THE GREEN TREES . . .
I
THE holidays that followed this term were the most marvellous. From
first to last they were bathed in the atmosphere of mellow gold that
makes beautiful some evenings of spring, all tender and bird-haunted; and
his mother, too, was more wonderful than she had ever been before. On
the very first evening when she had come upstairs to tuck him in and to
kiss him good-night, she sat on the bedstead leaning over him with both
her arms round his neck and whispering secrets to him. Very
extraordinary they were; and as she told him, her lips were soft on his
cheek. She said that only a month before she had expected to have a baby
sister for him—she had always longed so much to have a baby girl—and
before the first jealousy that had flamed up into his mind had died away,
she told him how the baby had been born dead, and how terribly she had
felt the disappointment. He wondered, in the dark, if she were crying.
“But now that I’ve got my other baby again,” she said, “I am going to
forget all about it. We’ll be ever so happy by ourselves, Eddie, won’t
we? In the evenings when father is down at business we will read
together. This time we’ll take turns reading, for you’re growing such a
big boy. And we’ll go wonderful walks, only not very far, because Dr.
Thornhouse says I’m not strong enough yet. I want you to tell me
everything—everything you do and think about at school, because you’re
all I’ve got now. And you’re part of me, Eddie, really.” At this she
clutched him passionately.
For a moment Edwin was nearly crying, and then, suddenly, he saw another
side of it: her expressed feelings were somehow foreign to him and made
him ashamed, as did Mr. Leeming’s watery eyes when he talked about
Arthur’s prototype. In the face of this eager emotion he felt himself
unresponsive and a little consciously superior and male. He didn’t want
to feel superior to his mother—but there it was! Even at breakfast next
morning he was shy, and it surprised him when he saw her clear gray-green
eyes wholly free from any answering shame. So unconscious was she of his
scrutiny that he went on looking at her—really looked at her for the
first time in his life. And looking, he began to differentiate this new
being, so fragile and eager and girlish, from the old traditional mother
whom he had loved and accepted as unquestionably as the miles of blue sky
above him. He discovered that she was a woman, remembered Griffin, and
blushed.
“What a colour you’ve got, boy,” said his father. And it struck him also
that she was smaller than she used to be.
“Isn’t mother rather thin?” he asked his father. Mr. Ingleby smiled, and
in his grave, shy way put out his hand to touch hers as it lay on the
table.
“You silly boy,” said his mother.
But her denials did not satisfy him. He knew, for certain, that she was
different from the mother whom he had known. He noticed, too, that she
was not allowed to eat the same food as the rest of them. Sometimes she
would forget their rules and taste things that were forbidden, and then
his father would gravely reprove her. Instead of bread she was ordered
to eat a sort of biscuit which Edwin’s curiosity made him anxious to
taste. He was disappointed; for they had no taste at all. “What are
they made of?” he asked; and they told him “Gluten. . . . That’s the
sticky part of wheat without starch.”
And yet, in spite of her illness, they had never been happier together.
The new intimacy, that had begun with her painful confidences of the
first evening, continued. In particular she told him of the difficulties
which she was having with his Aunt Laura, her sister, who had lately
married a small manufacturer and come to live near Halesby. The story
was an old one and rather unhappy. It began years and years ago in the
days of his mother’s childhood, days that she remembered so unhappily
that she never really wanted to recall them. He had never before known
anything about his mother’s childhood. He had just taken her for granted
in her present surroundings. Now, in the long firelight evenings, she
told him how her forefathers and his had once been great people, living
in a stone border castle high above the Monmouth marches, and how, with
the lapse of time and the decay of the bloody age in which their violence
had prospered, the family had fallen from its estate and lost its lands;
how the tower of the castle had been broken and under its shadow a
farmhouse had arisen in which they had lived and scraped what income they
could make from a little valley-land and many acres of mountain pasture.
Now there were none of them left there; but still, where the tracks grew
stony and the orchards began to thin away, the walls of the house
crumbled patiently under the shadow of overhanging mountain-ridges.
