And Mrs. Farmer's soft drawl spinning out the theme: "And a resident plumber. Yes, Mrs. Olivier, you really wou-ould."

Mr. and Mrs. Farmer had called and stayed to tea. Across the room you could see his close, hatchet nose and straggly beard. Every now and then his small, greenish eyes lifted and looked at you.

Impossible that you had ever enjoyed going to Mrs. Farmer's to see the baby. It was like something that had happened to somebody else, a long time ago. Mrs. Farmer was always having babies, and always asking you to go and see them. She couldn't understand that as you grew older you left off caring about babies.

"'—We are such stuff As dreams are made of—'"

"The Bishop—Confirmation—opportunity."

Even Mamma owned that Mr. Farmer never knew when it was time to go.

"'As dreams are made of, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep—'"

The universe is nothing but the spectacle of the dreams of God. Or was it the thoughts of God?

"Confirmation—Parish Church—Bishop—"

Confirmation. She had seen a Confirmation once, years ago. Girls in white dresses and long white veils, like brides, shining behind the square black windows of the broughams. Dora and Effie Draper. Effie leaned forward. Her pretty, piercing face looked out through the black pane, not seeing anything, trying greedily to be seen. Big boys and girls knelt down in rows before the Bishop, and his sleeves went flapping up and down over them like bolsters in the wind.

Mr. Farmer was looking at her again, as if he had an idea in his head.

IX.

The Church Service was open at the Thirty-Nine Articles. Mamma had pushed Dr. Smith's "History of England" away.

"Do you think," she said, "you could say the Catechism and the Athanasian Creed straight through without stopping?"

"I daresay I could if I tried. Why?"

"Because Mr. Farmer will want to examine you."

"Whatever for?"

"Because," her mother said, "there's going to be a Confirmation. It's time you were thinking about being confirmed."

"Confirmed? Me?"

"And why not you?"

"Well—I haven't got to be, have I?"

"You will have, sooner or later. So you may as well begin to think about it now."

Confirmation. She had never thought about it as a real thing that might happen to her, that would happen, sooner or later, if she didn't do something to stop Mr. Farmer and Mamma.

"I am thinking. I'm thinking tight."

Tight. Tight. Her mind, in agony, pinned itself to one point: how she could stop her mother without telling her.

Beyond that point she couldn't see clearly.

"You see—you see—I don't want to be confirmed."

"You don't want? You might as well say you didn't want to be a Christian."

"Don't worry, Mamma darling. I only want to stay as I am."

"I must worry. I'm responsible for you as long as you're not confirmed. You forget that I'm your godmother as well as your mother."

She had forgotten it. And Papa and Uncle Victor were her godfathers. "What did your godfathers and godmothers then for you?—They did promise and vow three things in my name—" they had actually done it. "First: that I should renounce"—renounce—renounce—"Secondly: that I should believe all the Articles of the Christian Faith—"

The Christian Faith—the Catholic Faith. "Which Faith except everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly"—

—"And the Catholic Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity."

They had promised and vowed all that. In her name. What right had they? What right had they?

"You're not a baby any more," her mother said.

"That's what I mean. I was a baby when you went and did it. I knew nothing about it. You can't make me responsible."

"It's we who are responsible," her mother said.

"I mean for your vows and promises, Mamma darling. If you'll let me off my responsibility I'll let you off yours."

"Now," her mother said, "you're prevaricating."

"That means you'll never let me off. If I don't do it now I'll have to do it next year, or the next?"

"You may feel more seriously about it next year. Or next week," her mother said. "Meanwhile you'll learn the Thirty-Nine Articles. Read them through first."

"—'Nine. Of Original or Birth-sin. Original Sin ... is the fault and corruption of the Nature of every man ... whereby man is far gone from original righteousness and is of his own nature inclined to evil, so that the flesh lusteth always contrary to the spirit; and therefore in every person born into this world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation.'"

"Don't look like that," her mother said, "as if your wits were wool-gathering."

"Wool?" She could see herself smiling at her mother, disagreeably.

Wool-gathering. Gathering wool. The room was full of wool; wool flying about; hanging in the air and choking you. Clogging your mind. Old grey wool out of pew cushions that people had sat on for centuries, full of dirt.

Wool, spun out, wound round you, woven in a net. You were tangled and strangled in a net of unclean wool. They caught you in it when you were a baby a month old. Mamma, Papa and Uncle Victor. You would have to cut and tug and kick and fight your way out. They were caught in it themselves, they couldn't get out. They didn't want to get out. The wool stopped their minds working. They hated it when their minds worked, when anybody's mind worked. Aunt Lavvy's—yours.

"'Thirteen. Of Works before Justification. Works done before the grace of Christ, and the Inspiration of His Spirit, are not pleasant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ...: yea, rather, for that they are not done as God hath willed and commanded them to be done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin.'"

"Do you really believe that, Mamma?"

"Of course I believe it. All our righteousness is filthy rags."

—People's goodness. People's kindness. The sweet, beautiful things they did for each other. The brave, noble things, the things Mark did: filthy rags.

This—this religion of theirs—was filthy; ugly, like the shiny black covers of their Bibles where their fingers left a grey, greasy smear. Filthy and frightful; like funerals. You might as well be buried alive, five coffins deep in a pit of yellow clay.

Mamma couldn't really believe it. You would have to tell her it wasn't true. Not telling her meant that you didn't think she cared about the truth. You insulted her if you supposed she didn't care. Mark would say you insulted her. Even if it hurt her a bit at first, you insulted her if you thought she couldn't bear it. And afterwards she would be happy, because she would be free.

"It's no use, Mamma. I shan't ever want to be confirmed."

"Want—want—want! You ought to want, then. You say you believe the Christian Faith—"

Now—now. A clean quick cut. No jagged ends hanging.

"That's it. I don't believe a single word of it."

She couldn't look at her mother. She didn't want to see her cry.

"You've found that out, have you? You've been mighty quick about it."

"I found it out ages ago. But I didn't mean to tell you."

Her mother was not crying.

"You needn't tell me now," she said. "You don't suppose I'm going to believe it?"

Not crying. Smiling. A sort of cunning and triumphant smile.

"You just want an excuse for not learning those Thirty-Nine Articles."



XIV

I.

Mamma was crying.

Papa had left the dining-room. Mary sat at the foot of the table, and her mother at the head. The space between was covered and piled with Mark's kit: the socks, the pocket-handkerchiefs, the vests, the fine white pyjamas. The hanging white globes of the gaselier shone on them. All day Mary had been writing "M.E. Olivier, M.E. Olivier," in clear, hard letters, like print. The iridescent ink was grey on the white linen and lawn, black when you stamped with the hot iron: M.E. Olivier. Mamma was embroidering M.E.O. in crimson silk on a black sock.

Mark was in the Army now; in the Royal Field Artillery. He was going to India. In two weeks, before the middle of April, he would be gone. They had known this so long that now and then they could forget it; they could be glad that Mark should have all those things, so many more, and more beautiful, than he had ever had. They were appeased with their labour of forming, over and over again, the letters, clear and perfect, of his name.

Then Papa had come in and said that Dan was not going to live at home any more. He had taken rooms in Bloomsbury with young Vickers.

Dan had not gone to Cambridge when he left Chelmsted, as Mamma had intended. There hadn't been enough money.

Uncle Victor had paid for Mark's last year at Woolwich and for his outfit now. Some day Mamma would pay him back again.

Dan had gone first into Papa's office; then into Uncle Edward's office. He was in Uncle Victor's office now. Sometimes he didn't get home till after midnight. Sometimes when you went into his room to call him in the morning he wasn't there; but there were the bed-clothes turned down as Catty had left them, with his nightshirt folded on the top.

Her mother said: "I hope you're content now you've finished your work."

"My work?" her father said.

"Yes, yours. You couldn't rest till you'd got the poor boy out of your office, and now you've turned him out of the house. I suppose you thought that with Mark going you'd better make a clean sweep. It'll be Roddy next."

"I didn't turn him out of the house. But it was about time he went. The young cub's temper is getting unbearable."

"I daresay. You ruined Dan's temper with your silly tease—tease—tease—from morning till night. You can't see a dog without wanting to make it snap and snarl. It was the same with all the children. And when they turned you bullied them. Just because you couldn't break Mark's spirit you tried to crush Dan's. It's a wonder he has any temper left."

Emilius stroked his beard.

"That's right. Stroke your beard as if nothing mattered but your pleasure. You'll be happy enough when Mark's gone."

Emilius left off stroking his beard.

"You say I turned him out of the office," he said. "Did he stay with Edward?"

"Nobody could stay with Edward. You couldn't yourself."

"Ask Victor how long he thinks he'll keep him."

"What do you mean, Emilius?"

He didn't answer. He stood there, his lips pouting between his moustache and beard, his eyes smiling wickedly, as if he had just found out he could torment her more by not saying what he meant.

"If Dan went to the bad," she said, "I wouldn't blame him. It would serve you right.

"Unless," she added, "that's what you want."

And she began to cry.

She cried as a child cries, with spasms of sobbing, her pretty mouth spoiled, stretched wide, working, like india-rubber; dull red blotches creeping up to the brown stains about her eyes. Her tears splashed on to the fine, black silk web of the sock and sparkled there.

