She groped her way down the stairs and struggled with the oil lamp that Mrs. Baker had put ready for her in the kitchen. She succeeded in lighting it at last and by its soft light ate a supper of cold ham, bananas and tea. By the time she had finished, it was quite dark and she could see three stars in the windowpane. She was, she found, dreadfully tired and her limbs felt like lead as she washed up and stoked the Rayburn. But there was something she had to know before she went to bed. All day the surface of her mind had been obsessed with practical problems but all the time, in her heart and at the back of her mind, had been the little things. Were they still here?
Putting off the moment of knowing, she took the lamp and went first to the dining room. A blast of cold air met her face as she opened the door. It was a small room filled to capacity with the oak table, sideboard and chairs, one of them with a high carved back, that she remembered. A dingy Morris wallpaper was peeling off the wall and the brown linoleum on the floor was full of holes. There was a scurry of mice and the smell of them. Mary shut the door again hastily and went on to the parlor. She stood with her hand on the door handle afraid to go in. She remembered the mossy carpet strewn with roses, the sea-green light shining through the vine leaves and the table with the plush cover. Then she summoned her courage and opened the door.
It was not so changed as the dining room, for the beautiful paneled walls were untarnishable by time, and the carpet must have been well looked after, for though it was faded it was still pretty. As Mrs. Baker had said, a fire was laid in the basket grate. There were a couple of spindly chairs with gilt legs, an escritoire against the wall and the table with the plush cover still standing in the window. But the little things were not there.
2
Mary was awakened at five the next morning by the birds and felt it to be incredible that such small creatures could make such a row. She got out of bed to see what could be singing with such abandon, like one of the beloved music hall stars of the old days, and it was two blackbirds in the lilac opposite her east window. Their wide-open crocus-colored beaks looked like the jaws of crocodiles and from them song poured forth. Leaning out of the window with her dressing gown around her shoulders, she could distinguish the heavenly music of the seraph thrush singing in the copse, and when the blackbirds paused for a moment she could hear the lark singing high overhead and the cuckoos calling in the distant woods. These songs woven together were an almost visible web of music lifting the earth from darkness to light.
She went back to bed and lay watching the movement of shadows on the wall, shadows of the branches, of birds’ wings, of her curtains swaying, and listened to the striking of the church clock, the rustle of trees, and cows lowing in the distant fields. For these things were a part of her room and she must learn them by heart. When she went away she would come back to them as surely as she came back to John’s photo on the mantelpiece and Jane Austen beside her bed, and would find in them a measure of her peace. The light grew stronger and the birds went about their business but she could not sleep again and she stretched out her hand for Persuasion. It was one of the loveliest love stories ever written, she thought, quiet and yet exciting. Although she practically knew it by heart yet upon each rereading she recaptured that first deep anxiety lest Captain Wentworth should not come up to scratch. Yet anxiety was not a word one ought to use in connection with Jane, who was so eminently trustworthy. Perhaps it was a measure of her genius that she could arouse it. Would you have found me trustworthy had you married me? she asked the man in the photo opposite. I should have found you so. You had honor and fire with gentleness. I liked you, admired you, wanted to love you more and know you better. Would you have made me love you as I wanted to love you? Was I capable of knowing you? And if not then, am I now? Can you teach me? There was no answer in the great emptiness of death and she got up feeling suddenly cold and weary. She had never known what she believed about death, whether it was the end or whether it wasn’t. She knew there could be no certainty, only faith. Could she find faith? Was there anyone here who could help her?
She washed and dressed, and on her way downstairs looked into the two bedrooms that Mrs. Baker had told her were uninhabitable. They had dry rot in the floorboards, fungus growing in the corners and not a stick of furniture in either of them. What had happened to the furniture? What had happened to the oak chest and the little things? Feeling now thoroughly discouraged she went downstairs to the kitchen and found the Rayburn out. Her stoking the night before could not have been to its taste. Looking into the larder she found milk and cereal, bread and marmalade for breakfast, but her whole being ached for hot tea. She must have an oil stove, or calor gas, or something that would ensure a cup of tea when she wanted it, and eventually she must put in electricity. But it was not a priority. There were things far more pressing in this house than electricity.
After breakfast she fetched her writing case and went into the little parlor to make a list of these priorities. It was a lovely day but she was cold after a tealess breakfast and put a match to the fire. She sat down beside it with her blotting pad on her knee. There was a small window beside the chimney breast that looked west into the kitchen garden, and she saw to her delight that just outside it was a blossoming apple tree. The light of the flames was warmly reflected in the paneling and the sound of them was a voice murmuring of pleasant things beside her. She began to feel more cheerful. Like all women she enjoyed making lists, and even a list of her lists, and she lost track of time noting down repairs to the house in order of priority. Then she made another list of those of her possessions in storage in London which would be suitable here, and another of those that would not. She was hard at it when Mrs. Baker’s head came around the door.
“The Rayburn’s out, dear. Now that’s a funny thing. It never goes out. You made it up?”
“Yes, Mrs. Baker. I’m sorry.”
