By the time they were on the open moor, the sky in the east was warm and flushed with day. They stopped at the highest point, to breathe the horses, and Mary craned out of the window to look back over the way they had come. Danesacre was a whisper of houses in the mouth of the valley. The harbour was invisible, and a haze of smoke hid all but the topmost roofs below the church. The floor of the sea was splashed with silver in pools and rings of light, shifting and flashing in the early sun. Mary jumped out of the carriage and stood a moment on the fine short turf at the roadside. The moor wind was cold on her cheeks. It looked warmer down in the valley. Her intent gaze followed it until its green slopes and dark patches of wood were lost in the shadows of the hills. Charlotte called her sharply to get in, and reluctantly, filled with a childish sense of irrevocable loss, she climbed back into the carriage. They set off again on the twenty-mile drive to the town where they intended to take train for London.
Charlotte talked in a sleepy fashion as the carriage crossed the moors and came down into the Vale of Pickering. She gave Mary fragments of her life, beginning with Mary’s own birth.
“You were all but born in a carriage, Mary. We were driving home and we had to stop at a cottage. Cottage it was called, but it was more like a hovel. You can’t imagine how squalid it was. Your father was vexed at it happening like that, as if I should have chosen to lie up in such a place. But he was inconsiderate even in those days, and he got worse as you got older. Until I couldn’t bear it any longer, and I went away to London. I hated leaving you, Mary. You were such a round soft little thing then. You’ve got positively bony. I can’t think what that woman has been feeding you on. I used to cry sometimes when I thought of you. Particularly at night. If I was alone.” She broke off, and Mary, suddenly ashamed because she had been thinking that it was just like Charlotte to have her baby in the most inconvenient and untidy manner possible, got on to Charlotte’s knee and kissed her like the loving little girl she was when she was not a disillusioned and experienced woman. The experienced woman vanished completely in the little girl. Mary lay in Charlotte’s arms while Charlotte petted her and stroked her, and mother and daughter clung together, closer in mind and body than they had been since Charlotte’s return. When they reached the town, Mary stood guard over Charlotte’s box and her own bundle while Charlotte got the tickets and asked agitated questions of all the officials in sight, and of one gentleman who was not an official, but who kindly answered Charlotte’s questions and helped her and Mary into the train, handing up Mary’s bundle with a polite smile. Mary eyed the bundle distrustfully. It was very small, and Mary considered that either her mother had not packed her new frock or it was being lamentably crushed. Both prospects were sufficiently gloomy, but she forgot, in the excitement of sitting in a train for the first time in her life, to question Charlotte about it.
When they reached London she was very tired, and dozed all the way in the cab that took them to Islington and Miss Short’s house. She was dimly conscious that the cab was climbing what seemed an endless hill, after hours of which the cab stopped and she was lifted down and carried into a small warm room, very full of furniture, by a lady who afterwards ran round the room, clucking and upsetting things as she went. She was given a bowl of bread and milk, and in spite of every effort to keep awake, fell forward into it and was removed, to the accompaniment of a frenzied clucking, into a candle-lit bedroom, where she was undressed, and it was discovered that Charlotte had forgotten to pack any of her nightclothes. There was a good deal of laughter over this, which Mary thought ill-occasioned, and she was rolled in a garment belonging to Miss Short, and put to bed with an admonition to keep over against the wall. She fell asleep at once, with one despairing glance at a mass of crumpled silk, lying under a chair where it had fallen, that she thought must be her best frock.
When she woke up the sun was shining and Charlotte was standing in front of the glass coiling her hair. Mary gazed sleepily for some moments at her mother’s big white arms and smooth shoulders. Then, remembering her frock, she sat up in bed and looked round for it. There it was, still lying on the floor. But it was not her best frock. It was an old one, hopelessly too small and old-fashioned for her to wear. Charlotte laughed, but seeing how chagrined the little girl was, she came and sat down on the bed beside her, and promised her any number of new frocks.
“London frocks, Mary. Real frocks. I’ll take you out after breakfast to the shops. Thank heaven I’ve got some money now and needn’t go to Madame Rose, with her sickening Requests for Immediate Payment and tossing her head and her airs. As if I hadn’t bought more frocks from her in a month than most of her customers do in a year.”
It occurred to Mary that it might be the very number of the frocks bought that caused Madame Rose to toss her head, and she hoped the lady would now be paid off and not have to go on indulging in such a tiresome exercise. She said as much, and Charlotte laughed and told her not to talk like Mark Henry. “What’s the sense in paying old bills when you’ve got ready money to spend?” she asked. “Most of the things are worn out, and you’d be no better off when you had paid for them.”
Hopelessly confused in her mind by this aspect of finance, Mary followed her mother downstairs to the little sitting-room, which in the daylight seemed even fuller of furniture than the night before. Moving about in it was a tortuous edgewise process, in which at one point Mary was wedged between two pieces that overhung her like the Sym-plegades. The room looked out on to a garden and a cherry-tree covered with immature cherries.