Emilius had gone from the room, leaving the door open. Mary got up and shut it. She stood, hesitating. The helpless sobbing drew her, frightened her, stirred her to exasperation that was helpless too. Her mother had never been more intolerably dear.

She went to her. She put her arm round her.

"Don't, Mamma darling. Why do you let him torture you? He didn't turn Dan out of the office. He let him go because he can't afford to pay him enough."

"I know that as well as you," her mother said surprisingly.

She drew herself from the protecting arm.

"Well, then—But, oh, what a brute he is. What a brute!"

"For shame to talk that way of your father. You've no right. You're the one that always goes scot-free."

And, beginning to cry again, she rose and went out, grasping Mark's sock in her convulsive hand.

"Mary, did you hear your mother say I bullied you?"

Her father had come back into the room.

"Yes," she said.

"Have I ever bullied you?"

She looked at him steadily.

"No. You would have done if Mamma had loved me as much as she loves Mark. I wish you had. I wish you'd bullied the life out of me. I shouldn't have cared. I wish you'd hated me. Then I should have known she loved me."

He looked at her in silence, with round, startled eyes. He understood.

II.

"Ubique—"

The gunner's motto. Mark's motto, stamped on all the letters he would write. A blue gun on a blue gun-carriage, the muzzle pointing to the left. The motto waving underneath:

"UBIQUE."

At soldiers' funerals the coffin was carried on a gun-carriage and covered with a flag.

"Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt." All through the excitement of the evening it went on sounding in her head.

It was Mark's coming of age party in the week before he went. The first time she could remember being important at a party. Her consciousness of being important was intense, exquisite. She was Sub-Lieutenant Mark Olivier's sister. His only one.

And, besides, she looked nice.

Last year's white muslin, ironed out, looked as good as new. The blue sash really was new; and Mamma had lent her one of her necklets, a turquoise heart on a thin gold chain. In the looking-glass she could see her eyes shining under her square brown fringe: spots of gold darting through brown crystal. Her brown hair shone red on the top and gold underneath. The side pieces, rolled above her ears and plaited behind, made a fillet for her back hair. Her back hair was too short. She tried to make it reach to her waist by pulling the curled tips straight; but they only sprang back to her shoulder-blades again. It was unfortunate.

Catty, securing the wonderful fillet with a blue ribbon told her not to be unhappy. She would "do."

Mamma was beautiful in her lavender-grey silk and her black jet cross with the diamond star. They all had to stand together, a little behind her, near the door, and shake hands with the people as they came in. Mary was surprised that they should shake hands with her before they shook hands with Mark; it didn't seem right, somehow, when it was his birthday.

Everybody had come except Aunt Charlotte; even Mr. Marriott, though he was supposed to be afraid of parties. (You couldn't ask Aunt Charlotte because of Mr. Marriott.) There were the two Manistys, looking taller and leaner than ever. And there was Mrs. Draper with Dora and Effie. Mrs. Draper, black hawk's eyes in purple rings; white powder over crushed carmines; a black wing of hair folded over grey down. Effie's pretty, piercing face; small head poised to strike. Dora, a young likeness of Mrs. Draper, an old likeness of Effie, pretty when Effie wasn't there.

When they looked at you you saw that your muslin was not as good as new. When they looked at Mamma you saw that her lavender silk was old-fashioned and that nobody wore black jet crosses now. You were frilly and floppy when everybody else was tight and straight in Princess dresses.

Mamma was more beautiful than Mrs. Draper; and her hair, anyhow, was in the fashion, parted at the side, a soft brown wing folded over her left ear.

But that made her look small and pathetic—a wounded bird. She ought not to have been made to look like that.

You could hear Dora and Effie being kind to Mamma. "Dear Mrs. Olivier"—Indulgence—Condescension. As if to an unfortunate and rather foolish person. Mark could see that. He was smiling: a hard, angry smile.

Mrs. Draper was Mamma's dearest friend. They could sit and talk to each other about nothing for hours together. In the holidays Mrs. Draper used to be always coming over to talk to Mamma, always bringing Dora and Effie with her, always asking Mark and Dan and Roddy to her house, always wondering why Mark never went.

Dan went. Dan seemed as if he couldn't keep away.

This year Mrs. Draper had left off asking Mark and Dan and Roddy. She had left off bringing Dora and Effie with her.

Mary wondered why she had brought them now, and why her mother had asked them.

The Manistys. She had brought them for the Manistys. She wanted Mamma to see what she had brought them for. And Mamma had asked them because she didn't care, and wanted them to see that she didn't care, and that Mark didn't care either.

If they only knew how Mark detested them with their "Dear Mrs. Olivier"!

Something was going on. She heard Uncle Victor saying to Aunt Lavvy, "Mark's party is a bit rough on Dan."

Dan was trying to get to Effie through a gap in the group formed by the Manistys and two young subalterns, Mark's friends. Each time he did it Mrs. Draper stopped him by moving somehow so as to fill the gap. He gave it up at last, to sit by himself at the bottom of the room, jammed into a corner between the chimney-piece and the rosewood cabinet, where he stared at Effie with hot, unhappy eyes.

Supper. Mamma was worried about the supper. She would have liked to have given them a nicer one, but there wasn't enough money; besides, she was afraid of what Uncle Victor would think if they were extravagant. That was the worst of borrowing, Mark said; you couldn't spend so much afterwards. Still, there was enough wine yet in the cellar for fifty parties. You could see, now, some advantage in Papa's habit of never drinking any but the best wine and laying in a large stock of it while he could.

Mary noticed that Papa and Dan drank the most. Perhaps Dan drank more than Papa. The smell of wine was over all the supper, spoiling it, sending through her nerves a reminiscent shiver of disgust.

Mark brought her back into the dining-room for the ice she hadn't had. Dan was there, by himself, sitting in the place Effie had just left. Effie's glass had still some wine in it. You could see him look for the wet side of the rim and suck the drops that had touched her mouth. Something small and white was on the floor beside him. Effie's pocket-handkerchief. He stooped for it. You could hear him breathing up the scent on it with big, sighing sobs.

They slunk back into the drawing-room.

Mark asked her to play something.

"Make a noise, Minky. Perhaps they'll go."

"The Hungarian March." She could play it better than Mamma. Mamma never could see that the bass might be even more important than the treble. She was glad that she could play it better than Mamma, and she hated herself for being glad.

Mark stood by the piano and looked at her as she played. They talked under cover of the "Droom—Droom—Droom-era-room."

"Mark, am I looking too awful?"

"No. Pretty Minx. Very pretty Minx."

"We mustn't, Mark. They'll hear us. They'll think us idiots."

"I don't care if they do. Don't you wish they'd go? Clever Minx. Clever paws."

Mamma passed and looked at them. Her face shrank and sharpened under the dropped wing of her hair. She must have heard what Mark said. She hated it when Mark talked and looked like that. She hated it when you played her music.

Beethoven, then. The "Sonata Eroica" was bound up with "Violetta," the "Guards" and "Mabel" Waltzes and the "Pluie des Perles."

"Ubique quo fas et gloria ducunt." That was the meaning of the noble, serious, passionate music.

Roddy called out, "Oh, not that dull old thing."

No. Not that. There was the Funeral March in it: sulle morte d'un eroe. Mark was going away.

"Waldteufel," then. One—two—three. One—two—three. Sustained thrum in the bass. One—two—three. Thursday—Friday—One—two—three. Saturday—Sunday. Beat of her thoughts, beat of the music in a sort of syncopated time. One—two—three, Monday.

On Tuesday Mark would be gone.

His eyes made her break off to look round. Dan had come back into the room, to his place between the cabinet and the chimney-piece. He stooped forward, his head hanging as if some weight dragged it. His eyes, turned up, staring at Effie, showed half circles of blood-shot white. His face was flushed. A queer, leaden grey flush.

Aunt Lavvy sat beside him. She had her hand on his arm, to keep him quiet there in his corner.

"Mark—what's the matter with Dan?"

One—two—three. One—two—three. Something bumped against the glass door of the cabinet. A light tinkling crash of a broken pane. She could see slantwise as she went on playing. Dan was standing up. He swayed, feeling for the ledge of the cabinet. Then he started to come down the room, his head lowered, thrust forward, his eyes heavy with some earnest, sombre purpose.

He seemed to be hours coming down the room by himself. Hours standing in the middle of the room, holding on to the parrot chair.

"Mark!"

"Go on playing."

He went to him. Roddy sprang up from somewhere. Hours while they were getting Dan away from the parrot chair to the door beside the piano. Hours between the opening and sudden slamming of the door.

But she had not played a dozen bars. She went on playing.

"Wait a minute, Effie."

Effie was standing beside her with her hand on the door.

"I've lost my pocket-handkerchief. I must have left it in the dining-room. I know I left it in the dining-room," she said, fussing.

Mary got up. "All right. I'll fetch it."

She opened the door and shut it again quickly.

"I can't go—yet."

III.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday passed, each with a separate, hurrying pace that quickened towards bed-time.

