Free The Alington Inheritance by Patricia Wentworth

lights and drive through all this country by moonlight. He shook his head a little mournfully. There were so many things he would like to do, and he couldn’t do them. Not because they were difficult or impossible, but simply because you had been brought up hedged in by laws and by-laws until they had got you down. He laughed a little and considered what a modern world would be like with everyone doing as he pleased. Come to think of it, no one was ever free. Different times had their own restraints, personal, political, what have you. You were brought up in a certain code, and you kept to it. If you kicked over the traces you came to a sticky end. Each generation made its own rules, and the next one altered them. What was quite unacceptable in one generation was the fashion in the next, and so you went on.
    He liked driving alone, and he liked driving by night. If you kept off the beaten track you didn’t meet anyone much after twelve o’clock. His plan was to drive within a strategic distance of Alington House and sleep out the night in the back seat of his car. Then in the morning, when a country inn would be open, he would have breakfast and from there on follow the reasonable inspiration of the moment. He wanted to see the house and the portraits. He wanted it very much. After all, if they were in any way decent people they couldn’t object to him. It wasn’t as if he was claiming anything, or wanting to claim anything. He was simply a distant connection of the family who had come into possession of some papers about the house and the people to whom it had belonged. It was natural enough that he should want to come down and see the place for himself.
    He had turned rather an abrupt corner just out of a sleeping village, and a long flat stretch of road lay before him. Quite suddenly there was someone in the road. It stretched flat and open at one minute, and the next there was something there. Something? No, someone. He braked and brought the car to a standstill.
    The someone was a girl. She had a case in one hand, and with the other she had signalled him to stop. He leaned out, frowning.
    “You shouldn’t do that, you know.”
    “But I wanted you to stop.”
    “Why?” He was terse because for a moment he hadn’t been sure that he could stop in time and the road was narrow.
    The girl moved from the front of the car and came round to the door on his side. In the moment that she stepped across the lighted patch of road in front of the car he saw her, and he saw that she was young and pale—or perhaps that was just the lights of the car. She came up to the window on his side and said,
    “Will you please give me a lift?”
    The anger had gone out of him. He said,
    “Where do you want to go?”
    “It doesn’t matter. I mean, just anywhere will do.”
    “Are you running away?”
    It was quite obvious that she was. What does one do with a stray girl who asks one to help her? He said,
    “You’re running away, aren’t you? Why?” It wasn’t in the least what he had meant to say.
    The moonlight shone on her face. It looked sad and rather tired. There were dark marks like smudges under her eyes. She said very earnestly,
    “I’ve got to—I really have.”
    It was the sort of thing that any girl would say if she had had a row with her people or with her school.
    He said, “Why?” and she came nearer and dropped her voice.
    “I can’t tell you. You wouldn’t believe me.”
    “You might try.”
    Jenny considered. All this time he was in the shadow—she couldn’t see his face. She must see him. You can’t tell whether you can trust a person whom you can’t see. She said quickly and a little breathlessly,
    “Will you get out for a moment? I want to see you.”
    “Why do you want to do that?”
    He had a nice voice, but she must see him. She said,
    “I want to know whether I can trust you.”
    “Do you think you would know?”
    “Oh, yes, I should know if I could see you.” There was a confident ring