Mary Olivier: a Life Part 81

"Women," he said, "are wonderful. I can't think where you come from. I knew your father, I know Dan and your mother, and Victor Olivier and your aunt--"

"Which aunt?"

"The Unitarian lady; and I knew Mark--and Rodney. They don't account for you."

"Does anybody account for anybody else?"

"Yes. You believe in heredity?"

"I don't know enough about it."

"You should read Haeckel--_The History of Evolution_, and Herbert Spencer and Ribot's _Heredity_. It would interest you.... No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't interest you a bit."

"It sounds as if it would rather."

"It wouldn't.... Look here, promise me you won't think about it, you'll let it alone. Promise me."

He was like Jimmy making you promise not to hang out of top-storey windows.

"No good making promises."

"Well," he said, "there's nothing in it.... I wish I hadn't said that about your playing. I only wanted to see whether you'd mind or not."

"I don't mind. What does it matter? When I'm making music I think there's nothing but music in all the world; when I'm doing philosophy I think there's nothing but philosophy in all the world; when I'm writing verses I think there's nothing but writing in all the world; and when I'm playing tennis I think there's nothing but tennis in all the world."

"I see. And when you suffer you think there's nothing but suffering in all the world."

"Yes."

"And when--and when--"

His face was straight and serious and quiet. His eyes covered her; first her face, then her b.r.e.a.s.t.s; she knew he could see her bodice quiver with the beating of her heart. She felt afraid.

"Then," he said, "you'll not think; you'll know."

She thought: "He didn't say it. He won't. He can't. It isn't possible."

"Hadn't we better go?"

He sprang to his feet.

"Much better," he said.

IX.

She would not see him again that day. Dan was going to dine with him at the Buck Hotel.

When Dan came back from Reyburn he said he wouldn't go. He had a headache. If Vickers could have a headache, so could he. He sulked all evening in the smoking-room by himself; but towards nine o'clock he thought better of it and went round, he said, to look Vickers up.

Her mother yawned over her book; and the yawns made her impatient; she wanted to be out of doors, walking, instead of sitting there listening to Mamma.

At nine o'clock Mamma gave one supreme yawn and dragged herself to bed.

She went out through the orchard into the Back Lane. She could see Nannie Learoyd sitting on the stone stairs of Horn's granary, waiting for young Horn to come round the corner of his yard. Perhaps they would go up into the granary and hide under the straw. She turned into the field track to the schoolhouse and the highway. In the dark bottom the river lay like a broad, white, glittering road.

She stopped by the schoolhouse, considering whether she would go up to the moor by the high fields and come back down the lane, or go up the lane and come back down the fields.

"Too dark to find the gaps if I come back by the fields." She had forgotten the hidden moon.

There was a breaking twilight when she reached the lane. She came down at a swinging stride. Her feet went on the gra.s.s borders without a sound.

At the last crook of the lane she came suddenly on a man and woman standing in her path by the stone wall. It would be Nannie Learoyd and young Horn. They were fixed in one block, their faces tilted backwards, their bodies motionless. The woman's arms were round the man's neck, his arms round her waist. There was something about the queer back-tilted faces--queer and ugly.

As she came on she saw them break loose from each other and swing apart: Nannie Learoyd and Lindley Vickers.

X.

She lay awake all night. Her brain, incapable of thought, kept turning round and round, showing her on an endless rolling screen the images of Lindley and Nannie Learoyd, clinging together, loosening, swinging apart, clinging together. When she came down on Sunday morning breakfast was over.

Sunday--Sunday. She remembered. Last night was Sat.u.r.day night. Lindley Vickers was coming to Sunday dinner and Sunday supper. She would have to get away somewhere, to Dorsy or the Sutcliffes. She didn't want to see him again. She wanted to forget that she ever had seen him.

Her mother and Dan had shut themselves up in the smoking-room; she found them there, talking. As she came in they stopped abruptly and looked at each other. Her mother began picking at the pleats in her gown with nervous, agitated fingers. Dan got up and left the room.

"Well, Mary, you'll not see Mr. Vickers again. He's just told Dan he isn't coming."

Then he knew that she had seen him in the lane with Nannie.

"I don't want to see him," she said.

"It's a pity you didn't think of that before you put us in such a position."

She understood Lindley; but she wasn't even trying to understand her mother. The vexed face and picking fingers meant nothing to her. She was saying to herself, "I can't tell Mamma I saw him with Nannie in the lane.

I oughtn't to have seen him. He didn't know anybody was there. He didn't want me to see him. I'd be a perfect beast to tell her."

Her mother went on: "I don't know what to do with you, Mary. One would have thought my only daughter would have been a comfort to me, but I declare you've given me more trouble than any of my children."

"More than Dan?"

"Dan hadn't a chance. He'd have been different if your poor father hadn't driven him out of the house. He'd be different now if your Uncle Victor had kept him.... It's hard for poor Dan if he can't bring his friends to the house any more because of you."

"Because of me?"

"Because of your folly."

She understood. Her mother believed that she had frightened Lindley away.

She was thinking of Aunt Charlotte.