Olivier

8. Maturity

Book Four: Maturity (1879-1900)

XX

I.

The scent of hay came through the open window of her room. Clearer and finer than the hay smell of the Essex fields. She shut her eyes to live purely in that one sweet sense; and opened them to look at the hill, the great hill heaved up against the east.

You had to lean far out of the window to see it all. It came on from the hidden north, its top straight as a wall against the sky. Then the long shoulder, falling and falling. Then the thick trees. A further hill cut the trees off from the sky.

Roddy was saying something. Sprawling out from the corner of the window-seat, he stared with sulky, unseeing eyes into the little room.

"Roddy, what did you say that hill was?"

"Greffington Edge. You aren't listening."

His voice made a jagged tear in the soft, quiet evening.

"And the one beyond it?"

"Sarrack. Why can't you listen?"

Greffington Edge. Sarrack. Sarrack.

Green fields coming on from the north, going up and up, netted in with the strong net of the low grey walls that held them together, that kept them safe. Above them thin grass, a green bloom on the grey face of the hill. Above the thin grass a rampart of grey cliffs.

Roddy wouldn't look at the hill.

"I tell you," he said, "you'll loathe the place when you've lived a week in it."

The thick, rich trees were trying to climb the Edge, but they couldn't get higher than the netted fields.

The lean, ragged firs had succeeded. No. Not quite. They stood out against the sky, adventurous mountaineers, roped together, leaning forward with the effort.

"It's Mamma's fault," Roddy was saying. "Papa would have gone anywhere, but she would come to this damned Morfe."

"Don't. Don't--" Her mind beat him off, defending her happiness. He would kill it if she let him. Coming up from Reyburn on the front seat of the Morfe bus, he had sulked. He smiled disagreeable smiles while the driver pointed with his whip and told her the names of the places. Renton Moor. Renton Church. Morfe, the grey village, stuck up on its green platform under the high, purple mound of Karva Hill.

Garthdale in front of it, Rathdale at its side, meeting in the fields below its bridge.

Morfe was beautiful. She loved it with love at first sight, faithless to Ilford.

Straight, naked houses. Grey walls of houses, enclosing the wide oblong Green. Dark grey stone roofs, close-clipped lest the wind should lift them. On the Green two grey stone pillar fountains; a few wooden benches; telegraph poles. Under her window a white road curling up to the platform. Straight, naked houses, zigzagging up beside it. Down below, where the white road came from, the long grey raking bridge, guarded by a tall ash-tree.

Roddy's jabbing voice went on and on:

"I used to think Mamma was holy and unselfish. I don't think so any more. She says she wants to do what Papa wants and what we want; but she always ends by doing what she wants herself. It's all very well for her. As long as she's got a garden to poke about in she doesn't care how awful it is for us."

She hated Roddy when he said things like that about Mamma.

"I don't suppose the little lamb thought about it at all. Or if she did she thought we'd like it."

She didn't want to listen to Roddy's grumbling. She wanted to look and look, to sniff up the clear, sweet, exciting smell of the fields.

The roofs went criss-crossing up the road--straight--slant--straight. They threw delicate violet-green shadows on to the sage-green field below. That long violet-green pillar was the shadow of the ash-tree by the bridge.

The light came from somewhere behind the village, from a sunset you couldn't see. It made the smooth hill fields shine like thin velvet, stretched out, clinging to the hills.

"Oh, Roddy, the light's different. Different from Ilford. Look--"

"I've been looking for five weeks," Roddy said. "You haven't, that's all. I was excited at first."

He got up. He stared out of the window, not seeing anything.

"I didn't mean what I said about Mamma. Morfe makes you say things. Soon it'll make you mean them. You wait."

She was glad when he had left her.

The cliffs of Greffington Edge were violet now.

II.

At night, when she lay in bed in the strange room, the Essex fields began to haunt her; the five trees, the little flying trees, low down, low down; the straight, narrow paths through the corn, where she walked with Mark, with Jimmy, with Mr. Jourdain; Mr. Jourdain, standing in the path and saying: "Talk to me. I'm alive. I'm here. I'll listen."

Mark and Mamma planting the sumach tree by the front door; Papa saying it wouldn't grow. It had grown up to the dining-room window-sill.

Aunt Bella and Uncle Edward; the Proparts and the Farmers and Mr. Batty, all stiff and disapproving; not nearly so nice to you as they used to be and making you believe it was your fault.

The old, beautiful drawing-room. The piano by the door.

Dan staggering down the room at Mark's party. Mark holding her there, in his arms.

Dawn, and Dr. Draper's carriage waiting in the road beside the mangold fields. And Aunt Charlotte carried out, her feet brushing the flagstones.

