Cold Pastoral (13 page)

At that moment she learned of the stifling that could go with the fairest relationship. She felt defrauded, closed up with herself. Where was the person who could receive everything? She spoke to Philip with the poise of his own mother, and for a moment he heard a perfect imitation of her voice.

“Tell me more about David, please, Philip.”

“Another time, Mary. I must say this to you. What I want to suggest is that you co-ordinate with a normal world. Put the energy that went into fantasy into directive thinking and your capacity will increase for all the things Mater wants you to learn.”

“I want to learn them, too, Philip,” she said with a quick turn of the head. Even in illness he had never looked at her without amazement at the clearness of her face. In the economical tightness of her flesh and skin she had tissues that would never sag. It was a face that could be taken so safely out of doors. Light and sun could reveal no blemish.

“Don't you believe I want to learn, Philip?” she insisted.

“Yes, I do, Mary. I was merely suggesting that you don't spend yourself recklessly.”

“I won't wear out,” she said with a gay laugh. “Do you think I could have those girls in my room? Let's go and look at your room now.”

“It will be dull after this,” he said a little stiffly.

Mary Immaculate smiled blandly.

“Never mind, Philip, it will be good for my directive thinking.”

There was no insolence in her tone, nothing calling for reproof. The wood-child had evaded him, snubbing him gently in his determination not to include her old life in her new. He felt he had made a mistake and could hear an echo of a didactic voice.

He was confused. She was stirring his imagination and presenting him with the unknown. He had the scientific mind searching for a clarification of his emotions, but he was not prepared to admit that the child was mother of the woman he would find irresistible. He admitted fascination with her artless chatter and bewilderment when she assumed an expression of enigmatical emptiness. His interest never waned. He was finding her not quite so docile as the patient; he was hearing her shrill with youth—and yet one look into her face made him wonder that such attraction could be. Hitherto he had painted his own canvas. Now it was at the mercy of a greater artist. Mary Immaculate was splashing on it willynilly and crowding it rapidly with gobs of crude colour.

The house included Lilas, Hannah and a kitchenmaid the child rarely saw.

Lilas was the housemaid who crept round the table, made the beds, dusted and swept. She was thin, young, yearning and gone under her apron. Mary Immaculate thought her skin beautiful, but her mouth drooped and she looked cold. Her hair was puzzling and bright—gold beyond any hair the child had ever seen. In the house three days, she animated Lilas to their eyes. After dinner in the mater's sitting-room she was breathless with interest. Philip was reading the evening paper by the fire and the mater was knitting under a shaded lamp.

“Mater,” she whispered in a voice claiming their attention. “Lilas has been jilted! She left her place to get married. She lived in a small Cove like me, and she had a white dress and a veil and a pair of white canvas shoes, and she was all ready to be joined—”

“What, Mary?” asked Philip, laying down his paper.

“Joined, Philip, that's what she said. With her marriage is not a sacrament,” said the child with the jewel of the Catholic faith. “She was a Methodist waiting for her beau to come in on the train, and all that came in was a letter to say he had changed his mind and was marrying another girl.”

“If you would get your book, dear—”

“Oh, but, Mater, please let me tell it. It's very interesting and sad. She was that down-hearted—”

“So down-hearted,” interrupted Philip.

“So down-hearted that she raised the damper of the kitchen stove and threw her ring in the fire. It had a ruby with two pearls and cost eight dollars and seventy-five cents. Then she packed up her wedding dress and came back to look for another place, the one before this, and she moped and moped and nearly went into a decline, and when her flesh was melting off her bones she met somebody who persuaded her to join the Salvation Army. And that's what she did and, as soon as she had testified, the spoken word eased her of her burden, and it rolled off her like water off a duck's back. Now she wears the bonnet and goes to number one barracks every night. But Hannah won't let her wear the bonnet out of the Place, so she carries it in a paper bag and when she's down the avenue she hides her beret in a shrub and puts on the bonnet. Then she goes off to the barracks, and when she feels herself getting down-hearted she testifies again. After the service is over she meets a boy and walks home with him. She doesn't love him, but she says he's someone to hook up to—”

“My dear child,” said the mater firmly. “I—”

“Please, Mater dear, let her finish.”

