Cold Pastoral

by Margaret Duley

  “I think she’s very old,” said Felice thoughtfully. “Dave, if she’s able to go with it, as she told the boy, she’ll save herself many stiff necks looking backwards.”

  David looked at his wife.

  “Yes, Felice. We’ve never seen Mary. She comes of people who have lived generations in a predatory fight with nature. People who sail schooners to Labrador, and take the hazard of the seasons. She’s as tough as a young Eskimo. They can watch the Northern Lights guiding their dead, and wake up and shoot their caribou. Poetry and predacity!”

  “Poor Tim,” murmured Felice.

  “Poor young devil! He had spirit, and he used some of his last breath to tell Philip what he thought of him…. Well, they had enchantment, and that’s something, my dear….” David sat on, staring in the fire, quoting gloomily to himself: “Music, moody food, for us that trade in love!” Before his wife could speak he went on, “Do you think she’ll wear sackcloth, and walk softly for her Tim?”

  “I think she’ll be as good as gold, and I’m keeping her here, Dave, where she can talk herself out.”

  David smiled at his wife, knowing her faith in the liberation of psychic poison.

  “Hannah is a problem!”

  “But not tonight, dear,”said Felice firmly. “Order flowers for Tim, something from us and something tremendous from Mary. It will please the mother. Auntie Minnie will probably broadcast everything, but we can’t help that.”

  “No, we can’t help that. Let’s go to bed, and don’t worry, Felice, if you wake up and find Mary walking over the hills. It’s her way, and she’ll come back. Quite definitely do not encourage the university. It’s another cloister....”

  “I won’t,” said Felice “I’ll give her—people!”

  TWENTY

  “CHANGE, THE STRONGEST SON OF LIFE.”

  In the empty silence of the place, she was sorting the accumulation of five years. The trees shut out the sun, but the pale limed oak gave back gleams of sunshine-yellow. Already the room looked neglected. Hannah had not included it in her routine.

  The melancholy of her task and the association of objects depressed her mind in the channels of the past. The mater seemed to be there, giving her this and that. She ached for the modulated direction that was gone, and the something shattered from life. The white ship stood where her eyes could see it. Tim was in her heart, but he was not in the garden where she could see his face. Before she left she was going to climb the beech tree and sit in the bowl of green leaves. The tacks would be there where he hung things up, and the shelf where he rested his books. Tim’s note was in everything, and now she knew it held a timbre never quite joyous, like one who drooped in the shadow of black sails.

  Black sails! Shocked to sudden stillness, she knew her privacy had been invaded even before she smelt mildew. The room had grown stuffy, without wind or air.

  “I suppose being the young, you blame the old?”

  From a bottom drawer of the kneehole dressing-table, she looked up. Hannah was dreadful to see, with a hag-ridden face and harsh voice. Hands held on to each other, as if to still their own jitters. The pad of the pompadour was out, coarse with sheep’s wool, but her voice continued, implacable in judgment:

  “Nothing to say, I suppose, for all the years of deceit? Now that the reaping has come you haven’t done a thing! All you can do is to sit there with your white face that’s nothing but a lie to what you are.”

  Mary Immaculate swayed to her feet with a brevity of motion. She needed to stand to face Hannah, and look down on something that must be evicted at once.

  “Haven’t I known about you since the first day you stopped your practice? And I waited, so that my dead mistress wouldn’t know the thing she took into her house.”

  Mary Immaculate looked at the white ship, willing herself to silence. Like Kundry, bound to laughter, Hannah seemed bound to speech.

  “What I did, I did for the best, so that my foolish young men should know the truth. ’Twas better for Mr. Philip to know your lightness—”

  “Stop!” said the girl like a jet of anger. “Get out of my room. You and I have nothing to say to each other. There are some things that always go apart, like winds. West and east, and north and south. Some mix and blow together, but nobody ever heard of an east-west wind, or a north-south wind.”

  “Nor I, myself,” said the implacable old voice. “And I’m not taken in by your talk. Mr. David is lost to sense! Haven’t I heard the two of them talking, since he turned you out? Identification with nature, indeed! So it is, but not nature as they see it.”