“It’s your riddling that’s at fault. I’ll show you before I go. Now I’ll light it again and bring you a cup of hot tea. But first I must get the fowl on for your lunch. A boiler, and should eat soft. Baker took the liberty of killing one of ours for you. Give you a good start, we thought, with soup from the bones. And he also took the liberty of inquiring of Jack Beckett at the pub if you could keep your car there, seeing as you’ve no garage. You’re welcome, Jack says. There’s plenty of room in the barn where he keeps his. We hope you don’t mind, dear.”
“Of course not, Mrs. Baker. Thank you very much.”
Tired and cold, she felt near to tears. Strong and self-reliant woman that she was, no one had looked after her since John had died. Mrs. Baker looked at her. “A cup of tea is what you need, dear. And I’ll get Baker to bring you down my little spirit stove and kettle. Then whether the Rayburn’s out or in you’ll always be able to get yourself a cup of tea.”
The tea when it came in the beautiful Staffordshire teapot was placed beside her on the little plush-covered table. “Mrs. Baker, can you tell me of a good builder and decorator?” she asked.
“Well, there’s Roundham in Westwater. But he’ll charge you a pretty penny. And there’s my husband’s nephew Bill Baker in Thornton. He’s a good worker, Bill is, and employs good men. Not so classy as Roundham but more reliable.”
“I’ll have Bill Baker,” said Mary. She looked around. “Is there a telephone?”
“Telephone? No, dear. What would poor old Miss Lindsay have been doing with a telephone? Drop Bill a line. Twelve Mount Street, Thornton. Say I told you of him and he won’t keep you waiting.”
Mary put down her teacup and said hesitantly, “Mrs. Baker, when I was a little girl, and came here to see my cousin, a glass case was on this table and under it a whole host of little treasures. My cousin showed them to me and I loved them. Did she give them away?”
“No, they’re here. I packed them away in one of the drawers in the escritoire, for safety. The glass case is in a cupboard in one of the spare rooms. Miss Lindsay would never have parted with the little things. They were
for you. She’s told me time and again how you loved them as a child.”
“Did she part with many things?” asked Mary.
“She had to, dear. As time went on, her money didn’t go so far. She sold a lot of silver and valuable china, and the furniture in the spare rooms, and the chest in the hall.”
“Didn’t her lawyer get her an annuity?”
“He wanted to, but she wouldn’t have it.”
“But why not?” Mrs. Baker hesitated and with pity and compunction Mary answered her own question. “Because she wanted to leave something to me, a child she’d only seen once. I’m ashamed, Mrs. Baker.”
“Well, dear, don’t take on. It’s a queer thing, but when I came to look at the little things, before I put them away, it seemed to me that there were a few missing. I couldn’t say which they were, for I’ve never got the little things rightly in my head, but I thought there were one or two gone. It worried me.”
“Perhaps Miss Lindsay gave them away.”
“It wouldn’t have been like her to do that, when she was keeping them for you.”
There was a curious twanging sound, fumbling and a little eerie, and both women looked at each other. Then light dawned on Mrs. Baker. “Someone trying to ring the bell,” she said. “That bell needs seeing to,” and she left the room.
Mary followed her, for the weak twanging had almost sounded like a cry for help, and together she and Mrs. Baker dragged the screeching garden door back over the paving stones. Outside on the steps stood the woman whom she had seen coming out of the post office yesterday. She was dressed in the same clothes and carried a very large basket in which reposed a very small pot of blackberry jelly, and she was trembling so violently that the pot rattled in the basket. “It’s Miss Anderson from the vicarage, come to see you,” said Mrs. Baker in encouraging tones, adding very low for Mary’s private enlightenment, “Poor dear.”
“Do please come in,” said Mary. She had just been thinking of Cousin Mary, and now for a strange moment this woman seemed to be her. Yet there was not the slightest resemblance. She took her visitor’s arm and they walked together up the paved path. At the front door Jean recoiled, as though at the mouth of the pit, and Mrs. Baker made encouraging noises behind her. “It is dark,” said Mary, “but it’s light in the parlor, and I’ve a fire there.” She thought briefly that it had never occurred to her to call the paneled room the drawing room or the sitting room. It was the parlor and nothing else.
She installed Jean by the fire in one of the little gilt chairs, mentally adding two small armchairs of suitable period and the repairing of the doorbell to her list of priorities, and Mrs. Baker fetched fresh tea. This seemed to revive Jean, though she had to hold her cup with both hands, and presently, while Mary talked about the beauty of Appleshaw, she set her cup down and removed her dark glasses. She sat facing the light and Mary could see her face, the most vulnerable face she had ever seen, with a taut look of suffering about the mouth. The eyes, blue and beautiful, were not the eyes of the woman whom Jean appeared to be, and looking into them Mary was aware of intelligence and courage. She realized with deep respect that this woman had always done what she had to do and faced what she had to face. If many of her fears and burdens would have seemed unreal to another woman, there was nothing unreal about her courage. The dark glasses, Mary felt, were more of a psychological protection than a physical one. The lack of coordination between what she was in herself, and the jarred mechanism of body and nerves, had so deeply shamed her that she must hide. But with Mary she had taken her glasses off. Had she known that she had done it? Mary was afraid to speak lest she frighten them on again.
