Noah Davis - "A Narrative of The Life of Rev. Noah Davis, A Colored Man."

James J. Walsh - "Old Time Makers of Medicine"

Jean Pierre Camus - "The Spirit of St. Francis de Sales"

Frank Sidgwick - "Ballads of Romance and Chivalry"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

Mary Gray

K >> Katharine Tynan >> Mary Gray



MARY GRAY

BY KATHARINE TYNAN


_Author of "Julia," "The Story of Bawn," "Her Ladyship," "For Maisie,"
etc., etc._


WITH FOUR COLOURED ILLUSTRATIONS BY C. H. TAFFS

[Transcriber's note: This book was produced from scanned images of public
domain material from the Google Print project. Only the Frontispiece was
included in the scans.]


CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED
London, Paris, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1909
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED




[Illustration: "The men would salute their old General, the General
salute his old regiment"]




CONTENTS


CHAPTER I. Wistaria Terrace

CHAPTER II. The Wall Between

CHAPTER III. The New Estate

CHAPTER IV. Boy and Girl

CHAPTER V. "Old Blood and Thunder"

CHAPTER VI. The Blue Ribbon

CHAPTER VII. A Chance Meeting

CHAPTER VIII. Groves of Academe

CHAPTER IX. The Race with Death

CHAPTER X. Dispossessed

CHAPTER XI. The Lion

CHAPTER XII. Her Ladyship

CHAPTER XIII. The Heart of a Father

CHAPTER XIV. Lovers' Parting

CHAPTER XV. The General has an Idea

CHAPTER XVI. The Leading and the Light

CHAPTER XVII. A Night of Spring

CHAPTER XVIII. Halcyon Weather

CHAPTER XIX. Wild Thyme and Violets

CHAPTER XX. Jealousy, Cruel as the Grave

CHAPTER XXI. Two Women

CHAPTER XXII. Light on the Way

CHAPTER XXIII. The News in the _Westminster_

CHAPTER XXIV. The Friend

CHAPTER XXV. The One Woman

CHAPTER XXVI. Golden Days

CHAPTER XXVII. The Intermediary

CHAPTER XXVIII. Noel! Noel!




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS


"The men would salute their old General, the General salute his old
regiment"

"Sir Robin Drummond had come to Mary's side, and turned the page of
her music"

"'Do you know what I came here in the mind to ask you?'"

"'Miss Nelly is in the drawing-room, sir'"




MARY GRAY




CHAPTER I

WISTARIA TERRACE


The house where Mary Gray was born and grew towards womanhood was one of
a squat line of mean little houses that hid themselves behind a great
church. The roadway in front of the houses led only to the back entrance
of the church. Over against the windows was the playground of the church
schools, surrounded by a high wall that shut away field and sky from the
front rooms of Wistaria Terrace.

The houses were drab and ugly, with untidy grass-plots in front. They
presented an exterior of three windows and a narrow round-topped
hall-door which was a confession of poverty in itself. Five out of six
houses had a ramping plaster horse in the fanlight of the hall door, a
fixture which went with the house and was immune from breakage because
no one ever thought of cleaning the fanlights.

In the back gardens the family wash was put to dry. Some of the more
enterprising inhabitants kept fowls; but there was not much enterprise
in Wistaria Terrace.

Earlier inhabitants had planted the gardens with lilac and laburnum
bushes, with gooseberries and currants. There were no flowers there that
did not sow themselves year after year. They were damp, grubby places,
but even there an imaginative child like Mary Gray could find
suggestions of delight.

Mary's father, Walter Gray, was employed at a watchmaker's of repute. He
spent all his working life with a magnifying glass in his eye, peering
into the mechanism of watches, adjusting the delicate pivots and springs
on which their lives moved. His occupation had perhaps encouraged in him
a habit of introspection. Perhaps he found the human machine as worthy
of interest as the works of watches and clocks. Anyhow, in his leisure
moments, which were few, he would discuss curiously with Mary the hidden
springs that kept the human machine in motion, the strange workings and
convolutions of it. From the very early age when she began to be a
comfort and a companion to her father, Mary had been accustomed to such
speculations as would have written Walter Gray down a madman if he had
shared them with the grown people about him rather than with a child.

Mary was the child of his romance, of his first marriage, which had
lasted barely a year.

He never talked of her mother, even to Mary, though she had vague
memories of a time when he had not been so reticent. That was before the
stepmother came, the stepmother whom, honestly, Walter Gray had married
because his child was neglected. He had not anticipated, perhaps, the
long string of children which was to result from the marriage, whose
presence in the world was to make Mary's lot a more strenuous one than
would have been the case if she had been a child alone.

