Maulever Hall (21 page)

A cock crowed over at the home farm. “Hurry,” he had said, “hurry
...
” Her husband. White, soft hands and that unmistakable voice
...
How could she have forgotten? Or—had she wanted to forget? Did that explain everything? For now, reluctantly, bitterly, she was convinced that those stirrings of memory she had felt while they talked had been real. She did remember this man, the sallow face, the gray unfathomable eyes, but not with love, not as a wife should.

“Hurry
...
hurry.” All the time her eyes were on the second-floor window of Mauleverer’s room. He must be still asleep there, behind closed red curtains, dreaming, perhaps, of her and of happiness. How could she tell him? What would this new blow do to him? Ever since the first shock of discovery, her mind, below the surface, had been frenziedly hunting expedients, trying this and that way out. But there was none: she had really known it all the time. Married
...
shadowed with madness ... a kidnaper. It was true, what Rossand has said. Rossand—her husband! But he was right. Even to have sheltered her might mean the end of Mauleverer’s career. What if it should be known that he had engaged himself to her! Her hands were busy tearing her handkerchief into tiny pieces. Merciful that it had gone no further.

“Hurry." The lisping voice echoed in her brain. What was she doing, standing here gazing at closed red curtains? She must indeed be gone before the house stirred. Now her mind was busy with phrases from the letter she must write Mauleverer. She would be gone when he read it. It was the only way. “Goodbye, my darling.” She turned and hurried toward the house.

Martha was waiting in her room. She should have expected it. “Well?” Black eyes agleam with curiosity. “Good news, I hope?”

“No. Martha, I have to leave, at once, and take the child.”

“Thomas? Impossible. I won’t allow it. What right have you?”

This too she should have expected. And suddenly her whirling thoughts fell into place, a decision was taken almost it seemed unconsciously. I am not mad, she told herself. I remember that I do not trust him. I was running away from him—from my husband. And I am not going back to him. “Martha, will you do something for me?”

“Not if it concerns Thomas.”

“No, no, I think you are right. I must go, but Thomas is best here. You will look after him. Let me think.” She pressed her hands to her brows. “What time is it?”

“Nearly six o’clock.”

Hurry
...
hurry. “I must write a letter—two letters.” Her mind was racing ahead again. Mrs. Bundy; impossible to take any clothes; a clean break and be done with it. It was the kindest way; the only way. She wrote rapidly:
Sir
—
You have convinced me that I am fit only for retirement from the world. But not with you. I am going to a friend who will,
I
am sure, give me asylum. Do not try to follow me: no one at the Hall knows where I am going.
Nothing about the child. Let him assume that she had taken him with her. She reread the note. Would it protect Mauleverer? She thought so. More and more she found herself suspecting her husband’s motives. If his story had all been true, surely he would have claimed her openly. Why did he muffle his face on his cloak? He is afraid ... He must have ill-treated me
...
Oh, if only I could remember.

“Six o’clock,” said Martha as the stable
cl
ock began to strike.

“Yes.” Once again she wrote:
My darling—I can never call you that again. I am married. I have just learned it. I think my heart is breaking. Do not try to follow me. What is the use? I am going t
o
friends, who will be good to me. God bless you. I shall always love you.
A tear fell on the paper as she signed her name.

But there was no time for tears. The servants were stirring now. It was lucky for her that old Jim lived with his wife in one of the lodge cottages across the park. After yesterday’s scene he would never let her take Sadie, but the stable boy would be another matter. Best not risk the time it would take to change. “Will you give that to the man in the orchard?” She handed the first note to Martha. “But not yet. Wait till you see me ride up over the hill.”

“You are really going?” Martha took the note.

“I must.”

“And your clothes?”

“I will send for them. If I can.” She
kn
ew that she never would.

“You have money for the journey?” It was not solicitude on Martha’s part, she was sure, but, more likely, the wish to be well rid of her.