  The girl was trembling, from tooth to toenail. Unaccustomed to violence she did not know how to contain it. She felt pregnant with something she had to eject at the old woman. When she was almost exhausted with struggle, she heard a cool voice in the centre of her head, “Don’t mind old witchface, Gretel, don’t mind.” Serenity rippled down her body from Tim, like a cruciform in her heart. In a light faraway voice she spoke to Hannah:

  “Tim died, you know, Hannah, because of your evil thoughts; but boys like Tim don’t die. They live on in the people who love them. I’ll always be rich with Tim. Just then he told me not to mind you, and I don’t any more. He spoke to me, but you couldn’t hear, because you’ve never put your ear to the ground. It’s a long time since you were young, but perhaps you remember Hansel and Gretel, and the old witch with her hocus-pocus? You tried to disenchant Tim and me, but we’re not disenchanted. Somewhere, this minute, Tim must be playing the Crust Waltz.” She held up her hand with a compelling gesture, “Listen, Hannah, you must be able to hear it!”

  The old woman was shaken. As the light voice continued it returned to the puckishness of childhood. Hannah was too closely allied with make-believe to let her be liberated too soon.

  “Do you know, Hannah,” she whispered, “what happened to the old witch when she had taken the children? She got baked in her own oven—and the children came back! Yes, Hannah, the children came back, and the oven blew wide open, and there was the witch, baked to a great ginger-bread.”

  A sudden thought turned her voice to bitter ice, cruel in implication.

  “Humperdinck must have been a Catholic, Hannah, when he made the oven for the old hag, and the oven in real life is Hell—Hell—”

  “Stop!” said Hannah, putting up her hands, as if the girl was making a physical assault. “Don’t curse me. I’m old—”

  “Yes, but we were young, Hannah,” she whispered with sudden dreariness. Shivering had come back, crumpling the sword-blade straightness of her body. With the need for support she dropped on the bed.

  “Please go,” she asked dismissingly.

  In the sight of outward capitulation, the old woman mustered to a last retort.

  “It’s you who’s going,” she said scornfully, “and the Place will come back to its own. As for me, I’ve got a right here as long as I live—”

  “By my wish and discretion,” said a deadly quiet voice.

  Philip stood in the doorway, and the change in him made the girl fix wide eyes on his face. Outwardly composed, he was stark as an etching.

  “Philip, you look very ill,” she said spontaneously.

  “Why shouldn’t he look ill?” asked Hannah with harsh accusation. “Who’s fault is that?”

  “Get out, Hannah, get out! Didn’t I tell you, order you, not to disturb Miss Mary’s packing?”

  “You did, Mr. Philip,” was the defiant answer, “but it would be strange if I heeded a child whom I raised from its first breath of life. My orders came from her, and glad I am that she’s not here—”

  “Stop!” said Philip, like the crack of a whip. “I know now you didn’t dare speak of Miss Mary while Mater was alive. You know enough about us to realize she would have seen the truth instantly. You also knew you could poison my mind, knowing how I would act.”

  His laugh was a bitter bark.

  “Yes, Mr. Philip,” agreed the old woman, almost complacently. “You could always be d
epended on to lose your temper. You were a jealous boy—”

  “Oh, stop, Hannah!” said the girl, seeing the goaded line of Philip’s jaw.

  “Get out,” he said quietly, advancing until she circled backwards and out the door.

  “Yes, I’ll go,” she said, holding up her hands in front of her face. “My fingers have worked to the bone for you, and now you turn on my grey hairs—”

  A vehement bang of the door shut out the rest. Philip was inside with Mary Immaculate, while a dead boy stood between them.

  “I’m sorry about Hannah,’’ was all that he said.

  She straightened, bracing herself for what was to come. It was not necessary to stand to face Philip. He was afraid of her, tormented by self-blame, looking nailed against the door, in black-and-white.

  “It’s all right,” she said quietly. “She’s never been any different, only just then it mattered terribly.”

  “Yes,” he said inadequately. “Mary, why didn’t you tell us about Hannah?”

