Martha Peake (17 page)

There she was, squeezed into her alcove in the window, her back pressed against one wall and the soles of her feet against the other, knees bent and arms wrapped about them, gazing across the marsh toward the town, when she caught from the corner of her eye some small movement in the shadows of the courtyard below. Glancing down, she saw him leaning against the wall with his legs crossed and his hands in his pockets—and staring straight up at the window! Martha had not a furtive bone in her body. Deception and subterfuge were alike alien to her. She did not pull back at once, like some guilty thing surprised, although perhaps she should have done.

No, she held his gaze—gaze, I call it, when what she saw, I imagine, what she locked eyes with, was, rather, a pair of slits which even in the gloom, even at that distance, were tiny glittering pinpricks of malevolence and lust—but after a second she did pull back, a fierce prickle of dread and alarm coursing the length of her spine, and a strong flush rising as the blood came up in her cheeks. She sat panting in the window alcove while these extraordinary physical reactions to the man subsided; and then, climbing down, she sat close to the fire. Clyte knew why she had fled her father, and that her father was ignorant of her whereabouts; and I strongly suspect that every instinct in Martha told her that this dark little creature meant her no good.

She did not sleep. Later that night, her imagination still excited by the appearance of Clyte, she tried to tell herself that she must put her trust in my uncle William, who would not allow her to be harmed by anybody, as she thought—not Clyte, not Drogo, not her father. This helped her. She had no great confidence that putting her trust in God would avail her much—if God was looking out for her, then why was she in this predicament at all?—but William Tree, he was another matter. William did not move in mysterious ways. William had offered her his protection. He had taken her under his wing. She had nothing to fear with William on her side.

Not so. Even my uncle admitted as much. He was a busy man, he said, and his duties in Lord Drogo’s dissecting rooms were many and varied, with the result that, after settling Martha in the west wing, and issuing stern warnings, he vanished into the bowels of the house, by which I mean the cellars, sculleries, and outhouses set aside for his lordship’s anatomical work, and Martha lost sight of him. Knowing only when she was allowed to appear in the kitchen, and when she could put out her night-soil, and collect her water and firewood—and instructed never to show herself out-of-doors during daylight hours, nor in any other part of the house than those passages and staircases connecting the tower to the kitchen, and under no circumstances to attempt to make contact with Lord Drogo—who had not yet been apprised, William told her, of her presence under his roof, as William was waiting, so he said, for a “felicitous opportunity”—she was left to herself.

Meanwhile Harry was scouring London for her. Her flight had convinced him beyond all reason of the truth of his suspicions, that is, that his daughter, with the help of Fred Lour, who had also disappeared, had robbed and deceived him. Other things, wild things, he also believed. He believed there must be still other men involved. Harry’s picture of the world and how it worked was by this time as bent out of alignment as his spine. Since Martha had fled him there was no one to buttress him against the self-loathing and despair that now preyed upon him without cease. For as my uncle correctly said, if the world calls a man a monster, and there is nobody to contradict it, then that man, in his own eyes, becomes a monster; and who could love a monster? Surely any man, any normal man, of normal scale, and structure, and symmetry and proportion is preferable to a monster—hence Harry’s conviction that Martha had fled with the help of other men; and hence, to compound the madness, jealousy of the most destructive kind, mindless and primitive, was now aroused in his tortured heart. Salt in the wound, worse than salt, a fresh
wound, rather, a hundred times more excruciating than mere abandonment. Oh, Harry Peake’s hell had yet to display the full measure of its torments.

But as he floundered in his sea of gin, as he clung like a castaway to this single splintered plank of an idea, someone came to him and hinted to him of Martha’s whereabouts. Who could have done that? Only Clyte.

He crossed the marsh on foot. Martha was the first to see him, as he came forward alone against that flat, featureless waste. She was in her window, with a book, when she happened to glance up, and there he was, a mile away, just beginning to come up over the rise; and as soon as she saw those shoulders she knew it was he. Only her father had shoulders thrown so emphatically athwart as those were; only her father—and now the figure was over the rise and visible in all its lurching glory—had a spine which flared like a hood and
wrenched
those shoulders apart! He moved her to tears, that shuffling fellow out there on the marsh, that dear benighted man; and she was close to surrendering all caution, she wanted to run down the road and feel him sweep her up in his arms—but she pushed down the impulse, she pushed it down, though it cost her all she had, and with her face pressed to the window she silently wept, because she could see him coming and was unable to go to him lest he harm her.

