THE BRANCH

Choice 2: Mistress Mary Quite Contrary

Part I

Mary Lennox departed her uncle's study, her arms full of her inheritance. When she arrived inside her room, she carefully hid the box under her bed, in the little alcove where she kept all her treasures. Then, she stood. The dark, ornate room appeared exactly the same as the day she first arrived at Misselthwaite. The carved bed, wall hangings, and arrangement of the room revealed no more about the presence of Mary Lennox than any of the rest of the manor. For all the years she had called Misselthwaite home, little had changed in both the house and its inhabitants. She doubted much would change, even years after her departure. There would not even be dust left on the windowsill after her.

It was only under the bed, beneath the oak slats and crevices, that Mary felt she could display her few possessions. There, she kept a box of photographs, adding to their number each year, along with all the letters she received while away at school. She kept some sketch books, a box of art supplies, a few books she purchased with her pocket money, and an old, battered skipping rope – now far too short for her grown limbs. Her greatest treasure she kept in a little wooden chest: a drawing of a missel thrush, a preserved nest, and a container of flower seeds – carefully saved from year to year for the next spring's planting and recorded in the nearby notebook. Between worn pages, she carefully pressed flowers, leaves, and seeds. At the top of each page, she wrote the name of the flower (both common and scientific) and then any observations she had about its growth and planting. Then, she painstakingly painted a picture alongside it. This, she did for every plant in the garden, spending every summer holiday working to complete it. She had not finished yet for there was always a new sapling or sprout she had not recognized from the preceding years.

To all these, she added the box of jewelry. While undoubtedly the item with the greatest monetary value, she did not believe it to be her greatest treasure.

When she emerged from beneath the bed, she stood at the window. Below, in the gardens, she saw old Ben Weatherstaff and Dickon Sowerby working in the grounds. The head gardener leant heavily on a rake and spent more effort directing the broad, tall youth beside him in his efforts than he did working the land himself. A wheelbarrow full of pruned branches lay between them.

There would be no robin to chirrup to them or oversee their efforts.

For a moment, her eyes filled with tears again and she forced her gaze away from the gardeners. There was the beloved wall covered with ivy and path into her favorite place in all the world. She noted that the door to the Secret Garden had been left ajar. For a moment, she considered finding solace within its walls or telling Dickon about the meeting with her uncle. However, she could just as easily tell him later, when he was not needed by Ben. She daren't speak of jewels and finery before the gruff old gardener… or, perhaps, it was the allusions to her mother she wished to avoid before him. She could not tell.

Beyond the grounds of Misselthwaite, out where the manicured gardens and furrowed lands ended and the open moor began, it seemed as if that was the very beginning of the rest of the world. She looked up just as a cloud shifted, shattering a ray of sun into a dozen shards – each distinct and piercing the moor beyond with columns of fragmented light. The sight was so compelling that she pushed open the window and drank in the sweet scent of earth and air and growing things beyond. For a time, she simply watched the shifting pattern of shadow and light dancing across the moor. The longer she lingered, the more the room around her felt all the more constricting, all the more shrouded in darkness and she longed for the fresh air of the moor.

She tore off the fine, neatly pressed clothes she had worn to visit her uncle and quickly changed into an old dress better meant for a day in the garden. Then, she crept out of the house, using back stairways and hidden passages that had become as familiar as the howl of the wind through her windows at night. The proud, grand stables of the manor house welcomed her, but echoed with a foreign emptiness. Stall after stall stood empty. The only horses who remained were those too old or too young to be sent to the War. Similarly, most of the grooms had followed – by choice or by draft- and those who remained sported either white hair or beardless chins. A few of the hardy mares remained – just enough to produce the next generation – but they were so few, such a fraction of what had once frolicked across the pastures and meadows around Misselthwaite.

Her own mare was one fortunate enough to keep her place at Misselthwaite. Queen Elizabeth whinnied when she saw her mistress and was more than eager for an outing. Mary placed the bridle over her horse's head, but did not bother with a saddle. She clambered onto her horse's back and urged the creature into a gallop as soon as there were no obstacles before them, save a fence or two which could easily be jumped.

She knew her uncle and cousin would chide her if they caught her. It was not proper for her to ride alone or astride a horse or without saddle. She almost wished they would see her, just so she could tell them she did not care what they thought. This was the manner Dickon first taught her to ride and, for a moment, she did not wish to pay heed to what was expected of her or what was proper. Instead, she rode as far and as fast as her horse could manage, the view of Misselthwaite gradually melting away, leaving her awash in an ocean of fluctuating grasses and rolling hills, all bare beneath the flickering light of the cloud-broke sun.

