The atmosphere of the dining room was unusual today. Usually the little girls ate scourged on by the lash of Miss Giles’s tongue, but today it was obvious that the yellow faced woman at the head of the table would not know what they did. They would be able to hide bits of fat under their knives and forks and get away with it. But at the other end of the table was Mary O’Hara with her flaming red hair and her blue eyes flashing fire at them. She said nothing, only applied herself to her own nauseating plateful with apparent zest, but even the smallest child understood. They would be mean skunks if they took advantage of Miss Giles’s inability to see what they were doing to do what she wouldn’t approve of. They hated her but they knew she was game. They ate silently and desperately, and Pat, who had the kind of gallantry that in a man might have won her the Victoria Cross, asked for a second helping. Annie, removing the plates, was surprised at the almost scoured appearance of each one of them. Mary relaxed and smiled. Each child might have worn the white disc of her plate as a halo, she thought. Then the tombstones and prunes arrived, and her eyes and the rebracing of her shoulders nerved them afresh for the final effort. For some it was even more difficult than the first course, the tombstones were so very hard and so very sticky. The swallows were audible, especially from the boarders, six little Anglo-Indian children who lived always at Oaklands and had to face up to Annie’s cooking at breakfast and supper as well as dinner. Miss Giles held to the arms of the chair and her knuckles were white.
“She’s brave,” thought Mary. “No other woman would have come down to dinner at all. But she knows I have no sense of discipline. She has, both for herself and the children. And of duty. But she’s a cruel woman and more to blame than Aunt Rose for all that is wrong in this place.” Yet though Mary was at the moment quite sure she was right she was aware that nothing was wrong in this room just now, there was nothing here to frighten her like the strength that had moved her body and her will in Mrs. Belling’s room. And as for the little girls, they had been angels. As they got to their feet to say grace she decided that on the whole, though it had been unusually horrible, it had been a good dinner and a quite resounding victory for the forces of light.
Miss Giles said grace in a clear voice that had most surprisingly a sudden timbre of beauty in it, but Mary realized it was the last thing even she could do and took it upon herself to give commands for the afternoon.
“Miss Giles has a headache and so I’m taking English Literature for all of you this afternoon,” she said. “Pat, take them to have their rest in the hall and then come to me in my room when I ring the bell. Pat, lead out.”
Pat led out and Miss Giles abruptly disappeared. While the children lay flat on their backs in the hall, to assist the processes of digestion, Mary had ten minutes in which to deal with the two little girls under the willow tree. She raced up the back stairs to her bedroom and took from her drawer a tin of biscuits and a box of chocolates, then remembering Miss Giles’s admirable sense of discipline she put back the box of chocolates; for really they were very naughty little girls and when she had fed them she must scold them. Then she went to the larder and fetched two mugs of milk and with them and the biscuits on a tray went out to the willow tree.
3
It was a fresh, fair world under the weeping willow. The arching branches touched the grass all the way round so that one was enclosed in a dome of beauty, and the light of the grey day shining through the golden-green new leaves was the light of another world. It seemed to Mary to be a many colored light, silver and green and gold, with the mauve and blue of the crocuses and scillas in the grass caught up into it. Words of great poetry shone in her mind.
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity.
But here the dome sheltered a microcosm of existence, a world small as a drop of sun-shot water swinging high upon a tree, so fragile that it might disappear at any moment, but lifted up so high on the tree that it was as near the white radiance as a world could be. Mary felt as though Oaklands was no more than a point of darkness in shadows far below.
Heaven’s light for ever shines, Earth’s shadows fly.
