by Ursula Bloom
‘Are there so many?’ asked Mr. Nason unguardedly.
‘Oh no,’ Mamma went on in triumph, ‘only just all the Carews. They came to see us often. We visited. They were all clergymen. Mrs. Carew was a charming woman. George was the only child.’
What a triumph for Mamma! She could impress upon Mr. Nason that she and the Carews had visited! What a thrill of bliss!
‘I remember George,’ said Mary, ‘we met at parties. He wore a plaid sash. Perhaps,’ she added, ‘he doesn’t wear that now.’
Everybody looked annoyed at Mary. She had been born with a sense of humour, and it was certainly not inherited from Mamma. She wished that she could have remembered poor Papa better, because she always had an idea that they had been of an ilk.
‘He is a very cultured young man,’ said Mr. Nason impressively; ‘he has only been recently ordained.’
‘That’s right,’ said Mary, ‘he is three years older than I am. I wonder why he went into the Church?’
‘It was in the family.’ Mamma was now drawing upon her imagination somewhat largely. ‘Mrs. Carew told me she always felt George would. She confided a lot in me. We were great friends. You have heard me speak of her?’ she challenged Mr. Jones. He was taken unawares, and, before he had time to pull himself together, blurted out the horrid truth that he had never heard of the lady until this moment. Mamma was mortified and she made a ghastly effort to smile.
Mr. Nason, having demolished the tea, made his adieux on the plea that he had several other calls upon his list. It took him so long tramping from house to house. The moment he had gone, Mamma let fly.
‘There now,’ said Mamma, ‘to think that horrid George Carew is coming here! As if life isn’t hard enough as it is, without people pushing their way in like that. You remember him, Mary, a nasty little child?’
‘I do remember him,’ Mary answered. She did. A little fat boy who had been superior over the tea, who had treated her as a mere babe because of their slight disparity in years.
‘So trying,’ Mamma went on. ‘Now he’ll tell everybody about poor Papa.’
‘But why not?’ Mr. Jones ventured his first remark, and of course it was the wrong one.
‘Why not? Good heavens, you’ll drive me mad with your ridiculous questions! Why not, indeed? That’s why I left Lynch. When I married you I thought we’d start again, away from that horrid trade. How can you be so stupid! No wonder I get to know no one, with the way you go on. I’m sure if I didn’t know you were meant to be somebody I should take you for a nobody.’
‘Ah,’ said Mr. Jones, as one who understood, and again, ‘Ah.’
The bell shrilled once more. It clanged through the house. Harriet came in bearing a small orange envelope on a Japanese tray. Instantly they all knew that it was about Johnny.
II
Mary had but very hazy recollections of how the afternoon progressed. Johnny had been wounded at Ladysmith. Mamma read the telegram, gave a shriek, and had immediate and loud hysterics. Mr. Jones, always useless, and invariably more so in any emergency, eddied this way and that like a leaf in a gust of wind, demanding somebody to do something for goodness’ sake. Mary and Harriet knelt one on each side of Mamma, and they unhooked her bodice, and fanned her, and waved smelling-salts before her nose. The telegram stated distinctly that Johnny was only slightly wounded, but Mamma, on recovering consciousness, persisted that he was dying. Mamma screamed and gasped, and flung herself about until she was utterly weary, then she allowed them to arrange her on the sofa, tucked in with the magenta wool blanket which Grandmamma had crocheted for her.
Mamma was now crying in a quieter manner; she had got over the worst of it. But, of course, it was very disturbing, and nobody could feel very happy, because, apart from the noise which Mamma had made, there was the thought of Johnny. Nobody really knew how badly Johnny might be wounded.
Mary left Mamma to Mr. Jones. She went out into the garden to fetch in the croquet things. The dew fell early and it spoilt the varnish; it had been a very expensive set and they had to be careful with it.
Mamma’s mallet lay flung down where she had met her mortification; Mary could imagine the grand gesture of contempt with which Mamma had flung it. ‘What’s a game to me? It doesn’t signify at all.’ The girl gathered them up in her arms, and the posts too.
The little grey door into the street, which was set on a line with the wall, wheezed open, and a young man peered round. He was tall and fair and he had a fine fair moustache. She saw him, and she smiled.
