“No, dearest, not dislike,” her mother protested. “It was just that he had his heart set on an alliance with the Hamilton family in the hope that the two properties might be combined one day. Chester is the only son —”
“And a complete blockhead, as well as being a cruel bully, whom Papa well knew I had detested since childhood,” Laura retorted. Her features softened at the sight of tears shimmering in her mother’s eyes, but her next words, though quiet, were unrelenting. “Yes, Mama, dislike. You must have been aware that Papa could scarcely bring himself to say a civil word to me in the last year and a half of his life. He refused to let me visit my godmother in London during the season, and made me understand that if I would not have Chester Hamilton I would remain a spinster forever. He wanted to punish me for refusing to knuckle under to his will.”
“No, Laura, notyou!He wanted to punishme, because I would not support him in urging you into that distasteful marriage. If he was unkind to you it was always to punish me. Everything is my fault! It was my wretched weakness in the first place that was behind everything. I never had your strength or resolution, dearest. I could not stand firm againstmyfather, and look what has come of it!” Mrs. Marsh put her hands over her face and began to weep in earnest.
Laura leapt to her feet and crossed to her parent, placing her strong young arms about the shaking shoulders and murmuring soothing noises as one would to an inconsolable child. While the storm lasted, shock faded and suspicions formed and faded in her mind, finally coalescing into conjecture. When her mother had dried her eyes and blown her nose, muttering incoherent little apologies for breaking down, Laura said, “Mama, do I apprehend that your were coerced into marrying my father byyourfather?”
“Yes,” Mrs. Marsh admitted in a voice that still contained sobbing breaths, “but it was even worse that that.”
“In what way worse?”
“Well, arranged marriages where the parties have no initial affection or regard for each other have been known to prosper in time, but in this case I was in love with another man, whom my father had repulsed. I told your father this, thinking that he would not wish to wed me under such unpromising circumstances, but he would not rescind his offer, and so we were married.”
“Infamous!” Laura declared, then added involuntarily, “Poor Papa. He must have loved you desperately.”
Mrs. Marsh leaned forward and gripped her daughter’s hand so strongly that Laura’s eyes flew to her face. Her voice passionate, she protested, “If that had been the case, had he really loved me, I must have come to care in time — my heart would have been touched by his sincerity and his pain — but it was clear that he was only infatuated with my face, because when I could not respond as he desired, he soon grew cold and increasingly bitter. He was sadly chagrined when you were not a son. In the next three years I had two more confinements, two stillborn boys —”
“I never knew about this!”
“No, you were just a baby yourself, and we never spoke of it later. Your father blamed me openly for my failure to produce a son. Looking back, I feel that was the death knell for any hope of forging a viable marriage bond. We lived together as unforgiving strangers from that point.”
“All those years — how unutterably sad, but at least you did not allow your unhappiness to embitter you, Mama. You’ve been a wonderful mother and a kind mistress and neighbour despite your basic unhappiness, while Papa … Papa seemed to alienate all who would be his friends.”
“Perhaps I tried harder because I had more to atone for. I always knew the original failure was mine,” Mrs. Marsh said, her face reflecting sadness and regret. “Do not judge your father too harshly, my love.”
“I must judge him as I found him, Mama. Though I was his child and tried to please him most of my life, he was unable to love me, and he would have condemned me to a loveless marriage for the sake of eventually enlarging the property, which I find doubly heinous given the circumstances of his own situation. What was the name of the man you loved, Mama? Was he totally ineligible? What became of him?”
Mrs. Marsh blinked at her daughter’s abrupt change of subject, and it was a moment before she replied, “His name was Stephen Wright. His birth was unexceptionable, but his prospects were modest; my father did not consider his estate high enough to aspire to the hand of a baronet’s daughter. Your grandfather Marsh possessed large estates in Sussex at the time, so your father was decidedly the better catch, but my father was burned in the end. He did not know that Mr. Marsh, who was addicted to gaming, was on the brink of losing everything except this farm, which he had made over to his son. We were scarcely married a year when my father-in-law died of a massive stroke and the realsituation became known. That contributed to your father’s woes just about the time you were born.”
“Quite a heritage I have: a spendthrift gambler for a paternal grandfather, and an embittered father. I could not like my grandfather Albright either, on the two occasions when you took me to visit your old home. He was so distant — almost disdainful — that I never felt welcome there. One would have thought he’d have been eager to make amends for having forced you into a connection that did not turn out to be advantageous after all.”
“I fear human nature does not always react according to rules of logic, dearest. It is not uncommon to resent and dislike those we’ve injured. I presume it saves us from the pangs of guilt that otherwise would assail our consciences if we had to believe our victims were undeserving of the harm we’d done them. My father considered me too stupid and unworldly to know what was good for me, in any case.”
“I did not know the background then, but it is really quite satisfying to learn that I was right to dislike my grandfather — quite perceptive for a child of eight or nine.” Laura was relieved to see that the exaggerated smugness with which she had infused this statement had the desired effect of driving away the world-weary expression from her mother’s face.
“I was proud of the way you behaved during that dismal visit, Laura. You did not allow yourself to be intimidated by your grandfather’s brusque manners, and you maintained a quiet dignity that was surprising in a young child.” Mrs. Marsh’s lips twisted wryly. “Certainly I never learned to stand up to him without quaking, inwardly at least.”
“But, Mama, I was only imitating your dignity as best I could at the time. I did not dream that you were afraid of him.” Laura thought she detected gratitude in her mother’s expression just before Burns announced dinner.
The women followed the balding, rotund butler, who had grown old in the service of the Marsh family, into a pleasant dining room where a mahogany table had been made smaller to accommodate them after the master’s death. As she slid into her chair, Laura watched her mother smile a thank-you to Burns as he guided her chair into place. Opening her eyes wide, she said, “By the way, Mama, you did not tell me what happened to Mr. Wright.”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Mrs. Marsh said blankly. “I never saw him again after my father sent him away.”
“Or even heard about him? Nothing at all?”
“No, nothing.”
“A story without an ending — how disappointing.”
“There was an ending of course, Laura, but it is unknown to me. Another thing I do not know is why you were so late changing this evening.”
“Guinevere was lonely. She refused to permit anyone else to milk her tonight.”
Mrs. Marsh smiled but shook her head as she picked up her fork. “That is what comes of making pets out of farm animals. I have the greatest fear of finding that cow in my drawing room one of these days.”
Laura chuckled at the mind picture produced by her mother’s facetious remark, but solemnly promised to depress any pretensions Guinevere might entertain about accompanying her mistress indoors. The meal proceeded in a spirit of amity as Mrs. Marsh ate sparingly and her daughter devoured the simple but well-cooked dishes Mrs. Burns had been preparing at Wellstead Farm as far back as Laura’s memory reached.
A smile swept across her mother’s face like the sun coming out from behind a cloud at some nonsense of Laura’s. The girl observed this with satisfaction that was succeeded by a spurt of guilt at the thought of how much more pleasant the dinnerhour had been since her father’s death. She had shied away from making even the most private admission that life itself had been more pleasant during the fifteen months since an accident while felling trees had ended her father’s life, but such was the truth. It was a terrible truth to own, but how could she forget hundreds of family dinners where her mother smiled rarely and her father never, dinners where the principle burden of maintaining any form of conversation had fallen on her own adolescent shoulders?
