Olivier

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4. Childhood



V.

After Mark and Dan had gone a great and very remarkable change came over Papa and Mamma. Mamma left off saying the funny things that Mary could not understand, and Papa left off teasing and flying into tempers and looking like Jehovah and walking by himself in the cool of the evening. He followed Mamma about the garden. He hung over her chair, like Mark, as she sat sewing. You came upon him suddenly on the stairs and in the passages, and he would look at you as if you were not there, and say, "Where's your mother? Go and tell her I want her." And Mamma would put away her trowel and her big leather gloves and go to him. She would sit for hours in the library while he flapped the newspaper and read to her in a loud voice about Mr. Gladstone whom she hated.

Sometimes he would come home early from the office, and Mamma and Mary would be ready for him, and they would all go together to call at Vinings or Barkingside Vicarage or on the Proparts.

Or Mr. Parish's wagonette would be ordered, and Mamma and Mary would put on their best clothes very quick and go up to London with him, and he would take them to St. Paul's or Maskelyne and Cooke's, or the National Gallery or the British Museum. Or they would walk slowly, very slowly, up Regent Street, stopping at the windows of the bonnet shops while Mamma picked out the bonnet she would buy if she could afford it. And perhaps the next day a bonnet would come in a bandbox, a bonnet that frightened her when she put it on and looked at herself in the glass. She would pretend it was one of the bonnets she had wanted; and when Papa had forgotten about it she would pull all the trimming off and put it all on again a different way, and Papa would say it was an even more beautiful bonnet than he had thought.

You might have supposed that he was sorry because he was thinking about Mark and Dan and trying to make up for having been unkind to them. But he was not sorry. He was glad. Glad about something that Mamma had done. He would go about whistling some gay tune, or you caught him stroking his moustache and parting it over his rich lips that smiled as if he were thinking of what Mamma had done to make him happy. The red specks and smears had gone from his eyes, they were clear and blue, and they looked at you with a kind, gentle look, like Uncle Victor's. His very beard was happy.

"You may not know it, but your father is the handsomest man in Essex," Mamma said.

Perhaps it wasn't anything that Mamma had done. Perhaps he was only happy because he was being good. Every Sunday he went to church at Barkingside with Mamma, kneeling close to her in the big pew and praying in a great, ghostly voice, "Good Lord, deliver us!" When the psalms and hymns began he rose over the pew-ledge, yards and yards of him, as if he stood on many hassocks, and he lifted up his beard and sang. All these times the air fairly tingled with him; he seemed to beat out of himself and spread around him the throb of violent and overpowering life. And in the evenings towards sunset they walked together in the fields, and Mary followed them, lagging behind in the borders where the sharlock and wild rye and poppies grew. When she caught up with them she heard them talking.

Once Mamma said, "Why can't you always be like this, Emilius?"

And Papa said, "Why, indeed!"

And when Christmas came and Mark and Dan were back again he was as cruel and teasing as he had ever been.

VI.

Eighteen seventy-one.

One cold day Roddy walked into the Pool of Siloam to recover his sailing boat which had drifted under the long arch of the bridge.

There was no Passion Week and no Good Friday and no Easter that spring, only Roddy's rheumatic fever. Roddy in bed, lying on his back, his face white and sharp, his hair darkened and glued with the sweat that poured from his hair and soaked into the bed. Roddy crying out with pain when they moved him. Mamma and Jenny always in Roddy's room, Mr. Spall's sister in the kitchen. Mary going up and down, tiptoe, on messages, trying not to touch Roddy's bed.

Dr. Draper calling, talking in a low voice to Mamma, and Mamma crying. Dr. Draper looking at you through his spectacles and putting a thing like a trumpet to your chest and listening through it.

"You're quite right, Mrs. Olivier. There's nothing wrong with the little girl's heart. She's as sound as a bell."

A dreadful feeling that you had no business to be as sound as a bell. It wasn't fair to Roddy.

Something she didn't notice at the time and remembered afterwards when Roddy was well again. Jenny saying to Mamma, "If it had to be one of them it had ought to have been Miss Mary."

And Mamma saying to Jenny, "It wouldn't have mattered so much if it had been the girl."

VII.

You knew that Catty loved you. There was never the smallest uncertainty about it. Her big black eyes shone when she saw you coming. You kissed her smooth cool cheeks, and she hugged you tight and kissed you back again at once; her big lips made a noise like a pop-gun. When she tucked you up at night she said, "I love you so much I could eat you."

