I’ll Bring You Buttercups. Elizabeth Elgin
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his mother took consumption and she died too. There was only his aunt left after that. She wasn’t well off, but she gave him her savings. He’s very sad she died before he qualified. She would have been so proud of him.’
‘Proud. Yes.’ And Miss Julia’s doctor had no one, no background, except that of a miner’s son who had risen by his own efforts.
‘He can’t afford his own practice, either. Not for years will he be able to – not even buy himself a partnership. But he’s a brilliant physician, Hawthorn.’
‘He said so?’
‘No, of course he didn’t. But I know he is. Life’s very unfair, isn’t it?’
‘It is.’ Alice offered daisy-printed satin-quilted slippers. Unfairer than she knew, because how was the daughter of a baronet ever to be allowed to marry the son of a man who had dug coal? The world she lived in didn’t, wouldn’t, allow it.
‘He was determined to be a doctor – after both his parents had suffered so. And, Hawthorn, he believes that women should have the vote – well, responsible women, that is.’
‘Then it couldn’t be better, could it?’ Alice poured water into the papier mâché bowl kept especially for the washing-up of the best china, adding cold water and flaked soap, concentrating hard on making it into a sud so she might think, uninterrupted. Because what Miss Julia had just told her was what she wanted least to hear. Not that the young doctor wasn’t the worthiest of gentlemen, but wouldn’t it have been better for all concerned if he’d found himself a nice, genteel nurse to marry? Such a woman would have made a better wife for a young physician on his climb to the top. How could he ever hope to support the daughter of a gentleman? And would he be acceptable, even if he could?
Mind, Mrs Clementina had come from trade, and she had married into the gentry; Alice supposed trade was all right. Anything was all right if it brought money into the family. But the doctor could barely support himself, it seemed, let alone a wife. Doctor MacMalcolm had nothing to commend him at all but ambition and good looks, she sighed. Yet folk didn’t choose where to love; not penniless young physicians nor young society ladies, it seemed, and oh, deary me, what had Miss Julia gone and done?
‘Hawthorn?’ Julia snapped her fingers. ‘You were miles away. Thinking about Dwerryhouse, were you?’
‘No, miss. If you want the truth I was thinking that Doctor MacMalcolm having no family, so to speak, and having no means yet of supporting a wife, changes things a lot. Once, I thought it would be best if you told her ladyship all, hoping she would understand. But him having nothing, so to speak, even if there’s all credit due to him for getting to be a doctor, won’t go down well with her ladyship. Now I’m beginning to wish I’d been more firm; hadn’t let you –’
‘Hawthorn – nothing you could have said or done would have made a scrap of difference. I told you that one day I would meet the man I wanted to marry, and two days ago I met him. And it’s all right. Whatever happens, I won’t involve you. I’ll just have to find a way out of it – or round it, won’t I? And I will.’
‘Then I wish you luck, I really do. Tomorrow, when you meet him, you will be careful? You won’t make any promises or get any hare-brained schemes into your head, will you?’
‘I’ll go carefully, I promise you.’
She would have to, she thought, for so much was at stake that one wrong move, one wrong word even, could be the end of it for them both, and that could not, must not, happen. And she would go carefully, because Andrew MacMalcolm was the man she wanted to marry. She had known it yesterday when he opened his door to her, and no one else would do.
Andrew, or no one.
Alice pulled out the oven damper, then gave her full attention to the scones she was baking. She had been unable to get to shop to buy a cake, and since Miss Julia couldn’t offer the cherry cake again – to offer a cut-into cake would suggest they were nothing short of poverty-stricken – she had left a note asking the milkman for cream. This afternoon they would eat fresh scones with cream and jam, though to be truthful, neither would notice if she served a slice from yesterday’s loaf, gone stale.
Oh, miss, she mourned, sniffing the milk to make sure it was good and sour – only sour milk for scones, Mrs Shaw always said – why did you have to go and fall in love? No, that wasn’t what she meant, for every woman had the right to fall in love. What she really meant, she supposed, was why had she fallen in love with someone she could never be wed to. Because it wouldn’t do; it really wouldn’t. Doctoring was the most desirable of professions, but when it didn’t come hand in hand with money, then there was nothing more to be said.
It was then, and for the first time, that Alice acknowledged how very fortunate she was. Fortunate to be a nobody, to have nothing, and no one to forbid her marriage to Tom, save an aunt who wouldn’t care if she wed the midden-man. And how very fortunate that Tom loved her in spite of the fact that she had nothing; loved her for herself – his buttercup girl.
‘Tom,’ she whispered to the rolling-pin. ‘I’m glad that in two days’ time I shall be getting off that train back home.’ Glad she’d be taking Morgan for his afternoon walk and that Tom would be there. And he would tilt her chin with his fingertip and bend and kiss her. Tom, her love. Thomas Dwerryhouse, whom one day she would marry. For they could wait. They had all the time in the world – not like Miss Julia and her doctor, because after today they might never meet again.
‘It doesn’t bear thinking about,’ she muttered, flouring the rolling-pin. And who, she demanded with amazement, would ever have thought that the day would dawn when she would pity Julia Sutton. Because she did. She pitied her something awful.
Julia walked slowly, her hand in Andrew MacMalcolm’s, speaking little, for there seemed nothing more important than being together. Their talking had been done, their plans made, promises asked and given.
‘After today, Andrew,’ she had used his name without thinking because it was beautiful to say, ‘I won’t be able to meet you. Tonight, Aunt Sutton’s maid returns from Bristol, and my aunt will make the overnight crossing and be in London before Hawthorn and I leave.’
‘So it’s goodbye, for a while.’
‘For as short a while as I can make it,’ she had whispered, knowing she was being forward, yet being so only because there was so little time. ‘I shall come back as soon as I can, but I shall tell Aunt Sutton about you and you must leave your card at her house. And I’ll beg her to receive you so she can say to my mother that she knows you, and approves.’
‘She’ll approve, do you think?’ He smiled down and she smiled back, without embarrassment. ‘She’ll take a wee rubber approval stamp and plonk it right in the middle of my forehead and that’ll make it all right?’
‘No, but it’s the way it’s got to be, so we must accept it.’
‘Why must we,’ he asked softly, ‘and, come to that, why must it be?’
‘Because –’ She glanced up quickly, alarmed, but saw no rancour, nothing in his face to warrant her fear. To him, she supposed, it was as simple as being in love, because he was in love, too; she knew it. ‘Because – well – that’s the way we do it. Being properly introduced, and all that sort of thing.’
‘But, Julia, you and I weren’t introduced, yet here we are, miserable because we’re parting, wanting to see each other again, both of us –’ He stopped, asking the question with his eyes.
‘Both of us knowing we might fall in love?’
‘Have fallen in love, and against all the rules and conventions. We know all we need to know about each other; that my father dug coal and your father burned it; that I am a good physician and intend to be even better; that you and I met three days ago and knew –’
‘Just as my parents knew,’ she whispered.
‘Aye – that we were right for each