“Enough.” The word journey had given her an idea. “I shall catch the coach at Pennington Cross and send Sadie back from there. She’ll find her way home right enough. Now, I must go.” She had been moving about as she spoke, gathering a few necessities into a tiny bundle that she could attach to Sadie’s saddle. Impossible to take more. “Goodbye, Martha.”

“I suppose you know what you are doing.”

“I wish I did not.” At least Martha made no move to stop her, nor any pretense of regret at her going, but merely stood and watched with enigmatic black eyes as she picked up her note for Mauleverer and ran down to leave it in his study.
Putting it down in the center of his desk, she stopped for a moment, her hand caressing the back of the chair where he would sit while he read it. If she let herself hesitate, she would be lost. She turned and ran from the room and out by the back way to the stable yard.

The stable boy looked frightened when she told him to saddle Sadie for her, but complied readily enough. After all, she and Mauleverer had made no secret, last night, of their happiness. He must think she would soon be his mistress.

The thought released the tears that were, all the time, so dangerously near, and she had to turn away for a minute to hide them. There would be time for tears—presently.

“You are riding at once?” The boy was looking at her dress.

“Yes.” Haughtiness was the only answer.

He helped her to mount with obvious reluctance and she felt suddenly sorry for him. She should have asked Mauleverer not to be angry with him. Too late now. On impulse, she took off the brooch she always wore and handed it to him. “Give Mr. Mauleverer this, will you—and my love.” She was out of the yard before he had sufficiently gaped his astonishment. It was the best she could do, but should surely protect him from the first surge of Mauleverer’s anger. At the thought, tears blinded her, and she let the reins lie loose on Sadie’s neck as the mare set forward on the familiar track up the hillside. Her own misery was bad enough, but the thought of Mauleverer’s was almost more than she could bear. “But what could I do?” she whispered to herself, turning to look downward and back, with blurring eyes, to where Maulever Hall stood quiet in morning sunlight. “What else could I do?”

For a moment, the urge to turn and ride back was so strong as to be almost irresistible. Surely it would be better for Mauleverer if they faced their tragedy together? At least there would be no chance of his feeling rejected as he had been once before, by that other girl. The temptation was so strong that she pulled Sadie to a standstill. She would see him once more; feel his arms around her for the last time. “Yes,” she told herself, “and have him feel in honor bound to contrive your divorce and wreck his career by marrying you.” And then: “Good God, I am talking to myself. Perhaps I am mad.
P
erhaps it was all true.”
She urged Sadie forward. All the more reason for making a clean break of it. Only—if the lisping stranger—she could
not think of him as her husband—if his story was true in its entirety, she had done a terrible thing in leaving little Thomas with Martha. Once again she hesitated and allowed herself a lingering, longing backward glance. Smoke was beginning to rise from the kitchen chimneys at the back of the Hall. Soon, Mauleverer would wake. She had taken her decision and must abide by it. By now Martha would be giving the stranger—stranger! ironic word for one’s husband—would be giving Mr. Rossand her note. Suppose he tried to follow her—he had a carriage, he had said. He might well, guided by Martha, drive round to Pennington Cross and try to intercept her there. Well, he would not find her, but the sooner she was safely hidden in Mrs. Bundy’s secluded valley, and Sadie running free over the moor, the better. “Hurry,” she whispered to herself. It had been, somehow, the key word all morning. If only there had been more time—time to think, to disentangle unbearable truth from suspected falsehood in the stranger’s story, but always there had been the feeling of hurry, and, worst of all, when she had got back to her room, the pressure of Martha’s presence. “But I was right,” she told herself finally, setting Sadie to a canter, “there was nothing else I could have done.”

