Cold Pastoral (19 page)
A dip to sea level, a rise to a headland brought them to David's cottage. Walking to the front facing the sea, they mounted five steps leading to a verandah. Ignoring the closed front door, Philip pulled a wire screen from floor-length windows.
“What's that?” asked Mary Immaculate, stiffening the long lines of her body. Fixed on the step of an exciting interior, she heard the
hoarse squawk of some forest creature. Its shrill repeat took her mind
off Dutch-blue walls, deep chairs with gay covers.
“Brute beast!” ejaculated David's disturbed voice.
An energetic stamp of a foot evicted a wild ginger streak. Almost
unidentifiable in moving colour, it sped between Mary Immaculate's
legs, hurled past Philip, leaving a deposit of hair on his trouser-legs.
“Good God!” said Philip, startled. “Rufus! His appetite has come back.”
A light, tortured voice came from the hall.
“David, David darling, do something! I can't bear it! Oh, the poor
wretched thing, what can I do? Look, look, David, it's all mangled
and its wing is half off. Do something, I implore you, darling.”
“Do, Felice, what can i do?” David's voice was full of distaste.
Mary Immaculate could feel the unseen repulsion of his nostrils.
Identifying the distress of a blackbird, she moved stealthily forward
on feet seeming cushioned with animal pads. A backward fling of
her hand commanded Philip not to tread on her heels. Magnetism
claiming him, he followed on the tips of his toes. Easing through the
door like a secret, she took a tortured situation from David and Felice.
Either they had too much humanity or too little to forget themselves
in action. Seeing it all, Mary Immaculate's eyes acquired animal
glaze. There was a black-haired woman squatting in front of a corner,
making ineffectual grabs at something replying in hoarse panic. David
was leaning against a newel-post with his lips curled away from his
teeth. He looked like Lilas pouring wine.
“God!” he said in bitter disgust.
Nervous hands had worried the bird out of a corner. As it hopped
across a strip of carpet, it represented the cruelty of nature. Faculty of
flight was gone in a wing dragging from a mangled back. Bare of
feathers it was raw like slaughtered flesh. The agitation of its plight
had entered small bowels emitting a series of watery droppings.
“Oh, poor thing, poor thing!” wailed Felice in a high, light voice.
“Shushhhâ” breathed Mary Immaculate on long sibilance.
The bird had gone into another corner, swelling its chest with its
bursting heart.
There was no thud in the way she fell on her knee, and her crawl was predacious, sinuous and slow with patience. Poising in immobility she crouched, gazing at the bird. Seeing the intense yellow of her eyes, David's shocked sensitiveness expected to see her grow tawny stripes. From Interest and fascination they let her alone; Felice on her haunches, Philip filling the door and David rigid against the newel-post. The bird did not squawk or move. Whether in trust or mesmerism it awaited its fate. Hardly aware that her hand had moved, they saw it enclosing the bird. Falling back on her heels, she stroked the tiny head with the tip of one finger.
“Poor bird,” she said pitifully, “you can't live like that. It's better to die.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Felice, crawling forward on her knees. “David dear, you must knock it on the head.”
“I will not,” said David decisively.
“Philip will, then,” she said, as if she knew he would accept the hard part.
“If you say so, Felice,” he agreed, making a forward step.
Mary Immaculate met his eyes.
“It will hurt it more if you take it from my hand, Philip. I know what to do. Where's the kitchen?”
“There,” said Felice, pointing to a closed door.
Mary Immaculate was through it while they were collecting themselves. Following, they saw a maid filling a bucket at a sink. The girl was square, fresh and a product of Mary Immaculate's own world. Understanding the impersonal earth, she moved quickly at the child's direction.
“There, miss,” she said, stepping aside.
A decisive plunge took the bird into water. They did not see it again until she brought it up, bedraggled in feathers parting to show seams of white skin. On the palm of her hand it drooped with slacked neck.
“Is it quite dead?” she asked, holding it out to Philip.
“Quite dead,” he said gravely.
Mary Immaculate had a strange capacity for changing servants into human beings. The maid walked to a stove and raised a damper.
