Miss Mary Martha Crawford (4 page)

was always saying so. lie considered he was vastly over worked in

having to see to the vegetable garden, the yard, and the care of the two horses. That was another thing, the fodder for the horses was a

great drain on the household resources. When they had the mill they

did an exchange with Farmer Croft, which had been advantageous to both parties. She had never realized until these past two years the

variation that is needed for a horse's diet; besides straw there was oats, which also had to be bruised for Gip because he was too old to masticate them whole, and if she didn't keep an eye on Nick now he

would often omit this chore, and Gip's stomach would become extended like a barrel and he would be disinclined to pull the trap. Then there were bruised beans and barley dust and some potatoes. But whereas

Gip's food might take time to prepare, as for Belle, she'd eat twice as much, and everything whole, especially if her father had ridden her to the hunt.

At the sound of sharp footsteps in the hall they turned their angry

glances from each other and looked towards John Crawford as he came

into view at the end of the pass age. He was dashing the snowflakes

off his high hat and with a gay gesture he now threw it towards them, and Mildred, on a laugh that belied her temper of a moment ago, caught it and cried as she ran towards him, "Oh! Papa, you're covered. Look, you're covered with snow."

"How's my lady?" He was unbuttoning his double-breasted knee-length coat, and he bent towards her and kissed her on the brow, and as she helped him off with his coat, she said gaily, "Your lady is very well, sir, in fact in high fettle." And at this they both laughed. While Martha stood by the study door watching them there came the usual

pounding on the stairs as Nancy raced down them, crying, "Papa!

Papa! " and when she came into view her father had his arms wide waiting for her, and when he swung her off her feet her skirt billowed and showed the frill on her blue flannel drawers.

They both stood laughing and panting as he looked in Martha's

direction; saying, "What a welcome. You'd think I'd been away for years instead of a few days. Now, now, away with you both." He turned them about and pushed them low down on the back with the flat of his hands as if they were small children, saying, "Shoo!

Shoo! " and they ran away laughing.

His greeting of Martha was quite different. Looking into her face, he said quietly, "Hello there, my dear," and she answered as quietly,

"Hello, Papa," then added, "Are you very cold?"

"Frozen. I'm afraid it's going to lie." He went swiftly past her now and towards the fire, and there, standing with his back to it, he bent forward so that the heat could waft his buttocks.

"Everything all right?" He now poked his long, handsome face towards her.

"As usual. Papa."

"No trouble?"

She turned her gaze away from his before answering, "A few

difficulties. Papa, but ... but we'll discuss them after you've had

your meal."

"Yes, yes." His jocular tone had changed. He turned now and faced the fire, thrusting his hands out towards it.

"How is Uncle James?"

"What?" He jerked his head to the side and glanced at her.

"Oh, Uncle James. Oh, about the same."

"His condition doesn't worsen ?"

"Not perceptibly. No--' he nodded his head now towards the fire' not perceptibly'.

"How old is Uncle Jaraes now, Papa?"

Again he turned his head towards her, but asked of himself, "Ah, how old is he? Now, well, let me think. Ninety-two. Yes, ninety-two. And you know something?" He pursed his lips and his pointed chin knob bled itself into a semblance of flatness.

"I'm getting the idea he's determined to live to a hundred."

When she made no reply to this, he faced her, saying somewhat stiffly,

"What is it?"

"Nothing, Papa."

"Something's worrying you. Come; I know my little Martha Mary." He thrust out his arm and drew her towards him and held her close to his side for a moment.

This endearing gesture usually had the power to captivate her, but

somehow tonight it had lost some of its charm. She looked up into the face close to her own. Whenever she saw him like this she could

understand why her mother had married him, she could understand why

people liked him, and why the girls loved him, why she herself loved him. This being so, why of late had she been questioning so many

things about him, why had she forced herself to lift the facade to

glimpse the man she suspected lay behind it? Yet even so, she would

not admit to herself that she had discovered a weak man, a vacillating man . and something more, but what that more was she couldn't as yet make out.

