Mary Olivier: a Life Part 63

Through the wide open window she could smell the frost; she could hear it tingle. She put up her mouth above the bedclothes and drank down the clear, cold air. She thought with pleasure of the ice in her bath in the morning. It would break under her feet, splintering and tinkling like gla.s.s. If you kept on thinking about it you would sleep.

V.

Pa.s.sion Week.

Her mother was reading the Lessons for the Day. Mary waited till she had finished.

"Mamma--what was the matter with Aunt Charlotte?"

"I'm sure I don't know. Except that she was always thinking about getting married. Whatever put Aunt Charlotte in your head?"

Her mother looked up from the Prayer Book as she closed it. Sweet and pretty; sweet and pretty; young almost, as she used to look, and tranquil.

"It's my belief," she said, "there wouldn't have been anything the matter with her if your Grandmamma Olivier hadn't spoiled her. Charlotte was as vain as a little peac.o.c.k, and your Grandmamma was always petting and praising her and letting her have her own way."

"If she'd had her own way she'd have been married, and then perhaps she wouldn't have gone mad."

"She might have gone madder," said her mother. "It was a good thing for you, my dear, you didn't get your way. I'd rather have seen you in your coffin than married to Maurice Jourdain."

"Whoever it had been, you'd have said that."

"Perhaps I should. I don't want my only daughter to go away and leave me.

It would be different if there were six or seven of you."

Her mother's complacence and tranquillity annoyed her. She hated her mother. She adored her and hated her. Mamma had married for her own pleasure, for her pa.s.sion. She had brought you into the world, without asking your leave, for her own pleasure. She had brought you into the world to be unhappy. She had planned for you to do the things that she did. She cared for you only as long as you were doing them. When you left off and did other things she left off caring.

"I shall never go away and leave you," she said.

She hated her mother and she adored her.

An hour later, when she found her in the garden kneeling by the violet bed, weeding it, she knelt down beside her, and weeded too.

VI.

April, May, June.

One afternoon before post-time her mother called her into the study to show her Mrs. Draper's letter.

Mrs. Draper wrote about Dora's engagement and Effie's wedding. Dora was engaged to Hubert Manisty who would have Vinings. Effie had broken off her engagement to young Tom Manisty; she was married last week to Mr.

Stuart-Gore, the banker. Mrs. Draper thought Effie had been very wise to give up young Manisty for Mr. Stuart-Gore. She wrote in a postscript: "Maurice Jourdain has just called to ask if I have any news of Mary. I think he would like to know that that wretched affair has not made her unhappy."

Mamma was smiling in a nervous way. "What am I to say to Mrs. Draper?"

"Tell her that Mr. Jourdain was right and that I am not at all unhappy."

She was glad to take the letter to the post and set his mind at rest.

It was in June last year that Maurice Jourdain had come to her: June the twenty-fourth. To-day was the twenty-fifth. He must have remembered.

The hayfields shone, ready for mowing. Under the wind the s.h.i.+mmering hay gra.s.s moved like waves of hot air, up and up the hill.

She slipped through the gap by Morfe Bridge and went up the fields to the road on Greffington Edge. She lay down among the bracken in the place where Roddy and she had sat two years ago when they had met Mr. Sutcliffe coming down the road.

The bracken hid her. It made a green sunshade above her head. She shut her eyes.

"Kikerikuh! sie glaubten Es ware Hahnen geschrei."

That was all nonsense. Maurice Jourdain would never have crept in the little hen-house and hidden himself under the straw. He would never have crowed like a c.o.c.k. Mark and Roddy would. And Harry Craven and Jimmy.

Jimmy would certainly have hidden himself under the straw.

Supposing Jimmy had had a crystal mind. s.h.i.+ning and flas.h.i.+ng. Supposing he had never done that awful thing they said he did. Supposing he had had Mark's ways, had been n.o.ble and honourable like Mark--

The interminable reverie began. He was there beside her in the bracken.

She didn't know what his name would be. It couldn't be Jimmy or Harry or any of those names. Not Mark. Mark's name was sacred.

Cecil, perhaps.

_Why_ Cecil? _Cecil_?--You ape! You drivelling, dribbling idiot! That was the sort of thing Aunt Charlotte would have thought of.

She got up with a jump and stretched herself. She would have to run if she was to be home in time for tea.

From the top hayfield she could see the Sutcliffes' tennis court; an emerald green s.p.a.ce set in thick grey walls. She drew her left hand slowly down her right forearm. The muscle was hardening and thickening.

Mamma didn't like it when you went by yourself to play singles with Mr.

Sutcliffe. But if Mr. Sutcliffe asked you you would simply have to go.

You would have to play a great many singles against Mr. Sutcliffe if you were to be in good form next year when Mark came home.

VII.

She was always going to the Sutcliffes' now. Her mother shook her head when she saw her in her short white skirt and white jersey, slas.h.i.+ng at nothing with her racquet, ready. Mamma didn't like the Sutcliffes. She said they hadn't been nice to poor Papa. They had never asked him again.

You could see she thought you a beast to like them.

"But, Mamma darling, I can't help liking them."

And Mamma would look disgusted and go back to her pansy bed and dig her trowel in with little savage thrusts, and say she supposed you would always have your own way.

You would go down to Greffington Hall and find Mr. Sutcliffe sitting under the beech tree on the lawn, in white flannels, looking rather tired and bored. And Mrs. Sutcliffe, a long-faced, delicate-nosed Beauty of Victorian Alb.u.ms, growing stout, wearing full skirts and white cashmere shawls and wide mushroomy hats when n.o.body else did. She had an air of doing it on purpose, to be different, like royalty. She would take your hand and press it gently and smile her downward, dragging smile, and she would say, "How is your mother? Does she mind the hot weather? She must come and see me when it's cooler." That was the nice way she had, so that you mightn't think it was Mamma's fault, or Papa's, if they didn't see each other often. And she would look down at her shawl and gather it about her, as if in spirit she had got up and gone away.

And Mr. Sutcliffe would be standing in front of you, looking suddenly years younger, with his eyes s.h.i.+ning and clean as though he had just washed them.

And after tea you would play singles furiously. For two hours you would try to beat him. When you jumped the net Mrs. Sutcliffe would wave her hand and nod to you and smile. You had done something that pleased her.

To-day, when it was all over, Mr. Sutcliffe took her back into the house, and there on the hall table were the books he had got for her from the London Library: The Heine, the Goethe's _Faust_, the Sappho, the Darwin's _Origin of Species_, the Schopenhauer, _Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung_.

"Five? All at once?"