PEACE
I
Frances Harrison was sitting out in the garden under the tree that her
husband called an ash-tree, and that the people down in her part of the
country called a tree of Heaven.
It was warm under the tree, and Frances might have gone to sleep there
and wasted an hour out of the afternoon, if it hadn't been for
the children.
Dorothy, Michael and Nicholas were going to a party, and Nicky was
excited. She could hear Old Nanna talking to Michael and telling him to
be a good boy. She could hear young Mary-Nanna singing to Baby John.
Baby John was too young himself to go to parties; so to make up for that
he was riding furiously on Mary-Nanna's knee to the tune of the
"Bumpetty-Bumpetty Major!"
It was Nicky's first party. That was why he was excited.
He had asked her for the third time what it would be like; and for the
third time she had told him. There would be dancing and a Magic Lantern,
and a Funny Man, and a Big White Cake covered with sugar icing and
Rosalind's name on it in pink sugar letters and eight little pink wax
candles burning on the top for Rosalind's birthday. Nicky's eyes shone
as she told him.
Dorothy, who was nine years old, laughed at Nicky.
"Look at Nicky," she said, "how excited he is!"
And every time she laughed at him his mother kissed him.
"I don't care," said Nicky. "I don't care if I am becited!"
And for the fifth time he asked, "When will it be time to go?"
"Not for another hour and a half, my sweetheart."
"How long," said Nicky, "is an hour and a half?"
* * * * *
Frances had a tranquil nature and she never worried. But as she sat
under her tree of Heaven a thought came that made a faint illusion of
worry for her mind. She had forgotten to ask Grannie and Auntie Louie
and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie to tea.
She had come to think of them like that in relation to her children
rather than to her or to each other.
It was a Tuesday, and they had not been there since Friday. Perhaps, she
thought, I'd better send over for them now. Especially as it's such a
beautiful afternoon. Supposing I sent Michael?
And yet, supposing Anthony came home early? He was always kind to her
people, but that was the very reason why she oughtn't to let them spoil
a beautiful afternoon for him. It could not be said that any of them
was amusing.
She could still hear Mary-Nanna singing her song about the
Bumpetty-Bumpetty Major. She could still hear Old Nanna talking to
Michael and telling him to be a good boy. That could only end in Michael
being naughty. To avert naughtiness or any other disaster from her
children was the end of Frances's existence.
So she called Michael to come to her. He came, running like a little
dog, obediently.
* * * * *
Michael was glad that he had been sent across the Heath to Grannie's
house with a message. It made him feel big and brave. Besides, it would
put off the moment when Mary-Nanna would come for him, to make him ready
for the party. He was not sure that he wanted to go to it.
Michael did not much like going to Grannie's house either. In all the
rooms there was a queer dark-greenness and creepiness. It smelt of
bird-cages and elder bushes and of Grandpapa's funeral. And when you had
seen Auntie Edie's Senegal wax-bills, and the stuffed fish, and the
inside of Auntie Louie's type-writer there was nothing else to see.
His mother said that Grandpapa's funeral was all over, and that the
green creepiness came from the green creepers. But Michael knew it
didn't. She only said things like that to make you feel nice and comfy
when you were going to bed. Michael knew very well that they had put
Grandpapa into the drawing-room and locked the door so that the funeral
men shouldn't get at him and take him away too soon. And Auntie Louie
had kept the key in her pocket.
Funerals meant taking people away.
Old Nanna wouldn't let him talk about it; but Mary-Nanna had told him
that was what funerals meant. All the same, as he went up the flagged
path, he took care not to look through the black panes of the window
where the elder bush was, lest he should see Grandpapa's coffin standing
in the place where the big table used to be, and Grandpapa lying inside
it wrapped in a white sheet.
Michael's message was that Mummy sent her love, and would Grannie and
Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie come to tea? She was
going to have tea in the garden, and would they please come early? As
early as possible. That was the part he was not to forget.
The queer thing was that when Michael went to see Grannie and the
Aunties in Grannie's house he saw four old women. They wore black
dresses that smelt sometimes of something sweet and sometimes like your
fingers when you get ink on them. The Aunties looked cross; and Auntie
Emmeline smelt as if she had been crying. He thought that perhaps they
had not been able to stop crying since Grandpapa's funeral. He thought
that was why Auntie Louie's nose was red and shiny and Auntie Edie's
eyelids had pink edges instead of lashes. In Grannie's house they never
let you do anything. They never did anything themselves. They never
wanted to do anything; not even to talk. He thought it was because they
knew that Grandpapa was still there all the time.
But outside it the Aunties were not so very old. They rode bicycles. And
when they came to Michael's Father's house they forgot all about
Grandpapa's funeral and ran about and played tennis like Michael's
mother and Mrs. Jervis, and they talked a lot.
Michael's mother was Grannie's child. To see how she could be a child
you had only to think of her in her nightgown with her long brown hair
plaited in a pigtail hanging down her back and tied with a blue ribbon.
But he couldn't see how the three Aunties could be Grannie's other
children. They were bigger than Grannie and they had grey hair. Grannie
was a little thing; she was white and dry; and she had hair like hay.
Besides, she hardly ever took any notice of them except to make a face
at Auntie Emmeline or Auntie Edie now and then. She did it with her head
a little on one side, pushing out her underlip and drawing it
back again.
Grannie interested Michael; but more when he thought about her than when
she was actually there. She stood for him as the mark and measure of
past time. To understand how old Grannie was you had to think backwards;
this way: Once there was a time when there was no Michael; but there was
Mummy and there was Daddy. And once there was a time when there was no
Mummy and no Daddy; but there was Grannie and there was Grandpapa. Now
there was no Grandpapa. But he couldn't think back far enough to get to
the time when there was no Grannie.
Michael thought that being Grannie must feel like being God.
Before he came to the black window pane and the elder bush he had to run
down the slopes and jump the gullies on his side of the Heath, and cross
the West Road, and climb the other slope to Grannie's side. And it was
not till you got to the row of elms on Judge's Walk that you had to go
carefully because of the funeral.
He stood there on the ridge of the Walk and looked back to his own side.
There were other houses there; but he knew his father's house by the
tree of Heaven in the garden.
* * * * *
The garden stood on a high, flat promontory jutting out into the Heath.
A brown brick wall with buttresses, strong like fortifications on a
breastwork, enclosed it on three sides. From the flagged terrace at the
bottom of the garden you looked down, through the tops of the
birch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of the
Heath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden.
The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, and
flat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open,
row on row. It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the back
of it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, a fringe of Heath
still parted it from the hill road that went from "Jack Straw's Castle"
to "The Bull and Bush." You reached it by a lane that led from the road
to the Heath.
The house belonged to the Heath and the open country. It was aware of
nothing but the Heath and the open country between it and Harrow on the
Hill. It had the air of all the old houses of Hampstead, the wonderful
air of not acknowledging the existence of Bank Holidays. It was lifted
up high above the town; shut in; utterly secluded.
* * * * *
Anthony Harrison considered that he had done well when he acquired West
End House for his wife Frances, and for his children, Dorothea, Michael,
Nicholas and John.
Frances had said that, if he was thinking of her, he needn't buy a big
place, because she didn't want one. But he might buy it for the children
if he liked. Anthony had said that she had no idea of what she mightn't
want, once she began to give her mind to it, and that he would like to
think of her living in it after he was gone. Not that he had any
intention of going; he was only thirty-six (not much older than Frances)
and incurably healthy. But since his wife's attention had become
absorbed in the children--to the exclusion of every other interest--he
was always trying to harrow her by the suggestion. And Frances only
laughed at him and told him that he was a silly old thing, and that he
needn't think he was going to get round her that way.
There was no other way open for Anthony; unless he were to go bankrupt
or get pneumonia or peritonitis. Frances would have been the first to
acknowledge that illness or misfortune constituted a claim. And the only
things he ever did get were loud, explosive colds in his head which made
him a mark for derision. His business was so sound that not even a
revolution or a European war could shake it. And his appearance was
incompatible with his pretensions to pathos.
