Maulever Hall (4 page)

“Do you? That’s strange; I remember thinking the same thing myself.” But this was a dangerous memory, one from the time of the terror. It was good to be interrupted by Mrs. Mauleverer who now tapped at the door to ask after the invalid and exclaim with pleasure on finding her up and dressed.

“Do you
think
you are strong enough to come downstairs and eat luncheon with me? I shall be so glad to have company.”

“But—should I? You know nothing about me. Think”—she made herself say it—“think what the vicar said.”

“Mr. Emsworth? I hope I am not to be guided by his ridiculous notions. No, no, Miss Lamb, you are my guest, and must behave as such.”

“But I am not even Miss Lamb.”

“I am sure your real name is much prettier. Now come along downstairs, do, and stop arguing. What do you think of our grand stairway? Pitiful, is it not? I keep urging Mark to have it rehung with that striped paper you see everywhere, but he won’t do it. Some nonsense about the portraits—that’s my father-in-law, the old tyrant—” She crossed the large downstairs hall. “I keep begging Mark to have his likeness taken, but he won’t do that either
...
it’s all of a piece. One of Sir Thomas Lawrence’s portraits would have been some kind of company for me, but of course Mark was always too busy— and now he’s dead—Sir Thomas, I mean.” She sounded personally affronted about it. “This way, my dear. I usually lunch in the breakfast room when I’m alone.”

It was a sunny, comfortably shabby room, with more family portraits round the walls. Seating herself obediently
at the small oval table, Marianne made her last protest: “But what will Mr. Mauleverer say? May he not object to my presence here?”

“Mark?” Mrs. Mauleverer bridled. “I hope he knows better than to be making objections to the company I choose to keep. Particularly when he favors me with so little of his own.”

Marianne was amazed. “But, dear madam, even if you feel you can brave his displeasure, I must be
thinking
of it.”

“My good child, have you taken leave of your senses? It is true that Mark is of a somewhat impatient turn of character, and indeed never could brook being crossed from a child, but I have yet to learn that a mother must be asking permission from her son before she provides herself with a companion.”

Her son!
It was Marianne’s turn to exclaim. “What an idiot I have been! You must forgive my stupidity, ma’am, but I quite thought Mr. Mauleverer was your husband.” She stopped, horrified at what she had said, and wondering what deep springs of grief she might not have touched.

But to her delighted amazement, Mrs. Mauleverer burst out into her gay, almost childish laugh. “Oh, that’s too rich,” she said. “Mark, my husband! No wonder you looked so shocked when I spoke of how he neglects me. It is bad enough in a son, but in a husband
...
No, no, my dear, poor Mr. Mauleverer has been dead these twenty years or more—I do not precisely remember the date. I am afraid I found wearing widow’s weeds a dead bore and abandoned them years ago, which, I suppose, is what misled you. But now you can see that though I love Mark dearly I do not need to be deferring to him on matters that concern me alone. Though as a matter of fact I did write to him the other day to tell him all about you and Thomas. I don’t suppose he’ll trouble to answer, though.” Again the faintly querulous tone. “I have not heard from him this age. And as for Thomas”—she took one of her characteristic leaps of subject—“Mark will never notice whether he’s here or not. And don’t, pray, say anything more about your looking after him. For one thing, Martha dislikes you quite enough as it is without your taking him away from her. For another, I don’t want to share you with a brat like him. Tell me, do you play cards?”

“Cards? I—I believe so.”

“I was sure
you did. Andrew.” She turned to the footman. “The card table in the library; at once.”

For a moment, an expression of—what? flickered over that marble countenance. Then, “Very good, madam,” said Andrew.

Marianne was surprised to find that Mrs. Mauleverer’s favorite game was bezique, delighted to find herself entirely mistress of the complicated rules of the game, and then surprised all over again to find she lost so steadily. Of course, in a sense it made no difference. Mrs. Mauleverer had suggested that they play for sixpence a thousand and had got over the difficulty of Marianne’s having no money by starting her off with ten shillings out of her own purse. She derived such simple pleasure from winning them back again that Marianne was reluctant to admit to herself that she was steadily, systematically and quite obviously cheating.

It was a relief when Andrew appeared and interrupted the session by drawing the curtains against the early dusk, making up the fire, and announcing with lugubrious pleasure that “that child’s been at it again. Cook’s in a proper passion, I can tell you.”

“Well, don’t,” said Mrs. Mauleverer. “Tell Martha, it’s her business. Miss Lamb and I are busy. No, no, don’t move, Miss Lamb, you must have your revenge.”

“But should I not see what Thomas has done?”