And she would play any game you liked. You had only to say, "Let's play the going-away game," and she was off. You began: "I went away to the big hot river where the rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses are"; or: "I went away to the desert where the sand is, to catch zebras. I rode on a dromedary, flump-flumping through the sand," and Catty would follow it up with: "I went away with the Good Templars. We went in a row-boat on a lake, and we landed on an island where there was daffodillies growing. We had milk and cake; and it blew such a cool breeze."

Catty was full of love. She loved her father and mother and her little sister Amelia better than anything in the whole world. Her home was in Wales. Tears came into her eyes when she thought about her home and her little sister Amelia.

"Catty--how much do you love me?"

"Armfuls and armfuls."

"As much as your mother?"

"Very near as much."

"As much as Amelia?"

"Every bit as much."

"How much do you think Jenny loves me?"

"Ever so much."

"No. Jenny loves Roddy best; then Mark; then Dank; then Mamma; then Papa; then me. That isn't ever so much."

Catty was vexed. "You didn't oughter go measuring people's love, Miss Mary."

Still, that was what you did do. With Catty and Jenny you could measure till you knew exactly where you were.

Mamma was different.

You knew when she loved you. You could almost count the times: the time when Papa frightened you; the time when you cut your forehead; the time the lamb died; all the whooping-cough and chicken-pox times, and when Meta, the wax doll, fell off the schoolroom table and broke her head; and when Mark went away to school. Or when you were good and said every word of your lessons right; when you watched Mamma working in the garden, planting and transplanting the flowers with her clever hands; and when you were quiet and sat beside her on the footstool, learning to knit and sew. On Sunday afternoons when she played the hymns and you sang:

"There's a Friend for little children
Above the bright blue sky,"

quite horribly out of tune, and when you listened while she sang herself, "Lead, kindly light," or "Abide with me," and her voice was so sweet and gentle that it made you cry. Then you knew.

Sometimes, when it was not Sunday, she played the Hungarian March, that went, with loud, noble noises:

Droom--Droom--Droom-era-room
Droom--Droom--Droom-era-room
Droom rer-room-room droom-room-room
Droom--Droom--Droom.

It was wonderful. Mamma was wonderful. She swayed and bowed to the beat of the music, as if she shook it out of her body and not out of the piano. She smiled to herself when she saw that you were listening. You said "Oh--Mamma! Play it again," and she played it again. When she had finished she stooped suddenly and kissed you. And you knew.

But she wouldn't say it. You couldn't make her.

"Say it, Mamma. Say it like you used to."

Mamma shook her head.

"I want to hear you say it."

"Well, I'm not going to."

"I love you. I ache with loving you. I love you so much that it hurts me to say it."

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Because it hurts me more not to. Just once. 'I love you.' Just a weeny once."

"You're going to be like your father, tease, tease, tease, all day long, till I'm worn out."

"I'm not going to be like Papa. I don't tease. It's you that's teasing. How'm I to know you love me if you won't say it?"

Mamma said, "Can't you see what I'm doing?"

"No."

She was not interested in the thin white stuff and the lace--Mamma's needle-work.

"Well, then, look in the basket."

The basket was full of tiny garments made of the white stuff, petticoats, drawers and nightgown, sewn with minute tucks and edged with lace. Mamma unfolded them.

"New clothes," she said, "for your new dolly."

"Oh--oh--oh--I love you so much that I can't bear it; you little holy Mamma!"

Mamma said, "I'm not holy, and I won't be called holy. I want deeds, not words. If you love me you'll learn your lessons properly the night before, not just gabble them over hot from the pan."

"I will, Mamma, I will. Won't you say it?"

"No," Mamma said, "I won't."

She sat there with a sort of triumph on her beautiful face, as if she were pleased with herself because she hadn't said it. And Mary would bring the long sheet that dragged on her wrist, and the needle that pricked her fingers, and sit at Mamma's knee and sew, making a thin trail of blood all along the hem.

"Why do you look at me so kindly when I'm sewing?"

"Because I like to see you behaving like a little girl, instead of tearing about and trying to do what boys do."

And Mamma would tell her a story, always the same story, going on and on, about the family of ten children who lived in the farm by the forest. There were seven boys and three girls. The six youngest boys worked on the farm with their father--yes, he was a very nice father--and the eldest boy worked in the garden with his mother, and the three girls worked in the house. They could cook and make butter and cheese, and bake bread; and even the youngest little girl could knit and sew.

"Had they any children?"

"No, they were too busy to think about having children. They were all very, very happy together, just as they were."

The story was like the hem, there was never any end to it, for Mamma was always finding something else for the three girls to do. She smiled as she told it, as if she saw something that pleased her.

Mary felt that she could go on sewing at the hem and pricking her finger for ever if Mamma would only keep that look on her face.



VIII

I.