Not that Mary grumbled about the stepbrothers and sisters. Year after
year, from the time she could stagger under the weight of a baby, she
had received a new burden for her arms, and had found enough love for
each newcomer.

The second Mrs. Gray was a poor, puny, washed-out little rag of a woman,
whose one distinction was the number of her children. They had always
great appetites to be satisfied. As soon as they began to run about, the
rapidity with which they wore out their boots and the knees of their
trousers, and outgrew their frocks, was a subject upon which Mrs. Gray
could expatiate for hours. Mary had a tender, strong pity from the
earliest age for the down-at-heel, over-burdened stepmother, which
lightened her own load, as did the vicarious, motherly love which came
to her for each succeeding fat baby.

Mary was nurse and nursery-governess to all the family. Wistaria Terrace
had one great recompense for its humble and hidden condition. It was
within easy reach of the fields and the mountains. For an adventurous
spirit the sea was not at an insuperable distance. Indeed, but for the
high wall of the school playground, the lovely line of mountains had
been well in view. As it was, many a day in summer Mary would carry off
her train of children to the fields, with a humble refection of bread
and butter and jam, and milk for their mid-day meal; and these occasions
allowed Mrs. Gray a few hours of peace that were like a foretaste of
Paradise.

She never grumbled, poor little woman, because her husband shared his
thoughts with Mary and not with her. Whatever ambitions she had had to
rise to her Walter's level--she had an immense opinion of his
learning--had long been extinguished under the accumulation of toils and
burdens that made up her daily life. She was fond of Mary, and leant on
her strangely, considering their relative ages. For the rest, she toiled
with indifferent success at household tasks, and was grateful for having
a husband so absorbed in distant speculations that he was insensible of
the near discomfort of a badly-cooked dinner or a buttonless shirt.

The gardens of the houses opened on a lane which was a sort of
rubbish-shoot for the houses that gave upon it. Across the lane was a
row of stabling belonging to far more important houses than Wistaria
Terrace. Beyond the stables and stable yards were old gardens with shady
stretches of turf and forest trees enclosed within their walls. Beyond
the gardens rose the fine old-fashioned houses of the Mall, big Georgian
houses that looked in front across the roadway at the line of elm-trees
that bordered the canal. The green waters of the canal, winding placidly
through its green channel, with the elm-trees reflected greenly in its
green depths, had a suggestion of Holland.

The lane was something of an adventure to the children of Wistaria
Terrace. There, any day, you might see a coachman curry-combing his
satin-skinned horses, hissing between his teeth by way of encouragement,
after the time-honoured custom. Or you might see a load of hay lifted up
by a windlass into the loft above the stables. Or you might assist at
the washing of a carriage. Sometimes the gate at the farther side of the
stable was open, and a gardener would come through with a barrowful of
rubbish to add to the accumulation already in the lane.

Through the open gateway the children would catch glimpses of Fairyland.
A broad stretch of shining turf dappled with sun and shade. Tall
snapdragons and lilies and sweet-williams and phlox in the garden-beds.
A fruit tree or two, heavy with blossom or fruit.

Only old-fashioned people lived in the Mall nowadays, and the glimpses
the children caught of the owners of those terrestrial paradises fitted
in with the idea of fairyland. They were always old ladies and
gentlemen, and they were old-fashioned in their attire, but very
magnificent. There was one old lady who was the very Fairy Godmother of
the stories. She was the one who had the magnificent mulberry-tree in
her garden. One day in every year the children were called in to strip
the tree of its fruit; and that was a great day for Wistaria Terrace.

The children were allowed to bring basins to carry away what they could
not eat; and benevolent men-servants would ascend to the overweighted
boughs of the tree by ladders and pick the fruit and load up the
children's basins with it. Again, the apples would be distributed in
their season. While the distribution went on, the old lady would stand
at a window with her little white dog in her arms nodding her head in a
well-pleased way. The children called her Lady Anne. They had no such
personal acquaintance with the other gardens and their owners, so their
thoughts were very full of Lady Anne and her garden.

When Mary was about fourteen she made the acquaintance of Lady Anne--her
full name was Lady Anne Hamilton--and that was an event which had a
considerable influence on her fortunes. The meeting came about in this
way.

Mary had gone marketing one day, and for once had deserted the shabby
little row of shops which ran at the end of Wistaria Terrace, at right
angles to it. She had gone out into the great main thoroughfare, the
noise of which came dimly to Wistaria Terrace because of the huge mass
of the church blocking up the way.