“Why? Not still harping on what the vicar said, I hope. Anyone can see he’s no child of yours. Doesn’t care a straw for you; nor you for him. I’m a mother; I should know. How surprised Mark will be when he hears about you! It would be just like him, after leaving me lonely all winter, to come down now to make sure you’re fit company for me. He’s a terrible stickler, is Mark. But no need to look so bothered, my dear, he can’t help but approve of you.”

Marianne wished she were so sure. Everything his adoring mother said about Mark Mauleverer made him sound more autocratic, bad-tempered, selfish, and unreasonable. She awaited his letter with dread, but found herself, just the same, settling down with amazing ease into the peaceful monotony of life at Maulever Hall. Days slid past placidly, variegated only by Mrs. Mauleverer’s choice of bezique, piquet, or two
-
handed whist to beat her at. The high point of each was the ceremonial arrival of the mailbag, but every day, as Mrs. Mauleverer unlocked it, Marianne’s fear of an angry letter ordering her expulsion seemed more absurd. She was not, it seemed, worth writing about.

The weather was improving. She contrived to lure Mrs. Mauleverer out to walk with her down the drive to where she
had found the first snowdrops and was congratulated by Gibbs on her achievement: “She’s looking so much better, you’d hardly believe
...
and so are you, miss. I’d hardly know you for the waif mistress brought home that night.”

A waif. It was all she was: homeless, rootless, and still, sometimes, in terror. She pushed the thought aside, and ran downstairs to find Mrs. Mauleverer unlocking the mailbag, which had just arrived from the village.

“Look!” She greeted Marianne eagerly. “It’s come at last. Now let’s see what he has to say about you.” She opened the letter, exclaiming, “A double one, too; there’s a compliment for you.” And then, on quite a different note: “Oh, how dreadful. Oh, my poor Mark, what a disaster! And the poor child too! Oh dear, I’ll never look forward to a letter again—and he says nothing about you, my dear, after all—well, no wonder. What a terrible thing ... we must have the chimneys swept at once. Oh the poor dear little baby—and he says he must start North at once, so there go my hopes of a visit. Well, maybe that’s just as well; we’d never agree about it. I know he thinks it a terrible misfortune, but I confess for my part if it were not for the disastrous way it had happened, I should be inclined quite to like it. After all, a title is a title. Of course it’s true, as Mark always says, that there have been Mauleverers at Maulever Hall since Doomsday Book, while some of our peers—well, you know as well as I do that they get made for the oddest reasons. But just the same, if he did not mind it so terribly, I should quite like the idea of Mark’s being Lord Heverdon. But ring the bell, will you? I must give orders at once about the chimneys.”

Marianne rose obediently from her chair, but hesitated for a moment. “My dear madam, I must beg that you will explain yourself. I am quite devoured with curiosity.”

Incorrigibly, Mrs. Mauleverer’s eyes now sparkled with delight. Gifted with an insatiable passion for gossip, it was not often that she had such a story to tell. “Why”—she picked up the letter again and her face sobered as she looked at it—“Mark’s ward, poor little Lord Heverdon, has been burned in his bed—and all because of a neglected flue, my dear, which is why we must have ours swept without delay. And poor Mark is Lord Heverdon and cross as two sticks as a result.”

“But, dear madam, why?”

Oh dear, with a complacent sigh. “What a scatterbrain I am, to be sure, telling my story so back-to-foremost. Though I should have thought that you, so clever as you are, would
have found it out for yourself. Mark has longed, all his life, to sit in the House of Commons, but he is so high-minded—quite impossibly so, if you ask me, but of course no one ever has—that he will not accept any seat that has the slightest whiff of patronage about it. Well, of course, you can imagine what the result has been; he has never found a seat, and has had to content himself with working for his friend Lord Grey in what I have always thought an almost menial capacity. But all his hopes have been set on the new Parliament that will come in after his precious Reform Bill has been passed. And now look what has happened. He must sit, poor Mark, in the Lords. It is no wonder that he is so angry. And he’s executor, too, for that hussy, Lady Heverdon, and must go North at once, he says, to Heverdon, to arrange for the funeral. From all I’ve heard of her, balls are more in her line than funerals though it’s true she buried Lord Heverdon fast enough.” She sighed theatrically. “So much for my hopes. I really quite thought Mark would want to see my romantic
protégée
and might, for once, pay me a visit in the Easter Recess. Oh, well”—here a sigh of resignation—“he would probably be in a terrible passion anyway, and, thank goodness, I have you, my dear. Now, ring the bell and let us make arrangements about those chimneys.” She cast an anxious glance at the huge fire that roared in the hearth. “I am sure I have no wish to be burned in my bed.”