‘Oh, Wally,’ she said.
Wally beckoned, and, as she approached, demanded in a hoarse whisper: ‘How is the old lady bow-wow?’
‘Oh, Wally, you shan’t call Mamma that. It isn’t nice of you. She’s in great trouble, as Johnny has been wounded at Ladysmith.’
‘Good Lord!’
‘Yes, the news came by telegram about an hour ago. Mamma was terribly upset. You see, Johnny is her favourite child.’
Wally came inside the garden and firmly shut the wheezy door upon the street. ‘I detest Johnny,’ he said.
‘But he’s hurt.’
‘The fact that Johnny is hurt doesn’t lessen my dislike of him. I think Johnny is a young beast, so there!’
He said it firmly, and he shut his mouth so sharply that one almost expected his teeth to be snapped up into his gums.
‘It isn’t very kind of you.’
‘I dare say. Now if Johnny were dead ‒’
She gave a cry and turned white. The idea of Johnny dying seemed to materialise before her eyes; she saw him lying among sere grasses on the veldt with his beautiful plumed hat beside him. ‘Oh no,’ she said.
Wally took her hands. ‘Put those mallets down, and come and sit in the summer-house and talk. I suppose she won’t dash out upon us?’
‘No, she’s having hysterics. It always takes her a long time to have them thoroughly. She never leaves any of it out.’
They crossed the lawn, with the pointed shadows of the firs lengthening with the setting sun. They sat down side by side in the arbour with its rustic walls of beech-nuts and flattened fir-cones. The honeysuckle was out. It smelt as only honeysuckle can smell, delicately warm, deliciously fragrant. It always seemed to Mary that, in this hour of dusk, the honeysuckle smelt sweeter than in any other hour of the day. It came and went in waves like the sea.
‘You look worn to a thread,’ said Wally kindly. He was wearing white flannels and the Emmanuel blazer, and he looked very young and attractive as he sat by her side. He was a round-faced young man, who had been a cherubic baby, and a fat little child. She was wondering about him as a baby ‒ and why she did not know.
‘I feel just done,’ she told him. ‘Mamma is so very thorough over her hysterics. Every day this life gets more and more trying.’
‘Was she always like this? Even in your father’s lifetime?’
‘Always. Poor Papa chose the better part.’ She tried to laugh and failed. ‘Sometimes I wish I’d gone with poor Papa too.’
‘I wish I could take you away,’ he said fiercely, and his hands clenched on his flannel-clad knees.
‘You couldn’t.’
‘If only I’d got the money, I’d marry you.’
A delicious ecstasy filled her. This was almost like her first proposal, and from Wally, dear, kind Wally, whom she had always looked upon as a big brother. ‘Oh, but ‒’ she said.
‘Yes, you’d say “no,” maidenly modesty and all that; but I’d make you. Mamma would sap anybody’s vitality. Why don’t you get a job?’
‘Girls in my position don’t take jobs; not unless they are very, very poor. I suppose my German and French would help me, but I am all Mamma has got.’
‘She’s got Mr. Jones.’
‘Oh yes, but …’ and then she caught Wally’s eye and they both laughed together.
‘The job you want is as my wife,’ he told her, and he drew her unprotestingly into his arms. The honeysuckles formed a screen of sweetness; they w
aved in delicious wreaths, and she felt his mouth upon hers. There was the soft silkiness of his moustache which she had so often admired. She wanted to cling to him, but somehow she couldn’t.
‘Oh,’ she said, as he freed her. ‘You oughtn’t to, really you oughtn’t. What would Mamma say?’
‘Damn Mamma!’
‘Yes, but … it’s all wrong.’
‘It’s all wrong that I’ve only got that wretched pound a week Aunt Emily left me, and no chance of a decent job. This war seems to have messed things up so much. I ought to have been something by now, and here I am, a miserable nothing.’
‘You’re Wally.’
‘Yes, that’s a lot of use.’
‘Wally, I ‒ I am very fond of you.’ She slipped her hand into his and held it fast. She felt thrilled by the contact, possessed by the romance, it was all so very delightful out here in the twilit garden with him. It was like sipping champagne, the champagne of life from the golden goblet which the gods had offered to her; sipping it in very little sips. ‘Couldn’t you get the money somehow?’
