Miss Mary Martha Crawford (30 page)

pick up his hat from a chair, and when he stood before her she said,

"Thank you, doctor, for ... for all you have done."

"For all I have done?" He raised his eyebrows.

"I can't see that I have done very much, in fact nothing as regards Miss Nancy; as for your aunt, well, we both know that little can be

done " in that quarter. The only thing is to keep her as happy as possible. "

"Yes, doctor."

"Good-day then."

"Good-day, doctor."

He had reached the top step when he turned again and, his head slightly back on his shoulders, he moved his chin from side to side before he asked, "Would you like me to call in if I'm passing during the week to see how things are faring with young Robson?"

"I'd be very grateful, doctor."

"I'll do that then, I'll do that." He turned abruptly from her now and ran down the steps to where Clan Holland was standing ruffing Fred's ears. He mounted the trap, nodded at Clan, saying, "Thanks Clan,"

then, turning, he looked to

where Martha was still standing at the top of the steps and he touched his hat with his whip by way of salute, then drove smartly down the

drive.

Martha went slowly back into the house. She crossed the hall, went

down the passage and entered the study; then she stood with her back to the door, and now she did something she hadn't done since she was a

child, she pushed three of her fingers into her mouth and bit hard on them.

martha met Roland at the station and his first words to her were,

"What's all this about? Couldn't it have waited another two days, you knew I was coming?"

Her reply to this, and tartly, was, "It couldn't have waited another day, it's waited a fortnight too long already. It may be too late now, you might have been able to stop it if you had come home earlier, or if you had left me an address to write to, but I had to telegraph to the school and ask them to forward it."

"Stop what? What are you talking about?"

She turned from him.

"Let us get away from here; the trap is outside."

As she mounted the trap and went to take the reins, he said, "Move over; give them to me."

Silently she did as she was bid, thinking it would never do for the son of her father to be seen to be driven through the town by a woman, it might lessen his maleness in the eyes of the ladies. She did not

chastise herself for this way of thinking, but sat looking straight

ahead as Roland applied his attention to getting the horse through the streets.

It wasn't until they were leaving the town that he slackened the reins and said, "Well now, what is the great tragedy that requires my presence at home? That's what the message said, " Urgently request your presence at home"."

She still kept her gaze ahead as she replied slowly, "Nancy is going to be married."

He drew the trap to a standstill, crying, "Whoa there!" then screwed round on the seat and stared at her and, his tone voicing his

incredulity, said, "And you brought me posthaste to tell me that Nancy is going to be married?"

^5

Yes. "

"God above! have you taken leave of your senses?"

"Not quite." She still looked ahead as she added now, "She's marrying a drover."

Almost thirty seconds elapsed before he repeated, "A drover?"

"Yes, a cattle drover, one Robbie Robson. You may know of him, you have ridden about the country much more than I have. He lives in Hill Cottage. It lies, I understand, back from the Prudhoe Road. He can

neither read nor write but he has in his favour a presentable

appearance and an intelligence above the average for his class."

"A drover! Has she gone out of her mind? She cannot do it she cannot do it, not at this time."

She was looking hard at him now.

"Why not at this time? I should have thought you would have said at any time."

"There is a strong reason why I say not at this time. My God! what were you up to to let her get to know this fellow?"

"I am not a gaoler. I cannot control her actions. Apparently I never have, for I may tell you now that she has taken this step because of a disappointment, a love disappointment. She has, which may seem

incredible to you as it did to me, been meeeting William Brockdean for some years past, and she imagined no, she was led to believe, I am sure of this she was led to believe that his intentions were other wise than what they turned out to be. When you were last at home you remarked on the change in her, but you were not interested enough to ask the reason for it."

"Well he grabbed up the reins again and swung the whip across the horse's flanks as he cried, " I'll put a stop to it. "

"I hope you succeed. But you may find it difficult; he is no ordinary individual, and she is in a state of defiance. The doctor thinks that if she is frustrated in this present madness she'll take a more

dangerous course still."

"By damn! She won't, not if I know it."

Martha glanced at him. He was playing the man. But he was still a

youth, a pimply-faced youth; yet there was the appeal of her father

all about him, but it didn't touch her, not in any way, for she saw

through it right to what lay beneath, and as Dilly would have said it was mush.

Her father had been mush. Inside he had been all mush.

"Where is she now?" He lashed at the horse again.

"She went into Newcastle this morning early. He was driving her there.

She said she was going for a new gown. She didn't ask me for any

money, and I know she had none of her own. "

Again he was about to check the horse but jerked his head in anger

towards her, saying, "In the name of God! why didn't you stop her?"

"I have never yet attempted to take up fisticuffs against a man. He called for her with a horse and trap, and the turnout was much smarter than this one. It may have been hired, I don't know. If you had been there perhaps you would have come to grips with him.... perhaps."

"Why do you say it like that?"

"Because you've never met him. He is, I imagine, a man one would be wary of before directing a blow towards him."

"Blow? I'd knock him down."

"I wouldn't promise yourself so much success; it's diplomacy that is needed in this matter, and perhaps law."

"Law? Law... that's it. Talk about law, create a scandal. Look, I told you I was bringing a guest. It's very important to me. Oh my

God!" He jerked the reins in his hand.

"I came home with news, in fact my idea was to bring the news with me but Eva couldn't get away until Friday."

She was looking at his profile now, squinting at it, her mouth was

agape and her eyes screwed up to pin points. She put her hand up

suddenly to her bonnet as a gust of wind lifted the front brim upwards and she pulled it back on to her head before she repeated, "Eva? Your companion, your guest is ... is a woman?"

