← catalogue

Mary Olivier: a Life

by May Sinclair · English · Gutenberg #9366 · 672,961 chars · public domain (US)

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mary Olivier: a Life
    
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: Mary Olivier: a Life

Author: May Sinclair


        
Release date: November 1, 2005 [eBook #9366]
                Most recently updated: January 2, 2021

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/9366

Credits: Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MARY OLIVIER: A LIFE ***




Produced by Suzanne Shell, Beth Trapaga and PG Distributed Proofreaders




MARY OLIVIER:

A LIFE


BY

MAY SINCLAIR


1919


CONTENTS

BOOK ONE     INFANCY (1865-1869)

BOOK TWO     CHILDHOOD (1869-1875)

BOOK THREE   ADOLESCENCE (1876-1879)

BOOK FOUR    MATURITY (1879-1900)

BOOK FIVE    MIDDLE AGE (1900-1910)




BOOK ONE
INFANCY (1865-1869)


I


I.

The curtain of the big bed hung down beside the cot.

When old Jenny shook it the wooden rings rattled on the pole and grey
men with pointed heads and squat, bulging bodies came out of the folds
on to the flat green ground. If you looked at them they turned into
squab faces smeared with green.

Every night, when Jenny had gone away with the doll and the donkey,
you hunched up the blanket and the stiff white counterpane to hide the
curtain and you played with the knob in the green painted iron railing
of the cot. It stuck out close to your face, winking and grinning at
you in a friendly way. You poked it till it left off and turned grey
and went back into the railing. Then you had to feel for it with your
finger. It fitted the hollow of your hand, cool and hard, with a blunt
nose that pushed agreeably into the palm.

In the dark you could go tip-finger along the slender, lashing
flourishes of the ironwork. By stretching your arm out tight you could
reach the curlykew at the end. The short, steep flourish took you to
the top of the railing and on behind your head.

Tip-fingering backwards that way you got into the grey lane where the
prickly stones were and the hedge of little biting trees. When the
door in the hedge opened you saw the man in the night-shirt. He had
only half a face. From his nose and his cheek-bones downwards his
beard hung straight like a dark cloth. You opened your mouth, but
before you could scream you were back in the cot; the room was light;
the green knob winked and grinned at you from the railing, and behind
the curtain Papa and Mamma were lying in the big bed.

One night she came back out of the lane as the door in the hedge was
opening. The man stood in the room by the washstand, scratching his long
thigh. He was turned slantwise from the nightlight on the washstand so
that it showed his yellowish skin under the lifted shirt. The white
half-face hung by itself on the darkness. When he left off scratching
and moved towards the cot she screamed.

Mamma took her into the big bed. She curled up there under the shelter
of the raised hip and shoulder. Mamma's face was dry and warm and
smelt sweet like Jenny's powder-puff. Mamma's mouth moved over her wet
cheeks, nipping her tears.

Her cry changed to a whimper and a soft, ebbing sob.

Mamma's breast: a smooth, cool, round thing that hung to your hands
and slipped from them when they tried to hold it. You could feel the
little ridges of the stiff nipple as your finger pushed it back into
the breast.

Her sobs shook in her throat and ceased suddenly.


II.

The big white globes hung in a ring above the dinner table. At first,
when she came into the room, carried high in Jenny's arms, she could
see nothing but the hanging, shining globes. Each had a light inside
it that made it shine.

Mamma was sitting at the far end of the table. Her face and neck shone
white above the pile of oranges on the dark blue dish. She was dipping
her fingers in a dark blue glass bowl.

When Mary saw her she strained towards her, leaning dangerously out of
Jenny's arms. Old Jenny said "Tchit-tchit!" and made her arms tight
and hard and put her on Papa's knee.

Papa sat up, broad and tall above the table, all by himself. He was
dressed in black. One long brown beard hung down in front of him and
one short beard covered his mouth. You knew he was smiling because his
cheeks swelled high up his face so that his eyes were squeezed into
narrow, shining slits. When they came out again you saw scarlet specks
and smears in their corners.

Papa's big white hand was on the table, holding a glass filled with
some red stuff that was both dark and shining and had a queer, sharp
smell.

"Porty-worty winey-piney," said Papa.

The same queer, sharp smell came from between his two beards when he
spoke.

Mark was sitting up beside Mamma a long way off. She could see them
looking at each other. Roddy and Dank were with them.

They were making flowers out of orange peel and floating them in the
finger bowls. Mamma's fingers were blue and sharp-pointed in the water
behind the dark blue glass of her bowl. The floating orange-peel
flowers were blue. She could see Mamma smiling as she stirred them
about with the tips of her blue fingers.

Her underlip pouted and shook. She didn't want to sit by herself on
Papa's knee. She wanted to sit in Mamma's lap beside Mark. She wanted
Mark to make orange-peel flowers for her. She wanted Mamma to look
down at her and smile.

Papa was spreading butter on biscuit and powdered sugar on the butter.

"Sugary--Buttery--Bippery," said Papa.

She shook her head. "I want to go to Mamma. I want to go to Mark."

She pushed away the biscuit. "No. No. Mamma give Mary. Mark give
Mary."

"Drinky--winky," said Papa.

He put his glass to her shaking mouth. She turned her head away, and
he took it between his thumb and finger and turned it back again. Her
neck moved stiffly. Her head felt small and brittle under the weight
and pinch of the big hand. The smell and the sour, burning taste of
the wine made her cry.

"Don't tease Baby, Emilius," said Mamma.

"I never tease anybody."

He lifted her up. She could feel her body swell and tighten under the
bands and drawstrings of her clothes, as she struggled and choked,
straining against the immense clamp of his arms. When his wet red lips
pushed out between his beards to kiss her she kicked. Her toes drummed
against something stiff and thin that gave way and sprang out again
with a cracking and popping sound.

He put her on the floor. She stood there all by herself, crying, till
Mark came and took her by the hand.

"Naughty Baby. Naughty Mary," said Mamma. "Don't kiss her, Mark."

"No, Mamma."

He knelt on the floor beside her and smiled into her face and wiped it
with his pocket-handkerchief. She put out her mouth and kissed him and
stopped crying.

"Jenny must come," Mamma said, "and take Mary away."

"No. Mark take Mary."

"Let the little beast take her," said Papa. "If he does he shan't come
back again. Do you hear that, sir?"

Mark said, "Yes, Papa."

They went out of the room hand in hand. He carried her upstairs
pickaback. As they went she rested her chin on the nape of his neck
where his brown hair thinned off into shiny, golden down.


III.

Old Jenny sat in the rocking-chair by the fireguard in the nursery.
She wore a black net cap with purple rosettes above her ears. You
could look through the black net and see the top of her head laid out
in stripes of grey hair and pinky skin.

She had a grey face, flattened and wide-open like her eyes. She held
it tilted slightly backwards out of your way, and seemed to be always
staring at something just above your head. Jenny's face had tiny
creases and crinkles all over it. When you kissed it you could feel
the loose flesh crumpling and sliding softly over the bone. There was
always about her a faint smell of sour milk.

No use trying to talk to Jenny. She was too tired to listen. You
climbed on to her lap and stroked her face, and said "Poor Jenny. Dear
Jenny. Poor Jenny-Wee so tired," and her face shut up and went to
sleep. Her broad flat nose drooped; her eyelids drooped; her long,
grey bands of hair drooped; she was like the white donkey that lived
in the back lane and slept standing on three legs with his ears lying
down.

Mary loved old Jenny next to Mamma and Mark; and she loved the white
donkey. She wondered why Jenny was always cross when you stroked her
grey face and called her "Donkey-Jenny." It was not as if she minded
being stroked; because when Mark or Dank did it her face woke up
suddenly and smoothed out its creases. And when Roddy climbed up with
his long legs into her lap she hugged him tight and rocked him,
singing Mamma's song, and called him her baby.

He wasn't. _She_ was the baby; and while you were the baby you could
sit in people's laps. But old Jenny didn't want her to be the baby.

The nursery had shiny, slippery yellow walls and a brown floor, and a
black hearthrug with a centre of brown and yellow flowers. The greyish
chintz curtains were spotted with small brown leaves and crimson
berries. There were dark-brown cupboards and chests of drawers, and
chairs that were brown frames for the yellow network of the cane. Soft
bits of you squeezed through the holes and came out on the other side.
That hurt and made a red pattern on you where you sat down.

The tall green fireguard was a cage. When Jenny poked the fire you
peeped through and saw it fluttering inside. If you sat still you
could sometimes hear it say "teck-teck," and sometimes the fire would
fly out suddenly with a soft hiss.

High above your head you could just see the gleaming edge of the brass
rail.

"Jenny--where's yesterday and where's to-morrow?"


IV.

When you had run a thousand hundred times round the table you came to
the blue house. It stood behind Jenny's rocking-chair, where Jenny
couldn't see it, in a blue garden. The walls and ceilings were blue;
the doors and staircases were blue; everything in all the rooms was
blue.

Mary ran round and round. She loved the padding of her feet on the
floor and the sound of her sing-song:

"The pussies are blue, the beds are blue, the matches are blue and the
mousetraps and all the litty mouses!"

Mamma was always there dressed in a blue gown; and Jenny was there,
all in blue, with a blue cap; and Mark and Dank and Roddy were there,
all in blue. But Papa was not allowed in the blue house.

Mamma came in and looked at her as she ran. She stood in the doorway
with her finger on her mouth, and she was smiling. Her brown hair was
parted in two sleek bands, looped and puffed out softly round her
ears, and plaited in one plait that stood up on its edge above her
forehead. She wore a wide brown silk gown with falling sleeves.

"Pretty Mamma," said Mary. "In a blue dress."


V.

Every morning Mark and Dank and Roddy knocked at Mamma's door, and if
Papa was there he called out, "Go away, you little beasts!" If he was
not there she said, "Come in, darlings!" and they climbed up the big
bed into Papa's place and said "Good morning, Mamma!"

When Papa was away the lifted curtain spread like a tent over Mary's
cot, shutting her in with Mamma. When he was there the drawn curtain
hung straight down from the head of the bed.




II


I.

White patterns on the window, sharp spikes, feathers, sprigs with
furled edges, stuck flat on to the glass; white webs, crinkled like
the skin of boiled milk, stretched across the corner of the pane;
crisp, sticky stuff that bit your fingers.

Out of doors, black twigs thickened with a white fur; white powder
sprinkled over the garden walk. The white, ruffled grass stood out
stiffly and gave under your feet with a pleasant crunching. The air
smelt good; you opened your mouth and drank it in gulps. It went down
like cold, tingling water.

Frost.

You saw the sun for the first time, a red ball that hung by itself on
the yellowish white sky. Mamma said, "Yes, of course it would fall if
God wasn't there to hold it up in his hands."

Supposing God dropped the sun--


II.

The yellowish white sky had come close up to the house, a dirty
blanket let down outside the window. The tree made a black pattern on
it. Clear glass beads hung in a row from the black branch, each black
twig was tipped with a glass bead. When Jenny opened the window there
was a queer cold smell like the smell of the black water in the butt.

Thin white powder fluttered out of the blanket and fell. A thick
powder. A white fluff that piled itself in a ridge on the window-sill
and curved softly in the corner of the sash. It was cold, and melted
on your tongue with a taste of window-pane.

In the garden Mark and Dank and Roddy were making the snow man.

Mamma stood at the nursery window with her back to the room. She
called to Mary to come and look at the snow man.

Mary was tired of the snow man. She was making a tower with Roddy's
bricks while Roddy wasn't there. She had to build it quick before he
could come back and take his bricks away, and the quicker you built it
the sooner it fell down. Mamma was not to look until it was finished.

"Look--look, Mamma! M-m-mary's m-m-made a tar. And it's _not_ falled
down!"

The tower reached above Jenny's knee.

"Come and look, Mamma--" But Mamma wouldn't even turn her head.

"I'm looking at the snow man," she said.

Something swelled up, hot and tight, in Mary's body and in her face.
She had a big bursting face and a big bursting body. She struck the
tower, and it fell down. Her violence made her feel light and small
again and happy.

"Where's the tower, Mary?" said Mamma.

"There isn't any tar. I've knocked it down. It was a nashty tar."


III.

Aunt Charlotte--

Aunt Charlotte had sent the Isle of Skye terrier to Dank.

There was a picture of Aunt Charlotte in Mamma's Album. She stood on a
strip of carpet, supported by the hoops of her crinoline; her black
lace shawl made a pattern on the light gown. She wore a little hat
with a white sweeping feather, and under the hat two long black curls
hung down straight on each shoulder.

The other people in the Album were sulky, and wouldn't look at you.
The gentlemen made cross faces at somebody who wasn't there; the
ladies hung their heads and looked down at their crinolines. Aunt
Charlotte hung her head too, but her eyes, tilted up straight under
her forehead, pointed at you. And between her stiff black curls she
was smiling--smiling. When Mamma came to Aunt Charlotte's picture she
tried to turn over the page of the Album quick.

Aunt Charlotte sent things. She sent the fat valentine with the lace
paper border and black letters printed on sweet-smelling white satin
that Papa threw into the fire, and the white china doll with black
hair and blue eyes and no clothes on that Jenny hid in the nursery
cupboard.

The Skye terrier brought a message tied under his chin: "Tib. For my
dear little nephew Dan with Aunt Charlotte's fond love." He had
high-peaked, tufted ears and a blackish grey coat that trailed on the
floor like a shawl that was too big for him. When you tried to stroke
him the shawl swept and trailed away under the table. You saw nothing
but shawl and ears until Papa began to tease Tib. Papa snapped his
finger and thumb at him, and Tib showed little angry eyes and white
teeth set in a black snarl.

Mamma said, "Please don't do that again, Emilius."

And Papa did it again.


IV.

"What are you looking at, Master Daniel?" said Jenny.

"Nothing."

"Then what are you looking like that for? You didn't ought to."

Papa had sent Mark and Dank to the nursery in disgrace. Mark leaned
over the back of Jenny's chair and rocked her. His face was red but
tight; and as he rocked he smiled because of his punishment.

Dank lay on the floor on his stomach, his shoulders hunched, raised on
his elbows, his chin supported by his clenched fists. He was a dark
and white boy with dusty eyelashes and rough, doggy hair. He had
puckered up his mouth and made it small; under the scowl of his
twisted eyebrows he was looking at nothing.

"It's no worse for you than it is for Master Mark," said Jenny.

"_Isn't_ it? Tib was my dog. If he hadn't been my dog Papa wouldn't have
teased him, and Mamma wouldn't have sent him back to Aunt Charlotte, and
Aunt Charlotte wouldn't have let him be run over."

"Yes. But what did you say to your Papa?"

"I said I wish Tib _had_ bitten him. So I do. And Mark said it would
have served him jolly well right."

"So it would," said Mark.

Roddy had turned his back on them. Nobody was taking any notice of
him; so he sang aloud to himself the song he was forbidden to sing:

   "John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave,
    John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave--"

The song seemed to burst out of Roddy's beautiful white face; his pink
lips twirled and tilted; his golden curls bobbed and nodded to the tune.

   "John Brown's body lies a-rotting in his grave,
    As we go marching on!"

"When I grow up," said Dank, "I'll kill Papa for killing Tibby. I'll
bore holes in his face with Mark's gimlet. I'll cut pieces out of him.
I'll get the matches and set fire to his beard. I'll--I'll _hurt_ him."

"I don't think _I_ shall," said Mark. "But if I do I shan't kick up a
silly row about it first."

"It's all very well for you. You'd kick up a row if Tibby was your dog."

Mary had forgotten Tibby. Now she remembered.

"Where's Tibby? I want him."

"Tibby's dead," said Jenny.

"What's 'dead'?"

"Never you mind."

Roddy was singing:

   "'And _from_ his nose and _to_ his chin
     The worms crawled out and the worms crawled in'--

"_That's_ dead," said Roddy.


V.

You never knew when Aunt Charlotte mightn't send something. She forgot
your birthday and sometimes Christmas; but, to make up for that, she
remembered in between. Every time she was going to be married she
remembered.

Sarah the cat came too long after Mark's twelfth birthday to be his
birthday present. There was no message with her except that Aunt
Charlotte was going to be married and didn't want her any more.
Whenever Aunt Charlotte was going to be married she sent you something
she didn't want.

Sarah was a white cat with a pink nose and pink lips and pink pads
under her paws. Her tabby hood came down in a peak between her green
eyes. Her tabby cape went on along the back of her tail, tapering to
the tip. Sarah crouched against the fireguard, her haunches raised, her
head sunk back on her shoulders, and her paws tucked in under her
white, pouting breast.

Mark stooped over her; his mouth smiled its small, firm smile; his eyes
shone as he stroked her. Sarah raised her haunches under the caressing
hand.

Mary's body was still. Something stirred and tightened in it when she
looked at Sarah.

"I want Sarah," she said.

"You can't have her," said Jenny. "She's Master Mark's cat."

She wanted her more than Roddy's bricks and Dank's animal book or
Mark's soldiers. She trembled when she held her in her arms and kissed
her and smelt the warm, sweet, sleepy smell that came from the top of
her head.

"Little girls can't have everything they want," said Jenny.

"I wanted her before you did," said Dank. "You're too little to have a
cat at all."

He sat on the table swinging his legs. His dark, mournful eyes watched
Mark under their doggy scowl. He looked like Tibby, the terrier that
Mamma sent away because Papa teased him.

"Sarah isn't your cat either, Master Daniel. Your Aunt Charlotte gave
her to your Mamma, and your Mamma gave her to Master Mark."

"She ought to have given her to me. She took my dog away."

"_I_ gave her to you," said Mark.

"And I gave her to you back again."

"Well then, she's half our cat."

"I want her," said Mary. She said it again and again.

Mamma came and took her into the room with the big bed.

The gas blazed in the white globes. Lovely white lights washed like
water over the polished yellow furniture: the bed, the great high
wardrobe, the chests of drawers, the twisted poles of the
looking-glass. There were soft rounds and edges of blond light on the
white marble chimney-piece and the white marble washstand. The drawn
curtains were covered with shining silver patterns on a sleek green
ground that shone. All these things showed again in the long, flashing
mirrors.

Mary looked round the room and wondered why the squat grey men had gone
out of the curtains.

"Don't look about you," said Mamma. "Look at me. Why do you want
Sarah?"

She had forgotten Sarah.

"Because," she said, "Sarah is so sweet."

"Mamma gave Sarah to Mark. Mary mustn't want what isn't given her. Mark
doesn't say, 'I want Mary's dollies.' Papa doesn't say, 'I want Mamma's
workbox.'"

"But _I_ want Sarah."

"And that's selfish and self-willed."

Mamma sat down on the low chair at the foot of the bed.

"God," she said, "hates selfishness and self-will. God is grieved every
time Mary is self-willed and selfish. He wants her to give up her
will."

When Mamma talked about God she took you on her lap and you played with
the gold tassel on her watch chain. Her face was solemn and tender. She
spoke softly. She was afraid that God might hear her talking about him
and wouldn't like it.

Mary knelt in Mamma's lap and said "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild," and
"Our Father," and played with the gold tassel. Every day began and
ended with "Our Father" and "Gentle Jesus, meek and mild."

"What's hallowed?"

"Holy," said Mamma. "What God is. Sacred and holy."

Mary twisted the gold tassel and made it dance and run through the loop
of the chain. Mamma took it out of her hands and pressed them together
and stooped her head to them and kissed them. She could feel the kiss
tingling through her body from her finger-tips, and she was suddenly
docile and appeased.

When she lay in her cot behind the curtain she prayed: "Please God keep
me from wanting Sarah."

In the morning she remembered. When she looked at Sarah she thought:
"Sarah is Mark's cat and Dank's cat."

She touched her with the tips of her fingers. Sarah's eyes were
reproachful and unhappy. She ran away and crept under the chest of
drawers.

"Mamma gave Sarah to Mark."

Mamma was sacred and holy. Mark was sacred and holy. Sarah was sacred
and holy, crouching under the chest of drawers with her eyes gleaming
in the darkness.


VI.

It was a good and happy day.

She lay on the big bed. Her head rested on Mamma's arm. Mamma's face
was close to her. Water trickled into her eyes out of the wet pad of
pocket-handkerchief. Under the cold pad a hot, grinding pain came from
the hole in her forehead. Jenny stood beside the bed. Her face had
waked up and she was busy squeezing something out of a red sponge into
a basin of pink water.

