ST. MARTIN’S FLOW

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 247, 31 July 1941, Page 7

ST. MARTIN’S FLOW

By MARJORIE BOWEN.

CHAPTER VII. A PETTIGREW LOVES A MEDWAY. . Hari'y lived in tlie great new house that his father, Paul, had built outside King’s Lynn. He dealt, by legitimate means, in the silk and brandy that his father was supposed to have smuggled, fte kept an orderly but) modest establishment and took his place, though in a somewhat ambiguous way, in the life'of the county. It was still considered in Norfolk that he was very much beneath Mary Pettigrew; and he was a man of middle years, Mary the unexpected and late child of a marriage long barren, so there was time between them.

An' ectasy of devotion upheld the girl,' made strong in. her first love beyond all jfiean. consideratiops. “He loves .me, but dare not say so.” And why should he be so abashed?

She had seen his'glance. He was a * well-made fellow, with fine limbs and a dark complexion and flashing eyes, nothing of the pale, gentle Rose, his mother, about him, thirty-five years of age now, she supposed.. While she had eighteen summers only . . . . “It’s for me to do what my father never dared to do—to be a rebel, to recognise the changes that are coin-

ing.” Mary went with her head in the air, to the old Mansion House that was now much neglected. A great number of the finer pieces of the furniture and of the more important paintings had been sold; there were gaps on the walls and spaces on the floor and here and there a. good tapestry that! Mary remembered in her youth had disappeared/ And the silver on the sideboard was scant and the servants were mostly old, or maids from the village who Were inclined to be pert and insolent. Mary looked up at the portrait oi her parents, Miles Pettigrew, who; had been weak and an idler, and who had done little with his life; and Jane Grant, the colourless woman who seemed ,to have fulfilled her destiny in a passive way without saying either “yes’ or "no” to anything. “And it is for the,” said Mary, aloud, leaning back in the great chair of the master of the old Mansion House, “to redeem all their weakness and follies and do something that is worth while.” . She smiled down the length of the empty table, past the great silver salt Harry, she would put in her place, at the bottom she would sit herself; he was a man of the new generation who would know how to control her destiny, her estates,, how to deal with all these questions that vexed and disturbed her; had had a good deal of experience, a busy active life. , “Why should we not, in time, build up a new lineage here? Why should not our children inherit both the pld tradition of the Pettigrews and he new blood of the Medways?” " On this thought she went up to her chamber that was still haqdsomely furnished though the pieces were worn and refurbished. “I suppose if he loves me,” said •Mlary, looking at herself in the mirror, and she did not doubt that he did love her, “he will care nothing for my poverty. I suppose this ancient name is still worth something.” Then she went on her knees very humbly, for though she was of great intelligence she was no more than a girl in love, and she thought of nothing blit Harry Medway and the offer she might make him of herself, and all she had. i For she had decided to take this

bold, nay, this almost unprecedented step and oil the morrow to ride over to King’s Lynn and to propose to Harry, Medway that he should have her as his wife. She knew that their names had been, as the village saying went, “coupled together,” and that many gossips were expecting that

they should he “united in matrimony.” Some of the old-fashioned people who were of her kin, or relationship, or ancient' friendship, would throw up their hands and say this was an unheard of thing that a Pettigrew should marry a Medway! “But what do I care?” thought Mary. “I shall satisfy not only my' love but my sense of the modernity of the world.” - “WE stand before A NEW ACE ' Mary dressed herself carefully in her blue riding-habit with her tall hat and veil, and rode over on the roan mare to Medway House, as it was somewhat ostentatiously called. On the way she had to pass the Mansion Farm, and she saw there Martha Boult, the only surviving daughter of Emily and Jeremiah Boult; she was a good deal older than Maaiy, and pretty in a simple way. The young lady from the old Mansion House’smiled at her graciously. These Boults were perhaps better ofF than she was herself, hut they were no more than yeoman stock and had, indeed, never attempted to presume upon their station. Emily Boult had died long since, leaving behind her husband, Jeremiah, and this one , daughter, Martha; and all accounted it a blessing that the shrewish, vinegarish woman had been so early removed, for she had not been by any regretted, unless it was by the husband whom sue despised, but for whom she had done so much. . . 4 Mary had heard something of her story, for tales such as these > that deal with love and passion, and Jik- ' ipg and disappointment get passed round from lip to lip, especially from' the lips of women, and Mary had had some compassion for Emily Boult, who had loved (the romantic girl,believed) , her own father, Miles Pettigrew, but been refused by him out of deep disdain, the disdain of Miles himself ior a woman w r ho was not loved, and the disdain of the Pettigrews for a woman who came from lowly birth. So lEtnily, to save her pride, the gossips always declared, had snatched her cousin, Jeremiah, and had put ail through in fine state with a haughty air, but soon afterwards, finding herself, as it were, trapped, as so many women find themselves, had become bitter and sliarp : tempered and led, as the neighbours said, her husband a tedious life. Yet he had borne all stolidly, but

A Tale of the End of an Epoch.