It would have paid him better to have been small and weedy, or
lamentably fat, or to have had a bald place coming, or crow's feet
pointing to grey hairs; for then there might have been a chance for him.
But Anthony's body was well made, slender and tall. He had blue eyes and
black-brown hair, and the look of an amiable hawk, alert, fiercely
benevolent. Frances couldn't see any pathos in the kind of figure she
happened to admire most, the only kind she would have tolerated in a
husband. And if she _had_ seen any pathos in it she wouldn't have
married it. Pathos, she said, was all very well in a father, or a
brother, or a friend, but in choosing a husband you had to think of your
children; and she had wanted boys that would look like Michael and
Nicholas and John.
"Don't you mean," Anthony had said, "boys that will look like me?"
"I mean," she had answered, "exactly what I say. You needn't be so
arrogant."
_Her_ arrogance had been beyond all bearing since John, the third son,
had been born.
And it was Frances, after all, who had made him buy West End House for
her own reasons. Both the day nursery and the night nursery had windows
to the south. It was the kind of house she had always dreamed of living
in, and of Michael, or Nicky living in after she and Anthony were gone.
It was not more than seven minutes' walk from the bottom of the lane to
the house where her people lived. She had to think about the old people
when the poor dears had come up to London in order to be thought about.
And it had white storm shutters and a tree of Heaven in the garden.
And, because they had both decided that they would have that house
whatever happened, they began to argue and to tease each other. Anthony
had said it was all right, only the tree of Heaven wasn't a tree of
Heaven; it was a common ash. He was one of the biggest timber merchants
in the country and he ought to know. Frances said she mightn't know
much, but she did know that was the kind of tree the people down in her
part of the country called a tree of Heaven. Anthony said he couldn't
help that. It didn't matter what they called it. It was a common ash.
Then she told him he had no poetry in his composition. She had always
dreamed of having a tree of Heaven in her garden; and he was destroying
her dream. He replied that he didn't want to destroy her dream, but the
tree really _was_ an ash. You could tell by the bark, and by the leaves
and by the number and the shape of the leaflets. And anyhow, that was
the first he'd heard about her dream.
"You don't know," said Frances, "what goes on inside me."
She said that if any of the children developed an imagination he needn't
think _he_ had anything to do with it.
"I shan't," said Anthony. "I wouldn't have anything to do with it if I
could. Facts are good enough for me. The children must be brought up to
realize facts."
An ash-tree was a fact and a tree of Heaven was a fancy; unless by any
chance she meant _ailanthus glandulosa_. (He knew she didn't.) If she
wanted to know, the buds of the ash were black like ebony. The buds of
the tree of Heaven were rose-red, like--like bad mahogany. Wait till the
spring and look at the buds.
Frances waited till the spring and looked at the buds, and, sure enough,
they were black like ebony.
Anthony also said that if they were choosing a house for the children,
it was no earthly use to think about the old people. For the old people
would go and the children would remain.
As if to show how right he was, Grandpapa had died early in that summer
of 'ninety-five, one month after they had moved into West End House.
That still left Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie
Edie for Anthony to look after.
* * * * *
She was thinking of them now. She hoped that they would come early in
time to see the children. She also hoped that they would go early, so
that she and Anthony might have their three sets of tennis before
dinner in peace.
There would be no peace if Louie and Edie wanted to play too. The one
thing that Anthony could not stand was people wanting to do things they
couldn't do, and spoiling them for those who could. He used to say that
the sight of Louie anywhere near the tennis court put him off
his stroke.
Again, the faint illusion of worry was created by the thought that this
dreadful thing might happen, that Louie and Edie might want to play and
that Anthony would be put off his stroke and be annoyed, and that his
annoyance, his just and legitimate annoyance, would spoil the
perfection of the afternoon. And as she played with the illusion it made
more real her tranquillity, her incredible content.
Her hands were busy now putting decorative stitches into a frock for
John. She had pushed aside a novel by George Moore and a volume of
Ibsen's plays. She disliked Ibsen and disapproved of George Moore. Her
firm, tight little character defended itself against every form of
intellectual disturbance. A copy of the _Times_ had fallen from her lap
to her feet. Jane, the cat, had found it there, and, purring loudly, had
trodden it down into a bed, and now lay on it, asleep. Frances had
informed herself of the affairs of the nation.
At the bottom of her mind was the conviction (profound, because
unconscious) that the affairs of the nation were not to be compared for
interest with her own affairs, and an attitude of condescension, as if
she honoured the _Times_ by reading it and the nation by informing
herself of its affairs; also the very distinct impression that evening
papers were more attractive than morning papers. She would have admitted
that they owed their attraction to the circumstance that Anthony brought
them home with him in his pocket, and that in the evening she was not
obliged to inform herself of what might be happening. Anthony was
certain to inform her.
Not that anything ever did happen. Except strikes; and even then, no
sooner did the features of the strike begin to get dramatic than they
were instantly submerged in the flood of conversation that was let loose
over them. Mrs. Anthony pitied the poor editors and reporters while
Parliament was sitting. She saw them as rather silly, violent and
desperate men, yet pathetic in their silliness, violence and
desperation, snatching at divorces, and breach of promise cases, and
fires in paraffin shops, as drowning men snatch at straws.
Her imagination refused to picture any end to this state of things.
There would just be more speeches and more strikes, and still more
speeches, going on for ever and ever at home; while foreign affairs and
the British Empire went on for ever and ever too, with no connection
between the two lines of sequence, and no likeness, except that both
somehow went on and on.
That was Anthony's view of England's parliament and of her imperial
policy; and it was Mrs. Anthony's. Politics, Anthony said, had become
static; and he assured Frances that there was no likelihood that they
would ever become dynamic again--ever.
Anthony's view of politics was Mrs. Anthony's view of life.
Nothing ever really happened. Things did not change; they endured; they
went on. At least everything that really mattered endured and went on.
So that everything that really mattered could--if you were given to
looking forward--be foreseen. A strike--a really bad one--might
conceivably affect Anthony's business, for a time; but not all the
strikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddling
and muddling of politicians could ever touch one of those
enduring things.
Frances believed in permanence because, in secret, she abhorred the
thought of change. And she abhorred the thought of change because, at
thirty-three, she had got all the things she wanted. But only for the
last ten years out of the thirty-three. Before that (before she was Mrs.
Anthony), wanting things, letting it be known that you wanted them, had
meant not getting them. So that it was incredible how she had contrived
to get them all. She had not yet left off being surprised at her own
happiness. It was not like things you take for granted and are not aware
of. Frances was profoundly aware of it. Her happiness was a solid,
tangible thing. She knew where it resided, and what it was made of, and
what terms she held it on. It depended on her; on her truth, her love,
her loyalty; it was of the nature of a trust. But there was no illusion
about it. It was the reality.
She denied that she was arrogant, for she had not taken one of them for
granted, not even Dorothy; though a little arrogance might have been
excusable in a woman who had borne three sons and only one daughter
before she was thirty-two. Whereas Grannie's achievement had been four
daughters, four superfluous women, of whom Anthony had married one and
supported three.
To be sure there was Maurice. But he was worse than superfluous,
considering that most of the time Anthony was supporting Maurice, too.
She had only known one serious anxiety--lest her flesh and blood should
harbour any of the blood and flesh left over after Morrie was made. She
had married Anthony to drive out Morrie from the bodies and souls of her
children. She meant that, through her and Anthony, Morrie should go, and
Dorothea, Michael, Nicholas and John should remain.
As Frances looked at the four children, her mouth tightened itself so as
to undo the ruinous adoration of her eyes. She loved their slender
bodies, their pure, candid faces, their thick, straight hair that parted
solidly from the brush, clean-cut and shining like sheets of polished
metal, brown for Dorothy, black-brown for Nicholas, red gold for Michael
and white gold for John. She was glad that they were all made like that;
slender and clear and hard, and that their very hair was a thing of
clean surfaces and definite edges. She disliked the blurred outlines of
fatness and fuzziness and fluffiness. The bright solidity of their forms
helped her to her adored illusion, the illusion of their childhood as
going on, lasting for ever and ever.
