ST. MARTIN'S FLOW

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 253, 7 August 1941, Page 7

ST. MARTIN'S FLOW

! By MARJORIE BOWEN. ;:

(Copyright). i

2 $ I A Tale End of an Epoch. »

chapter; xiii.

when one has waited a great number of months or years one becomes passive, one no longer cares. Jt dp.esn’t matter very much, Hilda.” “But oh,” cried the young woman, rising up suddenly and turning away from the firelight, “it does matter to mo. I want to enjoy life. I want to know things. Oh. I could not hear to sit here in a backwater and wait.” “It does not matter what you think or wish, Hilda. I'don't know what your vision is, or your faith—T won’t tell you mine. Let all that go.” “I can’t,” said Hilda. “What am I tom between —my duty, to the past, my duty to the present?” “Aren’t there always these two voices calling, one of duty and destiny,"whatever words we choose to give them, and one disguising itself in the name of some loved one? But do not concern yourself with Simon. I can assure you that he loved you truly.” “Oh, Mrs Pettigrew, it is most generous of you to say that. Sometimes when I was in Italy, so alien with that brittle sunshine, nursing a girl who was not really a friend, I thought of Simon and these old places, and felt that l loved him truly and loved you also.” “I am glad you do love me, my dear. Let all go. The future lies with you, Hilda.” . . , “And with Simon, if ho should return.” “If he should return,” repeated Mary, with a sigh. “One should not give too much importance to him because he is my son. His loss would not mean much in the new world that i$ to come. •My dear, don’t go back to the old Farm to-night. Why don’t you sleep here? Or do yon feel a difference between us?” “There’s no difference in my heart, Mrs Pettigrew.” HiLDA MAKES A DECISION. Hilda Boult lay in the great bed in the guest chamber in the old Mansion House. She felt in one sense an alien, and in another sense that she had come home. What an effort she had made to return to England, even though she knew wliat fatigue, what difficulty, lay in her way! Hilda, crossed her hands upon her ■ breast; and all modern thoughts fell away from her. She considered how she might have been, had she chosen, bride of the lord of this place. And why not? She was not, at least, hostile to this mode of life. She had found now, in her loneliness and pain, much in common with Mary Pettigrew, a woman whom she had hitherto brushed aside and tried to despise. How vain,, and in a way cheap, seemed all this cry for “women’s suffrage” and “social reform” compared to the state and dignity of the mistress of the old Mansion, House, who had gone her w«y from year to year following the routine of the seasons, aloof and gracious, from one war to another. “Yes, she remembers,” thought Hilda, tossing restlessly, “other wars, though they seem small now. l believe Harry Medway was the‘man whom she really loved, and ho volunteered lor Africa. She must have been very young then and she is beautiful still. What do I rqean to do? Am I to attach myself, to this ancient place, these decaying traditions, as I think them to be ? Am I to wait here for the possible return of Simon? Why, I don’t believe ho will return. It will mean that I am to he here with his mother until she is dead—and then alone. Why not? Wliat elso can I do? There’s no longer a cause to serve now there’s a war. I don’t know. It’s all beyond me. When it comes to it, it’s only women’s work

A WOMAN’S SYMPATHY.

“What docs that mean to me, Mrs Pettigrew? I feel confused. I went to Italy with some friends to think things out, and wo all decided that we would refuse marriage, however advantageous it might he, in the hope of serving our sox and the future. But let’s speak of Simon.”

“Why do you want to speak of him, dear?” •

“I don’t know. I thought it reasonable enough that one should refuse marriftge and work only for the cause, and making things better for the future. And then father died, and then 1 was caught in Italy when war broke out; and nothing seemed to matter save getting home again.” “Hush, my dear,” said the' other, quickly. “You mustn’t talk like that. It simply means that you’re tired and don’t quite know what you say.” “Oh, Mary Pettigrew, forgive f me that I speak so informally, but I wish that I could have been your daughter.” “I wish too. dear,” said Mary quietly.

“Simon wished it, and what has gone wrong that we are not all three united? Yet it seems as if the future tugged at me. I ought to do something now—drive an ambulance, I suppose, or run the farm—do my best to help.” And so they sat, the young woman on the hassock at the knee of the older woman who was in her easychair, with the light fading. “And if he does return, my dear,” asked Mary, “what will be your answer to the question he may put to you.again ?’\

“I’ll be glad to take him. I hope I shall make as ihucli success of the old Mansion House as you have done.” “You mustn’t talk like that,” said Mary Pettigrew on a note that was almost one of alarm. “It was as if we both confessed to failure, and you know they say the future lies with tfte women.”