“Fire is clean, miss,” she said suggestively.
The child looked at the girl, seeing quiet eyes, and skin with the honey pallor of a Jersey cow.
“
I'm
a Catholic, and we don't cremate.”
The maid smiled. “There's no churches in the forests, miss.”
Mary Immaculate smiled back. “I ought to know that,'' she said, dropping the bird into the fire.
Startled elders saw the pair return to the sink, where the child washed her hands as the maid passed a towel.
“My dear,” said Felice, returning to earth, “how are you? What an introduction! David wrote about you, but he hasn't described you at all. I'm delighted to see you at last.”
“Hello!”she said, returning the towel and shaking hands. Looking at Felice, she tried to find an answer to David in his wife. In that capacity she was something of a shock. Balance suggested he should be complemented by a beautiful creature, tall like himself. She was short, meagre, with a long face. When women's brows were becoming increasingly conspicuous and napes were fully revealed, her head looked hot with a weight of hair. Eyes were green under black brows, and her smile was so wide that no teeth could fill it. In her quick graciousness she bared a generous expanse of gum. Hands were smooth and beautiful, and supple from the wrists. Clothes were well cut, depending on themselves for style.
“Come out of the kitchen, Mary,” said David flippantly.
Felice slipped her arm through the child's, drawing her along. “Let them go, my dear. Come upstairs with me while I unpack. I'm in a disgraceful muddle. I've brought you a presentâ”
“Me?”said the child excitedly. “How gorgeous! What is it?”
“Wait and see. If you like it, we might use it. Let the men amuse themselves. We'll have time for them later.”
Exuberantly Mary Immaculate mounted white stairs with grassgreen carpet. In her cottage Felice had let herself go with colour as vivid as the shades of a summer world.
The brothers lounged through the large room, going out through the screen door. Rufus was sitting on the top step, gazing at the sea with round sinless eyes.
“Murderer!” growled David as he went down the steps. “What did you think of that bit of girlishness, Phil?”
“The doctor in me gave it full marks,” he answered, seating himself in a canvas chair. Advancing his long legs he relaxed in the sun.
“Humph!” said David, doing the same thing. “But the
man
waited for her to hide her pretty head.”
“I'm not so sure⦔
“Well, I am,” said David convincingly. “I'm shattered by that young thing doing something that would give me the creeps. When she was crawling across the floor I'm sure I saw jungle. I hope to God she won't change into a leopardess and eat you in your bed. You'd be useless with aâ”
“Shut up!” said Philip vigorously. “It was a perfectly natural act of a child who's seen maimed creaturesâ”
“And I'm sure I saw whiskers, too,” interrupted David, intent on his picture. “Knowing her, I hardly expected fear of a mouse, but I didn't anticipate anything quite so nervelessâ”
“In her world she couldn't afford nerves. She's not a product of people who pay three guineas a time to discuss childish shocksâ”
“The robbers,” said David lazily. “Felice paid a hundred guineas to get cured of claustrophobia under trees. That's why I can't afford my own phobias. I'm sure I was born with one skin too little. I was excoriated in the fire of '92, or was it '46? Hannah will tell me. It left me with spiritual haemophilia. I'm a bleeder over life's agonies. It comes from a long line of spirits born to the purpleâ”
“You're a fool,” said Philip amiably. “It comes from a line of time-wasters. That's a better diagnosis for your purple spiritâ”
“You can go, Phil,” said David, closing his eyes. “I'm unhappy because Mary is so brave and you're so sensible. You're excused to operate on any of God's creatures you find at large.”
A long drowsy silence was shattered by the rush of Mary Immaculate's feet and the wild joy of her voice.
“Philip, David, look at me!”
The brothers sat up.
“Good gracious, darling,” said David, blinking, “you're very bare and beautiful!”
“Yes, aren't I?” she agreed, strutting in front of them both.
There was something in the childish parade of her body that gave the men the consciousness that might have been hers. She was too tender with adolescence, easing childhood away. Felice had brought her a bathing-suit like a green sheath, with sandals, and a towellingcape being twirled in the air. Her head was enclosed in a helmet outlining the neat skull, while legs and thighs shimmered with a white bloom.
