“Not the stamps,” she said. “Margary loves them and I don’t mind ironing. I like it, really. It was just that I was in a shocking bad temper.”
“Not now?” asked John.
“No, not now.” She kissed him and pushed him gently away. She had got control of herself again and had no further use for him for the moment.
“Go back to your sermons and let me get on with the children’s things. I’ll iron that blouse again. Margary will want it for school on Monday.”
He went, a little cast down by his dismissal. It was so often like that. Just when they seemed coming closer together she pushed him away. Yet back in his study he found that the required platitudes came quite easily. Things were right between them again and the children’s weekend happiness was safe. Had he won the last argument, or Daphne? Daphne, of course, or things would not have been right between them. Margary so far was still going back to school on Monday.
3
“Elevenses!” called Pat’s clear voice, and he got up obediently to join Daphne and the children in the kitchen. Mrs. Wilmot left early on Saturdays and they had their food there to save carrying it to the dining room. The kitchen was almost cheerful with the geraniums, Orlando purring loudly and the children gathered round the table. There was tea in a big brown teapot, milk for the children, and ginger biscuits on a blue plate. “Why are ginger biscuits such a heartening form of food?” John wondered. “It is difficult to see a plate of ginger biscuits and remain depressed.”
“Has Harriet got hers?” he asked, hovering over his chair in the shape of a bent pin.
“I took it up,” said Daphne with a touch of sharpness. John’s habit of seizing any excuse for snooping upstairs to Harriet was apt to try her patience.
“You could fetch it down again after,” said Pat cheekily.
John lowered himself into his chair and smiled at her indulgently. She was an impudent little baggage but she was angelic to look at and very like Daphne had been at her age, only Daphne had been a frail little creature, never happy with the uncle and aunt who had brought her up, her eyes sombre and her thin lips compressed upon her private woes. Pat, he thanked God, appeared to have no woes. Her lips were full and rosy, her face warmly flushed, her dark eyes sparkling with her joy in life.
“Father, you haven’t heard a word,” Pat reproached him. He had been vaguely aware of the music of her voice and Winkle’s, in a duet upon the subject of Frederick, the toad who lived in the vegetable garden.
“I heard,” he said. “Frederick has produced strings of jelly which will eventually turn into a family. He will now have to be called Frederica.”
“Lots and lots of jellied babies!” squeaked Winkle, her chubby cheeks rosy with pleasure. The children did not wear their school clothes on Saturdays and she had a blue snood round her golden hair and wore a blue smock. Pat’s smock was a red and white check.
“Freda, Fred, Florence, Fanny and Francesca,” said John instantly. “Fiona, Flora, Fritz, Fry and Frumpy.” There were times when he could leap out of his customary abstraction with startling suddenness and be thoroughly on the spot, and he was so now, leaning his arms on the table and consulting earnestly with an equally earnest Winkle. Their mutual earnestness about the creatures was their only likeness. The consultation finished he leaned back and smiled at Daphne, and she smiled back at him. All was well today with these two happy children. And Margary?
Because he loved her best John always looked at her last. Though she liked most animals she had a horror of the occult creatures, bats and owls, toads and spiders, snakes and even cats, and she was stirring her cup of warm sugary milk a little thoughtfully with one hand while with the other she counted up the number of toads who would presently be at large in the garden. Her head was bent and her straight sandy hair fell forward, shadowing her pale face. Her green smock had shrunk and lost color in the wash and clung about her sadly, like a cloak of drying seaweed about a stranded mermaid. She was, John thought suddenly, exactly like the little mermaid in Hans Andersen’s story, “a singular child, very quiet and thoughtful.” She never cried either. “Mermaids cannot weep, and therefore, when they are troubled, suffer infinitely more than human beings do.”
“Don’t count, on your fingers, Margary,” said Daphne sharply. For Margary it was a terrible reminder. On Monday there would be school again, school and arithmetic and Miss Giles. She looked up quickly, her face stricken, then braced her shoulders with habitual courage and smiled at Daphne. It was John’s smile, apologetic and deprecating, and like his always annoyed Daphne, making her feel vaguely reproached when her intentions had been all for the best.
“I do it too,” whispered John, slipping his hand under the table and moving his fingers on her lap to show her what he meant. It was perhaps disloyalty to Daphne but the others were talking again and only Margary could hear him. He was glad he had thought of that mermaid, who had followed the prince to the heights on bleeding feet. “All will I risk to win him—and an immortal soul.” A rereading of Hans Andersen would help him to help Margary. She looked up and smiled at him and he was reassured, as always, by the serenity of her eyes.
“What are you doing this morning?” he asked her, for he knew she would not be engrossed with the toad like the others. “Could you sort some stamps for me? There’s a whole boxfull to be looked through. Mrs. Johnson sent them for the choir boys.”
She nodded her head, her eyes bright. “In your study? While you talk to Harriet?”
He laughed. For some reason or other she liked being alone in his study. He knew that she was as fond of being there alone as of being there with him. He was at a loss to account for either likeness.
“Yes,” he said. “If you’ve finished your milk, come along with me and I’ll show you what I want you to do.”