‘Heaven knows. I will try.’
‘If I have to be an old maid and spend all my days with Mamma, I shall go mad. I am sure I shall.’
‘You’ll never be an old maid, you dear thing.’ He surveyed her critically in the soft, subdued light. A skin that was colourless, that reminded him of paper-white narciss, Scilly’s flowers, first of the year. Eyes deep and dark and violet, set widely on either side a too-long nose; her mouth small, and very red. He thought of the Shulamite, whose ‘mouth was a thread of scarlet’; he touched with approval the pile of sleek, pale brown hair, the slim shoulders, the slight figure. ‘No, you’ll never be an old maid,’ he repeated. ‘But you are for some other lucky fellow, not for me.’
‘Why not?’ she demanded, amazed at her own temerity. ‘Would you? If … if …?’
She felt her mouth going dry, her eyes misting over. She could not speak. She nodded dazedly, just before he kissed her again.
III
Later they went indoors. Mamma was quietly crying as she lay on the sofa, while Harriet arranged the supper. Mr. Jones, who was reading Punch in an uncomfortable fashion in the best armchair, looked up aggrievedly.
‘It’s a wonder you can bring yourself to leave your poor Mamma,’ he said. ‘And she in such trouble.’
‘Nobody cares for me,’ sobbed Mamma, with no little vehemence. ‘Nobody takes any notice of me except my darling boy, my sweet Johnny, and he … he’s in some wild place, dying.’
Mary approached nearer. ‘Mamma, here’s Wally Roberts. He came to say how sorry he was.’
But that was not what Wally had come to say. She was still thrilling over the exquisite moment in the summer-house; she would never see the honeysuckles again without that delicious memory. It was her first little breathless romance, and it was lovely for its unusualness. She saw Wally approach the sofa and whisper suitable words to Mamma under the magenta crochet blanket, but she saw him in a dream. The real part of her was back in the summer-house, with the golden door to a blissful and romantic future flung wide.
‘These dreadful wars,’ sobbed Mamma, clutching at the crochet blanket. ‘It’s cruel, cruel! …’
‘Perhaps he will be invalided home?’ said Wally. Mamma brightened. ‘You’ll have him back in a few weeks now. Besides, the old war is nearly over. That affair at Kimberley was the turning-point. Peace can’t be long.’
‘The poor dear Queen, how she must suffer,’ Mamma murmured. ‘She knows how much all her brave soldiers are suffering. It’s very hard in the last years of her life.’
‘It’s my opinion,’ said Mary, meaning no disloyalty, ‘that the poor dear Queen will live for ever; she’s that sort.’
Mamma took in a long breath. ‘You learnt odd opinions in Germany,’ she said. ‘I hate to think that I should ever hear a child of mine speak so disrespectfully of the dear Queen. Such a wife, such a mother, such a noble, blessed woman. Sometimes, Mary, I wonder if you are a child of mine.’
‘You ought to know,’ Mary blurted out before she could stay herself, and instantly she wished that she had held her tongue.
‘Worse and worse,’ Mamma declared. ‘My poor son dying, lying perhaps in some grave miles from anywhere, giving his life for his country, dying bravely, fighting to the last, and my daughter ‒’ She screamed again in pants, with an ‘Oh!’ between each shriek.
‘Now she’s off,’ said Wally in an aside. Mr. Jones looked hopelessly at them.
‘She’s highly strung,’ he complained. ‘Oh dear, what can we do? I never know what to do. What does one do?’
‘One gets out,’ said Wally, who had been staring at Mamma, magenta as the blanket which Grandmother had crocheted.
That night when she went to bed Mary viewed herself in the long cheval-glass. She was thinking of Wally, of what today had signified in her life, and all that he had said in the arbour. She ought to have been thinking of Johnny, who was probably suffering tortures, and although she was ashamed of herself for not thinking of Johnny, she could not make herself think of him.