Mark's last night. She had left her door open so that she could hear him come upstairs. He came and sat on her bed as he used to do years ago when she was afraid of the ghost in the passage.

"I shan't be away for ever, Minky. Only five years."

"Yes, but you'll be twenty-six then, and I shall be nineteen. We shan't be ourselves."

"I shall be my self. Five years isn't really long."

"You—you'll like it, Mark. There'll be jungles with bisons and tigers."

"Yes. Jungles."

"And polo."

"Shan't be able to go in for polo."

"Why not?"

"Ponies. Too expensive."

They sat silent.

"What I don't like," Mark said in a sleepy voice, "is leaving Papa."

"Papa?"

He really meant it. "Wish I'd been decenter to him," he said.

And then: "Minky—you'll be kind to little Mamma."

"Oh, Mark—aren't I?"

"Not always. Not when you say funny things about the Bible."

"You say funny things yourself."

"Yes; but she thinks I don't mean them, so it doesn't matter."

"She thinks I don't mean them, either."

"Well—let her go on thinking it. Do what she wants—even when it's beastly."

"It's all very well for you. She doesn't want you to learn the Thirty-Nine Articles. What would you do if she did?"

"Learn them, of course. Lie about them, if that would please her."

She thought: "Mamma didn't want him to be a soldier."

As if he knew what she was thinking, he said, "She doesn't really mind my going into the Army. I knew she wouldn't. Besides, I had to."

"Yes."

"I'll make it up to her," he said. "I won't do any other thing she wouldn't like. I won't marry. I won't play polo. I'll live on my pay and give poor Victor back his money. And there's one good thing about it. Papa'll be happier when I'm not here."

IV.

"Mark!"

"Minky!"

"He had said good-night and gone to his room and come back again to hold her still tighter in his arms.

"What?"

"Nothing," he said. "Only—good-night."

To-morrow no lingering and no words. Mark's feet quick in the passage. A door shut to, a short, crushing embrace before he turned from her to her mother.

Her mother and she alone together in the emptied room, turning from each other, without a word.

V.

The wallflowers had grown up under the south side of the garden wall; a hedge of butterfly-brown and saffron. They gave out a hot, velvet smell, like roses and violets laced with mignonette.

Mamma stood looking at the wallflowers, smiling at them, happy, as if Mark had never gone.

As if Mark had never gone.



XV

I.

Mamma whispered to Mrs. Draper, and Aunt Bella whispered to Mamma: "Fourteen." They always made a mystery about being fourteen. They ought to have told her.

Her thoughts about her mother went up and down. Mamma was not helpless. She was not gentle. She was not really like a wounded bird. She was powerful and rather cruel. You could only appease her with piles of hemmed sheets and darned stockings. If you didn't take care she would get hold of you and never rest till she had broken you, or turned and twisted you to her own will. She would say it was God's will. She would think it was God's will.

They might at least have told you about the pain. The knives of pain. You had to clench your fists till the fingernails bit into the palms. Over the ear of the sofa cushions she could feel her hot eyes looking at her mother with resentment.

She thought: "You had no business to have me. You had no business to have me."

Somebody else's eyes. Somebody else's thoughts. Not yours. Not yours.

Mamma got up and leaned over you and covered you with the rug. Her white face quivered above you in the dusk. Her mouth pushed out to yours, making a small sound like a moan. You heard yourself cry: "Mamma, Mamma, you are adorable!"

That was you.

II.

And as if Mark had never gone, as if that awful thing had never happened to Dan, as if she had never had those thoughts about her mother, her hidden happiness came back to her. Unhappiness only pushed it to a longer rhythm. Nothing could take it away. Anything might bring it: the smell of the white dust on the road; the wind when it came up out of nowhere and brushed the young wheat blades, beat the green flats into slopes where the white light rippled and ran like water, set the green field shaking and tossing like a green sea; the five elm trees, stiff, ecstatic dancers, holding out the broken-ladder pattern of their skirts; haunting rhymes, sudden cadences; the grave "Ubique" sounding through the Beethoven Sonata.

Its thrill of reminiscence passed into the thrill of premonition, of something about to happen to her.



XVI

I.

Poems made of the white dust, of the wind in the green corn, of the five trees—they would be the most beautiful poems in the world.

Sometimes the images of these things would begin to move before her with persistence, as if they were going to make a pattern; she could hear a thin cling-clang, a moving white pattern of sound that, when she tried to catch it, broke up and flowed away. The image pattern and the sound pattern belonged to each other, but when she tried to bring them together they fell apart.

That came of reading too much Byron.

How was it that patterns of sound had power to haunt and excite you? Like the "potnia, potnia nux" that she found in the discarded Longfellow, stuck before his "Voices of the Night."

Potnia, potnia nux, hypnodoteira ton polyponon broton, erebothen ithi, mole, mole katapteros ton Agamemnonion epi domon.

She wished she knew Greek; the patterns the sounds made were so hard and still.

And there were bits of patterns, snapt off, throbbing wounds of sound that couldn't heal. Lines out of Mark's Homer.

Mark's Greek books had been taken from her five years ago, when Rodney went to Chelmsted. And they had come back with Rodney this Easter. They stood on the shelf in Mark's bedroom, above his writing-table.

One day she found her mother there, dusting and arranging the books. Besides the little shabby Oxford Homers there were an Aeschylus, a Sophocles, two volumes of Aristophanes, clean and new, three volumes of Euripides and a Greek Testament. On the table a well-preserved Greek Anthology, bound in green, with the owner's name, J.C. Ponsonby, stamped on it in gilt letters. She remembered Jimmy giving it to Mark.

She took the Iliad from its place and turned over the torn, discoloured pages.

Her mother looked up, annoyed and uneasy, like a child disturbed in the possession of its toys.

"Mark's books are to be kept where Mark put them," she said.

"But, Mamma, I want them."

Never in her life had she wanted anything so much as those books.

"When will you learn not to want what isn't yours?"

"Mark doesn't want them, or he'd have taken them. He'd give them me if he was here."

"He isn't here. I won't have them touched till he comes back."

"But, Mamma darling, I may be dead. I've had to wait five years as it is."

"Wait? What for, I should like to know?"

"To learn Greek, of course."

Her mother's face shivered with repugnance. It was incredible that anybody should hate a poor dead language so.

"Just because Mark learnt Greek, you think you must try. I thought you'd grown out of all that tiresome affectation. It was funny when you were a little thing, but it isn't funny now."

Her mother sat down to show how tired she was of it.

"It's just silly vanity."

Mary's heart made a queer and startling movement, as if it turned over and dashed itself against her ribs. There was a sudden swelling and aching in her throat. Her head swam slightly. The room, Mark's room, with Mark's white bed in one corner and Dan's white bed in the other, had changed; it looked like a room she had never been in before. She had never seen that mahogany washstand and the greyish blue flowers on the jug and basin. The person sitting on the yellow-painted bedroom chair was a stranger who wore, unaccountably, a brown dress and a gold watch-chain with a gold tassel that she remembered. She had an odd feeling that this person had no right to wear her mother's dress and her chain.

The flash of queerness was accompanied by a sense of irreparable disaster. Everything had changed; she heard herself speaking, speaking steadily, with the voice of a changed and unfamiliar person.

"Mark doesn't think it's vanity. You only think it is because you want to."

The mind of this unfamiliar self had a remorseless lucidity that seemed to her more shocking than anything she could imagine. It went on as if urged by some supreme necessity. "You're afraid. Afraid."

It seemed to her that her mother really was afraid.

"Afraid? And what of?" her mother said.

The flash went out, leaving her mind dark suddenly and defeated.

"I don't know what of. I only know you're afraid."

"That's an awful thing for any child to say to any mother. Just because I won't let you have your own way in everything. Until your will is resigned to God's will I may well be afraid."

"How do you know God doesn't want me to know Greek? He may want it as much as I do."

"And if you did know it, what good would it do you?"

She stood staring at her mother, not answering. She knew the sound patterns were beautiful, and that was all she knew. Beauty. Beauty could be hurt and frightened away from you. If she talked about it now she would expose it to outrage. Though she knew that she must appear to her mother to be stubborn and stupid, even sinful, she put her stubbornness, her stupidity, her sinfulness, between it and her mother to defend it.

"I can't tell you," she said.

"No. I don't suppose you can."

Her mother followed up the advantage given her. "You just go about dreaming and mooning as if there was nothing else in the wide world for you to do. I can't think what's come over you. You used to be content to sit still and sew by the hour together. You were more help to me when you were ten than you are now. The other day when I asked you to darn a hole in your own stocking you looked as if I'd told you to go to your funeral.

"It's time you began to take an interest in looking after the house. There's enough to keep you busy most of your time if you only did the half of it."

"Is that what you want me to be, Mamma? A servant, like Catty?"

"Poor Catty. If you were more like Catty," her mother said, "you'd be happier than you are now, I can tell you. Catty is never disagreeable or disobedient or discontented."

"No. But perhaps Catty's mother thinks she is."

She thought: She is afraid.

"Do you suppose," her mother said, "it's any pleasure to me to find fault with my only daughter? If you weren't my only daughter, perhaps I shouldn't find fault."

