II.

The five elm trees held up their skirts above the high corn. The flat
surface of the corn-tops was still. Hot glassy air quivered like a thin
steam over the brimming field.

The glazed yellow walls of the old nursery gave out a strong light and
heat. The air indoors was dry and smelt dusty like the hot, crackling air
above the corn. The children had come in from their play in the fields;
they leaned out of the windows and talked about what they were going to
be.

Mary said, "I shall paint pictures and play the piano and ride in a
circus. I shall go out to the countries where the sand is and tame
zebras; and I shall marry Mark and have thirteen children with blue eyes
like Meta."

Roddy was going to be the captain of a cruiser. Dan was going to Texas,
or some place where Papa couldn't get at him, to farm. Mark was going to
be a soldier like Marshal McMahon.

It was Grandpapa and Grandmamma's fault that he was not a soldier now.

"If," he said, "they'd let Papa marry Mamma when he wanted to, I might
have been born in eighteen fifty-two. I'd be eighteen by this time. I
should have gone into the French Army and I should have been with McMahon
at Sedan now."

"You might have been killed," Mary said.

"That wouldn't have mattered a bit. I should have been at Sedan. Nothing
matters, Minky, as long as you get what you want."

"If you were killed Mamma and me would die, too, the same minute. Papa
would be sorry, then; but not enough to kill him, so that we should go to
heaven together without him and be happy."

"Mamma wouldn't be happy without him. We couldn't shut him out."

"No," Mary said; "but we could pray to God not to let him come up too
soon."


III.

Sedan--Sedan--Sedan.

Papa came out into the garden where Mamma was pulling weeds out of the
hot dry soil. He flapped the newspaper and read about the Battle of
Sedan. Mamma left off pulling weeds out and listened.

Mark had stuck the picture of Marshal McMahon over the schoolroom
chimney-piece. Papa had pinned the war-map to the library door. Mark was
restless. He kept on going into the library to look at the war-map and
Papa kept on turning him out again. He was in a sort of mysterious
disgrace because of Sedan. Roddy was excited about Sedan. Dan followed
Mark as he went in and out; he was furious with Papa because of Mark.

Mamma had been a long time in the library talking to Papa. They sent for
Mark just before dinner-time. When Mary ran in to say good-night she
found him there.

Mark was saying, "You needn't think I want your beastly money. I shall
enlist."

Mamma said, "If he enlists, Emilius, it'll kill me."

And Papa, "You hear what your mother says, sir. Isn't that enough for
you?"

Mark loved Mamma; but he was not going to do what she wanted. He was
going to do something that would kill her.


IV.

Papa walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, like the Lord God.
And he was always alone. When you thought of him you thought of Jehovah.

There was something funny about other people's fathers. Mr. Manisty, of
Vinings, who rode along Ley Street with his two tall, thin sons, as if he
were actually proud of them; Mr. Batty, the Vicar of Barkingside, who
called his daughter Isabel his "pretty one"; Mr. Farmer, the curate of
St. Mary's Chapel, who walked up and down the room all night with the
baby; and Mr. Propart, who went about the public roads with Humphrey and
Arthur positively hanging on him. Dan said Humphrey and Arthur were tame
and domestic because they were always going about with Mr. Propart and
talking to him as if they liked it. Mark had once seen Mr. Propart trying
to jump a ditch on the Aldborough Road. It was ridiculous. Humphrey and
Arthur had to grab him by the arms and pull him over. Mary was sorry for
the Propart boys because they hadn't got a mother who was sweet and
pretty like Mamma and a father called Emilius Olivier. Emilius couldn't
jump ditches any more than Mr. Propart; but then he knew he couldn't, and
as Mark said, he had the jolly good sense not to try. You couldn't be
Jehovah and jump ditches.

Emilius Olivier was everything a father ought to be.

Then suddenly, for no reason at all, he left off being Jehovah and began
trying to behave like Mr. Batty.

It was at dinner, the last Sunday before the thirteenth. Mamma had moved
Roddy and Mary from their places so that Mark and Dan could sit beside
her. Mary was sitting at the right hand of Papa in the glory of the
Father. The pudding had come in; blanc-mange, and Mark's pudding with
whipped cream hiding the raspberry jam. It was Roddy's turn to be helped;
his eyes were fixed on the snow-white, pure blanc-mange shuddering in the
glass dish, and Mamma had just asked him which he would have when Papa
sent Mark and Dan out of the room. You couldn't think why he had done it
this time unless it was because Mark laughed when Roddy said in his
proud, dignified voice, "I'll have a little piece of the Virgin's womb,
please, first." Or it may have been because of Mark's pudding. He never
liked it when they had Mark's pudding. Anyhow, Mark and Dan had to go,
and as they went he drew Mary's chair closer to him and heaped her plate
with cream and jam, looking very straight at Mamma as he did it.

"You might have left them alone," Mamma said, "on their last Sunday. They
won't be here to annoy you so very long."

Papa said, "There are three days yet till the thirteenth."

"Three days! You'll count the hours and the minutes till you've got what
you want."

"What I want is peace and quiet in my house and to get a word in
edgeways, sometimes, with my own wife."

"You've no business to have a wife if you can't put up with your own
children."

"It isn't my business to have a wife," Papa said. "It's my pleasure. My
business is to insure ships. And you see me putting up with Mary very
well. I suppose she's my own child."

"Mark and Dan are your own children first."

"_Are_ they? To judge by your infatuation I should have said they
weren't. 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Silver
bells and cockle shells, and chocolate creams all in a row.'"

He took a large, flat box of chocolates out of his pocket and laid it
beside her plate. And he looked straight at Mamma again.

