With All My Worldly Goods by Mary Burchell Page B

earnestly. “At least—I have always believed there was not, until the end, and I think I was right. She didn’t ask much of life—just to enjoy herself in her own light-hearted, flirtatious way. But, of course, that didn’t please my father at all, and there was often trouble.”
    “Your father was more like Bruce, I suppose?” Leonora said quickly.
    “Well, yes. In view of what happened afterwards, it’s rather curious, but Bruce was like my father in many ways.” Agatha hesitated.
    “Yes?—go on.”
    “Even having Bruce didn’t do anything much towards making my stepmother more settled and responsible, and really she spent very little time with us at the country house. She was nearly always in London, and usually, of course, my father with her. We had the most wonderful house in Norfolk then, and Bruce and I were always there. I was fond of the place—I always have been—but with Bruce it was an absolute passion. You know—he never does anything by halves.”
    “I know,” Leonora said, and she was powerless to keep the tenderness out of her voice.
    “I cannot remember a time when he didn’t love every inch of his home. Often when he was a child, I have seen him lie on the ground with his cheek pressed against the grass, quite still for ages, just because he was so happy to be there.”
    “Oh—Bruce.” Leonora smiled at this picture of him, but she felt the tears sting her eyelids too. “Was he a very dear little boy?” she said involuntarily.
    “Well—yes, I suppose he was,” Agatha agreed thoughtfully. “Very quiet and determined, but with a quality of—I can only call it restful content—very rare in a child.”
    “He was like that?” Leonora looked up, astonished. “I can’t imagine it.”
    “He was very different then,” his sister said a little sadly, and they neither of them spoke for a moment. Then Agatha went on: “He went away to boarding school, of course, but always the holidays were spent at home in Norfolk. He used to hate actually leaving the place, though he was quite happy at school, and the home-comings were the great events of his life. It was most extraordinary that he never seemed to miss his parents if they were away. The place was what he loved.”
    Leonora remembered then his saying that he had never loved any one. It was probably literally true. His parents didn’t sound the kind one could love much.
    “And then?” she prompted, because every detail about Bruce was utterly absorbing to her.
    Agatha laid down her work with a sigh.
    “It lasted until he was nearly sixteen, Lora. And then, without warning, it seemed to us, his mother ran away with another man. I can’t tell you how awful it was. My father was like someone crazy. I don’t think the things of which he accused her were true, but he raked up every silly flirtation there had ever been. Heaven knows, she must have been indiscreet and stupid enough, but he vowed she had never been faithful to him from the very beginning. And then he became obsessed with the idea that Bruce was not his son at all.”
    “Agatha! What did Bruce do?”
    “He couldn’t do anything. That was the terrible part. He was sent for from school, and simply plunged into this awful crisis without warning. My father couldn’t turn her out because she had gone already, but he told Bruce to go.”
    “But he couldn’t. Surely he couldn’t do that—legally I mean?”
    “No, I don’t suppose he could have really. I don’t know. But there was no one to help or advise Bruce, and in any case he was stunned by the whole thing. My father simply said Bruce was no son of his, and he didn’t intend to keep him or educate him any longer. I was there, because I cried—quite without effect—to make my father see reason, and I remember that Bruce only asked one question: ‘Am I never to come back to Farron?’ That was the name of the house, you understand.”
    “And what did your father say?” Leonora was quite pale by now.
    “He