“Yes, but war only makes us women' helpless.” “But we mustn’t be helpless women any more,” replied Mary Pettigrew vigorously. “You were right when you said we ought to have the vote.” “But the vote won’t mean anything now, don’t you understand that? I’ve seen the folly, the barrenness of that kind of thing.’’ “I want to do what I can to help,” declared Mary. “I shall-soon be dead. I am an old woman, and these times are not tranquil. Simon is missing, all is in that. I have nothing else hut. him. Listen, Hilda, I never much loved his father; I only married him to beget an heir for the Pettigrews, I suppose it seems like nonsense to you.” “No,” said Hilda, slowly, “it doesn’t seem like nonsense to me. If Simon, should return, why, I’ll tnkq him, gladly and thankfully, and pray that we may have children who will inherit something of these old glories.” “You don’t speak out of pity?” “Listen,” said Hilda, suddenly raising her head, “I’ve been living jn Italy since the war began, I’ve seen all sides of this question, the peasants, the women who don’t understand, the women who follow the men just because they are their men, and I’ve thought about it. .Tm'going right back to elemental feelings. Don’t say any more, Mrs Pettigrew, you look so tired.” “So old, you mean. I am past every thing, I no longer have much courage or strength.” “Oh, don’t talk like that. Indeed T love you so much. ,, “Love me! That’s a strange word for you to use to me. Are ,you the woman who refused my -son?” “Yes, and' I’m the woman who comes from the old Mansion Farm. Don’t repulse me, don’t reject me!” “Why should one woman ever reject another! Indeed, I want to hold you tightlyf to cherish you. it’s been very lonely here ” “Anc\ I, too, have been lonely m Italy, lonely as I struggled to return home, lonely in my attempts to find news of Simon. Please like me a little, Mrs Pettigrew.” “I like you more than a little, Hilda. I wish you had not gone oit on your new-fangled ideas. How long ago is it, six months, a year?” “Don’t speak of that,” said Hilda, fondling her hand. “It’s not a question of timo but of feeling.”

NO DIFFERENCE IN HER HEART. “I know what seems to count, Hilda, now it’s something I’vo never seemed quite to understand before —the defence of this land that we all care for, and its people.” “What do you want of me? asked Hilda. “I have money, as far as money counts now. And you, 1 understand • well, the estates, they're nearly gone aren’t they?” “Yes. Why should 1 make any disguise of it I can’t struggle any longer, the last taxes arc—well, overwhelming for me. I. shall have to go. If Simon is indeed missing, well what does it matter?” ''

“I suppose,” mused Hilda, gazing into the flames that broke from the oak logs, “that I could have made it so much easier if f had not been so sellwilled.”

“But you had no right to say it, my dear,” said Mrs Pettigrew. “Unless you had really felt if, and you didn’t feel it, you didn’t love him, you didn’t want to give him your money.” “I don’t know. Even a. little truth is so difficult to find. Well, I don’t even know that I didn’t love Simon. Maybe I did and fought it down, because I believed other things more important.” “What could bo more important, said Mary Pettigrew, gently, “than love?” “Wo use mean terms,” she added, leaning forward and kissing Hilda’s brow, “that don’t mean much. Oh, what is the use of us considering what we believe in, what we fought for in our youth, or even talking of love?” “Can’t we make some good come out of it?” cried Hilda. “He may he a prisoner and ho may be dead, and all we can do is to sit here and wait.” “To wait!” cried Hilda. “That’s the most terrible thing that happens to women, to have to wait.” “To remain at home and wait. But

wo can do. There, have always to ho mothers, and people to bring up the next generation. And I suppose, too, there is something in tradition, sou can't look at'Mary Pettigrew and despise what she stands for." Hilda felt that she could marry Simon without there being such a discrepancy between them. But Simon was posted as missing; she might never see him again.

She put her hands before her eyes and between the chinks of her fingers the bluish moonlight crept . . Simon’s mother, she mused, would not express her sorrow and her griel. She had had summed up and understood her son, but she would be mourning for him for over.

“And) J, too, I suppose, could understand him. And when it comes to it 1 suppose I’d rather he here as. his wife than standing on a platform with these women who want —what? What does any of this matter? If one could be a wifo to a man whom one respected even if one didn’t love him! —lt’s getting too deep lor me,'’ thought Hilda. “I’m tired. All one wants is to he rooted in some sort of security, and with perhaps children, and a- home.” Slip felt the tears come to her eyes. Simon had truly loved her, and she did not kqow any' other man who had done as much, thougn there had been other wooers who had been attracted by her fortune. She was a rich woman, she supposed, even in war-time, hut she had not taken great trouble to go into her financial affairs.

As she lay half-dreaming there, Simon Pettigrew gradually took on the shape of the ideal hero; she almost. believed that she bad always loved him, and only put him aside because of her devotion to a cause that had now boon extinguished in a devotion to a much greater cause. “If the British Empire doesn’t survive,” she tlipught “what is the good of considering, even for a moment, such a question as women’s She put | her hands before her eyes and drew the coverlet up before them, and as she lay there in the great bed that had belonged to the Pettigrews, secure in the house that had’ belonged to them for generations, she felt absorbed in them, part of their future and their well-being. And she resolved, before she fell into a sleep of deep fatigue, that if Simon returned she would marry him.