THE HEIR A Love Story By V. SACKVILLE-WEST _Author of “Heritage,” “The Dragon in Shallow Waters,” etc._ NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 1922 _Printed in Great Britain_ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS PAGE THE HEIR 1 THE CHRISTMAS PARTY 121 PATIENCE 179 HER SON 193 THE PARROT 243 THE HEIR: A LOVE STORY _To B. M._ I Miss Chase lay on her immense red silk four-poster that reached as high as the ceiling. Her face was covered over by a sheet, but as she had a high, aristocratic nose, it raised the sheet into a ridge, ending in a point. Her hands could also be distinguished beneath the sheet, folded across her chest like the hands of an effigy; and her feet, tight together like the feet of an effigy, raised the sheet into two further points at the bottom of the bed. She was eighty-four years old, and she had been dead for twenty-four hours. The room was darkened into a shadowy twilight. Outside, in a pale, golden sunshine, the birds twittered among the very young green of the trees. A thread of this sunshine, alive with golden dust-motes, sundered the curtain and struck out, horizontally, across the boards of the floor. One of the two men who were moving with all possible discretion about the room, paused to draw the curtains more completely together. “Very annoying, this delay about the coffin,” said Mr. Nutley. “However, I got off the telegrams to the papers in time, I hope, to get the funeral arrangements altered. It would be very awkward if people from London turned up for the funeral on Thursday instead of Friday—very awkward indeed. Of course, the local people wouldn’t turn up; they would know the affair had had to be put off; but London people—they’re so _scattered_. And they would be annoyed to find they had given up a whole day to a country funeral that wasn’t to take place after all.” “I should think so, indeed,” said Mr. Chase, peevishly. “I know the value of time well enough to appreciate that.” “Ah yes,” Mr. Nutley replied with sympathy, “you’re anxious to be back at Wolverhampton, I know. It’s very annoying to have one’s work cut into. And if _you_ feel like that about it, when the old lady was your aunt, what would comparative strangers from London feel, if they had to waste a day?”