III

The spring evenings drew out; snowdrops gave way to daffodils in the park and village children came begging at the back door with draggled little bunches of primroses, but no further word came from Mrs. Mauleverer’s son. “I must remember to call him Lord Heverdon, my dear. He may not like it, but there’s not much he can do about it.”

Marianne had learned by now that when her hostess had
one of her bad nights and came down to breakfast with clouded eye and shaking hand, the best way of drawing her out of herself was to turn the conversation to her absent, neglectful son. She might grumble about him most of the time, but, quite obviously, she adored him. Marianne, listening, day in day out to the bitter-sweet stream of praise and blame, had developed a hearty dislike for this young man whose tedious perfections must be more than counterbalanced by his selfishness. No wonder if he neglected his mother so shamefully now, since from his earliest years she had evidently lain down and let him trample on her. He had been a delicate child, it seemed, and she had wanted to keep him at home with a private tutor, but he had insisted—“Yes, absolutely insisted, my dear, you never saw anything like it”—on going to Eton as his father had done before him. And after that, when his mother had entertained some lingering hope that he would stay at home, keep her company and learn to manage the estate, he had taken himself ruthlessly to the University, only to leave it again, despite her tears and prayers, vividly described, on the escape of the monster, Bonaparte, from Elba. “He was only a child, my dear, but he would go, and though I do not like to say it of my brother-in-law, his uncle connived at it, I am sure, from the most interested of motives. He and my husband had divided the estate between them, you see. If Mark had been killed, it would all have reverted to Lord Heverdon, and what would have happened to me, I tremble to think. There is not even a dower house here, as you know, and I should have been reduced to living on my jointure.”

For once, Marianne found herself faintly sympathizing with the absent Mark Mauleverer, whose mother seemed to think of his possible death in such forthrightly
financial
terms. Perhaps, after all, there might be some justification for his persistent course of neglect. And another thought now struck her: “You mean that this house belongs to Mr. Mauleverer?”

“Of course it does. To whom else? You do not
think,
do you, that I would be living here, in the dead heart of the country, boring myself to distraction winter after winter, if there was anything else I could do? If it had been mine, I should have sold it years ago, and moved to London, or maybe Bath—the season there is mighty pleasant—but as it is I am condemned, through my husband’s fault, to drag out the rest of my life here. You never saw a more iniquitous will than his—never. He left everything he could to Mark —everything, and I am dependent on him practically for the bread I eat.”

This was a disconcerting idea to Marianne in many ways. First of all, it brought home to her the fact that she too was dependent on this bad-tempered stranger for the bread she ate—and young Thomas’s too. But these financial revelations also made her wonder a little about what Mrs. Mauleverer had told her of her son’s education. Had she, perhaps, when in control of his finances, grudged the money to send him to Eton and then to the University? And why had it been necessary for his uncle to purchase him his commission in the Guards? But that was all ancient history now; the fact remained that Mrs. Mauleverer was left here high and dry on the edge of the moors and it did seem hard that her son should neither visit her nor arrange any other entertainment for her. Surely a trip to Bath and one to London each year would not be beyond his means to arrange for her? No, the more she thought about Mark Mauleverer, the less she liked him, and the more, therefore, she detested the idea of being dependent on him. But at least there was one consolation: there seemed not the slightest prospect of his coming to see them.

Easter was over now, and the rolling moor that rose up behind Maulever Hall had turned from gray to green. T
h
e beautifully kept lawns around the house were green, too, and the shrubbery was a tangle of spring blossom. “Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Mauleverer impatient
l
y, “they are well enough, and so they should be when you think of the sums Mark spends on their upkeep. If I had my way we would dismiss half the gardeners, and let the wilderness
be
a wilderness. Then perhaps I should be able to afford a barouche instead of that monstrous old carriage, and a few decent riding horses for my guests. Yes, Andrew?”

“Mr. Emsworth has called, ma’am.”

“Show him in. No, don’t run away, my dear, you must meet him some time. Best get it over with.”

“Must I?” So far, although she had shaken his unresponsive hand at the church door on Sundays, Marianne had contrived to avoid Mr. Emsworth when he visited Mrs. Mauleverer. She did not at all want to see him now, but, with Mrs. Mauleverer’s persuasive hand on hers, there seemed no help for it. Curtsying to him gravely, she was comforted by his obvious embarrassment.

“Miss Lamb!” After his usual deferential greeting to Mrs. Mauleverer he came toward her, hand outstretched. “I have
been hoping greatly for a few words with you. I owe you, I feel, an apology.”

“It does not matter.” Indifferently, she let him seize and wring her hand with his moist one.

