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Mary Olivier: A Life

M >> May Sinclair >> Mary Olivier: A Life




"Who is Jimmy?"

"Mark's friend and mine."

"_Where_ is he?"

"In Australia. He can't ever come back, so I shall never see him again."

"I'm glad to hear it."

A sudden, dreadful doubt. She turned to him in the narrow path.

"You aren't laughing at me, are you? You don't think I'm shamming and
showing off?"

"I? I? Laughing at you? My poor child--No--"

"They don't understand that you can really love words--beautiful sounds.
And thoughts. Love them awfully, as if they were alive. As if they were
people."

"They are alive. They're better than people. You know the best of your
Shelley and Plato and Spinoza. Instead of the worst."

"I should have liked to have known them, too. Sometimes I pretend that I
do know them. That they're alive. That they're here. Saying things and
listening. They're kind. They never misunderstand. They never lose their
tempers."

"You mustn't do that," he said sharply.

"Why not?"

"It isn't good for you. Talk to me. I'm alive. I'm here, I'll listen.
I'll never misunderstand. I'll never lose my temper."

"You aren't always here."

He smiled, secretly, with straight lips, under the funny, frizzy, French
moustache. And when he spoke again he looked old and wise, like an uncle.

"Wait," he said. "Wait a bit. Wait three years."

"Three years?" she said. "Three years before we can go for another walk?"

He shouted laughter and drew it back with a groan.

She couldn't tell him that she pretended he was there when he was not
there; that she created situations.

He was ill, and she nursed him. She could feel the weight of his head
against her arm, and his forehead--hot--hot under her hand. She had felt
her hands to see whether they would be nice enough to put on Mr.
Jourdain's forehead. They were rather nice; cool and smooth; the palms
brushed together with a soft, swishing sound like fine silk.

He was poor and she worked for him.

He was in danger and she saved him. From a runaway horse; from a furious
dog; from a burning house; from a lunatic with a revolver.

It made her sad to think how unlikely it was that any of these things
would ever happen.


III.

"Mr. Jourdain, I am going to school."

The corn was reaped and carried. The five elms stood high above the
shallow stubble.

"My poor Mary, is it possible?"

"Yes. Mamma says she's been thinking of it for a long time."

"Don't be too hard on your mother till you're quite sure it wasn't my
aunt."

"It may have been both of them. Anyhow, it's awful. Just--just when I was
so happy."

"Just when I was so happy," he said. "But that's the sort of thing they
do."

"I knew you'd be sorry for me."




XVIII


I.

She was shut up with Papa, tight, in the narrow cab that smelt of the
mews. Papa, sitting slantways, nearly filled the cab. He was quiet and
sad, almost as if he were sorry she was going.

His sadness and quietness fascinated her. He had a mysterious, wonderful,
secret life going on in him. Funny you should think of it for the first
time in the cab. Supposing you stroked his hand. Better not. He mightn't
like it.

Not forty minutes from Liverpool Street to Victoria. If only cabs didn't
smell so.


II.

The small, ugly houses streamed past, backs turned to the train, stuck
together, rushing, rushing in from the country.

Grey streets, trying to cut across the stream, getting nowhere, carried
past sideways on.

Don't look at the houses. Shut your eyes and remember.

Her father's hand on her shoulder. His face, at the carriage window,
looking for her. A girl moving back, pushing her to it. "Papa!"

Why hadn't she loved him all the time? Why hadn't she liked his beard?
His nice, brown, silky beard. His poor beard.

Mamma's face, in the hall, breaking up suddenly. Her tears in your mouth.
Her arms, crushing you. Mamma's face at the dining-room window. Tears,
pricking, cutting your eyelids. Blink them back before the girls see
them. Don't think of Mamma.