“My brother,” said Jean, “wanted me to bid you welcome. He’s the Vicar here, you know. He’ll be coming to see you soon. He wanted to know if there’s anything we can do.” Her face was suffused with crimson but she had got it out.
“That’s kind of you,” said Mary, “but I’m settling down well and loving this house.”
“Loving it?” whispered Jean.
“Did you know my cousin Miss Lindsay?” asked Mary, and was instantly aware that she had said the wrong thing, for Jean had begun to tremble again and was groping for her glasses. She was terrified of Cousin Mary, she thought, and she’s still terrified of the house. “Let’s go out into the garden,” she said. “We can go out through the conservatory. We won’t have to go back to the hall. The window opens almost down to the floor. Look, I’ll help you.”
But Jean resisted her helping hand for a moment while she groped in the basket for the pot of blackberry jelly. “For you,” she said, holding it out. “I made it myself. Gladys helped me.”
“Now I really feel I’ve come to live in the country,” said Mary gratefully, as she put it on the mantelpiece. “There are trees and birds in London but not blackberries. I can’t wait for the autumn in Appleshaw. Blackberries and the smell of bonfires, and the cherry trees scarlet along the edge of the woods.”
“No, no!” cried Jean. “You must not hurry like that. I mean, it’s spring. Each year, I mean—I want—but I can’t do it!” She ended on a note of despair.
“You mean each year not to let the spring go racing by while you think of something else. You form your resolution and having formed it you look up and it’s summer.”
Jean nodded in astonishment and relief, as Mary helped her through the window. Mary had expressed it for her and the relief was physical as well as mental.
“The vine grows up through the floor!” cried Mary. This was the first time she had been in the conservatory. The trunk of the old vine grew straight up through the center of the tessellated pavement of dim blue and green and spread out like an umbrella beneath the low domed glass roof. There was nothing else in the conservatory, though a shelf ran around it, waiting for flowers. Scented geraniums, thought Mary, and chrysanthemums in the winter.
The conservatory door was open and they passed out into the garden, breathless for a moment while the scents and sounds of spring broke over their heads like a wave. Jean was visited by one of her rare moments of happiness, one of those moments when the goodness of God was so real to her that it was like a taste and scent; the rough strong taste of honey in the comb and the scent of water. Her thoughts of God had a homeliness that at times seemed shocking, in spite of their power, which could rescue her from terror or evil with an ease that astonished her. This morning, for instance, putting on her outdoor shoes in her bedroom to call on the new Miss Lindsay, terror had come upon her. The dread of meeting someone who did not know about her was one of her worst fears. They would try to talk to her, and she would not know what they were talking about, or if she did know, and she knew more often than people realized, and the answers were lucid in her mind, she would not be able to find the words to give them form. She would see the surprise in the face of the newcomer, the embarrassment, and then the relief with which he effected his escape. And to that fear had been added her terror of The Laurels, and the thing that had happened to her there. She had fumbled helplessly with the knotted laces of her shoes and got in a panic because she could not tie them. Because of course she had known she must go. She always did the thing because in obedience lay the integrity that God asked of her. If anyone had asked her what she meant by integrity she would not have been able to tell them but she had seen it once like a picture in her mind, a root going down into the earth and drinking deeply there. No one was really alive without that root. And meanwhile she had not been able to get her shoes laced. She had stopped struggling, her hands sticky with fear and anxiety, and taking her shoes right off had turned back with blind trust to the beginning again, to the beginning of the action of obedience that always had a wholesome sweetness in it, though it was hard, a foretaste of the end with its humble thankfulness. And then, just as she had bent to pick up her left shoe, it had happened, and she had sat with the shoe in her hand and laughed. Just the sense of her own ridiculous predicament, only she had not been laughing alone. He had laughed with her. A
fter that the knots had come out of the laces quite easily, she had put on her hat and gone. The fear had gone with her, of course, but it had become bearable. And now look how easy it had all been and how He had helped her.
Mary’s next remark was another mistake. “Isn’t that a lovely willow tree?” she said. “Like a waterfall.”
“There’s someone inside it!” gasped Jean, trembling with a new terror.
“Just a bird,” said Mary, and stretched out a hand to pull aside the green-gold curtain and show it was all right. But her hand dropped again. Ridiculous ideas are catching and she too now had the feeling that there was someone there, someone hostile to them. They would go and look at the beautiful boy in the pond, she thought, but when she turned and glanced toward him some trick of the sunlight, rippling down his smooth limbs, caused the illusion that he moved. “Come and see the rose garden,” she said hastily. The rose garden, basking in warmth, was normal enough, but the curtain of wistaria hid the path beyond and anyone could have been there, pacing up and down, shabby silk skirts dragging on the paving stones, and Mary had to acknowledge that the atmosphere of her home, at present at any rate, was undeniably queer. She did not resist Jean’s edging movement around the roses, her quick anguished glance toward the garden door. Indeed with her hand within her arm she helped her there.
The Scent of Water Page 6