“You’re looking at my tree,” Miss Short said in her ear. “It’s a lovely tree. I brought the slip from my dear father’s place in Kent, when he died, and it was found that the house and the grounds and all his money had to be given to a lot of men who came down from London and made themselves a great nuisance, going round poking the chairs and even lifting the covers, my dear, to look underneath. Most indelicate, I thought, and goodness knows what they expected to find there but Legs. I became quite nervous about my own, if you understand me. They were going to take everything. However, it seemed there was something they couldn’t touch, which annoyed them all very much, though how they could reconcile it with their Christian principles to want to rob a poor unmarried lady of her money, I don’t know. I spoke to one of them about it and he said: ‘Principles! If I’d even had the interest I wouldn’t feel so bad about it, never mind the principle!’ Well, I don’t understand it, my dear. It was my father’s money, and it seems to me unjust that it should be taken from me to give to a lot of men I’d never seen before. That is, all of it but a little in the Funds, as they say, which is paid me twice a year by a Person with very gentlemanly whiskers, and it’s not that I grudge your mother any of it, but I can’t help wishing she would show a little consideration for me and not speak so brusquely when I ask her about getting some of it back. She ought to remember I’m alone in the world except for Paul, and he’s more of a companion than a help, as you might say. But it’s got nothing to do with you, my dear, and I’m sure I’m very glad to have you. One mouth doesn’t make much difference, does it? Have you a very large appetite, I wonder? Some children have, of course. But there, never mind, let’s talk about my nice tree instead. I took the slip myself and hid it under my cloak, because there’s no knowing what these men would have done if they’d seen me making off with a piece of what they said was their property. I felt almost as if I were stealing, but you couldn’t call it stealing, to take a bit of our own trees, could you?”
Mary said she was sure it was not stealing, and, reassured, Miss Short allowed herself to display a little triumph at the thought of how cleverly she had outwitted the men, getting away with a slip of a valuable tree, and not letting go of it until she had planted it in the garden there, which she did before as much as looking round the house to see whether the sitting-room was big enough to hold her chiffonier and the mahogany pedestal table Mary could examine after breakfast when the cloth was off.
Charlotte c
ame in at that moment and they sat down to breakfast, Miss Short looking at Mary with an odd air of guilt and appeal, to which Mary responded with a friendly smile. Mary felt a certain delicacy about eating, and in spite of being hungry ate as sparingly as possible. She was wondering whether she could speak to her mother about paying Miss Short some of the money she owed her. In the meantime she resolved to eat only just enough to keep alive. Charlotte noticed nothing, but talked to Mary with vivacious delight, of London and shopping and fireworks and riding in the Park.
Left alone while Charlotte went up to dress, Mary tried to arrange her ideas about London, but got them hopelessly mixed and gave up the attempt. She examined the pedestal of the table and found it wreathed with an engaging series of imps and devils, boldly carved and lustrous with much polishing. She speculated on the amount of labour it must take to get the dust out of all those dimpled cheeks and creased limbs. After that she set out to explore the house, and discovered that Paul was a large cat, with the most monumentally contemptuous face cat ever had. Mary tried to stroke him but he turned his back on the little girl and disappeared down the basement stairs. She was looking after him rather forlornly when Charlotte came down, dressed for the street, and they went out. Just as they emerged from the narrow street, Mary spelling out the name, Lincthorn Road, as they went along, Miss Short came running after them. She was out of breath and her head streamed with agitated wisps of hair. She carried a little bag of asafoetida, which she insisted on hanging round Mary’s neck as a protection against cholera. “The milkman says there are two cases in City Road,” she panted. “All black and bursting. It’s against nature. You must wear this day and night, my dear. Never mind what anyone says.”
Holding tightly to her mother’s hand, Mary set off down the stepped terrace that stretched from the Angel as far as she could see. When they had gone fifty yards, she looked back. Miss Short was still standing at the corner of Lincthorn Road, and she began to make violent gestures with her arms, indicative apparently of a cholera patient in the throes. Abashed, Mary looked hastily away again, hoping that no one had observed her connection with this pantomime.
They came back to Lincthorn Road in the late afternoon, with two new dresses for Mary, and various purchases of her mother’s following by messenger. Miss Short was presented with an inlaid work-box. She seemed about to say something, but changed her mind, thanked Charlotte, and put the box away, clucking softly like a meditative hen.
Mary was tired, and dazed with impressions of streets, hurrying crowds, and traffic. She had enjoyed the Park, envying the young ladies on horseback, in bewitching toppers and voluminous skirts. A gentleman had greeted Charlotte, who smiled at him in the ingratiating way Mary had hated when Mark Henry’s manager was the object of her mother’s wiles. She found that she hated it as much now, and drew back when the gentleman put a finger under her chin. As he was going he said: “Who likes sugar-plums?” and balanced a coin on his finger.
“I don’t know,” Mary said coldly, “I don’t.”
He was a little taken aback, and Charlotte scolded her for her want of manners. “They’ve let you grow into a complete bumpkin,” she lamented. Mary felt a sudden twinge of longing for Mark Henry’s solid presence. She would not entertain it, and hardened her heart against her mother.