But what was he doing now? He had reached a solitary stand of elms on the bank of a narrow ditch and settled himself at the foot of a tree. And what was he doing now? He was having a drink. He had taken from his pocket a bottle and he was having a drink. Then he put the bottle away, but he did not move. He was watching the house. He was sitting under a tree and staring at Drogo Hall, waiting for—what? For Martha to appear, so that he could rush down on her and tear her to pieces? Oh no. Not that.

Still the tears streamed down Martha’s face. After a while she saw him get to his feet and resume his erratic progress. Was she the only
one to see him? How could a big humped figure like that go unnoticed in a landscape devoid of any feature but a few trees? Surely the whole house must know he was coming?

“Oh God,” she whispered, “what am I to do?”

But a moment later my uncle entered the room; and seeing Martha at the window, turning, now, startled, toward him, he said: “So you know.”

“What am I to do, William?” she cried.

“Nothing, my dear, nothing at all. I came to tell you that. Do nothing. Lord Drogo will receive him. Your presence will not be revealed.”

“Is this sure, William?”

“On my honour.”

“Thank you, William. Thank you, thank you!”

He bowed, and left her.

What Martha should of course have remembered, but did not, were her own sentiments when, like her father, she had come on foot across the marsh, drawing ever closer to Drogo Hall, and quite uncertain as to the reception she could expect. To come as a petitioner to a great house is not for the faint of heart. The nearer the visitor approaches, the more imposing the building appears; the more imposing the building, the more intimidating the prospect; so that by the time she actually reaches the house, her feelings of doubt and trepidation have become magnified, and whatever courage and purpose she may have started out with, by then it has long since dissipated. This is why lords and kings build great houses, so as to terrify their visitors.

And so it was for Harry Peake. Martha watched him from the window, careful that she herself could not be seen; and the closer he got, the slower and more haltingly uncertain his step, such that she was convinced he would at any moment turn back.

But then Lord Drogo came out to meet him.

Hearing this, I began to pay close attention not only to my uncle’s words, but to the tone in which they were spoken. I suspected strongly that hidden meanings were secreted in this history of his, relative to Lord Drogo’s ambitions; I listened to hear them betrayed. Drogo, he said in his urgent fluting whisper, emerged from the front door and came briskly down the steps in shirtsleeves and britches and advanced with a hand outstretched to where Martha’s poor bewildered father stood waiting, somewhat unsteady, deeply uncertain, suspicious, hopeful, and, yes, proud—she saw it, she saw his jaw lift, felt the flare in the man as some heat arose from deep inside him, some idea of the soul that translated into a conviction, despite his exposed condition before this great house, of his essential manhood. Martha saw it; Francis Drogo saw it also. He understood what had brought Harry here and what it had cost him. He shook him warmly by the hand and, still gripping his hand, pointed toward the house, offered hospitality, made him welcome; and the two men went in.

Martha was in some distress now. She imagined she would be summoned to appear below, where his lordship, in a magnanimous gesture of misplaced condescension, would reunite the father with his daughter. Martha remembered what William had said, he had sworn on his honour that her presence would not be revealed. This calmed her down. This brought her round.

She made herself comfortable in her window once more. Twilight was stealing over the marsh, and with it a low mist, a clinging, seeping mist, and soon, she knew, the howling would begin; and she thought, surely Lord Drogo will not send my father home in the dark? She tried to imagine what was happening down in the hall, or the kitchen, or wherever it was that Lord Drogo saw fit to entertain a man like Harry Peake. Were they again speaking of his pain? No, more likely Harry was telling his story, telling his lordship of his ill fortune in raising a treacherous child who stole his money and ran off
with another man, leaving him destitute. Was she here, he might ask, and Lord Drogo, she imagined—she hoped!—would respond with bluff surprise and amusement: “Here, sir? Whatever makes you think she is here, sir?”

What would her father say to that? “You showed us kindness, my lord, when we were last together. I suspect my daughter may presume on that kindness by coming to you now.”

“I wish she had, sir. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to effect a meeting between you and your daughter, to some happy end. I remember the girl well. Spirited creature.”