They would be the nicest looking children at Mrs. Jervis's party. They
would stand out solid from the fluffiness and fuzziness and fatness of
the others. She saw people looking at them. She heard them saying: "Who
are the two little boys in brown linen?"--"They are Michael and Nicholas
Harrison." The Funny Man came and said: "Hello! I didn't expect to see
you here!" It was Michael and Nicholas he didn't expect to see; and the
noise in the room was Nicky's darling laughter.
Music played. Michael and Nicholas danced to the music. It was Michael's
body and Nicky's that kept for her the pattern of the dance, their feet
that beat out its measure. Sitting under the tree of Heaven Frances
could see Mrs. Jervis's party. It shimmered and clustered in a visionary
space between the tree and the border of blue larkspurs on the other
side of the lawn. The firm figures of Michael and Nicholas and Dorothy
held it together, kept it from being shattered amongst the steep blue
spires of the larkspurs. When it was all over they would still hold it
together, so that people would know that it had really happened and
remember having been there. They might even remember that Rosalind had
had a birthday.
* * * * *
Frances had just bestowed this life after death on Mrs. Jervis's party
when she heard Michael saying he didn't want to go to it.
He had no idea why he didn't want to go except that he didn't.
"What'?" said Frances. "Not when Nicky and Dorothy are going?"
He shook his head. He was mournful and serious.
"And there's going to be a Magic Lantern"--
"I know."
"And a Funny Man"--
"I know."
"And a Big White Cake with sugar icing and Rosalind's name on it in pink
letters, and eight candles--"
"I know, Mummy." Michael's under lip began to shake.
"I thought it was only little baby boys that were silly and shy."
Michael was not prepared to contest the statement. He saw it was the
sort of thing that in the circumstances she was bound to say. All the
same his under lip would have gone on shaking if he hadn't stopped it.
"I thought you were a big boy," said Frances.
"So I _was_, yesterday. To-day isn't yesterday, Mummy."
"If John--John was asked to a beautiful party _he_ wouldn't be afraid to
go."
As soon as Michael's under lip had stopped shaking his eyelids began.
You couldn't stop your eyelids.
"It's not _afraid_, exactly," he said.
"What is it, then?"
"It's sort--sort of forgetting things."
"What things?"
"I don't know, Mummy. I think--it's pieces of me that I want to
remember. At a party I can't feel all of myself at once--like I do now."
She loved his strange thoughts as she loved his strange beauty, his
reddish yellow hair, his light hazel eyes that were not hers and not
Anthony's.
"What will you do, sweetheart, all afternoon, without Nicky and Dorothy
and Mary-Nanna?"
"I don't want Nicky and Dorothy and Mary-Nanna. I want Myself. I want to
play with Myself."
She thought: "Why shouldn't he? What right have I to say these things to
him and make him cry, and send him to stupid parties that he doesn't
want to go to? After all, he's only a little boy."
She thought of Michael, who was seven, as if he were younger than
Nicholas, who was only five.
* * * * *
Nicky was different. You could never tell what Michael would take it
into his head to think. You could never tell what Nicky would take it
into his head to do. There was no guile in Michael. But sometimes there
was guile in Nicky. Frances was always on the look out for
Nicky's guile.
So when Michael remarked that Grannie and the Aunties would be there
immediately and Nicky said, "Mummy, I think my ear is going to ache,"
her answer was--"You won't have to stay more than a minute, darling."
For Nicky lived in perpetual fear that his Auntie Louie might kiss at
him.
Dorothy saw her mother's profound misapprehension and she hastened to
put it right.
"It isn't Auntie Louie, Mummy. His ear is really aching."
And still Frances went on smiling. She knew, and Nicky knew that, if a
little boy could establish the fact of earache, he was absolved from all
social and family obligations for as long as his affliction lasted. He
wouldn't have to stand still and pretend he liked it while he was being
kissed at.
Frances kept her mouth shut when she smiled, as if she were trying not
to. It was her upper lip that got the better of her. The fine, thin
edges of it quivered and twitched and curled. You would have said the
very down was sensitive to her thought's secret and iniquitous play. Her
smile mocked other people's solemnities, her husband's solemnity, and
the solemnity (no doubt inherited) of her son Michael; it mocked the
demureness and the gravity of her face.
She had brought her face close to Nicky's; and it was as if her mouth
had eyes in it to see if there were guile in him.
"Are you a little humbug?" she said.
Nicky loved his mother's face. It never got excited or did silly things
like other people's faces. It never got red and shiny like Auntie
Louie's face, or hot and rough like Auntie Emmeline's, or wet and mizzly
like Auntie Edie's. The softness and whiteness and dryness of his
mother's face were delightful to Nicky. So was her hair. It was cold,
with a funny sort of coldness that made your fingers tingle when you
touched it; and it smelt like the taste of Brazil nuts.
Frances saw the likeness of her smile quiver on Nicky's upper lip. It
broke and became Nicky's smile that bared his little teeth and curled up
the corners of his blue eyes. (His blue eyes and black brown hair were
Anthony's.) It wasn't reasonable to suppose that Nicky had earache when
he could smile like that.
"I'm afraid," she said, "you're a little humbug. Run to the terrace and
see if Grannie and the Aunties are coming."
He ran. It was half a child's run and half a full-grown boy's.
Then Mrs. Anthony addressed her daughter.
"Why did you say his ear's aching when it isn't?"
"Because," said Dorothy, "it _is_ aching."
She was polite and exquisite and obstinate, like Anthony.
"Nicky ought to know his own ear best. Go and tell him he's not to stand
on the top of the wall. And if they're coming wave to them, to show
you're glad to see them."
"But--Mummy--I'm not."
She knew it was dreadful before she said it. But she had warded off
reproof by nuzzling against her mother's cheek as it tried to turn away
from her. She saw her mother's upper lip moving, twitching. The
sensitive down stirred on it like a dark smudge, a dust that quivered.
Her own mouth, pushed forward, searching, the mouth of a nuzzling puppy,
remained grave and tender. She was earnest and imperturbable in her
truthfulness. "Whether you're glad or not you must go," said Frances.
She meant to be obeyed.
Dorothy went. Her body was obedient. For as yet she had her mother's
body and her face, her blunted oval, the straight nose with the fine,
tilted nostrils, her brown eyes, her solid hair, brown on the top and
light underneath, and on the curve of the roll above her little ears.
Frances had watched the appearance of those details with an anxiety that
would have surprised her if she had been aware of it. She wanted to see
herself in the bodies of her sons and in the mind of her daughter. But
Dorothy had her father's mind. You couldn't move it. What she had said
once she stuck to for ever, like Anthony to his ash-tree. As if sticking
to a thing for ever could make it right once. And Dorothy had formed the
habit of actually being right, like Anthony, nine times out of ten.
Frances foresaw that this persistence, this unreasoning rectitude,
might, in time, become annoying in a daughter. There were moments when
she was almost perturbed by the presence of this small, mysterious
organism, mixed up of her body and her husband's mind.
But in secret she admired her daughter's candour, her downrightness and
straightforwardness, her disdain of conventions and hypocrisies. Frances
was not glad, she knew she was not glad, any more than Dorothy was glad,
to see her mother and her sisters. She only pretended. In secret she was
afraid of every moment she would have to live with them. She had lived
with them too long. She foresaw what would happen this afternoon, how
they would look, what they would say and do, and with what gestures. It
would be like the telling, for the thirteenth time, of a dull story that
you know every word of.
She thought she had sent them a kind message. But she knew she had only
asked them to come early in order that they might go early and leave her
to her happiness.
She went down to the terrace wall where Michael and Nicky and Dorothy
were watching for them. She was impatient, and she thought that she
wanted to see them coming. But she only wanted to see if they were
coming early. It struck her that this was sad.
