Mary Olivier: a Life Part 75

"No. _He_ was all right. That beastly woman."

"What woman?"

"His aunt. She didn't want me there. I wasn't fit for anything but driving cattle and cleaning out their stinking pigsties.... She used to look at me when I was eating. You could see she was thinking 'He isn't worth his keep.' ... Her mouth had black teeth in it, with horrible gummy gaps between. The women were like that. I wanted to hit her on the mouth and smash her teeth.... But of course I couldn't."

"It's all over. You mustn't think about it."

"I'm not. I'm thinking about the other thing.... The thing I did. And the dog, Mary; the dog."

She knew what was coming.

"You can't imagine what that place was like. Their sheep-run was miles from the farm. Miles from anything. You had to take it in turns to sleep there a month at a time, in a beastly hut. You couldn't sleep because of that dog. Jem _would_ give him me. He yapped. You had to put him in the shed to keep him from straying. He yapped all night. The yapping was the only sound there was. It tore pieces out of your brain.... I didn't think I could hate a dog.... But I did hate him. I simply couldn't stand the yapping. And one night I got up and hung him. I hung him."

"You didn't, Roddy. You know you didn't. The first time you told me that story you said you found him hanging. Don't you remember? He was a bad dog. He bit the sheep. Jem's uncle hung him."

"No. It was me. Do you know what he did? He licked my hands when I was tying the rope round his neck. He played with my hands. He was a yellow dog with a white breast and white paws.... And that isn't the worst. That isn't It."

"It?"

"The other thing. What I did.... I haven't told you that. You couldn't stand me if you knew. It was why I had to go. Somebody must have known.

Jem must have known."

"I don't believe you did anything. Anything at all."

"I tell you I did."

"No, Roddy. You only think you did. You only think you hung the dog."

They got up out of the pit. They took the track to the schoolhouse lane.

A sheep staggered from its bed and stalked away, bleating, with head thrown back and shaking b.u.t.tocks. Plovers got up, wheeling round, sweeping close. "_Pee_-vit--_Pee_-vit. Pee-_vitt_!"

"This d.a.m.ned place is full of noises," Roddy said.

VIII.

"The mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or images of things may be referred to the idea of G.o.d."

The book stood open before her on the kitchen table, propped against the scales. As long as you were only stripping the strings from the French beans you could read.

The mind can bring it about. The mind can bring it about. "He who clearly and distinctly understands himself and his emotions loves G.o.d, and so much the more in proportion as he more understands himself and his emotions."

Fine slices of French beans fell from the knife, one by one, into the bowl of clear water. Spinoza's thought beat its way out through the smell of steel, the clean green smell of the cut beans, the crusty, spicy smell of the apple pie you had made. "He who loves G.o.d cannot endeavour that G.o.d should love him in return."

"'Shall we gather at the river--'" Catty sang as she went to and fro between the kitchen and the scullery. Catty was happy now that Maggie had gone and she had only you and Jesus with her in the kitchen. Through the open door you could hear the clack of the hatchet and the thud on the stone flags as Roddy, with slow, sorrowful strokes, chopped wood in the backyard.

"Miss Mary--" Catty's thick, loving voice and the jerk of her black eyes warned her.

Mamma looked in at the door.

"Put that book away," she said. She hated the two brown volumes of Elwes's Spinoza you had bought for your birthday. "The dinner will be ruined if you read."

"It'll be ruined if I don't read."

For then your mind raged over the saucepans and the fragrant, floury pasteboard, hungry and unfed. It couldn't bring anything about. It s.n.a.t.c.hed at the minutes left over from Roddy and the house and Mamma and the piano. You knew what every day would be like. You would get up early to practise. When the cooking and the housework was done Roddy would want you. You would play tennis together with Mr. Sutcliffe and Dorsy Heron.

Or you would go up on to the moors and comfort Roddy while he talked about the "things" he had done in Canada and about getting away and about the dog. You would say over and over again, "You know you didn't hang him. It was Jem's uncle. He was a bad dog. He bit the sheep." In the winter evenings you would sew or play or read aloud to Mamma and Roddy, and Roddy would crouch over the fender, with his hands stretched out to the fire, not listening.

But Roddy was better. The wind whipped red blood into his cheeks. He said he would be well if it wasn't for the bleating of the sheep, and the crying of the peewits and the shouting of the d.a.m.ned villagers. And people staring at him. He would be well if he could get away.

Then--he would be well if he could marry Dorsy.

So the first year pa.s.sed. And the second. And the third year. She was five and twenty. She thought: "I shall die before I'm fifty. I've lived half my life and done nothing."

IX.

Old Dr. Kendal was dead. He had had nothing more to live for. He had beaten Mr. Peac.o.c.k of Sarrack. Miss Kendal was wearing black ribbons in her cap instead of pink. And Maggie's sister was dead of her cancer.

The wall at the bottom of the garden had fallen down and Roddy had built it up again.

He had heaved up the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason, couldn't have built a better wall.

It had all happened in the week when she was ill and went to stay with Aunt Lavvy at Scarborough. Yesterday evening, when she got home, Roddy had come in out of the garden to meet her. He was in his shirt sleeves; gla.s.s beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, his face was white with excitement. He had just put the last dab of mortar to the last stone.

In the blue and white morning Mary and her mother stood in the garden, looking at the wall. In its setting of clean white cement, Roddy's bit showed like the map of South Africa. They were waiting for him to come down to breakfast.

"I must say," Mamma said, "he's earned his extra half-hour in bed."

She was pleased because Roddy had built the wall up and because he was well again.

They had turned. They were walking on the flagged path by the flower-border under the house. Mamma walked slowly, with meditative pauses, and bright, sidelong glances for her flowers.

"If only," she said, "he could work without trampling the flowers down."

The sun was shining on the flagged path. Mamma was stooping over the bed; she had lifted the stalk of the daffodil up out of the sunk print of Roddy's boot. Catty was coming down the house pa.s.sage to the side door.

Her mouth was open. Her eyes stared above her high, sallow cheeks. She stood on the doorstep, saying something in a husky voice.

"Miss Mary--will you go upstairs to Master Roddy? I think there's something the matter with him. I think--"

Upstairs, in his narrow iron bed, Roddy lay on his back, his lips parted, his eyes--white slits under half-open lids--turned up to the ceiling. His arms were squared stiffly above his chest as they had pushed back the bedclothes. The hands had been clenched and unclenched; the fingers still curled in towards the palms. His face had a look of innocence and candour.

Catty's thick, wet voice soaked through his mother's crying. "Miss Mary--he went in his first sleep. His hair's as smooth as smooth."

X.

She was alone with Dan in the funeral carriage.

Her heart heaved and dragged with the grinding of the brakes on the hill; the brake of the hea.r.s.e going in front; the brake of their carriage; the brake of the one that followed with Dr. Charles in it.