“Mater stopped me, Philip, because of the idioms, but that's what Lilas said, ‘hook up to.' She said anyone was better than no one, and the avenue gave her the creeps. Hannah told her David drinks every night, and she's very worried for fear she'll have to carry the wine—”

“Indeed!” said the mater coolly, but Philip was laughing with real enjoyment.

“David will have to reform, Mater. Mary, why won't Hannah let her wear her bonnet out of the Place?”

“She told Lilas this was no house for tambourines.”

She did not divulge Hannah's remarks to herself, that it was useless to be strict with the maids when the heads of the house saw fit to defile it with Popery.

From the moment of her entrance in the house, Hannah denied her a place. Outward expressions of aversion were only evinced when her mistress and Philip were well out of hearing. The woman's sense of caste was outraged by the transplantation of a fisherman's child. Already the intruder had ousted her in the service of her mistress.

Hannah had a pompadour of yellow-white hair that seemed to be dressed over a pad. Having seen something coarse poking out, Mary Immaculate was sure of the pad. Hannah's eyes were grey and surrounded with wrinkles, and her skin was loose on her cheeks and chin. Often the child imagined herself taking a tuck in Hannah's face. Her mouth was remindful of Mrs. Houlihan, under a bulbous nose as fleshy as the lobes of her ears. Of German extraction, she had come to the country with her mistress. Stolid in loyalty, she was equally stolid in hate. Mary Immaculate had lived too close to hostile winds not to know that some would always blow cold.

Only once she tried to lessen the aversion.

“Why don't you like me, Hannah?”

The old woman was polishing the Georgian tea-service in the wine-red dining-room. Sunshine poured in from the conservatory and enriched the colour of walls and carpet. Silver emerged brightly from Hannah's cloth. Without looking up she unclosed her thin lips. Her voice was deliberate, with stabs of considered dislike.

“Don't bother me! I've no time for the likes of you, but let me tell you this: when my mistress wants a stitch picked up you leave it to me. You may be able to knit. It's right that you should. People like you should be clothed from the sheep's back and stay in their places. That's my last word to you.”

The child felt differently. The unwarranted dislike made her feel puckish in a desire to goad. The sun caught her yellow eyes and brought out the gold in her hair. Leaning against the sideboard, she was the picture of sleek impudence. Her voice came softly, in a singsong of careful enunciation.

“It's a lovely tea-service we have, isn't it, Hannah? Do you know it's in the classic design of the time, without the scrolls and knobs that were evident in other pieces? Not that I don't like the knobs, Hannah, and there's a bowl with a cherub's head that I fancy above those plain pieces you're polishing now. But Mater thinks I should train my mind to value lines. Do you know, Hannah, that tea-services were first introduced into England about the time of Queen Anne? She was a tea-drinker and used to sip with the Duchess of Marlborough. Now that I'm a Fitz Henry we—”

“We, we; let me hear less of the we. There's one that'll never see you beyond your own class. Your kind comes to the back door of this house. What do you know of the Place?”

“A lot, Hannah,” said the child in an unaltered tone. “I know the sideboard is Adam, and he has nothing to do with Eve, either. Did you know, Hannah, that in the fire of '46 the knife-urns were stolen and the owner of the house had to search in every pawnshop until he could buy them back? If you don't know those things, Hannah, it shows how much above you I am, for having learned so quickly.''

In spite of sealed lips the woman was goaded to reply.

“And why should I know things that belong to the minds of my betters? I do my duty and polish—”

“The tea-service, Hannah! Did you know it was saved from the fire—?”

“Do I know, do I know? I should say I do.” The old woman stood up and flicked out a yellow cloth. “Didn't I take it from the sideboard when the trees were burning outside and put it in bed—?”

“Did you, Hannah?” she said in another tone. “Tell me about it, will you? Tell me about the day David was born—”

“David, indeed!” snorted the woman implacably. “If I had my way it would be Mr. David and Mr. Philip.”

Mary Immaculate drew herself to her slender height.

