Maulever Hall

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Deliberately, she made herself relax in her corner, and began to count guests at last night’s ball, as if they had been sheep: the Duke of Wellington, in his garter ribbon; the Duke of Devonshire—an income of £140,000 a year, someone had told her—Lord Grey, courteous but preoccupied, and no wonder; Lord Melbourne teasing her about an imagined kinship—“So you’re a Lamb too, are you?” And then urbanely changing the subject when he saw her color up at the question, so that she wondered just what stories were circulating about her. But everyone had been wonderfully kind. The Princess de Lieven had admired her dress, and, at once, the Duchess of Dino, her rival in the diplomatic corps, had congratulated her on her dancing. Lady Cowper had smiled at her, and even the fierce old Tory Lady Stafford had murmured something that might easily have been construed as a compliment. But then, all the time, the Duke of Lundy had been quietly there, ready to support her in any difficulty. No wonder if the world had been kind, seeing her so seconded. And, in return, she had refused him—would do so again if he should repeat his offer. And—for what? For Mauleverer, of the short temper and the brooding face. For Mauleverer, perhaps a murderer, in intention at least. She stiffened in her corner of the carriage. For Mauleverer, whom she would always love. There is no logic in loving, and the time was past when she could help herself. Now, deliciously, for a while, she gave herself up to memory of that rain-drenched, delirious day on the moor. Whatever else she might be compelled to believe of him, she would always believe that, then, he had loved her. There was comfort in the thought and, at last, dreamlessly, she slept.

  When she woke, gray light was filtering into the carriage. The rain had stopped, but when she looked out of the window she saw a thin dusting of snow on the ground. They were passing through a village where nothing seemed awake but cocks and hens. It must be very early.

  Mrs. Mauleverer woke with a grunt. “Where are we?”

  “I’ve no idea.”

  “I haven’t slept a wink all night.” The old lady’s cap had slipped sideways, revealing the bald patch her hair was usually dressed to cover. She looked pinched with cold and fatigue. “Can’t we stop for a while and rest?”

  “I dare not.” Impossible to explain. “Look, the sun is rising.”

  But Mrs. Mauleverer would not be distracted by the sight of glowing light over the snow-covered fields. “I wish I hadn’t come,” she wailed.

  So did Marianne. It seemed madness, now, to have brought her. Relenting, she promised that when next they stopped to change horses, they would at least take time to drink some hot coffee. “The men will need it anyway. They must be perished with cold.”

  “Not half so much as I am.” Marianne suspected that Mrs. Mauleverer did not really believe the lower classes capable of feeling discomfort. But she cheered up somewhat over coffee and hot rolls, and Marianne, too, was cheered by the coachman’s telling her that they had made admirable time so far, and, if the snow only held off, should reach Maulever Hall by dinnertime—“late dinner.” He grinned at her, pleased with himself after his night’s exertions.

  A feeble midwinter sun had already thawed the night’s sprinkling of snow from the roads and the carriage lumbered steadily on, while Marianne and Mrs. Mauleverer dozed in their respective corners, too tired, by now, for talk. It was dark by the time they reached Exton, where both of them were jerked awake as the coach rattled on to cobblestones. “Not much longer now,” said Marianne.

  “No, thank goodness. I hope I never have to make such a journey again. I am all of an ache from head to foot.”

  So was Marianne, but she listened patiently to Mrs. Mauleverer’s catalogue of complaints. “And they won’t expect us, either,” she wound up. “Most likely there’ll be nothing fit to eat in the house, and the beds not aired, and no fires—oh dear, I do wish I had stayed in town. I don’t know what I was thinking of to let you persuade me to join you on this mad jaunt.”

  But Marianne was only half-listening, her mind busy with a problem of her own. John Barnaby had urged her to waste no time in removing little Thomas—or rather, she reminded herself, Lord Heverdon—out of danger’s way. But it was no use thinking of taking him away tonight. She knew herself to be too exhausted for a further journey, and, besides, she could not possibly ask her exhausted coachman to start out again, and there was, she knew, no carriage now at Maulever Hall. Besides—she was wrestling with the old doubts again—would it not be better to stay and see if Mauleverer really did arrive? Surely her mere presence, and his mother’s, would be enough to foil any design he might have on the child. And, “I don’t believe it,” she told herself. She would stay and prove Barnaby wrong.