It seemed that Mary was not going to bed. She was going to dress herself in one of the new frocks and accompany her mother and Miss Short to a fancy-dress ball at Cremorne. Mary hoped it was not somewhere out of England and was relieved to find they were going in a cab. Miss Short did not want to go. She came downstairs dressed in a pink silk frock, in which she looked more distracted than ever, and remonstrated with Charlotte all the way to Chelsea.
“You don’t want me to come with you, Lottie. You only want someone to hold you down when you begin to go off, like a balloon, in one of your wild fits; you know you do?”
“Hold your tongue, you silly old grasshopper,” Charlotte said. She was excited, and laughed so loudly that the driver begged her not to do it again. He said his horse had been at the battle of Waterloo and had nervous fits when anything reminded him of it.
“You know you’re going to enjoy yourself,” Charlotte told her. “And so is Mary, aren’t you, darling?”
Mary said: “I hope so,” but she was yawning and Charlotte cried: “What a pair of owls! I wish I’d left you both at home.”
The fireworks in the gardens took Mary’s breath away. She stood gaping at them until the last splendid conflagration had died to a sizzling star, and turned to find the tall gentleman of Rotten Row at their elbow.
“Here’s the little lady with the salted tongue,” he said to Mary. “I suppose you’re all prepared to dance. Come along now, and I’ll find you seats before I borrow your mother for a waltz or two.
Mary frowned, and tugged so hard on Miss Short’s hand that the bewildered lady excused herself from accompanying Charlotte and Charlotte’s friend to the ballroom. She said she would follow later with Mary, but when she did, they were stopped at the door by a man who announced that the tickets were ten shillings, five shillings to those in fancy-dress.
“Five shillings for the little girl,” he said, “although she’s not dressed. Ten to you, madam.”
Miss Short gasped, and rose to the situation like a game-cock.
“But I am in fancy-dress,” she declared, feverishly unbuttoning her coat. “I’m a Pink.” She wrote her name with trembling fingers, paid over half a sovereign, and the door curtain was lifted for her to pass through.
“Miss Short. A Pink,” the doorkeeper bawled, and with Mary at her heels, Miss Short sailed through. The dozen people nearest the door began to laugh, and Miss Short dragged Mary round the walls of the room until they found a comparatively secluded corner at the entrance to a plant house, which’was very dark. Miss Short refused to explore it, on the ground that her father’s only brother had been found dead in a similar place, with his feet sticking up through an ornamental shrub and his watch-chain hanging on one of the branches. “Like a Christmas tree, my dear. Apoplexy following on Defalcation, they said.”
Miss Short sat down on the edge of a chair and looked nervously round, as if she expected to see the corpse of a defaulting gentleman behind her now.
“I don’t see Charlotte anywhere,” she complained to Mary. “You know, my dear, Charlotte’s my oldest friend, but I don’t feel that I’m being well treated. It’s a very pretty box, I know, but fifty pounds is fifty pounds, and I would like just a little of it. Do you think you could see about my getting part? I might do such a lot of things with it. I might go to Paris for a holiday to stay in my old school. Do you believe, my dear, that in our hearts we have an awareness of God at all times and in all situations? That is what the sisters taught us but I had a dreadful experience on the French train the last time I went to see them and when I tried to pray it was as if devils were laughing in my head and the power and the glory belong to the Evil One. There was a most inconvenient sort of lavatory at the end of the train and I went there, just as we seemed to be coming into Paris, to tidy myself. The door stuck and I couldn’t get out. I was paralysed. It seemed indelicate to knock, and someone began to bang on the door from the outside, most impatient, and shouting in French. I didn’t answer him, of course, and he went on until the train stopped and I saw we’d reached Paris. I didn’t know what to do then. I knocked, and no one heard me through the noise they were making getting off the train. There was only one little window in the place, high up on the wall on the side away from the platform. I was trying to crane my neck out of this when a pair of legs came down the side of the train from the roof, and I thought: An angel sent. I grabbed at them. There was a yell and the man slid down and bumped on the ground. Not an angel after all. He got up and put his face to the window, and when he saw me he behaved like a maniac. You would have thought I’d bitten his legs, instead of only giving them a little tug. I said: ’I can’t get out.’ I couldn’t make him understand, but a
fter a while he went away and brought some sort of officials and they broke in the door. My dear, you can imagine what I felt like. However, I straightened my hat in front of them all and walked out saying: ’I’m English. I wanted to wash my hands. I’m English.’ My brother was there to meet me and he went off in fits of laughter. I saw nothing very funny in it. Do you think it was funny?”
“I think it was perfectly dreadful,” Mary assured her, shocked by the recital. She caught sight of Charlotte, on the arm of the tall gentleman. They seemed to be making their way towards Mary and Miss Short, but they vanished, and though Mary looked all round, she could not see them. She was very tired, and her head was nodding forward when she heard Charlotte’s voice, coming apparently out of the wall at their back. She turned round in a fright. Miss Short seized her arm.
“They’re in there, my dear,” she whispered, jerking her head towards the plant house. “What do you think we’d better do?”
Mary stared helplessly at Miss Short’s twitching face. Really, she thought fretfully, the way Miss Short put everything on her was too bad. She did not know what to do, and sat still. Charlotte’s voice sounded strange.
The Lovely Ship Page 4