Olivier

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11. Maturity



VI.

April, May, June.

One afternoon before post-time her mother called her into the study to show her Mrs. Draper's letter.

Mrs. Draper wrote about Dora's engagement and Effie's wedding. Dora was engaged to Hubert Manisty who would have Vinings. Effie had broken off her engagement to young Tom Manisty; she was married last week to Mr. Stuart-Gore, the banker. Mrs. Draper thought Effie had been very wise to give up young Manisty for Mr. Stuart-Gore. She wrote in a postscript: "Maurice Jourdain has just called to ask if I have any news of Mary. I think he would like to know that that wretched affair has not made her unhappy."

Mamma was smiling in a nervous way. "What am I to say to Mrs. Draper?"

"Tell her that Mr. Jourdain was right and that I am not at all unhappy."

She was glad to take the letter to the post and set his mind at rest.

It was in June last year that Maurice Jourdain had come to her: June the twenty-fourth. To-day was the twenty-fifth. He must have remembered.

The hayfields shone, ready for mowing. Under the wind the shimmering hay grass moved like waves of hot air, up and up the hill.

She slipped through the gap by Morfe Bridge and went up the fields to the road on Greffington Edge. She lay down among the bracken in the place where Roddy and she had sat two years ago when they had met Mr. Sutcliffe coming down the road.

The bracken hid her. It made a green sunshade above her head. She shut her eyes.

"Kikeriküh! sie glaubten Es wäre Hahnen geschrei."

That was all nonsense. Maurice Jourdain would never have crept in the little hen-house and hidden himself under the straw. He would never have crowed like a cock. Mark and Roddy would. And Harry Craven and Jimmy. Jimmy would certainly have hidden himself under the straw.

Supposing Jimmy had had a crystal mind. Shining and flashing. Supposing he had never done that awful thing they said he did. Supposing he had had Mark's ways, had been noble and honourable like Mark--

The interminable reverie began. He was there beside her in the bracken. She didn't know what his name would be. It couldn't be Jimmy or Harry or any of those names. Not Mark. Mark's name was sacred.

Cecil, perhaps.

Why Cecil? Cecil?--You ape! You drivelling, dribbling idiot! That was the sort of thing Aunt Charlotte would have thought of.

She got up with a jump and stretched herself. She would have to run if she was to be home in time for tea.

From the top hayfield she could see the Sutcliffes' tennis court; an emerald green space set in thick grey walls. She drew her left hand slowly down her right forearm. The muscle was hardening and thickening.

Mamma didn't like it when you went by yourself to play singles with Mr. Sutcliffe. But if Mr. Sutcliffe asked you you would simply have to go. You would have to play a great many singles against Mr. Sutcliffe if you were to be in good form next year when Mark came home.

VII.

She was always going to the Sutcliffes' now. Her mother shook her head when she saw her in her short white skirt and white jersey, slashing at nothing with her racquet, ready. Mamma didn't like the Sutcliffes. She said they hadn't been nice to poor Papa. They had never asked him again. You could see she thought you a beast to like them.

"But, Mamma darling, I can't help liking them."

And Mamma would look disgusted and go back to her pansy bed and dig her trowel in with little savage thrusts, and say she supposed you would always have your own way.

You would go down to Greffington Hall and find Mr. Sutcliffe sitting under the beech tree on the lawn, in white flannels, looking rather tired and bored. And Mrs. Sutcliffe, a long-faced, delicate-nosed Beauty of Victorian Albums, growing stout, wearing full skirts and white cashmere shawls and wide mushroomy hats when nobody else did. She had an air of doing it on purpose, to be different, like royalty. She would take your hand and press it gently and smile her downward, dragging smile, and she would say, "How is your mother? Does she mind the hot weather? She must come and see me when it's cooler." That was the nice way she had, so that you mightn't think it was Mamma's fault, or Papa's, if they didn't see each other often. And she would look down at her shawl and gather it about her, as if in spirit she had got up and gone away.