"I can't, Jenny, I can't. I know there's a funeral coming."

Mary stood on the flagstone inside the arch of the open gate. She looked up and down the road and drew back again into the garden. Jenny, tired and patient, waited outside.

"I've told you, Miss Mary, there isn't any funeral."

"If there isn't there will be. There! I can see it."

"You see Mr. Parish's high 'at a driving in his wagonette."

It was Mr. Parish's high hat. When he put the black top on his wagonette it looked like a hearse.

They started up Ley Street towards Mr. Spall's cottage.

Jenny said, "I thought you was going to be such a good girl when Master Roddy went to school. But I declare if you're not twice as tiresome."

Roddy had gone to Chelmsted after midsummer. She had to go for walks on the roads with Jenny now at the risk of meeting funerals.

This week they had been every day to Ilford to call at Mr. Spall's cottage or at Benny's, the draper's shop in the High Street.

Jenny didn't believe that a big girl, nine next birthday, could really be afraid of funerals. She thought you were only trying to be tiresome. She said you could stop thinking about funerals well enough when you wanted. You did forget sometimes when nice things happened; when you went to see Mrs. Farmer's baby undressed, and when Isabel Batty came to tea. Isabel was almost a baby. It felt nice to lift her and curl up her stiff, barley-sugar hair and sponge her weak, pink silk hands. And there were things that you could do. You could pretend that you were not Mary Olivier but somebody else, that you were grown-up and that the baby and Isabel belonged to you and were there when they were not there. But all the time you knew there would be a funeral on the road somewhere, and that some day you would see it.

When they got into the High Street the funeral was coming along the Barking Road. She saw, before Jenny could see anything at all, the mutes, sitting high, and their black, bunched-up weepers. She turned and ran out of the High Street and back over the railway bridge. Jenny called after her, "Come back!" and a man on the bridge shouted "Hi, Missy! Stop!" as she ran down Ley Street. Her legs shook and gave way under her. Once she fell. She ran, staggering, but she ran. People came out of their cottages to look at her. She thought they had come out to look at the funeral.

After that she refused to go outside the front door or to look through the front windows for fear she should see a funeral.

They couldn't take her and carry her out; so they let her go for walks in the back garden. When Papa came home she was sent up to the schoolroom to play with the doll's house. You could see the road through the high bars of the window at the end of the passage, so that even when Catty lit the gas the top floor was queer and horrible.

Sometimes doubts came with her terror. She thought: "Nobody loves me except Mark. And Mark isn't here." Mark's image haunted her. She shut her eyes and it slid forward on to the darkness, the strong body, the brave, straight up and down face, the steady, light brown eyes, shining; the firm, sweet mouth; the sparrow-brown hair with feathery golden tips. She could hear Mark's voice calling to her: "Minx! Minky!"

And there was something that Mamma said. It was unkind to be afraid of the poor dead people. Mamma said, "Would you run away from Isabel if you saw her lying in her little coffin?"

II.

Jenny's new dress had come.

It was made of grey silk trimmed with black lace, and it lay spread out on the bed in the spare room. Mamma and Aunt Bella stood and looked at it, and shook their heads as if they thought that Jenny had no business to wear a silk dress.

Aunt Bella said, "She's a silly woman to go and leave a good home. At her age."

And Mamma said, "I'd rather see her in her coffin. It would be less undignified. She meant to do it at Easter; she was only waiting till Roddy went to school. She's waiting now till after the Christmas holidays."

Jenny was going to do something dreadful.

She was going to be married. The grey silk dress was her wedding-dress. She was going to marry Mr. Spall. Even Catty thought it was rather dreadful.

But Jenny was happy because she was going to wear the grey silk dress and live in Mr. Spall's cottage and talk to him about Jesus. Only one half of her face drooped sleepily; the other half had waked up, and looked excited; there was a flush on it as bright as paint.

III.

Mary's bed stood in a corner of the night nursery, and beside it was the high yellow linen cupboard. When the doors were opened there was a faint india-rubbery smell from the mackintosh sheet that had been put away on the top shelf.

One night she was wakened by Catty coming into the room and opening the cupboard doors. Catty climbed on a chair and took something from the top shelf. She didn't answer when Mary asked what she was doing, but hurried away, leaving the door on the latch. Her feet made quick thuds along the passage. A door opened and shut, and there was a sound of Papa going downstairs. Somebody came up softly and pulled the door to, and Mary went to sleep again.

When she woke the room was full of the grey light that frightened her. But she was not frightened. She woke sitting up on her pillow, staring into the grey light, and saying to herself, "Jenny is dead."

But she was not afraid of Jenny. The stillness in her heart spread into the grey light of the room. She lay back waiting for seven o'clock when Catty would come and call her.