"If those are the chocolates I reminded you to get for--for the hamper, I
won't have them opened."

"They are _not_ the chocolates you reminded me to get for--the hamper. I
suppose Mark's stomach _is_ a hamper. They are the chocolates I reminded
myself to get for Mary."

Then Mamma said a peculiar thing.

"Are you trying to show me that you're not jealous of Mary?"

"I'm not trying to show you anything. You know I'm not jealous of Mary.
And you know there's no reason why I should be."

"To hear you, Emilius, anybody would think I wasn't fond of my own
daughter. Mary darling, you'd better run away."

"And Mary darling," he mocked her, "you'd better take your chocolates
with you."

Mary said: "I don't want any chocolates, Papa."

"Is that her contrariness, or just her Mariness?"

"Whatever it is it's all the thanks _you_ get, and serve you right, too,"
said Mamma.

She went upstairs to persuade Dan that Papa didn't mean it. It was just
his way, and they'd see he would be different to-morrow.

But to-morrow and the next day and the next he was the same. He didn't
actually send Mark and Dan out of the room again, but he tried to pretend
to himself that they weren't there by refusing to speak to them.

"Do you think," Mark said, "he'll keep it up till the last minute?"

He did; even when he heard the sound of Mr. Parish's wagonette in the
road, coming to take Mark and Dan away. They were sitting at breakfast,
trying not to look at him for fear they should laugh, or at Mamma for
fear they should cry, trying not to look at each other. Catty brought in
the cakes, the hot buttered Yorkshire cakes that were never served for
breakfast except on Christmas Day and birthdays. Mary wondered whether
Papa would say or do anything. He couldn't. Everybody knew those cakes
were sacred. Catty set them on the table with a sort of crash and ran out
of the room, crying. Mamma's mouth quivered.

Papa looked at the cakes; he looked at Mamma; he looked at Mark. Mark was
staring at nothing with a firm grin on his face.

"The assuagers of grief," Papa said. "Pass round the assuagers."

The holy cakes were passed round. Everybody took a piece except Dan.

Papa pressed him. "Try an assuager. Do."

And Mamma pleaded, "Yes, Dank."

"Do you hear what your mother says?"

Dan's eyes were red-rimmed. He took a double section of cake and tried to
bite his way through.

At the first taste tears came out of his eyes and fell on his cake. And
when Mamma saw that she burst out crying.

Mary put her piece down untasted and bit back her sobs. Roddy pushed his
piece away; and Mark began to eat his, suddenly, bowing over it with an
affectation of enjoyment.

Outside in the road Mr. Parish was descending from the box of his
wagonette. Papa looked at his watch. He was going with them to Chelmsted.

And Mamma whispered to Mark and Dan with her last kiss, "He'll be all
right in the train."

It was all over. Mary and Roddy sat in the dining-room where Mamma had
left them. They had shut their eyes so as not to see the empty chairs
pushed back and the pieces of the sacred cakes, bitten and abandoned.
They had stopped their ears so as not to hear the wheels of Mr. Parish's
wagonette taking Mark and Dan away.

Hours afterwards Mamma came upon Mary huddled up in a corner of the
drawing-room.

"Mamma--Mamma--I _can't_ bear it. I can't live without Mark. And Dan."

Mamma sat down and took her in her arms and rocked her, rocked her
without a word, soothing her own grief.

Papa found them like that when he came back from Chelmsted. He stood in
the doorway looking at them for a moment, then slunk out of the room as
if he were ashamed of himself. When Mamma sent Mary out to say good-bye
to him, he was standing beside the little sumach tree that Mark gave
Mamma on her birthday. He was smiling at the sumach tree as if he loved
it and was sorry for it.

And Mamma got a letter from Mark in the morning to say she was right.
Papa had been quite decent in the train.


V.

After Mark and Dan had gone a great and very remarkable change came over
Papa and Mamma. Mamma left off saying the funny things that Mary could
not understand, and Papa left off teasing and flying into tempers and
looking like Jehovah and walking by himself in the cool of the evening.
He followed Mamma about the garden. He hung over her chair, like Mark, as
she sat sewing. You came upon him suddenly on the stairs and in the
passages, and he would look at you as if you were not there, and say,
"Where's your mother? Go and tell her I want her." And Mamma would put
away her trowel and her big leather gloves and go to him. She would sit
for hours in the library while he flapped the newspaper and read to her
in a loud voice about Mr. Gladstone whom she hated.

Sometimes he would come home early from the office, and Mamma and Mary
would be ready for him, and they would all go together to call at Vinings
or Barkingside Vicarage or on the Proparts.

Or Mr. Parish's wagonette would be ordered, and Mamma and Mary would put
on their best clothes very quick and go up to London with him, and he
would take them to St. Paul's or Maskelyne and Cooke's, or the National
Gallery or the British Museum. Or they would walk slowly, very slowly, up
Regent Street, stopping at the windows of the bonnet shops while Mamma
picked out the bonnet she would buy if she could afford it. And perhaps
the next day a bonnet would come in a bandbox, a bonnet that frightened
her when she put it on and looked at herself in the glass. She would
pretend it was one of the bonnets she had wanted; and when Papa had
forgotten about it she would pull all the trimming off and put it all on
again a different way, and Papa would say it was an even more beautiful
bonnet than he had thought.

You might have supposed that he was sorry because he was thinking about
Mark and Dan and trying to make up for having been unkind to them. But he
was not sorry. He was glad. Glad about something that Mamma had done. He
would go about whistling some gay tune, or you caught him stroking his
moustache and parting it over his rich lips that smiled as if he were
thinking of what Mamma had done to make him happy. The red specks and
smears had gone from his eyes, they were clear and blue, and they looked
at you with a kind, gentle look, like Uncle Victor's. His very beard was
happy.