* * * * *
Small and distant, the four black figures moved on the slope under the
Judges' Walk; four spots of black that crawled on the sallow grass and
the yellow clay of the Heath.
"How little they look," Michael said.
Their littleness and their distance made them harmless, made them
pathetic. Frances was sorry that she was not glad. That was the
difference between her and Dorothy, that she was sorry and always would
be sorry for not being what she ought to be; and Dorothy never would be
sorry for being what she was. She seemed to be saying, already, in her
clearness and hardness, "What I am I am, and you can't change me." The
utmost you could wring from her was that she couldn't help it.
Frances's sorrow was almost unbearable when the four women in black came
nearer, when she saw them climbing the slope below the garden and
the lane.
II
Grannie took a long time crossing the lawn from the door in the lane to
the tree of Heaven.
She came first. Her daughters followed, forced to her slow pace,
advancing with an air of imperfect cohesion, of not really belonging to
each other, as if they had been strangers associated by some accident.
It had grown on them in their efforts to carry off the embarrassment of
appearing as an eternal trio. Auntie Louie carried it off best. Sharp
and rigid, Auntie Louie's figure never lent itself to any group. But for
her black gown she really might not have belonged.
Mrs. Fleming went slowly, not because she was old, for she was only
sixty, but because, though she said, and thought, that she was wrapped
up in Frances and her children, she was still absorbed, fascinated by
her sacred sense of bereavement. She moved as if hypnotized by her
own sorrow.
To her three unmarried daughters she behaved with a sort of mystic
hostility, a holy detachment and displeasure, as if she suspected them
of getting over it, or of wanting to get over it if they could. But to
her one married daughter and to her grand-children she was soft and
gentle. So that, when they happened to be all together, her moods
changed so rapidly that she seemed a creature of unaccountable caprice.
One minute her small, white, dry face quivered with softness and
gentleness, and the next it stiffened, or twitched with the inimical,
disapproving look it had for Louie and Emmeline and Edith.
The children lifted up their pure, impassive faces to be kissed at. Old
Nanna brought Baby John and put him on his grandmother's knee. Dorothy
and Nicholas went off with Mary-Nanna to the party. Michael forgot all
about playing with himself. He stayed where he was, drawn by the
spectacle of Grannie and the Aunties. Grannie was clucking and chuckling
to Baby John as she had clucked and chuckled to her own babies long ago.
Her under lip made itself wide and full; it worked with an in and out
movement very funny and interesting to Michael. The movement meant that
Grannie chuckled under protest of memories that were sacred to
Grandpapa.
"Tchoo--tchoo--tchoo--tchoo! Chuckaboo! Beautiful boy!" said Grannie.
Auntie Louie looked at her youngest nephew. She smiled her downward,
sagging smile, wrung from a virginity sadder than Grannie's grief. She
spoke to Baby John.
"You really are rather a nice boy," Auntie Louie said.
But Edie, the youngest Auntie, was kneeling on the grass before him,
bringing her face close to his. Baby John's new and flawless face was
cruel to Auntie Edie's. So was his look of dignity and wisdom.
"Oh, she says you're only rather nice," said Auntie Edie. "And you're
the beautifullest, sweetest, darlingest that ever was. Wasn't she a
nasty Auntie Louie? Ten little pink toes. And _there_ he goes. Five
little tootsies to each of his footsies."
She hid herself behind the _Times_ disturbing Jane.
"Where's John-John?" she cried. "Where's he gone to? Can anybody tell me
where to find John-John? Where's John-John? Peep-_bo_--there he is!
John-John, look at Auntie Edie. Oh, he won't pay any attention to
poor me."
Baby John was playing earnestly with Grannie's watch-chain.
"You might leave the child alone," said Grannie. "Can't you see he
doesn't want you?"
Auntie Edie made a little pouting face, like a scolded, pathetic child.
Nobody ever did want Auntie Edie.
And all the time Auntie Emmy was talking to Frances very loud and fast.
"Frances, I do think your garden's too beautiful for words. How clever
of you to think of clearing away the old flower-beds. I hate flower-beds
on a lawn. Yet I don't suppose I should have had the strength of mind to
get rid of them if it bad been me."
As she talked Auntie Emmy opened her eyes very wide; her eyebrows
jerked, the left one leaping up above the right; she thrust out her chin
at you and her long, inquiring nose. Her thin face was the play of
agitated nerve-strings that pulled it thus into perpetual, restless
movements; and she made vague gestures with her large, bony hands. Her
tongue went tick-tack, like a clock. Anthony said you-could hear Emmy's
tongue striking the roof of her-mouth all thee time.
"And putting those delphiniums all together like that--Massing the
blues. Anthony? I _do_ think Anthony has perfect taste. I adore
delphiniums."
Auntie Emmy was behaving as if neither Michael nor Baby John was there.
"Don't you think John-John's too beautiful for words?" said Frances.
"Don't you like him a little bit too?"
Auntie Emmy winced as if Frances had flicked something in her face.
"Of course I like him too. Why shouldn't I?"
"I don't think you _do_, Auntie Emmy," Michael said.
Auntie Emmy considered him as for the first time.
"What do you know about it?" she said.
"I can tell by the funny things your face does."
"I thought," said Frances, "you wanted to play by yourself."
"So I do," said Michael.
"Well then, go and play."
He went and to a heavenly place that he knew of. But as he played with
Himself there he thought: "Auntie Emmy doesn't tell the truth. I think
it is because she isn't happy."
Michael kept his best things to himself.
* * * * *
"I suppose you're happy," said Grannie, "now you've got the poor child
sent away."
Auntie Emmy raised her eyebrows and spread out her hands, as much as to
say she was helpless under her mother's stupidity.
"He'd have been sent away anyhow," said Frances. "It isn't good for him
to hang about listening to grown-up conversation."
It was her part to keep the peace between her mother and her sisters.
"It seems to me," said Auntie Louie, "that you began it yourself."
When a situation became uncomfortable, Auntie Louie always put her word
in and made it worse. She never would let Frances keep the peace.
Frances knew what Louie meant--that she was always flinging her babies
in Emmy's face at those moments when the sight of other people's babies
was too much for Emmy. She could never be prepared for Emmy's moments.
"It's all very well," Auntie Louie went on; "but I should like to hear
of somebody admiring Dorothy. I don't see where Dorothy comes in."
Dorothy was supposed, by the two Nannas, to be Auntie Louie's favourite.
If you taxed her with it she was indignant and declared that she was
sure she wasn't.
And again Frances knew what Louie meant--that she loved her three sons,
Michael and Nicholas and John, with passion, and her one daughter,
Dorothea, with critical affection. That was the sort of thing that Louie
was always saying and thinking about people, and nobody ever paid the
slightest attention to what Louie said or thought. Frances told herself
that if there was one emotion that she was more free from than another
it was sex jealousy.
The proof of it, which she offered now, was that she had given up
Dorothy to Anthony. It was natural that he should care most for the
little girl.
Louie said that was easy--when she knew perfectly well that Anthony
didn't. Like Frances he cared most for his three sons. She was leaving
Dorothy to Anthony so that Anthony might leave Michael and Nicholas
to her.
"You might just as well say," Frances said, "that I'm in love with
John-John. Poor little Don-Don!"
"I might," said Louie, "just as well."
Grannie said she was sure she didn't understand what they were talking
about and that Louie had some very queer ideas in her head.
"Louie," she said, "knows more than I do."
Frances thought: Was Grannie really stupid? Was she really innocent? Was
she not, rather, clever, chock-full of the secret wisdom and the secret
cruelty of sex?
Frances was afraid of her thoughts. They came to her not like thoughts,
but like quick rushes of her blood, partly confusing her. She did not
like that.
She thought: Supposing Grannie knew all the time that Emmy was unhappy,
and took a perverse pleasure in her knowledge? Supposing she was not
really soft and gentle? She could be soft and gentle to her, because of
her children and because of Anthony. She respected Anthony because he
was well-off and efficient and successful, and had supported her ever
since Grandpapa had gone bankrupt. She was proud of Frances because she
was Anthony's wife, who had had three sons and only one daughter.