She mustn't tell them. Mamma couldn't bear it. Roddy couldn't bear it. Aunt Charlotte was Papa's sister. He must never know.

The sound of the brushing feet made her heart ache.

She was glad to wake in the small, strange room. It had taken a snip off Mamma's and Papa's room on one side of the window, and a snip off the spare room on the other. That made it a funny T shape. She slept in the tail of the T, in a narrow bed pushed against the wall. When you sat up you saw the fat trees trying to get up the hill between the washstand and the chest of drawers.

This room would never be taken from her, because she was the only one who was small enough to fit the bed.

She would be safe there with her hill.

III.

The strange houses fascinated her. They had the simplicity and the precision of houses in a very old engraving. On the west side of the Green they made a long straight wall. Morfe High Row. An open space of cobblestones stretched in front of it. The market-place.

Sharp morning light picked out the small black panes of the windows in the white criss-cross of their frames, and the long narrow signs of the King's Head and the Farmer's Arms, black on grey. The plaster joints of the walls and the dark net of earth between the cobbles showed thick and clear as in a very old engraving. The west side had the sky behind it and the east side had the hill.

Grey-white cart roads slanted across the Green, cutting it into vivid triangular grass-plots. You went in and out of Morfe through the open corners of its Green. Her father's house stood at the south-west corner, by itself. A projecting wing at that end of the High Row screened it from the market-place.

The strange houses excited her.

Wonderful, unknown people lived in them. You would see them and know what they were like: the people in the tall house with the rusty stones, in the bright green ivy house with the white doors, in the small grey, humble houses, in the big, important house set at the top of the Green, with the three long rows of windows, the front garden and the iron gate.

People you didn't know. You would be strange and exciting to them as they were strange and exciting to you. They might say interesting things. There might be somebody who cared about Plato and Spinoza.

Things would happen that you didn't know. Anything might happen any minute.

If you knew what was happening in the houses now--some of them had hard, frightening faces. Dreadful things might have happened in them. Her father's house had a good, simple face. You could trust it.

Five windows in the rough grey wall, one on each side of the white door, three above. A garden at the side, an orchard at the back. In front a cobbled square marked off by a line of thin stones set in edgeways.

A strange house, innocent of unhappy memories.

Catty stood at the door, looking for her. She called to her to come in to breakfast.

IV.

Papa was moving restlessly about the house. His loose slippers shuffled on the stone flags of the passages.

Catty stopped gathering up the breakfast cups to listen.

Catty was not what she used to be. Her plump cheeks were sunk and flattened. Some day she would look like Jenny.

Papa stood in the doorway. He looked round the small dining-room as if he were still puzzled by its strangeness. Papa was not what he used to be. A streak of grey hair showed above each ear. Grey patches in his brown beard. Scarlet smears in the veined sallow of his eyes. His bursting, violent life had gone. He went stooping and shuffling. The house was too small for Papa. He turned in it as a dog turns in his kennel, feeling for a place to stretch himself.

He said, "Where's your mother? I want her."

Mary went to find her.

She knew the house: the flagged passage from the front door. The dining-room on the right. The drawing-room on the left. In there the chairs and tables drew together to complain of Morfe. View of the blacksmith's house and yard from the front window. From the side window Mamma's garden. Green grass-plot. Trees at the far end. Flowers in the borders: red roses, cream roses, Canterbury bells, white and purple, under the high walls. In a corner an elder bush frothing greenish white on green.

Behind the dining-room Papa's tight den. Stairs where the passage turned to the left behind the drawing-room. Glass door at the end, holding the green of the garden, splashed with purple, white and red. The kitchen here in a back wing like a rough barn run out into the orchard.

Upstairs Catty's and Cook's room in the wing; Papa's dressing-room above the side passage; Roddy's room above Papa's den. Then the three rooms in front. The one above the drawing-room was nearly filled with the yellow birch-wood wardrobe and bed. The emerald green of the damask was fading into the grey.

Her mother was there, sitting in the window-seat, reading the fourteenth chapter of St. John.

"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions--"

Mamma was different, too, as if she had shrunk through living in the cramped rooms. She raised her head. The head of a wounded bird, very gentle.

"Why are you sitting up here all alone?"

"Because sometimes I want to be alone."

"Shall I spoil the aloneness?"

"Not if you're a good girl and keep quiet."

Mary sat on the bed and waited till the chapter should be ended.

She thought: "She talks to me still as though I were a child. What would she say if I told her about Aunt Charlotte? She wouldn't know what it was really like. She wasn't there.

"I shall never tell her."

She was thrilled at the thought of her grown-up hardness, her grown-up silence, keeping her mother safe.

