“I believe I’m going to sleep,” she murmured.
“That’s the aspirins working,” said Mary. “I’ll go now.”
“Thank you for the tea,” said Miss Giles, raising herself a little. She was not an attractive sight as she turned her face towards Mary, with scarlet blotches on her sallow skin and her straight grey hair in wisps about her face, but her bitter down-turned mouth had a suspicion of a smile about it and Mary smiled broadly back. Miss Giles’s ugliness, and the rather aggressive health of Mary’s hearty smile, were veiled by the dimness of the room, so that neither felt repulsed. Instead each felt that strange movement of the spirit that can come when two strangers meet and know they are no longer strangers. Mary picked up the tray and went quickly out of the room and down the stairs. She could hear the church clock striking three as she went down; time for the day girls to put on their things and go home. But there seemed in the striking of the hour more than the ending of the school period. “I’ve always adored the clock striking,” she thought. “I never knew why. And I never knew why some people always pray when the clock strikes. I do now. It’s one hour nearer the ending of the days. How incredible it seems that the Seraph should bother with such horrid women as Giles and me.”
5
There was a happy chirping in the cloakroom as the children put on their walking shoes. Mary, standing at the door, thought they might have been sparrows, so loud was the chirping and so fulfilled with satisfaction. Perhaps the purpose of sparrows, as of children let out of school, was just to remark loudly and with repetition that in spite of any appearance to the contrary everything is quite all right. If the repetition seemed a little monotonous at times that was one’s own fault; in a world where thrushes sing and willow trees are golden in the spring, boredom should have been included among the seven deadly sins.
Pat, Margary and Winkle were the last to leave because Winkle had lost the rear end of a marzipan rabbit, which she thought must have been whisked out of her pocket with her handkerchief (in which she kept it) when last she blew her nose, and it took a long time to run it to earth beneath the radiator in the passage. And as Annie never dusted under the radiator a little more time was lost while Winkle picked a dead spider off the rabbit preparatory to eating it; for it would be best to eat it now, she explained, for fear she should lose it again. “How patient Mrs. Wentworth is today,” thought Mary, for usually Daphne came in to fetch the children if she suspected they were dawdling. Mary admired Daphne immensely, and plump and rather obviously pretty as she was herself she envied her her height and grace and beautiful worn face, and the distinction with which she wore her shabby clothes, but she did not think she was a patient woman. It was surprising that she had not come in. But when they came out into the Oaklands drive it was not Daphne who was in the car but John.
“Father! Father!” shouted the three little girls in delight.
“Mummy couldn’t leave the Mother’s Union tea,” explained John.
He opened the door of the car and got out, and Mary, who had not seen him before, watched in delight as his ramshackle length of limb emerged from the ramshackle contraption of a machine that was the vicarage car. Daphne’s beauty tended to obliterate the charm of the vicarage car, one saw her and not it, but John and the car were all of a piece, the one the perfect setting for the other. And though neither was an object of beauty they both seemed all of a piece with the gleam of the river behind them and the tall elms beyond, with the willow tree and the song of the thrush and Mary’s gay heart and love of life.
This sense of kinship with particular things and people was not new to Mary. As one lived in a place certain things about one, the branches of a tree seen through one’s window, certain aspects of the light, a church tower in the distance perhaps, or an old horse browsing in a green field, moved forward from the rest of one’s surroundings and became the furniture of one’s own private world. One could not part from that particular tree, that old horse, without a sense of personal loss; and from memory they would never be lost. And so with certain people. In a moment of time a woman perhaps known before, perhaps not known, would step forward from the millions of the world, part the branches of the tree and come right in. Or the old horse one day would have a man upon its back, a long angular fellow in dented armor, with a pasteboard visor covering his comical face, and he would not ride away. And so it was fitting that those elms beyond the gleam of water, that Mary could see from her window and would not forget until she died, should now form the boundary of her world as Don Quixote came riding into it.
In a hatless age John clung to a battered felt hat that he had had for a decade because his bald head felt the draughts that blew in through all the gaping cracks in his car. But never, even after years of practice, could he get out of the car without knocking it over his nose. He removed it, saw Mary, and bowed. “He is like a very tall scarecrow,” thought Mary, “not at all the knight errant I would have chosen, but one does not choose them, they are sent. He has Margary’s eyes. He is a better father than most.”
Mary, like all good schoolmistresses, and she was a good schoolmistress in spite of many derelictions of duty, had formed a poor opinion of all parents and this was for her high praise.
“How do you do?” she said severely, for she was always severe with parents. “I am Mary O’Hara, Winkle’s form mistress.” Then her severity abruptly vanished and she chuckled. “There are only two forms,” she said, “Miss Giles has the other, and Margary and Pat.”