"No, not a woman, she's a girl, a very dear girl."

"It's the same thing." It was as if she were listening to someone else's voice because most of her, she felt sure, had become frozen, yet the wind itself was warm.

She asked now, very quietly, "She's your friend's sister?"

"What do you say?" He leant his head towards her.

"I said is she your friend's sister?" Her bawling startled him.

He turned his head to the front again and made a number of small

motions with it before he replied, "No, no, she isn't."

"Who is she then?"

"I'll tell you when we get home."

He almost toppled over the side of the trap as she grabbed the reins from his hands and pulled the horse to a standstill, and she was

leaning partly across him as she demanded, "You'll tell me now...

now!"

'now look here Martha Mary. "

"Never mind, look here Martha Mary. What is it you've got to tell me about... this Eva, whoever she may be?"

He now thrust her from him, straightened his cravat, stretched his neck upwards first one way, then the other, and said, "She's the girl I'm going to marry, we're engaged. I... I was bringing her home to meet

you."

She flopped back against the wooden bar that acted as a back to the

seat. She didn't believe it, no, she didn't believe it, this couldn't be happening. She wasn't sitting in the trap on the highway and being told that her brother was going to marry, that her nineteen-year-old brother was going to bring a woman into the house. Strange, but she

had never really thought about him ever getting married; that was

stupid of her, but he had always seemed so young, even at nineteen he didn't appear his age, more like a youth of sixteen or seventeen. Yet here he was telling her he was a man and going to be married.

That same feared rage she had experienced for the first time on the

morning she met her father's mistress was rising in her again, but with more strength and power than it had possessed at its birth. She turned her head slowly and looked at him. Her face dark with passion and in a voice like no other she had ever used, she said two words, "Drive on!"

and after looking at her for a long moment he drew in a breath, bit

tightly on his lower lip, took up the reins and drove on. 2i8

Immediately the trap stopped on the drive she jumped down from it,

missing the bottom step, and actually ran at a pace up the steps and into the house. Once in the hall, she dragged off her bonnet and flung it towards a chair, throwing her grey faded dust coat after it, and

when it missed the chair and fell to the floor she left it lying

there.

Peg, having come from the kitchen to give Master Roland a word of

welcome, had stopped dead just beyond the kitchen door and gazed in

amazement at Miss Martha Mary who, as she expressed it to herself,

looked as mad as any March hare, and when she saw Master Roland enter the hall and follow Miss Martha Mary across to the drawing-room she

uttered no word of greeting. There was something up.

She snatched a duster from the pocket of her apron and busied herself in the hall in order to find out what it was. But she could have

stayed in the kitchen and heard equally as well because Miss Martha

Mary was now shouting, "You have the effrontery to come back from school school I say and tell me that you are going to be married!

May I ask how you propose to support your wife? "

They stood facing each other before the empty fireplace, their faces blotched with their anger, and Roland's voice was now as loud as

hers.

"Yes, I'll tell you how I'll manage to support a wife. There's the shop. Much more could be made out of it. And what is more we have

ideas, plans for turning this place--' he now jerked his forearm in an arc in front of his face 'into a school."

She wanted to sit down, she wanted to grip something for support. No, no, not for support, she had the most terrifying feeling of stretching out her hands and gripping his neck and choking, him. Her little

brother, as she had thought of him until recently, had with his

announcement blown her world into pieces. It lay about her in

fragments. She, who had toiled and slaved, yes, slaved after them all for years, but more so of late when she had been called upon to do the most menial of household tasks, and all without payment or thought of payment, was now to be relegated . to what? To what position would

she be relegated in this household

under Roland's wife? Still a maid of all work but without the dignity of being recognized as the mistress.

That was the rod that was flaying her at this moment. The one

compensation she asked, indeed the only compensation she asked in

exchange for all her labour and love was to be recognized as the

mistress of The Habitation.

She had told herself often of late that she was stupid about many

things, ignorant through prudery, and bigoted about matters she didn't understand, but now she also saw that she had been purposely blind.

Hadn't she realized that Roland was the son of his father and that

women would be a necessity to him from early in life? But she had

never imagined so early. He was but a boy. No! No! Why did she keep

harping on about him being a boy. Why should William Brockdean be

considered a man and entitled to marry, or Robbie Robson for that

matter, and not Roland Crawford? It was she who had been at fault, at least as regards her blindness, for this was self-inflicted.

Yet she saw it now as a blindness that had shafts of light penetrating it, selfish shafts of light. Why had she been so keen for Roland to

maintain his scholastic studies? Why had she offered him the small

fortune that Dilly had left her? Why? As a means of keeping him out

of the way for another two or three years so that she could continue to act as mistress of this house, that's why.

Well, that being so it would seem that she was being paid out for her duplicity, wouldn't it?

But no! Her whole being reared in denial against the accusation.

Whatever her ulterior motive had been she didn't deserve to be treated thus. Turn the house into a school indeed! And who would be the

'schoolmistress? Mrs. Eva Crawford of course. And who would be the

school matron? And the housekeeper? And the doer of all the mean

chores? Poor Miss Martha Mary Crawford, the spinster sister of the

owner.

No. No. Never.

When she banged her fist on the occasional table and the knickknacks skidded here and there she brought a startled

look of fear to Roland's face and he cried at her, "Stop it, Martha Mary! Take hold of yourself. Don't go mad."

"Don't go mad, you say. Huh! Don't go mad. You come home and

barefacedly tell me you are going to be married and you expect me to accept it calmly after all that's been done for you."

"What d'you mean, all that's been done for me? Father kept me at school... / " Father didn't keep you at school, I kept you at school,"