Mamma looked up and smiled; the chapter was ended; they went downstairs.

Papa stood in the doorway of his den and called to Mamma in a queer low voice.

The letters--

She went into the dining-room and waited--ten minutes--twenty.

Her mother came to her there. She sat down in her armchair by the window-seat where the old work-basket stood piled with socks ready for darning. She took a sock and drew it over her hand, stretching it to find the worn places. Mary took its fellow and began to darn it. The coarse wool, scraping her finger-tips, sent through her a little light, creeping, disagreeable shock.

She was afraid to look at her mother's face.

"Well, Mary--poor Aunt Charlotte might have been carried away in her coffin, and we shouldn't have known if it had been left to you to tell us." "I didn't because I thought it would frighten you."

Mamma was not frightened. They couldn't have told her what it was really like.

Papa's slippers shuffled in the passage. Mamma left off darning to listen as Catty had listened.

V.

On Greffington Edge.

Roddy was looking like Mark, with his eyes very steady and his mouth firm and proud. His face was red as if he were angry. That was when he saw the tall man coming towards them down the hill road.

Roddy walked slowly, trying not to meet him at the cattle-gate. The tall man walked faster, and they met. Roddy opened the gate.

The tall man thanked him, said "Good day," looked at her as he passed through, then stopped.

"My sister--Mr. Sutcliffe."

Mr. Sutcliffe, handsome with his boney, high-jointed nose and narrow jaw, thrust out, incongruously fierce, under his calm, clean upper lip, shaved to show how beautiful it was. His black blue eyes were set as carefully in their lids as a woman's. He wore his hair rather long. One lock had got loose and hung before his ear like a high whisker.

He was asking Roddy when he was coming to play tennis, and whether his sister played. They might turn up tomorrow.

The light played on his curling, handsome smile. He hoped she liked Rathdale.

"She only came yesterday," Roddy said.

"Well--come along to-morrow. About four o'clock. I'll tell my wife."

And Roddy said, "Thanks," as if it choked him.

Mr. Sutcliffe went on down the hill.

"We can't go," Roddy said.

"Why not?" "Well--"

"Let's. He looked so nice, and he sounded as if he really wanted us."

"He doesn't. He can't. You don't know what's happened."

"Has anything happened?"

"Yes. I don't want to tell you, but you'll have to know. It happened at the Sutcliffes'."

"Who are the Sutcliffes?"

"Greffington Hall. The people who own the whole ghastly place. We were dining there. And Papa was funny."

"Funny? Funny what way?"

"Oh, I don't know.--Like Dan was at Mark's party.'

"Oh Roddy--" She was listening now.

"Not quite so awful; but that sort of thing. We had to come away."

"I didn't know he did."

"No more did I. Mamma always said it wasn't that. But it was this time. And he chose that evening."

"Does Mamma mind frightfully?" she said.

"Yes. But she's angry with the Sutcliffes."

"Why?"

"Because they've seen him."

"How many Sutcliffes are there?"

"Only him and Mrs. Sutcliffe. The son's in India.

"They'll never ask him again, and Mamma won't go without him. She says we can go if we like, but you can see she'll think us skunks if we do."

"Well--then we can't."

She had wanted something to happen, and something had happened, something that would bring unhappiness. Unhappiness. Her will rose up, hard and stubborn, pushing it off.

"Will it matter so very much? Do the Sutcliffes matter?"

"They matter this much, that there won't be anything to do. They've got all the shooting and fishing and the only decent tennis court in the place. You little know what you're in for."

"I don't care, Roddy. I don't care a bit as long as I have you."

"Me? Me?"

He had stopped on the steep of the road; her feet had been lagging to keep pace with him. He breathed hard through white-edged lips. She had seen him look like that before. The day they had walked to the Thames, to look at the ships, over the windy Flats.

He looked at her. A look she hadn't seen before. A look of passionate unbelief.

"I didn't think you cared about me. I thought it was Mark you cared about. Like Mamma."

"Can't you care about more than one person?"

"Mamma can't--"

"Oh Roddy--"

"What's the good of saying 'Oh Roddy' when you know it?"

They were sitting on a ledge of stone and turf. Roddy had ceased to struggle with the hill.

"We're all the same," he said. "I'd give you and Dan up any day for Mark. Dan would give up you and me. Mark would give up all of us for Mamma. And Mamma would give up all of us for Mark."

Roddy had never said anything like that before.

"I'll stick to you, anyhow," she said.

"It's no use your sticking. I shan't be here. I shall have to clear out and do something," he said.

On his face there was a look of fear.

VI.

