Mary Olivier: a Life Part 40

"No. None."

"You don't like him, Aunt Lavvy."

"No, Mary, I do not. And I don't know anybody who does."

"I like him," Mary said.

Aunt Lavvy looked as if she hadn't heard. "I oughtn't to have let you see Aunt Charlotte."

V.

Mary woke up suddenly. It was her third night in the spare room at Five Elms.

She had dreamed that she saw Aunt Charlotte standing at the foot of the bas.e.m.e.nt stairs, by the cat's cupboard where the kittens were born, taking her clothes off and hiding them. She had seen that before. When she was six years old. She didn't know whether she had been dreaming about something that had really happened, or about a dream. Only, this time, she saw Aunt Charlotte open her mouth and scream. The scream woke her.

She remembered her mother and Aunt Bertha in the drawing-room, talking, their faces together. That wasn't a dream.

There was a sound of feet overhead. Uncle Victor's room. A sound of a door opening and shutting. And then a scream, m.u.f.fled by the shut door.

Her heart checked; turned sickeningly. She hadn't dreamed that.

Uncle Victor shouted down the stair to Dan. She could hear Dan's feet in the next room and his door opening.

The screaming began again: "I-ihh! I-ihh! I-ihh!" Up and up, tearing your brain. Then: "Aah-a-o-oh!" Tearing your heart out. "Aa-h-a-o-oh!" and "Ahh-ahh!" Short and sharp.

She threw off the bed-clothes, and went out to the foot of the stairs.

The cries had stopped. There was a sound of feet staggering and shuffling. Somebody being carried.

Dan came back down the stair. His trousers were drawn up over his night-shirt, the braces hanging. He was sucking the back of his hand and spitting the blood out on to his sleeve.

"Dan--was that Aunt Charlotte?"

"Yes."

"Was it pain?"

"No." He was out of breath. She could see his night-shirt shake with the beating of his heart.

"Have you hurt your hand?"

"No."

"Can I do anything?"

"No. Go back to bed. She's all right now."

She went back. Presently she heard him leave his room and go upstairs again. The bolt of the front door squeaked; then the hinge of the gate.

Somebody going out. She fell asleep.

The sound of hoofs and wheels woke her. The room was light. She got up and went to the open window. Dr. Draper's black brougham stood at the gate.

The sun blazed, tree-high, on the flat mangold field across the road. The green leaves had the cold glitter of wet, pointed metal. To the north-east a dead smear of dawn. The brougham didn't look like itself, standing still in that unearthly light. As if it were taking part in a funeral, the funeral of some dreadful death. She put on her dressing-gown and waited, looking out. She _had_ to look. Downstairs the hall clock struck a half-hour.

The front door opened. Britton came out first. Then Aunt Charlotte, between Uncle Victor and Dr. Draper. They were holding her up by her arm-pits, half leading, half pushing her before them. Her feet made a brushing noise on the flagstones.

They lifted her into the brougham and placed themselves one on each side of her. Then Britton got in, and they drove off.

A string of white tulle lay on the garden path.

END OF BOOK THREE

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 Ess.e.x 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 gra.s.s, a green bloom on the grey face of the hill. Above the thin gra.s.s 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.