, Johnny!”

He looked round with a fleeting grin.

“I know, I know. Jonathan gone and Mirrie an heiress, and I don’t even let twenty-four hours go by before making sure of her—that’s the way it looks.”

“It does rather.”

He said,

“It just happened. You know the way things do. You get on a buttered slide and it just runs away with you.”

Georgina was looking at him. He wasn’t putting on an act. She said,

“You must have had a horrid shock when you found that Jonathan had burned the will he made on Tuesday.”

“Yes—in a way. I suppose you won’t believe me, but—”

“Why shouldn’t I believe you?”

He gave an odd short laugh.

“I don’t find it easy to believe myself! When Maudsley said that about the will being burned and your inheriting under the old one it knocked Mirrie right off her balance. She thought it meant that she would have to go back to that infernal Home, and whether you believe it or not, all I could think about was the best way to look after her and make her feel safe. When she said I wouldn’t want to marry her if she hadn’t got any money I knew that I wanted to marry her more than I had ever wanted anything in all my life. And I went after her and said so.”

Georgina put out her hand to him, but he didn’t see it. He was staring into the fire.

“This afternoon at the funeral that horrible chap Sid Turner came up and spoke to Mirrie. I can’t think what possessed him to show up. No, that isn’t true. It was fairly obvious that it was because he thought Mirrie was coming into Jonathan’s money. I’ve just been driving him into Lenton with Maudsley, and he began about it in the car. Mirrie had told him about the will, and he shot off a line about seeing she got her rights. I left Maudsley to cope with him, which he did very efficiently. But all the time he was talking—all the time, Georgina—it was coming home to me that if it hadn’t been for Jonathan there mightn’t have been a pennorth of difference, between him and me. You know I hadn’t the faintest, most shadowy claim on Jonathan. Mama was only about a seventeenth cousin, and I was just a horrid scrubby little schoolboy who was no more relation to him than Adam, but he let her bring me here, and he has always let me treat this as my home. If I’d really had to live by my wits, I don’t expect there would be anything to choose between me and Sid. It came over me pretty clearly that I’d the devil of a lot to thank Jonathan for. And Mama—and you.”

Georgina said, “Thank you, Johnny.” Then, after a little pause, “What are you going to do now? I mean, about Mirrie. Are you engaged?”

“Well, yes, we are. Do you think we ought to give it out?”

“I don’t know. She is very young, Johnny.”

He said,

“Someone has got to look after her. She can’t go back to that uncle and aunt.”

“They won’t want her if there’s no money. You had better wait and let me talk to Mr. Maudsley.”

For the first time he turned round to face her.

“What are you going to say to him?”

Georgina laughed. She put out her hand again, and this time he took it. She said,

“Wait and see.”

The serious Johnny was gone. His eyes laughed back at her.

“You couldn’t be going to give us a nice wedding present, could you, darling?”

Georgina said, “I might.”