She was excited because they were going to the ivy house for tea. It looked so pretty and so happy with its green face shining in the sun. Nothing could take from her her belief in happiness hiding behind certain unknown doors. It hid behind the white doors of the ivy house. When you went in something wonderful would happen.

The ivy house belonged to Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin.

The photographs in Mamma's old album showed how they looked when they and Mamma were young. Modest pose of dropped arms, holding mushroom hats in front of them as a protection, the narrow ribbons dangling innocently. Ellen Frewin, small and upright, slender back curved in to the set of shawl and crinoline, prim head fixed in the composure of gentle disdain, small mouth saying always "Oh," Meta, the younger sister, very tall, head bent in tranquil meditation, her mantle slanting out from the fall of the thin shoulders.

They rose up in the small, green lighted drawing-room. Their heads bent forward to kiss.

Ellen Waugh: the photographed face still keeping its lifted posture of gentle disdain, the skin stretched like a pale tight glove, a slight downward swelling of the prim oval, like the last bulge of a sucked peppermint ball, the faded mouth still making its small "oh." She was the widow of a clergyman.

Meta, a beautiful nose leaping out at you in a high curve; narrow, delicate cheeks thinned away so that they seemed part of the nose; sweet rodent mouth smiling up under its tip; blurred violet eyes arching vaguely.

Princess gowns stiffened their shawl and crinoline gestures.

"So this is Mary. She's not like her mother, Caroline. Meta, can you see any likeness?"

Miss Frewin arched her eyes and smiled, without looking at you.

"I can't say I do."

Their heads made little nodding bows as they talked. Miss Frewin's bow was sidelong and slow, Mrs. Waugh's straight and decisive.

"She's not like Rodney," Mrs. Waugh said. "And she's not like Emilius. Who is she like?"

Mary answered. "I'm rather like Dan and a good bit like Mark. But I'm most of all like myself."

Mrs. Waugh said "Oh." Her mouth went on saying it while she looked at you.

"She is not in the least like Mark," Mamma said.

They settled down, one on each side of Mamma, smiling at her with their small, faded mouths as you smile at people you love and are happy with. You could see that Mamma was happy, too, sitting between them, safe.

Mrs. Waugh said, "I see you've got Blenkiron in again?"

"Well, he's left his ladder in the yard. I suppose that means he'll mend the kitchen chimney some time before winter."

"The Yorkshire workmen are very independent," Mrs. Waugh said.

"They scamp their work like the rest. You'd need a resident carpenter, and a resident glazier, and a resident plumber--"

"Yes, Caroline, you would indeed."

Gentle voices saying things you had heard before in the drawing-room at Five Elms.

Miss Frewin had opened a black silk bag that hung on her arm, and taken out a minute pair of scissors and a long strip of white stuff with a stitched pattern on it. She nicked out the pattern into little holes outlined by the stitches. Mary watched her, fascinated by the delicate movements of the thin fingers and the slanted, drooping postures of the head.

"Do you like doing it?"

"Yes."

She thought: "What a fool she must think me. As if she'd do it if she didn't like it."

The arching eyes and twitching mouth smiled at your foolishness.

Mrs. Waugh's voice went on. It came smoothly, hardly moving her small, round mouth. That was her natural voice. Then suddenly it rose, like a voice that calls to you to get up in the morning.

"Well, Mary--so you've left school. Come home to be a help to your mother."

A high, false cheerfulness, covering disapproval and reproach.

Their gentleness was cold to her and secretly inimical. They had asked her because of Mamma. They didn't really want her.

Half-past six. It was all over. They were going home across the Green.

"Mary, I wish you could learn to talk without affectation. Telling Mrs. Waugh you 'looked like yourself'! If you could only manage to forget yourself."

Your self? Your self? Why should you forget it? You had to remember. They would kill it if you let them.

What had it done? What was it that they should hate it so? It had been happy and excited about them, wondering what they would be like. And quiet, looking on and listening, in the strange, green-lighted, green-dark room, crushed by the gentle, hostile voices.

Would it always have to stoop and cringe before people, hushing its own voice, hiding its own gesture?

It crouched now, stung and beaten, hiding in her body that walked beside her mother with proud feet, and small lifted head.

VII.

Her mother turned at her bedroom door and signed to her to come in.

She sat down in her low chair at the head of the curtained bed. Mary sat in the window-seat.

"There's something I want to say to you."

"Yes, Mamma."

Mamma was annoyed. She tap-tapped with her foot on the floor.

"Have you given up those absurd ideas of yours?"

"What absurd ideas?"

"You know what I mean. Calling yourself an unbeliever."

"I can't say I believe things I don't believe."

"Have you tried?"

"Tried?"

"Have you ever asked God to help your unbelief?"

