Wife by Arrangement

188 Pages·2011·0.67 MB·English

by  Burchell Mary

WIFE BY ARRANGEMENT

Mary Burchell
'You may think you're in possession,' said Marcia when she heard of her cousin
Teresa's engagement to Elliott Burdern, 'but I can end all that when I like. Will
you give him up quietly? Or will you put me to the small trouble of taking him
from you?'
It was true that Elliott's proposal had been an unorthodox one. It was true that his
uncle's eccentric will had drastically limited his choice. Still, within those limits
he had chosen Teresa and not Marcia, and now Teresa knew that she had no
intention of retreating. And so began a struggle that was to be harder than either
she or Marcia anticipated.
CHAPTER I
W old Chad Burdern's will was read there was something of a flutter in the
HEN
Burdern family dovecote.
Not, perhaps, that dovecote was quite the correct expression, for there was
nothing reminiscent of doves about the Burderns. They were, on the contrary,
rather hard, positive people, marked out for worldly success, with the ability to
carry that success with a certain amount of arrogant grace.
Old Chad Burdern was the one who had made the money. He it was who had
started the great Foundry which brought prosperity and fierce activity to the
town of Malever nearly fifty years ago. Some people - particularly among his
business rivals - said that old Chad came from a poor working-class family and
that his father had never brought home more than twenty-five shillings in any
week of his life.
But all that was very old history, and took one back so many years that there was
not much harm in inventing what details one pleased to dress the tale of Chad
Burdern's origin. The important thing from Malever's point of view was that, by
the time he was forty, Chad Burdern had become one of the leading citizens of
the town.
Not the kind of leading citizen who eventually found himself Mayor. Chad was
too unconventional - one might almost say eccentric - and too little liked for that.
He was not a man whom other men slapped on the back, or naturally addressed
as "old man". He was, simply and indisputably, the richest man in the place, and
he had a way of making himself felt - whether it was at the head of a charity list
or on the magisterial bench.
There was another story about him - not told by his business rivals this time, but
mostly by the more elderly matrons of the town - and that was that he had
wanted to marry Peter Vale's daughter, Mary.
Whether that was true or not, he had not succeeded, and, since it was hard to
imagine that Chad Burdern had ever failed in anything he had set out to do, most
people rejected the story as a piece of enjoyable fiction.
Still, the fact remained that, after Mary Vale married Edward Manning and left
town, Chad Burdern had never again had his name coupled with that of any girl
in Malever, and he remained a bachelor until he died at the age of eighty-four,
leaving behind him a vast fortune and a highly provocative will.
The other members of the Burdern family - those who counted; that is to say -
were descended from Chad's brother, James. Though James was the elder of the
two by fifteen years, no one ever thought of him in that light, Chad being the real
personality. And, though James always enjoyed a good position in the firm -
which was, indeed, known as Burdern Brothers - he caused little stir in Malever
by either his life or his death, which took place when Chad was little more than
forty.
During the second half of his life, Chad had James's elder son for his working
partner, and in Roderick Burdern he undoubtedly found a personality much more
after his own heart than his brother had ever been.
Already in his early thirties when his father died, Roderick seemed more like his
uncle's contemporary than his junior. With something of the same tremendous
driving force and burning energy, he was an able second in all Chad's
undertakings. And, if he had not quite the fire of genius which had marked out
his uncle from other men, at least he had the skill and energy necessary to tend
that fire, once it had been lit.
Curiously enough, rumour had. it that he too had run after one of the Vale girls
in his time. But, if so, he had had no better luck than that attributed to his uncle -
though, unlike his uncle, he found speedy consolation for his failure. That is, if
one could regard in the light of consolation anyone so cool and proud and self-
possessed as Jessica Preedy.
There was no doubt that Jessica made Roderick a successful wife, possibly
because the uncompromising hardness of the Burdern family character was
admirably matched by her own unsentimental, self-sufficient personality.
Of her three children, Elliott, the eldest, inherited a good deal of this obstinate
determination, and so did her daughter Clare. Her younger son, Anthony, was
entirely devoid of it and, even at twenty-six - which was his age at the time of
his Great-Uncle Chad's death - he still seemed more like a sweet-tempered, easy-
going boy who had somehow strayed into the Burdern family, rather than any
characteristic member of it.