The Thames. Barking Creek goes into the Thames and the Roding goes into
Barking Creek. Yesterday, the last walk with Roddy, across Barking Flats
to the river, over the dry, sallow grass, the wind blowing in their
faces. Roddy's face, beautiful, like Mamma's, his mouth, white at the
edges. Roddy gasping in the wind, trying to laugh, his heart thumping.
Roddy was excited when he saw the tall masts of the ships. He had wanted
to be a sailor.

Dan's face, when he said good-bye; his hurt, unhappy eyes; the little
dark, furry moustache trying to come. Tibby's eyes. Dank wanted to marry
Effie. Mark was the only one who got what he wanted.

Better not think of Dank.

She looked shyly at her companions. The stout lady in brown, sitting
beside her; kind, thin mouth, pursed to look important; dull kind eyes
trying to be wise and sharp behind spectacles, between curtains of dead
hair. A grand manner, excessively polite, on the platform, to Papa--Miss
Lambert.

The three girls, all facing them. Pam Quin; flaxen pigtail; grown up
nose; polite mouth, buttoned, little flaxen and pink old lady, Pam Quin,
talking about her thirteenth birthday.

Lucy Elliott, red pig-tail, suddenly sad in her corner, innocent
white-face, grey eyes blinking to swallow her tears. Frances Elliott, hay
coloured pig-tail, very upright, sitting forward and talking fast to hide
her sister's shame.

Mamma's face--Don't think of it.

Green fields and trees rushing past now. Stop a tree and you'll change
and feel the train moving. Plato. You can't trust your senses. The
cave-dwellers didn't see the things that really moved, only the shadows
of the images of the things. Is the world in your mind or your mind in
the world? Which really moves? Perhaps the world stands still and you
move on and on like the train. If both moved together that would feel
like standing still.

Grass banks. Telegraph wires dipping and rising like sea-waves. At Dover
there would be the sea.

Mamma's face--Think. Think harder. The world was going on before your
mind started. Supposing you lived before, would that settle it? No. A
white chalk cutting flashed by. God's mind is what both go on in. That
settles it.

The train dashed into a tunnel. A long tunnel. She couldn't remember what
she was thinking of the second before they went in. Something that
settled it. Settled what? She couldn't think any more.

Dover. The girls standing up, and laughing. They said she had gone to
sleep in the train.


III.

There was no sea; only the Maison Dieu Road and the big square house in
the walled garden. Brown wire blinds half way up the schoolroom windows.
An old lady with grey hair and a kind, blunt face, like Jenny; she
unpacked your box in the large, light bedroom, folding and unfolding your
things with little gentle, tender hands. Miss Haynes. She hoped you would
be happy with them, hoped you wouldn't mind sleeping alone the first
night, thought you must be hungry and took you down to tea in the long
dining-room.

More girls, pretending not to look at you; talking politely to Miss
Lambert.

After tea they paired off, glad to see each other. She sat in the corner
of the schoolroom reading the new green Shakespeare that Roddy had given
her. Two girls glanced at her, looked at each other. "Is she doing it for
fun?" "Cheek, more likely."

Night. A strange white bed. Two empty beds, strange and white, in the
large, light room. She wondered what sort of girls would be sleeping
there to-morrow night. A big white curtain: you could draw it across the
room and shut them out.

She lay awake, thinking of her mother, crying now and then; thinking of
Roddy and Dan. Mysterious, measured sounds came through the open window.
That was the sea. She got up and looked out. The deep-walled garden lay
under the window, black and clear like a well. Calais was over there. And
Paris. Mr. Jourdain had written to say he was going to Paris. She had his
letter.

In bed she felt for the sharp edge of the envelope sticking out under the
pillow. She threw back the hot blankets. The wind flowed to her, running
cold like water over the thin sheet.

A light moved across the ceiling. Somebody had waked her. Somebody was
putting the blankets back again, pressing a large, kind hand to her
forehead. Miss Lambert.


IV.

"Mais--mais--de grâce! ça ne finira jamais--jamais, s'il faut répondre à
tes sottises, Marie. Recommençons."