"No. I could only do that if I didn't believe in my unbelief."

"You mean if you didn't glory in it. Then it's simply your self-will and your pride. Self-will has been your besetting sin ever since you were a little baby crying for something you couldn't have. You kicked before you could talk.

"Goodness knows I've done everything I could to break you of it."

"Yes, Mamma darling."

She remembered. The faded green and grey curtains and the yellow birchwood furniture remembered. Mamma sat on the little chair at the foot of the big yellow bed. You knelt in her lap and played with the gold tassel while Mamma asked you to give up your will.

"I brought you up to care for God and for the truth."

"You did. And I care so awfully for both of them that I won't believe things about God that aren't true."

"And how do you know what's true and what isn't? You set up your little judgment against all the wise and learned people who believe as you were taught to believe. I wonder how you dare."

"It's the risk we're all taking. We may every single one of us be wrong. Still, if some things are true other things can't be. Don't look so unhappy, Mamma."

"How can I be anything else? When I think of you living without God in the world, and of what will happen to you when you die."

"It's your belief that makes you unhappy, not me."

"That's the cruellest thing you've said yet."

"You know I'd rather die than hurt you."

"Die, indeed! When you hurt me every minute of the day. If it had been anything but unbelief. If I even saw you humble and sorry about it. But you seem to be positively enjoying yourself."

"I can't help it if the things I think of make me happy. And you don't know how nice it feels to be free."

"Precious freedom!--to do what you like and think what you like, without caring."

"There's a part of me that doesn't care and there's a part that cares frightfully."

The part that cared was not free. Not free. Prisoned in her mother's bedroom with the yellow furniture that remembered. Her mother's face that remembered. Always the same vexed, disapproving, remembering face. And her own heart, sinking at each beat, dragging remembrance. A dead child, remembering and returning.

"I can't think where you got it from," her mother was saying. "Unless it's those books you're always reading. Or was it that man?"

"What man?"

"Maurice Jourdain."

"No. It wasn't. What made you think of him?"

"Never you mind."

Actually her mother was smiling and trying not to smile, as if she were thinking of something funny and improper.

"There's one thing I must beg of you," she said, "that whatever you choose to think, you'll hold your tongue about it."

"All my life? Like Aunt Lavvy?"

"There was a reason why then; and there's a reason why now. Your father has been very unfortunate. We're here in a new place, and the less we make ourselves conspicuous the better."

"I see."

She thought: "Because Papa drinks Mamma and Roddy go proud and angry; but I must stoop and hide. It isn't fair."

"You surely don't want," her mother said, "to make it harder for me than it is."

Tears. She was beaten.

"I don't want to make it hard for you at all."

"Then promise me you won't talk about religion."

"I won't talk about it to Mrs. Waugh."

"Not to anybody."

"Not to anybody who wouldn't like it. Unless they make me. Will that do?"

"I suppose it'll have to."

Mamma held her face up, like a child, to be kissed.

VIII.

The Sutcliffes' house hid in the thick trees at the foot of Greffington Edge. You couldn't see it. You could pretend it wasn't there. You could pretend that Mr. Sutcliffe and Mrs. Sutcliffe were not there. You could pretend that nothing had happened.

There were other houses.

IX.

The long house at the top of the Green was gay with rows of pink and white sun-blinds stuck out like attic roofs. The poplars in the garden played their play of falling rain.

You waited in the porch, impatient for the opening of the door.

"Mamma--what will it be like?"

Mamma smiled a naughty, pretty smile. She knew what it would be like.

There was a stuffed salmon in a long glass case in the hall. He swam, over a brown plaster river bed, glued to a milk-blue plaster stream.

You waited in the drawing-room. Drab and dying amber and the dapple of walnut wood. Chairs dressed in pallid chintz, holding out their skirts with an air of anxiety. Stuffed love-birds on a branch under a tall glass shade. On the chimney-piece sand-white pampas grass in clear blood-red vases, and a white marble clock supporting a gilt Cupid astride over a gilt ball.

Above the Cupid, in an oval frame, the tinted crayon portrait of a young girl. A pink and blond young girl with a soft nuzzling mouth and nose. She was dressed in a spencer and a wide straw hat, and carried a basket of flowers on her arm. She looked happy, smiling up at the ceiling.

Across the passage a door opening. Voices in the passage, a smell like rotten apples, a tray that clattered.

Miss Kendal rustled in; tall elegant stiffness girded in black silk.

"How good of you to come, Mrs. Olivier. And to bring Miss Mary."