The words drifted like feathers from the wings of the bird that sang in the tree, down and down. She could not remember any more, but that was enough to comfort the poor woman down below. “In heaven their angels do always behold. . .” Each child in his own world of memory swinging on the highest branches of the tree, seeing still a faint shadow of what his angels see, trying to get back to the light that is so near. Each man, each woman, in his own world of lonely experience swinging upon the gaunt lower branches, seeing nothing, remembering nothing, yet possessing the light in apparent darkness and returning to it as surely as the drops of water are drawn in vapor towards the sun. If it were possible to escape from lonely experience for a moment and stand back from the tree one would see the myriad bright worlds sparkling upon it. But only the greatest could do that. For all but the greatest their own experience was a prison house until the ending of the days. But one could know how bright was the light that carried all souls back to the light when for a moment one entered the world of a child. And how clearly one could hear the bird singing!
“This morning it was a dove,” said Winkle. “This afternoon it’s a thrush.”
“A stormcock,” said Margary gently. “There’s a storm coming, Harriet said.”
Mary looked up and there he was just above her. Through a break in the new leaves she could see him, as through a window. She had never been so near to him before and she caught her breath as she met his fierce bright eye and saw the light rippling down his magnificent speckled breast. He lifted the strong greyish wings and she saw them lined with white, the outside tail feathers tipped with snow. He sang a stave of his song and she thought of a crimson banner unfurling. He was courage itself; a spirit singing.
“Dove, stormcock, lark or linnet, nightingale or swan,” she thought. “The Seraph has so many feathers in his wings.”
“Winkle and I are here together,” said Margary, as though this was delightful but somehow surprising.
“And I am here,” said Mary.
The fact that it was the three of them, and not one in the loneliness of uncommunicable experience, was something so strange and wonderful that it made Mary’s heart beat with that same thrilling delight that was hers when she heard great music. “I may not hear this again. This may not happen again. This is given to me. To me, a sinner.”
She set the tray on the grass, between a clump of crocuses and a clump of scillas, and sat down. Around her the long graceful branches of the weeping willow, the Salix Babylonica, whispered and swayed, for a small fresh breeze had come into the garden. “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered thee, O Zion.” But in this remembering there was no sorrow, and overhead the stormcock was singing one of the songs of Zion at the top of his voice. She was glad to see that she had put a traycloth on the tray and had chosen pretty mugs for the milk, little old pink and blue mugs with gold handles, and that her biscuit tin had flowers on the lid, for only a dainty feast was suitable to this fresh green place. But she was glad she had decided against the chocolates, for somehow they were not suitable.
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of paradise.
Crisp, sweet ginger biscuits were not out of place, but not chocolates that reminded one of Aunt Rose. . . Aunt Rose. . . She seemed so far away that it was almost as though she had no existence. Yet Miss Giles in the shadows seemed not far.
She looked at the children’s faces, smiling at her as they reached for their mugs of milk. Margary, whom she had last seen white and fear-stricken, had color in her cheeks now and her eyes shone. What astonishingly beautiful eyes she had, not sparkling when she was happy, like Winkle’s, but full of tranquil light. Winkle’s face, puce with rage a short time ago, had now resumed its normal rosiness a
nd it was obvious that if Winkle had ever had a care she had forgotten it. Care, for Winkle, was as far off as was Aunt Rose from Mary and fear from Margary. Such things had no existence here. And neither had time. The children ate their biscuits and drank their milk, and the stormcock sang, and Mary thought, “I will remember about this rainbow place. When my own particular experience seems dark and hard I’ll remember that it’s really a shining thing holding like a flower to the branches of the tree, and that I travel in it, like Cinderella in her coach, to the ending of the days. And up above me in the tree the Seraph sings, and sometimes he sings peace for us and sometimes courage, praise, truth, love, death, but he is always the same Seraph. Who is he? On Mount Alverno Saint Francis saw a great crucified Seraph above him, filling the heavens. I’ll remember.”
“How nice it is, missing English Literature,” said Winkle, who was not an intellectual child.
Her remark brought them all floating down to earth and Mary jumped to her feet. “Of all the useless schools!” she thought. “The whole staff incapacitated by laziness, headache or phantasmagoria, and no one left to teach the children but the sparrows under the eaves.”