“Then isn't it fortunate, Hannah, that you don't have your way?”

She left the dining-room with the tone and manner of Lady Fitz Henry. Her impersonation was so real that for a moment she felt herself tall and dignified, with black hair on her head and brown eyes for yellow. To the old woman it was insolence in the highest form. In using Lady Fitz Henry for her pattern, she prepared a rod for her own back. Hannah was slow and could bide her time.

When the child's first week was spent Lady Fitz Henry asked for her reckoning. They were in the same position as when they had heard the story of Lilas. Philip, watching, felt the child was sure of her treat. In the sleek look of her face and the secret fall of her lids she had the quietude of accomplishment. In a black dress under a shaded lamp Lady Fitz Henry was seated with her hands resting in her lap.

Mary Immaculate sat on a straight-backed chair with her eyes fixed on vacancy.

“Can I—?”

“May I?” corrected Philip.

“May I tell it in my own words, Mater?”

“Yes, you may, and leave out all that you've learned about the house. Tell me things in relation to yourself.”

Mary Immaculate's voice came slowly. “I've learned,” she said, “that my daily bath is more than my daily bread. To go to bed here means putting my teeth, hair, hands and face above my prayers. Mom said cleanliness was only next to godliness.”

Philip stared with grave concentration at his surgeon's hands. For a moment he feared that her treat might be postponed. The way she expressed her findings suggested a question. It was like the incident of Martha and Mary. Who had chosen the better part? Josephine and his mother were unwittingly thrown on the scales. Her voice saved her from any implication. It was the tone of a person trying to condense a long adventure. In his momentary worry for her, he found he had missed some of the findings.

“…and I must not enter a room at the top of my voice or slam the doors when I go out. Modulation can be brought into all things. I mustn't talk to Lilas while we're at table or make personal remarks about the way she caves in. I know that an apple must be eaten with a knife and fork if it's at the end of a meal, but if I have it between whiles I can gnaw it with my teeth. When there's a finger-bowl I don't put in two hands at a time and have a wash. And it comes without soap! I must try and eat more green food and drink lots of water. Philip says my system has had an excess of starches.”

Philip looked up from the contemplation of his hands. He had heard himself saying it as if he had voiced the opinion at that moment. He hoped she would not mimic his mother.

“I must not be slovenly in my speech or use idioms that are purely colloquial.”

Now it was Lady Fitz Henry's voice.

“I must not drop my
g
's! Above all I must not say guts or belly. If I must mention such organs I make my voice a little ashamed and say tummy.”

Her white brow contracted. To Philip it was apparent that she had returned to the robustness of her own strong world. The doctor in him gave her sympathy.

“I must not compare everything I like to the elements or talk about the Saints in Heaven. Religion is not as obtrusive as I make it. I can forget about souls sizzling in torment. It is a relic of uneducated minds. I can dwell on the kindness of God rather than His awfulness. Mom says the awfulness is good to frighten the wits out of people. She says one must beat with a stick—”

“That will do, Mary. You may get your hat and coat. It is a creditable test although some of your deductions are not quite accurate.”

“I go, do I?” she said, leaping out of her chair. “Oh, Mater, won't it be beautiful? I looked in the paper and picked out a drama of thundering herds and broken hearts. Wouldn't you like to come too, Mater?”

Lady Fitz Henry smiled contentedly.

“No, dear, I don't care to go. You may tell me about it when you come home. I'll be very happy with my book.”

It seemed incredible denial to Mary Immaculate, but she flew off, leaving a light impetuous kiss on the mater's cheek. Attainment crowned her. As she reached her room more findings popped into her mind. It was better for them to stay there she reflected. She must not mention the Little People to Philip or talk too much of her own mother to the mater. Both frowned inside when she did.

“LIGHT QUIRKS OF MUSIC…MAKE THE SOUL
DANCE UPON A JIG TO HEAVEN.”

F
inding an economy of indulgence from her own age and sex, school made her wary. She learned to let others speak first. Curiosity prevailed, and a divided camp as to whether she should be snubbed for her lowly birth or accepted for her adoption. A minority inclined towards romanticism, influenced by adventures alien to childish life.