  Mrs. Mauleverer cheered up a little when they turned at last into the driveway that led to Maulever Hall, but their first sight of the house was far from encouraging. No lights burned in any of the front rooms, so that it was nothing but a blacker shape against the starless blackness of the night.

  The groom jumped down and beat a resounding tattoo on the front door. It was raining again and Marianne and Mrs. Mauleverer waited its opening inside the coach. The delay seemed interminable and even Marianne was growing impatient when, at last, they saw a little flicker of candlelight behind the glass at each side of the big door. It opened a crack and Marianne, peering impatiently through the darkness, could see someone apparently questioning the groom. Then, at last, it swung wide as he hurried back to the coach.

  “Strange goings-on,” he said, as he opened the door and let down the step. “Seems all the servants are away to Exton on some Christmas junketing or other. Master’s orders, the housekeeper says. Very glad to see us she is, too, now she’s certain we aren’t a pack of housebreakers.”

  “Queer sort of housebreakers, arriving by coach,” said Marianne, as she jumped lightly out and turned to help her grumbling companion down.

  “Is it really you, miss?” Martha awaited them in the doorway, screening the candle she held against the wind. “Lord, but I’m glad to see you. I never thought I’d see the day—” And then, in amazement: “Mrs. Mauleverer!”

  The old lady pushed past her into the hall: “Her corpse, more likely. I’m perished with cold. What’s this I hear about the servants being away? I never heard of such an ill-managed business.”

  Marianne left her to her grumbling and turned to tell the men to take the carriage round to the stables. “Can you find your way? I’m afraid everything seems to be at sixes and sevens here.”

  Her apologetic tone mollified the men: “Lord bless you, miss,” said the coachman, “we’re old campaigners, Bert and me; we’ll be all right. Do you look to the old lady; she must be starved with the cold.”

  Marianne found Mrs. Mauleverer and Martha still talking in the front hall. “For tonight only,” Martha was saying. “It’ll be so cold in your apartments.”

  “Did you ever hear of such a thing?” Mrs. Mauleverer turned her disgust on Marianne. “There’s not a servant in the place, except Martha and the under nurserymaid. No fires, no food, nothing! What can Mark have been thinking of to send them all off like this?”

  “I cannot imagine.” But Marianne’s voice shook a little. Her imagination was running a grisly riot round the idea that he had purposely cleared the house of witnesses to the crime he planned. “And Thomas?” she asked.

  “Oh, he’s here, right enough, but not a bit well,” said Martha. “That’s why I’m so glad you’ve come, miss. I’ve been near distracted all day, with no one to send for the doctor. If he’s no better in the morning, do you think your coachman could go for him?” There was new respect in her voice, and Marianne realized, with dry amusement, that Mrs. Mauleverer had had time to tell her whose coach it was. She turned, now, to lead the way upstairs. “I’ve made so bold as to suggest to Mrs. Mauleverer that you and she should sleep, tonight, in my wing,” she said. “There haven’t been fires in the rest of the house all winter. I’m afraid you’d freeze there. And to tell truth, I’ll be glad to have you; it’s lonesome in this great house all empty.
I don’t half like it.” She looked nervously over her shoulder as she spoke, and the candle flickered in the draft of her movement.

  Mrs. Mauleverer shuddered in sympathy. “I don’t like it either. Very well, Martha, just for tonight you may have fires lighted for us in your wing.” They had reached Martha’s room by now and she sighed with relief at sight of the roaring fire on the hearth and settled luxuriously in the chair that was pulled up close to it. “What’s that?” she started nervously as a door banged somewhere in the house. “I thought you said there was nobody here, Martha?”