Her new self answered again, implacable in its lucidity. "You mean, if you'd had a girl you could do what you liked with you'd have let me alone? You'd have let me alone if you could have done what you liked with Mark?"

She noticed, as if it had a separate and significant existence, her mother's hand lying on the green cover of the Greek Anthology.

"If you were like Mark—if you were only like him!"

"If I only were!"

"Mark never hurt me. Mark never gave me a minute's trouble in his life."

"He went into the Army."

"He had a perfect right to go into the Army."

Silence. "Minky—you'll be kind to little Mamma." A hard, light sound; the vexed fingers tap-tapping on the book. Her mother rose suddenly, pushing the book from her.

"There—take Mark's books. Take everything. Go your own way. You always have done; you always will. Some day you'll be sorry for it."

She was sorry for it now, miserable, utterly beaten. Her new self seemed to her a devil that possessed her. She hated it. She hated the books. She hated everything that separated her and made her different from her mother and from Mark.

Her mother went past her to the door.

"Mamma—I didn't mean it—Mamma—"

Before she could reach the door it shut between them.

II.

The library at Five Elms was very small. Emilius used it as a smoking-room; but it was lined with books. Where the rows of shelves met the shutter cases a fold of window-curtain overlapped their ends.

On the fifth shelf, covered by the curtain, she found the four volumes of Shelley's Poetical Works, half-bound in marble-paper and black leather. She had passed them scores of times in her hunt for something to read. Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy Bysshe—what a silly name. She had thought of him as she thought of Allison's History of Europe in seventeen volumes, and the poems of Cornwall and Leigh Hunt. Books you wouldn't read if you were on a desert island.

There was something about Shelley in Byron's Life and Letters. Something she had read and forgotten, that persisted, struggled to make itself remembered.

Shelley's Pantheism.

The pages of Shelley were very clean; they stuck together lightly at the edges, like the pages of the Encyclopaedia at "Pantheism" and "Spinoza." Whatever their secret was, you would have to find it for yourself.

Table of Contents—Poems written in 1816—"Hymn to Intellectual Beauty." She read that first.

"Sudden thy shadow fell on me:— I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy!"

It had happened to Shelley, too. He knew how you felt when it happened. (Only you didn't shriek.) It was a real thing, then, that did happen to people.

She read the "Ode to a Skylark," the "Ode to the West Wind" and "Adonais."

All her secret happiness was there. Shelley knew about the queerness of the sharp white light, and the sudden stillness, when the grey of the fields turns to violet: the clear, hard stillness that covers the excited throb-throbbing of the light.

"Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity"—

Colours were more beautiful than white radiance. But that was because of the light. The more light there was in them the more beautiful they were; it was their real life.

One afternoon Mr. Propart called. He came into the library to borrow a book.

"And what are you so deep in?" he said.

"Shelley."

"Shelley? Shelley?" He looked at her. A kind, considering look. She liked his grey face with its tired keenness. She thought he was going to say something interesting about Shelley; but he only smiled his thin, drooping smile; and presently he went away with his book.

Next morning the Shelleys were not in their place behind the curtain. Somebody had moved them to the top shelf. Catty brought the step-ladder.

In the evening they were gone. Mr. Propart must have borrowed them.

III.

"To this, then, comes our whole argument respecting the fourth kind of madness, on account of which anyone, who, on seeing the beauty in this lower world, being reminded of the true, begins to recover his wings, and, having recovered them, longs to soar aloft, but, being unable to do it, looks upwards like a bird, and despising things below, is deemed to be affected with madness."

Beauty in itself. In itself—Beauty in beautiful things. She had never thought about it that way before. It would be like the white light in the colours.

Plato, discovered in looking for the lost Shelleys, thus consoled her. The Plato of Bohn's Library. Cary's English for Plato's Greek. Slab upon slab. No hard, still sound-patterns. Grey slabs of print, shining with an inner light—Plato's thought.

Her happiness was there, too.



XVII

I.

The French nephew was listening. He had been listening for quite a long time, ten minutes perhaps; ever since they had turned off the railway bridge into Ley Street.

They had known each other for exactly four hours and seventeen minutes. She had gone to the Drapers for tea. Rodney had left her on their doorstep and he had found her there and had brought her into the dining-room. That, he declared, was at five o'clock, and it was now seventeen minutes past nine by his watch which he showed her.

It had begun at tea-time. When he listened he turned round, excitedly, in his chair; he stooped, bringing his eyes level with yours. When he talked he tossed back his head and stuck out his sharp-bearded chin. She was not sure that she liked his eyes. Hot black. Smoky blurs like breath on glass. Old, tired eyelids. Or his funny, sallowish face, narrowing to the black chin-beard. Ugly one minute, nice the next.

It moved too much. He could say all sorts of things with it and with his shoulders and his hands. Mrs. Draper said that was because he was half French.

He was showing her how French verse should be read when Rodney came for her, and Dr. Draper sent Rodney away and kept her for dinner.

The French nephew was taking her home now. They had passed the crook of the road.

"And all this time," she said, "I don't know your name."

"Maurice. Maurice Jourdain. I know yours—Mary Olivier. I like it."

"You wouldn't if you were me and your father kept on saying, 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary,' and 'Mary had a little lamb.'"

"Fathers will do these cruel things. It's a way they have."

"Papa isn't cruel. Only he's so awfully fond of Mamma that he can't think about us. He doesn't mind me so much."

"Oh—he doesn't mind you so much?"

"No. It's Mark he can't stand."

"Who is Mark?"

"My brother. Mark is a soldier—Royal Artillery."

"Lucky Mark. I was to have been a soldier."

"Why weren't you?"

"My mother wouldn't have liked it. So I had to give it up."

"How you must have loved her. Mark loves my mother more than anything; but he couldn't have done that."

"Perhaps Mark hasn't got to provide for his mother and his sisters. I had. And I had to go into a disgusting business to do it."

"Oh-h—"

He was beautiful inside. He did beautiful things. She was charmed, suddenly, by his inner, his immaterial beauty. She thought: "He must be ever so old."

"But it's made them love you awfully, hasn't it?" she said.

His shoulders and eyebrows lifted; he made a queer movement with his hands, palms outwards. He stood still in the path, turned to her, straight and tall. He looked down at her; his lips jerked; the hard, sharp smile bared narrow teeth.

"The more you do for people the less they love you," he said.

"Your people must be very funny."

"No. No. They're simply pious, orthodox Christians, and I don't believe in Christianity. I'm an atheist. I don't believe their God exists. I hope he doesn't. They wouldn't mind so much if I were a villain, too, but it's awkward for them when they find an infidel practising any of the Christian virtues. My eldest sister, Ruth, would tell you that I am a villain."

"She doesn't really think it."

"Doesn't she! My dear child, she's got to think it, or give up her belief."

She could see the gable end of Five Elms now. It would soon be over. When they got to the garden gate.

It was over.

"I suppose," he said, "I must shut the prison door."

They looked at each other through the bars and laughed.

"When shall I see you again?" he said.

II.

She had seen him again. She could count the times on the fingers of one hand. Once, when he came to dinner with Dr. and Mrs. Draper; once at Sunday supper with the Drapers after Church; once on a Saturday when Mrs. Draper asked her to tea again; and once when he called to take her for a walk in the fields.

Mamma had lifted her eyebrows and Mrs. Draper said, "Nonsense. He's old enough to be her father."

The green corn stood above her ankles then. This was the fifth time. The corn rose to her waist. The ears were whitening.

"You're the only person besides Mark who listens. There was Jimmy. But that was different. He didn't know things. He's a darling, but he doesn't know things."

"Who is Jimmy?"

"Mark's friend and mine."

"Where is he?"

"In Australia. He can't ever come back, so I shall never see him again."

"I'm glad to hear it."

A sudden, dreadful doubt. She turned to him in the narrow path.

"You aren't laughing at me, are you? You don't think I'm shamming and showing off?"

"I? I? Laughing at you? My poor child—No—"

"They don't understand that you can really love words—beautiful sounds. And thoughts. Love them awfully, as if they were alive. As if they were people."

"They are alive. They're better than people. You know the best of your Shelley and Plato and Spinoza. Instead of the worst."

"I should have liked to have known them, too. Sometimes I pretend that I do know them. That they're alive. That they're here. Saying things and listening. They're kind. They never misunderstand. They never lose their tempers."

"You mustn't do that," he said sharply.

"Why not?"

"It isn't good for you. Talk to me. I'm alive. I'm here, I'll listen. I'll never misunderstand. I'll never lose my temper."

"You aren't always here."

He smiled, secretly, with straight lips, under the funny, frizzy, French moustache. And when he spoke again he looked old and wise, like an uncle.

"Wait," he said. "Wait a bit. Wait three years."

"Three years?" she said. "Three years before we can go for another walk?"

He shouted laughter and drew it back with a groan.

She couldn't tell him that she pretended he was there when he was not there; that she created situations.

He was ill, and she nursed him. She could feel the weight of his head against her arm, and his forehead—hot—hot under her hand. She had felt her hands to see whether they would be nice enough to put on Mr. Jourdain's forehead. They were rather nice; cool and smooth; the palms brushed together with a soft, swishing sound like fine silk.