Grannie behaved as if her grandchildren were her own children, as if she
had borne three Sons and only one daughter, instead of four daughters
and only one son. Still, Frances was the vehicle of flesh and blood that
carried on her flesh and blood in Michael and Nicholas and John. She
respected Frances.
But Frances could remember a time when she had been unmarried like her
sisters, and when Grannie had turned on her, too, that look that was
half contempt and half hostility or displeasure. Grannie had not wanted
her to marry Anthony, any more than she would have wanted Louie or
Emmeline or Edith to marry anybody, supposing anybody had wanted to
marry them. And Frances and Anthony had defied her. They had insisted on
marrying each other. Frances knew that if there had been no Anthony, her
mother would have despised her in secret, as in secret she despised
Emmeline and Edith. She despised them more than Louie, because, poor
things, they wanted, palpably, to be married, whereas Louie didn't, or
said she didn't. In her own way, Louie had defied her mother. She had
bought a type-writer and a bicycle with her own earnings, and by
partially supporting herself she had defied Anthony, the male
benefactor, Louie's manner intimated that there was nothing Frances had
that she wanted. She had resources in herself, and Frances had none.
Frances persuaded herself that she admired and respected Louie. She knew
that she, Frances, was only admired and respected because she had
succeeded where her three sisters had failed. She was even afraid that,
in moments of exasperation, Grannie used her and Anthony and the
children to punish Emmy and Edie for their failure. The least she could
do was to stand between them and Grannie.
It was possible that if Grannie had been allowed to ignore them and give
her whole attention to Frances or Michael or Baby John, she could have
contrived to be soft and gentle for an afternoon. But neither Louie nor
Emmeline, nor even Edith, would consent to be ignored. They refused to
knuckle under, to give in. Theirs was a perpetual struggle to achieve an
individuality in the teeth of circumstances that had denied them any.
Frances acknowledged that they were right, that in the same
circumstances she would have done the same.
In their different ways and by different methods they claimed attention.
They claimed it incessantly, Louie, the eldest, by an attitude of
assurance and superiority so stiff and hard that it seemed invulnerable;
Emmy by sudden jerky enthusiasms, exaltations, intensities; Edie by an
exaggerated animation, a false excitement. Edie would drop from a
childish merriment to a childish pathos, when she would call herself
"Poor me," and demand pity for being tired, for missing a train, for
cold feet, for hair coming down.
There would be still more animation, and still more enthusiasm when
Anthony came home.
Frances prided herself on her power of foreseeing things. She foresaw
that Anthony would come home early for his game. She foresaw the funny,
nervous agony of his face when he appeared on the terrace and caught
sight of Grannie and the three Aunties, and the elaborate and exquisite
politeness with which he would conceal from them his emotion. She
foresaw that she would say to Annie, "When the master comes tell him
we're having tea in the garden, under the tree of--under the ash-tree"
(for after all, he was the master, and discipline must be maintained).
She foresaw the very gestures of his entrance, the ironically solemn bow
that he would make to her, far-off, from the terrace; she even foresaw
the kind of joke that, for the life of him, he would not be able to
help making. She was so made that she could live happily in this world
of small, foreseen things.
III
And it all happened as she had foreseen.
Anthony came home early, because it was a fine afternoon. He made the
kind of joke that calamity always forced from him, by some perversion of
his instincts.
"When is an ash-tree not an ash-tree? When it's a tree of Heaven."
He was exquisitely polite to Grannie and the Aunties, and his manner to
Frances, which she openly complained of, was, he said, what a woman
brought on herself when she reserved her passion for her children, her
sentiment for trees of Heaven, and her mockery for her devoted husband.
"I suppose we can have some tennis _now_," said Auntie Louie.
"Certainly," said Anthony, "we can, and we shall." He tried not to look
at Frances.
And Auntie Edie became automatically animated.
"I can't serve for nuts, but I can run. Who's going to play with _me_?"
"I am," said Anthony. He was perfect.
The game of tennis had an unholy and terrible attraction for Auntie
Louie and Auntie Edie. Neither of them could play. But, whereas Auntie
Louie thought that she could play and took tennis seriously, Auntie Edie
knew that she couldn't and took it as a joke.
Auntie Louie stood tall and rigid and immovable. She planted herself,
like a man, close up to the net, where Anthony wanted to be, and where
he should have been; but Auntie Louie said she was no good if you put
her to play back; she couldn't be expected to take every ball he missed.
When Auntie Louie called out "Play!" she meant to send a nervous shudder
through her opponents, shattering their morale. She went through all the
gestures of an annihilating service that for some reason never happened.
She said the net was too low and that spoiled her eye. And when she
missed her return it was because Anthony had looked at her and put her
off. Still Aunt Louie's attitude had this advantage that it kept her
quiet in one place where Anthony could dance round and round her.
But Auntie Edie played in little nervous runs and slides and rushes; she
flung herself, with screams of excitement, against the ball, her partner
and the net; and she brandished her racket in a dangerous manner. The
oftener she missed the funnier it was to Auntie Edie. She had been
pretty when she was young, and seventeen years ago her cries and tumbles
and collisions had been judged amusing; and Auntie Edie thought they
were amusing still. Anthony had never had the heart to undeceive her. So
that when Anthony was there Auntie Edie still went about setting a
standard of gaiety for other people to live up to; and still she was
astonished that they never did, that other people had no sense
of humour.
Therefore Frances was glad when Anthony told her that he had asked Mr.
Parsons, the children's tutor, and young Norris and young Vereker from
the office to come round for tennis at six, and that dinner must be put
off till half-past eight.
All was well. The evening would be sacred to Anthony and the young men.
The illusion of worry passed, and Frances's real world of happiness
stood firm.
And as Frances's mind, being a thoroughly healthy mind, refused to
entertain any dreary possibility for long together, so it was simply
unable to foresee downright calamity, even when it had been pointed out
to her. For instance, that Nicky should really have chosen the day of
the party for an earache, the worst earache he had ever had.
He appeared at tea-time, carried in Mary-Nanna's arms, and with his head
tied up in one of Mr. Jervis's cricket scarves. As he approached his
family he tried hard not to look pathetic.
And at the sight of her little son her whole brilliant world of
happiness was shattered around Frances.
"Nicky darling," she said, "why _didn't_ you tell me it was really
aching?"
"I didn't know," said Nicky.
He never did know the precise degree of pain that distinguished the
beginning of a genuine earache from that of a sham one, and he felt that
to palm off a sham earache on his mother for a real one, was somehow a
sneaky thing to do. And while his ear went on stabbing him, Nicky did
his best to explain.
"You see, I never know whether it's aching or whether it's only going to
ache. It began a little, teeny bit when the Funny Man made me laugh.
And I didn't see the Magic Lantern, and I didn't have any of Rosalind's
cake. It came on when I was biting the sugar off. And it was aching in
both ears at once. It was," said Nicky, "a jolly sell for me."
At that moment Nicky's earache jabbed upwards at his eyelids and cut
them, and shook tears out of them. But Nicky's mouth refused to take any
part in the performance, though he let his father carry him upstairs.
And, as he lay on the big bed in his mother's room, he said he thought
he could bear it if he had Jane-Pussy to lie beside him, and his
steam-engine.
Anthony went back into the garden to fetch Jane. He spent an hour
looking for her, wandering in utter misery through the house and through
the courtyard and stables and the kitchen garden. He looked for Jane in
the hothouse and the cucumber frames, and under the rhubarb, and on the
scullery roof, and in the water butt. It was just possible that on a day
of complete calamity Jane should have slithered off the scullery roof
into the water-butt. The least he could do was to find Jane, since Nicky
wanted her.
And in the end it turned out that Jane had been captured in her sleep,
treacherously, by Auntie Emmy. And she had escaped, maddened with terror
of the large, nervous, incessantly caressing hands. She had climbed into
the highest branch of the tree of Heaven, and crouched there,
glaring, unhappy.