At seven o'clock Mamma came. She wore the dress she had worn last night, and she was crying.

Mary said, "You haven't got to say it. I know Jenny is dead."

The blinds were drawn in all the windows when she and Mark went into the front garden to look for snowdrops in the border by the kitchen area. She knew that Jenny's dead body lay on the sofa under the kitchen window behind the blind and the white painted iron bars. She hoped that she would not have to see it; but she was not afraid of Jenny's dead body. It was sacred and holy.

She wondered why Mamma sent her to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella. From the top-storey windows of Chadwell Grange you could look beyond Aldborough Hatch towards Wanstead Flats and the City of London Cemetery. They were going to bury Jenny there. She stood looking out, quiet, not crying. She only cried at night when she thought of Jenny, sitting in the low nursery chair, tired and patient, drawing back from her violent caresses, and of the grey silk dress laid out on the bed in the spare room.

She was not even afraid of the City of London Cemetery when Mark took her to see Jenny's grave. Jenny's grave was sacred and holy.



IX

I.

You had to endure hardness after you were nine. You learnt out of Mrs. Markham's "History of England," and you were not allowed to read the conversations between Richard and Mary and Mrs. Markham because they made history too amusing and too easy to remember. For the same reason you translated only the tight, dismal pages of your French Reader, and anything that looked like an interesting story was forbidden. You were to learn for the sake of the lesson and not for pleasure's sake. Mamma said you had enough pleasure in play-time. She put it to your honour not to skip on to the more exciting parts.

When you had finished Mrs. Markham you began Dr. Smith's "History of England." Honour was safe with Dr. Smith. He made history very hard to read and impossible to remember.

The Bible got harder, too. You knew all the best Psalms by heart, and the stories about Noah's ark and Joseph and his coat of many colours, and David, and Daniel in the lions' den. You had to go straight through the Bible now, skipping Leviticus because it was full of things you couldn't understand. When you had done with Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness you had to read about Aaron and the sons of Levi, and the wave-offerings, and the tabernacle, and the ark of the covenant where they kept the five golden emerods. Mamma didn't know what emerods were, but Mark said they were a kind of white mice.

You learnt Old Testament history, too, out of a little book that was all grey slabs of print and dark pictures showing the earth swallowing up Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Aaron and the sons of Levi with their long beards and high hats and their petticoats, swinging incense in fits of temper. You found out queerer and queerer things about God. God made the earth swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. He killed poor Uzzah because he put out his hand to prevent the ark of the covenant falling out of the cart. Even David said he didn't know how on earth he was to get the ark along at that rate. And there were the Moabites and the Midianites and all the animals: the bullocks and the he-goats and the little lambs and kids. When you asked Mamma why God killed people, she said it was because he was just as well as merciful, and (it was the old story) he hated sin. Disobedience was sin, and Uzzah had been disobedient.

As for the lambs and the he-goats, Jesus had done away with all that. He was God's son, and he had propitiated God's anger and satisfied his justice when he shed his own blood on the cross to save sinners. Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. You were not to bother about the blood.

But you couldn't help bothering about it. You couldn't help being sorry for Uzzah and the Midianites and the lambs and the he-goats.

Perhaps you had to sort things out and keep them separate. Here was the world, here were Mamma and Mark and kittens and rabbits, and all the things you really cared about: drawing pictures, and playing the Hungarian March and getting excited in the Easter holidays when the white evenings came and Mark raced you from the Green Man to the Horns Tavern. Here was the sudden, secret happiness you felt when you were by yourself and the fields looked beautiful. It was always coming now, with a sort of rush and flash, when you least expected it.

And there was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done it.

But supposing you hadn't got to believe it, supposing you hadn't got to believe anything at all, it would be easier to think about. The things you cared for belonged to each other, but God didn't belong to them. He didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if God was love, and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all, there were two Gods; one who made things and loved them, and one who didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind God had made.

When the midsummer holidays came and brook-jumping began she left off thinking about God.

II.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"--

The picture in the Sunday At Home showed the old King in bed and Prince Hal trying on his crown. But the words were not the Sunday At Home; they were taken out of Shakespeare. Mark showed her the place.

Mark was in the schoolroom chanting his home-lessons:

"'Yet once more, oh ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere'"--

That sounded nice. "Say it again, Mark, say it again." Mark said it again. He also said:

"'Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!'"

The three books stood on the bookshelf in the schoolroom, the thin Shakespeare in diamond print, the small brown leather Milton, the very small fat Pope's Iliad in the red cover. Mark gave them to her for her own.

