Maulever Hall

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  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 Marianne 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.

  For the moment she let Sadie loose in the rich grass of the lawn and followed her ancient guide to the front door that stood hospitably open among more climbing roses. Inside, the house bore a curious resemblance to its owner. Here, too, were odd contrasts and curious contradictions. The floor was of well-scrubbed brick, but a magnificent Persian carpet lay in front of the empty fireplace in the little parlor. Half the furniture was what you might expect to find in any village cottage; the rest would not have been out of place in a Mayfair drawing room. A rough wheel-backed chair was drawn up to a delicate lady’s writing desk; a charming little bookcase, full of leather volumes, stood on top of a plain deal chest. The odd and charming effect of the whole was accentuated by the silver vases that stood everywhere, all of them full of big buxom sweet-scented country roses.

  “Sit down.” The old woman gestured Marianne to a delicate little sofa whose upholstery had faded to a strange silver gray. Then she raised her voice to an eldritch screech: “Mary, Mary, where have you got to now? We have a visitor.”

  A door to the back of the house popped open and another old woman put her head round it. “A visitor?” Marianne was not, by now, in the least surprised that this voice was rich Cockney. The face, too, was a Londoner’s face, with the almost suspicious sharpness that is bred in city streets. Compare
d with her mistress, this old woman might almost pass as young, her face was still round and rosy and oddly unlined and her stout figure in the striped cotton gown and voluminous apron still robust. “A visitor?” she said again, “well bless us and keep us all and where did she spring from?”

  “From the moor. And that will be enough talk, Mary. We will have a luncheon at once. Our guest is exhausted.”

  “A luncheon? Dinner more like at this hour and there’s nought in the house but cold meat, my lady.”

  “Then off with you and bring it, and don’t ‘my lady’ me,” said her mistress. Then, turning to Marianne: “I know you will not want to stay for anything more elaborate, since your parents must already be anxious about you. Now, tell me about yourself. Where do you come from? Who are you? And what are your family thinking of to let you be riding about the moor, alone, on a bolting horse.”

  Marianne smiled at the brisk, imperative string of questions, but set herself to answer them as simply as she could. “My name is Marianne Lamb,” she began, “I am companion to Mrs. Mauleverer of Maulever Hall. And it was my fault, not Sadie’s. I was not thinking what I was doing, and an adder startled her.”

  “You must be a good rider. Companion, eh? I’ve heard of Mrs. Mauleverer. Plays cards, don’t she? Has a bad-tempered son who never got over being scarred at Waterloo. But good enough sort of people; none of your jumped-up second generation gentry. You might have done worse for yourself. Lamb, you said? Marianne? Mother reading French books? Or just Jane Austen? Well, one thing, it won’t take you much more than an hour to reach Maulever Hall by road—that is if that mare of yours can still go. Ought to have a rub down really, but there’s only me and Mary. Mary’s scared silly of horses, and I’d rather talk to you. Pretty girls don’t drop into my garden every day, and it’s pleasant to talk to someone I can hear. Ah! food; thank you, Mary, that will do. Don’t want to hurry you, my dear, but best eat fast and be on your way or they’ll have the search parties out from Maulever Hall. Come back another day and tell me what you’re doing tied to Mrs. Mauleverer’s apron strings.”

  “I’d like to.” Marianne found herself enormously drawn to this ugly old woman, with her sharp eyes and her oddly mannish way of talking. “If you’re sure I won’t be a nuisance.”

  “Nuisance! I should think not. Came down here for solitude; that’s true enough; but that was twenty years ago, and I had a broken heart for company. Forgotten what it felt like now, but occupying, I remember, very occupying. I missed it for a while ... Quiet in the country. Mary said, why not go back to town, but, I ask you, why? Can’t leave the garden for one thing—always something to do there—have some more strawberries? No? Well then, best be going, if you’ve the strength, and you look to have. Not a town girl either, are you? Knew it at once. Yes, do come again, my dear, I’d like it.”

  Slightly dazed, Marianne listened to her curt but lucid directions as to the best way back to Maulever Hall and then rose to take her leave: “I do not know how to thank you, Lady—” She paused expectantly.

  “Lady Fiddlestick! I thought I’d got Mary trained out of it at last, but she’s obstinate as they come. I ask you: Lady Gardener of Mud Hall? Or Lady Boots and Barrows?” She had, in fact, kicked off her Hessian boots on entering the house, but now put them on again preparatory to seeing Marianne to the road. “Call me Mrs. Bundy. It’ll do. I suppose you can mount the brute unaided?”

  “If you’ve a garden bench I can use?”

  “There’s an old tree trunk I sit on between chores.”

  Safely in the saddle again, Marianne bent once more to thank her hostess, whose real name she did not seem likely to learn. But, “Come again,” said Mrs. Bundy.

  Sadie was as weary as her rider, and they made their way lethargically home along the little country road to which Mrs. Bundy had directed Marianne. To her relief, the road seemed to keep mainly to the valley and though it wound up and down over the spurs of the hills, there was no really hard climb to test Sadie’s diminished strength. The heat of the day had passed and a little evening breeze sprung up. Birds sang their vespers in the hedges, the stream, which the little lane kept crossing and recrossing, rattled merrily over its stony bed. Marianne was amazed to find she was singing to herself. For a while, interest in Mrs. Bundy (what on earth could be her real name?) had drowned out the memory of her own wretchedness. The old lady had had a broken heart once, twenty years ago, and had even forgotten what it felt like. I must visit her again, thought Marianne, and turned, with relief, from the lane into a larger road that she recognized. Half an hour’s steady riding would bring her home to Maulever Hall.

