Mary Olivier: a Life Part 42

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 pa.s.sage 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 gra.s.s-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 pa.s.sage turned to the left behind the drawing-room. Gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage; 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 G.o.d, 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 coa.r.s.e wool, sc.r.a.ping 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 pa.s.sage. 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 pa.s.sed 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'."