Her sharp-jointed body was like the high-backed chair it sat on. Yet you saw that she had once been the young girl in the spencer; head carried high with the remembered tilt of the girl's head; jaw pushed out at the chin as if it hung lightly from the edge of the upper lip; the nuzzling mouth composed to prudence and propriety. A lace cap with pink ribbons perched on her smooth, ashy blond hair.

Miss Kendal talked to Mamma about weather and gardens; she asked after the kitchen chimney as if she really cared for it. Every now and then she looked at you and gave you a nod and a smile to show that she remembered you were there.

When she smiled her eyes were happy like the eyes of the young girl.

The garden-gate clicked and fell to with a clang. A bell clamoured suddenly through the quiet house.

Miss Kendal nodded. "The Doctor has come to tea. To see Miss Mary."

She put her arm in yours and led you into the dining-room, gaily, gaily, as if she had known you for a long time, as if she were taking you with her to some brilliant, happy feast.

The smell of rotten apples came towards you through the open door of the dining-room. You saw the shining of pure white damask, the flashing of silver, a flower-bed of blue willow pattern cups, an enormous pink and white cake. You thought it was a party.

Three old men were there.

Old Dr. Kendal, six feet of leanness doubled up in an arm-chair. Old Wellington face, shrunk, cheeks burning in a senile raddle. Glassy blue eyes weeping from red rims.

Dr. Charles Kendal, his son; a hard, blond giant; high cheeks, raw ruddied; high bleak nose jutting out with a steep fall to the long upper lip; savage mouth under a straight blond fringe, a shark's keen tooth pointing at the dropped jaw. Arched forehead drooping to the spread ears, blond eyebrows drooping over slack lids.

And Mr. James.

Mr. James was the only short one. He stood apart, his eyes edging off from his limp hand-shaking. Mr. James had a red face and high bleak nose like his brother; he was clean-shaved except for short auburn whiskers brushed forward in flat curls. His thin Wellington lips went out and in, pressed together, trying hard not to laugh at you.

He held his arms bowed out stiffly, as if the arm-holes of his coat were too tight for him.

The room was light at the far end, where the two windows were, and dark at the door-end where the mahogany sideboard was. The bright, loaded table stretched between.

Old Dr. Kendal sat behind it by the corner of the fireplace. Though it was August the windows were shut and a fire burned in the grate. Two tabby cats sat up by the fender, blinking and nodding with sleep.

"Here's Father," Miss Kendal said. "And here's Johnnie and Minnie."

He had dropped off into a doze. She woke him.

"You know Mrs. Olivier, Father. And this is Miss Olivier."

"Ay. Eh." From a red and yellow pocket-handkerchief he disentangled a stringy claw-like hand and held it up with an effort.

"Ye've come to see the old man, have ye? Ay. Eh."

"He's the oldest in the Dale," Miss Kendal said. "Except Mr. Peacock of Sarrack."

"Don't you forget Mr. Peacock of Sarrack, or he'll be so set-up there'll be no bearing him," Dr. Charles said.

"Miss Mary, will you sit by Father?"

"No, she won't. Miss Mary will sit over here by me."

Though Dr. Charles was not in his own house he gave orders. He took Mr. James's place at the foot of the table. He made her sit at his left hand and Mamma at his right; and he slanted Mamma's chair and fixed a basket screen on its back so that she was shielded both from the fire and from the presence of the old man.

Dr. Charles talked.

"Where did you get that thin face, Miss Mary? Not in Rathdale, I'll be bound."

He looked at you with small grey eyes blinking under weak lids and bared the shark's tooth, smiling. A kind, hungry shark.

"They must have starved you at your school. No? Then they made you study too hard. Kate--what d'you think Bill Acroyd's done now? Turned this year's heifers out along of last year's with the ringworm. And asks me how I think they get it. This child doesn't eat enough to keep a mouse, Mrs. Olivier."

He would leave off talking now and then to eat, and in the silence remarkable noises would come from the armchair. When that happened Miss Kendal would look under the table and pretend that Minnie and Johnnie were fighting. "Oh, those bad pussies," she would say.

When her face kept quiet it looked dead beside the ruddy faces of the three old men; dead and very quietly, very softly decomposing into bleached purple and sallow white. Then her gaiety would come popping up again and jerk it back into life.

Mr. James sat at her corner, beside Mary. He didn't talk, but his Wellington mouth moved perpetually in and out, and his small reddish eyes twinkled, twinkled, with a shrewd, secret mirth. You thought every minute he would burst out laughing, and you wondered what you were doing to amuse him so.

Every now and then Miss Kendal would tell you something about him.

"What do you think Mr. James did to-day? He walked all the way to Garth and back again. Over nine miles!"

And Mr. James would look gratified.

Tea was over with the sacrifice of the pink and white cake. Miss Kendal took your arm again and led you, gaily, gaily back to the old man.

