Cold Pastoral (15 page)

For a moment the child felt soiled, but she gave no sign and the woman had to go. Hannah hated her and none of them saw. She sighed and sipped her milk. Philip was angry with her for her vagabond hour. It had been such happiness, such an escape from conformity. Philip loved her when she was amenable and swung to anger when she did something by herself. Philip who was so kind, who took her to the cinema, called for her at school, bought her chocolates even though he said it was bad for her teeth. Philip who had taken her to the dentist's that week and stayed until she got used to the sharp picks and whirring machine making a noise in her head.

How beautiful it was in her room now! Quiet and washed by the setting sun. The three bronze girls on the mantelpiece looked as if they had run lighter-footed for the mildness of the day. Putting the tray aside she reached for the book. The mater had been telling her about India and had given her a copy of the child-stories of Kipling. Settling into her pillow she luxuriated in quiet.

When Lady Fitz Henry entered two hours later she was gazing unseeingly ahead.

“Mater,” she sighed, “I've just read such a lovely story,
The Drums of
the Fore and Aft
. When the regiment fell back two little boys Jakin and Lew walked out in the open and piped it on with fife and drum. Then they were shot.”

“I know it well, Mary,” said Lady Fitz Henry, seating herself with a slight smile. “We'll talk of it when we havemore time. In a moment you must go to sleep. I presume, my dear, you did your homework before you ran off. I should imagine it would be extremely uncomfortable to go to school unprepared.''

Mary Immaculate fell back to cold reality and a preversion of what the next day would be. That awful Betty Wilson with her cool derisive voice! She was still in the position when she wished to remain as unobtrusive as possible. Looking into the mater's eyes she knew she was being shown the results of indulgence.

“Mater,” she sighed woefully, “you say everything without saying anything.”

“It's unfortunate, isn't it,” she said pleasantly, “the natural results of a lack of discipline? What made you run off, Mary? I think I know, but tell me yourself.”

She sighed on her pillow and a little shake of her head made the light dance through her hair.

“Mater, I'm sorry if I upset you but I just had to go. I haven't been by myself since I left the Cove. I love to be with you, but I was used to spending whole days alone and playing a sort of make-believe. Then I saw the children coming back from the hills with the flowers I used to pick and I got tired of that time-table pinned to the wall. Think of days going on in the country and days in town sliced up into squares.”

Lady Fitz Henry nodded her head.

“I expect you've been much better than we imagine, dear. Now go to sleep and try to forget that Philip was cross.”

The child showed no signs of having remembered.

“Yes, he was cross, Mater. Philip is always mad if I like things he doesn't like.”

There was so much adult in the child; a natural maturity from her strong bleak world. In spite of her complex mind, there were moments when she was the sternest realist; the side of her that wanted to say guts and belly. Although she had conformed to all the amenities of daily life, Lady Fitz Henry occasionally discerned a cold wonder for the perpetual need of convention. She could visualise her unshocked in situations that would shake many children.

Downstairs she found her son holding a medical journal, in a library that had belonged to his father. Wall-space not packed with books was panelled in oak. She found him as she had found the child, gazing unseeingly ahead. Rising as his mother came in, he pulled forward a brown leather chair.

“Philip, I found Mary reading
The Drums of the Fore and Aft
and enjoying every second of her punishment. I was so reminded of David. If he was sent to bed it was just what he wanted, because he was very tired. If he had bread and water there was nothing like a glass of nice cold water. Mary had forgotten why she was punished.”

“I haven't,” he said grimly. “I thought she might be worrying because I was so angry.”

“Too angry, my son. I should suggest another attitude.”

Reasonably she discussed the child with him, but his ideas of Mary Immaculate had no room for wayfaring on lonely country roads.

There was no reconciliation between them. Perhaps he was glad to find her at breakfast, trying to learn out of two books.

“Oh, Philip,” she said genially, “I had to find out how many pieces of paper it takes to paper a room, and I haven't papered it at all, and that awful Betty Wilson will call me a bay-noddy.”

