ST. MARTIN’S FLOW

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 250, 4 August 1941, Page 7

ST. MARTIN’S FLOW

3 By MARJORIE BOWEN.

CHAPTER X

PRIDE OF THE PETTIGREWS.

She flushed and stood still, and the satchel of books did slip from her arm on to the fragrant grass at her feet. “I wonder!” she replied. “I wonder if that. does show 7 how seriously yen take me? I’m a human being, you know ,Simon, .not a chattel. I’ve got my ideas and my rights.” “Well, I suppose,” he responded, glowing witli satisfaction, that she had not instantly refused 'him, “women always have had their idea,s o and their rights, that men have been proud to give them. Oh, I heard a good deal of that sort of thing when I was at Oxford, and even when I was at school. But all that’s nothing, Hilda, compared to love, compared to the fact that i want you for my wife. I know I’ve not got much to olfer—that’s the conventional thing to say, but I mean it. But I am a. Pettigrew—yes, even though it is on the mother’s side,” lie added defiantly. • “All this—the church, and the old mill, and the estate, belongs to me, and it does mean something, even nowadays.’; “I know 7 it does, Simon,” she agreeu w 7 ith sudden humility, “and I like you well enough. I don’t think you understand me or what I’m trying to do. I’m willing to make a sacrifice for my ideals.” “I wish you wouldn’t talk like that, Hilda, it sounds'so silly. Our families have lived on this spot of land for hundreds of years “Lived*here too long,” she exclaimed, “sunk in convention and tradition! Yeu should go to the cities—-and learn.” “Don’t talk to me as if 1 w 7 as a small boy, Hilda. I know what’s going on.” Then seeing her defiant face, ho added: “There may he a war, you know, and that will sweep away all this nonsense.”

“Yes, and women will "be called, to take a part in it, I suppose. The men won’t bo able to win the war all by themselves even if they have muddled into it. .

Peeling she had said too much and said it too violently, the girl paused. He caught hold of her by the shoulder and tried to kiss her cheek, but she wrenched herself fiercely apart. ‘'‘Don’t touch me, Simon! You don’t understand me! I suppose to you Pm a silly girl who happened to take your fancy.” . - “Indeed you’re not, Hilda! Ypu’re a B very great deal more than that,” “Ah,” said she, maliciously /‘perhaps I’m the heiress of the Boults and the 'Medways ?” “You’re not that, Hilda, either. 1 don’t want your money. I’m trying to ask you, Hilda, to be my wife!” He pressed his point with ardour, out with a kind of hauteur too. As she moved away ho hold back. “Don’t, you care for me, Hilda? I’ve treated you frankly.” “You’re very imperious,”'said she, saving herself and the situation with a laugh. “But Hilda, let’s stop talking all this nonsense ” v “It’s not nonsense, it’s most important.” Then, controlling her feelings, she asked carefully: “If you think this is nonsense, what do you think is important, Simon?” ‘Only this, you and I, that.we should be married,” he answered, earnestly. “I don’t know a better way. Do you, with all your new ideas?” “Yes, I do. I know about s'JX equality and women having a chance to make their own careers. “Stop!” he cried. “You sound to me as if you were ranting on a soapbox at Hyde Park Corner. I. can t beai to listen to it, Hilda, a lovely girl like you.” She melted at that, and for a momenty was a mere girl with a charming springback-ground, looking at a young man. who loyed her—but she tried to be loyal to her ideals. “Simon, you don’t understand me, and I refuse you—yes, I do, even if you are going to stand there for another half-hour saying how much, you love me, I refuse you.” “Hilda, you haven't hetfrd me seriously. I love you!” J “What difference will that maker. “Well, I suppose it might make you a little sorry for what you’re saying now. There may he a war coming, there wouldn’t he anything new in that, would there? The man going out to light and the woman staying behind waiting for him.” “1 shouldn’t wait for you, Simon. Besides, if there was another war, women might help, too.” n , “Well, most of us would hate to think you’d have to do it. I don’t know how we’ve got on to this talk, Hilda. I came here to ask you to be my wife.’ • “And 1 appreciate it, Simon, indeed I do. And 1 thank yon, and your mother, too, for your kindness towards me.” • Simon could lmrdlv credit Ins ears After all, he had always considered himself as a brilliant match, and Hilda was nothing hut a girl of a. modest origin, with a certain amount of money he was astonished —outraged. “I’ve got some work to do, Simon. J know there are things that 1 can help with.” “That’s spoken like a shrew and a vixen!” lie retorted with sudden fury. “And T suppose that I should he glad that you said no— l —. I don’t like all this silly stuff that you’re talking, but I like you, Hilda.” She shook her head again—he could see that, even in the shadows. “I’m tempted, Simon, I’m tempted, but I must he strong ” She turned and ran, ho stumbled after her a step or two then gave up