  The question sounded unreasonable, in view of her greater silence. She answered as best she could.

  “Everything was so wonderful when I came. Wouldn’t it have been churlish to complain about a woman you had known all your lives?” She continued more slowly: “You wonder, Philip, how I could have seen Tim so often without your knowledge? I also wonder how you failed to notice Hannah’s hate of me?”

  His answer made a baffled protest against the past.

  “I thought we were guarding you so well. Did Mater know about Hannah?”

  She shook her head. “No, we were always friendly in front of her. She was devoted to Mater. You have to admit that. Philip—”

  “Yes,” he answered unhappily.

  “Thank you for what you said to Hannah about Mater understanding—”

  “Don’t, don’t, my dear,’’ he entreated in a wrung voice. “Mary, that boy, that boy…”

  In his effort for control he seemed to hit his head against the door. She grabbed her lower lip to stop its trembling. Her eyes felt as heavy as Tim’s, but as yet she had not shed a single tear. Her unyouthful control made him fling himself across the room.

  “Mary,’’ he asked with the candour of desperation, “what have I done to you? I who wanted to guard you and give you the best. God,” he ejaculated, dropping on his knees and wrapping his arms round her waist, “it’s torture, you and that boy, and the thought of Mater shaking her dear head at me.” His black head moving on her lap, worried the silk of her summer dress. Over him she felt old, with the burden of women’s effect on men. She learned that their needs were important, and she did her best to meet them. There was no protest in her body, towards his desperate grip round her waist.

  “Philip, you musn’t agonize over Tim. We killed him between us. His Uncle for forcing him to mining, Hannah for insulting his decency, I for leaving him when I should have stayed, and he, poor Tim, helped, too, by not speaking up and saying we weren’t lovers as Hannah meant.”

  “That is also my responsibility, Mary. Tim can’t be blamed for that—”

  “It’s also Tim’s,” she said firmly. “He knew it, himself, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, but it doesn’t help me, Mary. I can’t live with the thought of his murder.”

  “No,” she protested wildly. “Tim isn’t murdered! That’s a sin crying to high Heaven for vengeance. Don’t, don’t—oh, Philip, it’s all mixed up. Even the dark night was in it, and the sloven without a light. David laughs at my acceptance of some tenets of the Church, but if we didn’t accept, we’d go crazy wondering. I have to be like that, and when Mater died you talked about pressing on. Remember, ‘Console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover’. You must, you must! Felice has been to see Tim’s mother, and she’s awfully resigned. She goes to his grave and feels she’s got him, like she had when he was a baby. It’s all queer and muddled, but all you can do for me, Philip, is to let me go with Felice. I must—I don’t need to go to Tim’s grave to be with him. He’s part of me.”

  “Mary, I could manage to go on and let you go, if I could get back your trust, and feel that you would come to me as a friend. David has been showing me myself in a most inhuman light, but now—”

  “Philip,” she interrupted, “the first week I was at the Place, Mater said something to me that I’ve always remembered: ‘It’s disgraceful to stumble against the same stone twice.’ Couldn’t we try…”

  Her tone was desperate, exhausted. He sat up on the bed beside her, with sudden decision.

  “Mary,” he said, pulling a letter from his pocket, “your own mother knew about it. Dave has written to her.”

  She gave a sudden dry sob. “Mom and Tim could dream, when I knew nothing. I’m no good, Philip.”

  “Hush,” he said, soothingly, “read her letter.”

  Dear Sir,

  I know my child has been lying out again without a roof. The only time I didn’t know about her was the day she ran off. This time I saw her flying by the sea, while a wave tried to break over her head. It was snowing, and the flakes were black. As they touched her dress she kept trying to brush them off. Then there was people talking and shouting and blood-spots falling on the water. I’ve dreamt about her since, sir, and she’s always washing herself as if she was dirty. I’m anxious, and too sick to come and see for myself. My legs are swelled something awful. Put your finger in them and there’s a dent that don’t come out ...

  Josephine’s kitchen replaced the luxurious bedroom.

