Mary Olivier: a Life Part 70

"Dorsy isn't quite the same thing."

"Whether she is or isn't you've got to chuck it."

"Why?"

"Because Mamma doesn't like it and I don't like it. That ought to be enough." (Like Papa.)

"It isn't enough."

"Minky--why are you such a brute to little Mamma?"

"Because I can't help it ... It's all very well for you--"

Mark turned in the path and looked at her; his tight, firm face tighter and firmer. She thought: "He doesn't know. He's like Mamma. He won't see what he doesn't want to see. It would be kinder not to tell him. But I can't be kind. He's joined with Mamma against me. They're two to one.

Mamma must have said something to make him hate me." ...Perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps he had only seen her disapproving, reproachful face ...

"If he says another word--if he looks like that again, I shall tell him."

"It's different for you," she said. "Ever since I began to grow up I felt there was something about Mamma that would kill me if I let it. I've had to fight for every single thing I've ever wanted. It's awful fighting her, when she's so sweet and gentle. But it's either that or go under."

"Minky--you talk as if she hated you."

"She does hate me."

"You lie." He said it gently, without rancour.

"No. I found that out years ago. She doesn't _know_ she hates me. She never knows that awful sort of thing. And of course she loved me when I was little. She'd love me now if I stayed little, so that she could do what she liked with me; if I'd sit in a corner and think as she thinks, and feel as she feels and do what she does."

"If you did you'd be a much nicer Minx."

"Yes. Except that I _should_ be lying then, the whole time. Hiding my real self and crus.h.i.+ng it. It's your _real_ self she hates--the thing she can't see and touch and get at--the thing that makes you different. Even when I was little she hated it and tried to crush it. I remember things--"

"You don't love her. You wouldn't talk like that about her if you loved her."

"It's _because_ I love her. Her self. _Her_ real self. When she's working in the garden, planting flowers with her blessed little hands, doing what she likes, and when she's reading the Bible and thinking about G.o.d and Jesus, and when she's with _you_, Mark, happy. That's her real self. I adore it. Selves are sacred. You ought to adore them. Anybody's self.

Catty's.... I used to wonder what the sin against the Holy Ghost was.

They told you n.o.body knew what it was. _I_ know. It's that. Not adoring the self in people. Hating it. Trying to crush it."

"I see. Mamma's committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, has she?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "You mustn't go about saying those things. People will think you mad."

"Let them. I don't care--I don't care if _you_ think I'm mad. I only think it's beastly of you to say so."

"You're not madder than I am. We're all mad. Mad as hatters. You and me and Dank and Roddy and Uncle Victor. Poor Charlotte's the sanest of the lot, and she's the only one that's got shut up."

"Why do you say she's the sanest?"

"Because she knew what she wanted."

"Yes. She knew what she wanted. She spent her whole life trying to get it. She went straight for that one thing. Didn't care a hang what anybody thought of her."

"So they said poor Charlotte was mad."

"She was only mad because she didn't get it."

"Yes, Minx.... Would poor Minky like to be married?"

"No. I'm not thinking about that. I'd like to write poems. And to get away sometimes and see places. To get away from Mamma."

"You little beast."

"Not more beast than you. You got away. Altogether. I believe you knew."

"Knew what?"

Mark's face was stiff and red. He was angry now.

"That if you stayed you'd be crushed. Like Roddy. Like me."

"I knew nothing of the sort."

"Deep down inside you you knew. You were afraid. That's why you wanted to be a soldier. So as not to be afraid. So as to get away altogether."

"You little devil. You're lying. Lying."

He threw his words at you softly, so as not to hurt you. "Lying. Because you're a beast to Mamma you'd like to think I'm a beast, too."

"No--no." She could feel herself making it out more and more. Flash after flash. Till she knew him. She knew Mark.

"You _had_ to. To get away from her, to get away from her sweetness and gentleness so that you could be yourself; so that you could be a man."

She had a tremendous flash.

"You haven't got away altogether. Half of you still sticks. It'll never get away.... You'll never love anybody. You'll never marry."

"No, I won't. You're right there."

"Yes. Papa never got away. That was why he was so beastly to us."

"He wasn't beastly to us."

"He was. You know he was. You're only saying that because it's what Mamma would like you to say.... He couldn't help being beastly. He couldn't care for us. He couldn't care for anybody but Mamma."

"That's why I care for _him_," Mark said.

"I know.... None of it would have mattered if we'd been brought up right.

But we were brought up all wrong. Taught that our selves were beastly, that our wills were beastly and that everything we liked was bad. Taught to sit on our wills, to be afraid of our selves and not trust them for a single minute.... Mamma was glad when I was jilted, because that was one for _me_."