When Mamma pressed the pocket-handkerchief tight the pain ground
harder, when she loosened it blood ran out of the hole and the
pocket-handkerchief was warm again. Then Jenny put on the sponge.

She could hear Jenny say, "It was the Master's fault. She didn't ought
to have been left in the room with him."

She remembered. The dining-room and the sharp spike on the fender and
Papa's legs stretched out. He had told her not to run so fast and she
had run faster and faster. It wasn't Papa's fault.

She remembered tripping over Papa's legs. Then falling on the spike.
Then nothing.

Then waking in Mamma's room.

She wasn't crying. The pain made her feel good and happy; and Mamma was
calling her her darling and her little lamb. Mamma loved her. Jenny
loved her.

Mark and Dank and Roddy came in. Mark carried Sarah in his arms. They
stood by the bed and looked at her; their faces pressed close. Roddy
had been crying; but Mark and Dank were excited. They climbed on to the
bed and kissed her. They made Sarah crouch down close beside her and
held her there. They spoke very fast, one after the other.

"We've brought you Sarah."

"We've given you Sarah."

"She's your cat."

"To keep for ever."

She was glad that she had tripped over Papa's legs. It was a good and
happy day.


VII.

The sun shone. The polished green blades of the grass glittered. The
gravel walk and the nasturtium bed together made a broad orange blaze.
Specks like glass sparkled in the hot grey earth. On the grey flagstone
the red poppy you picked yesterday was a black thread, a purple stain.

She was happy sitting on the grass, drawing the fine, sharp blades
between her fingers, sniffing the smell of the mignonette that tingled
like sweet pepper, opening and shutting the yellow mouths of the
snap-dragon.

The garden flowers stood still, straight up in the grey earth. They
were as tall as you were. You could look at them a long time without
being tired.

The garden flowers were not like the animals. The cat Sarah bumped her
sleek head under your chin; you could feel her purr throbbing under her
ribs and crackling in her throat. The white rabbit pushed out his nose
to you and drew it in again, quivering, and breathed his sweet breath
into your mouth.

The garden flowers wouldn't let you love them. They stood still in
their beauty, quiet, arrogant, reproachful. They put you in the wrong.
When you stroked them they shook and swayed from you; when you held
them tight their heads dropped, their backs broke, they shrivelled up
in your hands. All the flowers in the garden were Mamma's; they were
sacred and holy.

You loved best the flowers that you stooped down to look at and the
flowers that were not Mamma's: the small crumpled poppy by the edge of
the field, and the ears of the wild rye that ran up your sleeve and
tickled you, and the speedwell, striped like the blue eyes of Meta, the
wax doll.

When you smelt mignonette you thought of Mamma.

It was her birthday. Mark had given her a little sumach tree in a red
pot. They took it out of the pot and dug a hole by the front door steps
outside the pantry window and planted it there.

Papa came out on to the steps and watched them.

"I suppose," he said, "you think it'll _grow_?"

Mamma never turned to look at him. She smiled because it was her
birthday. She said, "Of course it'll grow."

She spread out its roots and pressed it down and padded up the earth
about it with her hands. It held out its tiny branches, stiffly, like a
toy tree, standing no higher than the mignonette. Papa looked at Mamma
and Mark, busy and happy with their heads together, taking no notice of
him. He laughed out of his big beard and went back into the house
suddenly and slammed the door. You knew that he disliked the sumach
tree and that he was angry with Mark for giving it to Mamma.

When you smelt mignonette you thought of Mamma and Mark and the sumach
tree, and Papa standing on the steps, and the queer laugh that came out
of his beard.

When it rained you were naughty and unhappy because you couldn't go out
of doors. Then Mamma stood at the window and looked into the front
garden. She smiled at the rain. She said, "It will be good for my
sumach tree."

Every day you went out on to the steps to see if the sumach tree had
grown.


VIII.

The white lamb stood on the table beside her cot.

Mamma put it there every night so that she could see it first thing in
the morning when she woke.

She had had a birthday. Suddenly in the middle of the night she was
five years old.

She had kept on waking up with the excitement of it. Then, in the dark
twilight of the room, she had seen a bulky thing inside the cot,
leaning up against the rail. It stuck out queerly and its weight
dragged the counterpane tight over her feet.

The birthday present. What she saw was not its real shape. When she
poked it, stiff paper bent in and crackled; and she could feel
something big and solid underneath. She lay quiet and happy, trying to
guess what it could be, and fell asleep again.

It was the white lamb. It stood on a green stand. It smelt of dried hay
and gum and paint like the other toy animals, but its white coat had a
dull, woolly smell, and that was the real smell of the lamb. Its large,
slanting eyes stared off over its ears into the far corners of the
room, so that it never looked at you. This made her feel sometimes that
the lamb didn't love her, and sometimes that it was frightened and
wanted to be comforted.

She trembled when first she stroked it and held it to her face, and
sniffed its lamby smell.

Papa looked down at her. He was smiling; and when she looked up at him
she was not afraid. She had the same feeling that came sometimes when
she sat in Mamma's lap and Mamma talked about God and Jesus. Papa was
sacred and holy.

He had given her the lamb.

It was the end of her birthday; Mamma and Jenny were putting her to
bed. She felt weak and tired, and sad because it was all over.

"Come to that," said Jenny, "your birthday was over at five minutes
past twelve this morning."

"When will it come again?"

"Not for a whole year," said Mamma.

"I wish it would come to-morrow."

Mamma shook her head at her. "You want to be spoiled and petted every
day."

"No. No. I want--I want--"

"She doesn't know what she wants," said Jenny.

"Yes. I do. I _do_."

"Well--"

"I want to love Papa every day. 'Cause he gave me my lamb."

"Oh," said Mamma, "if you only love people because they give you
birthday presents--"

"But I don't--I don't--really and truly--"

"You didn't ought to have no more birthdays," said Jenny, "if they make
you cry."

Why couldn't they see that crying meant that she wanted Papa to be
sacred and holy every day?

The day after the birthday when Papa went about the same as ever,
looking big and frightening, when he "Baa'd" into her face and called
out, "Mary had a little lamb!" and "Mary, Mary, quite contrary," she
looked after him sorrowfully and thought: "Papa gave me my lamb."


IX.

One day Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella came over from Chadwell Grange.
They were talking to Mamma a long time in the drawing-room, and when
she came in they stopped and whispered.

Roddy told her the secret. Uncle Edward was going to give her a live
lamb.

Mark and Dank said it couldn't be true. Uncle Edward was not a real
uncle; he was only Aunt Bella's husband, and he never gave you
anything. And anyhow the lamb wasn't born yet and couldn't come for
weeks and weeks.

Every morning she asked, "Has my new lamb come? When is it coming? Do
you think it will come to-day?"

She could keep on sitting still quite a long time by merely thinking
about the new lamb. It would run beside her when she played in the
garden. It would eat grass out of her hand. She would tie a ribbon
round its neck and lead it up and down the lane. At these moments she
forgot the toy lamb. It stood on the chest of drawers in the nursery,
looking off into the corners of the room, neglected.

By the time Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella sent for her to come and see
the lamb, she knew exactly what it would be like and what would happen.
She saw it looking like the lambs in the Bible Picture Book, fat, and
covered with thick, pure white wool. She saw Uncle Edward, with his
yellow face and big nose and black whiskers, coming to her across the
lawn at Chadwell Grange, carrying the lamb over his shoulder like
Jesus.

It was a cold morning. They drove a long time in Uncle Edward's
carriage, over the hard, loud roads, between fields white with frost,
and Uncle Edward was not on his lawn.

Aunt Bella stood in the big hall, waiting for them. She looked much
larger and more important than Mamma.

"Aunt Bella, have you got my new lamb?"

She tried not to shriek it out, because Aunt Bella was nearly always
poorly, and Mamma told her that if you shrieked at her she would be
ill.

Mamma said "Sh-sh-sh!" And Aunt Bella whispered something and she heard
Mamma answer, "Better not."

"If she _sees_ it," said Aunt Bella, "she'll understand."

Mamma shook her head at Aunt Bella.

"Edward would like it," said Aunt Bella. "He wanted to give it her
himself. It's _his_ present."

Mamma took her hand and they followed Aunt Bella through the servants'
hall into the kitchen. The servants were all there, Rose and Annie and
Cook, and Mrs. Fisher, the housekeeper, and Giles, the young footman.
They all stared at her in a queer, kind way as she came in.

A low screen was drawn close round one corner of the fireplace; Uncle
Edward and Pidgeon, the bailiff, were doing something to it with a
yellow horse-cloth.

Uncle Edward came to her, looking down the side of his big nose. He led
her to the screen and drew it away.

Something lay on the floor wrapped in a piece of dirty blanket. When
Uncle Edward pushed back the blanket a bad smell came out. He said,
"Here's your lamb, Mary. You're just in time."

She saw a brownish grey animal with a queer, hammer-shaped head and
long black legs. Its body was drawn out and knotted like an enormous
maggot. It lay twisted to one side and its eyes were shut.

"That isn't my lamb."

"It's the lamb I always said Miss Mary was to have, isn't it, Pidgeon?"

"Yes, Squoire, it's the lamb you bid me set asoide for little Missy."

"Then," said Mary, "why does it look like that?"

"It's very ill," Mamma said gently. "Poor Uncle Edward thought you'd
like to see it before it died. You _are_ glad you've seen it, aren't
you?"

"No."

Just then the lamb stirred in its blanket; it opened its eyes and
looked at her.

She thought: "It's my lamb. It looked at me. It's _my_ lamb and it's
dying. My _lamb's_ dying."

The bad smell came again out of the blanket. She tried not to think of
it. She wanted to sit down on the floor beside the lamb and lift it out
of its blanket and nurse it; but Mamma wouldn't let her.

When she got home Mamma took down the toy lamb from the chest of
drawers and brought it to her.

She sat quiet a long time holding it in her lap and stroking it.

The stiff eyes of the toy lamb stared away over its ears.




III


I.

Jenny was cross and tugged at your hair when she dressed you to go to
Chadwell Grange.

"Jenny-Wee, Mamma says if I'm not good Aunt Bella will be ill. Do you
think it's really true?"

Jenny tugged. "I'd thank you for some of your Aunt Bella's illness,"
she said.

"I mean," Mary said, "like Papa was in the night. Every time I get
'cited and jump about I think she'll open her mouth and begin."

"Well, if she was to you'd oughter be sorry for her."

"I _am_ sorry for her. But I'm frightened too."

"That's not being good," said Jenny. But she left off tugging.

Somehow you knew she was pleased to think you were not really good at
Aunt Bella's, where Mrs. Fisher dressed and undressed you and you were
allowed to talk to Pidgeon.

Roddy and Dank said you ought to hate Uncle Edward and Pidgeon and Mrs.
Fisher, and not to like Aunt Bella very much, even if she was Mamma's
sister. Mamma didn't really like Uncle Edward; she only pretended
because of Aunt Bella.

Uncle Edward had an ugly nose and a yellow face widened by his black
whiskers; his mouth stretched from one whisker to the other, and his
black hair curled in large tufts above his ears. But he had no beard;
you could see the whole of his mouth at once; and when Aunt Bella came
into the room his little blue eyes looked up off the side of his nose
and he smiled at her between his tufts of hair. It was dreadful to
think that Mark and Dank and Roddy didn't like him. It might hurt him
so much that he would never be happy again.

About Pidgeon she was not quite sure. Pidgeon was very ugly. He had
long stiff legs, and a long stiff face finished off with a fringe of
red whiskers that went on under his chin. Still, it was not nice to
think of Pidgeon being unhappy either. But Mrs. Fisher was large and
rather like Aunt Bella, only softer and more bulging. Her round face
had a high red polish on it always, and when she saw you coming her
eyes twinkled, and her red forehead and her big cheeks and her mouth
smiled all together a fat, simmering smile. When you got to the black
and white marble tiles you saw her waiting for you at the foot of the
stairs.

She wanted to ask Mrs. Fisher if it was true that Aunt Bella would be
ill if she were naughty; but a squeezing and dragging came under her
waist whenever she thought about it, and that made her shy and ashamed.
It went when they left her to play by herself on the lawn in front of
the house.

Aunt Bella's house was enormous. Two long rows of windows stared out at
you, their dark green storm shutters folded back on the yellow brick
walls. A third row of little squeezed-up windows and little squeezed-up
shutters blinked in the narrow space under the roof. All summer a sweet
smell came from that side of the house where cream-coloured roses hung
on the yellow walls between the green shutters. There was a cedar tree
on the lawn and a sun-dial and a stone fountain. Goldfish swam in the
clear greenish water. The flowers in the round beds were stiff and
shining, as if they had been cut out of tin and freshly painted. When
you thought of Aunt Bella's garden you saw calceolarias, brown velvet
purses with yellow spots.

She could always get away from Aunt Bella by going down the dark walk
between the yew hedge and the window of Mrs. Fisher's room, and through
the stable-yard into the plantation. The cocks and hens had their black
timber house there in the clearing, and Ponto, the Newfoundland, lived
all by himself in his kennel under the little ragged fir trees.

When Ponto saw her coming he danced on his hind legs and strained at
his chain and called to her with his loud, barking howl. He played with
her, crawling on his stomach, crouching, raising first one big paw and
then the other. She put out her foot, and he caught it and held it
between his big paws, and looked at it with his head on one side,
smiling. She squealed with delight, and Ponto barked again.

The stable bell would ring while they played in the plantation, and
Uncle Edward or Pidgeon or Mrs. Fisher would come out and find her and
take her back into the house. Ponto lifted up his head and howled after
her as she went.

At lunch Mary sat quivering between Mamma and Aunt Bella. The squeezing
and dragging under her waist had begun again. There was a pattern of
green ivy round the dinner plates and a pattern of goats round the
silver napkin rings. She tried to fix her mind on the ivy and the goats
instead of looking at Aunt Bella to see whether she were going to be
ill. She _would_ be if you left mud in the hall on the black and white
marble tiles. Or if you took Ponto off the chain and let him get into
the house. Or if you spilled the gravy.

Aunt Bella's face was much pinker and richer and more important than
Mamma's face. She thought she wouldn't have minded quite so much if
Aunt Bella had been white and brown and pretty, like Mamma.

There--she had spilled the gravy.

Little knots came in Aunt Bella's pink forehead. Her face loosened and
swelled with a red flush; her mouth pouted and drew itself in again,
pulled out of shape by something that darted up the side of her nose
and made her blink.

She thought: "I know--I know--I _know_ it's going to happen."

It didn't. Aunt Bella only said, "You should look at your plate and
spoon, dear."

After lunch, when they were resting, you could feel naughtiness coming
on. Then Pidgeon carried you on his back to the calf-shed; or Mrs.
Fisher took you up into her bedroom to see her dress.

In Mrs. Fisher's bedroom a smell of rotten apples oozed through the
rosebud pattern on the walls. There were no doors inside, only places
in the wall-paper that opened. Behind one of these places there was a
cupboard where Mrs. Fisher kept her clothes. Sometimes she would take
the lid off the big box covered with wall-paper and show you her Sunday
bonnet. You sat on the bed, and she gave you peppermint balls to suck
while she peeled off her black merino and squeezed herself into her
black silk. You watched for the moment when the brooch with the black
tomb and the weeping willow on it was undone and Mrs. Fisher's chin
came out first by the open collar and Mrs. Fisher began to swell. When
she stood up in her petticoat and bodice she was enormous; her breasts
and hips and her great arms shook as she walked about the room.

Mary was sorry when she said good-bye to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella
and Mrs. Fisher.

For, always, as soon as she got home, Roddy rushed at her with the same
questions.

"Did you let Uncle Edward kiss you?"

"Yes."

"Did you talk to Pidgeon?"

"Yes."

"Did you kiss Mrs. Fisher?"

"Yes."

And Dank said, "Have they taken Ponto off the chain yet?"

"No."

"Well, then, that shows you what pigs they are."

And when she saw Mark looking at her she felt small and silly and
ashamed.


II.

It was the last week of the midsummer holidays. Mark and Dank had gone
to stay for three days at Aunt Bella's, and on the second day they had
been sent home.

Mamma and Roddy were in the garden when they came. They were killing
snails in a flower-pot by putting salt on them. The snails turned over
and over on each other and spat out a green foam that covered them like
soapsuds as they died.

Mark's face was red and he was smiling. Even Dank looked proud of
himself and happy. They called out together, "We've been sent home."

Mamma looked up from her flower-pot.

"What did you _do_?" she said.

"We took Ponto off the chain," said Dank.

"Did he get into the house?"

"Of course he did," said Mark. "Like a shot. He got into Aunt Bella's
bedroom, and Aunt Bella was in bed."

"Oh, _Mark_!"

"Uncle Edward came up just as we were getting him out. He was in an
awful wax."

"I'm afraid," Dank said, "I cheeked him."

"What did you say?"

"I told him he wasn't fit to have a dog. And he said we weren't to come
again; and Mark said that was all we _had_ come for--to let Ponto
loose."

Mamma put another snail into the flower-pot, very gently. She was
smiling and at the same time trying not to smile.

"He went back," said Mark, "and raked it up again about our chasing his
sheep, ages ago."

"_Did_ you chase the sheep?"

"No. Of course we didn't. They started to run because they saw Pidgeon
coming, and Roddy ran after them till we told him not to. The mean
beast said we'd made Mary's lamb die by frightening its mother. When he
only gave it her because he knew it wouldn't live. _Then_ he said we'd
frightened Aunt Bella."

Mary stared at them, fascinated.

"Oh, Mark, was Aunt Bella ill?"

"Of course she wasn't. She only says she's going to be to keep you
quiet."

"Well," said Mamma, "she won't be frightened any more. He'll not ask
you again."

"We don't care. He's not a bit of good. He won't let us ride his horses
or climb his trees or fish in his stinking pond."

"Let Mary go there," said Dank. "_She_ likes it. She kisses Pidgeon."

"I don't," she cried. "I hate Pidgeon. I hate Uncle Edward and Aunt
Bella. I hate Mrs. Fisher."

Mamma looked up from her flower-pot, and, suddenly, she was angry.

"For shame! They're kind to _you_," she said. "You little naughty,
ungrateful girl."

"They're _not_ kind to Mark and Dank. That's why I hate them."

She wondered why Mamma was not angry with Mark and Dank, who had let
Ponto loose and frightened Aunt Bella.




IV


I.

That year when Christmas came Papa gave her a red book with a gold
holly wreath on the cover. The wreath was made out of three words: _The
Children's Prize_, printed in letters that pretended to be holly
sprigs. Inside the holly wreath was the number of the year, in fat gold
letters: 1869.

Soon after Christmas she had another birthday. She was six years old.
She could write in capitals and count up to a hundred if she were left
to do it by herself. Besides "Gentle Jesus," she could say "Cock-Robin"
and "The House that Jack Built," and "The Lord is my Shepherd" and "The
Slave in the Dismal Swamp." And she could read all her own story books,
picking out the words she knew and making up the rest. Roddy never made
up. He was a big boy, he was eight years old.

The morning after her birthday Roddy and she were sent into the
drawing-room to Mamma. A strange lady was there. She had chosen the
high-backed chair in the middle of the room with the Berlin wool-work
parrot on it. She sat very upright, stiff and thin between the twisted
rosewood pillars of the chair. She was dressed in a black gown made of
a great many little bands of rough crape and a few smooth stretches of
merino. Her crape veil, folded back over her hat, hung behind her head
in a stiff square. A jet necklace lay flat and heavy on her small
chest. When you had seen all these black things she showed you,
suddenly, her white, wounded face.

Mamma called her Miss Thompson.

Miss Thompson's face was so light and thin that you thought it would
break if you squeezed it. The skin was drawn tight over her jaw and the
bridge of her nose and the sharp naked arches of her eye-bones. She
looked at you with mournful, startled eyes that were too large for
their lids; and her flat chin trembled slightly as she talked.

"This is Rodney," she said, as if she were repeating a lesson after
Mamma.

Rodney leaned up against Mamma and looked proud and handsome. She had
her arm round him, and every now and then she pressed it tighter to
draw him to herself.

Miss Thompson said after Mamma, "And this is Mary."

Her mournful eyes moved and sparkled as if she had suddenly thought of
something for herself.

"I am sure," she said, "they will be very good."

Mamma shook her head, as much as to say Miss Thompson must not build on
it.

Every weekday from ten to twelve Miss Thompson came and taught them
reading, writing and arithmetic. Every Wednesday at half-past eleven
the boys' tutor, Mr. Sippett, looked in and taught Rodney "_Mensa_: a
table."