She had done her shopping and was on her way home, when, right in the
track of the heavy tram as it came down the steep descent from the
bridge over the canal, she saw a helpless bit of white fur, as it might
well seem to anyone at a distance. The thing was almost motionless, or
stirring so feebly that its movements were not apparent. Evidently the
driver of the tram had not noticed it, or was not troubled to save its
life, for he stood with the reins in his hand, glancing from side to
side of the road for possible passengers as the tram swept down the long
incline.

Mary never hesitated. The tram was almost upon the thing when she first
saw it. "Why, it is Lady Anne's dog!" she cried, and launched herself
out in the roadway to save it. She was just in time to pick up the
blind, whimpering thing. The driver of the tram, seeing Mary in its
path, put on the brakes sharply. The tram lumbered to a stoppage, but
not before Mary had been flung down on her face and her arm broken by
the hoof of the horse nearest her.

It was likely to be an uncommonly awkward thing for the Gray household,
seeing that it was Mary's right arm that was injured. For one thing, it
would involve the dispossession of that year's baby. For another, it
would put Mrs. Gray's capable helper entirely out of action.

When Mary was picked up, and stood, wavering unsteadily, supported by
someone in the crowd which had gathered, hearing, as from a great
distance, the snarling and scolding of the tram-driver, who was afraid
of finding himself in trouble, she still held the blind and whimpering
dog in her uninjured arm.

She wanted to get away as quickly as possible from the crowd, but her
head swam and her feet were uncertain. Then she heard a quiet voice
behind her.

"Has there been an accident? I am a doctor," it said.

"A young woman trying to kill herself along of an old dog," said the
tram-driver indignantly. "As though there wasn't enough trouble for a
man already."

"Let me see," the doctor said, coming to Mary's side. "Ah, I can't make
an examination here. Better come with me, my child. I am on my way to
the hospital. My carriage is here."

"Not to hospital," said Mary faintly. "Let me go home; they would be so
frightened."

"I shan't detain you, I promise you. But this must be bandaged before
you can go home. Ah, is this basket yours, too?"

Someone had handed up the basket from the tram-track, where it had lain
disgorging cabbages and other articles of food.

"I will send you home as soon as I have seen to your arm," the doctor
said, pushing her gently towards his carriage. "And the little dog--is
he your own? I suppose he is, since you nearly gave your life for him?"

"He is not mine," said Mary faintly. "He belongs to Lady Anne--Lady Anne
Hamilton. She lives at No. 8, The Mall. She will be distracted if she
misses the little dog. She is so very fond of it."

"Ah! Lady Anne Hamilton. I have heard of her. We can leave the dog at
home on our way. Come, child."

The Mall was quite close at hand. They drove there, and just as the
carriage stopped at the gate of No. 8, which had a long strip of green
front garden, overhung by trees through which you could discern the old
red-brick house. Lady Anne herself came down the gravel path. Over her
head was a little shawl of old lace; it was caught by a seed-pearl
brooch with an amethyst centre. She was wearing a quilted red silk
petticoat and a bunched sacque of black flowered silk. She had
magnificent dark eyes and white hair. Under it her peaked little face
was the colour of old ivory. She was calling to her dog, "Fifine,
Fifine, where can you be?"

A respectable-looking elderly maid came hurrying after her.

"I've looked everywhere, my lady, and I cannot find the little thing,"
she said in a frightened voice.

Meanwhile, the doctor had got out of the carriage and had taken Fifine
gently from Mary's lap. Now that Mary was coming to herself she began to
discover that the doctor was young and kind-looking, but more careworn
than his youth warranted. He opened the garden gate and went up to Lady
Anne.

"Is this your little dog, madam?" he asked.

"My Fifine, my darling!" cried Lady Anne, embracing the trembling bit of
wool. "You don't know what she is to me, sir. My little grandson"--the
imperious old voice shook--"loved the dog. She was his pet. The child is
dead. You understand----"

"Perfectly," said the doctor. "I, too--I know what loss is. The little
dog strayed. She was found in the High Road. I am very glad to restore
her to you; but pray do not thank me. There is a young girl in my
carriage at the gate. She picked up your dog from under the wheels of a
tramcar, and broke her arm, I fear, in doing it. I am on my way to the
hospital, the House of Mercy, where I am doing work for a friend who is
on holiday. I am taking her with me so that I may set the arm where I
have all the appliances."

"She saved my Fifine? Heroic child! Let me thank her."

The old lady clutched her recovered treasure to her breast with fervour,
then handed the dog over to the maid.