“Your grandfather was the last of them, Eddie,” she said. “He was a
farmer.” And for a moment consciousness of Griffin and his social
prejudices invaded the picture. She told him of spring days, when the
clouds would come sweeping out of England on the back of the east wind
and be hurried like the frothy comb of a wave against the mountains, and
how they would then break asunder on the darens and fall back in a
drenching mist over the lonely house by Felindre, and for days the farm
would be islanded in fog. But on the summit above them, the sheep were
grazing in the sunlight and the buzzards hunting, and in the misty
lowlands beneath lay orchards full of faint-scented apple blossom. “We
were not the only decayed family there,” she said. “There were others,
and greater—such as the Grosmonts of Trecastel. But old Mr. Grosmont had
two sons, and father only had three daughters. I was a sort of ugly
duckling, Eddie; they never really liked me. And I was never happy
there.”
“I think I must be like you, darling,” said Edwin. “I had a rotten time
at St. Luke’s at first. Even now I don’t quite seem to be . . . I don’t
know . . . ordinary.”
She smiled and kissed him.
“My father was a dear,” she said, “but mother really hated me. Your Aunt
Carrie was much cleverer and better-looking than me, and so they always
made a fuss of her and left me to myself. She had all the advantages.
You see, I suppose they thought she was worth it. She was a beautiful,
selfish creature, with the most lovely hair.”
“I’m sure it wasn’t lovelier than yours, darling,” said Edwin.
“Then she went and threw herself away, as mother called it, on a man she
met at a hunt ball in Hereford. And she died, poor thing, with her first
baby. It was an awful blow to mother. It made her more horrid to me
than ever. I suppose she found me such a poor substitute. If it had
been me it wouldn’t have mattered. I went to keep house for your
great-uncle in North Bromwich; and there I met your father. I have never
been really happy. You see, nobody had ever taken any notice of
me—before that. Then mother began to put all the hopes that had been
disappointed in Carrie on Aunt Laura. Nothing was too good for her.
They spoiled her, and spoiled her. It was worse when father died and
mother was left to do what she liked with the money. And when your Aunt
Laura came here and met Mr. Fellows and married him, your grandmother
blamed me. I couldn’t help it . . . and in any case Mr. Fellows is an
awfully nice, quiet man. I did all I could for her, too, getting her
house ready and that sort of thing, and now she’s so dreadfully
difficult. I suppose she’s really annoyed to think that she hasn’t done
better for herself with all her advantages of education, and just lets it
off on me. It’s dreadfully awkward, Eddie. I think she’s even jealous
that their house isn’t as big as ours. I simply daren’t tell your father
the sort of things she’s said. If he knew one of them he’d never forgive
her. He’s like that about anything that affects me.”
“I should be, too,” said Edwin.
“Would you?” she smiled.
“Yes. . . . You’ve made me hate Aunt Laura already.”
“You mustn’t feel like that, Eddie. She’s young, and she’s been spoilt.
It isn’t all her fault, probably.”
“If it were any one but you I wouldn’t mind. But you’re so wonderful.”
He loved to look into her eyes when she loved him.
II
After this they had wonderful times together. In the mornings Edwin
would indulge his glorious idleness among the books of the dining-room
shelves, and after middle-day dinner, when his father had gone back to
the shop, he would set out with his mother up the lane under the tall
elms and through the sloping field that led to the mill pond. They did
not walk very far because she must not be over-tired; but the field was
so crowded with wonders that they were tempted further. Cowslips steeped
the meadows in their vinous perfume; and between the saplings of the
hazel copse they saw the sheeted hyacinths gleaming like pools that
mirror the sky in open places. Beyond the land of meadows and copses
they came to a belt of the old forest, through which they could see up a
broad green lane to the very shoulders of the hills: Pen Beacon heaving
its fleece of black firs, and the domed head of Uffdown.
His mother would sigh a little when she saw the hills. In weather that
threatened rain from the west they would seem so near, with their contour
hard against the watery sky and the cloud shadows all prussian blue.
“Oh, I should love to be there, Edwin,” she would say.
“Can’t we walk there some day, dearest?”
“It’s such a terrible drag up. We should both be dreadfully tired.”
“Oh, I wish we could, mother; I do wish we could.”
The day of their last walk together, when they came to the end of the
green lane and were sitting on the gate, she jumped down on the far side
and set off walking up the track.
“Come along, Eddie,” she said, “I’m going up to Uffdown.”
“Oh, mother,” he cried. “Isn’t it too far? I should like to carry you!”
And half-doubting, but fearfully eager for adventure, they set off
together. As they climbed upward it seemed that the air grew sweeter
every moment, and when they had left the wood behind them they came out
on to a stony lane with a surface of grit veined by the tracks of
storm-water, and on either side banks of tufted grass along which gorse
was swaying in the breeze. And here the clouds seemed to be racing close
above their heads, all dazzling white, and the blue in which they moved
was deep and limpid. Mrs. Ingleby’s gray-green eyes were full of
laughter and her face flushed with the climb.