And Mr. Sutcliffe would be standing in front of you, looking suddenly years younger, with his eyes shining and clean as though he had just washed them.

And after tea you would play singles furiously. For two hours you would try to beat him. When you jumped the net Mrs. Sutcliffe would wave her hand and nod to you and smile. You had done something that pleased her.

To-day, when it was all over, Mr. Sutcliffe took her back into the house, and there on the hall table were the books he had got for her from the London Library: The Heine, the Goethe's Faust, the Sappho, the Darwin's Origin of Species, the Schopenhauer, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.

"Five? All at once?"

"I get fifteen. As long as we're here you shall have your five."

He walked home with her, carrying the books. Five. Five. And when you had finished them there would be five more. It was unbelievable.

"Why are you so nice to me? Why? Why?"

"I think it must be because I like you, Mary."

Utterly unbelievable.

"Do--you--really--like me?"

"I liked you the first day I saw you. With your brother. On Greffington Edge."

"I wonder why." She wondered what he was thinking, what, deep down inside him, he was really thinking.

"Perhaps it was because you wanted something I could give you.... Tennis.... You wanted it so badly. Everything you want you want so badly."

"And I never knew we were going to be such friends."

"No more did I. And I don't know now how long it's going to last."

"Why shouldn't it last?"

"Because next year 'Mark' will have come home and you'll have nothing to say to me."

"Mark won't make a scrap of difference."

"Well--if it isn't 'Mark' ... You'll grow up, Mary, and it won't amuse you to talk to me any more. I shan't know you. You'll wear long skirts and long hair done in the fashion."

"I shall always want to talk to you. I shall never do up my hair. I cut it off because I couldn't be bothered with it. But I was sold. I thought it would curl all over my head, and it didn't curl."

"It curls at the tips," Mr. Sutcliffe said. "I like it. Makes you look like a jolly boy, instead of a dreadful, unapproachable young lady. A little San Giovanni. A little San Giovanni."

That was his trick: caressing his own words as if he liked them.

She wondered what, deep down inside him, he was really like.

"Mr. Sutcliffe--if you'd known a girl when she was only fourteen, and you liked her and you never saw her again till she was seventeen, and then you found that she'd gone and cut her hair all off, would it give you an awful shock?"

"Depends on how much I liked her."

"If you'd liked her awfully--would it make you leave off liking her?"

"I think my friendship could stand the strain."

"If it wasn't just friendship? Supposing it was Mrs. Sutcliffe?"

"I shouldn't like my wife to cut her hair off. It wouldn't be at all becoming to her."

"No. But when she was young?"

"Ah--when she was young--"

"Would it have made any difference?"

"No. No. It wouldn't have made any difference at all."

"You'd have married her just the same?"

"Just the same, Mary. Why?"

"Oh, nothing. I thought you'd be like that. I just wanted to make sure."

He smiled to himself. He had funny, secret thoughts that you would never know.

"Well," she said, "I didn't beat you."

"Form not good enough yet--quite."

He promised her it should be perfect by the time Mark came home.

VIII.

"The pale pearl-purple evening--" The words rushed together. She couldn't tell whether they were her own or somebody else's.

There was the queer shock of recognition that came with your own real things. It wasn't remembering though it felt like it.

Shelley--"The pale purple even." Not pearl-purple. Pearl-purple was what you saw. The sky to the east after sunset above Greffington Edge. Take out "pale," and "pearl-purple evening" was your own.

The poem was coming by bits at a time. She could feel the rest throbbing behind it, an unreleased, impatient energy.

Her mother looked in at the door. "What are you doing it for, Mary?"

"Oh--for nothing."

"Then for pity's sake come down into the warm room and do it there. You'll catch cold."

She hated the warm room.

The poem would be made up of many poems. It would last a long time, through the winter and on into the spring. As long as it lasted she would be happy. She would be free from the restlessness and the endless idiotic reverie of desire.

IX.

"From all blindness of heart; from pride, vain-glory and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness,

"Good Lord, deliver us."

Mary was kneeling beside her mother in church.