She made Catty put her bed between the two windows, and Mark made a bookshelf out of a piece of wood and some picture cord, and hung it within reach. She had a happy, excited feeling when she thought of the three books; it made her wake early. She read from five o'clock till Catty called her at seven, and again after Catty had tucked her up and left her, till the white light in the room was grey.

She learnt Lycidas by heart, and

"I thought I saw my late espoused wife
Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,"--

and the bits about Satan in Paradise Lost. The sound of the lines gave her the same nice feeling that she had when Mrs. Propart played the March in Scipio after Evening Service. She tried to make lines of her own that went the same way as the lines in Milton and Shakespeare and Pope's Iliad. She found out that there was nothing she liked so much as making these lines. It was nicer even than playing the Hungarian March. She thought it was funny that the lines like Pope's Iliad came easiest, though they had to rhyme.

"Silent he wandered by the sounding sea," was good, but the Greek line that Mark showed her went: "Be d'akeon para thina poluphloisboio thalasses"; that was better. "Don't you think so, Mark?"

"Clever Minx. Much better."

"Mark--if God knew how happy I am writing poetry he'd make the earth open and swallow me up."

Mark only said, "You mustn't say that to Mamma. Play 'Violetta.'"

Of all hateful and disgusting tunes the most disgusting and the most hateful was "Violetta," which Mr. Sippett's sister taught her. But if Mark would promise to make Mamma let her learn Greek she would play it to him twenty times running.

When Mark went to Chelmsted that autumn he left her his brown Greek Accidence and Smith's Classical Dictionary, besides Macaulay's Lays of Ancient Rome. She taught herself Greek in the hour after breakfast before Miss Sippett came to give her her music lesson. She was always careful to leave the Accidence open where Miss Sippett could see it and realise that she was not a stupid little girl.

But whether Miss Sippett saw the Accidence or not she always behaved as if it wasn't there.

III.

When Mamma saw the Accidence open on the drawing-room table she shut it and told you to put it in its proper place. If you talked about it her mouth buttoned up tight, and her eyes blinked, and she began tapping with her foot.

There was something queer about learning Greek. Mamma did not actually forbid it; but she said it must not be done in lesson time or sewing time, or when people could see you doing it, lest they should think you were showing off. You could see that she didn't believe you could learn Greek and that she wouldn't like it if you did. But when lessons were over she let you read Shakespeare or Pope's Iliad aloud to her while she sewed. And when you could say:

"Lars Porsena of Clusium
By the nine Gods he swore"--

straight through without stopping she went into London with Papa and brought back the Child's First History of Rome. A Pinnock's Catechism of Mythology in a blue paper cover went with the history to tell you all about the gods and goddesses. What Pinnock didn't tell you you found out from Smith's Classical Dictionary. It had pictures in it so beautiful that you were happy just sitting still and looking at them. There was such a lot of gods and goddesses that at first they were rather hard to remember. But you couldn't forget Apollo and Hermes and Aphrodite and Pallas Athene and Diana. They were not like Jehovah. They quarrelled sometimes, but they didn't hate each other; not as Jehovah hated all the other gods. They fitted in somehow. They cared for all the things you liked best: trees and animals and poetry and music and running races and playing games. Even Zeus was nicer than Jehovah, though he reminded you of him now and then. He liked sacrifices. But then he was honest about it. He didn't pretend that he was good and that he had to have them because of your sins. And you hadn't got to believe in him. That was the nicest thing of all.



X

I.

Mary was ten in eighteen seventy-three.

Aunt Charlotte was ill, and nobody was being kind to her. She had given her Sunday bonnet to Harriet and her Sunday gown to Catty; so you knew she was going to be married again. She said it was prophesied that she should be married in eighteen seventy-three.

The illness had something to do with being married and going continually to Mr. Marriott's church and calling on Mr. Marriott and writing letters to him about religion. You couldn't say Aunt Charlotte was not religious. But Papa said he would believe in her religion if she went to Mr. Batty's church or Mr. Farmer's or Mr. Propart's. They had all got wives and Mr. Marriott hadn't. Papa had forbidden Aunt Charlotte to go any more to Mr. Marriott's church.

Mr. Marriott had written a nice letter to Uncle Victor, and Uncle Victor had taken Papa to see him, and the doctor had come to see Aunt Charlotte and she had been sent to bed.

Aunt Charlotte's room was at the top of the tall, thin white house in the High Street. There was whispering on the stairs. Mamma and Aunt Lavvy stood at the turn; you could see their vexed faces. Aunt Charlotte called to them to let Mary come to her. Mary was told she might go if she were very quiet.

