The Rosemary Tree

  Chapter 8

  1

  The morning dawned calm and lovely. From her bed Harriet could see the hills beyond the river, the woods and the sky. Like all those who spend much of their life in one room she had come to have an almost personal love for her window. She slept with her curtains drawn back and whenever she woke in the night she looked towards it instantly with eager wonder as to what it had to show her; clouds like galleons crossing the face of the moon, gems of stars set in a pall of blue velvet, Aurora like a golden lamp blazing above the brown rim of a dawn sky. Once she had woken up in the dawn she did not often go to sleep again, for her window faced east and she could not bear to miss a moment of the sun’s rising. She loved to see the distant woods, grey and colorless while Aurora still blazed, dressing themselves in color as the starlight faded. She liked to see the nearer trees catching the light on their plumed crests, and the cattle standing knee deep in the white swathes of mist. Above all, she loved the dawn skies with their alternations of bright beauty, flaming so quickly to the penultimate splendor, then passing from glory to glory until the colors were lost in the splendor of the full day. Her eyes could never seem to catch the moment of change; in the span of a breath one glory had passed and another was passing and she could not halt the moments as they came; and perhaps only Harriet Martin was awake in Belmaray to tell of what had been.

  Yet how could she tell? That was what bothered her. She would say to Daphne, “It was a lovely dawn this morning, red and pink and all sorts,” and Daphne would answer, “Was it, Harriet? Could you manage pork for lunch or would you rather have an egg?” And she would say, “Egg, please, dearie,” and think how lopsided are the gifts of God. Now why give a woman eyes to see and no words to tell of it? Well, they had to see for themselves, that was what it was, and they all slept too heavy. “He was in the world . . . and the world knew Him not.” The way God squandered Himself had always hurt her; and annoyed her too. The sky full of wings and only the shepherds awake. That golden voice speaking and only a few fishermen there to hear; and perhaps some of the words He spoke carried away on the wind or lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. A thousand blossoms shimmering over the orchard, each a world of wonder all to itself, and then the whole thing blown away on a southwest gale as though the delicate little worlds were of no value at all. Well, of all the spendthrifts, she would think and then pull herself up. It was not for her to criticize the ways of Almighty God; if he liked to go to all that trouble over the snowflakes, millions and millions of them, their intricate patterns too small to be seen by human eyes, and melting as soon as made, that was His affair and not hers. All she could do about it was to catch in her window, and save from entire waste, as much of the squandered beauty as she could.

  The birds’ voices woke her that morning, and she lay listening to them while she watched the changing sky. What did the voices mean? The longer she lived the more deeply aware did she become of profundities of meaning in everything about her. To grow old was to become less aware of the normal aspect of things, which hitherto you had taken for granted as all that there was, and to sink more deeply into the darkness of their meaning. As she watched and listened the bright clouds and the birds’ voices became as a growing darkness. She fought against it for a moment, not wanting to waste the color and the sound, then yielded, for the darkness was a better thing than either.

  She was roused by a volley of sneezes and John bringing her an early morning cup of tea. Winter and summer alike he entered her room, scrupulously shaved and meticulously dressed at six-thirty, carrying her tea. He might have all the trouble in the world keeping his mind to the point, controlling his nerves and emotions, but at least he had now got his early morning routine running on rails. He leapt from bed as soon as his alarm clock rang five-forty-five, stifling it promptly lest Daphne in the next room should be disturbed, stumbled in a state of trembling misery to the bathroom and took a cold bath, to the accompaniment of the Sursum Corda which he intoned with groanings and croakings like those of a frog in a marsh. His bath over his misery hardened to a hard and resolute depression and he dressed and shaved in silence, as for the scaffold. It was useless to pray while he shaved for if he did he cut himself. That done he made Harriet’s cup of tea but did not have one himself, considering it contrary to discipline. But he made her cup of tea extremely well, exactly as she liked it, for at this time of day he was so focused upon the ideal of perfection that he could scarcely go wrong. There were no distractions yet, there had been no headlong failure to plunge him into despair. He did not take much notice of Harriet when he took in her tea, unless she were unwell and needing care, but kept his greetings and enquiries until later. He merely satisfied himself that all was well with her, wrapped her shawl round her, delivered the tea and went out again, for he kept silence before breakfast. Drinking her cup of tea, the best she had in the day, Harriet heard him going downstairs, opening the front door and walking quickly down the drive towards the church. Now, she knew, his early depression would lift a little, and by the time he got to church it would have lifted altogether. From seven to eight he prayed and meditated in the church, on Wednesday and saints’ days remaining to celebrate Holy Communion for the few faithful; old Mrs. Johnson, old Bartomy the sexton, and on saints’ days (under extreme protest) Daphne. Though he had never told her so Harriet knew these early morning hours in the church seemed to him not only the happiest in his life but life itself. They were like the short periods of ease in the existence of a man who is chronically sick. He stayed himself upon the thought that they would come again.