"You may not know it, but your father is the handsomest man in Essex,"
Mamma said.

Perhaps it wasn't anything that Mamma had done. Perhaps he was only happy
because he was being good. Every Sunday he went to church at Barkingside
with Mamma, kneeling close to her in the big pew and praying in a great,
ghostly voice, "Good Lord, deliver us!" When the psalms and hymns began
he rose over the pew-ledge, yards and yards of him, as if he stood on
many hassocks, and he lifted up his beard and sang. All these times the
air fairly tingled with him; he seemed to beat out of himself and spread
around him the throb of violent and overpowering life. And in the
evenings towards sunset they walked together in the fields, and Mary
followed them, lagging behind in the borders where the sharlock and wild
rye and poppies grew. When she caught up with them she heard them
talking.

Once Mamma said, "Why can't you always be like this, Emilius?"

And Papa said, "Why, indeed!"

And when Christmas came and Mark and Dan were back again he was as cruel
and teasing as he had ever been.


VI.

Eighteen seventy-one.

One cold day Roddy walked into the Pool of Siloam to recover his sailing
boat which had drifted under the long arch of the bridge.

There was no Passion Week and no Good Friday and no Easter that spring,
only Roddy's rheumatic fever. Roddy in bed, lying on his back, his face
white and sharp, his hair darkened and glued with the sweat that poured
from his hair and soaked into the bed. Roddy crying out with pain when
they moved him. Mamma and Jenny always in Roddy's room, Mr. Spall's
sister in the kitchen. Mary going up and down, tiptoe, on messages,
trying not to touch Roddy's bed.

Dr. Draper calling, talking in a low voice to Mamma, and Mamma crying.
Dr. Draper looking at you through his spectacles and putting a thing like
a trumpet to your chest and listening through it.

"You're quite right, Mrs. Olivier. There's nothing wrong with the little
girl's heart. She's as sound as a bell."

A dreadful feeling that you had no business to be as sound as a bell. It
wasn't fair to Roddy.

Something she didn't notice at the time and remembered afterwards when
Roddy was well again. Jenny saying to Mamma, "If it had to be one of them
it had ought to have been Miss Mary."

And Mamma saying to Jenny, "It wouldn't have mattered so much if it had
been the girl."


VII.

You knew that Catty loved you. There was never the smallest uncertainty
about it. Her big black eyes shone when she saw you coming. You kissed
her smooth cool cheeks, and she hugged you tight and kissed you back
again at once; her big lips made a noise like a pop-gun. When she tucked
you up at night she said, "I love you so much I could eat you."

And she would play any game you liked. You had only to say, "Let's play
the going-away game," and she was off. You began: "I went away to the big
hot river where the rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses are"; or: "I went
away to the desert where the sand is, to catch zebras. I rode on a
dromedary, flump-flumping through the sand," and Catty would follow it up
with: "I went away with the Good Templars. We went in a row-boat on a
lake, and we landed on an island where there was daffodillies growing. We
had milk and cake; and it blew such a cool breeze."

Catty was full of love. She loved her father and mother and her little
sister Amelia better than anything in the whole world. Her home was in
Wales. Tears came into her eyes when she thought about her home and her
little sister Amelia.

"Catty--how much do you love me?"

"Armfuls and armfuls."

"As much as your mother?"

"Very near as much."

"As much as Amelia?"

"Every bit as much."

"How much do you think Jenny loves me?"

"Ever so much."

"No. Jenny loves Roddy best; then Mark; then Dank; then Mamma; then Papa;
then me. That isn't ever so much."

Catty was vexed. "You didn't oughter go measuring people's love, Miss
Mary."

Still, that was what you did do. With Catty and Jenny you could measure
till you knew exactly where you were.

Mamma was different.

You knew _when_ she loved you. You could almost count the times: the time
when Papa frightened you; the time when you cut your forehead; the time
the lamb died; all the whooping-cough and chicken-pox times, and when
Meta, the wax doll, fell off the schoolroom table and broke her head; and
when Mark went away to school. Or when you were good and said every word
of your lessons right; when you watched Mamma working in the garden,
planting and transplanting the flowers with her clever hands; and when
you were quiet and sat beside her on the footstool, learning to knit and
sew. On Sunday afternoons when she played the hymns and you sang:

   "There's a Friend for little children
      Above the bright blue sky,"

quite horribly out of tune, and when you listened while she sang herself,
"Lead, kindly light," or "Abide with me," and her voice was so sweet and
gentle that it made you cry. Then you knew.

Sometimes, when it was not Sunday, she played the Hungarian March, that
went, with loud, noble noises:

   Droom--Droom--Droom-era-room
   Droom--Droom--Droom-era-room
   Droom rer-room-room droom-room-room
     Droom--Droom--Droom.

It was wonderful. Mamma was wonderful. She swayed and bowed to the beat
of the music, as if she shook it out of her body and not out of the
piano. She smiled to herself when she saw that you were listening. You
said "Oh--Mamma! Play it again," and she played it again. When she had
finished she stooped suddenly and kissed you. And you knew.

But she wouldn't say it. You couldn't make her.

"Say it, Mamma. Say it like you used to."

Mamma shook her head.

"I want to hear you say it."

"Well, I'm not going to."

"I love you. I ache with loving you. I love you so much that it hurts me
to say it."

"Why do you do it, then?"

"Because it hurts me more not to. Just once. 'I love you.' Just a weeny
once."

"You're going to be like your father, tease, tease, tease, all day long,
till I'm worn out."

"I'm not going to be like Papa. I don't tease. It's you that's teasing.
How'm I to know you love me if you won't say it?"