"From fornication, and all other deadly sin--"

Happiness, the happiness that came from writing poems; happiness that other people couldn't have, that you couldn't give to them; happiness that was no good to Mamma, no good to anybody but you, secret and selfish; that was your happiness. It was deadly sin.

She felt an immense, intolerable compassion for everybody who was unhappy. A litany of compassion went on inside her: For old Dr. Kendal, sloughing and rotting in his chair; for Miss Kendal; for all women labouring of child; for old Mrs. Heron; for Dorsy Heron; for all prisoners and captives; for Miss Louisa Wright; for all that were desolate and oppressed; for Maggie's sister, dying of cancer; and for Mamma, kneeling there, praying.

Sunday after Sunday.

And she would work in the garden every morning, digging in leaf mould and carrying the big stones for the rockery; she would go to Mrs. Sutcliffe's sewing parties; she would sit for hours with Maggie's sister, trying not to look as if she minded the smell of the cancer. You were no good unless you could do little things like that. You were no good unless you could keep on doing them.

She tried to keep on.

Some people kept on all day, all their lives. Still, it was not you so much as the world that was wrong. It wasn't fair and right that Maggie's sister should have cancer while you had nothing the matter with you. Or even that Maggie had to cook and scrub while you made poems.

Not fair and right.

X.

"Mamma, what is it? Why are you in the dark?"

By the firelight she could see her mother sitting with her eyes shut, and her hands folded in her lap.

"I can't use my eyes. I think there must be something the matter with them."

"Your eyes? ... Do they hurt?"

(You might have known--you might have known that something would happen. While you were upstairs, writing, not thinking of her. You might have known.)

"Something hurts. Just there. When I try to read. I must be going blind."

"Are you sure it isn't your glasses?"

"How can it be my glasses? They never hurt me before."

But the oculist in Durlingham said it was her glasses. She wasn't going blind. It wasn't likely that she ever would go blind.

For a week before the new glasses came Mamma sat, patient and gentle, in her chair, with her eyes shut and her hands folded in her lap. And you read aloud to her: the Bible and The Times in the morning, and Dickens in the afternoon. And in the evening you played draughts and Mamma beat you.

Mamma said, "I shall be quite sorry when the new glasses come."

Mary was sorry too. They had been so happy.

XI.

April. Mark's ship had left Port Said nine days ago.

Mamma had come in with the letter. "I've got news for you. Guess."

"Mark's coming to-day."

"No.... Mr. Jourdain was married yesterday."

"Who--to?"

"Some girl he used to see in Sussex."

(That one. She was glad it was the little girl, the poor one. Nice of Maurice to marry her.)

"Do you mind, Mary?"

"No, not a bit. I hope they'll be happy. I want them to be happy.... Now, you see--that was why he didn't want to marry me."

Her mother sat down on the bed. There was something she was going to say.

"Well--thank goodness that's the last of it."

"Does Mark know?"

"No, he does not. You surely don't imagine anybody would tell him a thing like that about his sister?"

"Like what?"

"Well--he wouldn't think it very nice of you."

"You talk as if I was Aunt Charlotte.... Do you think I'm like her?"

"I never said you were like her...."

"You think--you think and won't say."

"Well, if you don't want to be thought like your Aunt Charlotte you should try and behave a little more like other people. For pity's sake, do while Mark's here, or he won't like it, I can tell you."

"I don't do anything Mark wouldn't like."

"You do very queer things sometimes, though you mayn't think so.... I'm not the only one that notices. If you really want to know, that was what Mr. Jourdain was afraid of--the queer things you say and do. You told me yourself you'd have gone to him if he hadn't come to you."

She remembered. Yes, she had said that.

"Did he know about Aunt Charlotte?"

"You may be sure he did."

Mamma didn't know. She never would know what it had been like, that night. But there were things you didn't know, either.

"What did Aunt Charlotte do?"

"Nothing. She just fell in love with every man she met. If she'd only seen him for five minutes she was off after him. Ordering her trousseau and dressing herself up. She was no more mad than I am except just on that one point."