Aunt Charlotte was all by herself sitting up in a large white bed. A Bible propped itself open, leaves downwards, against the mound she made. There was something startling about the lengths of white curtain and the stretches of white pillow and counterpane, and Aunt Charlotte's very black eyebrows and hair and the cover of the Bible, very black, and her blue eyes glittering.

She was writing letters. Every now and then she took up the Bible and picked out a text and wrote it down. She wrote very fast, and as she finished each sheet she hid it under the bed-clothes, and made a sign to show that what she was doing was a secret.

"Love God and you'll be happy. Love God and you'll be happy," she said.

Her eyes pointed at you. They looked wise and solemn and excited.

A wide flat piece of counterpane was left over from Aunt Charlotte. Mary climbed up and sat in it with her back against the foot-rail and looked at her. Looking at Aunt Charlotte made you think of being born.

"Aunt Charlotte, do you know what being born is?"

Aunt Charlotte looked up under her eyebrows, and hid another sheet of paper. "What's put that in your head all of a sudden?"

"It's because of my babies. Catty says I couldn't have thirteen all under three years old. But I could, couldn't I?"

"I'm afraid I don't think you could," Aunt Charlotte said.

"Why not? Catty won't say why."

Aunt Charlotte shook her head, but she was smiling and looking wiser and more solemn than ever. "You mustn't ask too many questions," she said.

"But you haven't told me what being born is. I know it's got something to do with the Virgin Mary."

Aunt Charlotte said, "Sh-sh-sh! You mustn't say that. Nice little girls don't think about those things."

Her tilted eyes had turned down and her mouth had stopped smiling. So you knew that being born was not frightening. It had something to do with the things you didn't talk about.

And ye--how could it? There was the Virgin Mary.

"Aunt Charlotte, don't you wish you had a baby?"

Aunt Charlotte looked frightened, suddenly, and began to cry.

"You mustn't say it, Mary, you mustn't say it. Don't tell them you said it. They'll think I've been talking about the babies. The little babies. Don't tell them. Promise me you won't tell."

II.

"Aunt Lavvy--I wish I knew what you thought about Jehovah?"

When Aunt Lavvy stayed with you Mamma made you promise not to ask her about her opinions. But sometimes you forgot. Aunt Lavvy looked more than ever as if she was by herself in a quiet empty room, thinking of something that wasn't there. You couldn't help feeling that she knew things. Mamma said she had always been the clever one, just as Aunt Charlotte had always been the queer one; but Aunt Bella said she was no better than an unbeliever, because she was a Unitarian at heart.

"Why Jehovah in particular?" Aunt Lavvy was like Uncle Victor; she listened politely when you talked to her, as if you were saying something interesting.

"Because he's the one you've got to believe in. Do you really think he is so very good?"

"I don't think anything. I don't know anything, except that God is love."

"Jehovah wasn't."

"Jehovah--" Aunt Lavvy stopped herself. "I mustn't talk to you about it--because I promised your mother I wouldn't."

It was very queer. Aunt Lavvy's opinions had something to do with religion, yet Mamma said you mustn't talk about them.

"I promised, too. I shall have to confess and ask her to forgive me."

"Then," said Aunt Lavvy, "be sure you tell her that I didn't talk to you. Promise me you'll tell her."

That was what Aunt Charlotte had said. Talking about religion was like talking about being born.



XI

I.

Nobody has any innate ideas. Children and savages and idiots haven't any, so grown-up people can't have, Mr. Locke says.

But how did he know? You might have them and forget about them, and only remember again after you were grown up.

She sat up in the drawing-room till nine o'clock now, because she was eleven years old. She had taken the doll's clothes out of the old wooden box and filled it with books: the Bible, Milton, and Pope's Homer, the Greek Accidence, and Plutarch's Lives, and the Comedies from Papa's illustrated Shakespeare in seven volumes, which he never read, and two volumes of Pepys' Diary, and Locke On the Human Understanding. She wished the Bible had been bound in pink calf like Pepys instead of the shiny black leather that made you think of wet goloshes. Then it would have looked new and exciting like the other books.

She sat on a footstool with her box beside her in the corner behind Mamma's chair. She had to hide there because Mamma didn't believe you really liked reading. She thought you were only shamming and showing off. Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Farmer would come in, and Mr. Farmer would play chess with Papa while Mrs. Farmer talked to Mamma about how troublesome and independent the tradespeople were, and how hard it was to get servants and to keep them. Mamma listened to Mrs. Farmer as if she were saying something wonderful and exciting. Sometimes it would be the Proparts; or Mr. Batty would come in alone. And sometimes they would all come together with the aunts and uncles, and there would be a party.

Mary always hoped that Uncle Victor would notice her and say, "Mary is reading Locke On the Human Understanding," or that Mr. Propart would come and turn over the books and make some interesting remark. But they never did.