"Damn the cat!" said Anthony to himself. (It was not Jane he meant.)
He was distressed, irritated, absurdly upset, because he would have to
go back to Nicky without Jane, because he couldn't get Nicky what
he wanted.
In that moment Anthony loved Nicky more than any of them. He loved him
almost more than Frances. Nicky's earache ruined the fine day.
He confided in young Vereker. "I wouldn't bother," he said, "if the
little chap wasn't so plucky about it."
"Quite so, sir," said young Vereker.
It was young Mr. Vereker who found Jane, who eventually recaptured her.
Young Mr. Vereker made himself glorious by climbing up, at the risk of
his neck and in his new white flannels, into the high branches of the
tree of Heaven, to bring Jane down.
And when Anthony thanked him he said, "Don't mention it, sir. It's only
a trifle," though it was, as Mr. Norris said, palpable that the flannels
were ruined. Still, if he hadn't found that confounded cat, they would
never, humanly speaking, have had their tennis.
The Aunties did not see Mr. Vereker climbing into the tree of Heaven.
They did not see him playing with Mr. Parsons and Anthony and Mr.
Norris. For as soon as the three young men appeared, and Emmeline and
Edith began to be interested and emphatic, Grannie said that as they
wouldn't see anything more of Frances and the children, it was no good
staying any longer, and they'd better be getting back. It was as if she
knew that they were going to enjoy themselves and was determined to
prevent it.
Frances went with them to the bottom of the lane. She stood there till
the black figures had passed, one by one, through the white posts on to
the Heath, till, in the distance, they became small again and harmless
and pathetic.
Then she went back to her room where Nicky lay in the big bed.
* * * * *
Nicky lay in the big bed with Jane on one side of him and his
steam-engine on the other, and a bag of hot salt against each ear. Now
and then a thin wall of sleep slid between him and his earache.
Frances sat by the open window and looked out into the garden where
Anthony and Norris played, quietly yet fiercely, against Vereker and
Parsons. Frances loved the smell of fresh grass that the balls and the
men's feet struck from the lawn; she loved the men's voices subdued to
Nicky's sleep, and the sound of their padding feet, the thud of the
balls on the turf, the smacking and thwacking of the rackets. She loved
every movement of Anthony's handsome, energetic body; she loved the
quick, supple bodies of the young men, the tense poise and earnest
activity of their adolescence. But it was not Vereker or Parsons or
Norris that she loved or that she saw. It was Michael, Nicholas and John
whose adolescence was foreshadowed in those athletic forms wearing white
flannels; Michael, Nicky and John, in white flannels, playing fiercely.
When young Vereker drew himself to his full height, when his young body
showed lean and slender as he raised his arms for his smashing service,
it was not young Vereker, but Michael, serious and beautiful. When young
Parsons leaped high into the air and thus returned Anthony's facetious
sky-scraper on the volley, that was Nicky. When young Norris turned and
ran at the top of his speed, and overtook the ball on its rebound from
the base line where young Vereker had planted it, when, as by a miracle,
he sent it backwards over his own head, paralysing Vereker and Parsons
with sheer astonishment, that was John.
* * * * *
Her vision passed. She was leaning over Nicky now, Nicky so small in the
big bed. Nicky had moaned.
"Does it count if I make that little noise, Mummy? It sort of lets the
pain out."
"No, my lamb, it doesn't count. Is the pain very bad?"
"Yes, Mummy, awful. It's going faster and faster. And it bizzes. And
when it doesn't bizz, it thumps." He paused--"I think--p'raps--I could
bear it better if I sat on your knee."
Frances thought she could bear it better too. It would be good for Nicky
that he should grow into beautiful adolescence and a perfect manhood;
but it was better for her that he should be a baby still, that she
should have him on her knee and hold him close to her; that she should
feel his adorable body press quivering against her body, and the heat of
his earache penetrating her cool flesh. For now she was lost to herself
and utterly absorbed in Nicky. And her agony became a sort of ecstasy,
as if, actually, she bore his pain.
It was Anthony who could not stand it. Anthony had come in on his way to
his dressing-room. As he looked at Nicky his handsome, hawk-like face
was drawn with a dreadful, yearning, ineffectual pity. Frances had
discovered that her husband could both be and look pathetic. He had
wanted her to be sorry for him and she was sorry for him, because his
male pity was all agony; there was no ecstasy in it of any sort at all.
Nicky was far more her flesh and blood than he was Anthony's.
Nicky stirred in his mother's lap. He raised his head. And when he saw
that queer look on his father's face he smiled at it. He had to make the
smile himself, for it refused to come of its own accord. He made it
carefully, so that it shouldn't hurt him. But he made it so well that it
hurt Frances and Anthony.
"I never saw a child bear pain as Nicky does," Frances said in her
pride.
"If he can bear it, _I_ can't," said Anthony. And he stalked into his
dressing-room and shut the door on himself.
"Daddy minds more than you do," said Frances.
At that Nicky sat up. His eyes glittered and his cheeks burned with the
fever of his earache.
"I don't mind," he said. "Really and truly I don't mind. I don't care if
my ear _does_ ache.
"It's my eyes is crying, not me."
* * * * *
At nine o'clock, when they were all sitting down to dinner, Nicky sent
for his father and mother. Something had happened.
Crackers, he said, had been going off in his ears, and they hurt most
awfully. And when it had done cracking his earache had gone away. And
Dorothy had brought him a trumpet from Rosalind's party and Michael a
tin train. And Michael had given him the train and he wouldn't take the
trumpet instead. Oughtn't Michael to have had the trumpet?
And when they left him, tucked up in his cot in the night nursery, he
called them back again.
"It was a jolly sell for me, wasn't it?" said Nicky. And he laughed.
IV
It seemed that Nicky would always be like that. Whatever happened, and
something was generally happening to him, he didn't care. When he scaled
the plaster flower-pot on the terrace, and it gave way under his assault
and threw him down the steps on to the gravel walk, he picked himself
up, displaying a forehead that was a red abrasion filled in with yellow
gravel and the grey dust of the smashed flower-pot, and said "I don't
care. I liked it," before anybody had time to pity him. When Mary-Nanna
stepped on his train and broke the tender, he said "It's all right. I
don't care. I shall make another." It was no use Grannie saying, "Don't
care came to a bad end"; Nicky made it evident that a bad end would be
life's last challenge not to care. No accident, however unforeseen,
would ever take him at a disadvantage.
Two years passed and he was just the same.
Frances and Anthony agreed behind his back that Nicky was adorable.
But his peculiar attitude to misfortune became embarrassing when you had
to punish him. Nicky could break the back of any punishment by first
admitting that it was a good idea and then thinking of a better one when
it was too late. It was a good idea not letting him have any cake for
tea after he had tested the resilience of the new tyres on his father's
bicycle with a penknife; but, Nicky said, it would have been more to
the purpose if they had taken his steam-engine from him for a week.
"You didn't think of that, did you, Mummy? I thought of it," said Nicky.
Once he ran away over the West Heath, and got into the Leg of Mutton
Pond, and would have been drowned if a total stranger hadn't gone in
after him and pulled him out. That time Nicky was sent to bed at four
o'clock in the afternoon. At seven, when his mother came to tuck him up
and say Good-night, she found him sitting up, smiling and ready.
"Mummy," he said, "I think I ought to tell you. It isn't a bit of good
sending me to bed."
"I should have thought it was, myself," said Frances. She almost
suspected Nicky of insincerity.
"So it would have been," he assented, "if I didn't 'vent things. You
see, I just lie still 'venting things all the time. I've 'vented three
things since tea: a thing to make Daddy's bikesickle stand still with
Daddy on it; a thing to squeeze corks out of bottles; and a thing to
make my steam-engine go faster. That isn't a punishment, is it, Mummy?"
* * * * *
They said that Nicky would grow out of it. But two more years passed and
Nicky was still the same.