Mamma told them they must never be naughty with Miss Thompson because
her mother was dead.

They went away and talked about her among the gooseberry bushes at the
bottom of the garden.

"I don't know how we're going to manage," Rodney said. "There's no
sense in saying we mustn't be naughty because her mother's dead."

"I suppose," Mary said, "it would make her think she's deader."

"We can't help that. We've got to be naughty some time."

"We mustn't begin," Mary said. "If we begin we shall have to finish."

They were good for four days, from ten to twelve. And at a quarter past
twelve on the fifth day Mamma found Mary crying in the dining-room.

"Oh, Mary, have you been naughty?"

"No; but I shall be to-morrow. I've been so good that I can't keep on
any longer."

Mamma took her in her lap. She lowered her head to you, holding it
straight and still, ready to pounce if you said the wrong thing.

"Being good when it pleases you isn't being good," she said. "It's not
what Jesus means by being good. God wants us to be good all the time,
like Jesus."

"But--Jesus and me is different. He wasn't able to be naughty. And I'm
not able to be good. Not _all_ the time."

"You're not able to be good of your own will and in your own strength.
You're not good till God makes you good."

"Did God make me naughty?"

"No. God couldn't make anybody naughty."

"Not if he tried _hard_?"

"No. But," said Mamma, speaking very fast, "he'll make you good if you
ask him."

"Will he make me good if I don't ask him?"

"No," said Mamma.


II.

Miss Thompson--

She was always sure you would be good. And Mamma was sure you wouldn't
be, or that if you were it would be for some bad reason like being
sorry for Miss Thompson.

As long as Roddy was in the room Mary was sorry for Miss Thompson. And
when she was left alone with her she was frightened. The squeezing and
dragging under her waist began when Miss Thompson pushed her gentle,
mournful face close up to see what she was doing.

She was afraid of Miss Thompson because her mother was dead.

She kept on thinking about Miss Thompson's mother. Miss Thompson's
mother would be like Jenny in bed with her cap off; and she would be
like the dead field mouse that Roddy found in the lane. She would lie
on the bed with her back bent and her head hanging loose like the dear
little field mouse; and her legs would be turned up over her stomach
like his, toes and fingers clawing together. When you touched her she
would be cold and stiff, like the field mouse. They had wrapped her up
in a white sheet. Roddy said dead people were always wrapped up in
white sheets. And Mr. Chapman had put her into a coffin like the one he
was making when he gave Dank the wood for the rabbit's house.

Every time Miss Thompson came near her she saw the white sheet and
smelt the sharp, bitter smell of the coffin.

If she was naughty Miss Thompson (who seemed to have forgotten) would
remember that her mother was dead. It might happen any minute.

It never did. For Miss Thompson said you were good if you knew your
lessons; and at the same time you were not naughty if you didn't know
them. You might not know them to-day; but you would know them to-morrow
or the next day.

By midsummer Mary could read the books that Dank read. If it had not
been for Mr. Sippett and "_Mensa_: a table," she would have known as
much as Roddy.

Almost before they had time to be naughty Miss Thompson had gone. Mamma
said that Roddy was not getting on fast enough.




V


I.

The book that Aunt Bella had brought her was called _The Triumph Over
Midian_, and Aunt Bella said that if she was a good girl it would
interest her. But it did not interest her. That was how she heard Aunt
Bella and Mamma talking together.

Mamma's foot was tapping on the footstool, which showed that she was
annoyed.

"They're coming to-morrow," she said, "to look at that house at
Ilford."

"To live?" Aunt Bella said.

"To live," Mamma said.

"And is Emilius going to allow it? What's Victor thinking of, bringing
her down here?"

"They want to be near Emilius. They think he'll look after her."

"It was Victor who _would_ have her at home, and Victor might look
after her himself. She was his favourite sister."

"He doesn't want to be too responsible. They think Emilius ought to
take his share."

Aunt Bella whispered something. And Mamma said, "Stuff and nonsense! No
more than you or I. Only you never know what queer thing she'll do
next."

Aunt Bella said, "She was always queer as long as I remember her."

Mamma's foot went tap, tap again.

"She's been sending away things worse than ever. Dolls. Those naked
ones."

Aunt Bella gave herself a shake and said something that sounded like
"Goo-oo-sh!" And then, "Going to be married?"

Mamma said, "Going to be married."

And Aunt Bella said "T-t-t."

They were talking about Aunt Charlotte.

Mamma went on: "She's packed off all her clothes. Her new ones. Sent
them to Matilda. Thinks she won't have to wear them any more."

"You mustn't expect me to have Charlotte Olivier in my house," Aunt
Bella said. "If anybody came to call it would be most unpleasant."

"I wouldn't mind," Mamma said, tap-tapping, "if it was only Charlotte.
But there's Lavvy and her Opinions."

Aunt Bella said "Pfoo-oof!" and waved her hands as if she were clearing
the air.

"All I can say is," Mamma said, "that if Lavvy Olivier brings her
Opinions into this house Emilius and I will walk out of it."

To-morrow--they were coming to-morrow, Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy and
Aunt Charlotte.


II.

They were coming to lunch, and everybody was excited.

Mark and Dank were in their trousers and Eton jackets, and Roddy in his
new black velvet suit. The drawing-room was dressed out in its green
summer chintzes that shone and crackled with glaze. Mamma had moved the
big Chinese bowl from the cabinet to the round mahogany table and filled
it with white roses. You could see them again in the polish; blurred
white faces swimming on the dark, wine-coloured pool. You held out your
face to be washed in the clear, cool scent of the white roses.

When Mark opened the door a smell of roast chicken came up the kitchen
stairs.

It was like Sunday, except that you were excited.

"Look at Papa," Roddy whispered. "Papa's excited."

Papa had come home early from the office. He stood by the fireplace in
the long tight frock-coat that made him look enormous. He had twirled
back his moustache to show his rich red mouth. He had put something on
his beard that smelt sweet. You noticed for the first time how the
frizzed, red-brown mass sprang from a peak of silky golden hair under his
pouting lower lip. He was letting himself gently up and down with the
tips of his toes, and he was smiling, secretly, as if he had just thought
of something that he couldn't tell Mamma. Whenever he looked at Mamma she
put her hand up to her hair and patted it.

Mamma had done her hair a new way. The brown plait stood up farther back
on the edge of the sloping chignon. She wore her new lavender and white
striped muslin. Lavender ribbon streamed from the pointed opening of her
bodice. A black velvet ribbon was tied tight round her neck; a jet cross
hung from it and a diamond star twinkled in the middle of the cross. She
pushed out her mouth and drew it in again, like Roddy's rabbit, and the
tip of her nose trembled as if it knew all the time what Papa was
thinking.

She was so soft and pretty that you could hardly bear it. Mark stood
behind her chair and when Papa was not looking he kissed her. The
behaviour of her mouth and nose gave you a delicious feeling that with
Aunt Lavvy and Aunt Charlotte you wouldn't have to be so very good.

The front door bell rang. Papa and Mamma looked at each other, as much as
to say, "_Now_ it's going to begin." And suddenly Mamma looked small and
frightened. She took Mark's hand.

"Emilius," she said, "what am I to say to Lavinia?"

"You don't say anything," Papa said. "Mary can talk to Lavinia."

Mary jumped up and down with excitement. She knew how it would be. In
another minute Aunt Charlotte would come in, dressed in her black lace
shawl and crinoline, and Aunt Lavvy would bring her Opinions. And
something, something that you didn't know, would happen.


III.

Aunt Charlotte came in first with a tight, dancing run. You knew her by
the long black curls on her shoulders. She was smiling as she smiled in
the album. She bent her head as she bent it in the album, and her eyes
looked up close under her black eyebrows and pointed at you.
Pretty--pretty blue eyes, and something frightening that made you look at
them. And something queer about her narrow jaw. It thrust itself forward,
jerking up her smile.

No black lace shawl and no crinoline. Aunt Charlotte wore a blue and
black striped satin dress, bunched up behind, and a little hat perched on
the top of her chignon and tied underneath it with blue ribbons.

She had got in and was kissing everybody while Aunt Lavvy and Uncle
Victor were fumbling with the hat stand in the hall.

Aunt Lavvy came next. A long grey face. Black bands of hair parted on her
broad forehead. Black eyebrows; blue eyes that stuck out wide, that
didn't point at you. A grey bonnet, a grey dress, a little white shawl
with a narrow fringe, drooping.

She walked slowly--slowly, as if she were still thinking of something
that was not in the room, as if she came into a quiet, empty room.

You thought at first she was never going to kiss you, she was so tall and
her face and eyes held themselves so still.

Uncle Victor. Dark and white; smaller than Papa, smaller than Aunt Lavvy;
thin in his loose frock-coat. His forehead and black eyebrows were
twisted above his blue, beautiful eyes. He had a small dark brown
moustache and a small dark brown beard, trimmed close and shaped prettily
to a point. He looked like something, like somebody; like Dank when he
was mournful, like Dank's dog, Tibby, when he hid from Papa. He said,
"Well, Caroline. Well, Emilius."

Aunt Charlotte gave out sharp cries of "Dear!" and "Darling!" and
smothered them against your face in a sort of moan.

When she came to Roddy she put up her hands.

"Roddy--yellow hair. No. No. What have you done with the blue eyes and
black hair, Emilius? That comes of letting your beard grow so long."

Then they all went into the dining-room.

It was like a birthday. There was to be real blancmange, and preserved
ginger, and you drank raspberry vinegar out of the silver christening
cups the aunts and uncles gave you when you were born. Uncle Victor had
given Mary hers. She held it up and read her own name on it.

   MARY VICTORIA OLIVIER
   1863.

They were all telling their names. Mary took them up and chanted them:
"Mark Emilius Olivier; Daniel Olivier; Rodney Olivier; Victor Justus
Olivier; Lavinia Mary Olivier; Charlotte Louisa Olivier." She liked the
sound of them.

She sat between Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy. Roddy was squeezed into the
corner between Mamma and Mark. Aunt Charlotte sat opposite her between
Mark and Daniel. She _had_ to look at Aunt Charlotte's face. There were
faint grey smears on it as if somebody had scribbled all over it with
pencil.

A remarkable conversation.

"Aunt Lavvy! Aunt Lavvy! Have you brought your Opinions?"

"No, my dear, they were not invited. So I left them at home."

"I'm glad to hear it," Papa said.

"Will you bring them next time?"

"No. Not next time, nor any other time," Aunt Lavvy said, looking
straight at Papa.

"Did you shut them up in the stair cupboard?"

"No, but I may have to some day."

"Then," Mary said, "if there are any little ones, may I have one?"

"May she, Emilius?"

"Certainly not," Papa said. "She's got too many little opinions of her
own."

"What do you know about opinions?" Uncle Victor said.

Mary was excited and happy. She had never been allowed to talk so much.
She tried to eat her roast chicken in a business-like, grown-up manner,
while she talked.

"I've read about them," she said. "They are dear little animals with long
furry tails, much bigger than Sarah's tail, and they climb up trees."

"Oh, they climb up trees, do they?" Uncle Victor was very polite and
attentive.

"Yes. There's their picture in Bank's Natural History Book. Next to the
Ornythrincus or Duck-billed Plat-i-pus. If they came into the house Mamma
would be frightened. But I would not be frightened. I should stroke
them."

"Do you think," Uncle Victor said, still politely, "you _quite_ know what
you mean?"

"_I_ know," Daniel said, "she means opossums."

"Yes," Mary said. "Opossums."

"What _are_ opinions?"

"Opinions," Papa said, "are things that people put in other people's
heads. Nasty, dangerous things, opinions."

She thought: "That was why Mamma and Papa were frightened."

"You won't put them into Mamma's head, will you, Aunt Lavvy?"

Mamma said, "Get on with your dinner. Papa's only teasing."

Aunt Lavvy's face flushed slowly, and she held her mouth tight, as if she
were trying not to cry. Papa was teasing Aunt Lavvy.

"How do you like that Ilford house, Charlotte?" Mamma asked suddenly.

"It's the nicest little house you ever saw," Aunt Charlotte said. "But
it's too far away. I'd rather have any ugly, poky old den that was next
door. I want to see all I can of you and Emilius and Dan and little
darling Mary. Before I go away."

"You aren't thinking of going away when you've only just come?"

"That's what Victor and Lavinia say. But you don't suppose I'm going to
stay an old maid all my life to please Victor and Lavinia."

"I haven't thought about it at all," Mamma said.

"_They_ have. _I_ know what they're thinking. But it's all settled. I'm
going to Marshall and Snelgrove's for my things. There's a silver-grey
poplin in their window. If I decide on it, Caroline, you shall have my
grey watered silk."

"You needn't waggle your big beard at me, Emilius," Aunt Charlotte said.

Papa pretended that he hadn't heard her and began to talk to Uncle
Victor.

"Did you read John Bright's speech in Parliament last night?"

Uncle Victor said, "I did."

"What did you think of it?"

Uncle Victor raised his shoulders and his eyebrows and spread out his
thin, small hands.

"A man with a face like that," Aunt Charlotte said, "oughtn't to _be_ in
Parliament."

"He's the man who saved England," said Papa.

"What's the good of that if he can't save himself? Where does he expect
to go to with the hats he wears?"

"Where does Emilius expect to go to," Uncle Victor said, "when his John
Bright and his Gladstone get their way?"

Suddenly Aunt Charlotte left off smiling.

"Emilius," she said, "do you uphold Gladstone?"

"Of course I uphold Gladstone. There's nobody in this country fit to
black his boots."

"I know nothing about his boots. But he's an infidel. He wants to pull
down the Church. I thought you were a Churchman?"

"So I am," Papa said. "I've too good an opinion of the Church to imagine
that it can't stand alone."

"You're a nice one to talk about opinions."

"At any rate I know what I'm talking about."

"I'm not so sure of that," said Aunt Charlotte.

Aunt Lavvy smiled gently at the pattern of the tablecloth.

"Do you agree with him, Lavvy?" Mamma had found something to say.

"I agree with him better than he agrees with himself."

A long conversation about things that interested Papa. Blanc-mange going
round the table, quivering and shaking and squelching under the spoon.

"There's a silver-grey poplin," said Aunt Charlotte, "at Marshall and
Snelgrove's."

The blanc-mange was still going round. Mamma watched it as it went. She
was fascinated by the shivering, white blanc-mange.

"If there was only one man in the world," Aunt Charlotte said in a loud
voice, "and he had a flowing beard, I wouldn't marry him."

Papa drew himself up. He looked at Mark and Daniel and Roddy as if he
were saying, "Whoever takes notice leaves the room."

Roddy laughed first. He was sent out of the room.

Papa looked at Mark. Mark clenched his teeth, holding his laugh down
tight. He seemed to think that as long as it didn't come out of his mouth
he was safe. It came out through his nose like a loud, tearing sneeze.
Mark was sent out of the room.

Daniel threw down his spoon and fork.

"If he goes, I go," Daniel said, and followed him.

Papa looked at Mary.

"What are _you_ grinning at, you young monkey?"

"Emilius," said Aunt Charlotte, "if you send another child out of the
room, I go too."

Mary squealed, "Tee-he-he-he-he-_hee_! Te-_hee_!" and was sent out of the
room.

She and Aunt Charlotte sat on the stairs outside the dining-room door.
Aunt Charlotte's arm was round her; every now and then it gave her a
sudden, loving squeeze.

"Darling Mary. Little darling Mary. Love Aunt Charlotte," she said.

Mark and Dank and Roddy watched them over the banisters.

Aunt Charlotte put her hand deep down in her pocket and brought out a
little parcel wrapped in white paper. She whispered:

"If I give you something to keep, will you promise not to show it to
anybody and not to tell?"

Mary promised.

Inside the paper wrapper there was a match-box, and inside the match-box
there was a china doll no bigger than your finger. It had blue eyes and
black hair and no clothes on. Aunt Charlotte held it in her hand and
smiled at it.

"That's Aunt Charlotte's little baby," she said. "I'm going to be married
and I shan't want it any more.

"There--take it, and cover it up, quick!"

Mamma had come out of the dining-room. She shut the door behind her.

"What have you given to Mary?" she said.

"Butter-Scotch," said Aunt Charlotte.


IV.

All afternoon till tea-time Papa and Uncle Victor walked up and down the
garden path, talking to each other. Every now and then Mark and Mary
looked at them from the nursery window.

That night she dreamed that she saw Aunt Charlotte standing at the foot
of the kitchen stairs taking off her clothes and wrapping them in white
paper; first, her black lace shawl; then her chemise. She stood up
without anything on. Her body was polished and shining like an enormous
white china doll. She lowered her head and pointed at you with her eyes.

When you opened the stair cupboard door to catch the opossum, you found a
white china doll lying in it, no bigger than your finger. That was Aunt
Charlotte.

In the dream there was no break between the end and the beginning. But
when she remembered it afterwards it split into two pieces with a dark
gap between. She knew she had only dreamed about the cupboard; but Aunt
Charlotte at the foot of the stairs was so clear and solid that she
thought she had really seen her.

Mamma had told Aunt Bella all about it when they talked together that
day, in the drawing-room. She knew because she could still see them
sitting, bent forward with their heads touching, Aunt Bella in the big
arm-chair by the hearth-rug, and Mamma on the parrot chair.

END OF BOOK ONE




BOOK TWO
CHILDHOOD (1869-1875)


VI


I.

When Christmas came Papa gave her another _Children's Prize_. This time
the cover was blue and the number on it was 1870. Eighteen-seventy was
the name of the New Year that was coming after Christmas. It meant that
the world had gone on for one thousand eight hundred and seventy years
since Jesus was born. Every year she was to have a _Children's Prize_
with the name of the New Year on it.

Eighteen-seventy was a beautiful number. It sounded nice, and there was a
seven in it. Seven was a sacred and holy number; so was three, because of
the three Persons, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, and because of
the seven stars and the seven golden candlesticks. When you said
good-night to Mamma you kissed her either three times or seven times. If
you went past three you had to go on to seven, because something dreadful
would happen if you didn't. Sometimes Mamma stopped you; then you stooped
down and finished up on the hem of her dress, quick, before she could see
you.

She was glad that the _Children's Prize_ had a blue cover, because blue
was a sacred and holy colour. It was the colour of the ceiling in St.
Mary's Chapel at Ilford, and it was the colour of the Virgin Mary's
dress.

There were golden stars all over the ceiling of St. Mary's Chapel. Roddy
and she were sent there after they had had chicken-pox and when their
whooping-cough was getting better. They were not allowed to go to the
church at Barkingside for fear of giving whooping-cough to the children
in Dr. Barnardo's Homes; and they were not allowed to go to Aldborough
Hatch Church because of Mr. Propart's pupils. But they had to go to
church somewhere, whooping-cough or no whooping-cough, in order to get to
Heaven; so Mark took them to the Chapel of Ease at Ilford, where the
Virgin Mary in a blue dress stood on a sort of step over the door. Mamma
said you were not to worship her, though you might look at her. She was a
graven image. Only Roman Catholics worshipped graven images; they were
heretics; that meant that they were shut outside the Church of England,
which was God's Church, and couldn't get in. And they had only half a
Sunday. In Roman Catholic countries Sunday was all over at twelve
o'clock, and for the rest of the day the Roman Catholics could do just
what they pleased; they danced and went to theatres and played games, as
if Sunday was one of their own days and not God's day.

She wished she had been born in a Roman Catholic country.

Every night she took the _Children's Prize_ to bed with her to keep her
safe. It had Bible Puzzles in it, and among them there was a picture of
the Name of God. A shining white light, shaped like Mamma's vinaigrette,
with black marks in the middle. Mamma said the light was the light that
shone above the Ark of the Covenant, and the black marks were letters and
the word was the real name of God. She said he was sometimes called
Jehovah, but that was not his real name. His real name was a secret name
which nobody but the High Priest was allowed to say.

When you lay in the dark and shut your eyes tight and waited, you could
see the light, shaped like the vinaigrette, in front of you. It quivered
and shone brighter, and you saw in the middle, first, a dark blue colour,
and then the black marks that were the real name of God. She was glad she
couldn't read it, for she would have been certain to let it out some day
when she wasn't thinking.

Perhaps Mamma knew, and was not allowed to say it. Supposing she forgot?