Yet as she put the mugs on the tray, and pulled Winkle ruthlessly to her feet, she knew it had not been phantasmagoria; but having regard to the failings of herself and her colleagues she thought there was a good deal to be said for the sparrows. They did at least persevere in passing those remarks to which it appeared to be their vocation to give utterance.
“Must we go in?” asked Margary.
“Yes,” said Mary. “We are only given times like these so that we can go back again. Come along.” And she parted the trailing branches of the willow and led the way out.
“I don’t like lessons very much,” whispered Margary, and looking at her as they crossed the lawn Mary saw that the color had gone from her cheeks and the tranquil light from her eyes, and her heart swelled with rage. That woman!
“I’m taking English Literature this afternoon,” she said fiercely. Then she looked at her watch and for a moment stood still in horror. “No, I’m not,” she said. “At least not for long. In another ten minutes it will be time for you to go home.” It had seemed only a moment of time under the willow tree, but it had been a great many moments.
At the garden door they were met by Pat, reproachful but self-satisfied and quite mistress of the occasion.
“We have started English Literature,” she said. “I am teaching them.”
“Thank you, Pat,” said Mary weakly. “What are you teaching them?”
“I am telling them the story of Cinderella,” said Pat.
“You couldn’t tell them a better story,” said Mary. “Go on with it. I have just time to run up and see how Miss Giles is feeling before the period ends.”
4
She went into the kitchen to make tea for Miss Giles. There was just one thing to be said for Annie, and that was that she always seemed to have a kettle near the boil. “Not that one fancies even a cup of tea out of this kitchen,” thought Mary, regarding with revulsion the grease in the sink and the pile of unwashed saucepans on the dirty floor. “Cleanliness is next to godliness is an old wives’ saying but there’s a lot in it. It wouldn’t surprise me if one slid down the road to hell all the quicker if it’s slimy with grease; kitchen grease and the grease of an unwashed skin.” Averting her eyes from the saucepans she saw Annie slumped in the kitchen armchair, asleep with her mouth open while she waited for the arrival of the woman who helped her with the washing-up. With her down-at-heel shoes, her uncorseted figure and her personal uncleanliness she was not a pretty sight, and while the kettle came to the boil Mary averted her eyes again and looked out of the window at the gooseberry bushes. Their sturdiness and prickliness were reassuring. One could not slide anywhere on gooseberry bushes. She began to think about Annie again. “When she came to Aunt Rose she must have been young and pretty and clean, and now she is as horrid as the kitchen. Has this happened to her and the kitchen because she has lived with Aunt Rose for so long? Could it happen to me?” The kettle came to the boil and she was glad to have her thoughts deflected to Giles and her tea.
John, so ashamed of the contemptible small battles in which his weakness daily involved him, would have been encouraged if he could have seen the strong-minded Mary brought to a standstill in the passage leading to Miss Giles’s room, with the tea tray on the window sill and her hands over her face, while she fought her detestable, detested, uncharitable loathing of sickness in unattractive people in no way related to her. “You hateful woman, aren’t you a doctor’s daughter?” she admonished herself. “You loathsome reptile, do you call yourself a Christian? Do you or don’t you? Yes, but she is so horrid when she’s ill. I can’t go in. Besides, I’m sure she doesn’t want me. I’m sure she dislikes me as much as I dislike her. And why should I be kind to her when she is so cruel to the children? Why cannot Margary’s parents see that the child is being hurt by somebody or something? Why are parents always such fools? The tea is getting cold. No, it isn’t, for I’ve put a cosy over the pot. I’m sure she doesn’t want me. What’s that? You say I saw her down in the shadows when I was so happy swinging up above her in that shining world? Did I? I’d forgotten. I expect I only imagined it. I hate her. I hate sick people, unless they are people I love, and even then I am not so keen on them when they are ill as when they are well. I can’t go in and it’s not a bit of good you telling me I can. And who are you, anyway? Yes, I know she seemed near when I was under the willow tree. You needn’t keep reminding me. Mary O’Hara, once and for all, are you carrying this tray into that room or are you not? I hate her. Very well then, hate her, but carry that tray into that room or damn your soul in hell for ever. Please, may I come in?”
