Mary Olivier: a Life Part 71

"Were you jilted?"

"Yes. She thought it would make me humble. I always was. I am. I'm afraid of my self _now_. I can't trust it. I keep on asking people what they think when _I_ ought to _know_.... But I'm going to stop all that. I'm going to fight."

"Fight little Mamma?"

"No. Myself. The bit of me that claws on to her and can't get away. My body'll stay here and take care of her all her life, but my _self_ will have got away. It'll get away from all of them. It's got bits of them sticking to it, bits of Mamma, bits of Papa, bits of Roddy, bits of Aunt Charlotte. Bits of you, Mark. I don't _want_ to get away from you, but I shall have to. You'd kick me down and stamp on me if you thought it would please Mamma. There mayn't be much left when I'm done, but at least it'll be me."

"Mad. Quite mad, Minx. You ought to be married."

"And leave little Mamma? ... I'll race you from the bridge to the top of the hill."

He raced her. He wasn't really angry. Deep down inside him he knew.

VII.

November, and Mark's last morning. He had got promotion. He was going back to India with a new battery. He would be stationed at Poona, a place he hated. Nothing ever happened as he wanted it to happen.

She was in Papa's room, helping him to pack. The wardrobe door gave out its squeaking wail again and again as he opened it and threw his things on to the bed. Her mother had gone away because she couldn't bear to see them, his poor things.

They were all folded now and pressed down into the boxes and portmanteaus. She sat on the bed with Mark's sword across her knees, rubbing vaseline on the blade. Mark came and stood before her, looking down at her.

"Minky, I don't like going away and leaving Mamma with you.... When I went before you promised you'd be kind to her."

"What do I do?"

There was a groove down the middle of the blade for the blood to run in.

"Do? You do nothing. Nothing. You don't talk to her. You don't want to talk to her. You behave as if she wasn't there."

The blade was blunt. It would have to be sharpened before Mark took it into a battle. Mark's eyes hurt her. She tried to fix her attention on the blade.

"What makes you?"

"I don't know," she said. "Whatever it is it was done long ago."

"She hasn't got anybody," he said. "Roddy's gone. Dan's no good to her.

She won't have anybody but you."

"I know, Mark. I shall never go away and leave her."

"Don't talk about going away and leaving her!"

He didn't want her to see him off at the train. He wanted to go away alone, after he had said good-bye to Mamma. He didn't want Mamma to be left by herself after he had gone.

They stood together by the shut door of the drawing-room. She and her mother stood between Mark and the door. She had said good-bye a minute ago, alone with him in Papa's room. But there was something they had missed--

She thought: "We must get it now, this minute. He'll say good-bye to Mamma last. He'll kiss her last. But I must kiss him again, first."

She came to him, holding up her face. He didn't see her; but when his arm felt her hand it jerked up and pushed her out of his way, as he would have pushed anything that stood there between him and Mamma.

XXVI

I.

Old Mr. Peac.o.c.k of Sarrack was dead, and Dr. Kendal was the oldest man in the Dale. He was not afraid of death; he was only afraid of dying before Mr. Peac.o.c.k died. Mamma had finished building the rockery in the garden.

You had carried all the stones. There were no more stones to carry. That was all that had happened in the year and nine months since Mark had gone.

To you nothing happened. Nothing ever would happen. At twenty-one and a half you were old too, and very wise. You had given up expecting things to happen. You put 1883 on your letters to Mark and Dan and Roddy, instead of 1882. Then 1884. You measured time by the poems you wrote and by the books you read and by the Sutcliffes' going abroad in January and coming back in March.

You had advanced from the Critique of Pure Reason to the Critique of Practical Reason, and the Critique of Judgment and the Prolegomena. And in the end you were cheated. You would never know the only thing worth knowing. Reality. For all you knew there was no Reality, no G.o.d, no freedom, no immortality. Only doing your duty. "You can because you ought." Kant, when you got to the bottom of him, was no more exciting than Mamma. "_Du kannst, weil du sollst_."

Why not "You can because you shall"? It would never do to let Mamma know what Kant thought. She would say "Your Bible could have told you that."

There was Schopenhauer, though. _He_ didn't cheat you. There was "_reine Anschauung_," pure perception; it happened when you looked at beautiful things. Beautiful things were crystal; you looked through them and saw Reality. You saw G.o.d. While the crystal flash lasted "_Wille und Vorstellung_," the Will and the Idea, were not divided as they are in life; they were one. That was why beautiful things made you happy.

And there was Mamma's disapproving, reproachful face. Sometimes you felt that you couldn't stand it for another minute. You wanted to get away from it, to the other end of the world, out of the world, to die. When you were dead perhaps you would know. Or perhaps you wouldn't. Perhaps death would cheat you, too.

II.

"Oh--have I come too soon?"

She had found Mr. Sutcliffe at his writing-table in the library, a pile of papers before him. He turned in his chair and looked at her above the fine, lean hand that pa.s.sed over his face as if it brushed cobwebs.

"They didn't tell me you were busy."

"I'm not. I ought to be, but I'm not."

"You _are_. I'll go and talk to Mrs. Sutcliffe till you've finished."

"No. You'll stay here and talk to me. Mrs. Sutcliffe really _is_ busy."

"Sewing-party?"

"Sewing-party."

She could see them sitting round the dining-room: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, Mrs. Belk with her busy eyes, and Miss Kendal and Miss Louisa, Mrs. Oldshaw and Dorsy; and Mrs. Horn, the grocer's wife, very stiff in a corner by herself, sewing unbleached calico and hot red flannel, hot sunlight soaking into them. The library was dim, and leathery and tobaccoey and cool.

The last time she came on a Wednesday Mrs. Sutcliffe had popped out of the dining-room and made them go round to the tennis court by the back, so that they might not be seen from the windows. She wondered why Mrs.

Sutcliffe was so afraid of them being seen, and why she had not looked quite pleased.