At church they sang "Praise Him in His name Jah and rejoice before Him."
Jah was God's pet-name, short for Jehovah. It was a silly name--Jah.
Somehow you couldn't help thinking of God as a silly person; he was
always flying into tempers, and he was jealous. He was like Papa. Dank
said Papa was jealous of Mark because Mamma was so fond of him. There was
a picture of God in the night nursery. He had a big flowing beard, and a
very straight nose, like Papa, and he was lying on a sort of sofa that
was a cloud. Little Jesus stood underneath him, between the Virgin Mary
and Joseph, and the Holy Ghost was descending on him in the form of a
dove. His real name was Jesus Christ, but they called him Emmanuel.

   "There is a fountain filled with blood
    Drawn from Emmanuel's veins;
    And sinners plunged beneath that flood
    Lose all their guilty stains."

That was another frightening thing. It would be like the
fountain in Aunt Bella's garden, with blood in it instead of
water. The goldfishes would die.

Mark was pleased when she said that Sarah wouldn't be allowed to go to
Heaven because she would try to catch the Holy Ghost.

Jesus was not like God. He was good and kind. When he grew up he was
always dressed in pink and blue, and he had sad dark eyes and a little,
close, tidy beard like Uncle Victor. You could love Jesus.

Jenny loved him. She was a Wesleyan; and her niece Catty was a Wesleyan.
Catty marched round and round the kitchen table with the dish-cloth,
drying the plates and singing:

   "'I love Jesus, yes, I do,
    _For_ the Bible tells me _to_!'"

and

   "'I am so glad that my Father in Heaven
     Tells of His love in the book He has given--
     I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
     Jesus loves me,
     Jesus loves even me!'"

On New Year's Eve Jenny and Catty went to the Wesleyan Chapel at Ilford
to sing the New Year in. Catty talked about the Old Year as if it was
horrid and the New Year as if it was nice. She said that at twelve
o'clock you ought to open the window wide and let the Old Year go out and
the New Year come in. If you didn't something dreadful would happen.

Downstairs there was a party. Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy and Aunt
Charlotte were there, and the big boys from Vinings and the Vicarage at
Aldborough Hatch. Mark and Dank and Roddy were sitting up, and Roddy had
promised to wake her when the New Year was coming.

He left the door open so that she could hear the clock strike twelve. She
got up and opened the windows ready. There were three in Mamma's room.
She opened them all.

The air outside was like clear black water and very cold. You couldn't
see the garden wall; the dark fields were close--close against the house.
One--Two--Three.

Seven--When the last stroke sounded the New Year would have come in.

Ten--Eleven--Twelve.

The bells rang out; the bells of Ilford, the bells of Barkingside, and
far beyond the flats and the cemetery there would be Bow bells, and
beyond that the bells of the City of London. They clanged together and
she trembled. The sounds closed over her; they left off and began again,
not very loud, but tight--tight, crushing her heart, crushing tears out
of her eyelids. When the bells stopped there was a faint whirring sound.
That was the Old Year, that was eighteen sixty-nine, going out by itself
in the dark, going away over the fields.

Mamma was not pleased when she came to bed and found the door and windows
open and Mary awake in the cot.


II.

At the end of January she was seven years old. Something was bound to
happen when you were seven.

She was moved out of Mamma's room to sleep by herself on the top floor in
the night nursery. And the day nursery was turned into the boys'
schoolroom.

When you were little and slept in the cot behind the curtain Mamma would
sometimes come and read you to sleep with the bits you wanted: "The Lord
is my Shepherd," and "Or ever the silver cord be loosed or the golden
bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain or the wheel
broken at the cistern," and "the city had no need of the sun, neither of
the moon, to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the
Lamb is the light thereof."

When you were frightened she taught you to say, "He that dwelleth in the
secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the
Almighty.... He shall cover thee with His feathers and under His wings
shalt thou trust.... Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
And you were allowed to have a night-light.

Now it was all different. You went to bed half an hour later, while Mamma
was dressing for dinner, and when she came to tuck you up the bell rang
and she had to run downstairs, quick, so as not to keep Papa waiting. You
hung on to her neck and untucked yourself, and she always got away before
you could kiss her seven times. And there was no night-light. You had to
read the Bible in the morning, and it always had to be the bits Mamma
wanted, out of Genesis and the Gospel of St. John.

You had to learn about the one God and the three Persons. The one God was
the nice, clever, happy God who made Mamma and Mark and Jenny and the sun
and Sarah and the kittens. He was the God you really believed in.

At night when you lay on your back in the dark you thought about being
born and about arithmetic and God. The sacred number three went into
eighteen sixty-nine and didn't come out again; so did seven. She liked
numbers that fitted like that with no loose ends left over. Mr. Sippett
said there were things you could do with the loose ends of numbers to
make them fit. That was fractions. Supposing there was somewhere in the
world a number that simply wouldn't fit? Mr. Sippett said there was no
such number. But queer things happened. You were seven years old, yet you
had had eight birthdays. There was the day you were born, January the
twenty-fourth, eighteen sixty-three, at five o'clock in the morning. When
you were born you weren't any age at all, not a minute old, not a second,
not half a second. But there was eighteen sixty-two and there was January
the twenty-third and the minute just before you were born. You couldn't
really tell when the twenty-third ended and the twenty-fourth began;
because when you counted sixty minutes for the hour and sixty seconds for
the minute, there was still the half second and the half of that, and so
on for ever and ever.

You couldn't tell when you were really born. And nobody could tell you
what being born was. Perhaps nobody knew. Jenny said being born was just
being born. Sarah's grandchildren were born in the garden under the wall
where the jasmine grew. Roddy shouted at the back door, and when you ran
to look he stretched out his arms across the doorway and wouldn't let you
through. Roddy was excited and frightened; and Mamma said he had been
very good because he stood across the door.

There was being born and there was dying. If you died this minute there
would be the minute after. Then, if you were good, your soul was in
Heaven and your body was cold and stiff like Miss Thompson's mother. And
there was Lazarus. "He hath been in the grave four days and by this time
he stinketh." That was dreadfully frightening; but they had to say it to
show that Lazarus was really dead. That was how you could tell.

"'Lord, if thou hadst been here our brother had not died.'"

That was beautiful. When you thought of it you wanted to cry.

Supposing Mamma died? Supposing Mark died? Or Dank or Roddy? Or even
Uncle Victor? Even Papa?

They couldn't. Jesus wouldn't let them.

When you were frightened in the big dark room you thought about God and
Jesus and the Holy Ghost. They didn't leave you alone a single minute.
God and Jesus stood beside the bed, and Jesus kept God in a good temper,
and the Holy Ghost flew about the room and perched on the top of the
linen cupboard, and bowed and bowed, and said, "Rook-ke-heroo-oo!
Rook-ke-keroo-oo!"

And there was the parroquet.

Mark had given her the stuffed parroquet on her birthday, and Mamma had
given her the Bible and the two grey china vases to make up, with a bird
painted on each. A black bird with a red beak and red legs. She had set
them up on the chimney-piece under the picture of the Holy Family. She
put the Bible in the middle and the parroquet on the top of the Bible and
the vases one on each side.

She worshipped them, because of Mamma and Mark.

She said to herself: "God won't like _that_, but I can't help it. The
kind, clever God won't mind a bit. He's much too busy making things. And
it's not as if they were graven images."


III.

Jenny had taken her for a walk to Ilford and they were going home to the
house in Ley Street.

There were only two walks that Jenny liked to go: down Ley Street to
Barkingside where the little shops were; and up Ley Street to Ilford and
Mr. Spall's, the cobbler's. She liked Ilford best because of Mr. Spall.
She carried your boots to Mr. Spall just as they were getting
comfortable; she was always ferreting in Sarah's cupboard for a pair to
take to him. Mr. Spall was very tall and lean; he had thick black
eyebrows rumpled up the wrong way and a long nose with a red knob at the
end of it. A dirty grey beard hung under his chin, and his long, shaved
lips curled over in a disagreeable way when he smiled at you.

When Jenny and Catty went to sing the New Year in at the Wesleyan Chapel
he brought them home. Jenny liked him because his wife was dead, and
because he was a Wesleyan and Deputy Grand Master of the Independent
Order of Good Templars. You had to shake hands with him to say good-bye.
He always said the same thing: "Next time you come, little Missy, I'll
show you the Deputy Regalia." But he never did.

To-day Jenny had made her stand outside in the shop, among the old boots
and the sheets of leather, while she and Mr. Spall went into the back
parlour to talk about Jesus. The shop smelt of leather and feet and
onions and of Mr. Spall, so that she was glad when they got out again.
She wondered how Jenny could bear to sit in the back parlour with Mr.
Spall.

Coming home at first she had to keep close by Jenny's side. Jenny was
tired and went slowly; but by taking high prancing and dancing steps she
could pretend that they were rushing along; and once they had turned the
crook of Ley Street she ran on a little way in front of Jenny. Then,
walking very fast and never looking back, she pretended that she had gone
out by herself.

When she had passed the row of elms and the farm, and the small brown
brick cottages fenced off with putty-coloured palings, she came to the
low ditches and the flat fields on either side and saw on her left the
bare, brown brick, pointed end of the tall house. It was called Five
Elms.

Further down the road the green and gold sign of The Green Man and the
scarlet and gold sign of the Horns Tavern hung high on white standards
set up in the road. Further down still, where Ley Street swerved slightly
towards Barkingside, three tall poplars stood in the slant of the swerve.

A queer white light everywhere, like water thin and clear. Wide fields,
flat and still, like water, flooded with the thin, clear light; grey
earth, shot delicately with green blades, shimmering. Ley Street, a grey
road, whitening suddenly where it crossed open country, a hard causeway
thrown over the flood. The high trees, the small, scattered cottages, the
two taverns, the one tall house had the look of standing up in water.

She saw the queer white light for the first time and drew in her breath
with a sharp check. She knew that the fields were beautiful.

She saw Five Elms for the first time: the long line of its old red-tiled
roof, its flat brown face; the three rows of narrow windows, four at the
bottom, with the front door at the end of the row, five at the top, five
in the middle; their red brick eye-brows; their black glassy stare
between the drawn-back curtains. She noticed how high and big the house
looked on its slender plot of grass behind the brick wall that held up
the low white-painted iron railing.

A tall iron gate between brown brick pillars, topped by stone balls. A
flagged path to the front door. Crocuses, yellow, white, white and
purple, growing in the border of the grass plot. She saw them for the
first time.

The front door stood open. She went in.

The drawing-room at the back was full of the queer white light. Things
stood out in it, sharp and suddenly strange, like the trees and houses in
the light outside: the wine-red satin stripes in the grey damask curtains
at the three windows; the rings of wine-red roses on the grey carpet; the
tarnished pattern on the grey wall-paper; the furniture shining like dark
wine; the fluted emerald green silk in the panel of the piano and the
hanging bag of the work-table; the small wine-red flowers on the pale
green chintz; the green Chinese bowls in the rosewood cabinet; the blue
and red parrot on the chair.

Her mother sat at the far end of the room. She was sorting beads into
trays in a box lined with sandal wood.

Mary stood at the doorway looking in, swinging her hat in her hand.
Suddenly, without any reason, she was so happy that she could hardly bear
it.

Mamma looked up. She said, "What are you doing standing there?"

She ran to her and hid her face in her lap. She caught Mamma's hands and
kissed them. They smelt of sandal wood. They moved over her hair with
slight quick strokes that didn't stay, that didn't care.

Mamma said, "There. That'll do. That'll do."

She climbed up on a chair and looked out of the window. She could see
Mamma's small beautiful nose bending over the tray of beads, and her
bright eyes that slid slantwise to look at her. And under the window she
saw the brown twigs of the lilac bush tipped with green.

Her happiness was sharp and still like the white light.

Mamma said, "What did you see when you were out with Jenny to-day?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing? And what are you looking at?"

"Nothing, Mamma."

"Then go upstairs and take your things off. Quick!"

She went very slowly, holding herself with care, lest she should jar her
happiness and spill it.

One of the windows of her room was open. She stood a little while looking
out.

Beyond the rose-red wall of the garden she saw the flat furrowed field,
stripes of grey earth and vivid green. In the middle of the field the
five elms in a row, high and slender; four standing close together, one
apart. Each held up a small rounded top, fine as a tuft of feathers.

On her left towards Ilford, a very long row of high elms screened off the
bare flats from the village. Where it ended she saw Drake's Farm; black
timbered barns and sallow haystacks beside a clump of trees. Behind the
five elms, on the edge of the earth, a flying line of trees set wide
apart, small, thin trees, flying away low down under the sky.

She looked and looked. Her happiness mixed itself up with the queer light
and with the flat fields and the tall, bare trees.

She turned from the window and saw the vases that Mamma had given her
standing on the chimney-piece. The black birds with red beaks and red
legs looked at her. She threw herself on the bed and pressed her face
into the pillow and cried "Mamma! Mamma!"


IV.

Passion Week. It gave you an awful feeling of something going to happen.

In the long narrow dining-room the sunlight through the three windows
made a strange and solemn blue colour in the dark curtains. Mamma sat up
at the mahogany table, looking sad and serious, with the Prayer Book open
before her at the Litany. When you went in you knew that you would have
to read about the Crucifixion. Nothing could save you.

Still you did find out things about God. In the Epistle it said:
"'Wherefore art thou red in thine apparel and thy garments like him that
treadeth the wine-fat? I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the
people there was none with me: for I will tread them in my anger, and
trample them in my fury, and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my
garments, and I will stain all my raiment.'"

The Passion meant that God had flown into another temper and that Jesus
was crucified to make him good again. Mark said you mustn't say that to
Mamma; but he owned that it looked like it. Anyhow it was easier to think
of it that way than to think that God sent Jesus down to be crucified
because you were naughty.

There were no verses in the Prayer-Book Bible, only long grey slabs like
tombstones. You kept on looking for the last tombstone. When you came to
the one with the big black letters, THE KING OF THE JEWS, you knew that
it would soon be over.

"'They clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns and put it
on his head....'" She read obediently: "'And when the sixth hour was
come ... and when the sixth hour was come there was darkness over the whole
land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a
loud voice.... And Jesus cried with a loud voice ... with a loud voice,
and gave up the ghost.'"

Mamma was saying that the least you could do was to pay attention. But
you couldn't pay attention every time. The first time it was beautiful
and terrible; but after many times the beauty went and you were only
frightened. When she tried to think about the crown of thorns she thought
of the new hat Catty had bought for Easter Sunday and what Mr. Spall did
when he ate the parsnips.

Through the barred windows of the basement she could hear Catty singing
in the pantry:

   "'I am so glad that Jesus loves me,
     Jesus loves me,
     Jesus loves me....'"

Catty was happy when she sang and danced round and round with the
dish-cloth. And Jenny and Mr. Spall were happy when they talked about
Jesus. But Mamma was not happy. She had had to read the Morning Prayer
and the Psalms and the Lessons and the Litany to herself every morning;
and by Thursday she was tired and cross.

Passion Week gave you an awful feeling.

Good Friday would be the worst. It was the real day that Jesus died.
There would be the sixth hour and the ninth hour. Perhaps there would be
a darkness.

But when Good Friday came you found a smoking hot-cross bun on
everybody's plate at breakfast, tasting of spice and butter. And you went
to Aldborough Hatch for Service. She thought: "If the darkness does come
it won't be so bad to bear at Aldborough Hatch." She liked the new
white-washed church with the clear windows, where you could stand on the
hassock and look out at the green hill framed in the white arch. That was
Chigwell.

   "'There is a green hill far a-a-way
     Without a city wall--'"

The green hill hadn't got any city wall. Epping Forest and Hainault
Forest were there. You could think of them, or you could look at Mr.
Propart's nice clean-shaved face while he read about the Crucifixion and
preached about God's mercy and his justice. He did it all in a soothing,
inattentive voice; and when he had finished he went quick into the vestry
as if he were glad it was all over. And when you met him at the gate he
didn't look as if Good Friday mattered very much.

In the afternoon she forgot all about the sixth hour and the ninth hour.
Just as she was going to think about them Mark and Dank put her in the
dirty clothes-basket and rolled her down the back stairs to make her
happy. They shut themselves up in the pantry till she had stopped
laughing, and when Catty opened the door the clock struck and Mark said
that was the ninth hour.

It was all over. And nothing had happened. Nothing at all.

Only, when you thought of what had been done to Jesus, it didn't seem
right, somehow, to have eaten the hot-cross buns.


V.

Grandmamma and Grandpapa Olivier were buried in the City of London
Cemetery. A long time ago, so long that even Mark couldn't remember it,
Uncle Victor had brought Grandmamma in a coffin all the way from
Liverpool to London in the train.

On Saturday afternoon Mamma had to put flowers on the grave for Easter
Sunday, because of Uncle Victor and Aunt Lavvy. She took Roddy and Mary
with her. They drove in Mr. Parish's wagonette, and called for Aunt Lavvy
at Uncle Victor's tall white house at the bottom of Ilford High Street.
Aunt Lavvy was on the steps, waiting for them, holding a big cross of
white flowers. You could see Aunt Charlotte's face at the dining-room
window looking out over the top of the brown wire blind. She had her hat
on, as if she had expected to be taken too. Her eyes were sharp and
angry, and Uncle Victor stood behind her with his hand on her shoulder.

Aunt Lavvy gave Mary the flower cross and climbed stiffly into the
wagonette. Mary felt grown up and important holding the big cross on her
knee. The white flowers gave out a thick, sweet smell.

As they drove away she kept on thinking about Aunt Charlotte, and about
Uncle Victor bringing Grandmamma in a coffin in the train. It was very,
very brave of him. She was sorry for Aunt Charlotte. Aunt Charlotte had
wanted to go to the cemetery and they hadn't let her go. Perhaps she was
still looking over the blind, sharp and angry because they wouldn't let
her go.

Aunt Lavvy said, "We couldn't take Charlotte. It excited her too much
last time." As if she knew what you were thinking.

The wagonette stopped by the railway-crossing at Manor Park, and they got
out. Mamma told Mr. Parish to drive round to the Leytonstone side and
wait for them there at the big gates. They wanted to walk through the
cemetery and see what was to be seen.

Beyond the railway-crossing a muddy lane went along a field of coarse
grass under a hedge of thorns and ended at a paling. Roddy whispered
excitedly that they were in Wanstead Flats. The hedge shut off the
cemetery from the flats; through thin places in the thorn bushes you
could see tombstones, very white tombstones against very dark trees.
There was a black wooden door in the hedge for you to go in by. The lane
and the thorn bushes and the black door reminded Mary of something she
had seen before somewhere. Something frightening.

When they got through the black door there were no tombstones. What
showed through the hedge were the tops of high white pillars standing up
among trees a long way off. They had come into a dreadful, bare,
clay-coloured plain, furrowed into low mounds, as if a plough had gone
criss-cross over it.

You saw nothing but mounds. Some of them were made of loose earth; some
were patched over with rough sods that gaped in a horrible way. Perhaps
if you looked through the cracks you would see down into the grave where
the coffin was. The mounds had a fresh, raw look, as if all the people in
the City of London had died and been buried hurriedly the night before.
And there were no stones with names, only small, flat sticks at one end
of each grave to show where the heads were.

Roddy said, "We've got to go all through this to get to the other side."

They could see Mamma and Aunt Lavvy a long way on in front picking their
way gingerly among the furrows. If only Mark had been there instead of
Roddy. Roddy _would_ keep on saying: "The great plague of London. The
great plague of London," to frighten himself. He pointed to a heap of
earth and said it was the first plague pit.

In the middle of the ploughed-up plain she saw people in black walking
slowly and crookedly behind a coffin that went staggering on black legs
under a black pall. She tried not to look at them.

When she looked again they had stopped beside a heap that Roddy said was
the second plague pit. Men in black crawled out from under the coffin as
they put it down. She could see the bulk of it flattened out under the
black pall. Against the raw, ochreish ground the figures of two mutes
stood up, black and distinct in their high hats tied in the bunched out,
streaming weepers. There was something filthy and frightful about the
figures of the mutes. And when they dragged the pall from the coffin
there was something filthy and frightful about the action.

"Roddy," she said, "I'm frightened."

Roddy said, "So am I. I say, supposing we went back? By ourselves. Across
Wanstead Flats." He was excited.

"We mustn't. That would frighten Mamma."

"Well, then, we'll have to go straight through."

They went, slowly, between the rows of mounds, along a narrow path of
yellow clay that squeaked as their boots went in and out. Roddy held her
hand. They took care not to tread on the graves. Every step brought them
nearer to the funeral. They hadn't pointed it out to each other. They had
pretended it wasn't there. Now it was no use pretending; they could see
the coffin.