Mamma said, "Can't you see what I'm doing?"

"No."

She was not interested in the thin white stuff and the lace--Mamma's
needle-work.

"Well, then, look in the basket."

The basket was full of tiny garments made of the white stuff, petticoats,
drawers and nightgown, sewn with minute tucks and edged with lace. Mamma
unfolded them.

"New clothes," she said, "for your new dolly."

"Oh--oh--oh--I love you so much that I can't bear it; you little holy
Mamma!"

Mamma said, "I'm not holy, and I won't be called holy. I want deeds, not
words. If you love me you'll learn your lessons properly the night
before, not just gabble them over hot from the pan."

"I will, Mamma, I will. Won't you say it?"

"No," Mamma said, "I won't."

She sat there with a sort of triumph on her beautiful face, as if she
were pleased with herself because she hadn't said it. And Mary would
bring the long sheet that dragged on her wrist, and the needle that
pricked her fingers, and sit at Mamma's knee and sew, making a thin trail
of blood all along the hem.

"Why do you look at me so kindly when I'm sewing?"

"Because I like to see you behaving like a little girl, instead of
tearing about and trying to do what boys do."

And Mamma would tell her a story, always the same story, going on and on,
about the family of ten children who lived in the farm by the forest.
There were seven boys and three girls. The six youngest boys worked on
the farm with their father--yes, he was a _very_ nice father--and the
eldest boy worked in the garden with his mother, and the three girls
worked in the house. They could cook and make butter and cheese, and bake
bread; and even the youngest little girl could knit and sew.

"Had they any children?"

"No, they were too busy to think about having children. They were all
very, very happy together, just as they were."

The story was like the hem, there was never any end to it, for Mamma was
always finding something else for the three girls to do. She smiled as
she told it, as if she saw something that pleased her.

Mary felt that she could go on sewing at the hem and pricking her finger
for ever if Mamma would only keep that look on her face.




VIII


I.

"I can't, Jenny, I can't. I know there's a funeral coming."

Mary stood on the flagstone inside the arch of the open gate. She looked
up and down the road and drew back again into the garden. Jenny, tired
and patient, waited outside.

"I've told you, Miss Mary, there isn't any funeral."

"If there isn't there will be. There! I can see it."

"You see Mr. Parish's high 'at a driving in his wagonette."

It _was_ Mr. Parish's high hat. When he put the black top on his
wagonette it looked like a hearse.

They started up Ley Street towards Mr. Spall's cottage.

Jenny said, "I thought you was going to be such a good girl when Master
Roddy went to school. But I declare if you're not twice as tiresome."

Roddy had gone to Chelmsted after midsummer. She had to go for walks on
the roads with Jenny now at the risk of meeting funerals.

This week they had been every day to Ilford to call at Mr. Spall's
cottage or at Benny's, the draper's shop in the High Street.

Jenny didn't believe that a big girl, nine next birthday, could really be
afraid of funerals. She thought you were only trying to be tiresome. She
said you could stop thinking about funerals well enough when you wanted.
You did forget sometimes when nice things happened; when you went to see
Mrs. Farmer's baby undressed, and when Isabel Batty came to tea. Isabel
was almost a baby. It felt nice to lift her and curl up her stiff,
barley-sugar hair and sponge her weak, pink silk hands. And there were
things that you could do. You could pretend that you were not Mary
Olivier but somebody else, that you were grown-up and that the baby and
Isabel belonged to you and were there when they were not there. But all
the time you knew there would be a funeral on the road somewhere, and
that some day you would see it.

When they got into the High Street the funeral was coming along the
Barking Road. She saw, before Jenny could see anything at all, the mutes,
sitting high, and their black, bunched-up weepers. She turned and ran out
of the High Street and back over the railway bridge. Jenny called after
her, "Come back!" and a man on the bridge shouted "Hi, Missy! Stop!" as
she ran down Ley Street. Her legs shook and gave way under her. Once she
fell. She ran, staggering, but she ran. People came out of their cottages
to look at her. She thought they had come out to look at the funeral.

After that she refused to go outside the front door or to look through
the front windows for fear she should see a funeral.

They couldn't take her and carry her out; so they let her go for walks in
the back garden. When Papa came home she was sent up to the schoolroom to
play with the doll's house. You could see the road through the high bars
of the window at the end of the passage, so that even when Catty lit the
gas the top floor was queer and horrible.

Sometimes doubts came with her terror. She thought: "Nobody loves me
except Mark. And Mark isn't here." Mark's image haunted her. She shut her
eyes and it slid forward on to the darkness, the strong body, the brave,
straight up and down face, the steady, light brown eyes, shining; the
firm, sweet mouth; the sparrow-brown hair with feathery golden tips. She
could hear Mark's voice calling to her: "Minx! Minky!"

And there was something that Mamma said. It was unkind to be afraid of
the poor dead people. Mamma said, "Would you run away from Isabel if you
saw her lying in her little coffin?"


II.

Jenny's new dress had come.

It was made of grey silk trimmed with black lace, and it lay spread out
on the bed in the spare room. Mamma and Aunt Bella stood and looked at
it, and shook their heads as if they thought that Jenny had no business
to wear a silk dress.

Aunt Bella said, "She's a silly woman to go and leave a good home. At her
age."

And Mamma said, "I'd rather see her in her coffin. It would be less
undignified. She meant to do it at Easter; she was only waiting till
Roddy went to school. She's waiting now till after the Christmas
holidays."

Jenny was going to do something dreadful.

She was going to be married. The grey silk dress was her wedding-dress.
She was going to marry Mr. Spall. Even Catty thought it was rather
dreadful.