He was poor and she worked for him.

He was in danger and she saved him. From a runaway horse; from a furious dog; from a burning house; from a lunatic with a revolver.

It made her sad to think how unlikely it was that any of these things would ever happen.

III.

"Mr. Jourdain, I am going to school."

The corn was reaped and carried. The five elms stood high above the shallow stubble.

"My poor Mary, is it possible?"

"Yes. Mamma says she's been thinking of it for a long time."

"Don't be too hard on your mother till you're quite sure it wasn't my aunt."

"It may have been both of them. Anyhow, it's awful. Just—just when I was so happy."

"Just when I was so happy," he said. "But that's the sort of thing they do."

"I knew you'd be sorry for me."



XVIII

I.

She was shut up with Papa, tight, in the narrow cab that smelt of the mews. Papa, sitting slantways, nearly filled the cab. He was quiet and sad, almost as if he were sorry she was going.

His sadness and quietness fascinated her. He had a mysterious, wonderful, secret life going on in him. Funny you should think of it for the first time in the cab. Supposing you stroked his hand. Better not. He mightn't like it.

Not forty minutes from Liverpool Street to Victoria. If only cabs didn't smell so.

II.

The small, ugly houses streamed past, backs turned to the train, stuck together, rushing, rushing in from the country.

Grey streets, trying to cut across the stream, getting nowhere, carried past sideways on.

Don't look at the houses. Shut your eyes and remember.

Her father's hand on her shoulder. His face, at the carriage window, looking for her. A girl moving back, pushing her to it. "Papa!"

Why hadn't she loved him all the time? Why hadn't she liked his beard? His nice, brown, silky beard. His poor beard.

Mamma's face, in the hall, breaking up suddenly. Her tears in your mouth. Her arms, crushing you. Mamma's face at the dining-room window. Tears, pricking, cutting your eyelids. Blink them back before the girls see them. Don't think of Mamma.

The Thames. Barking Creek goes into the Thames and the Roding goes into Barking Creek. Yesterday, the last walk with Roddy, across Barking Flats to the river, over the dry, sallow grass, the wind blowing in their faces. Roddy's face, beautiful, like Mamma's, his mouth, white at the edges. Roddy gasping in the wind, trying to laugh, his heart thumping. Roddy was excited when he saw the tall masts of the ships. He had wanted to be a sailor.

Dan's face, when he said good-bye; his hurt, unhappy eyes; the little dark, furry moustache trying to come. Tibby's eyes. Dank wanted to marry Effie. Mark was the only one who got what he wanted.

Better not think of Dank.

She looked shyly at her companions. The stout lady in brown, sitting beside her; kind, thin mouth, pursed to look important; dull kind eyes trying to be wise and sharp behind spectacles, between curtains of dead hair. A grand manner, excessively polite, on the platform, to Papa—Miss Lambert.

The three girls, all facing them. Pam Quin; flaxen pigtail; grown up nose; polite mouth, buttoned, little flaxen and pink old lady, Pam Quin, talking about her thirteenth birthday.

Lucy Elliott, red pig-tail, suddenly sad in her corner, innocent white-face, grey eyes blinking to swallow her tears. Frances Elliott, hay coloured pig-tail, very upright, sitting forward and talking fast to hide her sister's shame.

Mamma's face—Don't think of it.

Green fields and trees rushing past now. Stop a tree and you'll change and feel the train moving. Plato. You can't trust your senses. The cave-dwellers didn't see the things that really moved, only the shadows of the images of the things. Is the world in your mind or your mind in the world? Which really moves? Perhaps the world stands still and you move on and on like the train. If both moved together that would feel like standing still.

Grass banks. Telegraph wires dipping and rising like sea-waves. At Dover there would be the sea.

Mamma's face—Think. Think harder. The world was going on before your mind started. Supposing you lived before, would that settle it? No. A white chalk cutting flashed by. God's mind is what both go on in. That settles it.

The train dashed into a tunnel. A long tunnel. She couldn't remember what she was thinking of the second before they went in. Something that settled it. Settled what? She couldn't think any more.

Dover. The girls standing up, and laughing. They said she had gone to sleep in the train.

III.

There was no sea; only the Maison Dieu Road and the big square house in the walled garden. Brown wire blinds half way up the schoolroom windows. An old lady with grey hair and a kind, blunt face, like Jenny; she unpacked your box in the large, light bedroom, folding and unfolding your things with little gentle, tender hands. Miss Haynes. She hoped you would be happy with them, hoped you wouldn't mind sleeping alone the first night, thought you must be hungry and took you down to tea in the long dining-room.

More girls, pretending not to look at you; talking politely to Miss Lambert.

After tea they paired off, glad to see each other. She sat in the corner of the schoolroom reading the new green Shakespeare that Roddy had given her. Two girls glanced at her, looked at each other. "Is she doing it for fun?" "Cheek, more likely."

Night. A strange white bed. Two empty beds, strange and white, in the large, light room. She wondered what sort of girls would be sleeping there to-morrow night. A big white curtain: you could draw it across the room and shut them out.

She lay awake, thinking of her mother, crying now and then; thinking of Roddy and Dan. Mysterious, measured sounds came through the open window. That was the sea. She got up and looked out. The deep-walled garden lay under the window, black and clear like a well. Calais was over there. And Paris. Mr. Jourdain had written to say he was going to Paris. She had his letter.

In bed she felt for the sharp edge of the envelope sticking out under the pillow. She threw back the hot blankets. The wind flowed to her, running cold like water over the thin sheet.

A light moved across the ceiling. Somebody had waked her. Somebody was putting the blankets back again, pressing a large, kind hand to her forehead. Miss Lambert.

IV.

"Mais—mais—de grace! ca ne finira jamais—jamais, s'il faut repondre a tes sottises, Marie. Recommencons."

Mademoiselle, golden top-knot shining and shaking, blue eyes rolling between black lashes.

"De ta tige detachee, Pauvre feuille dessechee"—

Detachee—dessechee. They didn't rhyme. Their not rhyming irritated her distress.

She hated the schoolroom: the ochreish wall-paper, the light soiled by the brown wire gauze; the cramped classes, the faint odour of girl's skin; girl's talk in the bedroom when you undressed.

The queer she-things had a wonderful, mysterious life you couldn't touch.

Clara, when she walked with you, smiling with her black-treacle eyes and bad teeth, glad to be talked to. Clara in bed. You bathed her forehead with eau-de-cologne, and she lay there, happy, glad of her headache that made them sorry for her. Clara, waiting for you at the foot of the stairs, looking with dog's eyes, imploring. "Will you walk with me?" "I can't. I'm going with Lucy." She turned her wounded dog's eyes and slunk away, beaten, humble, to walk with the little ones.

Lucy Elliott in the bathing machine, slipping from the cloak of the towel, slender and straight; sea water gluing red weeds of hair to her white skin. Sweet eyes looking towards you in the evening at sewing-time.

"Will you sit with me at sewing?"

"I'm sitting with Rose Godwin."

Sudden sweetness; sudden trouble; grey eyes dark and angry behind sudden tears. She wouldn't look at you; wouldn't tell you what you had done.

Rose Godwin, strong and clever; fourteen; head of the school. Honey-white Roman face; brown-black hair that smelt like Brazilian nuts. Rose Godwin walking with you in the garden.

"You must behave like other people if you expect them to like you."

"I don't expect them. How do I behave?"

"It isn't exactly behaving. It's more the way you talk and look at people. As if you saw slap through them. Or else as if you didn't see them at all. That's worse. People don't like it."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. It was cheeky of you to tell Mademoiselle that those French verses didn't rhyme."

"But they didn't."

"Who cares?"

"I care. I care frightfully."

"There you go. That's exactly what I mean," Rose said. "Who cares if you care? And there's another thing. You're worrying Miss Lambert. This school of hers has got a name for sound religious teaching. You may not like sound religious teaching, but she's got fifteen of us to look after besides you. If you want to be an atheist, go and be it by yourself."

"I'm not an atheist."

"Well, whatever silly thing you are. You mustn't talk about it to the girls. It isn't fair," Rose said.

"All right. I won't."

"On your honour?"

"On my honour."

V.

A three-cornered note on her dressing-table at bed-time:

Sept. 20th, 1878. Maison Dieu Lodge.

"My dear Mary: Our talk was not satisfactory. Unless you can assure me by to-morrow morning that you believe in the Blessed Trinity and all the other truths of our most holy religion, I fear that, much as we love you, we dare not keep you with us, for your school-fellows' sake.

"Think it over, my dear child, and let me know. Pray to God to-night to change your heart and mind and give you His Holy Spirit.

"Affectionately yours,

"Henrietta Lambert."

The Trinity. A three-cornered note.

"My dear Miss Lambert: I am very sorry; but it really isn't any good, and if it was it couldn't be done in the time. You wouldn't like it if I told you lies, would you? That's why I can't join in the prayers and say the Creed and bow; in Church or anywhere. Rose made me promise not to talk about it, and I won't.

"If you must send me away to-morrow morning, you must. But I'm glad you love me. I was afraid you didn't.

"With love, your very affectionate

"Mary Olivier."