With the scent of the crushed grass, the feel of the wind in her hair, and quivering of horse's muscles beneath her legs, she felt free. She felt alive. There were no shadowy secrets here, no dark passageways or stale wardrobes filled with old boxes and locked with old keys.

Her hair fell out of its pins and flowed freely down her back. Slowly, the let her horse calm into a trot and then into a walk. Finally, she pulled the horse to a halt, slid from her back, and let the Queen eat her fill of the sweet summer grasses. Mary lay on a clump of earth, her head pillowed on her hands, and watched the shifting, shimmering clouds sweep across the sky.

Her uncle wished for her to attend art school – more to keep her occupied and out from being underfoot than for any particular talent she possessed or the usefulness of the skills she would acquire – but women were not permitted university degrees and he had no wish for his ward to remain idle around Misselthwaite. Her uncle had many plans for Mary -some spoken and some left unsaid. Colin, too, had his own ideas of how Mary's life ought to be managed. Very few inquired into Mary's thoughts on the matter or what it was she wished to do.

One thing was certain: she did not want to leave.

Not just the moor, but Misselthwaite, her Garden. She treasured these places far too much and she longed for them when she was away. She counted the days till each holiday, longing for the breath of summer, the return to the one place she loved most. She did her best to attend to her studies and do as her uncle wished, but she did not enjoy it. Now, she would be pried away from Misselthwaite again, sent away once more – locked away in a safe deposit box until she was needed again.

There was one more thing she was certain of: she wished to leave more than anything.

The edge of the horizon, the undulating waves of grass beyond called to her, beckoning her to continue in her frantic gallop and leave the rigid, stately old manor house behind.

It was too much. If the death of the robin impacted her so, what would she face when the inevitable occurred and she was forced to face another death? If attachment to such a small, weak creature cut her wide open for injury, for such acute grief, how could she bear any greater loss? Dickon and Colin and Ben and Martha and the Garden and that dark old house with its impenetrable secrets- she had grown to love it all and it was too much for her to bear. How could she face losing any of them, being parted over and over again?

Suddenly, she understood her uncle in a way she never had before. Lord Craven had loved his wife – completely and utterly- and that love destroyed him. He could not bear his wife's loss and each day after became a torment. Lord Craven chose to leave Misselthwaite rather than love and face loss again. He would rather lock his son away than face another loss. He never took another wife, never stayed in a place long enough to grow attached. The only souls around him were those paid to be there. Even after it became clear that Colin would live, Lord Craven never spent more than a handful of days at a time in his son's company. He wandered the world as restlessly as the winter winds across the moor and wore his grief as a shroud about his heart.

Perhaps, there was a certain wisdom in that path. In India, Mary had not felt the death of her parents nor any other. She had not cared. No tears were shed. She had been whole, untouchable. That must be preferable to this ache in her breast, this heaviness in her soul. If she hardened her heart, she would not feel the inevitable loss of a friend or the desperate separation caused by time and distance. Even the Garden could wound her with its absence and tingling promises of beauty she could not possess or keep all as her own. No, it was better to protect herself - to build high, unscalable walls, and ensure no one would come in and no one would come out – and then she would not have to feel such agony again. She decided, then and there, that this would be the last time she cried.

When she returned to Misselthwaite that evening, she knew what she must do. Quietly, she returned Queen Elizabeth to the stables and placed a fond kiss on the horse's nose. Then, she ambled across the gardens until she reached the Garden door. With only the briefest of lingering glances, she shut the door. Then, she returned to her room.

She did not enter the Garden again, nor did she traverse the open moor. She avoided her cousin and Dickon as much as she could, pretending to be much occupied with errands in the village and preparing for her upcoming removal to art school. When the time came, her uncle and cousin deposited her at her school for her first term. She only remained a single night before she vanished, leaving only a note behind.

Lord Craven was angry and confused when news of Mary's disappearance reached him.

"Foolish, ungrateful child," he spat. "What is she about?"

Initially, he made some efforts to find his lost niece… perhaps, he might have found her, if he persisted. However, he had very little desire to search out a girl- no a woman- who chose to leave his care of her own accord. After all, she had decided she would look after herself and he would not be put out of his way to change her mind. If she wished to return, she would. It was only another loss, another sadness and he had more than enough of those to bear.