Roderick had predeceased his uncle by a few years, which - as his widow said,
with more chagrin than actual grief -r was both hard on him and unfortunate for
his family. For Chad Burdern, like all dictators, believed in keeping the real
power in his own hands, and his nephew Roderick had therefore, even as a man
of sixty, never been anything but an able second in the firm.
Even at the time of Roderick's death, Chad was still the undisputed head of
Burdern Brothers, and Roderick had never so much as sat down at the massive
mahogany desk which dominated the room held sacred to the head of the firm.
"It's quite wrong of Uncle Chad to keep everything in his own hands like this,"
Jessica Burdern complained to her elder son at the time of Roderick's death, and
the anger in her voice lost no force for being a calm anger. "In the natural course
of events he can't be with us much longer, and then what is to happen?"
"Then I shall take over the headship of the firm, you will continue to draw a
handsome life interest from it, and Clare and Anthony will be suitably provided
for," her son assured her, with the calm certainty of a man who has never known
circumstances to run violently counter to his wishes and therefore sees no reason
to anticipate such a thing happening.
Jessica, however, refused to be convinced.
"I don't think it will be quite so simple as that," she insisted. "Do you realise that
Uncle Chad has practically absolute power in the disposal of the firm and the
Burdern fortune? - and he is an extremely unpredictable sort of person in many
ways."
Elliott lit a cigarette, thrust out his long legs in front of him and regarded his
mother.
"What are you afraid Uncle Chad will do?"
"I'm not afraid of anything." Characteristically, Jessica rejected the word with
contempt. "I am only expressing regret and - yes - annoyance that we should be
so entirely in Uncle Chad's hands still. Your father gave a lifetime's devotion to
the firm, and you - who, after all, are not a boy, but a man of thirty - probably
carry more actual responsibility on your shoulders at this moment than Chad
himself."
"Not more. About the same amount."
"Even so, if s not right that everything finally depends on Chad. He could throw
us all out tomorrow, and we'd have nothing but the money your father saved and
left. And you know how quickly that can melt. Chad holds the controlling
interest in the firm and at least sixty per cent of the share capital, and if s his own
private fortune which finances many of our most profitable undertakings.
Suppose he took it into his head to leave all that away from the family."
Her son smiled at her and slightly shook his head.
"Uncle Chad has a tremendous feeling for family, even if his affections are not
strong. He would never leave the controlling interest in the firm outside his own
people. Why should he?"
Jessica Burdern bit her lip. She was an inordinately extravagant woman in her
cold way, and the very thought of vast sums of money which might come to the
family going elsewhere was unendurable.
"He might marry, even now," she murmured.
But Elliott laughed outright.
"Mother, you're deliberately raising bogeys for yourself. Uncle Chad is over
eighty."
"He wouldn't be the first hard old man to make a fool of himself," Jessica
retorted. "And he's still a very handsome old man and doesn't, look a day over
sixty-five. You take after him," she added irrelevantly.
Elliott acknowledged the oblique compliment with an ironical little inclination of
his head. But he said quite positively:
"Uncle Chad became a confirmed bachelor the day Mary Vale married Edward
Manning. If he lives to be a hundred — which is not improbable with such a
tough old bird - he'll still remain a confirmed bachelor."
Jessica Burdern looked at her son curiously.
"You believe that old story?"
"I have to. He told me himself."
"Is that so?" His mother looked genuinely interested. Then she added: "Yes, I
suppose he might well tell you. In some ways you're nearer to Chad than any of
us."
Elliott did not dispute that, and for a moment or two his mother was silent,
thinking how curious it was that her elder son should resemble his great-uncle so
much more closely than any of his own immediate forebears.
She had never known Chad when he was as young as Elliott now was, but she
could remember him with the same tall, commanding figure as her son. They
both, too, had the same slightly arrogant way of holding their heads, and both
possessed that indefinable, exciting quality which makes some men dominate
any company in which they find themselves.
Jessica refrained from pursuing the subject further at that moment. But in the
few years which elapsed between her husband's death and that of Uncle Chad,
she suffered other spasms of anxiety about the ultimate disposal of the Burdern
fortune. Though why, she would have been hard put to it to explain, even to
herself. As Elliott had said, Uncle Chad had a strong family sense and, on the
face of it, he could do little else but leave his famous firm and his equally
famous fortune to his own people.
Perhaps it was the old man's reticence about the provisions of his will which
prompted Jessica's uneasiness. He never made any of the usual observations or
promises which most rich men make at some time or another to their prospective
heirs. It was, Jessica sometimes said, as though, he felt that when he ceased to
direct Burdern Brothers there would be little of importance left to the firm.
