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:
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.