There was no answer to her knock and she went in. After the heat of Annie’s kitchen the chilliness of Miss Giles’s room came upon her with the shock of a cold shower; and she was reproached by its extreme tidiness. If she had gone to bed with a shocking headache she would have kicked her shoes anywhere, dropped her skirt on the floor and flung herself on the pillows with complete abandon. But Miss Giles had folded her skirt on a chair, placed her shoes side by side and covered herself with a carefully darned grey woollen shawl. She had partly drawn her curtains and her room was dim; though in any case the one small window only looked out upon the wall of the next-door house. She lay with her face to the wall and made no sign of recognition as Mary came up to her and put the tray on her bedside table.
“Giles, I’ve brought you some tea.”
“I don’t want it,” said Miss Giles rudely.
“It will do you good,” said Mary. “Take two aspirins with it. My father says aspirins do much more good if you take them with a cup of tea.”
“Nothing does me any good,” snapped Miss Giles. “Why can’t you let me alone? Did I ask you to come fussing here? Take the tray away.”
With her cheeks scarlet Mary sat down on the bed, her temper as flaming as her hair. “What was the good of sending me in here?” she demanded silently of whoever it was. “Just look at us. We’ll murder each other in a minute or two, and then where shall we be? But I’m darned if I’ll be driven away by her vile temper. Here I sit till she takes those two aspirins.”
She sat, looking round the room. It was so bare, so utterly unlike her own. No pretty things on the dressing table. Not even a powder bowl. Didn’t she ever powder her nose? No photographs. Hadn’t Giles got any family? Hadn’t she any friends even? Didn’t anybody ever give her anything, a pretty dressing jacket or nightdress case or something? Just the old grey darned shawl over her. But how spotless the room was. “You couldn’t say that of mine,” thought Mary, her anger beginning to evaporate. “I don’t go in for all this spit and polish. Of the two of us she is less likely to end up a slut like Annie than I am. She’s disciplined and I’m not. I could be a slut. Yes, I could. I could be cruel too. I am. Look at me sitting
here in a temper trying to force the poor wretch to drink tea she doesn’t want. Mary, Mother of God, have mercy upon all women, for all women are beasts underneath excepting only you.”
She got off the bed and picked up the tray. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “I’m going away and leaving you in peace. But I’m sorry.”
Gasping with the pain the movement gave her Miss Giles turned over and opened her eyes. In the changed voice there was some compulsion that she was not able to disobey. It was Mary’s voice yet it had in it a depth of compassion far beyond this Mary’s capacity.
“I will do as you say,” she murmured, and did not know to whom she spoke.
Astonished, Mary put the tray down again, poured out a cup of tea, took two aspirins from the bottle beside the bed and helped Miss Giles to hold the cup while she drank and swallowed them. Even with the cosy the tea was by this time lukewarm and Miss Giles had a moment of panic lest she be sick. “Don’t let me be sick,” she prayed. She had not prayed for years and to whom was she praying now? She had lost her faith long ago. And what a ridiculous prayer. She shut her eyes, fighting down the nausea. Then she opened them again and found Mary was once more sitting on her bed. In the dim room she could not see the girl’s face very well but she could see her hair, touched by a beam of light that shone through the chink in the curtains. It looked like curling red-gold feathers. Before Mary had come, when the pain had been at its worst, she had had a queer delusion that a few bright feathers had come floating down upon her bed. After that she had slept for a few minutes. What was this gold-crested creature sitting so patiently on her bed, a cock, or what? “Patience fills His crisp combs.” Ridiculous the way poets were always using the birds as types of different aspects of divinity. If they were so silly as to believe in divinity at least you would think they would express their idiocy under more fitting symbols than doves and swans and cocks and what not.