Although he was to live into his eighties Giles never forgot nor wholly recovered from that terrible event. His whole character was to change. The guilt he felt for the death of his brother weighed upon him like lead. If it had not been for the kindness and understanding he received from Mary he might even have lost his reason.
Once she had learned the full facts Mary turned to her brother. She understood, with a wisdom far beyond her years, and gave silent comfort.
It was not just James’s death. That he might have overcome gradually. It was what happened to his mother. Kind, practical Julie who only ever wanted to make a happy home and, perhaps, just to change the world a little. She would do nothing further.
The shock had been too appallingly brutal. Her favourite had been snatched from her without any warning. Julie’s mind closed. It refused to accept anything. She sank into a dream world where nothing was real any more.
Jon nearly went mad. His precious Julie ill? He stormed and raged. Sent for one doctor after another and neglected his own work. He spent hours hanging around her bed, hoping for a word or even a gesture from his wife. His whole world had turned topsy-turvy. He tried everything he knew to draw his wife back to him. The hard reserve which had always been the mask on his face was shattered.
Julie lived for months but never left her room again. She became a mental invalid. Exactly twelve months to the day she quietly died. The doctors could give no name to what had killed her.
Jon went frantic with grief. Coming on top of James’s death he went to pieces. If it had not been for Mary there was no telling what might not have happened.
Mary became the king-pin. Upon her shoulders fell the business of managing the house and staff. Suddenly, it was she who had to order the meals, make all the domestic arrangements and see to the two men.
She had her own private misery. Her own deep guilt. She had to make peace with her own conscience. She had never cared for James as much as Giles and this troubled her deeply. She had never really given James a chance. He had his faults but hadn’t he had his virtues also? What these were Mary would have been hard put to pin down if questioned. She side-stepped this though. Giles, dear Giles, what was he going through and it was all her fault. If she had not been so besotted with Robert, Giles would not have seen so much of him and the stupid ride would never have arisen. She was as much to blame as anyone.
Robert! Dear Robert! She would never marry. She knew that now. No other man would ever hold her hand, place his arm around her shoulder and murmur into her ear. No other man could ever match up to Robert’s little finger and, anyhow, marriage was totally impossible now. Quite out of the question. There was too much to do. The men to look after. Her personal feelings were irrelevant. She had taken her fun; now she must pay. She would live and die an old maid. Giles and her father came first while the farm ran a close second.
Mary handled her father like porcelain and he, sunk in dreadful grief, was amenable, willing to do as his daughter bid him. He simply ate the meals, changed his clothes and slept. On Giles’s shoulders lay the running of the farm. The hard work was exactly what he needed. He flung himself into it with every jot of energy, staggering home at night almost too exhausted to eat. He worked with the men, using his bare hands as they used theirs. He visited the markets, bought and sold the stock and produce. He attended to the machinery and at hay and harvest times he stood atop of the ricks, patting the sheaves into position, swinging his pitchfork with easy, rhythmic movements. He was up and about before the cows came in to be milked and he was still working, inspecting the stock and checking when the last hand left at night. He was everywhere and everything. The men who worked at Mayo’s worshipped him. Nothing was too good for the young master.
Giles Mayo became the talk of the county and the idol of the working man. Men applied to work on the farm for no other reason than that the young master was there. He often conducted an all-male gathering when questions and suggestions were tossed back and forth in open discussion. A shockingly new state of affairs according to the old diehards in the county who still considered their cattle more important than their workers. With all this, Mayo’s boomed.
Any newly invented machine which was capable of doing work better than muscles was acquired. Giles would first find out the cost, talk with his men, sell something of equal value and obtain the machine. No worker ever lost his job because of Mayo’s mechanization. With the increase in machinery Giles was able to put more land down to the plough and increase the farm’s yield.
The workers’ cottages were also the talk of the county. Giles inspected them once a month and this was always an occasion. This was the women’s day when they greeted their young master, took him around their small homes and gave him refreshment. Mary had learned, from experience, that Giles never wanted much to eat when he returned home on those days.
Giles divided the farm’s profits into three scrupulously fair piles. One third was put straight back into the farm; one third was for the family and the other third was set aside to give his workers what Giles considered to be a decent standard of living.
He liked to see his workers’ children tall, healthy and full of high spirits. Most of all he liked to see food about their cottages. During his visits a pot of bubbling stew topped with good dumplings always brought a word of praise from him. There was nothing that delighted him more than a tiny cottage filled with the sweet aroma of freshly baked bread.