She unhooked her frock and hung it up carefully in the big mahogany wardrobe; she sat down in her little white calico bodice and profuse petticoats, and she surveyed the world in general. A large room, and a good Brussels carpet ‒ Mamma only bought the best ‒ a mahogany bed, and a dressing-table to match. They were all clumsy pieces of furniture which Mamma had bought when she married poor Papa. Nowadays furniture had grown lighter. Mary would have liked wickerwork, it gave an appearance of lightness and freshness that was rather pleasing. She had desired a dressing-table that would preen itself from abutting frills of spotted muslin over pink sateen, and would be tied with ribbons; but Mamma did not change. Mamma did not believe that the dear Queen ever changed, and judging by the dear Queen’s portraits, Mary supposed Mamma to be quite justified in her theories. All the same, she would have liked some of the more modern attributes to a young girl’s bedroom.
And here she began to plan a little home of her own, hers and Wally’s, in a delightfully natural way. It would have bow windows, of course, and neat curtains made of spotted muslin. There would be lots and lots of bows. It was not that she loved Wally, for she did not delude herself with that idea. She was, like most girls of her age, in love with an emotion, and she found it extremely attractive. Any opportunity which might offer itself as a means of escape from Mamma and Mr. Jones would be a golden one. There was a certain triumph in the fact that Wally had proposed. Even now, if she were an old maid, she could always remind herself, with no small consolation, that she need not have been one. Wally had not the means to marry, but she did not feel that that should be allowed to deter her justifiable pride.
She took off her garments and slipped into the neat white nightdress. She slid into bed. As she snuggled down between the sheer linen sheets she smiled a little. Wally had told her that he loved her. One told oneself such delicious stories in bed, dreamt such exquisite dreams, consoled oneself for the grim realities of the day with such marvellous consolations. Those drowsy moments before sleep were never troubled by too stark reality, but combined all impossibilities into one delightfully probable whole.
Wally loved her, and George Carew was coming to be a curate there. Life was very interesting. She had entirely forgotten Johnny.
IV
News of Johnny came much later. His left arm had been wounded. It was really quite unimportant, but it meant a small injury to some of the tendons, and Johnny would be of no further use to his country in South Africa. Johnny was returning home. Mamma, when she received the letter, wept a great deal, declared that he was her favourite child, and how cruel it all was. She talked a lot about a lonely soldier’s grave, though how that affected Johnny nobody knew. Mr. Jones, with his usual tactlessness, stirred the troubled waters when they were about to simmer down with such remarks as: ‘Mary doesn’t trouble for either you or her poor brother,’ and ‘What a pity Mary doesn’t try and com
fort you a little,’ which generally provoked a fresh storm.
Johnny himself did not materialise all at once. South Africa was, of course, a long distance away, and steamships were slow vehicles. In the autumn Johnny would come home. The war was progressing very satisfactorily; Lord Roberts was so splendid, and Kruger seemed to have become afraid. He was really a most amusing old man; everybody cracked jokes about him, and sent caustic picture postcards to one another with rude caricatures of him on them.
At the end of July George Carew came. They had not seen him, because he arrived on the Friday, but Mr. Nason told everybody that he would preach at the morning service, and they were naturally very interested. All except Wally. Wally cherished a jealous dislike of George, whom he had never even met. On the Saturday Wally mentioned the subject nearest his heart to Mary.
‘I am sure I shall hate this George,’ he averred; he had formed this theory on a manlike impulse, and he did not intend to change it.
‘I don’t see why. He was quite a nice little boy. He may be a very pleasant young man.’
‘And you’ll join all the other ladies in running after him. Oh yes, I know.’
‘Wally, I shan’t.’
‘Of course you will. There’s something so horribly attractive about parsons. Goodness knows why; I hate ’em myself.’
‘I’m not like that,’ said Mary, trying to be dignified, for she knew with a sullen truthfulness that she was like that. She had thought, when she was lying awake at night, how nice it would be if George Carew fell in love with her. She had gone as far as what she would wear at her wedding. But she dreamt those same dreams with most of the other young men of the parish, so that was nothing to go on. It is the privilege of girlhood. But it did not suit Wally.
‘I shall go and hear him preach,’ he said. ‘Of course I shall have to do that. I’m sure I shan’t like him.’
‘If you make up your mind beforehand you probably won’t.’