"Roddy--I can't--I can't go past the funeral."

"We've got to."

He looked at her with solemn eyes, wide open in his beautiful face. He
was not really frightened, he was only trying to be because he liked it.

They went on. The tight feeling under her waist had gone; her body felt
loose and light as if it didn't belong to her; her knees were soft and
sank under her. Suddenly she let go Roddy's hand. She stared at the
funeral, paralysed with fright.

At the end of the path Mamma and Aunt Lavvy stood and beckoned to them.
Aunt Lavvy was coming towards them, carrying her white flower cross. They
broke into a stumbling, nightmare run.

The bare clay plain stretched on past the place where Mamma and Aunt
Lavvy had turned. The mounds here were big and high. They found Mamma and
Aunt Lavvy standing by a very deep and narrow pit. A man was climbing up
out of the pit on a ladder. You could see a pool of water shining far
down at the bottom.

Mamma was smiling gently and kindly at the man and asking him why the
grave was dug so deep. He said, "Why, because this 'ere lot and that
there what you've come acrost is the pauper buryin' ground. We shovel 'em
in five at a time this end."

Roddy said, "Like they did in the great plague of London."

"I don't know about no plague. But there's five coffins in each of these
here graves, piled one atop of the other."

Mamma seemed inclined to say more to the grave-digger; but Aunt Lavvy
frowned and shook her head at her, and they went on to where a path of
coarse grass divided the pauper burying ground from the rest. They were
now quite horribly near the funeral. And going down the grass path they
saw another that came towards them; the palled coffin swaying on headless
shoulders. They turned from it into a furrow between the huddled mounds.
The white marble columns gleamed nearer among the black trees.

They crossed a smooth gravel walk into a crowded town of dead people.
Tombstones as far as you could see; upright stones, flat slabs, rounded
slabs, slabs like coffins, stone boxes with flat tops, broken columns;
pointed pillars. Rows of tall black trees. Here and there a single tree
sticking up stiffly among the tombstones. Very little trees that were
queer and terrifying. People in black moving about the tombstones. A
broad road and a grey chapel with pointed gables. Under a black tree a
square plot enclosed by iron railings.

Grandmamma and Grandpapa Olivier were buried in one half of the plot
under a white marble slab. In the other half, on the bare grass, a white
marble curb marked out a place for another grave.

Roddy said, "Who's buried there?"

Mamma said, "Nobody. Yet. That's for--"

Mary saw Aunt Lavvy frown again and put her finger to her mouth.

She said, "Who? For who?" An appalling curiosity and fear possessed her.
And when Aunt Lavvy took her hand she knew that the empty place was
marked out for Mamma and Papa.

Outside the cemetery gates, in the white road, the black funeral horses
tossed their heads and neighed, and the black plumes quivered on the
hearses. In the wagonette she sat close beside Aunt Lavvy, with Aunt
Lavvy's shawl over her eyes.

She wondered how she knew that you were frightened when Mamma didn't.
Mamma couldn't, because she was brave. She wasn't afraid of the funeral.

When Roddy said, "She oughtn't to have taken us, she ought to have known
it would frighten us," Mark was angry with him. He said, "She thought
you'd like it, you little beast. Because of the wagonette."

Darling Mamma. She had taken them because she thought they would like it.
Because of the wagonette. Because she was brave, like Mark.


VI.

Dead people really did rise. Supposing all the dead people in the City of
London Cemetery rose and came out of their graves and went about the
city? Supposing they walked out as far as Ilford? Crowds and crowds of
them, in white sheets? Supposing they got into the garden?

"Please, God, keep me from thinking about the Resurrection. Please God,
keep me from dreaming about coffins and funerals and ghosts and skeletons
and corpses." She said it last, after the blessings, so that God couldn't
forget. But it was no use.

If you said texts: "Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night."
"Yea, though I walk through the City of London Cemetery." It was no use.

   "The trumpet shall sound and the dead shall arise ... Incorruptible."

That was beautiful. Like a bright light shining. But you couldn't think
about it long enough. And the dreams went on just the same: the dream of
the ghost in the passage, the dream of the black coffin coming round the
turn of the staircase and squeezing you against the banister; the dream
of the corpse that came to your bed. She could see the round back and the
curled arms under the white sheet.

The dreams woke her with a sort of burst. Her heart was jumping about and
thumping; her face and hair were wet with water that came out of her
skin.

The grey light in the passage was like the ghost-light of the dreams.

Gas light was a good light; but when you turned it on Jenny came up and
put it out again. She said, "Goodness knows when you'll get to sleep with
_that_ light flaring."

There was never anybody about at bedtime. Jenny was dishing up the
dinner. Harriet was waiting. Catty only ran up for a minute to undo the
hooks and brush your hair.

When Mamma sent her to bed she came creeping back into the dining-room.
Everybody was eating dinner. She sickened with fright in the steam and
smell of dinner. She leaned her head against Mamma and whimpered, and
Mamma said in her soft voice, "Big girls don't cry because it's bed-time.
Only silly baby girls are afraid of ghosts."

Mamma wasn't afraid.

When she cried Mark left his dinner and carried her upstairs, past the
place where the ghost was, and stayed with her till Catty came.




VII


I.

"Minx! Minx! Minx!"

Mark had come in from the garden with Mamma. He was calling to Mary. Minx
was the name he had given her. Minx was a pretty name and she loved it
because he had given it her. Whenever she heard him call she left what
she was doing and ran to him.

Papa came out of the library with Boag's Dictionary open in his hand.
"'Minx: A pert, wanton girl. A she-puppy.' Do you hear that, Caroline? He
calls his sister a wanton she-puppy." But Mamma had gone back into the
garden.

Mark stood at the foot of the stairs and Mary stood at the turn. She had
one hand on the rail of the banister, the other pressed hard against the
wall. She leaned forward on tiptoe, measuring her distance. When she
looked at the stairs they fell from under her in a grey dizziness, so
that Mark looked very far away.

They waited till Papa had gone back into the library--Mark held out his
arms.

"Jump, Minky! Jump!"

She let go the rail and drew herself up. A delicious thrill of danger
went through her and out at her fingers. She flung herself into space and
Mark caught her. His body felt hard and strong as it received her. They
did it again and again.

That was the "faith-jump." You knew that you would be killed if Mark
didn't catch you, but you had faith that he would catch you; and he
always did.

Mark and Dan were going to school at Chelmsted on the thirteenth of
September, and it was the last week in August now. Mark and Mamma were
always looking for each other. Mamma would come running up to the
schoolroom and say, "Where's Mark? Tell Mark I want him"; and Mark would
go into the garden and say, "Where's Mamma? I want her." And Mamma would
put away her trowel and gardening gloves and go walks with him which she
hated; and Mark would leave Napoleon Buonaparte and the plan of the
Battle of Austerlitz to dig in the garden (and he loathed digging) with
Mamma.

This afternoon he had called to Mary to come out brook-jumping. Mark
could jump all the brooks in the fields between Ilford and Barkingside,
and in the plantations beyond Drake's Farm; he could jump the Pool of
Siloam where the water from the plantations runs into the lake below
Vinings. Where there was no place for a little girl of seven to cross he
carried her in his arms and jumped. He would stand outside in the lane
and put his hands on the wall and turn heels over head into the garden.

She said to herself: "In six years and five months I shall be fourteen. I
shall jump the Pool of Siloam and come into the garden head over heels."
And Mamma called her a little humbug when she said she was afraid to go
for a walk with Jenny lest a funeral should be coming along the road.


II.

The five elm trees held up their skirts above the high corn. The flat
surface of the corn-tops was still. Hot glassy air quivered like a thin
steam over the brimming field.

The glazed yellow walls of the old nursery gave out a strong light and
heat. The air indoors was dry and smelt dusty like the hot, crackling air
above the corn. The children had come in from their play in the fields;
they leaned out of the windows and talked about what they were going to
be.

Mary said, "I shall paint pictures and play the piano and ride in a
circus. I shall go out to the countries where the sand is and tame
zebras; and I shall marry Mark and have thirteen children with blue eyes
like Meta."

Roddy was going to be the captain of a cruiser. Dan was going to Texas,
or some place where Papa couldn't get at him, to farm. Mark was going to
be a soldier like Marshal McMahon.

It was Grandpapa and Grandmamma's fault that he was not a soldier now.

"If," he said, "they'd let Papa marry Mamma when he wanted to, I might
have been born in eighteen fifty-two. I'd be eighteen by this time. I
should have gone into the French Army and I should have been with McMahon
at Sedan now."

"You might have been killed," Mary said.

"That wouldn't have mattered a bit. I should have been at Sedan. Nothing
matters, Minky, as long as you get what you want."

"If you were killed Mamma and me would die, too, the same minute. Papa
would be sorry, then; but not enough to kill him, so that we should go to
heaven together without him and be happy."

"Mamma wouldn't be happy without him. We couldn't shut him out."

"No," Mary said; "but we could pray to God not to let him come up too
soon."


III.

Sedan--Sedan--Sedan.

Papa came out into the garden where Mamma was pulling weeds out of the
hot dry soil. He flapped the newspaper and read about the Battle of
Sedan. Mamma left off pulling weeds out and listened.

Mark had stuck the picture of Marshal McMahon over the schoolroom
chimney-piece. Papa had pinned the war-map to the library door. Mark was
restless. He kept on going into the library to look at the war-map and
Papa kept on turning him out again. He was in a sort of mysterious
disgrace because of Sedan. Roddy was excited about Sedan. Dan followed
Mark as he went in and out; he was furious with Papa because of Mark.

Mamma had been a long time in the library talking to Papa. They sent for
Mark just before dinner-time. When Mary ran in to say good-night she
found him there.

Mark was saying, "You needn't think I want your beastly money. I shall
enlist."

Mamma said, "If he enlists, Emilius, it'll kill me."

And Papa, "You hear what your mother says, sir. Isn't that enough for
you?"

Mark loved Mamma; but he was not going to do what she wanted. He was
going to do something that would kill her.


IV.

Papa walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, like the Lord God.
And he was always alone. When you thought of him you thought of Jehovah.

There was something funny about other people's fathers. Mr. Manisty, of
Vinings, who rode along Ley Street with his two tall, thin sons, as if he
were actually proud of them; Mr. Batty, the Vicar of Barkingside, who
called his daughter Isabel his "pretty one"; Mr. Farmer, the curate of
St. Mary's Chapel, who walked up and down the room all night with the
baby; and Mr. Propart, who went about the public roads with Humphrey and
Arthur positively hanging on him. Dan said Humphrey and Arthur were tame
and domestic because they were always going about with Mr. Propart and
talking to him as if they liked it. Mark had once seen Mr. Propart trying
to jump a ditch on the Aldborough Road. It was ridiculous. Humphrey and
Arthur had to grab him by the arms and pull him over. Mary was sorry for
the Propart boys because they hadn't got a mother who was sweet and
pretty like Mamma and a father called Emilius Olivier. Emilius couldn't
jump ditches any more than Mr. Propart; but then he knew he couldn't, and
as Mark said, he had the jolly good sense not to try. You couldn't be
Jehovah and jump ditches.

Emilius Olivier was everything a father ought to be.

Then suddenly, for no reason at all, he left off being Jehovah and began
trying to behave like Mr. Batty.

It was at dinner, the last Sunday before the thirteenth. Mamma had moved
Roddy and Mary from their places so that Mark and Dan could sit beside
her. Mary was sitting at the right hand of Papa in the glory of the
Father. The pudding had come in; blanc-mange, and Mark's pudding with
whipped cream hiding the raspberry jam. It was Roddy's turn to be helped;
his eyes were fixed on the snow-white, pure blanc-mange shuddering in the
glass dish, and Mamma had just asked him which he would have when Papa
sent Mark and Dan out of the room. You couldn't think why he had done it
this time unless it was because Mark laughed when Roddy said in his
proud, dignified voice, "I'll have a little piece of the Virgin's womb,
please, first." Or it may have been because of Mark's pudding. He never
liked it when they had Mark's pudding. Anyhow, Mark and Dan had to go,
and as they went he drew Mary's chair closer to him and heaped her plate
with cream and jam, looking very straight at Mamma as he did it.

"You might have left them alone," Mamma said, "on their last Sunday. They
won't be here to annoy you so very long."

Papa said, "There are three days yet till the thirteenth."

"Three days! You'll count the hours and the minutes till you've got what
you want."

"What I want is peace and quiet in my house and to get a word in
edgeways, sometimes, with my own wife."

"You've no business to have a wife if you can't put up with your own
children."

"It isn't my business to have a wife," Papa said. "It's my pleasure. My
business is to insure ships. And you see me putting up with Mary very
well. I suppose she's my own child."

"Mark and Dan are your own children first."

"_Are_ they? To judge by your infatuation I should have said they
weren't. 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Silver
bells and cockle shells, and chocolate creams all in a row.'"

He took a large, flat box of chocolates out of his pocket and laid it
beside her plate. And he looked straight at Mamma again.

"If those are the chocolates I reminded you to get for--for the hamper, I
won't have them opened."

"They are _not_ the chocolates you reminded me to get for--the hamper. I
suppose Mark's stomach _is_ a hamper. They are the chocolates I reminded
myself to get for Mary."

Then Mamma said a peculiar thing.

"Are you trying to show me that you're not jealous of Mary?"

"I'm not trying to show you anything. You know I'm not jealous of Mary.
And you know there's no reason why I should be."

"To hear you, Emilius, anybody would think I wasn't fond of my own
daughter. Mary darling, you'd better run away."

"And Mary darling," he mocked her, "you'd better take your chocolates
with you."

Mary said: "I don't want any chocolates, Papa."

"Is that her contrariness, or just her Mariness?"

"Whatever it is it's all the thanks _you_ get, and serve you right, too,"
said Mamma.

She went upstairs to persuade Dan that Papa didn't mean it. It was just
his way, and they'd see he would be different to-morrow.

But to-morrow and the next day and the next he was the same. He didn't
actually send Mark and Dan out of the room again, but he tried to pretend
to himself that they weren't there by refusing to speak to them.

"Do you think," Mark said, "he'll keep it up till the last minute?"

He did; even when he heard the sound of Mr. Parish's wagonette in the
road, coming to take Mark and Dan away. They were sitting at breakfast,
trying not to look at him for fear they should laugh, or at Mamma for
fear they should cry, trying not to look at each other. Catty brought in
the cakes, the hot buttered Yorkshire cakes that were never served for
breakfast except on Christmas Day and birthdays. Mary wondered whether
Papa would say or do anything. He couldn't. Everybody knew those cakes
were sacred. Catty set them on the table with a sort of crash and ran out
of the room, crying. Mamma's mouth quivered.

Papa looked at the cakes; he looked at Mamma; he looked at Mark. Mark was
staring at nothing with a firm grin on his face.

"The assuagers of grief," Papa said. "Pass round the assuagers."

The holy cakes were passed round. Everybody took a piece except Dan.

Papa pressed him. "Try an assuager. Do."

And Mamma pleaded, "Yes, Dank."

"Do you hear what your mother says?"

Dan's eyes were red-rimmed. He took a double section of cake and tried to
bite his way through.

At the first taste tears came out of his eyes and fell on his cake. And
when Mamma saw that she burst out crying.

Mary put her piece down untasted and bit back her sobs. Roddy pushed his
piece away; and Mark began to eat his, suddenly, bowing over it with an
affectation of enjoyment.

Outside in the road Mr. Parish was descending from the box of his
wagonette. Papa looked at his watch. He was going with them to Chelmsted.

And Mamma whispered to Mark and Dan with her last kiss, "He'll be all
right in the train."

It was all over. Mary and Roddy sat in the dining-room where Mamma had
left them. They had shut their eyes so as not to see the empty chairs
pushed back and the pieces of the sacred cakes, bitten and abandoned.
They had stopped their ears so as not to hear the wheels of Mr. Parish's
wagonette taking Mark and Dan away.

Hours afterwards Mamma came upon Mary huddled up in a corner of the
drawing-room.

"Mamma--Mamma--I _can't_ bear it. I can't live without Mark. And Dan."

Mamma sat down and took her in her arms and rocked her, rocked her
without a word, soothing her own grief.

Papa found them like that when he came back from Chelmsted. He stood in
the doorway looking at them for a moment, then slunk out of the room as
if he were ashamed of himself. When Mamma sent Mary out to say good-bye
to him, he was standing beside the little sumach tree that Mark gave
Mamma on her birthday. He was smiling at the sumach tree as if he loved
it and was sorry for it.

And Mamma got a letter from Mark in the morning to say she was right.
Papa had been quite decent in the train.


V.

After Mark and Dan had gone a great and very remarkable change came over
Papa and Mamma. Mamma left off saying the funny things that Mary could
not understand, and Papa left off teasing and flying into tempers and
looking like Jehovah and walking by himself in the cool of the evening.
He followed Mamma about the garden. He hung over her chair, like Mark, as
she sat sewing. You came upon him suddenly on the stairs and in the
passages, and he would look at you as if you were not there, and say,
"Where's your mother? Go and tell her I want her." And Mamma would put
away her trowel and her big leather gloves and go to him. She would sit
for hours in the library while he flapped the newspaper and read to her
in a loud voice about Mr. Gladstone whom she hated.

Sometimes he would come home early from the office, and Mamma and Mary
would be ready for him, and they would all go together to call at Vinings
or Barkingside Vicarage or on the Proparts.

Or Mr. Parish's wagonette would be ordered, and Mamma and Mary would put
on their best clothes very quick and go up to London with him, and he
would take them to St. Paul's or Maskelyne and Cooke's, or the National
Gallery or the British Museum. Or they would walk slowly, very slowly, up
Regent Street, stopping at the windows of the bonnet shops while Mamma
picked out the bonnet she would buy if she could afford it. And perhaps
the next day a bonnet would come in a bandbox, a bonnet that frightened
her when she put it on and looked at herself in the glass. She would
pretend it was one of the bonnets she had wanted; and when Papa had
forgotten about it she would pull all the trimming off and put it all on
again a different way, and Papa would say it was an even more beautiful
bonnet than he had thought.

You might have supposed that he was sorry because he was thinking about
Mark and Dan and trying to make up for having been unkind to them. But he
was not sorry. He was glad. Glad about something that Mamma had done. He
would go about whistling some gay tune, or you caught him stroking his
moustache and parting it over his rich lips that smiled as if he were
thinking of what Mamma had done to make him happy. The red specks and
smears had gone from his eyes, they were clear and blue, and they looked
at you with a kind, gentle look, like Uncle Victor's. His very beard was
happy.

"You may not know it, but your father is the handsomest man in Essex,"
Mamma said.

Perhaps it wasn't anything that Mamma had done. Perhaps he was only happy
because he was being good. Every Sunday he went to church at Barkingside
with Mamma, kneeling close to her in the big pew and praying in a great,
ghostly voice, "Good Lord, deliver us!" When the psalms and hymns began
he rose over the pew-ledge, yards and yards of him, as if he stood on
many hassocks, and he lifted up his beard and sang. All these times the
air fairly tingled with him; he seemed to beat out of himself and spread
around him the throb of violent and overpowering life. And in the
evenings towards sunset they walked together in the fields, and Mary
followed them, lagging behind in the borders where the sharlock and wild
rye and poppies grew. When she caught up with them she heard them
talking.

Once Mamma said, "Why can't you always be like this, Emilius?"

And Papa said, "Why, indeed!"

And when Christmas came and Mark and Dan were back again he was as cruel
and teasing as he had ever been.


VI.

Eighteen seventy-one.

One cold day Roddy walked into the Pool of Siloam to recover his sailing
boat which had drifted under the long arch of the bridge.

There was no Passion Week and no Good Friday and no Easter that spring,
only Roddy's rheumatic fever. Roddy in bed, lying on his back, his face
white and sharp, his hair darkened and glued with the sweat that poured
from his hair and soaked into the bed. Roddy crying out with pain when
they moved him. Mamma and Jenny always in Roddy's room, Mr. Spall's
sister in the kitchen. Mary going up and down, tiptoe, on messages,
trying not to touch Roddy's bed.

Dr. Draper calling, talking in a low voice to Mamma, and Mamma crying.
Dr. Draper looking at you through his spectacles and putting a thing like
a trumpet to your chest and listening through it.

"You're quite right, Mrs. Olivier. There's nothing wrong with the little
girl's heart. She's as sound as a bell."