At half-past eight Catty would bring in the tea-tray; the white and grey and gold tea-cups would be set out round the bulging silver tea-pot that lifted up its spout with a foolish, pompous expression, like a hen. Mamma would move about the table in her mauve silk gown, and there would be a scent of cream and strong tea. Every now and then the shimmering silk and the rich scent would come between her and the grey, tight-pressed, difficult page.

"'The senses at first let in particular ideas and furnish the yet empty cabinet: and the mind growing by degrees familiar with some of them, they are lodged in the memory and names got to them.'

"Then how--Then how?--"

The thought she thought was coming wouldn't come, and Mamma was telling her to get up and hand round the bread and butter.

II.

"Mr. Ponsonby, do you remember your innate ideas?"

"My how much?" said Mr. Ponsonby.

"The ideas you had before you were born?"

Mr. Ponsonby said, "Before I was born? Well--" He really seemed to be considering it.

Mamma's chair, pushed further along the hearthrug, had driven her back and back, till the box was hidden behind the curtain.

Mr. Ponsonby was Mark's friend. Mark was at the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich now. Every Saturday Mr. Ponsonby came home with Mark and stayed till Sunday evening. You knew that sooner or later he would find you out behind Mamma's chair.

"I mean," she said, "the ideas you were born with."

"Seems to me," said Mr. Ponsonby, "I was born with precious few. Anyhow I can't say I remember them."

"I was afraid you'd say that. It's what Mr. Locke says."

"Mr. how much?"

"Mr. Locke. You can look at him if you like."

She thought: "He won't. He won't. They never, never do."

But Mr. Ponsonby did. He looked at Mr. Locke, and he looked at Mary, and he said, "By Gum!" He even read the bits about the baby and the empty cabinet.

"You don't mean to say you like this sort of thing?"

"I like it most awfully. Of course I don't mean as much as brook-jumping, but almost as much."

And Mr. Ponsonby said, "Well--I must say--of all--you are--by Gum!"

He made it sound like the most delicious praise.

Mr. Ponsonby was taller and older than Mark. He was nineteen. She thought he was the nicest looking person she had ever seen.

His face was the colour of thick white honey; his hair was very dark, and he had long blue eyes and long black eyebrows like bars, drawn close down on to the blue. His nose would have been hooky if it hadn't been so straight, and his mouth was quiet and serious. When he talked to you his mouth and eyes looked as if they liked it.

Mark came and said, "Minky, if you stodge like that you'll get all flabby."

It wasn't nice of Mark to say that before Mr. Ponsonby, when he knew perfectly well that she could jump her own height.

"Me flabby? Feel my muscle."

It rose up hard under her soft skin.

"Feel it, Mr. Ponsonby."

"I say--what a biceps!"

"Yes, but," Mark said, "you should feel his."

His was even bigger and harder than Mark's. "Mine," she said sorrowfully, "will never be as good as his."

Then Mamma came and told her it was bed-time, and Mr. Ponsonby said, "Oh, Mrs. Olivier, not yet."

"Five minutes more, then."

But the five minutes were never any good. You just sat counting them.

And when it was all over and Mr. Ponsonby strode across the drawing-room and opened the door for her she went laughing; she stood in the doorway and laughed. When you were sent to bed at nine the only dignified thing was to pretend you didn't care.

And Mr. Ponsonby, holding the door so that Mamma couldn't see him, looked at her and shook his head, as much as to say, "You and I know it isn't a joke for either of us, this unrighteous banishment."

III.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She might have known that some day Mamma would come up and find her putting the children to bed.

She had seven. There was Isabel Batty, and Mrs. Farmer's red-haired baby, and Mark in the blue frock in the picture when he was four, and Dank in his white frock and blue sash, and the three very little babies you made up out of your head. Six o'clock was their bed-time.

"You'd no business to touch those baby-clothes," Mamma said.

The baby-clothes were real. Every evening she took them from the drawer in the linen cupboard; and when she had sung the children to sleep she shook out the little frocks and petticoats and folded them in a neat pile at the foot of the bed.

"I thought you were in the schoolroom learning your lessons?"

"So I was, Mamma. But--you know--six o'clock is their bed-time."

"Oh Mary! you told me you'd given up that silly game."

"So I did. But they won't let me. They don't want me to give them up."

Mamma sat down, as if it was too much for her.

"I hope," she said, "you don't talk to Catty or anybody about it."

"No, Mamma. I couldn't. They're my secret."

"That was all very well when you were a little thing. But a great girl of twelve--You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Mamma had gone. She had taken away the baby-clothes. Mary lay face downwards on her bed.

