Mary Olivier: a Life Part 30

"We mustn't, Mark. They'll hear us. They'll think us idiots."

"I don't care if they do. Don't you wish they'd go? Clever Minx. Clever paws."

Mamma pa.s.sed and looked at them. Her face shrank and sharpened under the dropped wing of her hair. She must have heard what Mark said. She hated it when Mark talked and looked like that. She hated it when you played _her_ music.

Beethoven, then. The "Sonata Eroica" was bound up with "Violetta," the "Guards" and "Mabel" Waltzes and the "Pluie des Perles."

"_Ubique quo fas et gloria duc.u.n.t_." That was the meaning of the n.o.ble, serious, pa.s.sionate music.

Roddy called out, "Oh, _not that_ dull old thing."

No. Not that. There was the Funeral March in it: _sulle morte d'un eroe_.

Mark was going away.

"Waldteufel," then. _One_--two--three. _One_--two--three. Sustained thrum in the ba.s.s. One--two--three. Thursday--Friday--_One_--two--three.

Sat.u.r.day--Sunday. Beat of her thoughts, beat of the music in a sort of syncopated time. _One_--two--three, Monday.

On Tuesday Mark would be gone.

His eyes made her break off to look round. Dan had come back into the room, to his place between the cabinet and the chimney-piece. He stooped forward, his head hanging as if some weight dragged it. His eyes, turned up, staring at Effie, showed half circles of blood-shot white. His face was flushed. A queer, leaden grey flush.

Aunt Lavvy sat beside him. She had her hand on his arm, to keep him quiet there in his corner.

"Mark--what's the matter with Dan?"

_One_--two--three. _One_--two--three. Something b.u.mped against the gla.s.s door of the cabinet. A light tinkling crash of a broken pane. She could see slantwise as she went on playing. Dan was standing up. He swayed, feeling for the ledge of the cabinet. Then he started to come down the room, his head lowered, thrust forward, his eyes heavy with some earnest, sombre purpose.

He seemed to be hours coming down the room by himself. Hours standing in the middle of the room, holding on to the parrot chair.

"Mark!"

"Go on playing."

He went to him. Roddy sprang up from somewhere. Hours while they were getting Dan away from the parrot chair to the door beside the piano.

Hours between the opening and sudden slamming of the door.

But she had not played a dozen bars. She went on playing.

"Wait a minute, Effie."

Effie was standing beside her with her hand on the door.

"I've lost my pocket-handkerchief. I must have left it in the dining-room.

I _know_ I left it in the dining-room," she said, fussing.

Mary got up. "All right. I'll fetch it."

She opened the door and shut it again quickly.

"I can't go--yet."

III.

Friday, Sat.u.r.day and Sunday pa.s.sed, each with a separate, hurrying pace that quickened towards bed-time.

Mark's last night. She had left her door open so that she could hear him come upstairs. He came and sat on her bed as he used to do years ago when she was afraid of the ghost in the pa.s.sage.

"I shan't be away for ever, Minky. Only five years."

"Yes, but you'll be twenty-six then, and I shall be nineteen. We shan't be ourselves."

"I shall be my self. Five years isn't really long."

"You--you'll like it, Mark. There'll be jungles with bisons and tigers."

"Yes. Jungles."

"And polo."

"Shan't be able to go in for polo."

"Why not?"

"Ponies. Too expensive."

They sat silent.

"What I _don't_ like," Mark said in a sleepy voice, "is leaving Papa."

"Papa?"

He really meant it. "Wish I'd been decenter to him," he said.

And then: "Minky--you'll be kind to little Mamma."

"Oh, Mark--aren't I?"

"Not always. Not when you say funny things about the Bible."

"You say funny things yourself."

"Yes; but she thinks I don't mean them, so it doesn't matter."

"She thinks I don't mean them, either."

"Well--let her go on thinking it. Do what she wants--even when it's beastly."