Free James Hilton: Collected Novels by James Hilton

fastness that no one from the town need approach save in the mood and on the occasions of holidays. All of which, in its own way, conditioned Livia’s childhood. Sundays in summertime were the days when she must, above all things, remain within the half-mile of garden fence; weekdays in wintertime permitted her the greatest amount of freedom. It was easy, by this means, to keep her ignorant of everything except Miss Fortescue’s teachings and a general impression that all nature was kind and all humanity to be avoided.
    And Emily, who liked to put things off anyway, kept putting off the time for correcting all this. “Next year perhaps,” she would say, whenever Dr. Whiteside mentioned the matter. He was an old man who had brought both Livia and Livia’s father into the world; he did not greatly care for Emily and doubted the wisdom of most things that she did. “It’s time the child went to school and mixed with people,” he kept urging. “Why don’t you tell her the truth and get it over? You’ll have her self-centered and neurotic if she stays here seeing nobody but you and Sarah and Miss Fortescue…What does John think about it?”
    “He left it to me to tell her when I think the moment is right,” replied Emily, with strained accuracy. “She’s only eight, remember.”
    But it was just the same when Emily was able to say “She’s only nine” and “She’s only ten.” And by that time also another thing had happened. John had been transferred to a prison in the South of England, and Emily no longer saw him every month. After all, it was a long journey just for the sake of one short interview, and it was possible also to wonder what good it did, either to him or to her; letters were much easier.
    Not that Emily was a hardhearted woman—far from it. She had no bitterness against her husband for either the crash or the crime, or even against the country for having jailed him; she had no conviction that he deserved his punishment—nor, on the other hand, that he had been monstrously overpunished. The whole situation was one she could no longer come to terms with at all, since it had passed the stage of romantic interpretation. She was still able to weep whenever she thought of him, but equally able to do without thinking of him for long periods, and the idea of raking the whole thing up by telling Livia was not only distasteful, but something she was a little scared of. Already she was aware of something in Livia—character or personality or whatever one called it—that outclassed her own. For one thing, Livia had no fear—of ghosts, or being alone, or anything else. And also she would sometimes make scenes—curious, nerve-racking scenes that made Emily feel peculiarly helpless. Perhaps Dr. Whiteside was right and the child was neurotic—but would the knowledge that her father was in prison make her any less so? It was easy to think not.
    Nor was it clear that Livia would be made happier by school, for in addition to hating the idea of it, the child also seemed perfectly happy at Stoneclough. She had far more freedom than children have in many homes; she could play with dogs, cats, chickens, tame rabbits, and William the horse; she liked and was permitted to make cooking experiments in the kitchen and planting experiments in the garden; she could walk endlessly over nearby moorland and through the clough on weekdays; she could read library books sent up from Mudie’s in London, and there was that new invention, the phonograph, to amuse her. And on Sundays, to brighten the one day of restriction, old Mr. Felsby usually called. But it did not brighten things so much for Livia, who early formed the opinion that Mr. Felsby was a bore.
    Richard Felsby was seventy-eight, oaken in physique, the last of a generation destined to glower (within gilt frames) from above thousands of mantelpieces upon dwindling families. Both the Channings and the Felsbys were, in this matter, typical; once so prolific, they