His more sombre nature could not understand her light repudiation of yesterday. He felt relief for her normality and complete lack of rancour. In spite of himself he said as he sat down: “Couldn't I do the sum for you, Mary? It wouldn't take a minute.”

“Oh no, Philip, thank you just the same. It's too late to make a pen-and-ink copy in my book so I'll just have to manage somehow.”

Watching her long hands over her food at lunch, he had to inquire, “How did you get on with your paper-hanging, Mary?” She looked at him quickly and gave a smile verging towards a grin.

“When they collected the books there was nothing from me, so I was invited to the desk to explain.”

The smile left her face and she became serious.

“Miss Good asked me why I had failed to do my homework, and I told her the truth.”

Such candour was a shock to family reticence. His voice was reproachful.

“Was that necessary, Mary? Surely we keep those things to ourselves.”

“I had to explain, Philip. School-teachers want a real reason for things. I said I went for a long walk yesterday, several miles in fact, and when I got back my guardian, who is a doctor, said it was very bad for me and he made me go to bed with a glass of hot milk.”

The truth, told with a wistful shading of the voice, suggested childish fraility.

“Yes,” she said gently. “Miss Good was very sorry I had tired myself so completely, and she told me not to run round too much at recess. She said I looked white.”

There was nothing to say. She had told the truth and the mater had warned her she must stand on her own feet. Mother and son felt some reproof should be forthcoming. In view of her bland innocence and enigmatical face it seemed impossible to find a chink through which to attack. White she certainly was, but white with the clearness of health.

The mater was out for a walk and Mary Immaculate was playing scales. The window was open and soft air ballooned the curtains. It seemed impossible to concentrate on scales and see that her thumb went under her fingers. Twice she had heard a beguiling whistle, thin like a gimlet boring a sound.

Between the mater's flowers and a disused tennis-court stood a kitchen garden surrounded by a tall privet-hedge. Like a fruitful secret, vegetables grew inside, tended by a man who came three times a week. Age and impoverishment lay at the end of the garden. It had been velvet turf when the drawing-room had been in constant use. Neglect had allowed it to revert to native coarseness, and grass was ousted by dandelions and flat-leaved plantains. Mary Immaculate loved it. It was a hide-out when she was allowed to be alone in the garden. Behind the old trees ran a high wooden fence, screening the Place from audacious eyes. When the trees were bare, houses could be seen on either side. They were dots compared to the big white house.

Mary Immaculate went out in the garden. Treading the plantains and dandelions she raised her head to look for the whistle.

Across the grass came a long, sweet note, expiring as if lips had suddenly opened. It came again, more shrill and compelling, stopping with staccato finish. Then a little jig dropped from a tree, light as a leaf, calling to her feet. Dancing over the plantains, the music left her on the tips of her toes. Silence came down, rich with the smell of earth and the soundless flight of a pair of white butterflies.

“Hello!” said a voice from a beech tree.

Mary Immaculate clasped her hands.

“Hello!” said the voice again. “I drew you out from your rotten scales.”

“Who are you?” she whispered. Soft as it was, it reached the tree.

“The Pied Piper! Just wait a minute, I'm going to pipe you up in this tree.”

“I'm not a rat,” she said, airing recent knowledge.

“Yes, you are! You're the one, stout as Julius Caesar, who swam across and lived to carry his commentary out of the woods! I'll say you had guts to lie out there.”

“Oh!” she said, very pleased with herself. “I'm not allowed to have guts any more. They're not polite. Who are you, anyway, and where do you live when you're not in a tree?”

“I'm Tim to you and I live in the next house. There's a field behind us and I make it my summer home. As soon as the trees get green enough to hide me I climb up to my armchair. I've seen you lots of times. I know what you're like because I've seen you when you didn't know I was looking.”

“Oh!” she said doubtfully. “What am I like?”

“Swell,” said the voice with enthusiastic brevity.

“How old are you?” she asked hopefully. “Fifteen and a bit. What are you?”

“Nearly thirteen!”

The voice became considering.