"P.S.—I've folded my clothes all ready for packing."

To-morrow the clothes were put back again in their drawers. She wasn't going. Miss Lambert said something about Rose and Lucy and "kindness to poor Clara."

VI.

Rose Godwin told her that home-sickness wore off. It didn't. It came beating up and up, like madness, out of nothing. The French verbs, grey, slender as little verses on the page, the French verbs swam together and sank under the clear-floating images of home-sickness. Mamma's face, Roddy's, Dan's face. Tall trees, the Essex fields, flat as water, falling away behind them. Little feathery trees, flying low on the sky-line. Outside the hallucination the soiled light shut you in.

The soiled light; odours from the warm roots of girl's hair; and Sunday. Sunday; stale odours of churches. You wrote out the sermon you had not listened to and had not heard. Somebody told you the text, and you amused yourself by seeing how near you could get to what you would have heard if you had listened. After tea, hymns; then church again. Your heart laboured with the strain of kneeling, arms lifted up to the high pew ledge. You breathed pew dust. Your brain swayed like a bladder, brittle, swollen with hot gas-fumes. After supper, prayers again. Sunday was over.

On Monday, the tenth day, she ran away to Dover Harbour. She had thought she could get to London with two weeks' pocket-money and what was left of Uncle Victor's tip after she had paid for the eau-de-cologne; but the ticket man said it would only take her as far as Canterbury. She had frightened Miss Lambert and made her tremble: all for nothing, except the sight of the Harbour. It was dreadful to see her tremble. Even the Harbour wasn't worth it.

A miracle would have to happen.

Two weeks passed and three weeks. And on the first evening of the fourth week the miracle happened. Rose Godwin came to her and whispered: "You're wanted in the dining-room."

Her mother's letter lay open on the table. A tear had made a glazed snail's track down Miss Lambert's cheek; and Mary thought that one of them was dead—Roddy—Dan—Papa.

"My dear, my dear—don't cry. You're going home."

"Why? Why am I going?"

She could see the dull, kind eyes trying to look clever.

"Because your mother has sent for you. She wants you back again."

"Mamma? What does she want me for?"

Miss Lambert's eyes turned aside slantways. She swallowed something in her throat, making a funny noise: qualk-qualk.

"It isn't you? You aren't sending me away?"

"No; we're not sending you. But we think it's best for you to go. We can't bear to see your dear, unhappy little face going about the passages."

"Does it mean that Mamma isn't happy without me?"

"Well—she would miss her only daughter, wouldn't she?"

The miracle. The shining, lovely miracle.

"Mary Olivier is going! Mary Olivier is going!"

Actually the girls were sorry. Too sorry. The compassion in Rose Godwin's face stirred a doubt. Doubt of the miracle.

She carried her books to the white curtained room where Miss Haynes knelt by her trunk, packing her clothes with little gentle, tender hands.

"Miss Haynes" (suddenly), "I'm not expelled, am I?"

"Expelled? My dear child, who's talking about expulsion?"

As if she said, When miracles are worked for you, accept them.

She lay awake, thinking what she should say to her mother when she got home. She would have to tell her that just at first she very nearly was expelled. Then her mother would believe in her unbelief and not think she was shamming.

And she would have to explain about her unbelief. And about Pantheism.

VII.

She wondered how she would set about it. It wouldn't do to start suddenly by saying you didn't believe in Jesus or the God of the Old Testament or Hell. That would hurt her horribly. The only decent thing would be to let her see how beautiful Spinoza's God was and leave it to her to make the comparison.

You would have to make it quite clear to yourself first. It was like this. There were the five elm trees, and there was the happy white light on the fields. God was the trees. He was the happy light and he was your happiness. There was Catty singing in the kitchen. God was Catty.

Oh—and there was Papa and Papa's temper. God would have to be Papa too.

Spinoza couldn't have meant it that way.

He meant that though God was all Papa, Papa was not all God. He was only a bit of him. He meant that if God was the only reality, Papa wouldn't be quite real.

But if Papa wasn't quite real then Mamma and Mark were not quite real either.

If Spinoza had meant that—

But perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps he meant that parts of Papa, the parts you saw most of—his beard, for instance, and his temper—were not quite real, but that some other part of him, the part you couldn't see, might be real in the same way that God was. That would be Papa himself, and it would be God too. And if God could be Papa, he would have no difficulty at all in being Mamma and Mark.

Surely Mamma would see that, if you had to have a God, Spinoza's was by far the nicest God, besides being the easiest to believe in. Surely it would please her to think like that about Papa, to know that his temper was not quite real, and that your sin, when you sinned, was not quite real, so that not even your sin could separate you from God. All your life Mamma had dinned into you the agony of separation from God, and the necessity of the Atonement. She would feel much more comfortable if she knew that there never had been any separation, and that there needn't be any Atonement.

Of course she might not like the idea of sin being somehow inside God. She might say it looked bad. But if it wasn't inside God, it would have to be outside him, supporting itself and causing itself, and then where were you? You would have to say that God was not the cause of all things, and that would be much worse.

Surely if you put it to her like that—? But somehow she couldn't hear herself saying all that to her mother. Supposing Mamma wouldn't listen?

And she couldn't hear herself talking about her happiness, the sudden, secret happiness that more than anything was like God. When she thought of it she was hot and cold by turns and she had no words for it. She remembered the first time it had come to her, and how she had found her mother in the drawing-room and had knelt down at her knees and kissed her hands with the idea of drawing her into her happiness. And she remembered her mother's face. It made her ashamed, even now, as if she had been silly. She thought: I shall never be able to talk about it to Mamma.

Yet—perhaps—now that the miracle had happened—

VIII.

In the morning Miss Lambert took her up to London. She had a sort of idea that the kind lady talked to her a great deal, about God and the Christian religion. But she couldn't listen; she couldn't talk; she couldn't think now.

For three hours, in the train, in the waiting-room at Victoria, while Miss Lambert talked to Papa outside, in the cab, alone with Papa—Miss Lambert must have said something nice about her, for he looked pleased, as if he wouldn't mind if you did stroke his hand—in Mr. Parish's wagonette, she sat happy and still, contemplating the shining, lovely miracle.

IX.

She saw Catty open the front door and run away. Her mother was coming slowly down the narrow hall.

She ran up the flagged path.

"Mamma!" She flung herself to the embrace.

Her mother swerved from her, staggering back and putting out her hands between them. Aware of Mr. Parish shouldering the trunk, she turned into the open dining-room. Mary followed her and shut the door.

Her mother sat down, helplessly. Mary saw that she was crying; she had been crying a long time. Her soaked eyelashes were parted by her tears and gathered into points.

"Mamma—what is it?"

"What is it? You've disgraced yourself. Everlastingly. You've disgraced your father, and you've disgraced me. That's what it is."

"I haven't done anything of the sort, Mamma."

"You don't think it's a disgrace, then, to be expelled? For infidelity."

"But I'm not expelled."

"You are expelled. And you know it."

"No. They said I wasn't. They didn't want me to go. They told me you wanted me back again."

"Is it likely I should want you when you hadn't been gone three weeks?"

She could hear herself gasp, see herself standing there, open-mouthed, idiotic.

Nothing could shake her mother in her belief that she had been expelled.

"Of course, if it makes you happier to believe it," she said at last, "do. Will you let me see Miss Lambert's letter?"

"No," her mother said. "I will not."

Suddenly she felt hard and strong, grown-up in her sad wisdom. Her mother didn't love her. She never had loved her. Nothing she could ever do would make her love her. Miracles didn't happen.

She thought: "I wonder why she won't let me see Miss Lambert's letter?"

She went upstairs to her room. She leaned on the sill of the open window, looking out, drinking in the sweet air of the autumn fields. The five elms raised golden heads to a blue sky.

Her childhood had died with a little gasp.

Catty came in to unpack her box. Catty, with wet cheeks, kissed a dead child.



XIX

I.

In the train from Bristol to Paddington for the last time: July, eighteen-eighty.

She would never see any of them again: Ada and Geraldine; Mabel and Florrie and little Lena and Kate; Miss Wray with her pale face and angry eyes; never hear her sudden, cold, delicious praise. Never see the bare, oblong schoolroom with the brown desks, seven rows across for the lower school, one long form along the wall for Class One where she and Ada and Geraldine sat apart. Never look through the bay windows over the lea to the Channel, at sunset, Lundy Island flattened out, floating, gold on gold in the offing. Never see magenta valerian growing in hot white grey walls.

Never hear Louie Prichard straining the little music room with Chopin's Fontana Polonaise. Never breathe in its floor-dust with the Adagio of the "Pathetic Sonata."

She was glad she had seen it through to the end when the clergymen's and squires' daughters went and the daughters of Bristol drapers and publicans and lodging-house keepers came.

("What do you think! Bessie Parson's brother marked all her underclothing. In the shop!")

But they taught you quite a lot of things: Zoology, Physiology, Paley's Evidences, British Law, Political Economy. It had been a wonderful school when Mrs. Propart's nieces went to it. And they kept all that up when the smash came and the butter gave out, and you ate cheap bread that tasted of alum, and potatoes that were fibrous skeletons in a green pulp. Oh—she had seen it through. A whole year and a half of it.

