The Eden Passion (72 page)

Aslam popped up from beneath the table, his handsome face wreathed in a smile. "Would you care for a game, Mr. Rhoades?" he inquired politely.

"I'd like nothing better," Andrew said.

John gave him a grateful pat, then moved to behind Dhari's chair and held it for her as she stood. "I'm counting on you," he whispered, loud enough for all to hear, "to keep your son honest."

Elizabeth saw him lean forward and kiss her on the cheek, Dhari responding with admirable warmth. They made a striking couple, Elizabeth mused, John so tall and fair, Dhari dark and delicate. But who was Lila Harrington?

There was no time for answers as Aslam ran eagerly from the room heading for the drawing-room fire and the chess challenge, Andrew calling back good-naturedly, "Care to place a wager on the winner?"

John laughed. "Only a fool would accept that offer. His chess master was Fraser Jennings, who quoted the Bible like a saint and played chess like Genghis Khan. Watch him," John concluded. "He's brighter than both of us put together."

Elizabeth saw Andrew wave a casual hand backward, then saw that same hand rest protectively about Dhari's shoulder, as though he too were trying to eradicate the horrors of the past in a loving and warm present.

Obviously John saw the gesture as well and was moved by it. "My father once told me that a man was wealthy if he had one good friend."

Elizabeth closed her eyes, aware of him standing behind her chair.

Edward's spirit was very close. To the best of her memory, she had never heard John quote his father before. On any subject.

"Come." She smiled, relishing the moment alone with him, their first since his return. "Your letters are in your father's trunk."

But as she moved to pass him, he caught her and drew her close. "Elizabeth, I'm so sorry . . ."

Caught in his embrace and wanting never to leave it, she asked, "Why? What have you to be sorry for? I'm the one—"

"Jack Willmot is dead," he said.

"I know," she murmured, holding his face between her hands. "Andrew told me everything." In his eyes she saw the reflected horror of the last few years. "Oh my dearest," she whispered, and clung to him, seeing him not as a grown man but as the handsome little boy who'd clasped her hand tightly for fear of falling down the steps in the old house on Oxford Street. How many times she'd served as the buffer between that vulnerable innocence and all dangers, real and imagined. If only she could have spared him at least a portion of these present crucibles.

But she couldn't, and concentrated now on what was within her capability, which was to give him vast amounts of love and understanding. With their arms linked, they left the dining room, moving slowly up the stairs, hearing in the drawing room Aslam's delighted shriek as he took an early lead.

"Poor Andrew," John muttered.

"He'll survive," Elizabeth countered. "He's a remarkable man."

John nodded in agreement, and they climbed the rest of the stairs in silence.

John knew precisely when she had left the room; he had started to call her back, then had changed his mind. Clearly it had meant a great deal to her, his confrontation with his father's trunk. How effortlessly she had read rapture on his face, when in truth, all he'd felt was depression at the sight of this fragment from his boyhood.

Staring at it, he saw that it reeked with that poverty in which he'd passed most of his life, and poverty of the worst kind, foisted on him by the man who had owned this trunk, that foolish man who had fathered him in secret, lied to him about the identity of his mother, thrust him early on into a zoo of wretched, half-starved children, and as though the list of offenses already was not long enough, he'd then committed the most stupid blunder of all, had given his fortune

away, his fortune, the Eden wealth, that ancient inheritance which would have made such a difference in John's life.

Abruptly he pushed away from the trunk, wanting to have nothing to do with it. He leaned back against the chair and lifted his head.

Eden.

There was that, too, the painful realization that it still was beyond his reach. Yet how hungry he was to see it. He started upward as he effortlessly recalled the happiest days of his life, with the reassuring comfort of Eden Castle surrounding him, glorying in that first love, the only love that mattered, Harriet's love, mother or wife, it made no difference.

In a surge of longing he leaned forward and threw open the lid of the trunk, determined to fetch his letters from Lila Harrington and return to the drawing room.