"Aunt Lavvy said that was why Uncle Victor never married. He was afraid of something--something happening to his children. What do you think he thought would happen?"

Her mother's foot tapped on the floor.

"I'm sure I can't tell you what he thought. And I don't know what there was to be afraid of. I wish you wouldn't throw your stockings all about the room."

Mamma picked up the stockings and went away. You could see that she was annoyed. Annoyed with Uncle Victor for having been afraid to marry.

A dreadful thought came to her. "Does Mamma really think I'm like Aunt Charlotte? I won't be like her. I won't.... I'm not. There was Jimmy and there was Maurice Jourdain. But I didn't fall in love with the Proparts or the Manistys, or Norman Waugh, or Harry Craven, or Dr. Charles. Or Mr. Sutcliffe.... She said I was as bad as Aunt Charlotte. Because I said I'd go to Maurice.... I meant, just to see him. What did she think I meant?... Oh, not that.... Would I really have gone? Got into the train and gone? Would I?"

She would never know.

"I wish I knew what Uncle Victor was afraid of."

Wondering what he had been afraid of, she felt afraid.



XXV

I.

She waited.

Mamma and Mark had turned their backs to her as they clung together. But there was his sparrow-brown hair, clipped close into the nape of his red-brown neck. If only Mamma wouldn't cry like that--

"Mark--"

"Is that Minky?"

They held each other and let go in one tick of the clock, but she had stood a long time seeing his eyes arrested in their rush of recognition. Disappointed.

The square dinner-table stretched itself into an immense white space between her and Mark. It made itself small again for Mark and Mamma. Across the white space she heard him saying things: about Dan meeting him at Tilbury, and poor Victor coming to Liverpool Street, and Cox's. Last night he had stayed at Ilford, he had seen Bella and Edward and Pidgeon and Mrs. Fisher and the Proparts. "Do you remember poor Edward and his sheep? And Mary's lamb!"

Mark hadn't changed, except that he was firmer and squarer, and thinner, because he had had fever. And his eyes--He was staring at her with his disappointed eyes.

She called to him. "You don't know me a bit, Mark."

He laughed. "I thought I'd see somebody grown up. Victor said Mary was dreadfully mature. What did he mean?"

Mamma said she was sure she didn't know.

"What do you do with yourself all day, Minky?"

"Nothing much. Read--work--play tennis with Mr. Sutcliffe."

"Mr.--Sutcliffe?"

"Never mind Mr. Sutcliffe. Mark doesn't want to hear about him."

"Is there a Mrs. Sutcliffe?"

"Yes."

"Does she play?"

"No. She's too old. Much older than he is."

"That'll do, Mary."

Mamma's eyes blinked. Her forehead was pinched with vexation. Her foot tapped on the floor.

Mark's eyes kept up their puzzled stare.

"What's been happening?" he said. "What's the matter? Everywhere I go there's a mystery. There was a mystery at Ilford. About Dan. And about poor Charlotte. I come down here and there's a mystery about some people called Sutcliffe. And a mystery about Mary." He laughed again. "Minky seems to be in disgrace, as if she'd done something.... It's awfully queer. Mamma's the only person something hasn't happened to."

"I should have thought everything had happened to me," said Mamma.

"That makes it queerer."

Mamma went up with Mark into his room. Papa's room. You could hear her feet going up and down in it, and the squeaking wail of the wardrobe door as she opened and shut it.

She waited, listening. When she heard her mother come downstairs she went to him.

Mark didn't know that the room had been Papa's room. He didn't know that she shivered when she saw him sitting on the bed. She had stood just there where Mark's feet were and watched Papa die. She could feel the basin slipping, slipping from the edge of the bed.

Mark wasn't happy. There was something he missed, something he wanted. She had meant to say, "It's all right. Nothing's happened. I haven't done anything," but she couldn't think about it when she saw him sitting there.

"Mark--what is it?"

"I don't know, Minky."