A dreadful feeling that you had no business to be as sound as a bell. It
wasn't fair to Roddy.

Something she didn't notice at the time and remembered afterwards when
Roddy was well again. Jenny saying to Mamma, "If it had to be one of them
it had ought to have been Miss Mary."

And Mamma saying to Jenny, "It wouldn't have mattered so much if it had
been the girl."


VII.

You knew that Catty loved you. There was never the smallest uncertainty
about it. Her big black eyes shone when she saw you coming. You kissed
her smooth cool cheeks, and she hugged you tight and kissed you back
again at once; her big lips made a noise like a pop-gun. When she tucked
you up at night she said, "I love you so much I could eat you."

And she would play any game you liked. You had only to say, "Let's play
the going-away game," and she was off. You began: "I went away to the big
hot river where the rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses are"; or: "I went
away to the desert where the sand is, to catch zebras. I rode on a
dromedary, flump-flumping through the sand," and Catty would follow it up
with: "I went away with the Good Templars. We went in a row-boat on a
lake, and we landed on an island where there was daffodillies growing. We
had milk and cake; and it blew such a cool breeze."

Catty was full of love. She loved her father and mother and her little
sister Amelia better than anything in the whole world. Her home was in
Wales. Tears came into her eyes when she thought about her home and her
little sister Amelia.

"Catty--how much do you love me?"

"Armfuls and armfuls."

"As much as your mother?"

"Very near as much."

"As much as Amelia?"

"Every bit as much."

"How much do you think Jenny loves me?"

"Ever so much."

"No. Jenny loves Roddy best; then Mark; then Dank; then Mamma; then Papa;
then me. That isn't ever so much."

Catty was vexed. "You didn't oughter go measuring people's love, Miss
Mary."

Still, that was what you did do. With Catty and Jenny you could measure
till you knew exactly where you were.

Mamma was different.

You knew _when_ she loved you. You could almost count the times: the time
when Papa frightened you; the time when you cut your forehead; the time
the lamb died; all the whooping-cough and chicken-pox times, and when
Meta, the wax doll, fell off the schoolroom table and broke her head; and
when Mark went away to school. Or when you were good and said every word
of your lessons right; when you watched Mamma working in the garden,
planting and transplanting the flowers with her clever hands; and when
you were quiet and sat beside her on the footstool, learning to knit and
sew. On Sunday afternoons when she played the hymns and you sang:

   "There's a Friend for little children
      Above the bright blue sky,"

quite horribly out of tune, and when you listened while she sang herself,
"Lead, kindly light," or "Abide with me," and her voice was so sweet and
gentle that it made you cry. Then you knew.

Sometimes, when it was not Sunday, she played the Hungarian March, that
went, with loud, noble noises:

   Droom--Droom--Droom-era-room
   Droom--Droom--Droom-era-room
   Droom rer-room-room droom-room-room
     Droom--Droom--Droom.

It was wonderful. Mamma was wonderful. She swayed and bowed to the beat
of the music, as if she shook it out of her body and not out of the
piano. She smiled to herself when she saw that you were listening. You
said "Oh--Mamma! Play it again," and she played it again. When she had
finished she stooped suddenly and kissed you. And you knew.

But she wouldn't say it. You couldn't make her.

"Say it, Mamma. Say it like you used to."

Mamma shook her head.

"I want to hear you say it."

"Well, I'm not going to."

"I love you. I ache with loving you. I love you so much that it hurts me
to say it."

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Because it hurts me more not to. Just once. 'I love you.' Just a weeny
once."

"You're going to be like your father, tease, tease, tease, all day long,
till I'm worn out."

"I'm not going to be like Papa. I don't tease. It's you that's teasing.
How'm I to know you love me if you won't say it?"

Mamma said, "Can't you see what I'm doing?"

"No."

She was not interested in the thin white stuff and the lace--Mamma's
needle-work.

"Well, then, look in the basket."

The basket was full of tiny garments made of the white stuff, petticoats,
drawers and nightgown, sewn with minute tucks and edged with lace. Mamma
unfolded them.

"New clothes," she said, "for your new dolly."

"Oh--oh--oh--I love you so much that I can't bear it; you little holy
Mamma!"

Mamma said, "I'm not holy, and I won't be called holy. I want deeds, not
words. If you love me you'll learn your lessons properly the night
before, not just gabble them over hot from the pan."

"I will, Mamma, I will. Won't you say it?"

"No," Mamma said, "I won't."

She sat there with a sort of triumph on her beautiful face, as if she
were pleased with herself because she hadn't said it. And Mary would
bring the long sheet that dragged on her wrist, and the needle that
pricked her fingers, and sit at Mamma's knee and sew, making a thin trail
of blood all along the hem.

"Why do you look at me so kindly when I'm sewing?"

"Because I like to see you behaving like a little girl, instead of
tearing about and trying to do what boys do."

And Mamma would tell her a story, always the same story, going on and on,
about the family of ten children who lived in the farm by the forest.
There were seven boys and three girls. The six youngest boys worked on
the farm with their father--yes, he was a _very_ nice father--and the
eldest boy worked in the garden with his mother, and the three girls
worked in the house. They could cook and make butter and cheese, and bake
bread; and even the youngest little girl could knit and sew.

"Had they any children?"

"No, they were too busy to think about having children. They were all
very, very happy together, just as they were."

The story was like the hem, there was never any end to it, for Mamma was
always finding something else for the three girls to do. She smiled as
she told it, as if she saw something that pleased her.

Mary felt that she could go on sewing at the hem and pricking her finger
for ever if Mamma would only keep that look on her face.




VIII


I.

"I can't, Jenny, I can't. I know there's a funeral coming."

Mary stood on the flagstone inside the arch of the open gate. She looked
up and down the road and drew back again into the garden. Jenny, tired
and patient, waited outside.

"I've told you, Miss Mary, there isn't any funeral."

"If there isn't there will be. There! I can see it."

"You see Mr. Parish's high 'at a driving in his wagonette."

It _was_ Mr. Parish's high hat. When he put the black top on his
wagonette it looked like a hearse.

They started up Ley Street towards Mr. Spall's cottage.

Jenny said, "I thought you was going to be such a good girl when Master
Roddy went to school. But I declare if you're not twice as tiresome."

Roddy had gone to Chelmsted after midsummer. She had to go for walks on
the roads with Jenny now at the risk of meeting funerals.

This week they had been every day to Ilford to call at Mr. Spall's
cottage or at Benny's, the draper's shop in the High Street.

Jenny didn't believe that a big girl, nine next birthday, could really be
afraid of funerals. She thought you were only trying to be tiresome. She
said you could stop thinking about funerals well enough when you wanted.
You did forget sometimes when nice things happened; when you went to see
Mrs. Farmer's baby undressed, and when Isabel Batty came to tea. Isabel
was almost a baby. It felt nice to lift her and curl up her stiff,
barley-sugar hair and sponge her weak, pink silk hands. And there were
things that you could do. You could pretend that you were not Mary
Olivier but somebody else, that you were grown-up and that the baby and
Isabel belonged to you and were there when they were not there. But all
the time you knew there would be a funeral on the road somewhere, and
that some day you would see it.

When they got into the High Street the funeral was coming along the
Barking Road. She saw, before Jenny could see anything at all, the mutes,
sitting high, and their black, bunched-up weepers. She turned and ran out
of the High Street and back over the railway bridge. Jenny called after
her, "Come back!" and a man on the bridge shouted "Hi, Missy! Stop!" as
she ran down Ley Street. Her legs shook and gave way under her. Once she
fell. She ran, staggering, but she ran. People came out of their cottages
to look at her. She thought they had come out to look at the funeral.

After that she refused to go outside the front door or to look through
the front windows for fear she should see a funeral.

They couldn't take her and carry her out; so they let her go for walks in
the back garden. When Papa came home she was sent up to the schoolroom to
play with the doll's house. You could see the road through the high bars
of the window at the end of the passage, so that even when Catty lit the
gas the top floor was queer and horrible.

Sometimes doubts came with her terror. She thought: "Nobody loves me
except Mark. And Mark isn't here." Mark's image haunted her. She shut her
eyes and it slid forward on to the darkness, the strong body, the brave,
straight up and down face, the steady, light brown eyes, shining; the
firm, sweet mouth; the sparrow-brown hair with feathery golden tips. She
could hear Mark's voice calling to her: "Minx! Minky!"

And there was something that Mamma said. It was unkind to be afraid of
the poor dead people. Mamma said, "Would you run away from Isabel if you
saw her lying in her little coffin?"


II.

Jenny's new dress had come.

It was made of grey silk trimmed with black lace, and it lay spread out
on the bed in the spare room. Mamma and Aunt Bella stood and looked at
it, and shook their heads as if they thought that Jenny had no business
to wear a silk dress.

Aunt Bella said, "She's a silly woman to go and leave a good home. At her
age."

And Mamma said, "I'd rather see her in her coffin. It would be less
undignified. She meant to do it at Easter; she was only waiting till
Roddy went to school. She's waiting now till after the Christmas
holidays."

Jenny was going to do something dreadful.

She was going to be married. The grey silk dress was her wedding-dress.
She was going to marry Mr. Spall. Even Catty thought it was rather
dreadful.

But Jenny was happy because she was going to wear the grey silk dress and
live in Mr. Spall's cottage and talk to him about Jesus. Only one half of
her face drooped sleepily; the other half had waked up, and looked
excited; there was a flush on it as bright as paint.


III.

Mary's bed stood in a corner of the night nursery, and beside it was the
high yellow linen cupboard. When the doors were opened there was a faint
india-rubbery smell from the mackintosh sheet that had been put away on
the top shelf.

One night she was wakened by Catty coming into the room and opening the
cupboard doors. Catty climbed on a chair and took something from the top
shelf. She didn't answer when Mary asked what she was doing, but hurried
away, leaving the door on the latch. Her feet made quick thuds along the
passage. A door opened and shut, and there was a sound of Papa going
downstairs. Somebody came up softly and pulled the door to, and Mary went
to sleep again.

When she woke the room was full of the grey light that frightened her.
But she was not frightened. She woke sitting up on her pillow, staring
into the grey light, and saying to herself, "Jenny is dead."

But she was not afraid of Jenny. The stillness in her heart spread into
the grey light of the room. She lay back waiting for seven o'clock when
Catty would come and call her.

At seven o'clock Mamma came. She wore the dress she had worn last night,
and she was crying.

Mary said, "You haven't got to say it. I know Jenny is dead."

The blinds were drawn in all the windows when she and Mark went into the
front garden to look for snowdrops in the border by the kitchen area. She
knew that Jenny's dead body lay on the sofa under the kitchen window
behind the blind and the white painted iron bars. She hoped that she
would not have to see it; but she was not afraid of Jenny's dead body. It
was sacred and holy.

She wondered why Mamma sent her to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella. From the
top-storey windows of Chadwell Grange you could look beyond Aldborough
Hatch towards Wanstead Flats and the City of London Cemetery. They were
going to bury Jenny there. She stood looking out, quiet, not crying. She
only cried at night when she thought of Jenny, sitting in the low nursery
chair, tired and patient, drawing back from her violent caresses, and of
the grey silk dress laid out on the bed in the spare room.

She was not even afraid of the City of London Cemetery when Mark took her
to see Jenny's grave. Jenny's grave was sacred and holy.




IX


I.

You had to endure hardness after you were nine. You learnt out of Mrs.
Markham's "History of England," and you were not allowed to read the
conversations between Richard and Mary and Mrs. Markham because they made
history too amusing and too easy to remember. For the same reason you
translated only the tight, dismal pages of your French Reader, and
anything that looked like an interesting story was forbidden. You were to
learn for the sake of the lesson and not for pleasure's sake. Mamma said
you had enough pleasure in play-time. She put it to your honour not to
skip on to the more exciting parts.

When you had finished Mrs. Markham you began Dr. Smith's "History of
England." Honour was safe with Dr. Smith. He made history very hard to
read and impossible to remember.

The Bible got harder, too. You knew all the best Psalms by heart, and the
stories about Noah's ark and Joseph and his coat of many colours, and
David, and Daniel in the lions' den. You had to go straight through the
Bible now, skipping Leviticus because it was full of things you couldn't
understand. When you had done with Moses lifting up the serpent in the
wilderness you had to read about Aaron and the sons of Levi, and the
wave-offerings, and the tabernacle, and the ark of the covenant where
they kept the five golden emerods. Mamma didn't know what emerods were,
but Mark said they were a kind of white mice.

You learnt Old Testament history, too, out of a little book that was all
grey slabs of print and dark pictures showing the earth swallowing up
Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Aaron and the sons of Levi with their long
beards and high hats and their petticoats, swinging incense in fits of
temper. You found out queerer and queerer things about God. God made the
earth swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. He killed poor Uzzah because
he put out his hand to prevent the ark of the covenant falling out of the
cart. Even David said he didn't know how on earth he was to get the ark
along at that rate. And there were the Moabites and the Midianites and
all the animals: the bullocks and the he-goats and the little lambs and
kids. When you asked Mamma why God killed people, she said it was because
he was just as well as merciful, and (it was the old story) he hated sin.
Disobedience was sin, and Uzzah had been disobedient.

As for the lambs and the he-goats, Jesus had done away with all that. He
was God's son, and he had propitiated God's anger and satisfied his
justice when he shed his own blood on the cross to save sinners. Without
shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. You were not to bother
about the blood.

But you couldn't help bothering about it. You couldn't help being sorry
for Uzzah and the Midianites and the lambs and the he-goats.

Perhaps you had to sort things out and keep them separate. Here was the
world, here were Mamma and Mark and kittens and rabbits, and all the
things you really cared about: drawing pictures, and playing the
Hungarian March and getting excited in the Easter holidays when the white
evenings came and Mark raced you from the Green Man to the Horns Tavern.
Here was the sudden, secret happiness you felt when you were by yourself
and the fields looked beautiful. It was always coming now, with a sort of
rush and flash, when you least expected it.

And _there_ was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion
was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding
bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the
things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't
honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness
was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for
you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done
it.

But supposing you hadn't got to believe it, supposing you hadn't got to
believe anything at all, it would be easier to think about. The things
you cared for belonged to each other, but God didn't belong to them. He
didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if God was love,
and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all,
there were two Gods; one who made things and loved them, and one who
didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind
God had made.

When the midsummer holidays came and brook-jumping began she left off
thinking about God.


II.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"--

The picture in the _Sunday At Home_ showed the old King in bed and Prince
Hal trying on his crown. But the words were not the _Sunday At Home_;
they were taken out of Shakespeare. Mark showed her the place.

Mark was in the schoolroom chanting his home-lessons:

   "'Yet once more, oh ye laurels, and once more,
     Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere'"--

That sounded nice. "Say it again, Mark, say it again." Mark said it
again. He also said:

   "'Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
     Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!'"

The three books stood on the bookshelf in the schoolroom, the thin
Shakespeare in diamond print, the small brown leather Milton, the very
small fat Pope's _Iliad_ in the red cover. Mark gave them to her for her
own.

She made Catty put her bed between the two windows, and Mark made a
bookshelf out of a piece of wood and some picture cord, and hung it
within reach. She had a happy, excited feeling when she thought of the
three books; it made her wake early. She read from five o'clock till
Catty called her at seven, and again after Catty had tucked her up and
left her, till the white light in the room was grey.

She learnt _Lycidas_ by heart, and

   "I thought I saw my late espoused wife
    Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,"--

and the bits about Satan in _Paradise Lost_. The sound of the lines gave
her the same nice feeling that she had when Mrs. Propart played the March
in Scipio after Evening Service. She tried to make lines of her own that
went the same way as the lines in Milton and Shakespeare and Pope's
_Iliad_. She found out that there was nothing she liked so much as making
these lines. It was nicer even than playing the Hungarian March. She
thought it was funny that the lines like Pope's _Iliad_ came easiest,
though they had to rhyme.

"Silent he wandered by the sounding sea," was good, but the Greek line
that Mark showed her went: "Be d'akeon para thina poluphloisboio
thalasses"; that was better. "Don't you think so, Mark?"

"Clever Minx. Much better."

"Mark--if God knew how happy I am writing poetry he'd make the earth open
and swallow me up."

Mark only said, "You mustn't say that to Mamma. Play 'Violetta.'"

Of all hateful and disgusting tunes the most disgusting and the most
hateful was "Violetta," which Mr. Sippett's sister taught her. But if
Mark would promise to make Mamma let her learn Greek she would play it to
him twenty times running.

When Mark went to Chelmsted that autumn he left her his brown _Greek
Accidence_ and Smith's _Classical Dictionary_, besides Macaulay's _Lays
of Ancient Rome_. She taught herself Greek in the hour after breakfast
before Miss Sippett came to give her her music lesson. She was always
careful to leave the Accidence open where Miss Sippett could see it and
realise that she was not a stupid little girl.

But whether Miss Sippett saw the Accidence or not she always behaved as
if it wasn't there.


III.

When Mamma saw the Accidence open on the drawing-room table she shut it
and told you to put it in its proper place. If you talked about it her
mouth buttoned up tight, and her eyes blinked, and she began tapping with
her foot.

There was something queer about learning Greek. Mamma did not actually
forbid it; but she said it must not be done in lesson time or sewing
time, or when people could see you doing it, lest they should think you
were showing off. You could see that she didn't believe you _could_ learn
Greek and that she wouldn't like it if you did. But when lessons were
over she let you read Shakespeare or Pope's _Iliad_ aloud to her while
she sewed. And when you could say:

   "Lars Porsena of Clusium
    By the nine Gods he swore"--

straight through without stopping she went into London with Papa and
brought back the _Child's First History of Rome_. A Pinnock's _Catechism
of Mythology_ in a blue paper cover went with the history to tell you all
about the gods and goddesses. What Pinnock didn't tell you you found out
from Smith's _Classical Dictionary_. It had pictures in it so beautiful
that you were happy just sitting still and looking at them. There was
such a lot of gods and goddesses that at first they were rather hard to
remember. But you couldn't forget Apollo and Hermes and Aphrodite and
Pallas Athene and Diana. They were not like Jehovah. They quarrelled
sometimes, but they didn't hate each other; not as Jehovah hated all the
other gods. They fitted in somehow. They cared for all the things you
liked best: trees and animals and poetry and music and running races and
playing games. Even Zeus was nicer than Jehovah, though he reminded you
of him now and then. He liked sacrifices. But then he was honest about
it. He didn't pretend that he was good and that he _had_ to have them
because of your sins. And you hadn't got to believe in him. That was the
nicest thing of all.




X


I.

Mary was ten in eighteen seventy-three.

Aunt Charlotte was ill, and nobody was being kind to her. She had given
her Sunday bonnet to Harriet and her Sunday gown to Catty; so you knew
she was going to be married again. She said it was prophesied that she
should be married in eighteen seventy-three.

The illness had something to do with being married and going continually
to Mr. Marriott's church and calling on Mr. Marriott and writing letters
to him about religion. You couldn't say Aunt Charlotte was not religious.
But Papa said he would believe in her religion if she went to Mr. Batty's
church or Mr. Farmer's or Mr. Propart's. They had all got wives and Mr.
Marriott hadn't. Papa had forbidden Aunt Charlotte to go any more to Mr.
Marriott's church.

Mr. Marriott had written a nice letter to Uncle Victor, and Uncle Victor
had taken Papa to see him, and the doctor had come to see Aunt Charlotte
and she had been sent to bed.

Aunt Charlotte's room was at the top of the tall, thin white house in the
High Street. There was whispering on the stairs. Mamma and Aunt Lavvy
stood at the turn; you could see their vexed faces. Aunt Charlotte called
to them to let Mary come to her. Mary was told she might go if she were
very quiet.

Aunt Charlotte was all by herself sitting up in a large white bed. A
Bible propped itself open, leaves downwards, against the mound she made.
There was something startling about the lengths of white curtain and the
stretches of white pillow and counterpane, and Aunt Charlotte's very
black eyebrows and hair and the cover of the Bible, very black, and her
blue eyes glittering.

She was writing letters. Every now and then she took up the Bible and
picked out a text and wrote it down. She wrote very fast, and as she
finished each sheet she hid it under the bed-clothes, and made a sign to
show that what she was doing was a secret.

"Love God and you'll be happy. Love God and you'll be happy," she said.

Her eyes pointed at you. They looked wise and solemn and excited.