He turned them slowly over in his hand. Of course he must write to her and thank her for such unwarranted devotion. Yes, he would write to her soon and request the privilege of calling on her. What harm?

He smiled and felt partially restored by the mere memory of Lila Harrington. He was on the verge of closing the trunk when his fingers brushed across the worn fabric of an old shirtwaist. Without warning, his father was upon him.

"I'll take you to Eden one day, John, I promise."

Damn the man! Angrily John lifted the shirtwaist and saw beneath it another.

Damn him! Still he plunged deeper into the trunk, his hands clawing at the objects, one hairbrush, a pair of shoes, a nightshirt, and near the bottom, a muss of papers and letters, all bearing his father's handwriting.

He closed his eyes, feeling as though he'd fallen into an abyss, or more accurately, had never really crawled out.

As he commenced refilling the trunk, he saw a large brown packet resting on the bottom, almost obscured by the yellowed letters and clippings. With a sense of having examined everything else—and why not this?—John pushed the papers aside and lifted the packet. Constructed of coarse brown cardboard, it had appeared at first to be merely the bottom of the trunk itself.

As he lifted it, he examined it for handwriting and found none. Clearing a spot among the old garments, he placed it on the floor. Reaching in, he felt of two separate thicknesses, and withdrew the first, a large envelope with Elizabeth's name on the front in his fa-

ther's handwriting. Turning it over, finding no wax seal, he withdrew a short letter in his father's hand and a neatly tied stack of banknotes. He looked closer. My God, each note was in the denomination of five hundred pounds, and there were—quickly he counted— twelve of them. Six thousand pounds!

He stared incredulously down. But there they were, neatly folded and resting inside the letter, which he opened and lifted toward the light of the fire.

It was his father's handwriting, instructing Elizabeth that if anything happened to him, she was to take John to Eden Castle, and with the sum enclosed see to her own needs if she chose to return to London.

That was all, a hastily scribbled message, posing more questions than it answered. If something happened to him.

As John stared, mystified, at the letter, he glanced to the top of the page, to the date: April 10, 1848. Then it dawned. The Chartist Demonstration, that gloomy morning when, led by Feargus O'Conner, twenty-five thousand men had met on Kennington Common with petitions for the male franchise. While John remembered the incident only dimly, his father had told him about it countless times, how nervous the city had been, how the army had been called out, how hysterical editorials had predicted that the Thames would be red with blood by nightfall. Of course, nothing had happened.

With a sense of wonder, John stared down at the notes in his hand. Obviously the letter had been penned early that morning when his father had not known what to expect. Upon his safe return that night, he'd apparently forgotten about the letter with the small fortune in it and had shoved it into the back of his desk.

A curious thought entered his head. Did Elizabeth know about it? It was her money, then and now. If only she had found it earlier, how different her life might have been, and his as well.

He must tell her immediately. Returning the notes to the envelope, he felt the second weight in the packet, and reached in and withdrew a thick bundle of neatly aligned parchments, each bearing an official seal on the folded side.

Eager to share his discovery with Elizabeth, he decided not to examine them now, but changed his mind and drew off the cord and saw the folded parchments scatter about his lap, one falling partially open in the process, revealing the dark blue embossed edge of a legal document.

He flattened it before him and saw what appeared to be a deed,

signed by his father, witnessed by a Sir Claudius Potter, and made out in the name of. . .

John Murrey Eden.

Unconvinced that his eyes had not deceived him, he lifted the parchment to the light of the fire and saw it clearly, his name on a deed of ownership, near Blackfriars, Plat 34, north-northwest, section two, adjacent property 341.

It was gibberish. What did it mean? He stared down on it, and noticed the other papers spilling on the floor.

He lifted a second and pulled it open, saw another deed, his father's signature again, the flourish of Sir Claudius Potter, and again under the title of landowner,

John Murrey Eden.

This one was near Adelphi, Plat 14, south-southwest, section . . .