"I know. You've come back, and it isn't like what you thought it would be."

"No," he said, "it isn't.... I didn't think it would be so awful without Papa."

II.

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

Mark was sorry for the tiger.

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

"How did you feel?"

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

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

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

"What was it like?"

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

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

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

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

"That."

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

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

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

III.

"Mark, are you coming?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mark didn't look up or say anything. He went on giving the photographs to Mamma, telling her the names. "Dicky Carter. Man called St. John. Man called Bibby--Jonas Bibby. Allingham. Peters. Gunning, Stobart Hamilton. Sir George Limond, Colonel Robertson."

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

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

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

"Oh. Very handsome face."

"Very handsome."

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

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

"Are those all, Mark?"

"Those are all."

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

But when he went away for a fortnight to stay with the man called St. John, she was miserable till he had come back, safe.

IV.

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

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

That afternoon she took her book into the garden. Mark came to her there. Mamma, tired with the long service, dozed in the drawing-room.

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

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

"Why have you taken to that dreadful stodge?"

"I'm driven to it. It's like drink; once you begin you've got to go on."

"What on earth made you begin?"

"I wanted to know things--to know what's real and what isn't, and what's at the back of everything, and whether there is anything there or not. And whether you can know it or not. And how you can know anything at all, anyhow. I'd give anything ... Are you listening?"

"Yes, Minky, you'd give anything--"

"I'd give everything--everything I possess--to know what the Thing-in-itself is."

"I'd rather know Arabic. Or how to make a gun that would find its own range and feed itself with bullets sixty to the minute."

"That would be only knowing a few; more things. I want the thing. Reality, Substance, the Thing-in-itself. Spinoza calls it God. Kant doesn't; but he seems to think it's all the God you'll ever get, and that, even then, you can't know it. Transcendental Idealism is just another sell."

"Supposing," Mark said, "there isn't any God at all."

"Then I'd rather know that than go on thinking there was one when there wasn't."

"But you'd feel sold?"

"Sort of sold. But it's the risk--the risk that makes it so exciting ... Why? Do you think there isn't any God?"

"I'm afraid I think there mayn't be."

"Oh, Mark--and you went to the Sacrament. You ate it and drank it."

"Why shouldn't I?"

"You don't believe in it any more than I do."

"I never said anything about believing in it."

"You ate and drank it."

"Poor Jesus said he wanted you to do that and remember him. I did it and remembered Jesus."

"I don't care. It was awful of you."

"Much more awful to spoil Mamma's pleasure in God and Jesus. I did it to make her happy. Somebody had to go with her. You wouldn't, so I did ... It doesn't matter, Minky. Nothing matters except Mamma."

"Truth matters. You'd die rather than lie or do anything dishonourable. Yet that was dishonourable."

"I'd die rather than hurt Mamma ... If you make her unhappy, Minky, I shall hate you."

V.

"You can't go in that thing."

They were going to the Sutcliffes' dance. Mamma hadn't told Mark she didn't like them. She wanted Mark to go to the dance. He had said Morfe was an awful hole and it wasn't good for you to live in it.

The frock was black muslin, ironed out. Mamma's black net Indian scarf, dotted with little green and scarlet flowers, was drawn tight over her hips to hide the place that Catty had scorched with the iron. The heavy, brilliant, silk-embroidered ends, green and scarlet, hung down behind. She felt exquisitely light and slender.

Mamma was shaking her head at Mark as he stared at you.

"If you knew," he said, "what you look like ... That's the way the funny ladies dress in the bazaars--If you'd only take that awful thing off."

"She can't take it off," Mamma said. "He's only teasing you."

Funny ladies in the bazaars--Funny ladies in the bazaars. Bazaars were Indian shops ... Shop-girls ... Mark didn't mean shop-girls, though. You could tell that by his face and by Mamma's ... Was that what you really looked like? Or was he teasing? Perhaps you would tell by Mrs. Sutcliffe's face. Or by Mr. Sutcliffe's.