"Take me to see Fifine's preserver," she said in a commanding voice.

Mary was almost swooning with the pain of her arm. She heard Lady Anne's
praises as though from a long distance off.

"Stay, doctor," the old lady said; "I cannot have her jolted over the
paving-stones of the city to the Mercy. Bring her in here. We need not
detain you very long. We can procure splints and bandages, all you
require, from a chemist's shop. There is one just round the corner.
What, do you say, child? They will be frightened about you at home! I
shall send word. Be quiet now; you must let us do everything for you."

So the doctor assisted Mary into the old house behind the trees. Lady
Anne walked the other side of her, pretending to assist Mary and really
imagining that she did.

The splints and the bandages were on, and Mary had borne the pain well.

"I'm afraid I must go," said the doctor, looking at his watch. "I am
half an hour behind my time. And where am I to visit my patient?"

"Where but here?" said Lady Anne with decision. "It is now half-past
eleven. I have lunch at half-past one. Could you return to lunch,
Dr.--ah, Dr. Carruthers. You are Dr. Carruthers, are you not? You took
the big house at the corner of Magnolia Road a year ago?"

"Yes, I am Dr. Carruthers; and I shall be very pleased to return to
lunch, Lady Anne. I don't think the little dog is any the worse for her
experience."

His face was flushed as he stood with his hat in his hand, bowing and
smiling. If only Lady Anne Hamilton would take him up! That big house at
the corner of Magnolia Road had been a daring bid for fortune. So had
the neat, single brougham, hired from a livery-stable. So had been the
three smart maids. But so far Fortune had not favoured him. He was one
of fifty or so waiters on Fortune. When people were ill in the smart
suburban neighbourhood they liked to be attended by Dr. Pownall, who
always drove a pair of hundred guinea horses. None of your hired
broughams for them.

"You are paying too big a rent for a young man," said Lady Anne. "You
can't have made it or anything like made it. Pownall grows careless. The
last time I sent for him he kept me two hours waiting. When I had him to
Stewart, my maid, he was in a hurry to be gone. Pownall has too much to
do--too much by half."

Her eyes rested thoughtfully on the agitated Dr. Carruthers.

"You shall tell me all about it when you come back to lunch," she said;
"and I should like to call on your wife."




CHAPTER II

THE WALL BETWEEN


"The child has brought us luck--luck at last, Mildred," Dr. Carruthers
was saying, a few hours later. "When I lifted her in my arms she was as
light as a feather. A poor little shabby, overworked thing, all eyes,
and too big a forehead. Her boots were broken, and I noticed that her
fingers were rough with hard work."

He was walking up and down his wife's drawing-room in a tremendous state
of excitement, while she smiled at him from the sofa.

"It is wonderful, coming just now, too, when I had made up my mind that
we couldn't keep afloat here much longer, and had resolved to give up
this house at the September quarter and retire into a dingier part of
the town. Once it is known that I am Lady Anne Hamilton's medical man
the snobs of the neighbourhood will all be sending for me."

"Poor Dr. Pownall!" said Mrs. Carruthers, laughing softly.

"Oh, Pownall is all right. They say he's immensely wealthy. He can
retire now and enjoy his money. If the public did not go back on him
he'd be a dead man in five or six years. He does the work of twenty men.
I pity the others, the poor devils who are waiting on fortune as I have
waited."

"There is no fear of Lady Anne disappointing you?" she asked, in a
hesitating voice. She did not like to seem to throw cold water on his
joyful mood.

"There is no fear," he answered, standing midway of the room with its
three large windows. "She is coming to see you, Milly. If I have failed
in anything you will succeed. You will see me at the top of the tree
yet. You will have cause to be proud of me."

"I am always proud of you. Kit," she said, in a low, impassioned voice.

Meanwhile, Lady Anne herself had made a pilgrimage to Wistaria Terrace
in the hour preceding the luncheon hour. She had left Mary in a deep
chair in the big drawing-room. Outside were the boughs of trees. From
the windows you could surprise the secrets of the birds if you would.
The room was very spacious, with chairs and sofas round the walls, a
great mirror at either end, a paper on its walls which pretended to be
panels wreathed in roses. The ceiling had a gay picture of gods and
goddesses reclining in a flowery mead. The mantelpiece was Carrara
marble, curiously inlaid with coloured wreaths. There was a fire in the
brass grate, although it was summer weather. The proximity of the trees
and the natural climate of the place meant damp. The fire sparkled in
the brass dogs and the brass jambs of the fireplace. The skin of a tiger
stretched itself along the floor. The terrible teeth grinned almost at
Mary's feet.

