Mary Olivier: a Life Part 41

The lean, ragged firs had succeeded. No. Not quite. They stood out against the sky, adventurous mountaineers, roped together, leaning forward with the effort.

"It's Mamma's fault," Roddy was saying. "Papa would have gone anywhere, but she _would_ come to this d.a.m.ned Morfe."

"Don't. Don't--" Her mind beat him off, defending her happiness. He would kill it if she let him. Coming up from Reyburn on the front seat of the Morfe bus, he had sulked. He smiled disagreeable smiles while the driver pointed with his whip and told her the names of the places. Renton Moor.

Renton Church. Morfe, the grey village, stuck up on its green platform under the high, purple mound of Karva Hill.

Garthdale in front of it, Rathdale at its side, meeting in the fields below its bridge.

Morfe was beautiful. She loved it with love at first sight, faithless to Ilford.

Straight, naked houses. Grey walls of houses, enclosing the wide oblong Green. Dark grey stone roofs, close-clipped lest the wind should lift them. On the Green two grey stone pillar fountains; a few wooden benches; telegraph poles. Under her window a white road curling up to the platform. Straight, naked houses, zigzagging up beside it. Down below, where the white road came from, the long grey raking bridge, guarded by a tall ash-tree.

Roddy's jabbing voice went on and on:

"I used to think Mamma was holy and unselfish. I don't think so any more.

She says she wants to do what Papa wants and what we want; but she always ends by doing what she wants herself. It's all very well for her. As long as she's got a garden to poke about in she doesn't care how awful it is for us."

She hated Roddy when he said things like that about Mamma.

"I don't suppose the little lamb thought about it at all. Or if she did she thought we'd like it."

She didn't want to listen to Roddy's grumbling. She wanted to look and look, to sniff up the clear, sweet, exciting smell of the fields.

The roofs went criss-crossing up the road--straight--slant--straight.

They threw delicate violet-green shadows on to the sage-green field below. That long violet-green pillar was the shadow of the ash-tree by the bridge.

The light came from somewhere behind the village, from a sunset you couldn't see. It made the smooth hill fields s.h.i.+ne like thin velvet, stretched out, clinging to the hills.

"Oh, Roddy, the light's different. Different from Ilford. Look--"

"I've been looking for five weeks," Roddy said. "You haven't, that's all.

_I_ was excited at first."

He got up. He stared out of the window, not seeing anything.

"I didn't mean what I said about Mamma. Morfe _makes_ you say things.

Soon it'll make you mean them. You wait."

She was glad when he had left her.

The cliffs of Greffington Edge were violet now.

II.

At night, when she lay in bed in the strange room, the Ess.e.x fields began to haunt her; the five trees, the little flying trees, low down, low down; the straight, narrow paths through the corn, where she walked with Mark, with Jimmy, with Mr. Jourdain; Mr. Jourdain, standing in the path and saying: "Talk to me. I'm alive. I'm here. I'll listen."

Mark and Mamma planting the sumach tree by the front door; Papa saying it wouldn't grow. It had grown up to the dining-room window-sill.

Aunt Bella and Uncle Edward; the Proparts and the Farmers and Mr. Batty, all stiff and disapproving; not nearly so nice to you as they used to be and making you believe it was your fault.

The old, beautiful drawing-room. The piano by the door.

Dan staggering down the room at Mark's party. Mark holding her there, in his arms.

Dawn, and Dr. Draper's carriage waiting in the road beside the mangold fields. And Aunt Charlotte carried out, her feet brus.h.i.+ng the flagstones.

She mustn't tell them. Mamma couldn't bear it. Roddy couldn't bear it.

Aunt Charlotte was Papa's sister. He must never know.

The sound of the brus.h.i.+ng feet made her heart ache.

She was glad to wake in the small, strange room. It had taken a snip off Mamma's and Papa's room on one side of the window, and a snip off the spare room on the other. That made it a funny T shape. She slept in the tail of the T, in a narrow bed pushed against the wall. When you sat up you saw the fat trees trying to get up the hill between the washstand and the chest of drawers.

This room would never be taken from her, because she was the only one who was small enough to fit the bed.

She would be safe there with her hill.

III.

The strange houses fascinated her. They had the simplicity and the precision of houses in a very old engraving. On the west side of the Green they made a long straight wall. Morfe High Row. An open s.p.a.ce of cobblestones stretched in front of it. The market-place.

Sharp morning light picked out the small black panes of the windows in the white criss-cross of their frames, and the long narrow signs of the King's Head and the Farmer's Arms, black on grey. The plaster joints of the walls and the dark net of earth between the cobbles showed thick and clear as in a very old engraving. The west side had the sky behind it and the east side had the hill.

Grey-white cart roads slanted across the Green, cutting it into vivid triangular gra.s.s-plots. You went in and out of Morfe through the open corners of its Green. Her father's house stood at the south-west corner, by itself. A projecting wing at that end of the High Row screened it from the market-place.

The strange houses excited her.

Wonderful, unknown people lived in them. You would see them and know what they were like: the people in the tall house with the rusty stones, in the bright green ivy house with the white doors, in the small grey, humble houses, in the big, important house set at the top of the Green, with the three long rows of windows, the front garden and the iron gate.

People you didn't know. You would be strange and exciting to them as they were strange and exciting to you. They might say interesting things.

There might be somebody who cared about Plato and Spinoza.

Things would happen that you didn't know. Anything might happen any minute.

If you knew what was happening in the houses _now_--some of them had hard, frightening faces. Dreadful things might have happened in them. Her father's house had a good, simple face. You could trust it.

Five windows in the rough grey wall, one on each side of the white door, three above. A garden at the side, an orchard at the back. In front a cobbled square marked off by a line of thin stones set in edgeways.

A strange house, innocent of unhappy memories.

Catty stood at the door, looking for her. She called to her to come in to breakfast.

IV.

Papa was moving restlessly about the house. His loose slippers shuffled on the stone flags of the pa.s.sages.