ST. MARTIN’S FLOW

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 248, 1 August 1941, Page 7

ST. MARTIN’S FLOW

By MARJORIE BOWEN. :

CHAPTER vni. "IF YOU LOVE ME—” She paused, shocked by bis face that was turned aside from her. She had Bqlieved from his looks and glances, from his press of her hand, that he loved her, .and did not dare say so because of the distance between them forced her courage and added: "I came to .you, Harry—l believe 1 may call you that.—to say that I care for you enough to offer you a post as my husband and my steward.” "Indeed,” he cried, hastily, "forgive me, madam, I do not know what you are trying to say. Everything seems wrong ” "Why should it be wrong?” she asked, clear-eyed. "Indeed, if wo love one another ” "If we love one another! Madam, A think there is some mistake!” "Mistake!” she cried, forcing herself on. "What mistake can there be? 1 have seen your looks, your glances, what has held you back from me save that I am a Pettigrew and you are a Medway? If you love me ” "If 1 lovo you! Oh, Mary, a pity it is not true!” "Not true!” sho cried, drawing back from him in anger as much as in pain. "No, it is not time. If there is any whom I love it is ” " “Give mo her name!” cried Mary Pettigrew, turning a pace away from him. "It seems to be that our families are fated always to make these mistakes. My father,' your mother, indeed, Ido not know what lam saying— — ’ She leaned against the trunk pf a newly-budding'tree and would speak no more, and the heavy man strode up and down debating with himself. At last be came out with the cruel truth. "It’s Martha Boult, Miss Pettigrew, I’ve loved her. I suppose she’s silly, and a fool in her way, not so young. I believe I love her. And, Miss Pettigrew, pray tell me what you would say to me before I make any decisions.” Now she had her chance for making an escape, for evading all that she had through many nights of cold vigils, made up her mind to do, but because of the blood in her, of the race to which she owned loyalty, she would not accept this but. said coldly:— "What I had to say, Harry Medway was this—that I, as I know the meaning the word, loved you, ahd' would take you for my master.” She saw admiration and a gratified vanity in his fine features, and encouraged by this she spoke impulsively: "Oh, Harry, I know that all the past separates us, but all The future might join us !” "Miss Pettigrew,” said he, "Mary Pettigrew,” and he spoke in some confusion, “well, .1 don’t know what you mean.”

"Don’t you?” asked Mary, with a rising colour, hut a rising courage, too. "I’ve tried to speak to you plainly. I suppose what I~ do is in a way outrageous, but you’ll understand me, I suppose, if none other does.” "And what am I to understand, Miss Pettigrew?” said ho, and they paced together up and down. She looked up at the house, so new, to her so vulgar,so different from the old Mansion House. What was she forfeiting? What giving up, in offering herself and all that lief ancient name stood for for this man? t

But she put back these feelings, thinking that they were but commonplace ahd ignoble, and with truth shining in her eyes turned to him and said: “Harry, I believe that you might have cared for me but did not dare say so. No, stop, don’t say a woi’d. L think more of the new than of the old. You must believe me, me here now.” > She spoke in a tone that was exalted, and the colour came and went in her noble' face while the man looked at her astounded. "I’ve something to offer, Harry. Here 1 use your name freely. I’ve something to offer—an ancient race. Up to mv father’s time it meant something. I know my father’s history, he had not tlio courage to be a rebel.” “I don’t know what you mean, Miss Pettigrew,” he muttered, standing still and drawing with his stick a pattern on the gravel path. . "Don’t speak to mo so formally, Harry. I’ve come here to offer you myself. my estate, it’s encumbered, I know, you’ll find details of that from rny lawyer and tho mortgagees. l ßut there is’ something, it’s a n&me, I am Mary Pettigrew. "I can’t tmderstand what you mean!” he exclaimed. i "Only this, I’m offering myself to you as your wife, because 1 don’t think that you’d care to do that ’yourself, 1 being what I am.” "YOU’LL COME BACK?” She saw the hot colour mount to his face. "I’m more 'than honoured, I’m astounded,” he said, awkwardly. "I think to volunteer in the war now going on in Africa. . And there’s Martha. I told you.” "You arc going to volunteer?” Terror and prido mingled in her voice. "Ay, I thought of it. But what you said has confounded me, I. don’t know what to reply. Martha, you kiiow ” She drew herself up then in her maiden pride-as Rose Bartlett had drawn herself up a generation before beside St. Martin’s Flow.

"If you don’t know,” she replied, "there is no more to say. I. have made a silly mistake and must pay for it, in a hurt—well, vanity or pride, whichever you like to call it. I didn’t think that Martha Boult could matter.”

"Don’t call it either vanity or pride Miss' Pettigrew,” said* he, looking at her with the flashing eyes that she so much admired. "I’m going for a soldier. Indeed I must, I feel it’s an idle life here, for I’ve got my roots in the land. I like to travel, to knock about. Tho house is new and my family’s now Indeed, Miss Pettigrew——”

Her breed enabled her to mock at him lightly.

"What is it you want to say to mo — some explanation, perhaps, of your refusal?” "Don’t call it a refusal. I’ve hardly understood what you’ve said to mo. Indeed, I’ve noticed you and your beauty and your brightness and -admired your rank- ” "I did not know of Martha.”

"You’ll lot it go at that, I suppose?” "Indeed I’ll, let it go at that,”’ replied Mary Pettigrew, standing erect in th 6 cold spring air. "I have made a mistake, as I suppose most women do when their sincerity outruns their

A Tale of ihe Ernf of an Epoch,

(Copyright).

pride. I thought, seeing that the races wo came of ”

"Stop,” he cried, holding up liis hand with some dignity, "I know what my'race is. We made our money in Jamaica when sugar sold well. And nn father did a hit of smuggling, too with brandy and lace. ' And my pool mother—well, as far as I’ve heard the story, it was your father she was in love with and dreamed of. And wo criss and cross.”