  When she had finished her tea Harriet lay back against her pillows and tasted the flavor of the day. She always had a shrewd idea as to what sort of day it was going to be at the vicarage, and adjusted herself beforehand to storms or peace. Yesterday had been on the whole a good day. After what had seemed a dangerous start with the daffodils John and Daphne had come back from church in harmony with each other, and the children had come back from school older and wiser than when they had gone, but in the last event happy. They had gone to bed happy but Daphne and John had not. Daphne, who could be a wonderful cook when she had the heart, had in her joy at the morning’s harmony prepared a very special supper and told John not to be late for it. He had not come back to supper at all. Daphne never protested when she was hurt, she was merely proudly silent. The silence in which she and John had come upstairs last night, the coldness of her good-night, had lain on Harriet’s heart like a heavy weight until she slept. And she had felt exasperated with both of them. Why could not John take more pains to remember? With his catarrh he used his handkerchief often enough and a knot in one corner of it would have told him what he ought to be doing. Why could not Daphne be more tolerant of his forgetfulness? He had been that way from a boy and Daphne who had known him as a boy should surely have learned to laugh at it by this time. But it takes a happy marriage to make light of small things and they were not happy. Harriet knew that John had gone off to church this morning sick at heart, and sure, as always, that it was all his fault. Daphne, she suspected, could have uncovered the root of their unhappiness had she tried, but she didn’t; roots can be ugly things. “One of these days,” thought Harriet with mounting exasperation, “I’ll make her.” Then she controlled her exasperation and put the thought from her. She did not believe in forcing anything, in having things out; things came out by themselves, with patience and good will. She comforted herself with the sight of the trees against the shining sky, for undoubtedly it was going to be a difficult day. Saturday was usually happy, for the children did not go to school, but today she was sure was going to be difficult. “And I’ll not be able to do a thing for any of them,” she thought. “I’m just a useless hulk of an old woman who can’t even die.” Well, there it was. There was nothing she could do about it except bear the burden that she was with what patience she could.

  2

  His pen in his hand, ink all over
his fingers, John looked down at his sermons in despair. He was no preacher. The very glory of what he wanted to say seemed to get in the way of his saying it. Try as he might he could not write down what he knew. He was like a man trying to catch the moonlight on the water with a fishing net. When he pulled the net into his boat there was nothing in it except two repulsive jelly fish and a bit of seaweed. Sometimes he thought that his greatest blessing, the gift of a faith that had never been shaken and was his food and drink and very life, was a hindrance in the writing of sermons. Had he ever had doubts, had he ever had to hold his faith at arm’s length and argue about it, words might have come more easily. He wrestled with his two Sunday sermons the whole week long and would, he thought, have gone distracted but for the comfort of prayer, for the comfort of turning inward where no words were required. But he had to preach, and generally by about eleven-thirty on Saturday morning he reached the point where he knew there was no more he could do to make his sermons the worst ever written. At that point he put them away in his desk and knew peace until he had to mount the pulpit steps, falling over his cassock as he did so, and stumble through his pitiful dissection of his two jellyfish and his bit of seaweed.

  But today he could not reach that point. His mind refused to produce the platitude for the peroration of the morning’s sermon, or to tell him what was wrong with the grammar of the opening of the evening one. His mind was distracted by other worries, primarily the problem of that poor wretched woman and Margary. The chief worry was Margary, but there was Miss Giles too. It might be that her need of rescue was greater than Margary’s. He couldn’t think what to do about it. Fifty times if once he dragged his mind off Margary only to have it circling round his cowardice in not braving Daphne’s displeasure and bringing Michael to the vicarage yesterday. It had turned out all right, for Aunt Maria had made good his deficiency, but that did not alter the fact of his deficiency. If he had done his duty he would not have had supper at the manor and would not have wounded Daphne so cruelly by his forgetfulness. The knot had been in his handkerchief all right, placed there when she told him there was something special for supper, but he had thought it was for the coke. “Which I haven’t ordered even now,” he thought, and hastily ordered it on a bit of sermon paper. Then leaving his untidy scribbled sermons on his desk he went to find Daphne, a more urgent problem at this moment even than Margary, for Daphne in one of her ice-age moods would cast a blight over the children’s sacrosanct weekend, when they forgot Monday and were happy. Usually when he tried to make things better between himself and Daphne he only made them worse, but at least he had to try.

  Daphne was ironing.

  “Why on Saturday?” he asked her.

  “I can’t leave the whole lot till Monday,” she snapped. “I washed out Harriet’s messy traycloth and things, and the children’s blouses, after supper last night when you were at the manor.”

  Her iron glided over the traycloth which he had forgotten to ask Mrs. Wilmot to wash and he felt as though it were burning his soul. “I’m sorry, Daphne.”

  “What for?” enquired Daphne coldly.

  “For all my deficiencies, but chiefly because we cannot afford to send the washing to the laundry.”

  “Which we could do if you would bestir yourself,” said Daphne. “Lack of means is a deficiency which you could make good if you liked to try.”