The loss hit Colin Craven much harder. He had always assumed Mary would remain a fixture in his life- in the same way that Misselthwaite Manor remained each generation or the sun in the sky continued to rise. Of course, his cousin would remain – ready to chide and support, cheer up and demolish, entertain him and exhort him and share life together for as long as they lived. Afterall, she was his only true family. His uncle, the doctor, rarely visited and when he did, it was with an irritated, resigned sigh- as if he held Colin personally responsible for existing and insisting on living when it would have been far more convenient for him to die and leave the inheritance of the manor to him. And his father- well- it is hard to the change the patterns accrued over ten years of life and even harder to bring two wounded, isolated souls into true companionship. While leaps and bounds had been made since his days as an invalid, there remained a chasm between father and son that not even a miraculous healing and a living son could heal.

Mary remained the only person in his life he truly loved, and her sudden abandonment and absence felt like he had been impaled on a stick and then relieved of his liver.

Colin nearly failed all this classes that first year of university. He spent all the time he could trying to find her, trying to trace her movements. When he finally discovered she had shipped herself off to the very grounds of the war, he nearly got on a boat to follow after her. He would have, too, if he had been eighteen. Yet, she had always prided in her few extra months of age over him and no matter how much taller and stronger he grew, she would always be the elder. Those few months meant she could leave him behind to where he could not follow.

And while Mary might be mistress of her own fortune, Colin, most decidedly, was not. Until he became the Lord of the Manor in his own right, he was still subservient to his father's wishes- which most decidedly did not involve seeing his young son traipsing across France after his cousin.

It was the greatest grief he had ever known and he hardly knew how to bear it. His Mary chose to leave him, to leave him alone, to cut off all ties. He had never known his mother and so he had never understood his father's grief. He had known so few others. He could not claim to love his servants and they were paid to be with him. Yet, Mary was his. She had to love him. She must! They were the same, she and him, and their fates were intertwined.

Yet, she chose to leave – almost as suddenly as she had stumbled into his life, she carried herself right back out of it again, and he was bereft.

His father chided him for his poor performance at his studies and his lack of motivation. He threatened and pleaded and bribed Colin to attend to his studies and give up his search for his cousin. He could not, however, enter into his son's grief.

Dickon took Mary's absence more as a matter of course than a surprise. Afterall, he had always known she would someday leave. He had prepared himself. Each year as she went away to boarding school and left him behind, he had practiced for the inevitable. He knew how it would be. Either, she would marry her cousin and remain at Misselthwaite or she would marry elsewhere and leave Misselthwaite behind. Either way, she would leave Dickon behind and grow beyond him.

He had noticed Mary's reticence, her avoidance of him over that last month of summer. He assumed it was due to her age and growing up. He was, after all, only a gardener on the estate. Whatever their shared past, their futures could not converge and he assumed the distance was natural.

"Tha' munnot keep them all," his mother told him once, when the healed wing of a sparrow enabled her to take wing again. "Tha' munnot make them stay. Why heal them if not to let them fly? They art wild creatures, Dickon. Tha' canna change that, no matter how tha' wish to."

Yet, he was surprised she left Colin… and the Garden. He knew she loved them. Deeply and completely. To leave without looking back- that was unexpected and it troubled him. Dickon and Colin had never been close. Indeed, Colin was the sort of boy it was hard for anyone to truly be close with. Yet, they were tied together because they both loved Mary and it was this shared love which both unified and divided them and made it impossible for them to truly be friends. Colin was fiercely jealous and possessive of his cousin- he wished to remain the center of her attention, the one to determine the course of her day, her thoughts, her wishes. Yet, Mary was not one to be cowed and ordered about and she did as she pleased – even if it meant seeking out her old companion in the Garden.

Then, in a single moment, Mary Lennox was gone.

Dickon made sure to keep the Garden as clean and well-tended as if she had never left. He kept it alive, in case she ever returned and wished to see it again.

But she never came.

There was a wide world and vast horizons calling to her and she would follow. She would not look back to what she had left behind.

It was late in the war, as losses mounted and fresh conscripts were harder and harder to come by, that women were called on to take up non-combatant roles previously filled by men. If women answered telephones and worked in the mess hall, then the men they replaced could head to the battlelines and fight. Thus, advertisements were sent across England asking women to join. Mary volunteered for the Women's Army Auxillary Corps and found herself in Rouen, France operating telephone lines. Her expensive former education at least provided enough knowledge of French to make her useful and she could direct communications between battle lines and across languages.

There, she stayed, through the rest of the war long after the war ended. The war built and broke and soldered and melted and scorched. There were bombed out cities to clean up and rebuild. There were sick and wounded men to tend and bury. The war cemeteries required gardeners and if there was one thing Mary knew she could do well, it was tend a garden.

Notes:

Women's Army Auxillary Corps was later renamed Queen Mary's Army Auxilary Corps