  She was very late for dinner and found Mrs. Mauleverer hovering somewhere between anxiety and irritation; the anxiety genuine, if querulous enough, the irritation carefully fomented, Marianne suspected, by her patient enemy, Martha. She kept her explanations as brief as possible and did not mention the fact that Sadie had run away with her, merely saying that she had lost her way on the moors and stopped for directions. For some reason that she did not, herself, quite understand, she made no mention of her odd, engaging hostess, letting Mrs. Mauleverer think that she had merely stopped at some remote moorland farm.

  To her relief, Sadie was none the worse for their adventure and, as she had now established her right to use her, she rode out every afternoon that she could manage. It was nearly a week before she found time to pay another visit to the cottage in the valley and when she did so she was received like an old and welcome friend by both Mary and her mistress. The strawberries were finished, but she helped her new friend gather raspberries from the canes at the end of the garden and found herself, as she did so, talking much more freely than she had expected about her own circumstances. Mrs. Bundy was a good listener and if she deduced a good deal from Marianne’s few and guarded references to Mauleverer and Lady Heverdon she was too clever to show it, concentrating her questions on the point of Marianne’s identity. “So you are riding about the countryside hoping someone will recognize you? Hopeful, don’t you think? There’s been no hue and cry that I’ve heard of, and, recluse that I am, I hear of most things. It’s odd—very odd. But you’re well enough where you are, hey?”

  “Oh yes.” Marianne knew she did not sound quite convinced.

  “If not; come here. Always welcome. Plenty to do in the garden. You’d be bored, of course, but there are worse fates. No, no, don’t make a song and dance about it; just come, any day, if you want to. Mary likes you too; so no problem there; said so only the other day. There, that’s enough of those and my back’s breaking. Not so young as I was, you know: can’t stoop, can’t carry, can’t sleep—deuced boring, old age, if you ask me. Let’s go and have lunch.”

  After that, Marianne rode over to the cottage at least once a week. There was always a warm welcome for her, and a perfect flood of satisfactory talk. For though Mrs. Bundy called herself a recluse, she kept very much in touch with the world beyond her valley. All the latest books and papers found their way to the little house and she read them with an acute detachment that Marianne found enormously refreshing. Where Mrs. Mauleverer confined herself to La Belle Assemble, and preferred its illustrations to its text, Mrs. Bundy would discuss the relative merits of the Edinburgh and the Quarterly Reviews, with satirical references to particular articles in each. She was keenly interested, too, in the progress of the Reform Bill through Parliament and delighted Marianne by an occasional flattering reference to Mauleverer’s backstage work for it. She must, Marianne realized, have many and faithful correspondents in London to be so thoroughly au courant with affairs there, and she was often tempted to ask Mary who she really was, but refrained. If her kind hostess wished to remain Mrs. Bundy, she must be allowed to do so.

  Meanwhile, summer was drawing toward autumn. Corn was stacked in the fields and the first of September had brought all the neighboring gentry out with their guns. Mrs. Mauleverer hoped daily that her son would come down for a few days’ shooting. But his Reform Bill was stil
l being discussed in committee of the House of Commons. Marianne did not expect him. What she was waiting for was the mysteriously still-deferred announcement of his engagement to Lady Heverdon. Even if her state of mourning precluded its public announcement, surely it was time he told his mother about it. There had been, in fact, only one brief note from him since he had returned to London and that had been mainly concerned with the things he had left behind him in his sudden departure from the Hall. Of course, it had fallen to Marianne to make up a parcel of several exquisite cambric shirts, two velvet waistcoats and a file of papers about the Exton election. If she dropped two angry tears into the parcel before sealing it up, that was her own affair.

  Lady Heverdon, on the other hand, had written Mrs. Mauleverer a long double letter, lavishly crossed in a hand so delicate and spidery that Mrs. Mauleverer had thrown it to Marianne ordering her to read it aloud: “If you can make it out, that is.”

  t seemed to consist largely of a chronicle of the vicissitudes of her journey back to London, with the word “we” very much to the fore, and left Marianne with just the picture she had expected of sociable nights spent with Mauleverer by the roaring fires of country inns where obsequious landlords brought out their best to entertain such honored guests. There was no actual mention of Mauleverer, but when Lady Heverdon said that “we found it impossible to make ourselves hurry,” it was obvious enough what she meant. Every day, when the mail came, Marianne steeled herself for the inevitable announcement of the engagement, and every day suffered the pangs of exquisite disappointment.

  Meanwhile, her own suitor had not been idle. She had thought she had given poor Mr. Emsworth such a set-down, that day in the cutting garden, that he would never trouble her again, but she had, it seemed, very much mistaken her man. He had kept away from her, it was true, for a week or so after her refusal, but then the old encounters began again. She could not object to his visiting her Bible class, since it was, of course, conducted under his auspices, but she hated the way he insisted on seeing her home after it, with jocose remarks about poachers and his anxiety on her behalf. Worse still, he had paid a call at Maulever Hall when she was out riding one day and had contrived to enlist Mrs. Mauleverer on his side. The old lady dearly loved a romance, whether in three volumes or in real life, and refused to believe that Marianne was entirely unmoved by her suitor’s devotion. It would be, she hinted, the most satisfactory possible conclusion to Marianne’s adventures: “Of course, I should miss you grievously, my dear, but, after all, it is not as if you would be going far. And the vicarage is a very good sort of a house indeed. It has four reception rooms, if you count that tiny front room, and I am not sure how many bedrooms, but enough, I am sure, for the kind of family a clergyman can afford. Mr. Emsworth has no expectations, it is true, but the living is his for life—truly, child, you could do much worse.”