"What is it? Something's happened?"

"No, no, nothing's happened, nothing out of the ordinary, Papa."

"Your Aunt Sophie?"

"Oh, she's been very good, very good indeed."

He nodded now as he released his hold on her, then said, "Well, if you have nothing to tell me, I'll away to my bath."

As he moved towards the door she said quietly, "May we talk after dinner. Papa?"

He did not turn towards her but opened the door while saying,

"We'll^see."

"I must talk to you, Papa."

He was not more startled by her tone than she was herself. He looked back up the room towards her, then repeated slowly, "You must talk to me?"

She gulped in her throat and she joined her hands together tightly at her waist before she said very quietly, "If we are to eat, and I'm to keep Peg and Nick on, and if we are to maintain the trap and the

horses, then I must speak with you. Papa."

His eyelids shadowed the expression in his eyes. She watched his

mouth, his lips tight now, draw down at the corners. She saw a vein

on his neck stand out above the high stiffly starched collar; it was just below his ear and it swelled up like a little ball.

She was trembling inside and knew a moment of fear as to what form his reaction would take, but when he swung round and went out banging the door after him, her relief was so great that she slumped with it and dropped into a chair.

In some strange way she felt she had won a battle, at least the first attack. But there had been no battle, no argument as yet. But her

father's very attitude had been an admission of fault. He who had

demanded and been paid the homage of a king in his household for so

long had, in the last moments, been toppled from his throne; and the recognition of the fall was mutual.

But at supper time it was as if nothing untoward had happened. He was gay; he praised the potato soup, he said the lamb was done to a turn, and who could roast potatoes as good as Dilly, greasily crisp on the outside and like balls of flour on the inside; and then there was the cabbage, beautifully green he made no reference to the taste of washing soda to which it owed its colour and the turnips mashed with butter had melted in his mouth. Then the pudding, roasted apples hidden in great balls of crisp pastry, and what pastry.

It was a great meal. Mildred and Nancy plied him with questions about the journey, about the wonders of Newcastle, about Great-Uncle James, and about Christmas. He wouldn't be going to Great-Uncle James at

Christmas, would he?

Well, he didn't know. They might not understand, but it was a case of how should he put it policy. When he used this word he looked towards Martha, and his look said, "You understand what I mean?" and she did, because policy connected with Great-Uncle James spelled money. Yet all through the meal she felt sad because his charm was not affecting

her.

After the meal was over he enchanted Peg by helping to

3i carry the dishes into the kitchen. And there he complimented Dilly once more on the meal; then looking down on Peg Thornycroft he shook his head in mock seriousness as he said, "You know, Peg, they should put you in a travelling show, you'd make their fortune, for you're the only child I've ever seen who grows downwards."

"Aw, master, master, what you say, what you say. But I'll sprout.

You'll see, master, I'll sprout one of these days. " Peg was grinning from ear to ear. She was happy; the master was joking with her. Now

he bent his long length down to her and whispered in her ear, " Try standing in your bare feet in the stables, that should do the trick, manure's marvelous for making things sprout. "

The laugh that erupted from Peg could have come from someone four times her size, so loud was it, and she clapped her hand over her mouth

before crying, ^Eeh! master, master, the things you say. But I'll try anything, anything. r. Eeh! master. "

Now they were all in the drawing-room, a room so cluttered with

furniture and knickknacks, which ranged from an ornate sideboard, two whatnots, a davenport and a seven- piece plush suite down to a number of small tables and handembroidered footstools, that there was hardly a yard of floor space that wasn't covered. The walls were adorned with oil paintings depicting various members of the Low-Pearson family, all looking as if they were peering through dark gauze towards the centre of the room where the candelabra were placed at each end of a sofa

table to give light to the game of chess in progress.

