Mary Olivier: a Life Part 80

When you left off playing you could still hear him singing in your head.

"Das man vom liebsten was man hat." "Es ist bestimmt--" But if you felt like that about it, then--

Her hands dropped from the keys.

It wasn't possible. He only came on Friday evening last week. This was Sat.u.r.day morning. Seven days. It couldn't happen in seven days. He would be gone on Monday morning. Not ten days.

"I can't--I don't."

Something crossing the window pane made her start and turn. Nannie Learoyd's face, looking in. Naughty Nannie. You could see her big pink cheeks and her scarlet mouth and her eyes sliding and peering. Poor pretty, naughty Nannie. Nannie smiled when she met you on the Green, as if she trusted you not to tell how you saw her after dark slinking about the Back Lane waiting for young Horn to come out to her.

The door opened. Nannie slid away. It was only Mamma.

"Mary," she said, "I wish you would remember that Mr. Vickers has come to see Dan, and that he has only got two days more."

"It's all right. He's going into Reyburn with him."

"I'm sure," her mother said, "I wish he'd stay here."

She pottered about the room, taking things up and putting them down again. Presently Catty came for her and she went out.

Mary began to play the Sonata _Appa.s.sionata_. She thought: "I don't care if he doesn't come. I want to play it, and I shall."

He came. He stood close beside her and listened. Once he put his hand on her arm. "Oh no," he said. "_Not_ like that."

She stood up and faced him. "Tell me the truth, shall I ever be any good?

Shall I ever play?"

"Do you really want the truth?"

"Of course I do."

Her mind fastened itself on her playing. It hid and sheltered itself behind her playing.

"Let's look at your hands."

She gave him her hands. He lifted them; he felt the small bones sliding under the skin, he bent back the padded tips, the joints of the fingers.

"There's no reason why you shouldn't have played magnificently," he said.

"Only I don't. I never have."

"No, you never have."

He came closer; she didn't know whether he drew her to him or whether he came closer. A queer, delicious feeling, a new feeling, thrilled through her body to her mouth, to her finger-tips. Her head swam slightly. She kept her eyes open by an effort.

He gave her back her hands. She remembered. They had been talking about her playing.

"I knew," she said, "it was bad in places."

"I don't care whether it's bad or good. It's you. The only part of you that can get out. You're very bad in places, but you do something to me all the same."

"What do I do?"

"You know what you do."

"I don't. I don't really. Tell me."

"If you don't know, I can't tell you--dear--"

He said it so thickly that she was not sure at the time whether he had really said it. She remembered afterwards.

"There's Dan," she whispered.

He swung himself off from her and made himself a rigid figure at the window. Dan stood in the doorway. He was trying to took as if she wasn't there.

"I say, aren't you coming to Reyburn?"

"No, I'm not."

"Why not?"

"I've got a headache."

"_What_?"

"Headache."

Outside on the flagstones she saw Nannie pa.s.s again and look in.

VIII.

An hour later she was sitting on the slope under the hill road of Greffington Edge. He lay on his back beside her in the bracken. Lindley Vickers.

Suddenly he pulled himself up into a sitting posture like her own. She was then aware that Mr. Sutcliffe had gone up the road behind them; he had lifted his hat and pa.s.sed her without speaking.

"What does Sutcliffe talk to you about?"

"Farming."

"And what do you do?"

"Listen."

Below them, across the dale, they could see the square of Morfe on its platform.

"How long have you lived in that place?"

"Ten years. No; eleven."