For a moment the silence of the bedchamber seemed alive, so great that he heard his own breathing, his eyes fixed on his name. He looked at three deeds, then in a frenzy he opened each parchment, confirming his suspicions, deed after deed opened and examined until he found himself covered with them, his mind exploding with questions, talking aloud now, reading from the various parchments, then at last counting, "Two, four, six, eight, nine, eleven, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen."

Seventeen!

Seventeen pieces of London property in his name, the locations of his father's Ragged Schools, purchased for the good of all children, yet made out in the name of one child who, at some later date, in need of direction, would find them and . . .

Without any forewarning he was crying, for himself, for his father, for the distance between them which extended beyond the grave, for the fact that even now, with this bounty in his lap, he still did not comprehend him, and that the loss was his, as was the loneliness.

Carefully he reached out to the parchments, as though he were afraid of breaking something. Then he was moving, wiping away the tears, gathering the parchments, thinking that he needed a trained eye to view them, someone who could tell him, yes, they are valid, and yes, they are yours, thinking of Andrew, then speaking the name softly as he continued to gather the deeds. He retrieved Elizabeth's letter and money at the same time, stuffing it all into the brown folder which had lain undiscovered for years at the bottom of the trunk.

He was on his feet now, rushing to the door, clasping the folder to

him, calling again, "Andrew," taking the steps downward three at a time, shouting at the top of his voice, "Andrew!"

One week later, after having inspected each site with John, Andrew aligned the deeds on Elizabeth's dining-room table, weighting the curling edges with salt cellars, and stood back.

Every afternoon and well into the evening for the last seven days, the two of them had searched out each piece of property, generally finding only empty lots where obviously the old structure had been cleared but the disreputable property had been ignored. The deeds were legitimate, weighted with back taxes, but legal all the same. Andrew had confirmed that. Of course, he had doubts as to their real value, but as yet he hadn't the heart to tell John.

It hadn't been too difficult to discern that Edward Eden's estate investments had formed an interesting pattern. Because of the nature of his Ragged Schools, he had been forced on every occasion to buy into the most undesirable parts of London where there were no near neighbors who might have been offended by the sight of half-starved and malformed children.

"Well?" John prompted, leaning over the back of a near chair.

Still Andrew hedged, not wanting to give him false hope. "Let me show you something," he suggested, reaching for the map of London which he'd brought from his office. He placed it atop the spread deeds, aware of Elizabeth hovering close, sharing in the excitement, still astounded that she'd not discovered the deeds earlier, for John's sake.

Dhari was there as well, engrossed in the needlepoint which Elizabeth had given her. And Aslam was there, ignoring his French primer and drawn to the excitement at the table.

"Look," Andrew urged, pointing with his free hand. "Over the years, London has naturally divided itself into distinct segments. Here the fashionable West End, with the royal palaces of Whitehall, Westminster and St. James, and opposite you have the commercial and mercantile East End, with the ports and heavy industry. I'm not implying that there is a clear dividing line, but as you can see, money follows money, and the landed gentry and the aristocracy tend to buy land on the western outskirts, rather than to the east of the city or the isolated districts south of the river."

Andrew looked up, surprised to see everyone listening except John, who was now straddling the chair backward, apparently more fas-

cinated with Aslam's jet-black hair than he was with anything Andrew was saying.

Smarting from the lack of attention, Andrew released the map and let it roll itself up. At the sound of the flapping parchment, John looked up, apologetic. "I'm sorry, Andrew." He smiled. "What were you saying?"

"It isn't important," Andrew replied, and now found it relatively simple to say what had to be said. "You asked for my estimate of the total worth of all seventeen deeds," he began, not finding it any easier at all. "Of the two finds you made upstairs in your father's trunk, John," he began gently, "I'm afraid that Elizabeth's is the more valuable. You would do well just to match her by selling all seventeen properties."

Though he was looking at John, he heard Elizabeth's disappointment first. "Oh no," she murmured. As for John, he was still straddling the chair, a distant expression on his face, as though if he'd heard anything that Andrew had said, it hadn't made the slightest difference.