  “Philip,” she asked irrelevantly, “is Mom going to die? What would legs like that mean?”

  “It sounds like oedema, Mary, swollen tissue from other conditions.”

  “Is it serious?”

  “It can be, but your mother will never give up. If I sent for her to come in for treatment, she would refuse.”

  “I know,” said the girl, seeing the multiple tasks of Josephine’s lot. The Fitz Henrys had improved it, but daily drudgery still went on.

  “There’s bound to be a third death,’’ she said fatefully.

  Philip opened his mouth and then closed it at once. So strong is habit that he was about to reprove her for superstition. The girl saw it at once, and something of a smile came into her eyes.

  “We’ll always be ourselves, Philip. We are as God made us.”

  “And often a great deal worse,’’ said David cheerily from the door. He had entered without their knowledge, seeming restored to joy by the sight of them sitting side by side on a bed. Even if they had been different, David would have seen no awkwardness in the situation. There did not seem to be any emotions he could not cope with.

  “Well,’’ he said, “you’ve read your mother’s letter, Mary?” He tilted the girl’s chin and examined her face. “Darling, I’m always playing the woman with my eyes just to put you to shame. You look as if a good old-fashioned cry would do you good.”

  “I cried once, David,” she said gravely, “and Tim was frightened to death.”

  The eyes of the brothers met. The speech was small, but significant. It was the first time since Tim’s death that she had mentioned him naturally.

  “Your boat goes tomorrow afternoon, Mary. Are you packed? Come and have a drink, Phil, and let her get on with it.”

  The understanding of David. He had cleared Philip out, leaving her free to go to the mater’s bedroom, and out to the garden to say good-bye.

  While the ship was sorting visitors and passengers they stayed in their cabin. Philip blocked the door to any who might have entered to wish them God-speed. Felice was sailing without intimation to any of her friends.

  In a dark redingote coat over a print dress Mary Immaculate looked very tall. A hat revealed all of her hair, but shaded her eyes. Disposed on the two small beds lay all the creature comforts the mind could enumerate. Overhead and from the alleyway came sounds of feet, and voices keyed to a pitch of farewell. Setting out would have been stupendous without the weight of reason. Sitting on one of the beds, Dav
id talked on, maintaining an easy tempo, as if they might be going away for the week-end. Philip leaned against the door in black silence.

  “All visitors ashore! All visitors ashore!”

  A monotonous voice reiterated the one sentence all down the alleyway. The girl laced her fingers together, drawing in her breath.

  “Well, darling,” said David, taking her in his arms. “It’s just au revoir. You do the sights, and when I come I’ll introduce you to the fleshpots.”

  Without a word she put her arms round him, giving him little appreciative pats on his back. Then David turned to his wife, very thoughtfully turning his back on her farewell to Philip. He came forward, very set, letting her make the first move. Mary Immaculate had made the discovery that supreme naturalness came when the mind was terribly occupied with big adventures. She put an arm round his shoulder, raising her face. “It’s good-bye for a while, Philip.”

  Incapable of speech, he crushed her in arms, going frantic with imminent loss. She pressed her face against his, whispering, “Thank you for letting me go.” Then he relaxed, holding her lightly. He seemed to forget himself and speak naturally.

  “Mary, if you could remember what I asked, that you’ll come to me, with anything and everything? Believe me, dear, Mater’s little motto…”

  She gave him a pat, with something maternal in it.

  “Don’t worry, Philip. It’s the good things I remember. Please, Philip, don’t leave Rufus to Hannah. See that he gets his liver.”

  David and Felice laughed out loud. It was so relieving to think of Rufus.

  “I’ll ring the butcher myself,” David said with a grin. “Come, Phil, let’s go.”

  Laying his hand lightly on his brother’s arm, he drew him out. They were left alone with the sounds of a ship. Without a word Felice started to sort the packages on the beds, while the girl leaned her head against the port-hole, seeing the arms of the harbour, parted at the wrists to form an entrance to the sea. She was going to England! She, Mary Keilly, who had become Mary Fitz Henry, and Mary Vincent for about six hours.