"Here's Miss Mary come to talk to you, Father."

She set a chair for you beside him. He turned his head slowly to you, waking out of his doze.

"What did she say your name was, my dear?"

"Olivier. Mary Olivier."

"I don't call to mind anybody of that name in the Dale. But I suppose I brought you into the world same as the rest of 'em."

Miss Kendal gave a little bound in her chair. "Does anybody know where Pussy is?"

The claw hand stirred in the red and yellow pocket-handkerchief.

"Ye've come to see the old man, have ye? Ay. Eh."

When he talked he coughed. A dreadful sound, as if he dragged up out of himself a long, rattling chain.

It hurt you to look at him. Pity hurt you.

Once he had been young, like Roddy. Then he had been middle-aged, with hanging jaw and weak eyelids, like Dr. Charles. Now he was old, old; he sat doubled up, coughing and weeping, in a chair. But you could see that Miss Kendal was proud of him. She thought him wonderful because he kept on living.

Supposing he was your father and you had to sit with him, all your life, in a room smelling of rotten apples, could you bear it? Could you bear it for a fortnight? Wouldn't you wish--wouldn't you wish--supposing Papa--all your life.

But if you couldn't bear it that would mean--

No. No. She put her hand on the arm of his chair, to protect him, to protect him from her thoughts.

The claw fingers scrabbled, groping for her hand.

"Would ye like to be an old man's bed-fellow?"

"Pussy says it isn't her bed-time yet, Father."

When you went away Miss Kendal stood on the doorstep looking after you. The last you saw of her was a soft grimace of innocent gaiety.

X.

The Vicar of Renton. He wanted to see her.

Mamma had left her in the room with him, going out with an air of self-conscious connivance.

Mr. Spencer Rollitt. Hard and handsome. Large face, square-cut, clean-shaved, bare of any accent except its eyebrows, its mouth a thin straight line hardly visible in its sunburn. Small blue eyes standing still in the sunburn, hard and cold.

When Mr. Rollitt wanted to express heartiness he had to fall back on gesture, on the sudden flash of white teeth; he drew in his breath, sharply, between the straight, close lips, with a sound: "Fivv-vv!"

She watched him. Under his small handsome nose his mouth and chin together made one steep, straight line. This lower face, flat and naked, without lips, stretched like another forehead. At the top of the real forehead, where his hat had saved his skin, a straight band, white, like a scar. Yet Mr. Spencer Rollitt's hair curled and clustered out at the back of his head in perfect innocence.

He was smiling his muscular smile, while his little hard cold eyes held her in their tight stare.

"Don't you think you would like to take a class in my Sunday School?"

"I'm afraid I wouldn't like it at all."

"Nothing to be afraid of. I should give you the infants' school."

For a long time he sat there, explaining that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that he would give her the infants' school. You felt him filling the room, crushing you back and back, forcing his will on you. There was too much of his will, too much of his face. Her will rose up against his will and against his face, and its false, muscular smile.

"I'm sure my mother didn't say I'd like to teach in a Sunday School."

"She said she'd be very glad if I could persuade you."

"She'd say that. But she knows perfectly well I wouldn't really do it."

"It was not Mrs. Olivier's idea."

He got up. When he stood his eyes stared at nothing away over your head. He wouldn't lower them to look at you.

"It was Mrs. Sutcliffe's."

"How funny of Mrs. Sutcliffe. She doesn't know me, either."

"My dear young lady, you were at school when your father and mother dined at Greffington Hall."

He was looking down at her now, and she could feel herself blushing; hot, red waves of shame, rushing up, tingling in the roots of her hair.

"Mrs. Sutcliffe," he said, "is very kind."

She saw it now. He had been at the Sutcliffes that evening. He had seen Papa. He was trying to say, "Your father was drunk at Greffington Hall. He will never be asked there again. He will not be particularly welcome at the Vicarage. But you are very young. We do not wish you to suffer. This is our kindness to you. Take it. You are not in a position to refuse."

"And what am I to say to Mrs. Sutcliffe?"

"Oh, anything you like that wouldn't sound too rude."

"Shall I say that you're a very independent young lady, and that she had better not ask you to join her sewing-class? Would that sound too rude?"

"Not a bit. If you put it nicely. But you would, wouldn't you?"

He looked down at her again. His thick eyes had thawed slightly; they let out a twinkle. But he was holding his lips so tight that they had disappeared. A loud, surprising laugh forced them open.

He held out his hand with a gesture, drawing back his laugh in a tremendous "Fiv-v-v-v."