Their faces were nicer than ever. You couldn't tell. They would never let you know if anything was wrong.

Mrs. Sutcliffe said, "What a beautiful scarf you've got on, my dear."

"It's Mamma's. She gave it me." She wanted Mrs. Sutcliffe to know that Mamma had beautiful things and that she would give them. The scarf was beautiful. Nothing could take from her the feeling of lightness and slenderness she had in it.

Her programme stood: Nobody. Nobody. Norman Waugh. Dr. Charles. Mr. Sutcliffe. Mr. Sutcliffe. Nobody. Nobody again, all the way down to Mr. Sutcliffe, Mr. Sutcliffe, Mr. Sutcliffe. Then Mark. Mr. Sutcliffe had wanted the last dance, the polka; but she couldn't give it him. She didn't want to dance with anybody after Mark.

The big, long dining-room was cleared; the floor waxed. People had come from Reyburn and Durlingham. A hollow square of faces. Faces round the walls. Painted faces hanging above them: Mr. Sutcliffe's ancestors looking at you.

The awful thing was she didn't know how to dance. Mark said you didn't have to know. It would be all right. Perhaps it would come, suddenly, when you heard the music. Supposing it came like skating, only after you had slithered a lot and tumbled down?

The feeling of lightness and slenderness had gone. Her feet stuck to the waxed floor as if they were glued there. She was frightened.

It had begun. Norman Waugh was dragging her round the room. Once. Twice. She hated the feeling of his short, thick body moving a little way in front of her. She hated his sullen bull's face, his mouth close to hers, half open, puffing. From the walls Mr. Sutcliffe's ancestors looked at you as you shambled round, tied tight in your Indian scarf, like a funny lady in the bazaars. Raised eyebrows. Quiet, disdainful faces. She was glad when Norman Waugh left her on the window-seat.

Dr. Charles next. He was kind. You trod on his feet and he pretended he had trodden on yours.

"My dancing days are over."

"And mine haven't begun."

They sat out and she watched Mark. He didn't dance very well: he danced tightly and stiffly as if he didn't like it; but he danced: with Miss Frewin and Miss Louisa Wright, because nobody else would; with the Acroyds because Mrs. Sutcliffe made him; five dances with Dorsy Heron, because he liked her, because he was sorry for her, because he found her looking sad and shy in a corner. You could see Dorsy's eyes turn and turn, restlessly, to look at Mark, and her nose getting redder as he came to her.

Dr. Charles watched them. You knew what he was thinking. "She's in love with him. She can't take her eyes off him."

Supposing you told her the truth? "He won't marry you. He won't care for you. He won't care for anybody but Mamma. Can't you see, by the way he looks at you, the way he holds you? It's no use your caring for him. It'll only make your little nose redder."

He wouldn't mind her red nose; her little proud, high-bridged nose. He liked her small face, trying to look austere with shy hare's eyes; her vague mouth, pointed at the corners in a sort of sharp tenderness; her smooth, otter-brown hair brushed back and twisted in a tight coil at the nape of her neck. Dorsy was sweet and gentle and unselfish. He might have cared for Dorsy if it hadn't been for Mamma. Anyhow, for one evening in her life Dorsy was happy, dancing round and round, with her wild black hare's eyes shining.

Mr. Sutcliffe. She stood up. She would have to tell him.

"I can't dance."

"Nonsense. You can run and you can jump. Of course you can dance."

"I don't know how to."

"The sooner you learn the better. I'll teach you in two minutes."

He steered her into the sheltered bay behind the piano. They practised.

"Mark's looking at us."

"Is he? What has he done to you, Mary? We'll go where he can't look at us."

They went out into the hall.

"That's it; your feet between mine. In and out. Don't throw your shoulders back. Don't keep your elbows in. It's not a hurdle race."

"I wish it was."

"You won't in a minute. Don't count your steps. Listen for the beat. It's the beat that does it."

She began to feel light and slender again.

"Now you're off. You're all right."