A wide flat piece of counterpane was left over from Aunt Charlotte. Mary
climbed up and sat in it with her back against the foot-rail and looked
at her. Looking at Aunt Charlotte made you think of being born.

"Aunt Charlotte, do _you_ know what being born is?"

Aunt Charlotte looked up under her eyebrows, and hid another sheet of
paper. "What's put that in your head all of a sudden?"

"It's because of my babies. Catty says I couldn't have thirteen all under
three years old. But I could, couldn't I?"

"I'm afraid I don't think you could," Aunt Charlotte said.

"Why not? Catty _won't_ say why."

Aunt Charlotte shook her head, but she was smiling and looking wiser and
more solemn than ever. "You mustn't ask too many questions," she said.

"But you haven't told me what being born is. I know it's got something to
do with the Virgin Mary."

Aunt Charlotte said, "Sh-sh-sh! You mustn't say that. Nice little girls
don't think about those things."

Her tilted eyes had turned down and her mouth had stopped smiling. So you
knew that being born was not frightening. It had something to do with the
things you didn't talk about.

And ye--how could it? There was the Virgin Mary.

"Aunt Charlotte, don't you _wish_ you had a baby?"

Aunt Charlotte looked frightened, suddenly, and began to cry.

"You mustn't say it, Mary, you mustn't say it. Don't tell them you said
it. They'll think I've been talking about the babies. The little babies.
Don't tell them. Promise me you won't tell."


II.

"Aunt Lavvy--I wish I knew what you thought about Jehovah?"

When Aunt Lavvy stayed with you Mamma made you promise not to ask her
about her opinions. But sometimes you forgot. Aunt Lavvy looked more than
ever as if she was by herself in a quiet empty room, thinking of
something that wasn't there. You couldn't help feeling that she knew
things. Mamma said she had always been the clever one, just as Aunt
Charlotte had always been the queer one; but Aunt Bella said she was no
better than an unbeliever, because she was a Unitarian at heart.

"Why Jehovah in particular?" Aunt Lavvy was like Uncle Victor; she
listened politely when you talked to her, as if you were saying something
interesting.

"Because he's the one you've got to believe in. Do you really think he is
so very good?"

"I don't think anything. I don't know anything, except that God is love."

"Jehovah wasn't."

"Jehovah--" Aunt Lavvy stopped herself. "I mustn't talk to you about
it--because I promised your mother I wouldn't."

It was very queer. Aunt Lavvy's opinions had something to do with
religion, yet Mamma said you mustn't talk about them.

"I promised, too. I shall have to confess and ask her to forgive me."

"Then," said Aunt Lavvy, "be sure you tell her that I didn't talk to you.
Promise me you'll tell her."

That was what Aunt Charlotte had said. Talking about religion was like
talking about being born.




XI


I.

Nobody has any innate ideas. Children and savages and idiots haven't any,
so grown-up people can't have, Mr. Locke says.

But how did he know? You might have them and forget about them, and only
remember again after you were grown up.

She sat up in the drawing-room till nine o'clock now, because she was
eleven years old. She had taken the doll's clothes out of the old wooden
box and filled it with books: the Bible, Milton, and Pope's Homer, the
Greek Accidence, and _Plutarch's Lives_, and the Comedies from Papa's
illustrated Shakespeare in seven volumes, which he never read, and two
volumes of _Pepys' Diary_, and Locke _On the Human Understanding_. She
wished the Bible had been bound in pink calf like Pepys instead of the
shiny black leather that made you think of wet goloshes. Then it would
have looked new and exciting like the other books.

She sat on a footstool with her box beside her in the corner behind
Mamma's chair. She had to hide there because Mamma didn't believe you
really liked reading. She thought you were only shamming and showing off.
Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Farmer would come in, and Mr. Farmer would play
chess with Papa while Mrs. Farmer talked to Mamma about how troublesome
and independent the tradespeople were, and how hard it was to get
servants and to keep them. Mamma listened to Mrs. Farmer as if she were
saying something wonderful and exciting. Sometimes it would be the
Proparts; or Mr. Batty would come in alone. And sometimes they would all
come together with the aunts and uncles, and there would be a party.

Mary always hoped that Uncle Victor would notice her and say, "Mary is
reading Locke _On the Human Understanding_," or that Mr. Propart would
come and turn over the books and make some interesting remark. But they
never did.

At half-past eight Catty would bring in the tea-tray; the white and grey
and gold tea-cups would be set out round the bulging silver tea-pot that
lifted up its spout with a foolish, pompous expression, like a hen. Mamma
would move about the table in her mauve silk gown, and there would be a
scent of cream and strong tea. Every now and then the shimmering silk and
the rich scent would come between her and the grey, tight-pressed,
difficult page.

"'The senses at first let in particular ideas and furnish the yet empty
cabinet: and the mind growing by degrees familiar with some of them, they
are lodged in the memory and names got to them.'

"Then how--Then how?--"

The thought she thought was coming wouldn't come, and Mamma was telling
her to get up and hand round the bread and butter.


II.

"Mr. Ponsonby, do you remember your innate ideas?"

"My _how_ much?" said Mr. Ponsonby.

"The ideas you had before you were born?"

Mr. Ponsonby said, "Before I was born? Well--" He really seemed to be
considering it.

Mamma's chair, pushed further along the hearthrug, had driven her back
and back, till the box was hidden behind the curtain.

Mr. Ponsonby was Mark's friend. Mark was at the Royal Military Academy at
Woolwich now. Every Saturday Mr. Ponsonby came home with Mark and stayed
till Sunday evening. You knew that sooner or later he would find you out
behind Mamma's chair.

"I mean," she said, "the ideas you were born with."

"Seems to me," said Mr. Ponsonby, "I was born with precious few. Anyhow I
can't say I remember them."

"I was afraid you'd say that. It's what Mr. Locke says."

"Mr. how much?"

"Mr. Locke. You can look at him if you like."

She thought: "He won't. He won't. They never, never do."

But Mr. Ponsonby did. He looked at Mr. Locke, and he looked at Mary, and
he said, "By Gum!" He even read the bits about the baby and the empty
cabinet.

"You don't mean to say you _like_ this sort of thing?"

"I like it most awfully. Of course I don't mean as much as brook-jumping,
but almost as much."

And Mr. Ponsonby said, "Well--I must say--of _all_--you _are_--by Gum!"

He made it sound like the most delicious praise.

Mr. Ponsonby was taller and older than Mark. He was nineteen. She thought
he was the nicest looking person she had ever seen.

His face was the colour of thick white honey; his hair was very dark, and
he had long blue eyes and long black eyebrows like bars, drawn close down
on to the blue. His nose would have been hooky if it hadn't been so
straight, and his mouth was quiet and serious. When he talked to you his
mouth and eyes looked as if they liked it.

Mark came and said, "Minky, if you stodge like that you'll get all
flabby."

It wasn't nice of Mark to say that before Mr. Ponsonby, when he knew
perfectly well that she could jump her own height.

"_Me_ flabby? Feel my muscle."

It rose up hard under her soft skin.

"Feel it, Mr. Ponsonby."

"I say--_what_ a biceps!"

"Yes, but," Mark said, "you should feel his."

His was even bigger and harder than Mark's. "Mine," she said sorrowfully,
"will never be as good as his."

Then Mamma came and told her it was bed-time, and Mr. Ponsonby said, "Oh,
Mrs. Olivier, _not_ yet."

"Five minutes more, then."

But the five minutes were never any good. You just sat counting them.

And when it was all over and Mr. Ponsonby strode across the drawing-room
and opened the door for her she went laughing; she stood in the doorway
and laughed. When you were sent to bed at nine the only dignified thing
was to pretend you didn't care.

And Mr. Ponsonby, holding the door so that Mamma couldn't see him, looked
at her and shook his head, as much as to say, "You and I know it isn't a
joke for either of us, this unrighteous banishment."


III.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She might have known that some day Mamma would come up and find her
putting the children to bed.

She had seven. There was Isabel Batty, and Mrs. Farmer's red-haired baby,
and Mark in the blue frock in the picture when he was four, and Dank in
his white frock and blue sash, and the three very little babies you made
up out of your head. Six o'clock was their bed-time.

"You'd no business to touch those baby-clothes," Mamma said.

The baby-clothes were real. Every evening she took them from the drawer
in the linen cupboard; and when she had sung the children to sleep she
shook out the little frocks and petticoats and folded them in a neat pile
at the foot of the bed.

"I thought you were in the schoolroom learning your lessons?"

"So I was, Mamma. But--you know--six o'clock is their bed-time."

"Oh Mary! you told me you'd given up that silly game."

"So I did. But they won't let me. They don't want me to give them up."

Mamma sat down, as if it was too much for her.

"I hope," she said, "you don't talk to Catty or anybody about it."

"No, Mamma. I couldn't. They're my secret."

"That was all very well when you were a little thing. But a great girl of
twelve--You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Mamma had gone. She had taken away the baby-clothes. Mary lay face
downwards on her bed.

Shame burned through her body like fire. Hot tears scalded her eyelids.
She thought: "How was I to know you mustn't have babies?" Still, she
couldn't give them all up. She _must_ keep Isabel and the red-haired
baby.

But what would Mr. Ponsonby think of her if he knew?


IV.

"Mr. Ponsonby. Mr. Ponsonby! Stay where you are and look!"

From the window at the end of the top corridor the side of the house went
sheer down into the lane. Mary was at the window. Mr. Ponsonby was in the
lane.

She climbed on to the ledge and knelt there. Grasping the bottom of the
window frame firmly with both hands and letting her knees slide from the
ledge, she lowered herself, and hung for one ecstatic moment, and drew
herself up again by her arms.

"What did you do it for, Mary?"

Mr. Ponsonby had rushed up the stairs and they were sitting there. He was
so tall that he hung over her when he leaned.

"It's nothing. You ought to be able to pull up your own weight."

"You mustn't do it from top-storey windows. It's dangerous."

"Not if you've practised on the banisters first. Where's Mark?"

"With your Mater. I say, supposing you and I go for a walk."

"We must be back at six o'clock," she said.

When you went for walks with Mark or Mr. Ponsonby they always raced you
down Ley Street and over the ford at the bottom. They both gave you the
same start to the Horn's Tavern; the only difference was that with Mr.
Ponsonby you were over the ford first.

They turned at the ford into the field path that led to Drake's Farm and
the plantation. He jumped all the stiles and she vaulted them. She could
see that he respected her. And so they came to the big water jump into
the plantation. Mr. Ponsonby went over first and held out his arms. She
hurled herself forward and he caught her. And this time, instead of
putting her down instantly, he lifted her up in his arms and held her
tight and kissed her. Her heart thumped violently and she had a sudden
happy feeling. Neither spoke.

Humphrey Propart had kissed her once for a forfeit. And she had boxed his
ears. Mr. Ponsonby's was a different sort of kiss.

They tore through the plantation as if nothing had happened, clearing all
the brooks in a business-like way. Mr. Ponsonby took brook-jumping as the
serious and delightful thing it was.

Going home across the fields they held each other's hands, like children.
"Minky," he said, "I don't like to think of you hanging out of top-storey
windows."

"But it's so jolly to feel your body come squirming up after your arms."

"It is. It is. All the same, promise me you won't do it any more."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to India when I've passed out, and I want to find you
alive when I come back. Promise me, Minky."

"I will, if you're really going. But you're the only person I allow to
call me Minky, except Mark."

"Am I? I'm glad I'm the only person."

They went on.

"I'm afraid," she said, "my hand is getting very hot and horrid."

He held it tighter. "I don't care how hot and horrid it gets. And I think
you might call me Jimmy."

It was long after six o'clock. She had forgotten the children and their
bed-time. After that day she never played with them again.


V.

"If I were you," Mamma said, "I should put away that box of books. You'll
be no use if you read--read--read all day long."

"You oughtn't to say that, Mamma. I _am_ of use. You know I can make the
sewing-machine go when you can't."

Mamma smiled. She knew it.

"And which would you rather took you over the crossing at the Bank? Me or
Papa?"

Mamma smiled again. She knew she was safer with Mary at a crossing,
because Papa teased her and frightened her before he dragged her over.
But Mary led her gently, holding back the noses of the horses.

"There's that Locke on the human understanding," said Mamma. "Poor Jimmy
was frightened when he found you reading it."

"He wasn't. He was most awfully pleased and excited."

"He was laughing at you."

"He wasn't. He wasn't."

"Of course he was laughing at you. What did you think he was doing?"

"I thought he was interested."

"He wasn't, then. Men," Mamma said, "are _not_ interested in little
book-worms. He told me it was very bad for you."

Shame again. Hot, burning and scalding shame. He was only laughing at
her.

"Mark doesn't laugh at me," she said. The thought of Mark and of his love
for her healed her wound.

"A precious deal," Mamma said, "you know about Mark."

Mamma was safe. Oh, she was safe. She knew that Mark loved her best.


VI.

On the cover of Pinnock's Catechism there was a small black picture of
the Parthenon. And under it was written:

"Abode of gods whose shrines no longer burn."

Supposing the candles in St. Mary's Chapel no longer burned?

Supposing Barkingside church and Aldborough Hatch church fell to bits and
there were no more clergymen? And you only read in history books about
people like Mr. Batty and Mr. Propart and their surplices and the things
they wore round their necks?

Supposing the Christian religion passed away?

It excited you to think these things. But when you heard the "Magnificat"
in church, or when you thought of Christ hanging so bravely on the cross
you were sorry and you stopped thinking.

What a pity you couldn't ever go on without having to stop.

END OF BOOK TWO




BOOK THREE
ADOLESCENCE (1876-1879)


XII


I.

Mary went slowly up the lane between the garden wall and the thorn hedge.

The air, streaming towards her from the flat fields, had the tang of
cold, glittering water; the sweet, grassy smell of the green corn blades
swam on it. The young thorn leaves smelt of almonds and of their own
bitter green.

The five trees stood up, thin and black, in an archway of golden white
fire. The green of their young leaves hung about them like an emanation.

A skylark swung himself up, a small grey ball, spinning over the tree
tops to the arch of the sunset. His song pierced and shook, like the
golden white light. With each throb of his wings he shrank, smaller and
greyer, a moth, a midge, whirling in the luminous air. A grey ball
dropped spinning down.

By the gate of the field her sudden, secret happiness came to her.

She could never tell when it was coming, nor what it would come from. It
had something to do with the trees standing up in the golden white light.
It had come before with a certain sharp white light flooding the fields,
flooding the room.

It had happened so often that she received it now with a shock of
recognition; and when it was over she wanted it to happen again. She
would go back and back to the places where it had come, looking for it,
thinking that any minute it might happen again. But it never came twice
to the same place in the same way.

Catty was calling to her from the bottom of the lane. She stood still by
the gate, not heeding Catty, holding her happiness. When she had turned
from the quiet fields it would be gone.


II.

Sometimes she had queer glimpses of the persons that were called Mary
Olivier. There was Mrs. Olivier's only daughter, proud of her power over
the sewing-machine. When she brought the pile of hemmed sheets to her
mother her heart swelled with joy in her own goodness. There was Mark
Olivier's sister, who rejoiced in the movements of her body, the strain
of the taut muscles throbbing on their own leash, the bound forwards, the
push of the wind on her knees and breast, the hard feel of the ground
under her padding feet. And there was Mary Olivier, the little girl of
thirteen whom her mother and Aunt Bella whispered about to each other
with mysterious references to her age.

Her secret happiness had nothing to do with any of these Mary Oliviers.
It was not like any other happiness. It had nothing to do with Mamma or
Dan or Roddy, or even Mark. It had nothing to do with Jimmy.

She had cried when Jimmy went away, and she would cry again to-night when
she thought about him. Jimmy's going away was worse than anything that
had happened yet or could happen till Mark went to India. That would be
the worst thing.

Jimmy had not gone to India as he had said. He had had to leave Woolwich
because of something he had done, and his father had sent him to
Australia. He had gone without saying good-bye, and he was never coming
back. She would never in all her life see Jimmy again.

Jimmy had done something dreadful.

Nobody but Mamma and Papa and Mark knew what he had done; but from the
way they talked you could see that it was one of those things you mustn't
talk about. Only Mark said he didn't believe he really had done it.

Last Sunday she had written a letter to him which Mark posted:

"Dear Jimmy,--I think you might have come to say good-bye to us, even if
Papa and Mamma do think you've done something you oughtn't to. I want you
to know that Mark and I don't believe you did it, and even if you did it
won't make any difference. I shall always love you just the same, next
best to Mark. You can't expect me to love you really best, because he
will always come first as long as I live. I hope you will be very happy
in Australia. I shall keep my promise just the same, though it's
Australia and not India you've gone to.

"With love, ever your loving

"Minky.

"P.S. No. 1.--I'm reading a new poet--Byron. There was a silly woman who
said she'd rather have the fame of Childe Harold than the immortality of
Don Juan. But I'd rather have the immortality, wouldn't you?

"P.S. No. 2.--Do you think that you will keep Kangaroos? They might help
to make you happy."


III.

Mary was picking French beans in the kitchen garden when Mamma and Aunt
Bella came along the path, talking together. The thick green walls of the
runners hid her.

"Mary is getting very precocious," said Mamma.

"That comes from being brought up with boys," said Aunt Bella. "She ought
to see more girls of her own age."

"She doesn't like them."

Mary shouted "Cuckoo!" to warn them, but they wouldn't stop.

"It's high time," Aunt Bella said, "that she should learn to like them.
The Draper girls are too old. But there's that little Bertha Mitchison."

"I haven't called on Mrs. Mitchison for two years."

"And why haven't you, Caroline?"

"Because I can't afford to be always hiring wagonettes to go to Woodford
Bridge."

"Cuckoo!"

"Caroline--do you think she could have heard?"

"Cuckoo, Aunt Bella! Cuckoo!"


IV.

On the high road the white dust had a clear, sharp, exciting smell. At
the wet edges of the ford it thickened.

When you shut your eyes you could still see Bertha's scarlet frock on the
white bridge path and smell the wet earth at the edges of the ford.

You were leaning over the white painted railing of the bridge when she
began. The water flowed from under the little tunnel across the road into
the field beyond. Deep brown under the tunnel, tawny in the shallow ford,
golden patches where the pebbles showed through, and the water itself, a
sheet of thin crystal, running over the colours, sliding through them,
running and sliding on and on.

There was nothing in the world so beautiful as water, unless it was
light. But water was another sort of light.

Bertha pushed her soft sallow face into yours. Her big black eyes bulged
out under her square fringe. Her wide red mouth curled and glistened.
There were yellowish stains about the roots of her black hair. Her mouth
and eyes teased you, mocked you, wouldn't let you alone.

Bertha began: "I know something you don't know."

You listened. You couldn't help listening. You simply had to know. It was
no use to say you didn't believe a word of it. Inside you, secretly, you
knew it was true. You were frightened. You trembled and went hot and cold
by turns, and somehow that was how you knew it was true; almost as if you
had known all the time.

"Oh, shut up! I don't _want_ to hear about it."

"Oh, don't you? You did a minute ago."

"Of course I did, when I didn't know. Who wouldn't? I don't want to know
any more."

"I like that. After I've told you everything. What's the good of putting
your fingers in your ears _now_?"

There was that day; and there was the next day when she was sick of
Bertha. On the third day Bertha went back to Woodford Bridge.


V.

It was dreadful and at the same time funny when you thought of Mr. Batty
and Mr. Propart with their little round hats and their black coats and
their stiff, dignified faces. And there was Uncle Edward and his
whiskers. It couldn't be true.

Yet all true things came like that, with a queer feeling, as if you
remembered them.

Jenny's wedding dress. It would be true even of Jenny. Mamma had said she
would rather see her in her coffin than married to Mr. Spall. That was
why.

But--if it was true of everybody it would be true of Mamma and Papa. That
was what you hated knowing. If only you had gone on looking at the water
instead of listening to Bertha--

Mamma's face, solemn and tender, when you said your prayers, playing with
the gold tassel of her watch-chain. Papa's face, on your birthday, when
he gave you the toy lamb. She wouldn't like you to know about her. Mark
wouldn't like it.

Mark: her mind stood still. Mark's image stood still in clean empty
space. When she thought of her mother and Mark she hated Bertha.

And there was Jimmy. That was why they wouldn't talk about him.

Jimmy. The big water-jump into the plantation. Jimmy's arms, the throb of
the hard muscles as he held you. Jimmy's hand, your own hand lying in it,
light and small. Jimmy's eyes, looking at you and smiling, as if they
said, "It's all right, Minky, it's all right."

