Nightingale Wood Read Free Page A

her, she could not have (thought Mr Wither, sitting upright in his baggy-seated old black leather arm-chair and gazing sadly into the furious fire) more than, say, a hundred and fifty pounds a year. But even a hundred and fifty pounds a year ought to be properly looked after, and Mr Wither and his financial adviser, Major-General E. E. Breis-Cumwitt, DSO, were certainly more fitted to look after it than was Viola.
    If Mr Wither had had his way, he would have known how much money Viola possessed, but at the time of his son’s death, circumstances had conspired to keep him from finding out.
    To begin with, Teddy had always been irritatingly secretive about money (as, indeed, he was about all his affairs) and his father, though he knew how much he earned, did not know how much he saved. Every fortnight or so, during Teddy’s lifetime, Mr Wither asked Teddy if he were saving money, and Teddy said, ‘Yes, of course, Father,’ and changed the subject. He refused to answer direct questions about How Much and What In; he retorted that that was his affair. Nevertheless, his father had assumed that he did save something.
    Then, when he died suddenly of pneumonia, Mr Wither had been unable to go to the funeral (which took place in London, at Viola’s wish), much less investigate his son’s estate and take over its management, as he wanted to do, because he was at the time helpless with a sharp go of lumbago.
    But he did know that there had been no Will, and this made him uneasy.
    He wrote to Viola; he wrote two longish, earnest letters about the Money. He received in reply one short, vague little note saying that she was ‘going to stay with Shirley, a friend,’ and giving no address.
    Mrs Wither said that Shirley’s other name was Davis and that she lived in a place called Golders Green.
    Mr Wither went to the trouble of looking up all the Davises in the London Telephone Directory, Golders Green was creeping with them, so that was no use.
    He wrote another longish letter, to his son’s old address, and at last had a short reply, giving the Davis address, and saying nothing about the Money but vaguely mentioning difficulties about letting the flat.
    Then Mr Wither wrote once more, for the last time, saying nothing this time about the money but announcing firmly that his daughter-in-law must come at once to live at The Eagles.
    It was the only thing to do. While Viola was in London, there was no hope of his being able to manage her money for her, and the idea of it, knocking about on its own like that, was beginning to get on his nerves. The fact that he did not know how much it was made matters worse. Why, it might be three hundred a year!
    He thought Viola a silly, common little girl, but did not actually dislike her. Of course it was a pity, a great pity, that she had been a shopgirl, but after all, her father had owned half the business in which she was employed and it was a solid little business, long established and well patronized. That was all to the good; Mr Wither liked to feel money on all sides of him, like a stout fence; he liked to feel that his remotest cousin four times removed had a bit put by (as, indeed, all the Wither cousins had).
    No, he would not mind Viola coming to live at The Eagles. It was a large house; he would not often see her. When he did see her, she could be organized. And then he would be able to manage Teddy’s money for her, and see that it did not get spent or otherwise misused. It would make a nice hobby for her, too. She would follow his wise administration of her little income with interest throughout the years, growing wiser and (he hoped) more organizable as she grew older.
    She was just the sort of characterless girl that Mr Wither had always expected Teddy to marry. This did not prevent him from being very annoyed when Teddy did. What with Madge and Tina not marrying at all, and Teddy marrying a shopgirl, and Mrs Wither being so disappointed about all three of her children’s