Off. Turning and turning. You steered through the open door; in and out among the other dancers; you skimmed; you swam, whirling, to the steady tump-tump of the piano, and the queer, exciting squeak of the fiddles--

Whirling together, you and Mr. Sutcliffe and the piano and the two fiddles. One animal, one light, slender animal, whirling and playing. Every now and then his arm tightened round your waist with a sort of impatience. When it slackened you were one light, slender animal again, four feet and four arms whirling together, the piano was its heart, going tump-tump, and the fiddles--

"Why did I think I couldn't do it?"

"Funk. Pure funk. You wanted to dance--you wanted to so badly that it frightened you."

His arm tightened.

As they passed she could see Mrs. Sutcliffe sitting in an arm-chair pushed back out of the dancers' way. She looked tired and bored and a little anxious.

When the last three dances were over he took her back to Mark.

Mark scowled after Mr. Sutcliffe.

"What does he look at you like that for?"

"Perhaps he thinks I'm--a funny lady in a bazaar."

"That's the sort of thing you oughtn't to say."

"You said it."

"All the more reason why you shouldn't."

He put his arm round her and they danced. They danced.

"You can do it all right now," he said.

"I've learnt. He taught me. He took me outside and taught me. I'm not frightened any more."

Mark was dancing better now. Better and better. His eyes shone down into yours. He whispered.

"Minky--Poor Minky--Pretty Minky."

He swung you. He lifted you off your feet. He danced like mad, carrying you on the taut muscle of his arm.

Somebody said, "That chap's waked up at last. Who's the girl?"

Somebody said, "His sister."

Mark laughed out loud. You could have sworn he was enjoying himself.

But when he got home he said he hadn't enjoyed himself at all. And he had a headache the next day. It turned out that he hadn't wanted to go. He hated dancing. Mamma said he had only gone because he thought you'd like it and because he thought it would be good for you to dance like other people.

VI.

"Why are you always going to the Sutcliffes'?" Mark said suddenly.

"Because I like them."

They were coming down the fields from Greffington Edge in sight of the tennis court.

"You oughtn't to like them when they weren't nice to poor Papa. If Mamma doesn't want to know them you oughtn't to."

Mark, too. Mark saying what Mamma said. Her heart swelled and tightened. She didn't answer him.

"Anyhow," he said, "you oughtn't to go about all over the place with old Sutcliffe." When he said "old Sutcliffe" his eyes were merry and insolent as they used to be. "What do you do it for?"

"Because I like him. And because there's nobody else who wants to go about with me."

"There's Miss Heron."

"Dorsy isn't quite the same thing."

"Whether she is or isn't you've got to chuck it."

"Why?"

"Because Mamma doesn't like it and I don't like it. That ought to be enough." (Like Papa.)

"It isn't enough."

"Minky--why are you such a brute to little Mamma?"

"Because I can't help it ... It's all very well for you--"

Mark turned in the path and looked at her; his tight, firm face tighter and firmer. She thought: "He doesn't know. He's like Mamma. He won't see what he doesn't want to see. It would be kinder not to tell him. But I can't be kind. He's joined with Mamma against me. They're two to one. Mamma must have said something to make him hate me." ...Perhaps she hadn't. Perhaps he had only seen her disapproving, reproachful face ... "If he says another word--if he looks like that again, I shall tell him."

"It's different for you," she said. "Ever since I began to grow up I felt there was something about Mamma that would kill me if I let it. I've had to fight for every single thing I've ever wanted. It's awful fighting her, when she's so sweet and gentle. But it's either that or go under."

"Minky--you talk as if she hated you."

"She does hate me."

"You lie." He said it gently, without rancour.

"No. I found that out years ago. She doesn't know she hates me. She never knows that awful sort of thing. And of course she loved me when I was little. She'd love me now if I stayed little, so that she could do what she liked with me; if I'd sit in a corner and think as she thinks, and feel as she feels and do what she does."

"If you did you'd be a much nicer Minx."