“Oh, mother,” Edwin panted, “what an awful lick you go! Hadn’t we better
sit down a bit?”
“And catch cold! You careless boy. We’ll get to the top soon now.”
“But you mustn’t tire yourself.”
She laughed at him.
“Oh, this air is wonderful,” she said. “Just as if it had come straight
out of the blue, all washed and clean.”
On the top of Uffdown where the cloak of pine droops to a hollow between
the two peaks, they sat on a dry, yielding hedge-side, where the grass
was thick as the fleece of a mountain sheep, and four lovely counties
dreamed below them.
“Eddie,” she asked, half joking, “where does the west wind come from?”
Edwin was willing to instruct.
“Oh, I don’t know, dearest—from Wales and the sea, I suppose.”
“Put your head close to mine and I’ll show you. . . . Those hills that
look like mountains cut out of blue cardboard are the Malverns, and far,
ever so far beyond them—yes, just to the left you see a level ridge that
drops suddenly in the west. You don’t know what that is, Eddie, do you?”
“No—I don’t like to look at single things. I like to feel it’s all—what
d’you call it?—all dreamy underneath one.”
“But you must look at that. It’s the mountain, Eddie, close to where I
was born.”
“Felindre?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“But I never knew that you could see it from here. You never told me.”
“You know why. I told you that I was never happy there. And now, you
see, since the old people died and the land was sold, it really has
nothing to do with us.”
“Still, it’s rather wonderful to be looking into—into another country.
It is Wales, isn’t it?”
“Yes—part of it’s in Wales. Felindre is in England.”
Edwin pondered for a moment.
“I’m rather glad I’m not half-Welsh, anyway,” he said. “But I wish I’d
been there.”
“Do you?” she answered dreamily. “Yes—I wish we had been there together.
It was a different sort of life. I thought—I just thought I should like
to see it again.”
He was a little alarmed at the wistfulness in her voice.
“Mother—what do you mean?” he cried.
“Nothing, Eddie, nothing. It was another life.”
She put her arms round his neck and pulled him gently to her. He was
content to lie there, with his head on her breast, while she talked in a
low voice of that distant place and of her own childhood. He listened in
a dream and did not speak at all until she began to tell him a long story
which the Felindre shepherd, Morgan, had told her when she was a child.
Then Edwin opened his eyes and stopped her.
“Dearest, I know that story,” he said. “Oh, go on, it’s wonderful. . . .”
“Perhaps I’ve told it to you before: perhaps I told you when you were a
baby—I used to talk to you a great deal in your cradle. Perhaps . . . I
was rather lonely when you came, Eddie.”
“Oh, no, I’m sure you haven’t. . . .”
“Look, the cloud is blotting out my mountain now,” she said. “It is time
we were going.” The counties were asleep already.
Over the brow of the hill they stepped into a different world, for where
the smoke of the black country had blotted the fading skyline a hundred
pit fires were beginning to blink out, and nearer still a pillar of flame
shot up into the sky.
“Oh, look, mother,” Edwin cried.
“They’re puddling the iron at the great Mawne furnaces. Stand still a
moment, we might almost hear their roar.”
But no sound came to them but the clear tinkle of a stream plunging into
its mossy cup, and this seemed to bring them back into touch with the
lands that they had left. They hurried down through the dark woodland
paths, and when they reached the little town lights had bloomed in all
the ugly cottage windows, and the streets seemed deserted, for the
children were indoors.
III
She told him that she was rather tired, and would like to lie down and
rest for a little time before supper; and with the glow of the hill air
still on his cheeks and his limbs full of a delicious lassitude he
strolled down the lane and into the ill-lighted street of the town. He
passed through the little passage at the side of the shop and through the
dark bottle-room where he had to pick his way among drug hampers and
empty acid-carboys. Through the upper part of the glass door he could
see his father sitting on a high stool at the desk, his spectacles
half-way down his nose, dreaming among the bad debts in his ledger.
Edwin stood there for several minutes, for the picture fascinated him.
