Mary Olivier: a Life Part 22

BOOK THREE ADOLESCENCE (1876-1879)

XII

I.

Mary went slowly up the lane between the garden wall and the thorn hedge.

The air, streaming towards her from the flat fields, had the tang of cold, glittering water; the sweet, gra.s.sy smell of the green corn blades swam on it. The young thorn leaves smelt of almonds and of their own bitter green.

The five trees stood up, thin and black, in an archway of golden white fire. The green of their young leaves hung about them like an emanation.

A skylark swung himself up, a small grey ball, spinning over the tree tops to the arch of the sunset. His song pierced and shook, like the golden white light. With each throb of his wings he shrank, smaller and greyer, a moth, a midge, whirling in the luminous air. A grey ball dropped spinning down.

By the gate of the field her sudden, secret happiness came to her.

She could never tell when it was coming, nor what it would come from. It had something to do with the trees standing up in the golden white light.

It had come before with a certain sharp white light flooding the fields, flooding the room.

It had happened so often that she received it now with a shock of recognition; and when it was over she wanted it to happen again. She would go back and back to the places where it had come, looking for it, thinking that any minute it might happen again. But it never came twice to the same place in the same way.

Catty was calling to her from the bottom of the lane. She stood still by the gate, not heeding Catty, holding her happiness. When she had turned from the quiet fields it would be gone.

II.

Sometimes she had queer glimpses of the persons that were called Mary Olivier. There was Mrs. Olivier's only daughter, proud of her power over the sewing-machine. When she brought the pile of hemmed sheets to her mother her heart swelled with joy in her own goodness. There was Mark Olivier's sister, who rejoiced in the movements of her body, the strain of the taut muscles throbbing on their own leash, the bound forwards, the push of the wind on her knees and breast, the hard feel of the ground under her padding feet. And there was Mary Olivier, the little girl of thirteen whom her mother and Aunt Bella whispered about to each other with mysterious references to her age.

Her secret happiness had nothing to do with any of these Mary Oliviers.

It was not like any other happiness. It had nothing to do with Mamma or Dan or Roddy, or even Mark. It had nothing to do with Jimmy.

She had cried when Jimmy went away, and she would cry again to-night when she thought about him. Jimmy's going away was worse than anything that had happened yet or could happen till Mark went to India. That would be the worst thing.

Jimmy had not gone to India as he had said. He had had to leave Woolwich because of something he had done, and his father had sent him to Australia. He had gone without saying good-bye, and he was never coming back. She would never in all her life see Jimmy again.

Jimmy had done something dreadful.

n.o.body but Mamma and Papa and Mark knew what he had done; but from the way they talked you could see that it was one of those things you mustn't talk about. Only Mark said he didn't believe he really had done it.

Last Sunday she had written a letter to him which Mark posted:

"Dear Jimmy,--I think you might have come to say good-bye to us, even if Papa and Mamma do think you've done something you oughtn't to. I want you to know that Mark and I don't believe you did it, and even if you did it won't make any difference. I shall always love you just the same, next best to Mark. You can't expect me to love you really best, because he will always come first as long as I live. I hope you will be very happy in Australia. I shall keep my promise just the same, though it's Australia and not India you've gone to.

"With love, ever your loving

"Minky.

"P.S. No. 1.--I'm reading a new poet--Byron. There was a silly woman who said she'd rather have the fame of Childe Harold than the immortality of Don Juan. But I'd rather have the immortality, wouldn't you?

"P.S. No. 2.--Do you think that you will keep Kangaroos? They might help to make you happy."

III.

Mary was picking French beans in the kitchen garden when Mamma and Aunt Bella came along the path, talking together. The thick green walls of the runners hid her.

"Mary is getting very precocious," said Mamma.

"That comes from being brought up with boys," said Aunt Bella. "She ought to see more girls of her own age."

"She doesn't like them."

Mary shouted "Cuckoo!" to warn them, but they wouldn't stop.

"It's high time," Aunt Bella said, "that she should learn to like them.

The Draper girls are too old. But there's that little Bertha Mitchison."

"I haven't called on Mrs. Mitchison for two years."

"And why haven't you, Caroline?"

"Because I can't afford to be always hiring wagonettes to go to Woodford Bridge."

"Cuckoo!"

"Caroline--do you think she could have heard?"

"Cuckoo, Aunt Bella! Cuckoo!"

IV.

On the high road the white dust had a clear, sharp, exciting smell. At the wet edges of the ford it thickened.

When you shut your eyes you could still see Bertha's scarlet frock on the white bridge path and smell the wet earth at the edges of the ford.

You were leaning over the white painted railing of the bridge when she began. The water flowed from under the little tunnel across the road into the field beyond. Deep brown under the tunnel, tawny in the shallow ford, golden patches where the pebbles showed through, and the water itself, a sheet of thin crystal, running over the colours, sliding through them, running and sliding on and on.

There was nothing in the world so beautiful as water, unless it was light. But water was another sort of light.

Bertha pushed her soft sallow face into yours. Her big black eyes bulged out under her square fringe. Her wide red mouth curled and glistened.

There were yellowish stains about the roots of her black hair. Her mouth and eyes teased you, mocked you, wouldn't let you alone.

Bertha began: "I know something you don't know."