Maulever Hall (15 page)

“She has had a close shave of it with a poacher, but is none the worse, I hope, or will not be when once we get her safely indoors and to a fire.”

“A poacher! I told you it was not safe to be walking through the woods alone. But, poor Miss Lamb. Come, lean on me.” And she took Marianne’s other arm to help her into the house.

Once indoors, Lady Heverdon listened to Marianne’s story with exclamations of horror, hardly allowing Mauleverer to fit in his brief, pertinent questions. No, Marianne answered him, she had not the slightest idea of the identity of her assailant, nor could she be absolutely certain that he had fired at her on purpose; it could easily be, as Lady Heverdon insisted, a poacher’s accidental shot. “There’s not much we can do about it, in that case,” said Mauleverer at last, “but I will at least have a few enquiries made in the village.” And he left them alone to give his orders.

Lady Heverdon hung over Marianne anxiously as she lay on a sofa. “You look worse and worse,” she said. “You must let me help you to bed.”

“I must first thank Mr. Mauleverer properly.”

“Be advised by me, and leave that till tomorrow, my dear. There will be time enough then, and, frankly, your appearance, though I hesitate to mention it, is not quite the thing for the drawing room.”

Thus reminded of her disheveled state, Marianne submitted, though not with a very good grace to being helped upstairs. Once in her room, and suitably horrified by the white and scratched face in the mirror, she tried another protest: “But I shall be quite well enough to come down to dinner,” she said.

“Nonsense. Your ankle is swollen already; if you use it any more tonight you may well be laid up for weeks, and I know that would not suit you, so active as you are. No, no, let me be your messenger to Mauleverer tonight. I will
thank
him as prettily as possible on your behalf—though mind you I cannot think how he came to take so long to find you. I was getting quite anxious about both of you, he had been gone an age when I started out to meet you. I suppose he must have missed his way in the fog ... or perhaps he had too much to think about. You are my good friend, are you not, Miss Lamb?”

“Why, yes?” She did not try to conceal surprise at the sudden question.

“I know you are, and shall therefore trust you with what must remain a secret to the rest of the world—and even to Mrs. Mauleverer for some time longer. But I do not believe I even need to tell you; I have thought that your sharp eyes had pierced our secret this long time past, and, oh, it has been a relief not to have to act the indifferent in front of you.”

Marianne’s face had been white before, now it was chalky. “I do not understand you.”

“Discreet Miss Lamb! I knew I could count on you. But between us it shall be no longer a secret, and, since I know how thoroughly you respect my beloved Mauleverer, I shall allow myself the luxury of talking freely to you about him. We dare not trust his mother with our secret, poor creature that she is, but you are another matter.”

It must be true. And she—she must have imagined that brief, miraculous moment in the wood. Color flooded her face. The wish, no doubt, had fathered the thought. But Lady Heverdon was gazing at her expectantly. She must say something. “But why the need for secrecy?”

“Can you ask that? And I so recently widowed, and then, so dreadfully afflicted by poor little Lord Heverdon’s ghastly death? I cannot be talking of love and marriage for months yet; I am almost ashamed to be thinking of them, but how can I help myself? And, besides, Mauleverer is so masterful ... so passionate ... I do not know how I shall contrive to make him wait until I am out of mourning. You must help me, Miss Lamb, with your cool common sense; he has, he has told me, the greatest respect for your judgment. But what a selfish brute I am to stay prattling of my happiness when I can see you are fit for nothing but bed. Sleep well, my dear, and keep my secret for me. You are the only person in the world, besides us two, who knows it.”

Marianne could eat none of the food that was brought her, and did not expect to be able to sleep either, but about nine o’clock Gibbs came tapping at her door with a mug of warm
milk: “It will give you a good night’s rest,” she said. “Lady Heverdon thought you might need it.”

It tasted strange—bitter—but Marianne drank it eagerly. She did not care what it contained, whether opium or laudanum. Lady Heverdon had been right; more than anything she needed the oblivion of sleep. In the morning, she would face her wretchedness.