“I have not yet had the pleasure of meeting either of you,” said John, standing hat in hand before her and speaking with a humble courtesy that delighted Mary. She was a red-hot radical, and gloried in plebeian birth, but she handed it to these aristocrats. They had something. They might be as poor as church mice, or as comic as Don Quixote, but you knew them by the air of assurance with which they wore their rags, or paradoxically by the almost deprecating courtesy that was the outward sign of an inward grieving that they had been born one of the few and not one of the many whom they loved. There was a third species of the breed, those with wealth but no love, who wore their splendid manners with the same slightly contemptuous arrogance as they wore their splendid clothes, but though her very hair crisped with anger at the sight of them Mary tried to withhold her judgment. She believed the arrogance to be unconscious and she had been told that they died well.
“You have met Mrs. Belling?” asked Mary, and discovered slightly to her surprise that she really wanted to know.
“Yes,” said John gently but briefly.
Mary looked at him attentively, for he was the first parent she had talked to who had not commented upon Mrs. Belling’s sweetness. “I am her niece,” she said, and found that the honest admission cost her something.
“You are not at all like her,” said John with the same non-committal gentleness.
Mary stood looking at the elm trees, and found that Margary and Winkle were one on each side of her and that she was holding their hands rather tightly. Pat had left them and was already inside the car. That was as it should be, for Pat had nearly finished with Oaklands and this did not concern her. She pressed the children’s hands warmly for a minute, and then released them, unconsciously holding hers at her sides in closed balls of fists, and standing straight as a spindle, which had always been her habit as a little girl when facing something unpleasant. John saw the attitude and smiled.
“Run and get in the car, kids,” he said, and Margary and Winkle did as they were told. “Something wrong?” he asked.
“It’s Miss Giles,” Mary said breathlessly. “She’s not good for Margary.”
“In what way?” asked John. The question came out very sharply, and looking at him Mary hastily looked away again, for his blue eyes were probing her with a steely penetration which was as uncomfortable as it was unexpected. She must fix her own eyes on the serene elm trees, or she could never do it.
“She?
??s a cruel woman,” she said breathlessly. “She’s cruel to Margary, and to others among the children too, but chiefly to Margary. You see, Margary’s vulnerable.”
“Have you an explanation?” snapped John. His voice had become both hard and hoarse and Mary realized that where his children were concerned he was as vulnerable as Margary.
“She’s a sick woman,” said Mary. “She suffers a great deal.”
“From what disease?” demanded John.
“None,” said Mary. “Just dreadful headaches and so on. You know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said John grimly. “And she retaliates?”
“Retaliates?” asked Mary, puzzled.
“No one helps her. In such circumstances it is natural to have a grudge against the callousness of the whole human race, and to revenge it upon such as are vulnerable. It’s unconscious revenge probably. You and Miss Giles are friends?”
Mary fancied sarcasm in his tone and flushed scarlet. Did he think she was one of those detestable women who delight in running down other women in the presence of a man? Well, it didn’t matter what he thought, but sudden anger made her take her eyes from the elms and face him squarely. “Yes. Until ten minutes ago I thought I hated her, but ten minutes ago we became friends.” Looking at him she saw he was not sarcastic. She had been a fool to think he could be, for sarcasm doesn’t grow on the same stalk as humility. He had really wanted to know. “That sounds odd, I expect, but you know how it happens. Someone you have known perhaps for years, perhaps for minutes, steps forward from the background and is suddenly inside with you.”
“Inside what?” demanded John.
“Inside your own little world that you carry with you,” said Mary, and looked at him with an almost despairing pleading. Didn’t he know he also had stepped inside? “Surely you know what I mean?”
“Yes,” said John, and now there was the warmth of amusement in his voice. “You like to be well understood, don’t you? And you like to have as many people as possible right inside. Yes, I do know what you mean. It’s bad luck that the moment Miss Giles becomes your friend you have to do your best to get her dismissed. I’m sorry.”
Mary suddenly discovered that she was crying. She despised tears and was mad with herself. “Damn,” she said, feeling savagely for her handkerchief. John took her arm for a moment and turned round, so that she turned too, with her back to the house. The windows looked blank but Oaklands struck him as the sort of place where people peeped from behind curtains. He took his hand from her arm and they strolled together towards the gate and the car. “You did perfectly right,” he said. “Loyalty is difficult, isn’t it? Loyalties so often conflict. But the children always come first.” He paused at the gate and was suddenly uncertain and deeply troubled. “I wish I had your gift of quick decision. Those who have it don’t realize what a blessed gift it is. I have no idea, now, what to do about it. Do you believe in prayer?”
“Of course,” flashed Mary. “I’m a Roman Catholic,” she added belligerently.
“And I’m not,” said John, smiling at her vehemence. “But a mutual belief in prayer is almost the greatest bond between two human beings. Don’t you think so?”
Mary laughed. “If you are asking me to pray that you may do the right thing over this, well, I will,” she conceded graciously.