  “Doubtless it’s our driver and the groom,” said Marianne quickly, aware of the panic in the air. “I told them to settle themselves as best they might.” And then, bending to light a taper at the fire: “What we need is more light.” And she began to light the candles that stood in brass holders on the shelf.

  “I’m glad to see you, miss, I really am.” Once more Martha admitted surprise. “I’ve been properly blue-deviled, sitting here all on my own, and the child ill and all.”

  “Oh, yes, Thomas. What is the matter with him?” Fears jostled together in Marianne’s head.

  But Martha’s answer was reassuring: “Nothing but one of his feverish chills: he would go out snowballing yesterday, and I was so busy, with them all going off and all that I didn’t contrive to stop him. A couple of days in bed should set him to rights—I hope.”

  So much for her idea of taking the child away tomorrow. But, surely, she had already abandoned it? If only she could be sure of anything ... But she had to face the fact that Mauleverer’s sending away of the servants had a sinister look. “Well now”—she was intentionally brisk, as much to reassure herself as the others—“what we need is food. Martha, do you look after Mrs. Mauleverer and have this girl of yours light fires in the next room for us—we will sleep together, I think—and I will go down to the kitchen, make sure the men have found what they need, and bring back a supper for us. You have had yours, I suppose?”

  “Yes indeed.” Martha shivered dramatically. “We ate before the light went. I didn’t fancy venturing all that way down in the dark. I don’t like this house, miss, not empty like this.”

  “Don’t be absurd.” But Marianne had to admit to herself that she did not particularly enjoy the walk down the long, drafty corridor; her candle flickering in her hand; doors, on each side of her, shut on rooms that she hoped were empty. The house was full of noises, creakings, and whisperings, like a ship at sea. Somewhere, a casement rattled. The wind was getting up, and, as she passed some of the doors, cold little drafts whispered around her feet and the candle’s leaping flame made odd shadows on the walls ahead of her. Suddenly, she would have liked to run, but pride and common sense alike forbade it. Besides, she had reached the back stairs, which were so steep as to need careful going. At the bottom, she heard sounds of life at last and saw, ahead of her, light shining from under a baize door. Opening it, she found herself in a different world. Lighted by a big hanging lamp over the table, and a huge fire on the hearth, the big kitchen was warm and smelled comfortably of food. The coachman and groom were sitting facing each other across the table, food spread around them, tankards in their hands. The old campaigners had indeed contrived to make themselves at home.

  They jumped to their feet at sight of her, and assured her, in answer to her questions, that all was right and tight with them—“But it’s a rum go, just the same, miss, finding the house empty like this.”

  Heartily agreeing with them, Marianne had to conceal a sharp pang of disappointment when she learned that they had found themselves quarters in the grooms’ apartments above the stables. Just for tonight, she would have preferred to have them nearer, but pride forbade her suggesting it. Besides, they would naturally wish to be near the horses.

  She was relieved to find the big larder well stocked, providing evidence, if more had been needed, that the servants’ excursion to Exton had been sudden and unexpected. She collected a tray full of what she thought Mrs. Mauleverer would like best, put the candle on it, and sighed with relief when Evans, the coachman, volunteered to accompany her back upstairs: “To open the doors for you, miss.” Thus escorted, she found that the journey lost all its terrors, and she laughed at herself for the imagination that had set all kinds of horrors stirring behind the closed doors along the upstairs corridor. Just the same, she told Evans that she would come down, after supper, to lock up behind him and the groom when they adjourned to their sleeping quarters. She would feel very much safer, in this echoing, empty house, if she was certain all the doors were double locked and bolted.

  It was late by now. Mrs. Mauleverer nodded over her meal of cold meats and rather stale bread; little Thomas was sleeping peacefully in his room next to Martha’s, and Jane had gone shivering off with her candle up the steep second flight of stairs to her tiny garret room. The fire was burning low. Mrs. Mauleverer yawned and rose: “Well, I’m for bed,” she said. “Martha?”

  There was an odd little moment of silent tension in the room, before Martha, who had been busy with some sewing in the corner away from the fire, got slowly to her feet and came forward: “Yes, Mrs. Mauleverer?”

