Mary Olivier: a Life Part 67

II.

The big package in the hall had been opened. The tiger's skin lay on the drawing-room carpet.

Mark was sorry for the tiger.

"He was only a young cat. You'd have loved him, Minky, if you'd seen him, with his shoulders down--very big cat--shaking his haunches at you, and his eyes shining and playing; cat's eyes, sort of swimming and shaking with his fun."

"How did you feel?"

"Beastly mean to go and shoot him when he was happy and excited."

"Five years without any fighting.... Anything else happen?"

"No. No polo. No fighting. Only a mutiny in the battery once."

"What was it like?"

"Oh, it just tumbled into the office and yelled and waved jabby things and made faces at you till you nearly burst with laughing."

"You laughed?" Mamma said. "At a mutiny?"

"Anybody would. Minky'd have laughed if she'd been there. It frightened them horribly because they didn't expect it. The poor things never know when they're being funny."

"What happened," said Mary, "to the mutiny?"

"That."

"Oh--Mark--" She adored him.

She went to bed, happy, thinking of the tiger and the mutiny. When Catty called her in the morning she jumped out of bed, quickly, to begin another happy day. Everything was going to be interesting, to be exciting.

At any minute anything might happen, now that Mark had come home.

III.

"Mark, are you coming?"

She was tired of waiting on the flagstones, swinging her stick. She called through the house for him to come. She looked through the rooms, and found him in the study with Mamma. When they saw her they stopped talking suddenly, and Mamma drew herself up and blinked.

Mark shook his head. After all, he couldn't come.

Mamma wanted him. Mamma had him. As long as they lived she would have him. Mamma and Mark were happy together; their happiness tingled, you could feel it tingling, like the happiness of lovers. They didn't want anybody but each other. You existed for them as an object in some unintelligible time and in a s.p.a.ce outside their s.p.a.ce. The only difference was that Mark knew you were there and Mamma didn't.

She chose the Garthdale road. Yesterday she had gone that way with Mamma and Mark. She had not talked to him, for when she talked the pinched, vexed look came into Mamma's face though she pretended she hadn't heard you. Every now and then Mark had looked at her over his shoulder and said, "Poor Minx." It was as if he said, "I'm sorry, but you see how it is. I can't help it."

And just here, where the moor track touched the road, she had left them, clearing the water-courses, and had gone up towards Karva.

She had looked back and seen them going slowly towards the white sickle of the road, Mark very upright, taut muscles held in to his shortened stride; Mamma pathetic and fragile, in her shawl, moving with a stiff, self-hypnotised air.

Her love for them was a savage pang that cut her eyes and drew her throat tight.

Then suddenly she had heard Mark whooping, and she had run back, whooping and leaping, down the hill to walk with them again.

She turned back now, at the sickle. Perhaps Mark would come to meet her.

He didn't come. She found them sitting close on the drawing-room sofa; the tea-table was pushed aside; they were looking at Mark's photographs.

She came and stood by them to see.

Mark didn't look up or say anything. He went on giving the photographs to Mamma, telling her the names. "d.i.c.ky Carter. Man called St. John. Man called Bibby--Jonas Bibby. Allingham. Peters. Gunning, Stobart Hamilton.

Sir George Limond, Colonel Robertson."

Photographs of women. Mamma's fingers twitched as she took them, one by one. Women with smooth hair and correct, distinguished faces. She looked at each face a long time; her mouth half-smiled, half-pouted at them. She didn't hand on the photographs to you, but laid them down on the sofa, one by one, as if you were not there.

A youngish woman in a black silk gown; Mrs. Robertson, the Colonel's wife. A girl in a white frock; Mrs. d.i.c.ky Carter, she had nursed Mark through his fever. A tall woman in a riding habit and a solar topee, standing very straight, looking very straight at you, under the shadow of the topee. Mamma didn't mind the others so much, but she was afraid of this one. There was danger under the shadow of the topee.

"Lady Limond." Mark had stayed with them at Simla.

"Oh. Very handsome face."

"Very handsome."

You could see by Mark's face that he didn't care about Lady Limond.

Mamma had turned again to the girl in the white frock who had nursed him.

"Are those all, Mark?"

"Those are all."

She took off her gla.s.ses and closed her eyes. Her face was smooth now: her hands were quiet. She had him. She would always have him.

But when he went away for a fortnight to stay with the man called St.

John, she was miserable till he had come back, safe.

IV.

Whit Sunday morning. She would walk home with Mark after church while Mamma stayed behind for the Sacrament.

But it didn't happen. Mark scowled as he turned out into the aisle to make way for her. He went back into the pew and sat there, looking stiff and stubborn. He would go up with Mamma to the altar rails. He would eat the bread and drink the wine.

That afternoon she took her book into the garden. Mark came to her there.

Mamma, tired with the long service, dozed in the drawing-room.

Mark read over her shoulder: "'Wir haben in der Transcendentalen Aesthetik hinreichend bewiesen.' Do it in English."

"'In the Transcendental Aesthetic we have sufficiently proved that all that is perceived in s.p.a.ce or time, and with it all objects of any experience possible to us are mere Vorstellungen--Vorstellungen-- ideas--presentations, which, so far as they are presented, whether as extended things or series of changes, have no existence grounded in themselves outside our thoughts--'"