He put a cushion in his writing chair, sat her upon it and pushed the chair into his desk. Then he gave her the box of stamps and explained how he wanted them sorted. She was quick to understand. He had always been puzzled that she was considered such a dunce at school because with him she was always the opposite. He understood now that her slowness there was the measure of her fear. He left her happily absorbed and went up to Harriet.
4
He had meant to chat briefly to Harriet upon trivial subjects and then get a bit of digging done before lunch, for he did his best to keep his worries from her, but sitting in the comfortable chair beside her, looking out over the sunlit garden, the trivial subjects failed to present themselves to his mind. He leaned forward anxiously, his hands on his knees, his long legs bent under him, making no use of the comfort of the comfortable chair, and racked his brains in vain. “We’ll soon have the apple blossom out,” he said at last.
“So we shall,” said Harriet. “And now what’s troubling you?”
“That damn school!” burst out John, and then stopped appalled. What language to use before Harriet!
“I always suspected it was a damn school,” said Harriet placidly. “Now sit back, for goodness’ sake, and get it off your chest so that we can have a bit of peace.”
He hesitated, for he did not like to burden her with his worries, but his childhood’s habit of turning to her in all perplexities was too strong. He leaned back, leaned forward again, and then leaned back finally and poured the whole thing out.
“That poor woman,” said Harriet when he had finished. “But it’s not her that’s the trouble in that school.”
“Mary O’Hara is a sensible girl and she thinks so.”
“Sensible she may be,” said Harriet, “but at that age they never know as much as they think they do. It’s that Mrs. Belling. I’ve never liked her.”
“You’ve never seen her, Harriet.”
If Harriet had been a less fastidious woman the little sound she made might have been interpreted as a snort of contempt. “When you see the results what’s the need for seeing? What sort of
soil does it all grow out of? The language Pat uses! And the food that they have at that place. Shocking. And the kitchen filthy. Mrs. Wilmot’s niece, Rita, washes up there and Mrs. Wilmot’s told me. It’s a wonder the children aren’t poisoned. And the teaching there cannot be good. Pat, she’s sharp and she’s taught herself, but Margary’s learned nothing and yet she’s bright enough.”
“She’s too frightened to learn, Harriet. Too terrified of Miss Giles’s cruelty.”
“And what sort of headmistress is it that keeps a cruel woman on her staff?”
“I expect she doesn’t know, Harriet.”
“And what sort of headmistress is it who doesn’t know what’s going on? That woman’s no good. I can guess what she is. There’s cruelty and bad language and dirt growing out of what she is. Let herself go, that’s what she’s done.”
“But what are we to do, Harriet?”
“Have you consulted Daphne?”
“Not yet,” said John.
“Then don’t,” said Harriet.
“But there’s Margary, Harriet,” said John. “Unless I tell Daphne about Miss Giles she’ll never consent to keeping Margary away from school.”
“And if you do tell her she’ll go straight over to Silverbridge in one of her rages and get that poor woman dismissed.”
“Wouldn’t that be a good thing?” asked John.
“Not for Miss Giles,” said Harriet.
“It’s Margary I’m thinking about,” said John.
But Harriet had not finished with Miss Giles. “She cannot be a bad woman,” she said, “or that Mary O’Hara would not like her. She’d be a better headmistress than Mrs. Belling, I don’t doubt. If she had a bit more scope, trust put in her, she’d maybe turn out well. Why don’t you go and see her?”
“Go and see her? What on earth should I say when I got there?” demanded John in horror.
“How should I know?” asked Harriet. “You’d maybe find yourself saying something or other when you did get there.” She paused. “Poor soul,” she added briefly.
The soul. John sat suddenly upright in his chair, comically alert like a jack-in-the-box jumping up when the spring is pressed. Harriet smiled.
“I might go,” he said.
“No harm in it,” said Harriet.
There was a pause until he asked, “Harriet, why didn’t you tell me, or tell Daphne, about the dirt?”
“And what could either of you have done if I had?” asked Harriet. “You can’t take action on third-hand evidence. It’s no good forcing things; one waits.”
“I’m not going to wait before taking Margary away from Oaklands. I won’t have her go back. She’s a child who feels intensely. She never cries.”
“Is it the non-criers who feel most?” asked Harriet.
“Yes, don’t you remember Hans Andersen’s little mermaid?”
“I never liked that story,” said Harriet. “I don’t hold with people trying to better themselves. We should all keep to where we belong. That mermaid should have stuck to the sea, tail and all. And Margary should stick to school till the end of term. You mustn’t go pampering the child.”
“She’s endured enough, Harriet.”
“That’s for her to say,” said Harriet. “Tell her you know about Miss Giles and give her her choice.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, now.”
John picked up Harriet’s cup and saucer and went.