“Thank you,” said John humbly. “And will you come over and see us at Belmaray? It’s a pretty place.”
“I’m Labor,” Mary told him, her head back, the tears still wet on her face.
“And my wife and I are Conservative, and so you won’t come and see us,” said John sadly. “What a pity.”
“Yes, I’ll come,” said Mary. “I was only warning you.”
“Thank you,” said John, opening the door of the car. “Sorry to keep you waiting, you three. Good-bye, Miss O’Hara. If you’ll give us warning of your coming we’ll hang out a red flag in welcome.”
He bowed and put on his hat, knocking it off again while inserting his length into the car. He replaced it and peered anxiously at the switchboard, pressing the self-starter as though it was likely to explode a bomb beyond the elm trees. The engine stalled. “I don’t drive very well,” he said to Mary. “That’s why I’m so seldom allowed to fetch the children. Good-bye.” He lifted his hat to Mary and pressed the self-starter once more. The car struggled valiantly but remained where it was.
“Poor Rozinante!” giggled Mary. “Did you take the brake off?”
“Rozinante?” queried John in a puzzled tone, and his hat remained in his hand while he searched around in his mind for the origin of the familiar name.
Mary flushed again, for her thought had turned into speech without her knowledge. But she did not evade the issue. “Your car looked so thin and bony, like Don Quixote’s horse,” she explained. “But being so leftist I like your car. Nothing plutocratic about it.”
“Nor about Don Quixote either,” said John, and laughed delightedly. “And I hope you will remember that while deploring my politics. And you’re quite right. The brake is still on.”
He took the brake off, replaced his hat once more that he might lift it to Mary again, pressed the self-starter once more, and they were off.
“I believe that’s a very good man,” thought Mary, watching Rozinante zigzagging down the road. “Or rather two good men, the mad knight and the man who rapped out those questions like a consulting physician with no time to waste. No, it’s not that there are two men but that vulnerability always makes a garment for itself; a jester’s cap and bells or a Franciscan’s peasant tunic or—something.”
She turned round towards the house and saw a slight movement of one of the curtains of an upstairs window. “That’ll be Annie,” she thought resignedly. “Now there’ll be trouble.” She went slowly towards the house and entered it with distaste and reluctance. It was a horrid house.
Chapter 5
1
Well, why not?” thought Michael, sitting on a gate at the top of old Mr. Witteringham’s orchard. Mr. Witteringham was the landlord of the Wheatsheaf and had just provided him with a gorgeous high tea, sausage and mash, rhubarb pie, strong tea, strawberry jam and new bread, and having an excellent digestion he now had that feeling of happy repletion which encourages optimism. “It’s a mad idea but they are all mad here. No harm in trying it on. Why should I ever go back? I’ll feed the peacocks and prune the roses until I die.”
It was not only good food that had made Michael so optimistic but also Mr. Witteringham’s astounding faith in human nature. In a village where the landlord of the local fed you on the fat of the land simply on trust one’s outlook on the future became similarly trustful. Michael was unaware that old Mr. Witteringham had in his youth been the Wentworth’s gamekeeper and knew expensive clothes when he saw them; likewise the value of a gold watch and signet ring. It was obvious to Mr. Witteringham that the young gent’s severance from the source of financial supply, though apparently complete just now, need not be permanent. Even if they had run dry for the moment these young gents nearly always possessed some paternal or avuncular spring at the source. And if not in this case, well, the young man had been seen by Mrs. Witteringham (who saw and heard everything that was done or said in the village, whether present in the corporeal body or not) in intimate conversation with the vicar, and the vicar could be relied on to let no one suffer if he could help it; not even for their own misdeeds; proper tootlish he was.
Meanwhile Michael, saved from hunger by the cut of his coat and John’s reputation for benevolence, sat on the gate and surveyed the scene. The Wheatsheaf was at the highest point of the village, and the orchard sloped steeply above it. Below him the old unpruned apple trees were still without blossom, but here and there a plum tree or a cherry tree was a froth of white. In the rough grass under the trees were drifts of wild daffodils, and primroses and white violets were growing under the hedge by the gate. Below
the orchard were the tall chimneys and tiled roof of the Wheatsheaf, and to the right the village street with its whitewashed cob cottages wound down the hill to the river and the church. All the cottage gardens had their daffodils and early polyanthus and in the water meadows the kingcups were a sheet of gold. The smoke from the cottage chimneys rose gently, wreathed itself into strange shapes and then was lost in the grey of the sky.
It was a quiet, sleepy day and Michael had slept hardly at all the night before. He nodded, jerked himself awake, and then climbing off the gate sat down in the orchard grass with his back against it. Through a break in the trees he could see the splendid old church porch and the tower rising above it. “That porch might be the gateway of a fortress,” he thought sleepily, “with the keep above. It might be the gate of Tintagel from which they rode out to find the grail.”