(Copyright).

seemed relieved when, he was left aloncat last with his young daughter, who was now no longer so very young, but a. fine woman who\ had refused many suitors.

jJTg both of us come of people who have been thwarted and disappointed, and both for the same reason, I suppose;” thought Mary. She paused herself with a sense or shock as she saw before her the trim new gates of Medway House. Mary leaned from her horse and pulled the iron hell-chain. A groom, for all things were done" ostentatiously at Medway House, came quickly and took the horse and Mary Pettigrew, descending from the mounting block, asked if Mr Harry was within. She had to see him on something important. The man, not too well trained, stared, and she smiled that down, and went in easily, holding up her riding-habit and marking the trim new grounds', ah, that was it, all was new, not like the pld Mansion House, mellowed arid graced with age, but all, laid out with money and bought taste, something that had been put there suddenly, not a thing that had grown gradually from generation to generation.“Well,” she thought, lialf-defiantly, “why shouldn’t we join together, the two of us, he with his new.ideas/ his yeoman and his peasant blood, and 1 with my old decaying race?” Harry Medway, who chanced to be coming down to the portico of the house, saw her, and flushed with pride and a certain embarrassment at seeing the heiress of the old Mansion House unexpectedly there. They had met often at various social occasions when she was, as it were, at one end and he the other, of Assembly Room dances in Norwich, at various funcions, and always she had been very. gracious, and their eyes had exchanged messages. She looked at him now, handsome, well set up, as. .she in her young woman’s imagination supposed, heroic, and intelligent. A mature, heavy man, nearly double her age . . . “You’re surprised to see me here," she said, holding out her hand from which she had first drawn the long cuffed glove. “Surprised, yes! Honoured, too.” He had learnt a few tricks of speech, he had been abroad, he had been well educated. She knew that his manners did not ring true, hut what did that matter? She tried to scorn her own tradition.

“Mr Medway, walk with me a while. I admire your house, it is finely built, and your gardens are splendidly laid out.”

He accepted her flattery with a smile of pride. c “That is my father’s doing, as you know, with the- money that he made in Jamaica. It’s not easy as you, Miss Pettigrew, will understand, to begin a new family.” • - “No, I suppose it’s not easy. But nothing that’s worth doing is easy. It should be a proud business.” “I suppose so,” said the man, uneasily. “Why, Harry,” she cried, “how you misunderstand me 7 ” And she saw the blood mount into his florid face..

“Misunderstand you!” ho echoed. “We stand, I suppose,” she replied, “at tha beginning of a new age, do we not, or do. you deny that ” “A new age! I don’t know. {Thers are things going on 1 don’t like,” he said quickly. “You’ve heard that there’s war with the tribes threatened in South Africa?” “What’s that to do with us?” she cried, with a woman’s quick instinct to shield all she loved from the horrors and perils of war “Well, never mind, Miss Pettigrew, what were you going to ask me?” “Well, that’s not so easy to say, you ought to say it for me, really. Do you understand, do you know?” “You’re above me, you know, Miss Pettigrew.” ' “I come from an ancient family, but the age is new, is it not? I know something of my history, and of yours.” “Do you?” he cried, stopping short. “Do you?” . “Yes,” said she, challenging him, “indeed I do. I know that your mother, Rose Bartlett, was a peasant; I know that my father was, in a way, ard, that hp should have married her but did not—through lack of courage. He married instead that passive woman, my mother, who bred me. And Rose Bartlett, marrying Paul Medway, bred you; And so we come together, Harry Medway, here, now. in this period, the beginning of trie century. Have you the courage and insight to rise with me to what this moment means?*’ 1 (To Be Continued).

The characters in this story are entirely imaginary. No reference is intended to any living person or to any public or private property.