A Tale of the End of an Epoch.

(Copyright).

the pursuit in hot indignation. His heart swelled with indignation and mortification as he turned his back on the disappearing figure of the girl. He hoped that there would be a war, he hoped that he would be killed in the first battle ... > • / And with this burning sense of wrong in his baffled mind he w 7 ent again up to the old Mansion House. “BiECAUSE WE ARE POOR?” Simon Pettigrew’s genuine distress was not unmingled with the anger or hurt masculine pride. , Well, this will be a shock for mother if nothing else,, this was really his one consolation. He tried to put his disarranged thoughts into some sort of' order. He truly loved Hilda as niueft as it was in his nature to love anybody ; hut at the back of his love had been the thought, the hope, nay, the conviction, that the money of the Boults and Med ways, their property, their businesses (he did not know how many these were but he believed that they represented a considerable, sum) would bolster up his own sinking fortunes.

There was a discontented droop in his shoulders and a slouch in his step as he approached the house. The ,young man pressed into the hall, and turn d at qiicc into the small room at the right where liis mother sat. Yes he knew; she would be there, and there she was at her accounts.

She put the bank books aside now, as if with a guilty air, and laid across them a handsome blotter of stamped leatherwork.

“I’ve seen Hilda,” he broke out at once.

“Yes?” she,said, “Yes, dear? Well, I hope it’s happy news?” “I daresay it will be happy to you, mother,” replied Simon wjth a malice that he could not control. “She’s refused me!”

Mary Pettigrew looked down and waited for him to continue, and liei silence irritated him further.

“Well, haven’t you got anything to say about it, mother? You’re pretty astonished, aren’t you? Your precious son, the heir of all the Pettigrews, refused by Hilda Boult—and you know what her descent is 1 But she did refuse me, and definitely.” \ Mary Pettigrew spoke then, carefully, for she knew she was dealing with one whom anger and disappointment was making unreasonable.

“I suppose she doesn’t care for you enough, Simon. One must respect her for that. Perhaps if you wait ” “Oh, that’s old-fashioned sort of talk, mother! It isn’t a question of caring—as for that, she admitted she did, she said she liked me, almost loved me. Well, I don’t remember her exact words, but it seemed to come to that.” Mary Pettigrew could not control her surprise now. She looked at her son sharply. v What’s the obstacle, then, Simon? Because we are poor?” SIMON IS SULLEN. “Because wo are poor! How can you think that of Hilda, mother!” “Well, then, Simon, what is it?” “Why it’s iier new ideas, as you’d call them.” “Oh, that !” said Mary Pettigrew with a sigh. “Oh, you may dismiss it like that, mother, but I tell you it’s pretty important, to make a girl like Hilda refuse a man like me.”

She looked at him again sharply. She knew his weaknesses, and no doubt Hilda, did too, but there was something lovable about him, too, even in his failings. “She’ll change her’mind, I daresay, Simon. There are the enthusiasms of the young,' in every generation there’s something you know. If you’d rather I be silent I shall be.”.