Shame burned through her body like fire. Hot tears scalded her eyelids. She thought: "How was I to know you mustn't have babies?" Still, she couldn't give them all up. She must keep Isabel and the red-haired baby.

But what would Mr. Ponsonby think of her if he knew?

IV.

"Mr. Ponsonby. Mr. Ponsonby! Stay where you are and look!"

From the window at the end of the top corridor the side of the house went sheer down into the lane. Mary was at the window. Mr. Ponsonby was in the lane.

She climbed on to the ledge and knelt there. Grasping the bottom of the window frame firmly with both hands and letting her knees slide from the ledge, she lowered herself, and hung for one ecstatic moment, and drew herself up again by her arms.

"What did you do it for, Mary?"

Mr. Ponsonby had rushed up the stairs and they were sitting there. He was so tall that he hung over her when he leaned.

"It's nothing. You ought to be able to pull up your own weight."

"You mustn't do it from top-storey windows. It's dangerous."

"Not if you've practised on the banisters first. Where's Mark?"

"With your Mater. I say, supposing you and I go for a walk."

"We must be back at six o'clock," she said.

When you went for walks with Mark or Mr. Ponsonby they always raced you down Ley Street and over the ford at the bottom. They both gave you the same start to the Horn's Tavern; the only difference was that with Mr. Ponsonby you were over the ford first.

They turned at the ford into the field path that led to Drake's Farm and the plantation. He jumped all the stiles and she vaulted them. She could see that he respected her. And so they came to the big water jump into the plantation. Mr. Ponsonby went over first and held out his arms. She hurled herself forward and he caught her. And this time, instead of putting her down instantly, he lifted her up in his arms and held her tight and kissed her. Her heart thumped violently and she had a sudden happy feeling. Neither spoke.

Humphrey Propart had kissed her once for a forfeit. And she had boxed his ears. Mr. Ponsonby's was a different sort of kiss.

They tore through the plantation as if nothing had happened, clearing all the brooks in a business-like way. Mr. Ponsonby took brook-jumping as the serious and delightful thing it was.

Going home across the fields they held each other's hands, like children. "Minky," he said, "I don't like to think of you hanging out of top-storey windows."

"But it's so jolly to feel your body come squirming up after your arms."

"It is. It is. All the same, promise me you won't do it any more."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to India when I've passed out, and I want to find you alive when I come back. Promise me, Minky."

"I will, if you're really going. But you're the only person I allow to call me Minky, except Mark."

"Am I? I'm glad I'm the only person."

They went on.

"I'm afraid," she said, "my hand is getting very hot and horrid."

He held it tighter. "I don't care how hot and horrid it gets. And I think you might call me Jimmy."

It was long after six o'clock. She had forgotten the children and their bed-time. After that day she never played with them again.

V.

"If I were you," Mamma said, "I should put away that box of books. You'll be no use if you read--read--read all day long."

"You oughtn't to say that, Mamma. I am of use. You know I can make the sewing-machine go when you can't."

Mamma smiled. She knew it.

"And which would you rather took you over the crossing at the Bank? Me or Papa?"

Mamma smiled again. She knew she was safer with Mary at a crossing, because Papa teased her and frightened her before he dragged her over. But Mary led her gently, holding back the noses of the horses.

"There's that Locke on the human understanding," said Mamma. "Poor Jimmy was frightened when he found you reading it."

"He wasn't. He was most awfully pleased and excited."

"He was laughing at you."

"He wasn't. He wasn't."

"Of course he was laughing at you. What did you think he was doing?"

"I thought he was interested."

"He wasn't, then. Men," Mamma said, "are not interested in little book-worms. He told me it was very bad for you."

Shame again. Hot, burning and scalding shame. He was only laughing at her.

"Mark doesn't laugh at me," she said. The thought of Mark and of his love for her healed her wound.

"A precious deal," Mamma said, "you know about Mark."

Mamma was safe. Oh, she was safe. She knew that Mark loved her best.

VI.

On the cover of Pinnock's Catechism there was a small black picture of the Parthenon. And under it was written:

"Abode of gods whose shrines no longer burn."

Supposing the candles in St. Mary's Chapel no longer burned?

Supposing Barkingside church and Aldborough Hatch church fell to bits and there were no more clergymen? And you only read in history books about people like Mr. Batty and Mr. Propart and their surplices and the things they wore round their necks?

Supposing the Christian religion passed away?

It excited you to think these things. But when you heard the "Magnificat" in church, or when you thought of Christ hanging so bravely on the cross you were sorry and you stopped thinking.

What a pity you couldn't ever go on without having to stop.

End Of Book Two