When he had gone she opened the piano and played, and played. Through the window of the room Chopin's Fontana Polonaise went out after him, joyous, triumphant and defiant, driving him before it. She exulted in her power over the Polonaise. Nothing could touch you, nothing could hurt you while you played. If only you could go on playing for ever--

Her mother came in from the garden.

"Mary," she said, "if you will play, you must play gently."

"But Mamma--I can't. It goes like that."

"Then," said her mother, "don't play it. You can be heard all over the village."

"Bother the village. I don't care. I don't care if I'm heard all over everywhere!"

She went on playing.

But it was no use. She struck a wrong note. Her hands trembled and lost their grip. They stiffened, dropped from the keys. She sat and stared idiotically at the white page, at the black dots nodding on their stems, at the black bars swaying.

She had forgotten how to play Chopin's Fontana Polonaise.

XI.

Stone walls. A wild country, caught in the net of the stone walls.

Stone walls following the planes of the land, running straight along the valleys, switchbacking up and down the slopes. Humped-up, grey spines of the green mounds.

Stone walls, piled loosely, with the brute skill of earth-men, building centuries ago. They bulged, they toppled, yet they stood firm, holding the wild country in their mesh, knitting the grey villages to the grey farms, and the farms to the grey byres. Where you thought the net had ended it flung out a grey rope over the purple back of Renton, the green shoulder of Greffington.

Outside the village, the schoolhouse lane, a green trench sunk between stone walls, went up and up, turning three times. At the top of the last turn a gate.

When you had got through the gate you were free.

It led on to the wide, flat half-ring of moor that lay under Karva. The moor and the high mound of the hill were free; they had slipped from the net of the walls.

Broad sheep-drives cut through the moor. Inlets of green grass forked into purple heather. Green streamed through purple, lapped against purple, lay on purple in pools and splashes.

Burnt patches. Tongues of heather, twisted and pointed, picked clean by fire, flickering grey over black earth. Towards evening the black and grey ran together like ink and water, stilled into purple, the black purple of grapes.

If you shut your eyes you could see the flat Essex country spread in a thin film over Karva. Thinner and thinner. But you could remember what it had been like. Low, tilled fields, thin trees; sharp, queer, uncertain beauty. Sharp, queer, uncertain happiness, coming again and again, never twice to the same place in the same way. It hurt you when you remembered it.

The beauty of the hills was not like that. It stayed. It waited for you, keeping faith. Day after day, night after night, it was there.

Happiness was there. You were sure of it every time. Roddy's uneasy eyes, Papa's feet, shuffling in the passage, Mamma's disapproving, remembering face, the Kendals' house, smelling of rotten apples, the old man, coughing and weeping in his chair, they couldn't kill it; they couldn't take it away.

The mountain sheep waited for you. They stood back as you passed, staring at you with their look of wonder and sadness.

Grouse shot up from your feet with a "Rek-ek-ek-kek!" in sudden, explosive flight.

Plovers rose, wheeling round and round you with sharper and sharper cries of agitation. "Pee-vit--pee-vit--pee-vit! Pee-vitt;" They swooped, suddenly close, close to your eyes; you heard the drumming vibration of their wings.

Away in front a line of sheep went slowly up and up Karva. The hill made their bleating mournful and musical.

You slipped back into the house. In the lamp-lighted drawing-room the others sat, bored and tired, waiting for prayer-time. They hadn't noticed how long you had been gone.

XII.

"Roddy, I wish you'd go and see where your father is."

Roddy looked up from his sketch-book. He had filled it with pictures of cavalry on plunging chargers, trains of artillery rushing into battle, sailing ships in heavy seas.

Roddy's mind was possessed by images of danger and adventure.

He flourished off the last wave of battle-smoke, and shut the sketch-book with a snap.

Mamma knew perfectly well where Papa was. Roddy knew. Catty and Maggie the cook knew. Everybody in the village knew. Regularly, about six o'clock in the evening, he shuffled out of the house and along the High Row to the Buck Hotel, and towards dinner-time Roddy had to go and bring him back. Everybody knew what he went for.

He would have to hold Papa tight by the arm and lead him over the cobblestones. They would pass the long bench at the corner under the Kendals' wall; and Mr. Oldshaw, the banker, and Mr. Horn, the grocer, and Mr. Acroyd, the shoemaker, would be sitting there talking to Mr. Belk, who was justice of the peace. And they would see Papa. The young men squatting on the flagstones outside the "Farmer's Arms" and the "King's Head" would see him. And Papa would stiffen and draw himself up, trying to look dignified and sober.

When he was very bad Mamma would cry, quietly, all through dinner-time. But she would never admit that he went to the Buck Hotel. He had just gone off nobody knew where and Roddy had got to find him.

August, September and October passed.