But Jenny was happy because she was going to wear the grey silk dress and
live in Mr. Spall's cottage and talk to him about Jesus. Only one half of
her face drooped sleepily; the other half had waked up, and looked
excited; there was a flush on it as bright as paint.


III.

Mary's bed stood in a corner of the night nursery, and beside it was the
high yellow linen cupboard. When the doors were opened there was a faint
india-rubbery smell from the mackintosh sheet that had been put away on
the top shelf.

One night she was wakened by Catty coming into the room and opening the
cupboard doors. Catty climbed on a chair and took something from the top
shelf. She didn't answer when Mary asked what she was doing, but hurried
away, leaving the door on the latch. Her feet made quick thuds along the
passage. A door opened and shut, and there was a sound of Papa going
downstairs. Somebody came up softly and pulled the door to, and Mary went
to sleep again.

When she woke the room was full of the grey light that frightened her.
But she was not frightened. She woke sitting up on her pillow, staring
into the grey light, and saying to herself, "Jenny is dead."

But she was not afraid of Jenny. The stillness in her heart spread into
the grey light of the room. She lay back waiting for seven o'clock when
Catty would come and call her.

At seven o'clock Mamma came. She wore the dress she had worn last night,
and she was crying.

Mary said, "You haven't got to say it. I know Jenny is dead."

The blinds were drawn in all the windows when she and Mark went into the
front garden to look for snowdrops in the border by the kitchen area. She
knew that Jenny's dead body lay on the sofa under the kitchen window
behind the blind and the white painted iron bars. She hoped that she
would not have to see it; but she was not afraid of Jenny's dead body. It
was sacred and holy.

She wondered why Mamma sent her to Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella. From the
top-storey windows of Chadwell Grange you could look beyond Aldborough
Hatch towards Wanstead Flats and the City of London Cemetery. They were
going to bury Jenny there. She stood looking out, quiet, not crying. She
only cried at night when she thought of Jenny, sitting in the low nursery
chair, tired and patient, drawing back from her violent caresses, and of
the grey silk dress laid out on the bed in the spare room.

She was not even afraid of the City of London Cemetery when Mark took her
to see Jenny's grave. Jenny's grave was sacred and holy.




IX


I.

You had to endure hardness after you were nine. You learnt out of Mrs.
Markham's "History of England," and you were not allowed to read the
conversations between Richard and Mary and Mrs. Markham because they made
history too amusing and too easy to remember. For the same reason you
translated only the tight, dismal pages of your French Reader, and
anything that looked like an interesting story was forbidden. You were to
learn for the sake of the lesson and not for pleasure's sake. Mamma said
you had enough pleasure in play-time. She put it to your honour not to
skip on to the more exciting parts.

When you had finished Mrs. Markham you began Dr. Smith's "History of
England." Honour was safe with Dr. Smith. He made history very hard to
read and impossible to remember.

The Bible got harder, too. You knew all the best Psalms by heart, and the
stories about Noah's ark and Joseph and his coat of many colours, and
David, and Daniel in the lions' den. You had to go straight through the
Bible now, skipping Leviticus because it was full of things you couldn't
understand. When you had done with Moses lifting up the serpent in the
wilderness you had to read about Aaron and the sons of Levi, and the
wave-offerings, and the tabernacle, and the ark of the covenant where
they kept the five golden emerods. Mamma didn't know what emerods were,
but Mark said they were a kind of white mice.

You learnt Old Testament history, too, out of a little book that was all
grey slabs of print and dark pictures showing the earth swallowing up
Korah, Dathan and Abiram, and Aaron and the sons of Levi with their long
beards and high hats and their petticoats, swinging incense in fits of
temper. You found out queerer and queerer things about God. God made the
earth swallow up Korah, Dathan and Abiram. He killed poor Uzzah because
he put out his hand to prevent the ark of the covenant falling out of the
cart. Even David said he didn't know how on earth he was to get the ark
along at that rate. And there were the Moabites and the Midianites and
all the animals: the bullocks and the he-goats and the little lambs and
kids. When you asked Mamma why God killed people, she said it was because
he was just as well as merciful, and (it was the old story) he hated sin.
Disobedience was sin, and Uzzah had been disobedient.

As for the lambs and the he-goats, Jesus had done away with all that. He
was God's son, and he had propitiated God's anger and satisfied his
justice when he shed his own blood on the cross to save sinners. Without
shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. You were not to bother
about the blood.

But you couldn't help bothering about it. You couldn't help being sorry
for Uzzah and the Midianites and the lambs and the he-goats.

Perhaps you had to sort things out and keep them separate. Here was the
world, here were Mamma and Mark and kittens and rabbits, and all the
things you really cared about: drawing pictures, and playing the
Hungarian March and getting excited in the Easter holidays when the white
evenings came and Mark raced you from the Green Man to the Horns Tavern.
Here was the sudden, secret happiness you felt when you were by yourself
and the fields looked beautiful. It was always coming now, with a sort of
rush and flash, when you least expected it.

And _there_ was God and religion and duty. The nicest part of religion
was music, and knowing how the world was made, and the beautiful sounding
bits of the Bible. You could like religion. But duty was doing all the
things you didn't like because you didn't like them. And you couldn't
honestly say you liked God. God had to be propitiated; your righteousness
was filthy rags; so you couldn't propitiate him. Jesus had to do it for
you. All you had to do was to believe, really believe that he had done
it.

But supposing you hadn't got to believe it, supposing you hadn't got to
believe anything at all, it would be easier to think about. The things
you cared for belonged to each other, but God didn't belong to them. He
didn't fit in anywhere. You couldn't help feeling that if God was love,
and if he was everywhere, he ought to have fitted in. Perhaps, after all,
there were two Gods; one who made things and loved them, and one who
didn't; who looked on sulking and finding fault with what the clever kind
God had made.