Mademoiselle, golden top-knot shining and shaking, blue eyes rolling
between black lashes.

"De ta tige détachée,
Pauvre feuille dessechée"--

Détachée--desséchée. They didn't rhyme. Their not rhyming irritated her
distress.

She hated the schoolroom: the ochreish wall-paper, the light soiled by
the brown wire gauze; the cramped classes, the faint odour of girl's
skin; girl's talk in the bedroom when you undressed.

The queer she-things had a wonderful, mysterious life you couldn't touch.

Clara, when she walked with you, smiling with her black-treacle eyes and
bad teeth, glad to be talked to. Clara in bed. You bathed her forehead
with eau-de-cologne, and she lay there, happy, glad of her headache that
made them sorry for her. Clara, waiting for you at the foot of the
stairs, looking with dog's eyes, imploring. "Will you walk with me?" "I
can't. I'm going with Lucy." She turned her wounded dog's eyes and slunk
away, beaten, humble, to walk with the little ones.

Lucy Elliott in the bathing machine, slipping from the cloak of the
towel, slender and straight; sea water gluing red weeds of hair to her
white skin. Sweet eyes looking towards you in the evening at sewing-time.

"Will you sit with me at sewing?"

"I'm sitting with Rose Godwin."

Sudden sweetness; sudden trouble; grey eyes dark and angry behind sudden
tears. She wouldn't look at you; wouldn't tell you what you had done.

Rose Godwin, strong and clever; fourteen; head of the school. Honey-white
Roman face; brown-black hair that smelt like Brazilian nuts. Rose Godwin
walking with you in the garden.

"You must behave like other people if you expect them to like you."

"I don't expect them. How do I behave?"

"It isn't exactly behaving. It's more the way you talk and look at
people. As if you saw slap through them. Or else as if you didn't see
them at all. That's worse. People don't like it."

"Anything else?"

"Yes. It was cheeky of you to tell Mademoiselle that those French verses
didn't rhyme."

"But they didn't."

"Who cares?"

"I care. I care frightfully."

"There you go. That's exactly what I mean," Rose said. "Who cares if you
care? And there's another thing. You're worrying Miss Lambert. This
school of hers has got a name for sound religious teaching. You may not
like sound religious teaching, but she's got fifteen of us to look after
besides you. If you want to be an atheist, go and be it by yourself."

"I'm not an atheist."

"Well, whatever silly thing you are. You mustn't talk about it to the
girls. It isn't fair," Rose said.

"All right. I won't."

"On your honour?"

"On my honour."


V.

A three-cornered note on her dressing-table at bed-time:

Sept. 20th, 1878. Maison Dieu Lodge.

"My dear Mary: Our talk was not satisfactory. Unless you can assure me by
to-morrow morning that you believe in the Blessed Trinity and all the
other truths of our most holy religion, I fear that, _much as we love
you_, we dare not keep you with us, for your school-fellows' sake.

"Think it over, my dear child, and let me know. Pray to God _to-night_ to
change your heart and mind and give you His Holy Spirit.

"Affectionately yours,

"Henrietta Lambert."

The Trinity. A three-cornered note.

"My dear Miss Lambert: I am very sorry; but it really isn't any good, and
if it was it couldn't be done in the time. You wouldn't like it if I told
you lies, would you? That's why I can't join in the prayers and say the
Creed and bow; in Church or anywhere. Rose made me promise not to talk
about it, and I won't.

"If you must send me away to-morrow morning, you must. But I'm glad you
love me. I was afraid you didn't.

"With love, your very affectionate

"Mary Olivier."

"P.S.--I've folded my clothes all ready for packing."

To-morrow the clothes were put back again in their drawers. She wasn't
going. Miss Lambert said something about Rose and Lucy and "kindness to
poor Clara."


VI.

