Mary Olivier: a Life Part 18

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 G.o.d. G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d's son, and he had propitiated G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d. G.o.d 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 G.o.d didn't belong to them. He didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if G.o.d was love, and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all, there were two G.o.ds; one who made things and loved them, and one who didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind G.o.d had made.

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

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 G.o.ddess, 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 thala.s.ses"; that was better. "Don't you think so, Mark?"

"Clever Minx. Much better."

"Mark--if G.o.d 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 _Cla.s.sical 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 b.u.t.toned 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 G.o.ds 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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses. What Pinnock didn't tell you you found out from Smith's _Cla.s.sical 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 G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses 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 G.o.ds. 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 n.o.body 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.