5
Margary sat in her father’s writing chair and sorted stamps upon a sheet of white blotting paper. She knew enough about them to be able to sort the German from the French and the American from the Dominions without any hesitation. Miss Giles would have been astonished at her speed and accuracy. Without the bewilderment of fear she knew exactly what she was doing and could bring her natural gift of concentration to bear upon it. Though she did not lift her eyes from her work, did not take her mind from it, was entirely what she called Here, she was aware in the part of her which went There that she was in her father’s study, the room in the house which she liked best, partly because it was her father’s and partly because its window looked out upon the walled garden behind the house, the garden that was secret and enclosed. Though it was the vegetable garden it had flowers in it too, and on fine days of spring and summer was warm and safe and scented. When she withdrew herself entirely, complete with all her powers, from Here to There, in bed at night or at break in school when she was too miserable to join the other children and went off by herself behind the woodshed with her mug of milk and her hunk of bread, it was always through the study that she passed to the peace and safety of the garden. The study window faced west and at evening when the sky was clear it was full of golden light, that seemed to wash in over the sill and bring the glory of the garden with it.
But at all times of day she was happy in the study, especially sitting at the desk where the letters were written. John’s shabby old kneehole desk was in the center of the room, at right angles to the window. It had on it piles of notepaper and envelopes and unanswered letters weighted down with peculiar oddments; bits of stone John had picked up during walks, a carved bear from Berne, a glass paperweight with a picture of Margate inside which Harriet had given him as a little boy, and a bottle of ink.
John had a large correspondence. Men and women who had been boys and girls at Belmaray and had left the village would persist in writing to him. Men whom he had known in the war, at sea and in hospital, would persist in doing the same thing. All his old friends of school and college days liked to keep in touch. He could not think why they wrote to him when as friend, parish priest and chaplain he had been such a failure, and as fellow patient in the hospital for nerve cases such an appalling failure that he could scarcely bear to think now of the failure he had been. But they persisted in writing to him. Patiently, as best he could, he answered these letters, writing sometimes long into the night, covering many pages with his small neat handwriting, pegging away at it until his neck ached and his fingers cramped, and then doggedly praying for the whole lot of them until he was too bemused with headache and sleep to know what he was doing. Then he would have to give up and go to bed.
Daphne had given up sharing a room with him soon after their marriage, for she couldn’t stand being waked up in the small hours. She had no sympathy with all this correspondence but Margary thought it was wonderful to receive letters from all over the world, and that not only because of the foreign stamps brought into the house but because of the people. She argued it out that they must love her father or they wouldn’t write so many letters, and because she loved her father too she liked them, though she’d never seen them, and had the odd feeling that they liked her, though perhaps they didn’t even know that she existed. All this wealth of affection made a solid rock like a fortress, a place very like There.
Without lifting her eyes Margary was aware of the bright little fire of logs burning in the grate opposite her. Now that the spring had come John had given up his study fire that he always laid and lit himself. She knew that Daphne had got up extra early this morning to light it just once more as a surprise for him, so that the warmth should help him get his sermons by heart. Did he know? Margary wondered. He was odd about things like fires and food. He didn’t always seem to know what he was eating or whether he was hot or cold. Margary didn’t mind much about food herself but she adored a fire. This one had flames of orange and gold, saffron and rose pink, like the azaleas that Great-great-uncle Richard had planted.
On each side of the fireplace were two shabby comfortable armchairs, where parishioners sat when they came to talk to John, and in the corner of the room to the right was John’s prayer desk with his crucifix hanging over it on a bare cream wall. Most of the rest of the wall space was covered with bookcases filled with books, and when the evening light fell on them the colors glowed. She looked up and found that John had come back. ?
??Margary,” he said, “come over here and tell me what I ought to do. I’m in a bit of a fix.”
The faint color in her cheeks deepened so that she looked almost pretty. People never turned to her for help, as they did to Pat, because she wasn’t good at things. This was the first time anyone had asked for her co-operation. She came and sat on the hearthrug at her father’s feet. “Could I sit here?” she asked. “The fire is nice.”
“The fire?” asked John in horror. “Good lord, there’s a fire! Who lit it?”
“Mother,” said Margary. “Before breakfast.”
John was silent, and when she looked up at him she thought that he looked older than he had looked two minutes before. “I should never have married,” he said, and though Margary knew he was not talking to her she replied, “Then you wouldn’t have had Pat and Winkle—nor me.” The tone in which she added herself as an afterthought, an unconsidered trifle, made him laugh and wince at the same time. He pulled her up to sit on his knees, as she had done when she was a baby, and as she had done as a baby she wriggled herself comfortable with her head on his shoulders.
“Margary,” he said, “I’m in a fix about your Miss Giles.”
“Miss Giles?” she gasped, and went rigid within the curve of his arm. “Mine?”
He tightened his grip. “Yes, yours. Your form mistress. I’ve been told she loses her temper with some of the girls at the school, and frightens them and makes them unhappy.”
“Who told you?” she whispered.
“One of the older girls. Not Pat. I met her in Silverbridge yesterday and she told me.” Margary said nothing and he went on. “Now that won’t do, because it’s bad for girls to be frightened and unhappy. They can’t pass exams that way. That must stop. The only thing for me to do, I think, don’t you, is to tell Mrs. Belling and get her to send Miss Giles away?”