Why? Because you promised Mamma you'd stick to the Clevehead School whatever it was like? Because they taught you German and let you learn Greek by yourself with the old arithmetic master? (Ada Clark said it was a mean trick to get more marks.) Because of the Beethoven and Schumann and Chopin, and Lundy Island, and the valerian? Because nothing mattered, not even going hungry?

She was glad she hadn't told about that, nor why she asked for the "room to herself" that turned out to be a servants' garret on a deserted floor. You could wake at five o'clock in the light mornings and read Plato, or snatch twenty minutes from undressing before Miss Payne came for your candle. The tall sycamore swayed in the moonlight, tapping on the window pane; its shadow moved softly in the room like a ghost.

II.

She would like to see the valerian again, though. Mamma said it didn't grow in Yorkshire.

Funny to be going back to Ilford after Roddy and Papa and Mamma had left it. Funny to be staying at Five Elms with Uncle Victor. Nice Uncle Victor, buying the house from Papa and making Dan live with them. That was to keep him from drinking. Uncle Victor was hurt because Papa and Mamma would go to Morfe when he wanted you all to live with him. But you couldn't imagine Emilius and Victor living together or Mamma and Aunt Lavvy.

Bristol to Paddington. This time next week it would be King's Cross to Reyburn for Morfe.

She wondered what it would be like. Aunt Bella said it was a dead-and-alive place. Morfe—Morfe. It did sound rather as if people died in it. Aunt Bella was angry with Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin for making Mamma go there. But Aunt Bella had never liked Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin. That was because they had been Mamma's friends at school and not Aunt Bella's.

She wondered what they would be like, and whether they would disapprove of her. They would if they believed she had been expelled from Dover and had broken Mamma's heart. All Mamma's friends thought that.

She didn't mind going to Morfe so much. The awful thing was leaving Ilford. Ilford was part of Mark, part of her, part of her and Mark together. There were things they had done that never in all their lives they could do again. Waldteufel Waltzes played on the old Cramer piano, standing in its place by the door, waltzes that would never sound the same in any other place in any other room. And there was the sumach tree. It would die if you transplanted it.

III.

The little thin, sallow old man, coming towards her on the platform at Paddington, turned out to be Uncle Victor. She had not seen him since Christmas, for at Easter he had been away somewhere on business.

He came slowly, showing a smile of jerked muscles, under cold fixed eyes. He was not really glad to see her. That was because he disapproved of her. They all believed she had been expelled from the Dover school, and they didn't seem able to forget it. Going down from Liverpool Street to Ilford he sat bowed and dejected in his corner, not looking at her unless he could help it.

"How's Aunt Charlotte?" She thought he would be pleased to think that she had remembered Aunt Charlotte; but he winced as if she had hit him.

"She is—not so well." And then: "How have you been getting on?"

"Oh, all right. I've got the Literature prize again, and the French prize and the German prize; and I might have got the Good Conduct prize too."

"And why didn't you get it?"

"Because I gave it up. Somebody else had to have a prize, and Miss Wray said she knew it was the one I could best bear to part with."

Uncle Victor frowned as if he were displeased.

"You don't seem to consider that I gave it up," she said. But he had turned his eyes away. He wasn't listening any more, as he used to listen.

The train was passing the City of London Cemetery. She thought: "I must go and see Jenny's grave before I leave. I wish I hadn't teased her so to love me." She thought: "If I die I shall be put in the grass plot beside Grandpapa and Grandmamma Olivier. Papa will bring me in a coffin all the way from Morfe in the train." Little birch bushes were beginning to grow among the graves. She wondered how she could ever have been afraid of those graves and of their dead.

Uncle Victor was looking at the graves too; queerly, with a sombre, passionate interest. When the train had passed them he sighed and shut his eyes, as if he wanted to keep on seeing them—to keep on.

As Mr. Parish's wagonette drove up Ley Street he pointed to a field where a street of little houses had begun.

"Some day they'll run a street over Five Elms. But I shan't know anything about it," he said.

"No. It won't be for ages."

He smiled queerly.

They drew up at the gate. "You must be prepared for more changes," he said.

Aunt Lavvy was at the gate. She was sweet as if she loved you, and sad as if she still remembered your disgrace.

"No. Not that door," she said.

The dining-room and drawing-room had changed places, and both were filled with the large mahogany furniture that had belonged to Grandpapa.

"Why, you've turned it back to front."

Strips of Mamma's garden shone between the dull maroon red curtains. Inside the happy light was dead.

There seemed to her something sinister about this change. Only the two spare rooms still looked to the front. They had put her in one of them instead of her old room on the top floor; Dan had the other instead of his. It was very queer.

Aunt Lavvy sat in Mamma's place at the head of the tea-table. A tall, iron-grey woman in an iron-grey gown stood at her elbow holding a little tray. She looked curiously at Mary, as if her appearance there surprised and interested her. Aunt Lavvy put a cup of tea on the tray.

"Where's Aunt Charlotte?"

"Aunt Charlotte is upstairs. She isn't very well."

The maid was saying, "Miss Charlotte asked for a large piece of plum cake, ma'am," and Aunt Lavvy added a large piece of plum cake to the plate of thin bread and butter.

Mary thought: "There can't be much the matter with her if she can eat all that."

"Can I see her?" she said.

She heard the woman whisper, "Better not." She was glad when she left the room.

"Has old Louisa gone, then?"

"No," Aunt Lavvy said. She added presently, "That is Aunt Charlotte's maid."

IV.

Aunt Charlotte looked out through the bars of the old nursery window. She nodded to Mary and called to her to come up.

Aunt Lavvy said it did her good to see people.

There was a door at the head of the stairs, in a matchboard partition that walled the well of the staircase. You rang a bell. The corridor was very dark. Another partition with a door in it shut off the servants' rooms and the back staircase. They had put the big yellow linen cupboard before the tall window, the one she used to hang out of.

Some of the old things had been left in the nursery schoolroom, so that it looked much the same. Britton, the maid, sat in Jenny's low chair by the fireguard. Aunt Charlotte sat in an armchair by the window.

Her face was thin and small; the pencil lines had deepened; the long black curls hung from a puff of grey hair rolled back above her ears. Her eyes pointed at you—pointed. They had more than ever their look of wisdom and excitement. She was twisting and untwisting a string of white tulle round a sprig of privet flower.

"Don't you believe a word of it," she said. "Your father hasn't gone. He's here in this house. He's in when Victor's out.

"He says he's sold the house to Victor. That's a lie. He doesn't want it known that he's hidden me here to prevent my getting married."

"I'm sure he hasn't," Mary said. Across the room Britton looked at her and shook her head.

"It's all part of a plan," Aunt Charlotte said. "To put me away, my dear. Dr. Draper's in it with Victor and Emilius.

"They may say what they like. It isn't the piano-tuner. It isn't the man who does the clocks. They know who it is. It isn't that Marriott man. I've found out something about him they don't know. He's got a false stomach. It goes by clockwork.

"As if I'd look at a clock-tuner or a piano-winder. I wouldn't, would I, Britton?"

She meditated, smiling softly. "They make them so beautifully now, you can't tell the difference.

"He's been to see me nine times in one week. Nine times. But your Uncle Victor got him away before he could speak. But he came again and again. He wouldn't take 'No' for an answer. Britton, how many times did Mr. Jourdain come?"

Britton said, "I'm sure I couldn't say, Miss Charlotte." She made a sign to Mary to go.

Aunt Lavvy was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs. She took her into her bedroom, Mamma's old room, and asked her what Aunt Charlotte had said. Mary told her.

"Poor Mary—I oughtn't to have let you see her."

Aunt Lavvy's chin trembled. "I'm afraid," she said, "the removal's upset her. I said it would. But Emilius would have it. He could always make Victor do what he wanted."

"It might have been something you don't know about."

Grown-up and strong, she wanted to comfort Aunt Lavvy and protect her.

"No," Aunt Lavvy said. "It's the house. I knew it would be. She's been trying to get away. She never did that before."

(The doors and the partitions, the nursery and its bars, the big cupboard across the window, to keep her from getting away.)

"Aunt Lavvy, did Mr. Jourdain really call?"

Aunt Lavvy hesitated. "Yes. He called."

"Did he see Aunt Charlotte?"

"She was in the room when he came in, but your uncle took him out at once."

"She didn't talk to him? Did he hear her talking?"

"No, my dear, I'm sure he didn't."

"Are you sure he didn't see her?"

Aunt Lavvy smiled. "He didn't look. I don't think he saw any of us very clearly."

"How many times did he come?"

"Three or four times, I believe."

"Did he ask to see me?"

"No. He asked to see your Uncle Victor."

"I didn't know he knew Uncle Victor."

"Well," Aunt Lavvy said, "he knows him now."

"Did he leave any message for me?"

"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 basement 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, muffled 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 Essex 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 grass, a green bloom on the grey face of the hill. Above the thin grass 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.

The lean, ragged firs had succeeded. No. Not quite. They stood out against the sky, adventurous mountaineers, roped together, leaning forward with the effort.

"It's Mamma's fault," Roddy was saying. "Papa would have gone anywhere, but she would come to this damned Morfe."