Giles paid well above the rates. Most farm workers received 9/d a week with the shepherds and cowmen getting a little more. Rents averaged one shilling a week. Giles paid four shillings above the standard rate and took only two thirds of the normal rent. Consequently he never suffered from labour troubles.
The other farmers hated him for it. But Giles was a pure Mayo. He did not give a damn about what others thought or said. He went his own sweet way regardless. If anyone had told Giles that he was a Victorian reformer he would have laughed in their face. That was precisely what he was. In that day and age of sweated labour he was a hundred years ahead of his time and quite disinterested in politics as a whole.
He even introduced a system whereby all his workers contributed sixpence a month to a common fund. Out of this, they received instant medical attention for nothing. It was a daring scheme he innovated but was typical of the man. Giles had sought a suitable arrangement with his own doctor but he, a staunch Tory, had sneered at such goings-on for the common herd. Without more ado, Giles rode into Bristol and spent days hunting out newly qualified doctors. He sounded them out on their basic humane principles. When he had found a man who thought along his lines, he brought him back to Mayo’s and established him in one of the better village houses.
Despite all his enthusiasm and hard work he still had time for his father. Jon had died spiritually when he lost his precious Julie.
Every evening, no matter how tired he might be, Giles always sat with his father and told him, in great detail, the day’s events. Jon would nod or grunt. He never passed a comment or showed a jot of interest in the farm. Patiently Giles took him out on his rounds but soon realized that Jon was quite content to leave the running of the property in his son’s very competent hands.
Mary slowly found that she could think about Robert without tearing her heart to shreds. It took time, considerable time, but as she fitted herself into her domestic role and kept herself so busy, the pain of lost love eased slightly. It would never fully go. She was too sensible to think it might but instead of that wild, tearing love of so long ago, it seemed, she could now think of Robert with a quiet gentleness which became a beautiful dream of a memory.
She never mentioned her feelings to Giles and he never thought to ask. He was not selfish. He knew his sister had suffered but, in his clumsy, masculine way, he avoided the subject for fearing of inflicting new wounds. It was a long time before he realized that Mary had accepted the situation with a fatalistic calm. Gradually, tentatively, Robert’s name slipped into their conversations again but they discussed him calmly and as casually as the merits and demerits of a breeding cow.
No one ever saw Robert. Giles certainly never looked for him and he suspected that Robert avoided him deliberately. He heard tales of him and of Ferndale. Sometimes Giles talked to Mary.
‘Things aren’t good at Ferndale, I’ve heard.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s the land. It’s horse-sour and the horse market itself is dying. Father was right. I’m glad we got rid of the horses and concentrated on mixed farming instead.’
It never entered Giles’s head to seek Robert out and offer land. He knew that Mayo’s was a sacred trust handed to him to keep firmly united and to go down through the generations as it had already done for so many years. As his father had said, so long ago, what the Howards did was their affair.
‘But it’d be nice to have a friend. I’ve never met anyone I liked as much as you, Robert Howard. Why did it have to be?’ Giles asked himself often because he was a very lonely man. Guilt is a poor companion for any human being.
Even the workmen took sides. They all knew the history; it had been handed down from father to son and naturally, they sided with Giles. No Mayo’s worker who wanted to see the dawn with sound limbs would dream of drinking with a Howard’s man. And a Mayo’s woman would studiously ignore a Howard’s woman. If it had not been so tragic it might have been humorous.
* * *
When he was twenty-four years of age, Giles did some serious thinking in his position as nominal head of Mayo’s. Mary would never marry. That much was obvious. Giles knew she wanted nothing from life now but to run the farm and spend her days on it. For Giles, it was very different. What was going to be the outcome of it all; this hard work and planning? Who would claim Mayo’s if he died childless?
He sat one evening, considering the matter seriously. He was the direct heir. Through the years the Mayos had only ever managed to produce one surviving son per generation. Pondering this all out it struck Giles with a distinct shock, that if he died childless the Howards might well inherit! They stemmed from the same stock. Would they, in law, have a legitimate claim to the land?
‘I don’t like that,’ Giles told himself. ‘I don’t like it, Robert, and I can’t help it either. But when all is said and done you are a Howard and I am a Mayo and never the twain shall meet!’
Mayo’s must stay in the Mayo family. Giles did not need a Jon or George to tell him this fact. It had been instinctively bred into him.
He took a deep breath and sat back. ‘Well, then, there’s only one thing to do. I must marry and soon!’ he declared to the empty room.
He ran his mind over the single eligible females of the county. He had no illusions that he was more than a good catch. If he had wanted, he could have married long ago.
The girl must come from good stock. That, of course, was obvious. She must be a good breeder from a line of good breeders. A barren wife was no good to him.