"Or the lines of Louis XV's 'Apres moi le deluge', you mean," her daughter Clare
said consideringly. "That does sound a bit Uncle Chad-ish, it's true. But I think
his pride in the firm would keep him from doing anything that would reduce its
importance or tend to disintegrate it After all, his one idea has always been
expansion and consolidation. Don't you remember Father saying that Uncle
Chad would have liked nothing better than an amalgamation with Vales? I've
sometimes thought," Clare added reflectively, "that was the root of the story
about his wanting to marry one of the Vale girls, away back in the year dot."
"It's possible," her mother agreed. "Your father had much the same idea, I
remember. That also failed to materialise," she added with a certain cool
complacency - perhaps at the recollection of her own share in seeing that the
idea did not materialize.
Clare laughed.
"Our family don't seem to have much luck where the Vales are concerned."
"The Vales set altogether too high a value on themselves," her mother retorted
coldly.
Clare shrugged and made a slight face. She would have liked to agree but,
Burdern though she was, she secretly shared the general view in Malever that
there was something rather special about the Vales.
As a local wit once put it, "The Vales represent the art of the town - the
Burderns, the craft:"
While the Burderns dealt in iron and steel in its coarser and grosser form, the
Vales had a long family tradition as makers of the most delicate ornamental
wrought-iron work. And though Chad Burdern might - and probably did - make
more money in six months that the Vales did in twelve, the Vales remained the
aristocrats of the iron and steel industry in Malever.
"Has it struck you," Clare said, pursuing the subject further, "that Elliott shows
signs of following the family tradition, so far as wooing the Vales is concerned?"
Her mother glanced at her sharply.
"What do you mean?"
"Why, Marcia Vale, of course. She is the only Vale daughter of Ell's generation.
It would have to be Marcia."
Jessica Burdern frowned, but more in thoughtfulness than annoyance.
"It would be a splendid match," she said, half to herself.
Her daughter looked amused.
"For which side?"
"For both sides," Jessica countered quickly. "Elliott would be a 'catch' for any
girl - especially if Chad does nothing silly. But I was thinking of it from our
point of view as well. If Ell married Marcia Vale it would almost certainly lead
to an amalgamation between us and the Vales at last. Alec is the only other child
besides Marcia, and she is bound to be left some considerable interest in the
firm. Everyone knows she is her father's favourite."
"She isn't mine," Clare remarked. "I can think of few sisters-in-law I should like
less."
"Nonsense. She would suit us, in many ways." Jessica was rapidly reckoning up
the material advantages of the match. "And it is not necessary to like a sister-in-
law," she added, as. an impatient afterthought "Do you think Elliott is really
serious?"
"I think he's angrily mad about her, if you call that serious," Clare said.
"Don't use such silly expressions. Why should Ell be angry if he is, as you put it,
mad about her?"
Clare shrugged.
"He's uneasily aware that she's probably leading him up the garden, just for the
fun of having him on a string, and he doesn't like it. Personally, I think he'd do
well to drop Marcia, and hang the amalgamation. She wouldn't be faithful to any
man for more than six months - married or unmarried."
"It's a match that would please Chad immensely." Jessica refused even to glance
at Marcia's possible infidelity since the possibility of securing Uncle Chad's
unqualified approval had just presented itself to her. "If Elliott actually married
the Vale girl and brought off that amalgamation at last, there's nothing Chad
wouldn't do to show his gratification,"
But Clare was sceptical about the general probabilities.
"I wouldn't count on anything in that direction, Mother, if I were you. Marcia
likes to keep her men dangling, and Ell isn't a natural dangler. He's more likely
to tell her to go to hell than to ask her to marry him."
"I don't know why you should think your brother will make a fool of himself in
his personal affairs when he is so extremely astute in his business affairs," Mrs.
Burdern remarked bitterly.
"They are not," Clare pointed out drily, "quite the same thing."
But, anxious though she was about the matter, Mrs. Burdern knew better than to
question - still less to urge - her elder son. Elliott was not a man to seek advice
on his personal affairs, and would certainly resent any intrusion into them.
Mrs. Burdern could only wait and hope. Which she did with what patience she
could muster.
For a while her hopes looked like being fulfilled, for Elliott' was seen about a
good deal with Marcia Vale, and frequently partnered her at the more select
private dances given in Malever.
Then suddenly a serious reverse took place. The intimacy between Elliott and