"Yes. Except that I should be lying then, the whole time. Hiding my real self and crushing it. It's your real self she hates--the thing she can't see and touch and get at--the thing that makes you different. Even when I was little she hated it and tried to crush it. I remember things--"

"You don't love her. You wouldn't talk like that about her if you loved her."

"It's because I love her. Her self. Her real self. When she's working in the garden, planting flowers with her blessed little hands, doing what she likes, and when she's reading the Bible and thinking about God and Jesus, and when she's with you, Mark, happy. That's her real self. I adore it. Selves are sacred. You ought to adore them. Anybody's self. Catty's.... I used to wonder what the sin against the Holy Ghost was. They told you nobody knew what it was. I know. It's that. Not adoring the self in people. Hating it. Trying to crush it."

"I see. Mamma's committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, has she?"

"Yes."

He laughed. "You mustn't go about saying those things. People will think you mad."

"Let them. I don't care--I don't care if you think I'm mad. I only think it's beastly of you to say so."

"You're not madder than I am. We're all mad. Mad as hatters. You and me and Dank and Roddy and Uncle Victor. Poor Charlotte's the sanest of the lot, and she's the only one that's got shut up."

"Why do you say she's the sanest?"

"Because she knew what she wanted."

"Yes. She knew what she wanted. She spent her whole life trying to get it. She went straight for that one thing. Didn't care a hang what anybody thought of her."

"So they said poor Charlotte was mad."

"She was only mad because she didn't get it."

"Yes, Minx.... Would poor Minky like to be married?"

"No. I'm not thinking about that. I'd like to write poems. And to get away sometimes and see places. To get away from Mamma."

"You little beast."

"Not more beast than you. You got away. Altogether. I believe you knew."

"Knew what?"

Mark's face was stiff and red. He was angry now.

"That if you stayed you'd be crushed. Like Roddy. Like me."

"I knew nothing of the sort."

"Deep down inside you you knew. You were afraid. That's why you wanted to be a soldier. So as not to be afraid. So as to get away altogether."

"You little devil. You're lying. Lying."

He threw his words at you softly, so as not to hurt you. "Lying. Because you're a beast to Mamma you'd like to think I'm a beast, too."

"No--no." She could feel herself making it out more and more. Flash after flash. Till she knew him. She knew Mark.

"You had to. To get away from her, to get away from her sweetness and gentleness so that you could be yourself; so that you could be a man."

She had a tremendous flash.

"You haven't got away altogether. Half of you still sticks. It'll never get away.... You'll never love anybody. You'll never marry."

"No, I won't. You're right there."

"Yes. Papa never got away. That was why he was so beastly to us."

"He wasn't beastly to us."

"He was. You know he was. You're only saying that because it's what Mamma would like you to say.... He couldn't help being beastly. He couldn't care for us. He couldn't care for anybody but Mamma."

"That's why I care for him," Mark said.

"I know.... None of it would have mattered if we'd been brought up right. But we were brought up all wrong. Taught that our selves were beastly, that our wills were beastly and that everything we liked was bad. Taught to sit on our wills, to be afraid of our selves and not trust them for a single minute.... Mamma was glad when I was jilted, because that was one for me."

"Were you jilted?"

"Yes. She thought it would make me humble. I always was. I am. I'm afraid of my self now. I can't trust it. I keep on asking people what they think when I ought to know.... But I'm going to stop all that. I'm going to fight."

"Fight little Mamma?"

"No. Myself. The bit of me that claws on to her and can't get away. My body'll stay here and take care of her all her life, but my self will have got away. It'll get away from all of them. It's got bits of them sticking to it, bits of Mamma, bits of Papa, bits of Roddy, bits of Aunt Charlotte. Bits of you, Mark. I don't want to get away from you, but I shall have to. You'd kick me down and stamp on me if you thought it would please Mamma. There mayn't be much left when I'm done, but at least it'll be me."

"Mad. Quite mad, Minx. You ought to be married."

"And leave little Mamma? ... I'll race you from the bridge to the top of the hill."

He raced her. He wasn't really angry. Deep down inside him he knew.