Distant Choices Read Online Free PDF

thirty years High Grange Park, the house she preferred above all others, had been hers in everything but name. Her sister Letty’s children, living so conveniently nearby at High Grange vicarage, had – in everything but the distasteful task of giving them birth – been hers too. Letty being so much in the habit of taking Maud’s advice that she was uneasy about choosing so much as a new shawl without it. While Letty’s husband, the Reverend Rupert Saint- Charles, had never seemed to mind who chose the schools his sons attended, or found the money to dower his daughters so long as he was not called upon to do so himself. A hopeless couple, Rupert and Letty. Therefore Maud had taken them in hand, for their own good of course, so thoroughly and so naturally that – for as far back as anybody could remember – nothing had been done at High Grange, either at the Park, the vicarage, or in the village itself, unless Maud approved it, gave her permission, or had ordered it, in the first place, herself.
    A state of affairs which suited both her brother Matthew, who did not wish to be troubled with domestic matters, and her sister Letty, who had no head for them: Letty’s children – for whom she had never had much head either – being left gladly, quite naturally, to Maud. And had Maud’s ‘other’ niece, Kate, shown the same appreciation, then matters at High Grange Park may well have been easier. But Kate – neglected little cuckoo in the Stangway nest – had never seen in Maud the role of virgin-mother which she had been quite ready to play. She had a mother of her own, after all, her manner had always seemed to imply. A mother who prowled the attic all day, perhaps, talking to her paint brushes, but a mother nevertheless; which had led her to question – often and rudely – why she should need, or in fact pay attention to an aunt? An attitude which had soon turned Maud’s ministrations to slaps, her words of wisdom – so eagerly absorbed by Letty’s children – to reprimands, orders, threats; leading her finally to pursue a policy not so much of bringing Kate up as keeping her under some sort of control. A harsh policy, growing harsher as Kate continued to resist it, during which she had done her best to instil into the child a proper sense of shame and fear. Shame, that is – although the actual words were never spoken – at being the daughter of so odd and unhappy a mother. And the fear that she might come – unless she mended her ways – to resemble her.
    â€˜If you wish to be loved then you must deserve it,’ had been Maud’s favourite maxim to all her charges, bringing her a steady stream of little gifts, embroidered purses and slippers and flattering little water-colours from Letty’s daughters, posies of flowers and ‘secrets’from Letty’s sons; nothing from Kate but a blank stare, an insolent half-shrug of a brittle shoulder, a raised eyebrow which said mutely, but as plain as day, ‘Aunt Maud – what a tedious fool you are.’
    Difficult moments, these, when Maud – for years now – had been forced to wrestle with her conscience, warding off, as best she could, the evil – for she knew it to be that – of wishing a human life away. Yet there were times, nevertheless, when she was angry enough or honest enough to succumb to the temptation. For if Kate had never been born then how simple, how natural, how right it would have been for Matthew to make Letty’s eldest son his heir. Thus elevating to the rank of master of High Grange Park and Low Grange Colliery a young man who was his mother’s darling and the apple of his Aunt Maud’s determined eye.
    How fitting. How fervently – before the shock of Eva’s unexpected pregnancy – had Maud and Letty prayed for that. A dream shattered first by the appearance of Kate and then, to somewhat more serious