The child was sick and faint from the pain of having her arm set. She
lay in the deep sofa, covered with red damask, amid a bewildering
softness of cushions and rugs, and wondered what Lady Anne was saying to
Mamie. Mamie was Mrs. Gray. From the first Mary had not called her
Mother. Her name was Matilda, and Mamie was a sort of compromise.

Meanwhile, Lady Anne had gone out by her garden, through the stable, and
into the lane at the back. There was a little door open in the opposite
wall; beyond it was a shabby trellis with scarlet-runners clambering
upon it.

Lady Anne peeped within. A disheartened-looking woman was hanging a
child's frock on the line which was stretched from wall to wall. Three
children, ranging in age from two to five, were sitting on the grass
plot. Two were playing with white stones. The third was surveying its
own small feet with great interest, sucking at a fat thumb as though it
conveyed some delicious nourishment.

"Do I speak to Mrs. Gray?" asked Lady Anne, advancing. She had a
sunshade over her head, a deep-fringed thing with a folding handle. She
had bought it in Paris in the days of the Second Empire.

Mrs. Gray stared at the stranger within her gates, whom she knew by
sight. There was some perturbation in her face. She had been worried
about the unusual duration of Mary's absence. Mary had not come back
with the market basket which contained the children's dinner. At one
o'clock the four elder ones would be upon her, ravening. What on earth
had become of Mary? The poor woman had not realised how much she
depended on Mary, since Mary was always present and always willing to
take the burdens off her stepmother's thin, stooped shoulders on to her
own.

Now she caught sight of the market-basket. One of Lady Anne's
white-capped maids had come in and deposited it quietly.

"Mary?" she gasped. "What has become of Mary?"

"Pray don't frighten yourself," said Lady Anne. "I have a message
from Mary. She is at my house. As a matter of fact, she met with an
accident. There--don't go so pale. It is only a matter of time. Her arm
is broken. She got it broken in saving the life of my little Maltese,
who had strayed out and had got in the way of the tram. I always said
that those trams should not be allowed. The tracks are so very
unpleasant--dangerous even, for the carriages of gentlefolk. There is
far too much traffic allowed on the public highways nowadays, far too
much. People ought to walk if they cannot keep carriages."

She broke off abruptly and looked at the three small children.

"These are yours?" she asked. "They seem very close together in age."

"A year and a half, three years, four years and three months," said Mrs.
Gray, forgetting in her special cause for pride her awe of Lady Anne.

"Dear me, I should have thought they were all twins," said the old lady.
"How very remarkable! Have you any more?"

"Four at school. The eldest is nine. You see, they came so quickly, my
lady. Only for Mary I don't know how I should have reared them."

"H'm! Mary is very stunted. It struck me that she would have been tall
if she had had a chance. Those heavy babies, doubtless. Well, I am going
to keep Mary for a while. How will you do without her?"

Mrs. Gray's faded eyes filled with tears.

"I can't imagine, my lady. You see, we have never kept a servant. When I
lived at home with my Mamma we always had three. Mr. Gray has literary
attainments, my lady. He is not practical."

"I can send you an excellent charwoman," Lady Anne broke in, "for the
present. I will see what is to be done about Mary. The child has
rendered me an inestimable service. I must do something for her in
return. By the way, she is not your daughter?"

"My stepdaughter."

"Ah, I thought so. Well, the charwoman shall come in at once. She can
cook. Later on, we shall see--we shall see."

"By the way," said Lady Anne, coming back with a rustle of silks while
Mrs. Gray yet stood in bewilderment, holding the baby's frock in her
limp fingers. "By the way, Mary is very anxious about her father--how he
will take her accident. Will you tell your husband that I shall be glad
to see him when he comes home this evening?"

"I will, my lady," said Mrs. Gray; "and, my lady, would you please not
to mention to Mr. Gray about the charwoman? He's that proud; it would
hurt him, I'm sure. If he isn't told he'll never know she's there. A
child isn't as easily deceived as Walter."

"I shall certainly not tell him," Lady Anne said graciously. She did not
object to the honest pride in Walter Gray. He was probably a superior
man for his station, being Mary's father. As for that poor slattern,
Lady Anne had lived too long in the world to be amazed by the marriages
men made, either in her own exalted circle or in those below it.

Walter Gray came, in a flutter of tender anxiety, at half-past six in
the evening, to Lady Anne's garden, where Mary was sitting in her wicker
chair under the mulberry tree. Lady Anne had given orders that he was to
be shown out to the garden when he called.

Copyright (c) 2007. topboookz.com. All rights reserved.