"And so.” remarked Mary Petti grew, turning aside wrapped .again in her serene dignity. "I thought that wo two might have come together.” "Ay, so we might,” he agreed, "and though I have never thought of it, oi looked so high, if there had boon lovo and liking, and I had not seen Martha —and you not been too young to know wlutt you do. . . .”

He looked at her for a while, then he said Slowly, choosing his words wit!) deliberation:

"There’s a gulf sot between you and me, my lady.” And it did not jar on either of them that he used this oldfashioned term, as a. yeoman or a peasant speaking to the mistress ol the ’manor. "I’m of lower stock, and though I have the money, and your estates are slipping downhill, that don’t make any difference now. And I’m in a false position. I’m neither a peasant nor a yeoman nor a gentleman and so I am away to seo if I can mak; my fortune in the African war.” "And if you come back ? ? i cried she suddenly, all the terrors of a woman in love colouring her voice and flushing her cheeks.

"Why shouldn’t I come back? And if I do, well ” "You’ll come back to the woman you love,” said Mary Pettigrew, turning towards the gate. "I seo the groom has my horse ready. I understand.'’ "You’re so young. You’ll forget this —it will soon be——” "Dead and gone, as I suppose, Mi Medway.” She was able, even now. to redeem the moments from degradation "I_ spoke to you but of a, play, a fancy.” "I ought to tell you this—if I come back and she’ll have me, it will be Martha Boult who’ll he my wife.” "I commend your good taste,” said Mary Pettigrew mechanically. She thought at once of the handsome w'o man whom she had seen but a few hours before standing by the hedgerow, pretty, unlettered, stupid in a way, with her handsome dowry and lioi yeoman descent . . j and so she was Harry Medway’s choice, and so, as he had said, criss-cross their destinies went. SUNSET OF HOPES. And yet Mary had never thought o 1 this. Ho had seemed to her so strong, so bold, so clever, so above the /multitude,' and Martha Boult but another hodgero)v blossom, rather overblown for all the fat acres that went to be) dowry. ' She glanced at him with a certai n scorn a woman will glance at a mao who puts tlio best by and takes the lesser. But she had no thought now but to gloss over the moment, "Why, I knew,” cried she, lightly "that it was you and Martha all the time, and we had a certain wager bo tween us. as women will, for Martha is a friend of mine.”

And so sho went on talking lightly, and ho was bewildered and in a sense disappointed for he would like to have thought that tho heiress of the I etti grows, impoverished as she was, mighj have been his for the taking. And so in confusion and duplicity they parted, he setting her in her saddle, putting his hand for her foot as she mo unted on her roan mare, and she saying good byo to him with a curling lip of scon and riding slowly home. And as she came along the high roaci unattended and the setting sun was towards her face, she thought of how her dreams went down and this was the end.of much high refinance. "And what’s there for me?” asked Mary of the cool evening air. as she rode slowly.

She thought of the staid sober match that had been proposed to her by her lawyers—a neighbour, a small squire, a staid, middle-aged widower, Timothy Thorpe, who was willing to take the name of Pettigrew and so continue the old line.

"And so,” mused tho girl, "I shall set myself to a fraud and try to keep going. that -which is already decayed."

The winding road came out on the upland past the church that she saw below, and beneath the graveyard was St. Martin’s Flow, the dark river, with tho budding alders either side, that swept swiftly past the mill. Mary took her destiny in her hands as Rose Bartlett had taken it a long generation before, and decided: “I’ll marry Timothy Thorpe, and he’ll take the name of Pettigrew. And this romance can go its way. And 1 suppose if Harry Medway volunteers ior the war, when he comes back lie will marry Martha, as lie said, ancl whether or no, I can never see him again.” “And I 1 must be married first,” thought Mary,” because of the sheer dignity of my race, the respect I owe to those who went before me—knights, cavaliers, and legislators.' ’ Mary could visualise what her life would be with Timothy Thorpe, dull, staid, conventional, tie was a plain featured man, who, though not repellent to her was by no means pleasing. She knew that he wished to marry her for no romantic motive, but merely that he might he able to consolidate his failing fortunes with hers. “And- mine,” thought she, looking towards the altar that was dimly seen, “are failing too. With Harry Medway I might have raised them to some semblance of glory, hut it seems that one is not allowed to step outside tho accustomed paths.” She made silently, without drama, her renunciations. She had been a fool to suppose that sho could over do anything splendid and out of the way, Times were changing, hut not so mucli as she had hoped. No, she would marry Timothy Thorpe, who was a good, kind man. To him she would he a sensible wife, and perhaps in time she might bear a child who would be able—“to do,” said Mary Pettigrew aloud, "what I could not do—get out of the rut tq

which the centuries have condemned me. He can’t understand what a woman like me is worth, and neither can Timothy Thorpe either, or anybody who knows mo. And I supposed shall have to ho quiet and suppressed all iny life, and just do what J can to keep tho old estates together.” As she rode quietly home, in her deep mortification and her sense of love stifled and lost, she got some consolation from the crescent moon that rose pale as a chip of ice above the distant woods, and was reflected like a sparkle of silver in tho dark waters of St. Martin’s Flow. So Mary came back to the old Mansion House, denuded of so many of its splendours, and the old maidservant who stayed more for love of the Pettigrews than from any hope of gain, saw her to her bedroom. Diary, sending the old woman away, drew tlio curtains across the moonlight and sat down at her little bureau and wrote to her lawyers, and said that she wouljl accept 'through them tlio offer of Mi' Timothy Thorpe to In' her husband and the master of the decaying fortunes of tho Pettigrews and the old Mansion House, (To Be Continued).