“No,” said he, with a touch of remorse, “I’d rather you spoke! But I’m upset. You see, 1 was counting on Hilda.”

“Yes, I didn’t know till you spoke to mo just now that you were counting oil her so much, but I can understand that.”

“Counting on the money, too, mother, to speak frankly,” he lifted troubled eyes and gazed at her candidly. “I can Understand that also.”

“Can you, mother?” his use of the. word was instinctive, and he looked at her gratefully'. “You don’t think it’s mean and ignoble?”

“I think it’s very reasonable. After all, putting any question of efl’ection between yourself and Hilda aside, both t ho Boults and the Med ways made their money as, well, shall we put it? —under the banner of the Pettigrews. But all these people were learning the new tricks of business, and eve didn’t. We didn’t care. And so they went uphill and we down. But it all comes from the Pettigrews, Simon, though naturally Hilda has a right to her own decision and her own money.” “She’s not thinking of, her money, mother, she’s thinking of her ‘career.’ She’ll never change her mind. I think she’s a lunatic. You know thoso women she often has staying with her at the old Mansion Farm, well, they’ve got hold of her. They’ve put her against things like marriage, and having children. A lot of nonsense!” “No, Simon, I’m not so sure that it is. There is something in a woman, well, in most women at least, that is not anybody’s wife or mother, you know, but too often and for too long that’s been quite stifled. Perhaps some girls would bo happy without a hits-

band and children, I don’t know. Perhaps domestic life is overrated.” “How queer of you to talk like that, mother!” “Well, what do you want me to do? Fall on poor Hilda and abuse her because she won’t marry you?” “I suppose, you’re secretly relieved because she Won't have me. It would have been awkward for you. Tradition is very hard to live up to nowadays, mother.” A Visit FROM HILDA. She did not answer, but her thought was: “•Yes, for you, but some could and do.” But she was true to her convictions and her training. She had to urge Siipon into action for his own good. “Well, what are you going to be, Simon?” she asked. , ' “This clears the ground, doesn't it. You’ve got to make something of yourself.” “I hope there’ll be a war,” he muttered. “I’ll volunteer at once and get wiped out.” “How foolish to talk like that, Simon! How wrong too. You weren’t put into the world .to be, as you phrase it, wiped out in a foolish war,’ She Watched him. Well, she must face that, too. Perhaps the war would come, perhaps, even it would please him. “You can go into the army if you want to, Simon. With care, and if you didn’t -make an imprudent marriage you could like on your pay.” “I couldn’t be careful, so I probably should make an imprudent marriage.” “Well, what do you want to. do? If vou want just to be the squire of Pettigrew you’d best settle down to it and- learn the work arid all there is to it. You’re only upset now by Hilda’s refusal.” “Very well, mother, leave it at that. And I’ll come and talk to you to-morrow when I’ve thought things out a bit.” . Arid he, went with his lightly dejected gait, his slightly lounging air, out of the room. Mary Pettigrew did not, after all, go into her accounts but put her hands before her eyes and remembered her own young life. Her father had not dared to be a rebel as she had dared, and both wixys of life had come to nothing. And now here was a young woman of another, a, lower breed who tv as really being a rebel, really trying to get away from old codes. At first it seemed not only astonishing but shocking. Yet perha'ps the girl was in the right. Pjerhaps she belonged to that new generation that, was to help to perform the new wonders of the modern age. She stepped out into the garden, and tried to distract herself by looking at the first roses that were unfolding amid the glossy leaves. But a quick stop on the gravel caused tier to look up sharply. There was Hilda in her plain tweeds that Mary Pettigrew instinctively disliked, her dark curly hair and her fresh coloured face—an intrusion oil this ancient place. “I thought I’d come up to see you, Mrs Pettigrew. You don’t mind, do you?’’ There was a-touch of nervousness in her voice. “I found the great gates open.’’ , , “Yes, they’re usually open now. We haven’t got anyone at the lodge,_ you see.” Mary Pettigrew smiled pleasantly. (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 company.