She was always going to the Sutcliffes' now. Her mother shook her head
when she saw her in her short white skirt and white jersey, slashing at
nothing with her racquet, ready. Mamma didn't like the Sutcliffes. She
said they hadn't been nice to poor Papa. They had never asked him again.
You could see she thought you a beast to like them.
"But, Mamma darling, I can't help liking them."
And Mamma would look disgusted and go back to her pansy bed and dig her
trowel in with little savage thrusts, and say she supposed you would
always have your own way.
You would go down to Greffington Hall and find Mr. Sutcliffe sitting
under the beech tree on the lawn, in white flannels, looking rather tired
and bored. And Mrs. Sutcliffe, a long-faced, delicate-nosed Beauty of
Victorian Albums, growing stout, wearing full skirts and white cashmere
shawls and wide mushroomy hats when nobody else did. She had an air of
doing it on purpose, to be different, like royalty. She would take your
hand and press it gently and smile her downward, dragging smile, and she
would say, "How is your mother? Does she mind the hot weather? She must
come and see me when it's cooler." That was the nice way she had, so that
you mightn't think it was Mamma's fault, or Papa's, if they didn't see
each other often. And she would look down at her shawl and gather it
about her, as if in spirit she had got up and gone away.
And Mr. Sutcliffe would be standing in front of you, looking suddenly
years younger, with his eyes shining and clean as though he had just
washed them.
And after tea you would play singles furiously. For two hours you would
try to beat him. When you jumped the net Mrs. Sutcliffe would wave her
hand and nod to you and smile. You had done something that pleased her.
To-day, when it was all over, Mr. Sutcliffe took her back into the house,
and there on the hall table were the books he had got for her from the
London Library: The Heine, the Goethe's _Faust_, the Sappho, the Darwin's
_Origin of Species_, the Schopenhauer, _Die Welt als Wille und
Vorstellung_.
"Five? All at once?"
"I get fifteen. As long as we're here you shall have your five."
He walked home with her, carrying the books. Five. Five. And when you had
finished them there would be five more. It was unbelievable.
"Why are you so nice to me? Why? _Why_?"
"I think it must be because I like you, Mary."
Utterly unbelievable.
"Do--you--_really_--like me?"
"I liked you the first day I saw you. With your brother. On Greffington
Edge."
"I wonder why." She wondered what he was thinking, what, deep down inside
him, he was really thinking.
"Perhaps it was because you wanted something I could give you....
Tennis.... You wanted it so badly. Everything you want you want so
badly."
"And I never knew we were going to be such friends."
"No more did I. And I don't know now how long it's going to last."
"Why shouldn't it last?"
"Because next year 'Mark' will have come home and you'll have nothing to
say to me."
"Mark won't make a scrap of difference."
"Well--if it isn't 'Mark' ... You'll grow up, Mary, and it won't amuse
you to talk to me any more. I shan't know you. You'll wear long skirts
and long hair done in the fashion."
"I shall always want to talk to you. I shall never do up my hair. I cut
it off because I couldn't be bothered with it. But I was sold. I thought
it would curl all over my head, and it didn't curl."
"It curls at the tips," Mr. Sutcliffe said. "I like it. Makes you look
like a jolly boy, instead of a dreadful, unapproachable young lady. A
little San Giovanni. A little San Giovanni."
That was his trick: caressing his own words as if he liked them.
She wondered what, deep down inside him, he was really like.
"Mr. Sutcliffe--if you'd known a girl when she was only fourteen, and you
liked her and you never saw her again till she was seventeen, and then
you found that she'd gone and cut her hair all off, would it give you an
awful shock?"
"Depends on how much I liked her."
"If you'd liked her awfully--would it make you leave off liking her?"
"I think my friendship could stand the strain."
"If it wasn't just friendship? Supposing it was Mrs. Sutcliffe?"
"I shouldn't like my wife to cut her hair off. It wouldn't be at all
becoming to her."
"No. But when she was young?"
"Ah--when she was young--"
"Would it have made any difference?"
"No. No. It wouldn't have made any difference at all."
"You'd have married her just the same?"
"Just the same, Mary. Why?"
"Oh, nothing. I thought you'd be like that. I just wanted to make sure."
He smiled to himself. He had funny, secret thoughts that you would never
know.
"Well," she said, "I didn't beat you."
"Form not good enough yet--quite."
He promised her it should be perfect by the time Mark came home.