John Crawford had played Mildred and lost to her gracefully, following which he had repeated his failure with Nancy. It was as she cried,

"Papa! Papa! you let me win, you didn't try, we must play again,"

that Martha said firmly, "No more tonight. Papa is tired. In any case it is time for bed. Look at the clock." She pointed, "Quarter to nine! Come along now."

On the last command JMancy rose from her chair; but Mildred remained seated, and now as if she were claiming the support of her father she glanced at him, then looked up at Martha and repeated, "Quarter to nine. Really! you would think we were still babies. If we lived in a town we'd ..."

"We don't live in a town, and if you don't wish to go to bed, then go to your room."

"I won't!" Mildred was now on her feet, and after glaring at Martha she turned to her father, crying, "She's always taking this high hand with us. I'm eighteen years old, and no longer a child or a little

girl. I won't be ordered about so."

"Now, now, Milly." John Grawford put his hand out and patted her shoulder.

"Of course, you're not a little girl, and Martha Mary had no intention of implying that you were."

"Then tell her to leave me alone and stop acting as if she were my mother or--' she now poked her head towards Martha 'my grandmother."

Martha lowered her head now and walked down the length of the room

towards the dark window, and there she stood until she heard the door close and she knew that her father had marshalled the girls into the hall.

She did not turn but waited for him to speak, and when he did his voice no longer held the jocular tone that he had used to his two younger

daughters, it was as if, like Mildred, he were accusing her of being high-handed, for he said, "She's right; she's no longer a child.

You must remember that when dealing with her. "

The injustice of it! She swung round and almost glared at him where he was standing folding up the chess board; and again she was amazed at the words coming from her mouth, for she said now, not -loudly but

quietly and bitterly, "I shouldn't have to speak to her as I do, but I have no support, you are away so much."

"Martha!" It was only on rare occasions that he did not give her her full name, but now she saw, his temper, like her own, had blazed.

"You forget yourself. If you weren't running the house what do you think you'd be doing?

Serving in the bookshop or perhaps in some milliner's in Hexham. I've given you a free hand, and more liberty than is allotted to most young women. "

But such were her feelings that she dared break in on him now, crying,

"Liberty for what? Yes, Papa, liberty for what? I work like any servant; in fact, I'm an unpaid maid of all work. Even Peg gets her

shilling a week. As for myself, I have never had a penny of my own

that I can remember, or a new rag to my back for years. -..." What was this? What was she saying? What was the matter with her? She

must be quiet. She had never intended to say this. Oh, dear Lord.

Oh, dear Lord. But she couldn't stop, and now she was saying what had to be said.

"A month ago you promised to clear up the grocery bill, also the three outstanding bills due to Mr. White for coal; if he doesn't deliver

soon we won't have enough to last us over Christmas. Altogether I'm

ashamed to show my face in Hexham. Do you know I heard an assistant

whisper to another last week in Robinson's?

"I wouldn't rush," she said, "she's one of the Crawfords from The Habitation." I actually heard her say that. "

"You imagine things, girl."

"I do not imagine things. Papa, I have excellent hearing. Like Peg, I too can put my ear to the ground; but there is no need to stoop so far to hear what is being said about us in the town, and I think it's only my due that I should know why there's no money to meet our debts. When Mother was alive there was money, we lived differently. Why did you

sell the mill? You have never said. But even so, discounting the loss of the mill, there is the profit from the chandler's shop and the

bookshop. Surely they are such that we can live decently, not from

hand to mouth as we do. I've had to pinch and scrape so much of late that our meals, except when you're at home, are little better than

those in the Hexham soup kitchens.... Oh, Papa. Papa." She was

running now towards him where he was bending over the table, one hand flat on it, the other pressed against the right-hand side of his

stomach.

"Oh, Papa! What is it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

He did not speak but made a sound like a groan, and she clung to his arm, saying, "Please, please, what is it:' Are you in pain?"