“Ah, but it does, it does to me. I would not for the world be out of charity with any of my little flock, and most particularly not with one whom my respected friend Mrs. Mauleverer delights to honor. If I may take the liberty, ma’am”—to Mrs. Mauleverer—“of calling you my friend? But as for Miss Lamb, I feel we must be friends—indeed are friends already.”

“Oh?” Marianne picked up her embroidery.

“Why, yes, friends and fellow laborers. Wherever I go in the village, to whatever house of sickness and sorrow, I find that Miss Lamb has been before me. Do not think your goodness goes unnoticed, my dear young lady. God sees it all, and so, I can tell you, do I.”

“I do not do it with that in mind. I do it to please myself—and because there is such need. I have never seen such poverty, such ignorance
...
”

“Never?” He took it up with bright-eyed curiosity. “You mean that you have remembered?”

“Nothing,” she said almost angrily. “About myself, that is. It is only maddening that I remember so much that does not concern me. But wherever I have lived, I am convinced I have never seen anything like the conditions of some of the cottagers here. Do you know that the Martins sleep twelve in a room, with beds three deep, and only one other room?”

“I do indeed, and it is on that very subject that I am come to speak with you, ma’am.” He turned to address himself ingratiatingly to Mrs. Mauleverer, who was showing signs of irritation at being left so long out of the conversation. “I do not like the tone of the village. Is there any hope that Mr. Mauleverer will be coming down soon? His appearance would be worth a whole detachment of troops, for the people are convinced that he is their friend. And I tell you frankly, since this Reform Bill he is so concerned with was thrown out in the Lords, there are many in the village that are neither to hold nor to bind. If the King had not dissolved Parliament, I do not know what would have happened. But of course an election is unsettling too, even in a peaceful district like this where there is no question of a contest.”

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Mauleverer. “I hope the burgesses know their duty better than that. But do you mean to tell
me that our dolts of villagers are beginning to concern
themselves with politics?”

“They are indeed, and, between ourselves, I should feel very much safer if Mr. Mauleverer were to come down and talk some sense into them.”

She shuddered. “You mean we may have riots like last year? And be burned in our beds—or worse. I will write to Mark at once. Surely he must be returned from the North by now, and, neglectful though he is, the news that his old mother is in danger of her life must bring him home posthaste. You will excuse me, I know, Mr. Emsworth; I must catch today’s post.”

Thus summarily dismissed, the vicar took his leave, favoring Marianne once more with an almost tender pressure of the hand, and calling her his “blessed fellow worker.”

“Do you know what—” Mrs. Mauleverer settled herself at her writing desk. “I really believe that absurd Mr. Emsworth fancies himself in love with you. ‘Fellow worker’ indeed. What on earth did he mean?”

“Nothing but a lot of nonsense. You know that since you do not like the idea of my walking alone on the moors, I take my walks mostly to the village. Naturally, I have got to know many of the cottagers, and they are so terribly in need of help and advice—one must feel for them.”

“So that is where the kitchen scraps have been going! Mr. Boxall was complaining only the other day that the pigs’ bucket was coming out half empty. No, no, never look so guilty, child; if we can stave off riot and revolution with our kitchen scraps, so much the better. I am no fool, and know well enough how much you have saved me since you took over the housekeeping. If you choose to invest some of the saving in village good will, so much the better. You must let me know if there is anything more you think we should do. I have no more wish to be burned in my bed than the next person. Oh, if only Mark would agree to our visiting Bath, or, better still, London, where, I have no doubt, he means to spend the summer if Lord Grey is returned to power. And now, my dear, if you will forgive me, I must finish my letter to
him.
”

Marianne smiled to herself at the characteristic suggestion that she had been distracting her friend, and bent once more over the piece of household mending that had lain concealed, during Mr. Emsworth’s visit, under the more ladylike embroidery.

Her letter once despatched, Mrs. Mauleverer turned herself eagerly to the business of preparing the house for her
son’s reception. She seemed in no doubt that he would come, and Marianne wondered in just what alarmist terms she had written. The preparations she ordered seemed excessive, unless Mark Mauleverer was likely to bring a whole regiment of friends with him, but, said Gibbs, you never could tell with the master. So a whole range of guest bedchambers were aired and beeswaxed, Holland covers were taken off the furniture of the formal drawing room where Mrs. Mauleverer never sat, and the lustered candelabra there and in the dining room were polished till they shone, rainbow-bright in May sunshine.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Mauleverer, satisfied with having initiated this great spring cleaning, turned herself to the more satisfactory task of refurbishing her wardrobe in case, as she put
it,
“Mark brought down a party of his elegant town friends.” Luckily, Marianne had persuaded her to subscribe to
La Belle
Assemblée
and she and Martha pored over the latest number for hours. Velvet, alas, was out of fashion, and Martha who combined dressmaking with her other capacities, was soon hard at work on the carriage dress of emerald green
gros de Naples
that was recommended as all the rage. Since this involved such intricacies as a threefold cuff, a bias-trimmed skirt, and a matching
pelerine,
it was as much as anyone’s life was worth even to speak to her for a few days and Marianne, whose conscience often pricked her about Thomas, found her, for once, glad to have him taken off her hands.