VIII

Marianne slept long and dreamlessly and woke at last feeling wonderfully revived. Whatever the drug that Lady Heverdon had sent her, it had done its work well. She lay for a few moments, regardless of the household sounds that told her how late it was, and tried to grapple with last night’s events. Mauleverer and Lady Heverdon were engaged—she must have imagined that swift touch of his lips
...
And yet, how hard it was to believe
...
Could Lady Heverdon possibly have been lying? No, the suggestion was absurd
...
And there was something else; another uncomfortable memory that must be faced. Lady Heverdon had been surprised that Mauleverer had taken so long to find her, had given her a strange look when she said so. Could she possibly have meant to hint that he himself might have been her attacker? Everything in her revolted at the idea
...
and yet
...
and yet
...
Against her will, she remembered that other story of Lady Heverdon’s—the Countess of Lashton’s suggestion that she had been Mauleverer’s mistress and had been on the way to Maulever Hall with his child. Intolerable, impossible thought
...
She jumped out of bed with surprising vigor, found her ankle much better and dressed hurriedly.

Downstairs, the house was oddly quiet for so late an hour. Marianne looked in to the morning room, expecting to find Lady Heverdon, and was amazed to find Mrs. Mauleverer, for whom it was not late but very early indeed.

“Ah there you are, my dear,” said the old lady with touching pleasure. “How glad I am to see you better. The house seems
sadly dull and quiet, does it not, without them? They were disappointed not to see you before they went, and Mark left his particular commands that you were to take care of yourself and not be rambling about in the woods alone.”

“They are gone?” Marianne controlled her voice with an effort.

“Yes, to London. Mark had letters from Lord Grey yesterday that made it essential he return at once, and Lady Heverdon decided to avail herself of his escort for the first part of her journey home. To tell you the truth, my dear, I am not altogether sorry to see her go. I am afraid it was sadly dull for her here, with Mark away so much of the time on his election business. I expect it will be easier
...
” She let the sentence drag, but Marianne understood perfectly what she meant, and wondered whether she was right. It seemed to her highly unlikely, from remarks that Lady Heverdon had let drop, that she would be any satisfaction to Mrs. Mauleverer as a daughter-in-law. Indeed, the old lady would be lucky if she contrived to avoid being put away in some asylum for the elderly. Pity for her kind friend made her almost forget her own misery and she devoted the morning to making her more cheerful, being rewarded, as they took their light luncheon together, by Mrs. Mauleverer’s remark that it was “very pleasant and quite like old times.”

For Marianne, in the quiet misery of that morning, it was hard to believe that anything would ever be pleasant again, but she was not one to sit down under misfortune. More than ever it was essential that she find some other shelter for herself and the child—and, if necessary, for Mrs. Mauleverer too. Relieved that her ankle was so much better, she put on her riding habit after luncheon and descended on the stables.

Jim Barnes met her with a knowing look. “So he gave permission, did he, miss, before he left?”

She looked him straight in the eye. “I am here, am I not? Saddle her up for me, Jim.”

“Shan’t I ride with you, miss?”

“Good gracious no; you have other things to do than that.”

“But what about the poachers?”

So the story was all about; she might have known it. She shrugged. “Lightning never strikes twice in the same place you know.” She hoped she was right. “Besides, you can tell everyone, Jim, that I have not the slightest idea of who shot at me, so I am a danger to no one.”

“You’re a brave girl, miss, if you’ll excuse my saying so.”

Absurdly, she rode out of the stable yard with her eyes full of tears.

It was a hot still day with nothing stirring on the moor save sheep, and, high above her, noisily cheerful skylarks, but she noticed neither sunlight nor birdsong. She was free, at last, to give rein to the misery that had lain, all morning, heavy and cold about her heart. She had taken, hardly
thinking
about it, the way that Mauleverer must have ridden, earlier today, beside Lady Heverdon’s coach. Or, more likely, would he not have let his groom ride Prince, exchanging the pleasures of the fresh, bright morning for those of a tete a tete with his beloved? If Lady Heverdon’s confidences last night had left any room for doubt as to their being engaged, his joining her for the long, leisurely journey she had planned to London would have settled the question. Of course they were engaged, had been for the entire duration of her visit. It was absurd not to have realized this sooner, and as for that moment of delusion in the wood last night
...
she colored crimson merely at the recollection, her only consolation the thought that there was no way in which Mauleverer should have guessed at her shameful mistake.