Rose Godwin told her that home-sickness wore off. It didn't. It came
beating up and up, like madness, out of nothing. The French verbs, grey,
slender as little verses on the page, the French verbs swam together and
sank under the clear-floating images of home-sickness. Mamma's face,
Roddy's, Dan's face. Tall trees, the Essex fields, flat as water, falling
away behind them. Little feathery trees, flying low on the sky-line.
Outside the hallucination the soiled light shut you in.

The soiled light; odours from the warm roots of girl's hair; and Sunday.
Sunday; stale odours of churches. You wrote out the sermon you had not
listened to and had not heard. Somebody told you the text, and you amused
yourself by seeing how near you could get to what you would have heard if
you had listened. After tea, hymns; then church again. Your heart
laboured with the strain of kneeling, arms lifted up to the high pew
ledge. You breathed pew dust. Your brain swayed like a bladder, brittle,
swollen with hot gas-fumes. After supper, prayers again. Sunday was over.

On Monday, the tenth day, she ran away to Dover Harbour. She had thought
she could get to London with two weeks' pocket-money and what was left of
Uncle Victor's tip after she had paid for the eau-de-cologne; but the
ticket man said it would only take her as far as Canterbury. She had
frightened Miss Lambert and made her tremble: all for nothing, except the
sight of the Harbour. It was dreadful to see her tremble. Even the
Harbour wasn't worth it.

A miracle would have to happen.

Two weeks passed and three weeks. And on the first evening of the fourth
week the miracle happened. Rose Godwin came to her and whispered: "You're
wanted in the dining-room."

Her mother's letter lay open on the table. A tear had made a glazed
snail's track down Miss Lambert's cheek; and Mary thought that one of
them was dead--Roddy--Dan--Papa.

"My dear, my dear--don't cry. You're going home."

"Why? Why am I going?"

She could see the dull, kind eyes trying to look clever.

"Because your mother has sent for you. She wants you back again."

"Mamma? What does she want me for?"

Miss Lambert's eyes turned aside slantways. She swallowed something in
her throat, making a funny noise: qualk-qualk.

"It isn't _you_? You aren't sending me away?"

"No; we're not sending you. But we think it's best for you to go. We
can't bear to see your dear, unhappy little face going about the
passages."

"Does it mean that Mamma isn't happy without me?"

"Well--she _would_ miss her only daughter, wouldn't she?"

The miracle. The shining, lovely miracle.

"Mary Olivier is going! Mary Olivier is going!"

Actually the girls were sorry. Too sorry. The compassion in Rose Godwin's
face stirred a doubt. Doubt of the miracle.

She carried her books to the white curtained room where Miss Haynes knelt
by her trunk, packing her clothes with little gentle, tender hands.

"Miss Haynes" (suddenly), "I'm not expelled, am I?"

"Expelled? My dear child, who's talking about expulsion?"

As if she said, When miracles are worked for you, accept them.

She lay awake, thinking what she should say to her mother when she got
home. She would have to tell her that just at first she very nearly _was_
expelled. Then her mother would believe in her unbelief and not think she
was shamming.

And she would have to explain about her unbelief. And about Pantheism.


VII.

She wondered how she would set about it. It wouldn't do to start suddenly
by saying you didn't believe in Jesus or the God of the Old Testament or
Hell. That would hurt her horribly. The only decent thing would be to let
her see how beautiful Spinoza's God was and leave it to her to make the
comparison.

You would have to make it quite clear to yourself first. It was like
this. There were the five elm trees, and there was the happy white light
on the fields. God was the trees. He was the happy light and he was your
happiness. There was Catty singing in the kitchen. God was Catty.

Oh--and there was Papa and Papa's temper. God would have to be Papa too.

Spinoza couldn't have meant it that way.

He meant that though God was all Papa, Papa was not all God. He was only
a bit of him. He meant that if God was the only reality, Papa wouldn't be
quite real.

But if Papa wasn't quite real then Mamma and Mark were not quite real
either.