And yet he was not the same. And Dorothy, and Michael and John were not
the same.
For the awful thing about your children was that they were always dying.
Yes, dying. The baby Nicky was dead. The child Dorothy was dead and in
her place was a strange big girl. The child Michael was dead and in his
place was a strange big boy. And Frances mourned over the passing of
each age. You could no more bring back that unique loveliness of two
years old, of five years old, of seven, than you could bring back the
dead. Even John-John was not a baby any more; he spoke another language
and had other feelings; he had no particular affection for his mother's
knee. Frances knew that all this dying was to give place to a more
wonderful and a stronger life. But it was not the same life; and she
wanted to have all their lives about her, enduring, going on, at the
same time. She did not yet know that the mother of babies and the mother
of boys and girls must die if the mother of men and women is to be born.
Thoughts came to Frances now that troubled her tranquillity.
Supposing, after all, the children shouldn't grow up as she wanted them
to?
There was Nicky. She could do nothing with him; she could make no
impression on him.
There was Michael. She couldn't make him out. He loved them, and showed
that he loved them; but it was by caresses, by beautiful words, by rare,
extravagant acts of renunciation, inconsistent with his self-will; not
by anything solid and continuous. There was a softness in Michael that
distressed and a hardness that perplexed her. You could make an
impression on Michael--far too easily--and the impression stayed. You
couldn't obliterate it. Michael's memory was terrible. And he had secret
ways. He was growing more and more sensitive, more and more wrapped up
in Himself. Supposing Michael became a morbid egoist, like Anthony's
brother, Bartholomew?
And there was Dorothy. She went her own way more than ever, with the
absolute conviction that it was the right way. Nothing could turn her.
At thirteen her body was no longer obedient. Dorothy was not going to be
her mother's companion, or her father's, either; she was Rosalind
Jervis's companion. She seemed to care more about little fat, fluffy
Rosalind than about any of them except Nicky. Dorothy was interested in
Michael; she respected his queer thoughts. It was as if she recognized
some power in him that could beat her somewhere some day, and was humble
before a thing her cleverness had failed to understand. But it was Nicky
that she adored, not Michael; and she was bad for Nicky. She encouraged
his naughtiness because it amused her.
Frances foresaw that a time would come, a little later, when Nicky and
Dorothy would be companions, not Nicky and his mother.
In the evenings, coming home from the golf-links, Frances and Anthony
discussed their children.
Frances said, "You can't make any impression on Nicky. There seems to be
no way that you can get at him."
Anthony thought there was a way. It was a way he had not tried yet, that
he did not want to try. But, if he could only bring himself to it, he
judged that he could make a distinct impression.
"What the young rascal wants is a thorough good spanking," said Anthony.
Nicky said so too.
The first time he got it Nicky's criticism was that it wasn't a bad idea
if his father could have pulled it off all right. But he said, "It's no
good if you do it through the cloth. And it's no good unless you _want_
to hurt me, Daddy. And you don't want. And even if you did want, badly
enough to try and hurt, supposing you spanked ever so hard, you couldn't
hurt as much as my earache. And I can bear that."
"He's top dog again, you see," said Frances, not without a secret
satisfaction.
"Oh, is he?" said Anthony. "I don't propose to be downed by Nicky."
Every instinct in him revolted against spanking Nicky. But when
Williams, the groom, showed him a graze on each knee of the pony he had
bought for Frances and the children, Anthony determined that, this time,
Nicky should have a serious spanking.
"Which of them took Roger out?"
"I'm sure I don't know, sir," said Williams.
But Anthony knew. He lay in wait for Nicky by the door that led from the
stable yard into the kitchen garden.
Nicky was in the strawberry bed.
"Was it you who took Roger out this afternoon?"
Nicky did not answer promptly. His mouth was still full of strawberries.
"What if I did?" he said at last, after manifest reflection.
"If you did? Why, you let him down on Golders Hill and cut his knees."
"Holly Mount," said Nicky.
"Holly Mount or Golders Hill, it's all the same to you, you young
monkey."
"It isn't, Daddy. Holly Mount's much the worst. It's an awful hill."
"That," said Anthony, "is why you're forbidden to ride down it. You've
_got_ to be spanked for this, Nicky."
"Have I? All right. Don't look so unhappy, Daddy."
Anthony did much better this time. Nicky (though he shook with laughter)
owned it very handsomely. And Anthony had handicapped himself again by
doing it through the cloth. He drew the line at shaming Nicky.
(Yet--_could_ you have shamed his indomitable impudence?)
But he had done it. He had done it ruthlessly, while the strawberries
were still wet on Nicky's mouth.
And when it was all over Michael, looking for his father, came into the
school-room where these things happened. He said he was awfully sorry,
but he'd taken Roger out, and Roger had gone down on his knees and
cut himself.
No, it wasn't on Holly Mount, it was at the turn of the road on the hill
past the "Spaniards."
Anthony paid no attention to Michael. He turned on Michael's brother.
"Nicky, what did you do it for?"
"For a rag, of course. I knew you'd feel such a jolly fool when you
found it wasn't me."
"You see, Daddy," he explained later, "you might have known I wouldn't
have let Roger down. But wasn't it a ripping sell?"
"What are you to do," said Anthony, "with a boy like that?"
Frances had an inspiration. "Do nothing," she said. Her tranquillity
refused to be troubled for long together.
"Nicky's right. It's no good trying to punish him. After all, _why_
punish Nicky? It isn't as if he was really naughty. He never does unkind
things, or mean things. And he's truthful."
"Horribly truthful. They all are," said Anthony.
"Well, then, what does Nicky do?"
"He does dangerous things."
"He forgets."
"Nothing more dangerous than forgetting. We must punish him to make him
remember."
"But it doesn't make him remember. It only makes him think us fools."
"You know what it means?" said Anthony. "We shall have to send him to
school."
"Not yet," said Frances.
School was the thing in the future that she dreaded. Nicky was only
nine, and they were all getting on well with Mt. Parsons. Anthony knew
that to send Nicky to school now would be punishing Frances, not Nicky.
The little fiend would only grin in their faces if they told him he was
going to school.
It was no use trying to make impressions on Nicky. He was as hard as
nails. He would never feel things.
Perhaps, Frances thought, it was just as well.
V
"I do think it was nice of Jane," said Nicky, "to have Jerry."
"And I do think it was nice of me," said Dorothy, "to give him to you."
Jane was Dorothy's cat; therefore her kittens were Dorothy's.
"I wouldn't have given him to just anybody."
"I know," said Nicky.
"I might have kept him. He's the nicest kitten Jane ever had."
"I know," said Nicky. "It _was_ nice of you."
"I might want him back again."
"I--know."
Nicky was quiet and serious, almost humble, as if he went in the fear of
losing Jerry. Nobody but Jerry and Dorothy saw Nicky in that mood.
Not that he was really afraid. Nothing could take Jerry from him. If
Dorothy could have taken him back again she wouldn't have, not even if
she had really wanted him. Dorothy wasn't cruel, and she was
only ragging.
But certainly he was Jane's nicest kitten. Jane was half-Persian, white
with untidy tabby patterns on her. Jerry was black all over. Whatever
attitude he took, his tight, short fur kept the outlines of his figure
firm and clear, whether he arched his back and jumped sideways, or
rolled himself into a cushion, or squatted with haunches spread and
paws doubled in under his breast, or sat bolt upright with his four legs
straight like pillars, and his tail curled about his feet. Jerry's coat
shone like black looking-glass, and the top of his head smelt sweet,
like a dove's breast.
And he had yellow eyes. Mary-Nanna said they would turn green some day.
But Nicky didn't believe it. Mary-Nanna was only ragging. Jerry's eyes
would always be yellow.
Mr. Parsons declared that Nicky sat for whole hours meditating on Jerry,
as if in this way he could make him last longer.