As for her, perhaps she should be grateful for it, since it had taught her, however late in the day, the true state of her feelings toward him. And how grateful, too, she should be that he had left so suddenly for London, thus sparing her the misery of an encounter. At least, she ought to be grateful for this, she knew, but somehow could not manage it. Instead, she tormented herself with thoughts of that snug, sociable journey, the meals taken together at little country inns, the long evenings with no chaperone but Lady Heverdon’s maid. There had been a moment, after the unlucky episode of the Lashtons’ visit, when she had wondered if Mauleverer was not shaking off the yoke of his passion, but, even if she had been right, this romantic journey should do his business for him all over again. By the time they reached London, Lady Heverdon would doubtless have settled everything to please herself. Poor old Mrs. Mauleverer would be doomed to some genteel asylum for the aged and unreliable, and as for herself— she remembered Lady Heverdon’s words: “I do not know how we shall manage without you.” After such clear notice given, how had she managed to indulge herself in last night’s moment of madness?

It was unlucky for her that she should have reached this nadir of misery and let herself slump, self-condemned in the saddle, at the moment when an adder reared up in the path in front of Sadie. So far, the bay mare had borne her rider’s inattentiveness tolerably enough, but she had always been terrified of snakes. Now she started, shied, and bolted.

Jerked suddenly into wakefulness, Marianne hung on, but that was about all she could do. For a mad twenty minutes or so she forgot misery, terror, everything in her determination not to be thrown. It was, in a curious way, exhilarating to have life suddenly simplified into this wild struggle merely for survival and when at last Sadie slowed from her mad gallop to a weary canter and then, at last, to a walk, Marianne’s first feeling was almost one of disappointment. For a while, back there, in her terror of death, she had really been alive
...

She bent to pat the terrified and sweating horse and murmur soothing endearments to her. Then she looked around. It had been impossible, during their wild flight through the heather, to do more than realize that, mercifully, Sadie was keeping to one moorland path after another. Now she was completely lost. The moor rolled away on all sides; the sheep grazed, the larks sang. She had not the slightest idea which way to turn for home. Nor had she much inkling as to how far they had come in that wild rush, but it seemed unlikely that either of them would have the strength to get home without resting first. If Sadie was sweating and trembling, so, she now noticed, was she.

They had reached a place where the grassy track forked in two, and she pulled Sadie to a halt for a moment to consider whether to go on or back. She had seen no sign of human habitation since they had left Maulever Hall. Surely, fairly soon now, there must be something—a village, a shepherd’s hut, somewhere she could rest for a while and get advice about the shortest way home. She chose the slightly more marked of the two tracks and turned Sadie along it, congratulating herself, as she did so, on the fact that Sadie had not lamed herself. Then she would really have been in trouble
...
Besides, it would be bad enough if it became necessary to confess to Mauleverer that she had taken the mare without permission and been run away with, without having to own to damaging her. But probably it would never come to that. The election was over; Lady Heverdon was in London; what reason was there for Mauleverer to return to the Hall?

She felt, suddenly, exhausted and it was with a sense of almost frantic relief that she saw, as Sadie labored her way over a curve of the hill, a little wood below her, with chimneys sticking out of it, and a stream running down into a secluded valley. Twenty minutes of Sadie’s dejected amble down the
hill brought them into the little wood which turned out to be a perfect tangle of neglected undergrowth, with long brambles trailing across the path and dead branches here and there, over which Sadie picked her way fastidiously. Marianne’s heart sank. No smoke had been coming from the chimneys she had seen. Could the house be deserted?

A few minutes later she sighed with relief and pulled Sadie to a standstill. They had pushed their way through the green fringes of the wood into a little clearing. Facing them stood a low, gray stone house, weather-beaten and moss-grown, but just the same unmistakably lived in. Windows stood open on to the sunshine; a faded green curtain had blown out of one of them and caught on the yellow rambler rose that climbed all over one end of the cottage—for it was little more. And, if further confirmation was needed that this remote clearing was actually inhabited, it was provided by a well-tended vegetable garden that lay between Marianne and the house. Neat rows of peas and beans ran with military precision toward the house; beyond them was a square bed netted, presumably, for strawberries, and beyond that again a tangle of totally neglected herbaceous border with the tallest hollyhocks Marianne had ever seen.