When the midsummer holidays came and brook-jumping began she left off
thinking about God.


II.

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown"--

The picture in the _Sunday At Home_ showed the old King in bed and Prince
Hal trying on his crown. But the words were not the _Sunday At Home_;
they were taken out of Shakespeare. Mark showed her the place.

Mark was in the schoolroom chanting his home-lessons:

   "'Yet once more, oh ye laurels, and once more,
     Ye myrtles brown with ivy never sere'"--

That sounded nice. "Say it again, Mark, say it again." Mark said it
again. He also said:

   "'Achilles' wrath, to Greece the direful spring
     Of woes unnumbered, heavenly goddess, sing!'"

The three books stood on the bookshelf in the schoolroom, the thin
Shakespeare in diamond print, the small brown leather Milton, the very
small fat Pope's _Iliad_ in the red cover. Mark gave them to her for her
own.

She made Catty put her bed between the two windows, and Mark made a
bookshelf out of a piece of wood and some picture cord, and hung it
within reach. She had a happy, excited feeling when she thought of the
three books; it made her wake early. She read from five o'clock till
Catty called her at seven, and again after Catty had tucked her up and
left her, till the white light in the room was grey.

She learnt _Lycidas_ by heart, and

   "I thought I saw my late espoused wife
    Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave,"--

and the bits about Satan in _Paradise Lost_. The sound of the lines gave
her the same nice feeling that she had when Mrs. Propart played the March
in Scipio after Evening Service. She tried to make lines of her own that
went the same way as the lines in Milton and Shakespeare and Pope's
_Iliad_. She found out that there was nothing she liked so much as making
these lines. It was nicer even than playing the Hungarian March. She
thought it was funny that the lines like Pope's _Iliad_ came easiest,
though they had to rhyme.

"Silent he wandered by the sounding sea," was good, but the Greek line
that Mark showed her went: "Be d'akeon para thina poluphloisboio
thalasses"; that was better. "Don't you think so, Mark?"

"Clever Minx. Much better."

"Mark--if God knew how happy I am writing poetry he'd make the earth open
and swallow me up."

Mark only said, "You mustn't say that to Mamma. Play 'Violetta.'"

Of all hateful and disgusting tunes the most disgusting and the most
hateful was "Violetta," which Mr. Sippett's sister taught her. But if
Mark would promise to make Mamma let her learn Greek she would play it to
him twenty times running.

When Mark went to Chelmsted that autumn he left her his brown _Greek
Accidence_ and Smith's _Classical Dictionary_, besides Macaulay's _Lays
of Ancient Rome_. She taught herself Greek in the hour after breakfast
before Miss Sippett came to give her her music lesson. She was always
careful to leave the Accidence open where Miss Sippett could see it and
realise that she was not a stupid little girl.

But whether Miss Sippett saw the Accidence or not she always behaved as
if it wasn't there.


III.

When Mamma saw the Accidence open on the drawing-room table she shut it
and told you to put it in its proper place. If you talked about it her
mouth buttoned up tight, and her eyes blinked, and she began tapping with
her foot.

There was something queer about learning Greek. Mamma did not actually
forbid it; but she said it must not be done in lesson time or sewing
time, or when people could see you doing it, lest they should think you
were showing off. You could see that she didn't believe you _could_ learn
Greek and that she wouldn't like it if you did. But when lessons were
over she let you read Shakespeare or Pope's _Iliad_ aloud to her while
she sewed. And when you could say:

   "Lars Porsena of Clusium
    By the nine Gods he swore"--

straight through without stopping she went into London with Papa and
brought back the _Child's First History of Rome_. A Pinnock's _Catechism
of Mythology_ in a blue paper cover went with the history to tell you all
about the gods and goddesses. What Pinnock didn't tell you you found out
from Smith's _Classical Dictionary_. It had pictures in it so beautiful
that you were happy just sitting still and looking at them. There was
such a lot of gods and goddesses that at first they were rather hard to
remember. But you couldn't forget Apollo and Hermes and Aphrodite and
Pallas Athene and Diana. They were not like Jehovah. They quarrelled
sometimes, but they didn't hate each other; not as Jehovah hated all the
other gods. They fitted in somehow. They cared for all the things you
liked best: trees and animals and poetry and music and running races and
playing games. Even Zeus was nicer than Jehovah, though he reminded you
of him now and then. He liked sacrifices. But then he was honest about
it. He didn't pretend that he was good and that he _had_ to have them
because of your sins. And you hadn't got to believe in him. That was the
nicest thing of all.




X


I.

Mary was ten in eighteen seventy-three.

Aunt Charlotte was ill, and nobody was being kind to her. She had given
her Sunday bonnet to Harriet and her Sunday gown to Catty; so you knew
she was going to be married again. She said it was prophesied that she
should be married in eighteen seventy-three.

The illness had something to do with being married and going continually
to Mr. Marriott's church and calling on Mr. Marriott and writing letters
to him about religion. You couldn't say Aunt Charlotte was not religious.
But Papa said he would believe in her religion if she went to Mr. Batty's
church or Mr. Farmer's or Mr. Propart's. They had all got wives and Mr.
Marriott hadn't. Papa had forbidden Aunt Charlotte to go any more to Mr.
Marriott's church.

Mr. Marriott had written a nice letter to Uncle Victor, and Uncle Victor
had taken Papa to see him, and the doctor had come to see Aunt Charlotte
and she had been sent to bed.

Aunt Charlotte's room was at the top of the tall, thin white house in the
High Street. There was whispering on the stairs. Mamma and Aunt Lavvy
stood at the turn; you could see their vexed faces. Aunt Charlotte called
to them to let Mary come to her. Mary was told she might go if she were
very quiet.