  “Daphne, not again!” cried John in anguish. This was the great bone of contention between them. As soon as John buried it, Daphne dug it up again. To turn Aunt Maria out of the manor and sell it would mean a great easing of their struggles, but John would not do it. Where Aunt Maria had been born and lived, there she must die if she so wished it. He would not turn her out. Daphne could never manage to look at the thing from Aunt Maria’s point of view. She had never got on with her and now she disliked her intensely for her selfishness in clinging to the manor.

  “She knows quite well she is bleeding us white,” she said.

  “No, she does not, Daphne,” answered John gently. “I mean, she knows we are all in a bad state financially, but the idea of bettering things by selling the manor has never occurred to her. She and the manor are in this world as indivisible as soul and body. I am many sorts of a sinner but not a murderer.”

  “How you do dramatize things!” snapped Daphne.

  “Be patient, darling,” he pleaded. “She’s eighty-two.”

  “And will live to a hundred-and-two,” said Daphne. “I never saw a tougher old lady. Physically, that is. Mentally, of course, she’s very odd. Mrs. Wilmot says she has now got the most extraordinary young man with her. He came to borrow five pounds and she invited him to stay. Is that true? You were there last night.”

  “Yes, Daphne, but he wouldn’t have asked her for five pounds. He’s a decent chap.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I met him on the road yesterday morning by Pizzle bridge and we walked along together and talked a bit. I liked him.”

  “Who is he and where had he come from? Why did he go to the manor?”

  “I don’t know, darling.”

  “Don’t keep calling me darling. You think you can stop a row from being a row by sticking darlings here and there, but you can’t, so why try? Surely either he or Aunt Maria gave you some sort of explanation for his presence there? Is he a gentleman?”

  “Yes, no,” said John miserably. “I mean, yes. I don’t think I quite understood his explanation of why he was there but he made me feel it was right that he should be. I thought he was a gentleman. I think he needs help.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” said Daphne.

  “I don’t mean financial help, I mean—”

  “Spiritual? That’ll mean he’ll come to lunch a great deal. John, what are you doing? That’s Margary’s blouse you’re rumpling to pieces. I have just ironed it ready for school on Monday.”

  “Daphne,” said John desperately, “I don’t want her to go to school on Monday.”

  “Why ever not?”

  “I want her to have a week at home. She’s looking fagged out.”

  “John, what absolute nonsense! She’s perfectly fit. Has she been complaining to you?”

  “Margary never complains,” said John gently.

  “Then why are you making this fuss? She’s all behind her class now, little dunce that she is, and a week away in the middle of term will only make it harder for her when it comes to exams.”

  “I want Margary to have a week at home.”

  “But why? John, you are really the most maddening man who ever lived!”

  He knew he was but he did not know how to explain about Miss Giles. Nor about the oneness of Aunt Maria and Belmaray. He could never manage to explain things to Daphne because they never looked at a thing in the same way. Her point of view was a straight line and his was a corkscrew. Hers judged everything, correctly and at once, from the standpoint of the material well-being of her family. His wavered backward and forward between body and soul, earth and heaven, the bank balance and the heavenly treasure, until his head went round. It was going round now. He could not remember what they were quarrelling about, though he believed it had begun with the ironing. He ducked under the ironing board, took the iron from her, put it on the stand and flung his arms round her.

  “Daphne, we’ll sell my stamps and send the whole blooming lot to the laundry always.”

  John had only one hobby, the continuation of the valuable collection of stamps that had been begun by his grandfather and carried on by his father. He loved the interest of his stamps, the beauty, the precision of the colored pictures so exactly arranged on the white page. Margary was getting to love them too and had her own collection made up from his duplicates. They would pore over them together, patient, methodical and studious. Whenever John examined his conscience on the subject of detachment he always spent a very worrying ten minutes over the stamps. Was he really
detached from them? He found now to his horror that he did not want Daphne to accept his offer. To save her from fatigue he should have wanted to sell his stamps ten times over. He didn’t. His shame was so great that the blood rushed into his face and his arms tightened round her in agonizing compunction.

  She felt the sudden strength in his arms and her heart beat with exhilaration. He had never felt passion for her. The tender love he had felt for her as a little girl had become the chivalrous devotion of a subject for his queen, but it had never been passion. The Wentworth men did not love that way, and she, passionate herself, had looked for that in vain. Her first lover had set her on fire and then left her, yet when she had turned to John she had found no assuagement. She had thought ardor dead yet now it leapt in her again. She was in delicious confusion and fear, and it was not John who held her but another man. And then suddenly he was gone and she was being whirled away into an abyss of humiliation. She clung to something, some sort of rock, and was safe. It was John. She looked up at him, utterly confused. Not quite in control of herself she still held to her husband. It was as rock she had thought of him yesterday, she remembered, though anything less like rock than her poor weedy old John could not be imagined. She laughed a little, flushed and uncertain of herself.