Perhaps when Papa was young Mamma thought about him as you thought about
Jimmy; so that it couldn't be so very dreadful, after all.




XIII


I.

Mary was glad when Bertha went away to school. When the new year came and
she was fourteen she had almost forgotten Bertha. She even forgot for
long stretches of time what Bertha had told her. But not altogether.

Because, if it was true, then the story of the Virgin Mary was not true.
Jesus couldn't have been born in the way the New Testament said he was
born. There was no such thing as the Immaculate Conception. You could
hardly be expected to believe in it once you knew why it couldn't have
happened.

And if the Bible could deceive you about an important thing like that, it
could deceive you about the Incarnation and the Atonement. You were no
longer obliged to believe in that ugly business of a cruel, bungling God
appeased with bloodshed. You were not obliged to believe anything just
because it was in the Bible.

But--if you didn't, you were an Infidel.

She could hear Aunt Bella talking to Uncle Edward, and Mrs. Farmer and
Mrs. Propart whispering: "Mary is an Infidel."

She thought: "If I _am_ I can't help it." She was even slightly elated,
as if she had set out on some happy, dangerous adventure.


II.

Nobody seemed to know what Pantheism was. Mr. Propart smiled when you
asked him and said it was something you had better not meddle with. Mr.
Farmer said it was only another word for atheism; you might as well have
no God at all as be a pantheist. But if "pan" meant "all things," and
"theos" was God--

Perhaps it would be in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_. The Encyclopaedia
told you all about Australia. There was even a good long bit about Byron,
too.

Panceput--Panegyric--Pantheism! There you were. Pantheism is "that
speculative system which by absolutely identifying the Subject and Object
of thought, reduces all existence, mental and material, to phenomenal
modifications of one eternal, self-existent Substance which is called by
the name of God.... All things are God."

When you had read the first sentence five or six times over and looked up
"Subject" and "Object" and "Phenomenal," you could see fairly well what
it meant. Whatever else God might be, he was not what they said,
something separate and outside things, something that made your mind
uncomfortable when you tried to think about it.

"This universe, material and mental, is nothing but the spectacle of the
thoughts of God."

You might have known it would be like that. The universe, going on inside
God, as your thoughts go on inside you; the universe, so close to God
that nothing could be closer. The meaning got plainer and plainer.

There was Spinoza. ("Spinning--Spinoza.") The Encyclopaedia man said that
the Jewish priests offered him a bribe of two thousand florins to take
back what he had said about God; and when he refused to take back a word
of it, they cursed him and drove him out of their synagogue.

Spinoza said, "There is no substance but God, nor can any other be
conceived." And the Encyclopaedia man explained it. "God, as the infinite
substance, with its infinity of attributes is the _natura naturans_. As
the infinity of modes under which his attributes are manifested, he is
the _natura naturata_."

Nature naturing would be the cause, and Nature natured would be the
effect. God was both.

"God is the immanent"--indwelling--"but not the transient cause of all
things" ... "Thought and Extension are attributes of the one absolute
substance which is God, evolving themselves in two parallel streams, so
to speak, of which each separate body and spirit are but the waves. Body
and Soul are apparently two, but really one and they have no independent
existence: They are parts of God.... Were our knowledge of God capable of
present completeness we might attain to perfect happiness but such is not
possible. Out of the infinity of his attributes only two, Thought and
Extension, are accessible to us while the modes of these attributes,
being essentially infinite, escape our grasp."

So this was the truth about God. In spite of the queer words it was very
simple. Much simpler than the Trinity. God was not three incomprehensible
Persons rolled into one, not Jesus, not Jehovah, not the Father creating
the world in six days out of nothing, and muddling it, and coming down
from heaven into it as his own son to make the best of a bad job. He was
what you had felt and thought him to be as soon as you could think about
him at all. The God of Baruch Spinoza was the God you had wanted, the
only sort of God you cared to think about. Thinking about him--after the
Christian God--was like coming out of a small dark room into an immense
open space filled with happy light.

And yet, as far back as you could remember, there had been a regular
conspiracy to keep you from knowing the truth about God. Even the
Encyclopaedia man was in it. He tried to put you off Pantheism. He got
into a temper about it and said it was monstrous and pernicious and
profoundly false and that the heart of man rose up in revolt against it.
He had begun by talking about "attempts to transgress the fixed
boundaries which One wiser than we has assigned to our intellectual
operations." Perhaps he was a clergyman. Clergymen always put you off
like that; so that you couldn't help suspecting that they didn't really
know and were afraid you would find them out. They were like poor little
frightened Mamma when she wouldn't let you look at the interesting bits
beyond the place she had marked in your French Reader. And they were
always apologising for their God, as if they felt that there was
something wrong with him and that he was not quite real.

But to the pantheists the real God was so intensely real that, compared
with him, being alive was not quite real, it was more like dreaming.

Another thing: the pantheists--the Hindu ones and the Greeks, and Baruch
Spinoza--were heathen, and the Christians had tried to make you believe
that the heathen went to hell because they didn't know the truth about
God. You had been told one lie on the top of another. And all the time
the truth was there, in the _Encyclopaedia Britannica_.

Who would have thought that the Encyclopaedia could have been so
exciting?

The big puce-coloured books stood in a long row in the bottom shelf
behind her father's chair. Her heart thumped when she gripped the volumes
that contained the forbidden knowledge of the universe. The rough morocco
covers went Rr-rr-rimp, as they scraped together; and there was the sharp
thud as they fell back into their place when she had done with them.
These sounds thrilled her with a secret joy. When she was away from the
books she liked to think of them standing there on the hidden shelf,
waiting for her. The pages of "Pantheism" and "Spinoza" were white and
clean, and she had noticed how they had stuck together. Nobody had opened
them. She was the first, the only one who knew and cared.


III.

She wondered what Mark and her mother would say when they knew. Perhaps
Mark would say she ought not to tell her mother if it meant letting out
that the Bible said things that were not really true. His idea might be
that if Mamma wanted to believe in Jehovah and the Atonement through
Christ's blood, it would be unkind to try and stop her. But who on earth
_would_ want to believe that dreadful sort of thing if they could help
it? Papa might not mind, because as long as he knew that he and Mamma
would get into heaven all right he wouldn't worry so much about other
people. But Mamma was always worrying about them and making you give up
things to them; and she must be miserable when she thought of them
burning in hell for ever and ever, and when she tried to reconcile God's
justice with his mercy. To say nothing of the intellectual discomfort she
was living in. When you had found out the real, happy truth about God, it
didn't seem right to keep it to yourself.

She decided that she would tell her mother.

Mark was in the Royal Field Artillery now. He was away at Shoeburyness.
If she put it off till he came home again she might never do it. When
Mamma had Mark with her she would never listen to anything you had to
say.

Next Sunday was Epiphany. Sunday afternoon would be a good time.

But Aunt Lavvy came to stay from Saturday to Monday. And it rained. All
morning Mamma and Aunt Lavvy sat in the dining-room, one on each side of
the fireplace. Aunt Lavvy read James Martineau's _Endeavours After the
Christian Life_, and Mamma read "The Pulpit in the Family" out of the
_Sunday At Home_. Somehow you couldn't do it with Aunt Lavvy in the room.

In the afternoon when she went upstairs to lie down--perhaps.

But in the afternoon Mamma dozed over the _Sunday At Home_. She was so
innocent and pretty, nodding her head, and starting up suddenly, and
looking round with a smile that betrayed her real opinion of Sunday. You
couldn't do it while she dozed.

Towards evening it rained again and Aunt Lavvy went off to Ilford for the
Evening Service, by herself. Everybody else stayed at home, and there was
hymn-singing instead of church. Mary and her mother were alone together.
When her mother had sung the last hymn, "Lead, Kindly Light," then she
would do it.

Her mother was singing:

   "'Jesu, Lover of my soul,
      Let me to Thy bosom fly,
    While the nearer wa-a-ters roll,
      While the tempest still is high'"--

She could see the stiff, slender muscles straining in her mother's neck.
The weak, plaintive voice tore at her heart. She knew that her mother's
voice was weak and plaintive. Its thin, sweet notes unnerved her.

   "'Other refuge ha-ave I none:
      Hangs my helpless soul on Thee'"--

Helpless--Helpless. Mamma was helpless. It was only her love of Mark and
Jesus that was strong. Something would happen if she told her--something
awful. She could feel already the chill of an intolerable separation. She
could give up Jesus, the lover of her soul, but she could not give up her
mother. She couldn't live separated from Mamma, from the weak, plaintive
voice that tore at her.

She couldn't do it.


IV.

Catty's eyes twinkled through the banisters. She caught Mary coming
downstairs and whispered that there was cold boiled chicken and trifle
for supper, because of Aunt Lavvy.

Through the door Mary could see her father standing at the table, and the
calm breasts of the cold chicken smoothed with white sauce and decorated
with beetroot stars.

There was a book beside Papa's plate, the book Aunt Lavvy had been
reading. She had left it open on the drawing-room table when she went to
church. She was late for supper and they sat there waiting for her. She
came in, slowly as usual, and looking at the supper things as though they
were not there. When she caught sight of the book something went up and
flickered in her eyes--a sort of triumph.

You couldn't help thinking that she had left it lying about on purpose,
so that Papa should see it.

He stood waiting till she had sat down. He handed the book to her. His
eyes gleamed.

"When you come here," he said, "you will be good enough to leave James
Martineau behind you."

Mamma looked up, startled. "You don't mean to say you've brought that
man's books into the house?"

"You can see for yourself, Caroline," said Aunt Lavvy.

"I don't want to see. No, Mary, it has nothing to do with you."

Mamma was smiling nervously. You would have supposed that she thought
James Martineau funny, but the least bit improper.

"But look, Mamma, it's his _Endeavours After the Christian Life_."

Her mother took up the book and put it down as if it had bitten her.

"Christian Life, indeed! What right has James Martineau to call himself a
Christian? When he denies Christ--the Lord who bought him! And makes no
secret of it. How can you respect an infidel who uses Christ's name to
cover up his blasphemy?"

Aunt Lavvy was smiling now.

"I thought you said he made no secret of it?"

Mamma said, "You know very well what I mean."

"If you knew Dr. Martineau--"

"You've no business to know him," Emilius said, "when your brother Victor
and I disapprove of him."

Emilius was carving chicken. He had an air of kindly, luscious
hospitality, hesitating between the two flawless breasts.

"Dr. Martineau is the wisest and holiest man I ever knew," said Aunt
Lavvy.

"I daresay your sister Charlotte thinks Mr. Marriott the wisest and the
holiest man _she_ ever knew."

He settled the larger breast on Aunt Lavvy's plate and laid on it one
perfect star of beetroot. He could do that while he insulted her.

"Oh--Papa--you _are_ a br--"

Aunt Lavvy shook her gentle head.

"Lavinia dear" (Mamma's voice was gentle), "did you have a nice service?"

"Very nice, thank you."

"Did you go to Saint Mary's, or the Parish church?"

Aunt Lavvy's straight, flat chin trembled slightly. Her pale eyes
lightened. "I went to neither."

"Then---where did you go?"

"If you insist on knowing, Caroline, I went to Mr. Robson's church."

"You went to Mr.--to the Unitarian Chapel?"

"To the Unitarian Chapel."

"Emilius--" You would have thought that Aunt Lavvy had hit Mamma and hurt
her.

Emilius took up his table napkin and wiped his moustache carefully. He
was quite horribly calm.

"You will oblige me by not going there again," he said.

"You forget that I went every Sunday when we were in Liverpool."

"You forget that is the reason why you left Liverpool."

"Only one of the reasons, I think."

"Can you tell me what reason you have for going now? Beyond your desire
to make yourself different from other people."

"Aren't Unitarians other people?"

She poured out a glass of water and drank. She was giving herself time.

"My reason," she said, "is that I have joined the Unitarian Church."

Mamma put down her knife and fork. Her lips opened and her face turned
suddenly sharp and sallow as if she were going to faint.

"You don't mean to say you've gone over? Then God help poor Charlotte!"

Emilius steadied himself to speak. "Does Victor know?" he said.

"Yes. He knows."

"You have consulted him, and you have not consulted me?"

"You made me promise not to talk about it. I have kept my promise."

Mary was sure then that Aunt Lavvy had left the book open on purpose. She
had laid a trap for Emilius, and he had fallen into it.

"If you will hold infamous opinions you must be made to keep them to
yourself."

"I have a perfect right to my opinions."

"You have no right to make an open profession of them."

"The law is more tolerant than you, Emilius."

"There is a moral law and a law of honour. You are not living by
yourself. As long as you are in Victor's house the least you can do is to
avoid giving offence. Have you no consideration for your family? You say
you came here to be near us. Have you thought of us? Have you thought of
the children? Do you expect Caroline to go to Victor's house if she's to
meet the Unitarian minister and his wife?"

"You will be cutting yourself off completely, Lavinia," Mamma said.

"From what?"

"From everybody. People don't call on Nonconformists. If there were no
higher grounds--"

"Oh--Caroline--" Aunt Lavvy breathed it on a long sigh.

"It's all very well for you. But you might think of your sister
Charlotte," Mamma said.

Papa's beard jerked. He drew in his breath with a savage guttural noise.
"A-ach! What's the good of talking?"

He had gone on eating all the time. There was a great pile of chicken
bones on his plate.

Aunt Lavvy turned. "Emilius--for thirty-three years"--her voice broke as
she quivered under her loaded anguish--"for thirty-three years you've
shouted me down. You haven't let me call my soul my own. Yet it _is_ my
own--"

"There, please--_please_," Mamma said, "don't let us have any more of
it," just as Aunt Lavvy was beginning to get a word in edgeways.

"Mamma, that isn't fair, you must let her speak."

"Yes. You must let me speak." Aunt Lavvy's voice thickened in her throat.

"I won't have any discussion of Unitarianism here," said Papa.

"It's you who have been discussing it, not I."

"It is, really, Papa. First you began. Then Mamma."

Mamma said, "If you've finished your supper, Mary, you can go."

"But I haven't. I've not had any trifle yet."

She thought: "They don't want me to hear them; but I've a right to sit
here and eat trifle. They know they can't turn me out. I haven't done
anything."

Aunt Lavvy went on. "I've only one thing to say, Emilius. You've asked me
to think of Victor and Charlotte, and you and Caroline and the boys and
Mary. Have you once--in thirty-three years--for a single minute--thought
of _me_?"

"Certainly I have. It's partly for your own sake I object to your
disgracing yourself. As if your sister Charlotte wasn't disgrace enough."

Aunt Lavvy drew herself up stiff and straight in her white shawl like a
martyr in her flame. "You might keep Charlotte out of it, I think."

"I might. Charlotte can't help herself. You can."

At this point Mamma burst into tears and left the room.

"Now," he said, "I hope you're satisfied."

Mary answered him.

"I think _you_ ought to be, Papa, if you've been bullying Aunt Lavvy for
thirty-three years. Don't you think it's about time you stopped?"

Emilius stared at his daughter. His face flushed slowly. "I think," he
said, "it's time you went to bed."

"It isn't my bed-time for another hour yet."

(A low murmur from Aunt Lavvy: "Don't, Mary, don't.")

She went on. "It was you who made Mamma cry, not Aunt Lavvy. It always
frightens her when you shout at people. You know Aunt Lavvy's a perfect
saint, besides being lots cleverer than anybody in this house, except
Mark. You get her by herself when she's tired out with Aunt Charlotte.
You insult her religion. You say the beastliest things you can think
of--"

Her father pushed back his chair; they rose and looked at each other.

"You wouldn't dare to do it if Mark was here!"

He strode to the door and opened it. His arm made a crescent gesture that
cleared space of her.

"Go! Go upstairs. Go to bed!"

"I don't care where I go now I've said it."

Upstairs in her bed she still heard Aunt Lavvy's breaking voice:

"For thirty-three years--for thirty-three years--"

The scene rose again and swam before her and fell to pieces.
Ideas--echoes--images. Religion--the truth of God. Her father's voice
booming over the table. Aunt Lavvy's voice, breaking--breaking. A pile of
stripped chicken bones on her father's plate.


V.

Aunt Lavvy was getting ready to go away. She held up her night gown to
her chin, smoothing and folding back the sleeves. You thought of her
going to bed in the ugly, yellow, flannel night gown, not caring, lying
in bed and thinking about God.

Mary was sorry that Aunt Lavvy was going. As long as she was there
you felt that if only she would talk everything would at once become
more interesting. She thrilled you with that look of having something--
something that she wouldn't talk about--up her sleeve. The Encyclopaedia
man said that Unitarianism was a kind of Pantheism. Perhaps that was it.
Perhaps she knew the truth about God. Aunt Lavvy would know whether she
ought to tell her mother.

"Aunt Lavvy, if you loved somebody and you found out that their religion
wasn't true, would you tell them or wouldn't you?"

"It would depend on whether they were happy in their religion or not."

"Supposing you'd found out one that was more true and much more
beautiful, and you thought it would make them happier?"

Aunt Lavvy raised her long, stubborn chin. In her face there was a cold
exaltation and a sudden hardness.

"No religion was ever more true or more beautiful than Christianity," she
said.

"There's Pantheism. Aren't Unitarians a kind of Pantheists?"

Aunt Lavvy's white face flushed. "Unitarians Pantheists? Who's been
talking to you about Pantheism?"

"Nobody. Nobody knows about it. I had to find out."

"The less you find out about it the better."

"Aunt Lavvy, you're talking like Mr. Propart. Supposing I honestly think
Pantheism's true?"

"You've no right to think anything about it," Aunt Lavvy said.

"Now you're talking like Papa. And I did so hope you wouldn't."

"I only meant that it takes more time than you've lived to find out what
honest thinking _is_. When you're twenty years older you'll know what
this opinion of yours is worth."

"I know what it's worth to me, now, this minute."

"Is it worth making your mother miserable?"

"That's what Mark would say. How did you know I was thinking of Mamma?"

"Because that's what my brother Victor said to me."


VI.

The queer thing was that none of them seemed to think the truth could
possibly matter on its own account, or that anything mattered besides
being happy or miserable. Yet everybody, except Aunt Lavvy, was
determined that everybody else should be happy in their way by believing
what they believed; and when it came to Pantheism even Aunt Lavvy
couldn't live and let live. You could see that deep down inside her it
made her more furious than Unitarianism made Papa.

Mary saw that she was likely to be alone in her adventure. It appeared to
her more than ever as a journey into a beautiful, quiet yet exciting
country where you could go on and on. The mere pleasure of being able to
move enchanted her. But nobody would go with her. Nobody knew. Nobody
cared.

There was Spinoza; but Spinoza had been dead for ages. Now she came to
think of it she had never heard anybody, not even Mr. Propart, speak of
Spinoza. It would be worse for her than it had ever been for Aunt Lavvy
who had actually known Dr. Martineau. Dr. Martineau was not dead; and if
he had been there were still lots of Unitarian ministers alive all over
England. And in the end Aunt Lavvy had broken loose and gone into her
Unitarian Chapel.

She thought: "Not till after Grandmamma was dead. Till years after
Grandmamma was dead."

She thought: "Of course I'd die rather than tell Mamma."


VII.

Aunt Lavvy had gone. Mr. Parish had taken her away in his wagonette.

At lessons Mamma complained that you were not attending. But she was not
attending herself, and when sewing time came she showed what she had been
thinking about.

"What were you doing in Aunt Lavvy's room this morning?"

She looked up sharply over the socks piled before her for darning.

"Only talking."

"Was Aunt Lavvy talking to you about her opinions?"

"No, Mamma."

"Has she ever talked to you?"

"Of course not. She wouldn't if she promised not to. I don't know even
now what Unitarianism is.... What _do_ Unitarians believe in?"

"Goodness knows," her mother said. "Nothing that's any good to them, you
may be sure."

Mary went on darning. The coarse wool of the socks irritated her fingers.
It caught in a split nail, setting her teeth on edge.

If you went on darning for ever--if you went on darning--Mamma would be
pleased. She had not suspected anything.


VIII.

   "'Full fathom five thy father lies,
       Of his bones are coral made,
     Those are pearls that were his eyes.
       Nothing of him that doth fade
     But doth suffer a sea-change
     Into something rich and strange.'"

Between the lovely lines she could hear Mamma say, "They all scamp their
work. You would require a resident carpenter and a resident glazier--"

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 to

Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/9366