Mr. Ingleby had now reached the indeterminate period of middle age: his
hair was gray, rather thin about the crown, and wanted cutting. In the
shop he always wore a black alpaca jacket, and this, by reason of its
thinness, made his chest look mean and skimpy. In this state of
comparative repose he was not impressive. From time to time he raised
his hand to scratch his shoulder. A customer came in to buy a cake of
soap and Mr. Ingleby climbed down from his stool to attend to her. He
opened a glass case, and, groping for this particular soap, upset at
least half a dozen others. Edwin noticed his hands, which were clumsy
and heavily veined on the back, and felt sorry for him when he stooped to
pick up the cakes of soap that he had upset. It all seemed so inelastic,
so different from the eager youth of his mother. Examining his father
from a physical standpoint he recalled the day on which Widdup had begun
his sexual education and had laughed at his innocent ideals. Now Edwin
laughed at himself; and the laugh made Mr. Ingleby look up as if a flying
beetle had banged against his ear.
“Hallo, boy,” he said. “You were late for tea, you two!”
“Oh, we had a lovely walk—right on to Uffdown.”
“I hope you didn’t tire your mother. You must be careful, Eddie. Do you
want me to give you something to do? You shall weigh these powders then:
Phenacetin, five grains in each. Only try to be quiet; I have to get on
with these Lady-day bills.”
Mr. Ingleby yawned and Edwin started to weigh powders.
“Father, what is Dragon’s Blood?”
“It isn’t the blood of dragons, Edwin. . . .” Mr. Ingleby smiled under
his glasses.
“Oh, father, don’t rot.”
“Dragon’s Blood is a resin. It’s prepared from _Dracæna Draco_, and it’s
used for mahogany varnishes.”
“O-oh.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you, Edwin.”
Silence for five minutes.
“Father . . . Keats was a chemist.”
“Keats?” Mr. Ingleby pronounced the word in the same tone as he would
have used if he had been saying “Keatings, madam?”
“The poet.”
“Oh—Keats. Yes, of course he was. He was consumptive, too. Died in
Italy.”
“Yes, father.” Edwin was thankful to leave it at that; thankful that his
father knew just so much, even if he didn’t know any more. It would be
terrible to know more than your father, to feel that he was a sort of
intellectual inferior to you—a boy of fifteen. He would not talk of
these things any more.
They walked home in silence. It seemed as if Mr. Ingleby were still
worrying about his wife’s tiredness, for when she tried to joke with him
at the supper table he was moody and restrained.
“I’m not really a bit overdone,” she protested, kissing his forehead.
“You’re like a pair of children, the two of you,” he said, and indeed his
gray seriousness seemed to isolate him from all the joy of youth that was
in them.
That night Edwin’s mother sat for a long time on the bed talking to him
in a low voice. She would not tell him any more about the mountain
farmstead that had once been a castle, even when he begged her to do so.
She wanted to talk, she said, about all that he was to do during the
term, to make wonderful plans for the holidays, when the days would be
longer and they would be able to sit out under the limes on the lawn in
the twilight.
“I am going to plant evening stock,” she said, “all along the lawn border
in between the irises. Besides, I shall be stronger then and we will
often take our tea with us to Uffdown.” And at last she said, “Eddie,
you bad boy, you must really go to sleep now, darling. You’ve got such a
big journey before you to-morrow, and you’re sure to get a headache if
you don’t have a good night’s sleep.” She kissed him many times.
IV
And when she had passed downstairs to the dining-room where her husband
sat before the fire in a plush arm-chair, lightly dozing, she kissed him,
too. She was feeling queerly flushed and emotional, and somehow the
atmosphere of that little room felt stuffy to her after the air of the
open spaces.
“I’m restless to-night, dear,” she said. “I hate Eddie going back to
school. It’s dreadful to be parted from your baby just when he’s
beginning to be more and more part of you.”
“Come close to me, by the fire, child,” he said.
“No . . . I want some music, I think.”
She went into the drawing-room and lit the candles on the piano. Sitting
there, in the pale light, with a shawl thrown over her muslin tea-gown,
she looked very frail and pathetic, against the piano’s ebony. She
played the _Sonata Appassionata_ of Beethoven, and the rather tawdry
little knick-knacks on the piano danced as if they were made
uncomfortable by the rugged passion. The whole room seemed a little bit
artificial and threadbare, ministering to her discontent. When the
_Sonata_ was finished she still sat at the piano, conscious of her own
reflection in its polished panels, and wanting to cry. She could not
bear the taunting of that image, and so she snuffed the candles and sat
in the dark.
Edwin tossing on the verge of sleep was conscious of the music ceasing,
and, in the silence that followed, the cool cries of the owls.