Aunt Charlotte was all by herself sitting up in a large white bed. A
Bible propped itself open, leaves downwards, against the mound she made.
There was something startling about the lengths of white curtain and the
stretches of white pillow and counterpane, and Aunt Charlotte's very
black eyebrows and hair and the cover of the Bible, very black, and her
blue eyes glittering.

She was writing letters. Every now and then she took up the Bible and
picked out a text and wrote it down. She wrote very fast, and as she
finished each sheet she hid it under the bed-clothes, and made a sign to
show that what she was doing was a secret.

"Love God and you'll be happy. Love God and you'll be happy," she said.

Her eyes pointed at you. They looked wise and solemn and excited.

A wide flat piece of counterpane was left over from Aunt Charlotte. Mary
climbed up and sat in it with her back against the foot-rail and looked
at her. Looking at Aunt Charlotte made you think of being born.

"Aunt Charlotte, do _you_ know what being born is?"

Aunt Charlotte looked up under her eyebrows, and hid another sheet of
paper. "What's put that in your head all of a sudden?"

"It's because of my babies. Catty says I couldn't have thirteen all under
three years old. But I could, couldn't I?"

"I'm afraid I don't think you could," Aunt Charlotte said.

"Why not? Catty _won't_ say why."

Aunt Charlotte shook her head, but she was smiling and looking wiser and
more solemn than ever. "You mustn't ask too many questions," she said.

"But you haven't told me what being born is. I know it's got something to
do with the Virgin Mary."

Aunt Charlotte said, "Sh-sh-sh! You mustn't say that. Nice little girls
don't think about those things."

Her tilted eyes had turned down and her mouth had stopped smiling. So you
knew that being born was not frightening. It had something to do with the
things you didn't talk about.

And ye--how could it? There was the Virgin Mary.

"Aunt Charlotte, don't you _wish_ you had a baby?"

Aunt Charlotte looked frightened, suddenly, and began to cry.

"You mustn't say it, Mary, you mustn't say it. Don't tell them you said
it. They'll think I've been talking about the babies. The little babies.
Don't tell them. Promise me you won't tell."


II.

"Aunt Lavvy--I wish I knew what you thought about Jehovah?"

When Aunt Lavvy stayed with you Mamma made you promise not to ask her
about her opinions. But sometimes you forgot. Aunt Lavvy looked more than
ever as if she was by herself in a quiet empty room, thinking of
something that wasn't there. You couldn't help feeling that she knew
things. Mamma said she had always been the clever one, just as Aunt
Charlotte had always been the queer one; but Aunt Bella said she was no
better than an unbeliever, because she was a Unitarian at heart.

"Why Jehovah in particular?" Aunt Lavvy was like Uncle Victor; she
listened politely when you talked to her, as if you were saying something
interesting.

"Because he's the one you've got to believe in. Do you really think he is
so very good?"

"I don't think anything. I don't know anything, except that God is love."

"Jehovah wasn't."

"Jehovah--" Aunt Lavvy stopped herself. "I mustn't talk to you about
it--because I promised your mother I wouldn't."

It was very queer. Aunt Lavvy's opinions had something to do with
religion, yet Mamma said you mustn't talk about them.

"I promised, too. I shall have to confess and ask her to forgive me."

"Then," said Aunt Lavvy, "be sure you tell her that I didn't talk to you.
Promise me you'll tell her."

That was what Aunt Charlotte had said. Talking about religion was like
talking about being born.




XI


I.

Nobody has any innate ideas. Children and savages and idiots haven't any,
so grown-up people can't have, Mr. Locke says.

But how did he know? You might have them and forget about them, and only
remember again after you were grown up.

She sat up in the drawing-room till nine o'clock now, because she was
eleven years old. She had taken the doll's clothes out of the old wooden
box and filled it with books: the Bible, Milton, and Pope's Homer, the
Greek Accidence, and _Plutarch's Lives_, and the Comedies from Papa's
illustrated Shakespeare in seven volumes, which he never read, and two
volumes of _Pepys' Diary_, and Locke _On the Human Understanding_. She
wished the Bible had been bound in pink calf like Pepys instead of the
shiny black leather that made you think of wet goloshes. Then it would
have looked new and exciting like the other books.

She sat on a footstool with her box beside her in the corner behind
Mamma's chair. She had to hide there because Mamma didn't believe you
really liked reading. She thought you were only shamming and showing off.
Sometimes Mr. and Mrs. Farmer would come in, and Mr. Farmer would play
chess with Papa while Mrs. Farmer talked to Mamma about how troublesome
and independent the tradespeople were, and how hard it was to get
servants and to keep them. Mamma listened to Mrs. Farmer as if she were
saying something wonderful and exciting. Sometimes it would be the
Proparts; or Mr. Batty would come in alone. And sometimes they would all
come together with the aunts and uncles, and there would be a party.

Mary always hoped that Uncle Victor would notice her and say, "Mary is
reading Locke _On the Human Understanding_," or that Mr. Propart would
come and turn over the books and make some interesting remark. But they
never did.

At half-past eight Catty would bring in the tea-tray; the white and grey
and gold tea-cups would be set out round the bulging silver tea-pot that
lifted up its spout with a foolish, pompous expression, like a hen. Mamma
would move about the table in her mauve silk gown, and there would be a
scent of cream and strong tea. Every now and then the shimmering silk and
the rich scent would come between her and the grey, tight-pressed,
difficult page.

"'The senses at first let in particular ideas and furnish the yet empty
cabinet: and the mind growing by degrees familiar with some of them, they
are lodged in the memory and names got to them.'

