Mary Olivier: a Life Part 48

Happiness was there. You were sure of it every time. Roddy's uneasy eyes, Papa's feet, shuffling in the pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sed, 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 pa.s.s 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 n.o.body knew where and Roddy had got to find him.

August, September and October pa.s.sed.

XIII.

"Didn't I tell you to wait? You know them all now. You see what they're like."

In Roddy's voice there was a sort of tired, bitter triumph.

She knew them all now: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, and the Kendals; Mr.

Spencer Rollitt, and Miss Louisa Wright who had had a disappointment; and old Mrs. Heron. They were all old.

Oh, and there was Dorsy Heron, Mrs. Heron's niece. But Dorsy was old too, twenty-seven. She was no good; she couldn't talk to Roddy; she could only look at him with bright, shy eyes, like a hare.

Roddy and Mary were going up the Garthdale road. At the first turn they saw Mrs. Waugh and her son coming towards them. (She had forgotten Norman Waugh.)

Rodney groaned. "_He's_ here again. I say, let's go back."

"We can't. They've seen us."

"Everybody sees us," Roddy said.

He began to walk with a queer, defiant, self-conscious jerk.

Mrs. Waugh came on, buoyantly, as if the hoop of a crinoline still held her up.

"Well, Mary, going for another walk?"

She stopped, in a gracious mood to show off her son. When she looked at Roddy her raised eyebrows said, "Still here, doing nothing?"

"Norman's going back to work on Monday," she said.

The son stood aside, uninterested, impatient, staring past them, beating the road with his stick. He was thickset and square. He had the stooping head and heavy eyes of a bull. Black hair and eyebrows grew bushily from his dull-white Frewin skin.

He would be an engineer. Mr. Belk's brother had taken him into his works at Durlingham. He wasn't seventeen, yet he knew how to make engines. He had a strong, lumbering body. His heart would go on thump-thumping with regular strokes, like a stupid piston, not like Roddy's heart, excited, quivering, hurrying, suddenly checking. His eyes drew his mother away.

You were glad when they were gone.

"You can see what they think," Roddy said. "Everybody thinks it."

"Everybody thinks what?"

"That I'm a cad to be sticking here, doing nothing, living on Mamma's money."

"It doesn't matter. They've no business to think."

"No. But Mamma thinks it. She says I ought to get something to do. She talks about Mark and Dan. She can't see--" He stopped, biting his lip.

"If I were like Mark--if I could do things. That beast Norman Waugh can do things. He doesn't live on his mother's money. She sees that....

"She doesn't know what's the matter with me. She thinks it's only my heart. And it isn't. It's me. I'm an idiot. I can't even do office work like Dan.... She thinks I'll be all right if I go away far enough, where she won't see me. Mind you, I _should_ be all right if I'd gone into the Navy. She knows if I hadn't had that beastly rheumatic fever I'd have been in the Navy or the Merchant Service now. It's all rot not pa.s.sing you. As if walking about on a ship's deck was worse for your heart than digging in a garden. It certainly couldn't be worse than farming in Canada."

"Farming? In Canada?"

"That's her idea. It'll kill me to do what _I_ want. It won't kill me to do what _she_ wants."

He brooded.

"Mark did what he wanted. He went away and left her. Brute as I am, I wouldn't have done that. She doesn't know that's why I'm sticking here. I _can't_ leave her. I'd rather die."

Roddy too. He had always seemed to go his own way without caring, living his secret life, running, jumping, grinning at you. And he, too, was compelled to adore Mark and yet to cling helplessly, hopelessly, to Mamma. When he said things about her he was struggling against her, trying to free himself. He flung himself off and came back, to cling harder. And he was nineteen.

"After all," he said, "why shouldn't I stay? It's not as if I didn't dig in the garden and look after Papa. If I went she'd have to get somebody."

"I thought you wanted to go?" she said.

"So I did. So I do, for some things. But when it comes to the point--"

"When it comes to the point?"

"I funk it."