It was very quiet in the clearing and Marianne suddenly had the feeling that she had moved out of the real world into some fantastic fairy tale where spellbound princesses were waited on by invisible hands. A cuckoo called, somewhere in the wood, and a jay screeched farther off, but there were none of the little human noises that Marianne associated with life at Maulever Hall. No pail clinked, no dog barked, no quick, suppressed giggle spoke of the full life of the servants’ hall. Well, she told herself, no wonder for that; the house was hardly large enough to house its owners, would certainly not accommodate more than one or two servants. Sadie moved uneasily with a sudden clinking of harness and at the same moment Marianne became aware of a dark figure crouched under the strawberry netting and, apparently, quite unaware of their arrival. She jumped down, tied Sadie’s reins to a tree and moved along beside the bean rows to the strawberry bed.

Now that she could see the crouching figure more clearly, its appearance chimed in remarkably with her fairy tale fantasy. But this was not the princess but the witch, an old old woman in rusty black who muttered to herself as she reached here and there among the leaves and dropped the rich red berries into the silver bowl she carried. Silver? Marianne asked herself, and rather thought it was; it certainly shone like
silver, in remarkable contrast to the old woman’s straggling hair and shabby, old-fashioned dress. The hands that worked among the strawberry leaves were brown and tough as a village woman’s; the face was turned away from Marianne, who felt increasingly awkward about her intrusion.

She cleared her throat: “Excuse me, ma’am.”

The old woman took not the slightest notice, but dropped an extra red berry into the bowl, muttering something to herself as she did so. Marianne tried again, louder: “I beg your pardon, ma’am—”

The old woman straightened up, as far as she could under the strawberry netting, turned round and saw Marianne standing a few feet away from her. “Dear me,” she said calmly, emerged from the strawberry nets and stood for a moment considering Maria
nn
e out of faded blue eyes that looked remarkably bright and intelligent in the tanned face. “Am I supposed to be expecting you?” she asked at last.

Marianne had been too much surprised by her voice to speak sooner. She had taken it for granted that this shabby-looking old creature with the wild white hair and tattered black shawl would speak in the broadest Devon, but on the contrary her clipped consonants and drawled vowels were pure Mayfair. Her face, too, was a surprise. Weather-beaten to the quality of old leather and marked with the calm of age, it nevertheless had a quality quite absent from the old faces Marianne was used to in the village. There were lines of humor round the eyes, and of command round the mouth; this was not just an old woman; it was a person. And she was still looking enquiringly at Marianne.

“I ... I beg your pardon, ma’am, for intruding on you like this, but I have lost my way in the moors,” she said.

“You will have to speak louder than that, child, if I am to hear you,” said the old woman calmly. “I have been deaf these fifteen years and more.”

“I ... I am so sorry.” Still stammering with unaccountable nervousness, Marianne repeated her explanation, pitching her voice on the high note she had found answered with the deaf old women in the village.

“Good.” The voice held approval. “Lost your way, have you? Horse bolted with you by the look of things? Not hurt are you? Or the horse?”

“No, but tired—and so is Sadie.”

“Bring her round to the front then. She can eat the lawn for me, while I find something better for you. Begin with a strawberry?” She held out the bowl.

“Thank you.” It was silver, and antique, curiously chased silver at that.

“Think me crazy, do you? But why? It’s unbreakable, which is more than you can say for my pudding basins. No joke getting replacements out here, I can tell you. But you look exhausted, bring your horse and come.” She hitched up her black skirts to reveal a pair of military-looking Hessian boots and led the way around the edge of the vegetable garden, past the riotous herbaceous border and so around the clearing to what Marianne now realized was the front of the house. Here a neglected lawn, rather like a hayfield, stretched from the little stream right up to the front of the house. To Marianne’s relief, she saw that a well-beaten path crossed the lawn and lost itself in the tangled wood beside the stream. This was clearly the way back to civilization.