“My back is bare, too,” she said, craning her head over her shoulder to see the extent of her nudity. The brothers had the full benefit of the milky skin, narrow hips and tender curves showing barely perceptible womanhood. In her green-and-white, she suggested a flower springing from the earth.
Felice followed more decorously, wrapped in a cape. Her legs were frail and she stripped meagrely, but she had no consciousness. Being David's wife had removed all inferiority.
“We're going bathing, David. I'm so glad Rufus came back. I did think when I had him vetted he would stop eating the birds.”
“Not exactly the same instinct, dear,” smiled David, looking at the shimmer of Mary Immaculate's legs.
“Is it wise to go bathing, Felice, right off the ocean?” cautioned Philip. “Maryâ”
“Why not, Phil? We had a good crossing and I feel very fit.”
“Oh, don't stop us, Philip. I'm dying to feel the water. I'm sure it will blue me.”
“Pagan,” grinned David, rising from his chair. “Let's go to the look-out, Phil, and watch them, unless you'd like to go in yourself.”
“I'm afraid I feel drowsy and the cold water will wake me up.”
“The North Atlantic!” said David with a shiver. “Only these fat women can bear it. Run off, children! The old men will sit and watch Helen pass by.”
“Who's she, David?” asked the child, running by his side.
“None of your business,” he said with a charming smile.
“Rude, David,” she grinned.
Outside on the bank David subsided on the seat against the fence.
“Can you swim, Mary?”
“I expect so, David,” she said, looking down on the bathers. “Come on, Felice.”
Every step down the hazardous stairs was a joyous bound.
“Take care, Mary,” commanded Philip.
The laugh that floated back went out to sea again like a bell of
youth.
“Yes, Philip,” she called with vocal co-operation
His eyes watched her headlong descent until she gained the beach.
“I know how Faust felt,” sighed David from his choice of idleness. “When I look at her I feel nothing can replace youth, living and
loving, and being in tune with nature. She makes me feel jaded
and conscious of my age. I doubt very much if she'll attract much
physical love from men. She's too tall and white, and too much
like cold dew. I can see her twenty, thirty, forty, still with that dryad
look. It won't be sustained on virginity, either; it has a deeper
quality, something from green fields and cold snows. Men will be
conscious of smuts and luxuriate in an altar. Even if she had the
fabric of a courtesan she'd find it hard to seduce. To a man it would
be like defiling white samite. Iâ”
“Damn it all,” exploded Philip, “you're talking of a child! it's, It'sâ”
“The simple truth,” said David, unrepentant. “Other men will recognise the quality that compelled the first uncalculated action of
your life. I've no manners, phil! What do you feel about her?”
Protected from the sun by his glasses, David gazed searchingly at
his brother. Like his mother, the pupil and iris of his eyes merged into
one. Philip's eyes were wide and clear, and a more definite brown.
They came back from the sea to endure his brother's scrutiny.
“If you must know, damn you,” he said with concentrated
sincerity, “I wish it was her eighteenth birthday today, and I'd make
her marry me before she realised there was another man in the world.”
“Now that,” said David humorously, “is what I call an answer. No
evasionâ”
philip's short laugh stopped him.
“What would be the good of evasion? You'd only ask me again.”
“I think I would,” David admitted, gazing at Philip with concern. “I love Mary myself, but she's more important when she affects you and Mater. Isn't it dangerous to indulge that one-minded way? Why not go out more and let yourself go? Now that you're established, you've more leisure. Some other interest might claim you. I see lots of flaming youth around.”
“It can flame without me,” said Philip decisively. “I happen to know what I want. Mater's comfort, the preservation of the Place and Mary! My leisure will go to her. This winter I'm going to flood the tennis-court and make a rink. I'll teach her to waltzâ”
“Why not take her to the rinks?”
“Too many people and we'd be too far away from Mater. I think she knows how I feel, and in return no hand-picked companion could be better. If Mater is going to miss her, I won't send her to school in England.”