There was a branch of the Gordons, distant by two marriages. They had two marriageable girls ready for the market. Priscilla and Helen. He tried to remember what he knew about them. Helen was the elder and about his own age. Coming from the Gordon family she would obviously be adaptable for a country life. A town girl was no good at all.
Mary would still run the house he decided. Though he was contemplating matrimony in the most cold-blooded way, he had sense enough to realize that two women in a house could cause untold friction. Mary must like the girl and she like Mary. There was a Hunt Ball the next month. Not having attended for years Giles decided this would be a good time to view the matrimonial field.
He told Mary that same night. She listened to him thoughtfully. She noted his cold sentences and desire for marriage solely to produce an heir. It had obviously never entered his head that he might father a litter of daughters. Mary kept this interesting thought to herself.
‘It is time you married, Giles,’ she agreed, speaking softly. ‘Have you told father?’
Giles shook his head. ‘There’s no point. He’s not interested in anything I tell him. I think he’s just patiently waiting to die and join mother.’
Mary nodded. The words sounded cold and harsh but she knew them to be true.
‘I thought about Helen, the Gordon’s cousin.’
Mary furrowed her brows. ‘I remember her. She’s quite pretty and used to laugh a lot at school—not giggling though!’ she added hastily, seeing a frown cross Giles’s face.
‘Did you like her?’
Mary nodded. ‘Yes, I did! Why?’
Giles stared at her. ‘Because whoever comes here as my wife defers to you. You are mistress here, Mary,’ he said firmly.
Mary pursed her lips uneasily. Being feminine she knew the danger of such a situation. Two women lording it over one kitchen! Why, such a situation could be explosive!
‘Helen as a sister-in-law,’ she mused to herself.
It would be fun to have another female about the house. One of her own age and station in life! Even though the worker-staff relations at Mayo’s were good there was still the basic gulf of class distinction. Mary had found this to be far more rigidly upheld by the workers than themselves. It was as if they had pride in knowing their station in life and adhering to it. Sometimes they exasperated her.
She nodded at Giles. ‘I think Helen would fit in well here—but Giles—she might be spoken for!’ she pointed out.
‘I’ve thought of that,’ he replied. ‘I’ll take the carriage and look her over some time this week.’
Mary looked sharply at him.
‘Dear Giles, don’t be so cold-blooded about this!’ she thought to herself. ‘You are not going to inspect a piece of machinery now. You’re going to meet a woman. Someone living of flesh and bone and human emotion. A person who can laugh and cry and know fear!’
But she knew better than to say any of this aloud. Giles was sometimes quite unreachable. He must find out for himself.
True to his word, Giles surveyed the field. He went to the Hunt Ball, danced dutifully with the girls, flattered their mamas and was highly respectful to their bewhiskered papas. He compared all the marriageable daughters. He tabulated their good and bad points, discarding some instantly and putting others aside for further consideration. At the end of three months his first choice was still the best.
He drove over to see Helen’s stuffy, old-fashioned parents, and stated his intentions. He asked permission to call and court their elder daughter. The Gordon-Smiths were delighted. Giles Mayo was the catch of the county. They had never dreamed that his eyes had alighted on their first born. There were, of course, others dancing attendance on Helen but both Papa and Mama Gordon-Smith decided that Giles Mayo must take priority. Firmly and quietly, the other suitors departed, leaving Helen rather mystified and more than a little hurt.
Helen Gordon-Smith was no raving beauty. Her attractions emanated from a cheerful nature, happy spirit and the sheer vivacious love of life.
At first, she eyed Giles Mayo askance. Who wouldn’t? He had a reputation of being a determined man and who, horror of horrors, thought his workers human beings and treated them almost as equals! Helen unfortunately had been reared by a family who considered workers almost with revulsion.
But Giles, with his rugged good looks and virile masculine body, was magnetic. His personality was powerfully strong. Even though he was rather silent and aloof when he took her drives or escorted her a ride through the countryside. When he took her to a party it took him time to unbend.
Helen felt there was something about him which touched her. He aroused her dormant maternal instincts to a height which embarrassed her. She was left breathless and trembling though he never dreamed of going further than a respectful kiss. Fierce, inexplicable currents churned Helen’s body, leaving her perplexed and utterly bewildered.
She had never known such emotions existed. She was the typical, narrow-minded ignorant girl of the times. From where babies came she had absolutely no idea and knew better than to ask. There were many subjects rigidly taboo in her stuffy Victorian home. She sensed her mother would have swooned if questioned upon some of them.