"Don't. Don't—" Her mind beat him off, defending her happiness. He would kill it if she let him. Coming up from Reyburn on the front seat of the Morfe bus, he had sulked. He smiled disagreeable smiles while the driver pointed with his whip and told her the names of the places. Renton Moor. Renton Church. Morfe, the grey village, stuck up on its green platform under the high, purple mound of Karva Hill.

Garthdale in front of it, Rathdale at its side, meeting in the fields below its bridge.

Morfe was beautiful. She loved it with love at first sight, faithless to Ilford.

Straight, naked houses. Grey walls of houses, enclosing the wide oblong Green. Dark grey stone roofs, close-clipped lest the wind should lift them. On the Green two grey stone pillar fountains; a few wooden benches; telegraph poles. Under her window a white road curling up to the platform. Straight, naked houses, zigzagging up beside it. Down below, where the white road came from, the long grey raking bridge, guarded by a tall ash-tree.

Roddy's jabbing voice went on and on:

"I used to think Mamma was holy and unselfish. I don't think so any more. She says she wants to do what Papa wants and what we want; but she always ends by doing what she wants herself. It's all very well for her. As long as she's got a garden to poke about in she doesn't care how awful it is for us."

She hated Roddy when he said things like that about Mamma.

"I don't suppose the little lamb thought about it at all. Or if she did she thought we'd like it."

She didn't want to listen to Roddy's grumbling. She wanted to look and look, to sniff up the clear, sweet, exciting smell of the fields.

The roofs went criss-crossing up the road—straight—slant—straight. They threw delicate violet-green shadows on to the sage-green field below. That long violet-green pillar was the shadow of the ash-tree by the bridge.

The light came from somewhere behind the village, from a sunset you couldn't see. It made the smooth hill fields shine like thin velvet, stretched out, clinging to the hills.

"Oh, Roddy, the light's different. Different from Ilford. Look—"

"I've been looking for five weeks," Roddy said. "You haven't, that's all. I was excited at first."

He got up. He stared out of the window, not seeing anything.

"I didn't mean what I said about Mamma. Morfe makes you say things. Soon it'll make you mean them. You wait."

She was glad when he had left her.

The cliffs of Greffington Edge were violet now.

II.

At night, when she lay in bed in the strange room, the Essex fields began to haunt her; the five trees, the little flying trees, low down, low down; the straight, narrow paths through the corn, where she walked with Mark, with Jimmy, with Mr. Jourdain; Mr. Jourdain, standing in the path and saying: "Talk to me. I'm alive. I'm here. I'll listen."

Mark and Mamma planting the sumach tree by the front door; Papa saying it wouldn't grow. It had grown up to the dining-room window-sill.

Aunt Bella and Uncle Edward; the Proparts and the Farmers and Mr. Batty, all stiff and disapproving; not nearly so nice to you as they used to be and making you believe it was your fault.

The old, beautiful drawing-room. The piano by the door.

Dan staggering down the room at Mark's party. Mark holding her there, in his arms.

Dawn, and Dr. Draper's carriage waiting in the road beside the mangold fields. And Aunt Charlotte carried out, her feet brushing the flagstones.

She mustn't tell them. Mamma couldn't bear it. Roddy couldn't bear it. Aunt Charlotte was Papa's sister. He must never know.

The sound of the brushing feet made her heart ache.

She was glad to wake in the small, strange room. It had taken a snip off Mamma's and Papa's room on one side of the window, and a snip off the spare room on the other. That made it a funny T shape. She slept in the tail of the T, in a narrow bed pushed against the wall. When you sat up you saw the fat trees trying to get up the hill between the washstand and the chest of drawers.

This room would never be taken from her, because she was the only one who was small enough to fit the bed.

She would be safe there with her hill.

III.

The strange houses fascinated her. They had the simplicity and the precision of houses in a very old engraving. On the west side of the Green they made a long straight wall. Morfe High Row. An open space of cobblestones stretched in front of it. The market-place.

Sharp morning light picked out the small black panes of the windows in the white criss-cross of their frames, and the long narrow signs of the King's Head and the Farmer's Arms, black on grey. The plaster joints of the walls and the dark net of earth between the cobbles showed thick and clear as in a very old engraving. The west side had the sky behind it and the east side had the hill.

Grey-white cart roads slanted across the Green, cutting it into vivid triangular grass-plots. You went in and out of Morfe through the open corners of its Green. Her father's house stood at the south-west corner, by itself. A projecting wing at that end of the High Row screened it from the market-place.

The strange houses excited her.

Wonderful, unknown people lived in them. You would see them and know what they were like: the people in the tall house with the rusty stones, in the bright green ivy house with the white doors, in the small grey, humble houses, in the big, important house set at the top of the Green, with the three long rows of windows, the front garden and the iron gate.

People you didn't know. You would be strange and exciting to them as they were strange and exciting to you. They might say interesting things. There might be somebody who cared about Plato and Spinoza.

Things would happen that you didn't know. Anything might happen any minute.

If you knew what was happening in the houses now—some of them had hard, frightening faces. Dreadful things might have happened in them. Her father's house had a good, simple face. You could trust it.

Five windows in the rough grey wall, one on each side of the white door, three above. A garden at the side, an orchard at the back. In front a cobbled square marked off by a line of thin stones set in edgeways.

A strange house, innocent of unhappy memories.

Catty stood at the door, looking for her. She called to her to come in to breakfast.

IV.

Papa was moving restlessly about the house. His loose slippers shuffled on the stone flags of the passages.

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 passage 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 grass-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 passage turned to the left behind the drawing-room. Glass 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 passage; 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 God, 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 coarse wool, scraping 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 passage. 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 passed 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'."

"Who are the Sutcliffes?"

"Greffington Hall. The people who own the whole ghastly place. We were dining there. And Papa was funny."

"Funny? Funny what way?"

"Oh, I don't know.—Like Dan was at Mark's party.'

"Oh Roddy—" She was listening now.

"Not quite so awful; but that sort of thing. We had to come away."

"I didn't know he did."

"No more did I. Mamma always said it wasn't that. But it was this time. And he chose that evening."

"Does Mamma mind frightfully?" she said.

"Yes. But she's angry with the Sutcliffes."

"Why?"

"Because they've seen him."

"How many Sutcliffes are there?"

"Only him and Mrs. Sutcliffe. The son's in India.

"They'll never ask him again, and Mamma won't go without him. She says we can go if we like, but you can see she'll think us skunks if we do."

"Well—then we can't."

She had wanted something to happen, and something had happened, something that would bring unhappiness. Unhappiness. Her will rose up, hard and stubborn, pushing it off.

"Will it matter so very much? Do the Sutcliffes matter?"

"They matter this much, that there won't be anything to do. They've got all the shooting and fishing and the only decent tennis court in the place. You little know what you're in for."

"I don't care, Roddy. I don't care a bit as long as I have you."

"Me? Me?"

He had stopped on the steep of the road; her feet had been lagging to keep pace with him. He breathed hard through white-edged lips. She had seen him look like that before. The day they had walked to the Thames, to look at the ships, over the windy Flats.

He looked at her. A look she hadn't seen before. A look of passionate unbelief.

"I didn't think you cared about me. I thought it was Mark you cared about. Like Mamma."

"Can't you care about more than one person?"

"Mamma can't—"

"Oh Roddy—"

"What's the good of saying 'Oh Roddy' when you know it?"

They were sitting on a ledge of stone and turf. Roddy had ceased to struggle with the hill.

"We're all the same," he said. "I'd give you and Dan up any day for Mark. Dan would give up you and me. Mark would give up all of us for Mamma. And Mamma would give up all of us for Mark."

Roddy had never said anything like that before.

"I'll stick to you, anyhow," she said.

"It's no use your sticking. I shan't be here. I shall have to clear out and do something," he said.

On his face there was a look of fear.

VI.

She was excited because they were going to the ivy house for tea. It looked so pretty and so happy with its green face shining in the sun. Nothing could take from her her belief in happiness hiding behind certain unknown doors. It hid behind the white doors of the ivy house. When you went in something wonderful would happen.

The ivy house belonged to Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin.

The photographs in Mamma's old album showed how they looked when they and Mamma were young. Modest pose of dropped arms, holding mushroom hats in front of them as a protection, the narrow ribbons dangling innocently. Ellen Frewin, small and upright, slender back curved in to the set of shawl and crinoline, prim head fixed in the composure of gentle disdain, small mouth saying always "Oh," Meta, the younger sister, very tall, head bent in tranquil meditation, her mantle slanting out from the fall of the thin shoulders.

They rose up in the small, green lighted drawing-room. Their heads bent forward to kiss.

Ellen Waugh: the photographed face still keeping its lifted posture of gentle disdain, the skin stretched like a pale tight glove, a slight downward swelling of the prim oval, like the last bulge of a sucked peppermint ball, the faded mouth still making its small "oh." She was the widow of a clergyman.

Meta, a beautiful nose leaping out at you in a high curve; narrow, delicate cheeks thinned away so that they seemed part of the nose; sweet rodent mouth smiling up under its tip; blurred violet eyes arching vaguely.