If Spinoza had meant that--

But perhaps he hadn't. Perhaps he meant that parts of Papa, the parts you
saw most of--his beard, for instance, and his temper--were not quite
real, but that some other part of him, the part you couldn't see, might
be real in the same way that God was. That would be Papa himself, and it
would be God too. And if God could be Papa, he would have no difficulty
at all in being Mamma and Mark.

Surely Mamma would see that, if you had to have a God, Spinoza's was by
far the nicest God, besides being the easiest to believe in. Surely it
would please her to think like that about Papa, to know that his temper
was not quite real, and that your sin, when you sinned, was not quite
real, so that not even your sin could separate you from God. All your
life Mamma had dinned into you the agony of separation from God, and the
necessity of the Atonement. She would feel much more comfortable if she
knew that there never had been any separation, and that there needn't be
any Atonement.

Of course she might not like the idea of sin being somehow inside God.
She might say it looked bad. But if it wasn't inside God, it would have
to be outside him, supporting itself and causing itself, and then where
were you? You would have to say that God was not the cause of all things,
and that would be much worse.

Surely if you put it to her like that--? But somehow she couldn't hear
herself saying all that to her mother. Supposing Mamma wouldn't listen?

And she couldn't hear herself talking about her happiness, the sudden,
secret happiness that more than anything was like God. When she thought
of it she was hot and cold by turns and she had no words for it. She
remembered the first time it had come to her, and how she had found her
mother in the drawing-room and had knelt down at her knees and kissed her
hands with the idea of drawing her into her happiness. And she remembered
her mother's face. It made her ashamed, even now, as if she had been
silly. She thought: I shall never be able to talk about it to Mamma.

Yet--perhaps--now that the miracle had happened--


VIII.

In the morning Miss Lambert took her up to London. She had a sort of idea
that the kind lady talked to her a great deal, about God and the
Christian religion. But she couldn't listen; she couldn't talk; she
couldn't think now.

For three hours, in the train, in the waiting-room at Victoria, while
Miss Lambert talked to Papa outside, in the cab, alone with Papa--Miss
Lambert must have said something nice about her, for he looked pleased,
as if he wouldn't mind if you did stroke his hand--in Mr. Parish's
wagonette, she sat happy and still, contemplating the shining, lovely
miracle.


IX.

She saw Catty open the front door and run away. Her mother was coming
slowly down the narrow hall.

She ran up the flagged path.

"Mamma!" She flung herself to the embrace.

Her mother swerved from her, staggering back and putting out her hands
between them. Aware of Mr. Parish shouldering the trunk, she turned into
the open dining-room. Mary followed her and shut the door.

Her mother sat down, helplessly. Mary saw that she was crying; she had
been crying a long time. Her soaked eyelashes were parted by her tears
and gathered into points.

"Mamma--what is it?"

"What is it? You've disgraced yourself. Everlastingly. You've disgraced
your father, and you've disgraced me. That's what it is."

"I haven't done anything of the sort, Mamma."

"You don't think it's a disgrace, then, to be expelled? For infidelity."

"But I'm not expelled."

"You are expelled. And you know it."

"No. They said I wasn't. They didn't want me to go. They told me you
wanted me back again."

"Is it likely I should want you when you hadn't been gone three weeks?"

She could hear herself gasp, see herself standing there, open-mouthed,
idiotic.

Nothing could shake her mother in her belief that she had been expelled.

"Of course, if it makes you happier to believe it," she said at last,
"do. Will you let me see Miss Lambert's letter?"

"No," her mother said. "I will not."

Suddenly she felt hard and strong, grown-up in her sad wisdom. Her mother
didn't love her. She never had loved her. Nothing she could ever do would
make her love her. Miracles didn't happen.

She thought: "I wonder why she won't let me see Miss Lambert's letter?"