One day she sneaked into her father’s library when the house was empty. She sought for the dictionary which, like certain other books, was considered unsuitable for young females. It was kept hidden in a locked cabinet. With the skill worthy of a burglar she unpicked the lock, selected the dictionary and started looking up words of interest. At first, she had a problem. She did not know the names of the objects she wished to study but eventually turned to ‘organs’, ‘sex’ and ‘copulation’. By the time dusk fell Helen Gordon-Smith had acquired a major part of the purely technical detail necessary for her curiosity’s satisfaction.
‘Well!’ she exclaimed to herself, ‘who would have guessed babies came from doing that!’
She was still too prudish to actually utter the word ‘sex’. Then something else struck her like a bomb.
‘If I marry Giles Mayo does that mean I’ll have to do that?’
This was entirely different. What other people did she could view dispassionately. That she too would have to get involved in such activities and positions was a staggering thought!
Was that what marriage really meant? She now knew it was!
‘But could I let Giles Mayo do that—to me?’ she asked herself nervously. No sooner had the question been asked than her body willingly answered. Electric tingles chased down her spine. Her breath came in sharp, little gasps. She certainly could, she told herself and, adding practically, the sooner the better too!
Unbeknown to himself, Giles Mayo could not have chosen a more suitable mate than the happy, laughing and very intelligent Helen Gordon-Smith.
The courtship proceeded along well-run lines. Giles took Helen to Mayo’s to meet Mary. The two girls fell into each other’s arms with genuine cries of pleasure. Mary promptly took Helen on a slowly conducted tour of the house while Giles sat smoking his pipe and waiting for their return.
He was very pleased with the way things had turned out and smugly satisfied with his choice of female.
As he waited, he attempted to analyse his actual feelings for Helen. She was tall. Not too tall but certainly above average. She had her curves well developed in all the correct places. Though not having what he considered to be a pretty face she did have charm. She had a button of a nose which tilted slightly at the end. Coupled with dancing brown eyes, it gave her a perpetual mischievous look. She had long brown hair which waved and fell on her shoulders in a gentle curl. Her teeth were white and sparkling with health. Her cheeks had that rose tint only found in British country girls. Perhaps her most outstanding feature was her hands. Her nails were long, the fingers thin-boned while the palms were well-developed showing unusual strength.
He told his father his intentions and afterwards wondered if Jon had understood. Did he understand anything nowadays? All Jon wanted to do was sit in the kitchen rocking chair, smoke a pipe and look blankly out of the window. He was no trouble to them, being as tractable as a well-fed baby. But Jon’s passive disinterest in life upset Giles. It reminded him too vividly of that horrible day.
He was glad to think of other things. He flung himself into plans of matrimony. Helen was agreeable to an immediate wedding and they were married one sunny Saturday. All the village attended the nuptials of the young master and the feast afterwards was held in one of the Mayo’s emptied barns.
The house staff spent the preceding week in an orgy of cooking. Mary was worked up to a state of frenzy and could only talk of hams and roasts and cakes. Giles wondered whether they had an army to feed. Precious home-brewed wines were brought up from the cellars. The village women produced their home-made ales. Such was the frantic activity that even Jon was stimulated enough to take an interest. He passed one or two scathing comments about ‘clucking females’ which delighted brother and sister.
They watched their father carefully and saw a gleam of interest enter his blank eyes. Slowly, very gradually, the mentally dead man was drawn back into the emotional world of the living. With a start, Giles realized that nothing better could have happened.
He went to his nuptials feeling reborn. His father had returned to them. His guilt feeling began to diminish. Giles’s feelings were humble with thanks. This humility increased when, standing at the altar watching Helen walk up the aisle on her father’s arm, he was suddenly conscious of what the word love did mean after all.
This was not just a female capable of producing an heir for Mayo’s. This delightful creature was flesh and blood like himself. For the rest of his life she would stand at his side. With overpowering emotion Giles Mayo became aware that he was, indeed, very much in love with this Helen.
As they walked back down through the crowded church, her arm on his, he paused and looked steadily into his father’s eyes. Jon slowly smiled back at him. Stepping forward, one hand touching her pink cheek, Jon Mayo kissed his daughter-in-law.
‘Welcome!’ he said softly.
Tears ran unchecked down Mary’s cheeks. She looked up at her brother through a downpour of salt droplets.
‘Dear Giles! God bless you both. Look after Helen! Remember, I’ll be watching to make sure you do. She’s the dearest, sweetest friend to me and, Giles, our father, he’s recovered at last. Thank you, Giles! All is right with us again!’
Giles took the unprecedented step of a week’s honeymoon in London, that mysterious den of noise and iniquity. It was a week of bliss.