She found him crying in the corridor one morning. Martha had boxed his ears. Gibbs had told him to “run along, do.” The whole house was topsy-turvey again that day, for Mrs. Mauleverer had belatedly remembered about the chimneys. The master sweep, summoned from Exton, had arrived when they were still at breakfast, accompanied by a little black
-
faced, sniveling boy, whose dangerous job it was to go up the huge chimneys and sweep them clean with his scarred and scabby elbows and knees. Marianne had exclaimed in horror at the very idea of this and Mrs. Mauleverer had been quite surprised at her suggestion that the boy, who could not have been more than eight years old, might not quite like the prospect.
“
But it is always done so, my dear. Where can you have grown up?” And she settled cheerfully to her day’s task of helping Gibbs refurbish her feathers by dipping them in hot water.

She looked up in surprise when Marianne made her request. “Take the child for a picnic in the long meadow?
Why, yes, if you really wish to.” Her shrug suggested that people who wanted to picnic in May were little better than lunatics, but Marianne, who had been housebound for a week supervising and cleaning, found her spirits rise remarkably as she collected a simple meal, a large chip hat that Mrs. Mauleverer had given her because it was “too shabby for anything,” and the first volume of
Anne of Geierstein
in case Thomas left her in peace to read it.

He scampered along by her side gaily enough and she found herself troubled, as she had often been before, by the fact that she could not like him better. But there was a sharpness in his little gray eyes that she found disconcerting. She knew so little about children: Were they all so incorrigibly given to mischief? Martha seemed to find what she called his “little ways” endearing, but Marianne was not so sure. Did nice little boys occupy themselves with pulling the shells off carefully collected snails? He was happily chasing a butterfly now—a charming pursuit if one did not know that he wanted to tear off its wings.

Perhaps she had done wrong in abandoning him so completely to Martha, but, in face of her obvious hostility, and Mrs. Mauleverer’s persuasions, there had seemed no other course open to her. At all events her butterfly had escaped the eager, grubby little hands this time—which meant that Thomas came crying back to her. She forced a smile, comforted him and began to tell him the story of the Three Bears. But he was never a good listener and soon began to pick up stones and throw them at birds.

This occupied him until they reached the edge of the wood by the long meadow. Here Marianne stopped short. She had forgotten, and Mrs. Mauleverer had probably never known, that it was down to hay this year. Last time she had taken the short cut to the village, the grass had been short enough so that it did not matter where one walked, now it was a luxurious crop, almost, in this benevolent summer, ready for the scythe. She dismissed her vision of Thomas playing happily with his hoop while she read, and settled them instead on the verge of the little wood that separated the meadow from the park. Inevitably, Thomas was hungry already, so they ate their bread and cold meat and then she saw him happily started making a kind of black pudding of mud and grass while she pulled out her book and began absorbedly to read.

She had been up late the night before, playing two-handed whist for halfpenny points with Mrs. Mauleverer and submitting, as usual, to being cheated of the money her hostess
lent her to play with. It was always difficult to get Mrs. Mauleverer away from the card table, and it had been well past one o clock when Marianne had finally contrived to persuade her that it was time for bed. Martha had been impatiently dismissed some t
ime
before, so Marianne had had to help her now querulous friend to bed. This involved various negotiations with false fronts and rouge removers that she found oddly more distasteful than the sick-nursing that she practiced among the cottagers. And, at last, there had been a fretful call from Mrs. Mauleverer, now looking oddly diminished in bed: “My drops! Marianne, you have forgotten my drops.”

Measuring them out grudgingly, Marianne had found herself wishing, as many times before, that she knew just what these drops were. She must ask Dr. Barton some time. By the time she had combed out her own irrepressibly curling hair and washed her face in the cold water that stood ready on her washstand, it was nearly two o’clock. The waves of bored somnolence that had overwhelmed her at the card table had given place to a tense wakefulness, and she lay for another hour or so, listening to the wind grumbling about the moor, and fighting off the terror that still lay in wait for moments like this. Would she never know who she was?