"Then how--Then how?--"

The thought she thought was coming wouldn't come, and Mamma was telling
her to get up and hand round the bread and butter.


II.

"Mr. Ponsonby, do you remember your innate ideas?"

"My _how_ much?" said Mr. Ponsonby.

"The ideas you had before you were born?"

Mr. Ponsonby said, "Before I was born? Well--" He really seemed to be
considering it.

Mamma's chair, pushed further along the hearthrug, had driven her back
and back, till the box was hidden behind the curtain.

Mr. Ponsonby was Mark's friend. Mark was at the Royal Military Academy at
Woolwich now. Every Saturday Mr. Ponsonby came home with Mark and stayed
till Sunday evening. You knew that sooner or later he would find you out
behind Mamma's chair.

"I mean," she said, "the ideas you were born with."

"Seems to me," said Mr. Ponsonby, "I was born with precious few. Anyhow I
can't say I remember them."

"I was afraid you'd say that. It's what Mr. Locke says."

"Mr. how much?"

"Mr. Locke. You can look at him if you like."

She thought: "He won't. He won't. They never, never do."

But Mr. Ponsonby did. He looked at Mr. Locke, and he looked at Mary, and
he said, "By Gum!" He even read the bits about the baby and the empty
cabinet.

"You don't mean to say you _like_ this sort of thing?"

"I like it most awfully. Of course I don't mean as much as brook-jumping,
but almost as much."

And Mr. Ponsonby said, "Well--I must say--of _all_--you _are_--by Gum!"

He made it sound like the most delicious praise.

Mr. Ponsonby was taller and older than Mark. He was nineteen. She thought
he was the nicest looking person she had ever seen.

His face was the colour of thick white honey; his hair was very dark, and
he had long blue eyes and long black eyebrows like bars, drawn close down
on to the blue. His nose would have been hooky if it hadn't been so
straight, and his mouth was quiet and serious. When he talked to you his
mouth and eyes looked as if they liked it.

Mark came and said, "Minky, if you stodge like that you'll get all
flabby."

It wasn't nice of Mark to say that before Mr. Ponsonby, when he knew
perfectly well that she could jump her own height.

"_Me_ flabby? Feel my muscle."

It rose up hard under her soft skin.

"Feel it, Mr. Ponsonby."

"I say--_what_ a biceps!"

"Yes, but," Mark said, "you should feel his."

His was even bigger and harder than Mark's. "Mine," she said sorrowfully,
"will never be as good as his."

Then Mamma came and told her it was bed-time, and Mr. Ponsonby said, "Oh,
Mrs. Olivier, _not_ yet."

"Five minutes more, then."

But the five minutes were never any good. You just sat counting them.

And when it was all over and Mr. Ponsonby strode across the drawing-room
and opened the door for her she went laughing; she stood in the doorway
and laughed. When you were sent to bed at nine the only dignified thing
was to pretend you didn't care.

And Mr. Ponsonby, holding the door so that Mamma couldn't see him, looked
at her and shook his head, as much as to say, "You and I know it isn't a
joke for either of us, this unrighteous banishment."


III.

"What on earth are you doing?"

She might have known that some day Mamma would come up and find her
putting the children to bed.

She had seven. There was Isabel Batty, and Mrs. Farmer's red-haired baby,
and Mark in the blue frock in the picture when he was four, and Dank in
his white frock and blue sash, and the three very little babies you made
up out of your head. Six o'clock was their bed-time.

"You'd no business to touch those baby-clothes," Mamma said.

The baby-clothes were real. Every evening she took them from the drawer
in the linen cupboard; and when she had sung the children to sleep she
shook out the little frocks and petticoats and folded them in a neat pile
at the foot of the bed.

"I thought you were in the schoolroom learning your lessons?"

"So I was, Mamma. But--you know--six o'clock is their bed-time."

"Oh Mary! you told me you'd given up that silly game."

"So I did. But they won't let me. They don't want me to give them up."

Mamma sat down, as if it was too much for her.

"I hope," she said, "you don't talk to Catty or anybody about it."

"No, Mamma. I couldn't. They're my secret."

"That was all very well when you were a little thing. But a great girl of
twelve--You ought to be ashamed of yourself."

Mamma had gone. She had taken away the baby-clothes. Mary lay face
downwards on her bed.

Shame burned through her body like fire. Hot tears scalded her eyelids.
She thought: "How was I to know you mustn't have babies?" Still, she
couldn't give them all up. She _must_ keep Isabel and the red-haired
baby.

But what would Mr. Ponsonby think of her if he knew?


IV.

"Mr. Ponsonby. Mr. Ponsonby! Stay where you are and look!"

From the window at the end of the top corridor the side of the house went
sheer down into the lane. Mary was at the window. Mr. Ponsonby was in the
lane.

She climbed on to the ledge and knelt there. Grasping the bottom of the
window frame firmly with both hands and letting her knees slide from the
ledge, she lowered herself, and hung for one ecstatic moment, and drew
herself up again by her arms.

"What did you do it for, Mary?"

Mr. Ponsonby had rushed up the stairs and they were sitting there. He was
so tall that he hung over her when he leaned.

"It's nothing. You ought to be able to pull up your own weight."

"You mustn't do it from top-storey windows. It's dangerous."

"Not if you've practised on the banisters first. Where's Mark?"

"With your Mater. I say, supposing you and I go for a walk."

"We must be back at six o'clock," she said.

When you went for walks with Mark or Mr. Ponsonby they always raced you
down Ley Street and over the ford at the bottom. They both gave you the
same start to the Horn's Tavern; the only difference was that with Mr.
Ponsonby you were over the ford first.