She was exhausted with misery when at last she turned Sadie down into the quiet valley, but at least she had seen no one in her desolate ride. There would be no witnesses to carry news of her whereabouts back to Maulever Hall. She had meant the break to be complete, and had succeeded. Oceans of desolation lay in the thought. But it was done now. She jumped down, untied her absurdly tiny bundle from the saddle, looped up Sadie’s reins securely and turned her loose. “Home,” she whispered through the tears that would keep coming. “Home, Sadie.” The mare twitched an ear and began peacefully grazing on the luxuriant grass of what had once been Mrs. Bundys’ lawn. Suddenly desperate, Marianne used the reins as an improvised whip to urge the mare away, but Sadie only looked round at her reproachfully and went on with her meal. Almost frantic now, Marianne was looking round for a stick when Mrs. Bundy’s voice stopped her: “Leave her, child. She’ll go when she’s fed.” And then: “I suppose you know what you are doing.” She was leaning out of the low window of her bedroom, wearing a man’s velvet shooting jacket over her nightgown and an embroidered cap over her straggling gray locks. “Come to stay, have you? Not much luggage.”

“If you’ll have me.” Marianne dropped the stick she had found and instead of beating her, bent to give Sadie a last caress. Soon, Mauleverer would be touching her. Tears started again. She made herself answer Mrs. Bundy’s last remark. “It’s all I have.”

“Very desperate,” said the old woman. “I’ll come down. Quietly, as you come in. Mary’s ill. Very glad to see you, to tell truth. Glad anyway, of course; always welcome, but now—well, could call it an answer to prayer. Not that I go in for praying—much.” She vanished from the window and met Marianne, finger on lips, in the doorway of the house. “Come in,” she whispered. “She’s asleep. Sit down; rest; something to eat; tell me about it later.”

‘Thank you.” Marianne stumbled to the little sofa, and sat for a moment, head in hands, willing her whirling thoughts to settle. Mrs. Bundy returned from the kitchen. “Drink this.” She handed Marianne a glass. “My own cordial. Can’t beat it. Never tried. You’ll feel better presently. Stands to reason. You couldn’t feel worse.”

Grateful for the instant comprehension, Marianne swallowed the fiercely bitter brew and felt it
burn
its way down her throat.

“Dandelions,” explained Mrs. Bundy. “Nothing like them. There, now you feel better.”

It was true. Marianne raised her head and looked about her, noting at once a sad change in the room she had grown to love. Withered Michaelmas daisies drooped neglected in vases of tarnished silver. On the little writing desk, a drift of browning petals marked where a few late roses must have stood. Books and papers lay everywhere, on the floor, on tables, and even beside her on the sofa. And, over everything, lay the faint smear of neglect. Furniture that Marianne was used to seeing mirror-bright with beeswax was now dull to match the tarnished, blackening silver.

“Never was much of a polisher.” Mrs. Bundy had followed the direction of her eyes. “Other things more interesting. But I don’t like it.” She picked up the dried rose petals and sniffed at them.
“
Pot pourri,
I suppose, at a pinch.” She dropped them out of an open window. “Now”—she moved toward the kitchen door—“breakfast. Half your trouble is that you’re hungry.” Once again, it was true. But: “I wish it was the whole of it,” said Marianne.

“That’s better.” Mrs. Bundy’s voice approved her return of spirit. “No use giving way to it. Never was; never will be. Fight it. It’s the only way. It’s taken me twenty years, but I’ve learned. I think. Ham and eggs.”

She might not be a polisher, but she was a remarkably good cook. “Don’t talk. Eat.” She put the platter of frizzled ham and delicately fried eggs on the kitchen table, poured herself an enormous tankard of coffee and watched with approval as Marianne ate. The bread was stale. “Mary’s last baking,” she explained, cutting a slice.

“What’s the matter with her?”

“Old age mostly. You can’t avoid it, and she’s lived hard. My fault; I blame myself. I knew she was carrying too much weight. Should have slowed her down sooner, but she knew how things ought to be done. Very difficult to change, that. She’s been a whole staff of servants to me for twenty years. How do you stop? I don’t know. Now we’ll have to look after her. Not an easy invalid. You are coming to live here, aren’t you?”

“If you’ll have me.”

“Have you! It’s enough to make one believe in miracles. I was wondering whether to send for you. Didn’t like to, though. After all, you’ve got your own life.”