Jerry's life was wonderful to Nicky. Once he was so small that his body
covered hardly the palm of your hand; you could see his skin; it felt
soft and weak through the thin fur, sleeked flat and wet where Jane had
licked it. His eyes were buttoned up tight. Then they opened. He crawled
feebly on the floor after Jane, or hung on to her little breasts,
pressing out the milk with his clever paws. Then Jerry got older.
Sometimes he went mad and became a bat or a bird, and flew up the
drawing-room curtains as if his legs were wings.
Nicky said that Jerry could turn himself into anything he pleased; a
hawk, an owl, a dove, a Himalayan bear, a snake, a flying squirrel, a
monkey, a rabbit, a panther, and a little black lamb of God.
Jerry was a cat now; he was two years old.
Jerry's fixed idea seemed to be that he was a very young cat, and that
he must be nursed continually, and that nobody but Nicky must nurse him.
Mr. Parsons found that Nicky made surprising progress in his Latin and
Greek that year. What had baffled Mr. Parsons up till now had been
Nicky's incapacity for sitting still. But he would sit still enough when
Jerry was on his knee, pressed tight between the edge of the desk and
Nicky's stomach, so that knowledge entered into Nicky through Jerry when
there was no other way.
Nicky would even sit still in the open air to watch Jerry as he stalked
bees in the grass, or played by himself, over and over again, his own
enchanted game. He always played it in the same way. He started from the
same clump in the border, to run in one long careening curve across the
grass; at the same spot in the lawn he bounded sideways and gave the
same little barking grunt and dashed off into the bushes. When you tried
to catch him midway he stood on his hind legs and bowed to you
slantwise, waving his forepaws, or rushed like lightning up the tree of
Heaven, and climbed into the highest branches and clung there, looking
down at you. His yellow eyes shone through the green leaves; they
quivered; they played; they mocked you with some challenge, some charm,
secret and divine and savage.
"The soul of Nicky is in that cat," Frances said.
Jerry knew that he was Nicky's cat. When other people caught him he
scrabbled over their shoulders with his claws and got away from them.
When Nicky caught him he lay quiet and heavy in his arms, pressing down
and spreading his soft body. Nicky's sense of touch had been hardened by
violent impacts and collisions, by experiments with jack-knives and saws
and chisels and gouges, and by struggling with the material of his
everlasting inventions. Through communion with Jerry it became tender
and sensitive again. It delighted in the cat's throbbing purr and the
thrill of his feet, as Jerry, serious and earnest, padded down his bed
on Nicky's knee.
"I like him best, though," said Nicky, "when he's sleepy and at the same
time bitesome."
"You mustn't let him bite you," Frances said.
"I don't mind," said Nicky. "He wouldn't do it if he didn't like me."
Jerry had dropped off to sleep with his jaws closing drowsily on Nicky's
arm. When it moved his hind legs kicked at it and tore.
"He's dreaming when he does that," said Nicky. "He thinks he's a panther
and I'm buffaloes."
Mr. Parsons laughed at him. "Nicky and his cat!" he said. Nicky didn't
care. Mr. Parsons was always ragging him.
The tutor preferred dogs himself. He couldn't afford any of the
expensive breeds; but that summer he was taking care of a Russian
wolfhound for a friend of his. When Mr. Parsons ran with Michael and
Nicky round the Heath, the great borzoi ran before them with long leaps,
head downwards, setting an impossible pace. Michael and Dorothy adored
Boris openly. Nicky, out of loyalty to Jerry, stifled a secret
admiration. For Mr. Parsons held that a devotion to a cat was
incompatible with a proper feeling for a dog, whence Nicky had inferred
that any feeling for a dog must do violence to the nobler passion.
Mr. Parsons tried to wean Nicky from what he pretended to regard as his
unmanly weakness. "Wait, Nicky," he said, "till you've got a dog of
your own."
"I don't want a dog of my own," said Nicky. "I don't want anything but
Jerry." Boris, he said, was not clever, like Jerry. He had a silly face.
"Think so?" said Mr. Parsons. "Look at his jaws. They could break
Jerry's back with one snap."
"_Could_ he, Daddy?"
They were at tea on the lawn, and Boris had gone to sleep under Mr.
Parsons' legs with his long muzzle on his forepaws.
"He could," said Anthony, "if he caught him."
"But he couldn't catch him. Jerry'd be up a tree before Boris could look
at him."
"If you want Jerry to shin up trees you must keep his weight down."
Nicky laughed. He knew that Boris could never catch Jerry. His father
was only ragging him.
* * * * *
Nicky was in the schoolroom, bowed over his desk. He was doing an
imposition, the second aorist of the abominable verb [Greek: erchomai],
written out five and twenty times. (Luckily he could do the last fifteen
times from memory.)
Nicky had been arguing with Mr. Parsons. Mr. Parsons had said that the
second aorist of [Greek: erchomai] was not [Greek: êrchon].
Nicky had said, "I can't help it. If it's not [Greek: êrchon] it ought
to be."
Mr. Parsons had replied: "The verb [Greek: erchomai] is irregular." And
Nicky had retorted, in effect, that no verb had any business to be as
irregular as all that. Mr. Parsons had then suggested that Nicky might
know more about the business of irregular verbs if he wrote out the
second aorist of [Greek: erchomai] five and twenty times after tea. As
it was a particularly fine afternoon, an imposition was, Nicky admitted,
a score for Mr. Parsons and a jolly good sell for _him_.
Mr. Parsons had not allowed him to have Jerry on his knee, or even in
the room; and this, Nicky owned further, was but just. It wouldn't have
been nearly so good a punishment if he had had Jerry with him.
Nicky, bowed over his desk, struggled for the perfect legibility which
Mr. Parsons had insisted on, as otherwise the imposition would do him
more harm than good. He was in for it, and the thing must be done
honourably if it was done at all. He had only looked out of the windows
twice to make sure that Boris was asleep under Mr. Parsons' legs. And
once he had left the room to see where Jerry was. He had found him in
the kitchen garden, sitting on a bed of fresh-grown mustard and cress,
ruining it. He sat like a lamb, his forepaws crossed, his head tilted
slightly backwards. His yellow eyes gazed at Nicky with a sweet and
mournful innocence.
Nicky did not hear the voices in the garden.
"I'm awfully sorry, sir," Mr. Parsons was saying. "I can't think how it
could have happened." Mr. Parsons' voice was thick and his face was very
red. "I could have sworn the door was shut."
"Johnnie opened it," said Anthony. He seemed to have caught, suddenly,
one of his bad colds and to be giving it to Mr. Parsons. They were both
in their shirtsleeves, and Anthony carried something in his arms which
he had covered with his coat.
The borzoi stood in front of them. His face had a look of foolish
ecstasy. He stared at Mr. Parsons, and as he stared he panted. There was
a red smear on his white breast; his open jaws still dripped a pink
slaver. It sprayed the ground in front of them, jerked out with
his panting.
"Get away, you damned brute," said Mr. Parsons.
Boris abashed himself; he stretched out his fore legs towards Mr.
Parsons, shook his raised haunches, lifted up his great saw-like muzzle,
and rolled into one monstrous cry a bark, a howl, a yawn.
Nicky heard it, and he looked out of the schoolroom window. He saw the
red smear on the white curly breast. He saw his father in his shirt
sleeves, carrying something in his arms that he had covered with
his coat.
Under the tree of Heaven Dorothy and Michael, crouching close against
their mother, cried quietly. Frances was crying, too; for it was she who
would have to tell Nicky.
Dorothy tried to console him.
"Jerry's eyes would have turned green, if he had lived, Nicky. They
would, really."
"I wouldn't have minded. They'd have been Jerry's eyes."
"But he wouldn't have looked like Jerry."
"I wouldn't have cared what he looked like. He'd have _been_ Jerry."
"I'll give you Jane, Nicky, and all the kittens she ever has, if that
would make up."
"It wouldn't. You don't seem to understand that it's Jerry I want. I
wish you wouldn't talk about him."
"Very well," said Dorothy, "I won't."
Then Grannie tried. She recommended a holy resignation. God, she said,
had given Jerry to Nicky, and God had taken him away.