“You're so tall you make me think of reedy music. You know, ‘down in the reeds by the river'. I drew you out with my music, didn't I?”

“Maybe,” she admitted graciously. “I heard the whistle twice. Why do you want to have summer quarters in a field?”

The voice sounded a trifle impatient, as if making unnecessary explanation.

“To be by myself, of course, and to read the books I want to read and not those recommended by my lousy uncle.”

“Oh!” she said wonderingly. Here was freedom of speech indeed and a mood she could readily understand. For a moment she held her breath, standing very still.

“You—you want to be alone sometimes?”

“Sure! I want to play in an orchestra when I grow up. I'm swell at the piano and I can get a tune out of tumblers and a knife. If I had any decent instruments I know I could play them. I'd like the blowers best, the wood-winds, you know.”

“No, I don't know,” she sighed, “but you can tell me.”

“The wood-winds are the flutes, oboes and things,
but
they wouldn't give me one if they died for it. No, they give me manuals on mining engineering, because they've made up my mind that I'm going to be a mining engineer like my father before me.
And
when my uncle comes in to look me over I have to talk about pyrites and whatnots! Sure, when I go to church I always think the Hittites are minerals too.”

This was a rich field of exploration with an undisciplined side like her own.

“Are you far up in the tree?” she asked.

“Not too far for you to climb if I give you a hoist.”

“Oh!” she said virtuously. “I have to practise my scales.”

The answer came in the gay little jig that had set her dancing over the dandelions and plantains. For the life of her she could not refrain from walking to the square of earth beneath the tree. Conveniently by was a trunk, sawed off to give the larger trees room for expansion. Temptation always seemed so well arranged! Looking up she saw a pair of grey flannel legs and the edge of a blue blazer.

“Is that all of you?” she giggled.

There was a chuckle from the tree.

“Wait a minute, sister, till I pocket my whistle. I've got a mouthorgan, too, and a uke. I'll hook up the uke. O.K., now, don't break, or Uncle will ask why I want a new string.”

There was a quick change in the position of the legs. Leaning over a leafy branch, Tim looked down.

“Gee!” he said, blinking hooded eyelids rapidly at her upturned face. “Gee, you're pretty, close to!”

“You're not bad yourself,” she admitted agreeably, stepping up on the sawed-off trunk. It brought her nearer to an outstretched hand. Instantly she noticed its length emerging from a smooth wrist too far out of a sleeve. All the nails of the hand were blunted at the tips. Her own hand seemed a perfect fit for the wiry grasp pulling her to the same branch as himself. They seemed to be in the centre of a bowl of green, with hardly any sky visible through thick foliage.

“This,” he said gravely, “is the cavern that suddenly hollowed, and the Piper advanced—”

“And Mary followed! Don't speak yet, Tim, please, for a minute. Let me look at you. If it's not right I'll have to climb down again. 'Tis no good wasting my time from my scales if it's not something worth while.”

“O.K.,” he said, without objection to possible doubt of himself. “Look away.”

His hooded blue eyes rested on her in a half-dreaming regard. Unselfconsciously he endured her scrutiny, returning interest in herself. His head was deep, rounded at the back, and covered with fair hair having a tendency to curl away from the scalp. It grew in a curve in the middle of his forehead, receding at the temples. His face was broad across the eyes, suddenly short and narrow at the chin. His nose was straight and his mouth girlish in its curves and dents at the corners. His cheeks were soft with a fair down. As he smiled at her, she noticed his teeth were hard and white, but the two centre ones were crooked, making a jut in the front of his mouth. With his lazy hooded eyes, he looked interesting and strange. She had a sudden feeling if she slid from the tree he would sigh and shrug and play another tune.

“Well,” he demanded, raising his eyebrows and making a deep wrinkle in his brow. “You look the pure fruit to me.”

“You're nice,” she admitted; “but your eyes are funny. Nice, but funny.”

With a thumb and first finger he pulled at the skin of an eyelid.

“Music,” he explained briefly. “A crystal-gazer told me at a circus.

She said I'd go two ways and die in a day.”