  “I am worn out, Martha.” It was her petulant, baby voice. “Help me to bed.”

  The housekeeper’s keys jingled at Martha’s waist as she came forward another step. “Yes, Mrs. Mauleverer.”

  Marianne, reluctantly piling plates on the tray before returning it to the kitchen and locking up, was aware of a quick, wordless interchange between the two other women. Martha had Mrs. Mauleverer’s arm, now, and was supporting her as she rose shakily to her feet. “You are tired”— surprisingly, her voice was warm with sympathy—“you have come too far and too fast today.”

  “Yes.” Mrs. Mauleverer’s reproachful gaze was fixed on Marianne. “I cannot imagine why we hurried so. And all to find an empty house at the end of it. Where are you going to now, Marianne?” Her voice was sharp.

  “To take down the tray and lock up after the men.” She had already explained this.

  “And then wake me from my first sleep when you choose to come to bed? I thank you, no. Martha shall sleep with me. You will, won’t you, Martha?”

  “If you wish it.” Again there was unwonted warmth in Martha’s voice.

  Marianne had intended to ask for her company on the bleak walk down to the kitchen, but how could she now? “Very well”—she picked up the tray—“I will sleep on the sofa in here.” Nothing would induce her to sleep in Martha’s room. And yet—she opened the door and plunged once more into the dark and drafty corridor—had she misjudged Martha all the time? All her behavior tonight seemed to point to a genuine affection for Mrs. Mauleverer, which made her jealousy of herself at once understandable and sympathetic. Had she not, perhaps, allowed herself to be misled by old Gibbs’s own jealousy of Martha into totally unjustified doubts about her? And, if so, what damage might she not have done! She was convinced that Mauleverer’s decision to take his mother to London and leave Martha behind had been based on what she herself had told him. And on what grounds? She had mistrusted Martha’s influence over Mrs. Mauleverer, mainly because of the drops she gave her. But Mrs. Mauleverer, deprived of the drops, had been an infinitely more pitiful figure than she had ever presented in the country when she had them. “I’ll never interfere again,” she told herself, as she pushed her way through the baize door and found herself, once more with relief, in the warmth and comfort of the big kitchen.

  The two men were still sitting at their ease over the dying fire, but professed themselves ready to go to bed. “It’s been a long day, miss.”

  It certainly had. She thanked them once more for their speed and efficiency on the drive down, then saw them out and shot the heavy bolts behind them. Then, pausing for a moment in the firelight glow of the kitchen, she faced the question that had been haunting her since they arrived: Had it all been for nothing? A wild goose chase? She shivered and moved closer to the fire. Probably it had. And—what
was she going to do tomorrow? It had been all very well, in London, to plan to remove little Thomas from Maulever Hall and so away from any possibility of danger. But what about Martha? She would undoubtedly refuse to part with him, particularly since it would be impossible to explain his removal. She sank into the cook’s rocking chair and stared into the dying fire, chin in hands. She had been a fool to come bolting down here. Her eyes, gravelly with fatigue, flickered shut, then opened again reluctantly. At least one good thing had come of the journey—the reunion of Mrs. Mauleverer and Martha. And what would Mauleverer himself think of that? He must have taken his mother to London to get her away from Martha’s influence. He would hardly be delighted to have had her brought back so suddenly. Inevitably, her tired brain conjured up his angry face, as she had seen it last at the Ball. How brutal he had been to her, that night, and yet—she could hardly blame him. If only she could have explained ... But the time for explanations was past. Perhaps, at the Ball, if Lady Heverdon had not interrupted them, she might have managed to make him understand, but now there was nothing for it but to try to teach herself to forget him.

  Forget him? She never would, so why try? Marry the Duke and catch herself pretending that he was Mauleverer? She liked him far too well for that, much better, she told herself, than she did Mauleverer, but what had that to do with loving? Nothing was going to change what she felt for Mauleverer. Even if John Barnaby’s accusations should prove true, it would make no difference. And, now that she was here, in the house where she had known and loved Mauleverer, she found it increasingly difficult to believe them.