She went upstairs to her room. She leaned on the sill of the open window,
looking out, drinking in the sweet air of the autumn fields. The five
elms raised golden heads to a blue sky.

Her childhood had died with a little gasp.

Catty came in to unpack her box. Catty, with wet cheeks, kissed a dead
child.




XIX


I.

In the train from Bristol to Paddington for the last time: July,
eighteen-eighty.

She would never see any of them again: Ada and Geraldine; Mabel and
Florrie and little Lena and Kate; Miss Wray with her pale face and angry
eyes; never hear her sudden, cold, delicious praise. Never see the bare,
oblong schoolroom with the brown desks, seven rows across for the lower
school, one long form along the wall for Class One where she and Ada and
Geraldine sat apart. Never look through the bay windows over the lea to
the Channel, at sunset, Lundy Island flattened out, floating, gold on
gold in the offing. Never see magenta valerian growing in hot white grey
walls.

Never hear Louie Prichard straining the little music room with Chopin's
_Fontana_ Polonaise. Never breathe in its floor-dust with the _Adagio_ of
the "Pathetic Sonata."

She was glad she had seen it through to the end when the clergymen's and
squires' daughters went and the daughters of Bristol drapers and
publicans and lodging-house keepers came.

("What do you think! Bessie Parson's brother marked all her
underclothing. In the shop!")

But they taught you quite a lot of things: Zoology, Physiology, Paley's
Evidences, British Law, Political Economy. It had been a wonderful school
when Mrs. Propart's nieces went to it. And they kept all that up when the
smash came and the butter gave out, and you ate cheap bread that tasted
of alum, and potatoes that were fibrous skeletons in a green pulp.
Oh--she had seen it through. A whole year and a half of it.

Why? Because you promised Mamma you'd stick to the Clevehead School
whatever it was like? Because they taught you German and let you learn
Greek by yourself with the old arithmetic master? (Ada Clark said it was
a mean trick to get more marks.) Because of the Beethoven and Schumann
and Chopin, and Lundy Island, and the valerian? Because nothing mattered,
not even going hungry?

She was glad she hadn't told about that, nor why she asked for the "room
to herself" that turned out to be a servants' garret on a deserted floor.
You could wake at five o'clock in the light mornings and read Plato, or
snatch twenty minutes from undressing before Miss Payne came for your
candle. The tall sycamore swayed in the moonlight, tapping on the window
pane; its shadow moved softly in the room like a ghost.


II.

She would like to see the valerian again, though. Mamma said it didn't
grow in Yorkshire.

Funny to be going back to Ilford after Roddy and Papa and Mamma had left
it. Funny to be staying at Five Elms with Uncle Victor. Nice Uncle
Victor, buying the house from Papa and making Dan live with them. That
was to keep him from drinking. Uncle Victor was hurt because Papa and
Mamma would go to Morfe when he wanted you all to live with him. But you
couldn't imagine Emilius and Victor living together or Mamma and Aunt
Lavvy.

Bristol to Paddington. This time next week it would be King's Cross to
Reyburn for Morfe.

She wondered what it would be like. Aunt Bella said it was a
dead-and-alive place. Morfe--Morfe. It did sound rather as if people died
in it. Aunt Bella was angry with Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin for making
Mamma go there. But Aunt Bella had never liked Mrs. Waugh and Miss
Frewin. That was because they had been Mamma's friends at school and not
Aunt Bella's.

She wondered what they would be like, and whether they would disapprove
of her. They would if they believed she had been expelled from Dover and
had broken Mamma's heart. All Mamma's friends thought that.

She didn't mind going to Morfe so much. The awful thing was leaving
Ilford. Ilford was part of Mark, part of her, part of her and Mark
together. There were things they had done that never in all their lives
they could do again. Waldteufel Waltzes played on the old Cramer piano,
standing in its place by the door, waltzes that would never sound the
same in any other place in any other room. And there was the sumach tree.
It would die if you transplanted it.

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