A DEFINITION OF FELICITY
April came and brought to Ursula a fine pink boy, whose body, bundled
in rolls of shawl, squirmed deliciously in Mary's arms as she cuddled
him in a sunny room of the Hardrascliffe nursing-home. Ursula lay on a
sofa near the window regarding her offspring with amused satisfaction.
Her pale blue gown and lacy cap, and the light rug across her knees
mingled so admirably daintiness with discretion, that Mary thought she
looked more like an advertisement for somebody's invalid wine than a
woman who had recently emerged from the disturbing crisis of motherhood.
The baby roused from a light doze and turned, whimpering a little, in
Mary's arms.
"Poor little Thomas! You've woken him up, Mary. I'm sure you're
not holding him right. Give him to me. You're crushing his feet or
something."
Mary had been gazing dreamily through the window at the circling flight
of gulls above the sunlit garden.
"He's all right," she said, rocking Thomas softly with practised hands.
"But take him if you like. Hush, little love! Diddums, diddums! Did
your old aunt then squeeze your little tootsies?"
She crooned over the bundle, smiling tenderly.
Ursula fidgeted on the sofa.
"There, there, hush-aby, sweet lamb, hush-aby!" cooed Mary.
Thomas nestled comfortably against her.
"Oh, Mary, I wish you wouldn't talk that silly baby talk. It's such
nonsense--brings them up to bad habits. I don't intend the kid to hear
anything but good English. I read in a book that the misnaming of
common objects definitely retards a child's mental development. Fancy
calling feet 'tootsies' and dogs 'bow-wows' when the real words are so
much easier."
Mary smiled a little.
"Oh, it's all very well to smile. You're so old-fashioned, Mary. Come
along to mother, sweetheart. He has been held by a stranger quite long
enough, Mary. The new system is that children should be brought up to
lie in their cots and not be dandled about all day like handbags. They
must hate it. Put him in the cot, will you?"
Mary laid the protesting Thomas in a nest of bows and muslin, and stood
waiting for Ursula to gather him up and comfort the wails which greeted
his deprivation of protecting arms. But Ursula lay back serenely.
Before the arrival of her son, she had declared that all babies
bored her to sobs, but recently, having consumed vast quantities of
literature on the subject of their upbringing, she had learnt all about
them that was to be known. Mary, who had only nursed several dozens of
Anderby infants through croup and colic and teething, and cuddled them
in unenlightened arms, felt terribly behind the times. She hated to
hear children cry.
"Don't you ever want to cuddle him though, and say silly things? I
thought all mothers would."
"Well, of course I consider Thomas's good before my own pleasure."
Thomas from his cradle, objected loudly to his mother's altruism, but
Ursula only put out a cool, white hand and touched his shawl. "He must
be trained. He will soon learn."
The training was still in progress, when half an hour later Mrs. Toby
arrived in a state of fluttering jubilation, to congratulate Ursula on
her triumphant achievement.
"Well, my dear, this is nice! How lovely! How quite sweet he is! Dear,
dear! I must say you look quite well. Better than I did, after my
first. Toby drove me over from Market Burton, and I'm sure I wanted to
come, though he does go so fast round the corners, and we always break
down on Casserby Hill. But I thought I must slip up for a minute and
see how you are and the dear child. Why, he's smiling! Dear little man!"
An appropriate tear stole down Mrs. Toby's cheek. She had four children
of her own, whose existence had been to her a perpetual source of
distressful agitation, but she still regarded the advent of other
people's babies as a matter for tearful congratulation.
She hovered over the cot, blinking and smiling, and absent-mindedly
dropping one or two little parcels on the floor. Mary decided that
those strange, clucking noises she made with her tongue were intended
for the edification of Thomas, who ungratefully declined to be amused.
Ursula was politely attentive to the privileged absurdities of a mother
of four.
"I thought I might just bring along a few of Lucy's flannels, and the
cot cover I bought for Gladys. When you've had four like I have, you'll
know how these little things come in handy. And I just slipped one or
two other little things into a parcel. Dear me, where is it?"
"How nice of you! That's ripping!"
Mary observed Ursula's occasional lapses from pure English with
malicious relish. They compensated a little for her feeling of
exclusion from the experience of the two mothers. She was not used
to being out of it and disliked the sensation. Even little Mrs. Toby
seemed to assume an air of faint patronage towards her uninitiation.
"Toby's talking to your husband, Mary," she said. "I left them together
in the market. I thought I'd just slip along and see how Ursula and the
precious child were."
Mrs. Toby's deference towards life was so great that she never presumed
to make an unqualified statement. She would never go shopping, or
visit Ursula: but only "just slipped round the corner to buy a few
things" and "slipped along to the nursing house." "Life must be a
very slippery affair for her," thought Mary, with uncharacteristic
spitefulness. Usually she was rather sorry for Mrs. Toby. To-day,
seeing her permitted as an experienced mother to hold Thomas for the
unprecedented period of five minutes, she felt inclined to be spiteful.
Lately, she had noticed several occasions on which she felt inclined to
be spiteful.
"There, there! Hush then, little man!" murmured Mrs. Toby.
Ursula, bowing before a fourfold experience, offered no reproof.
"How's Toby?" she asked instead.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know. I really get a little worried sometimes,
my dear. I do indeed. He works so hard, poor dear." Mrs. Toby shook her
head, and her dangling veil became entangled with Thomas's safety-pins.
"Is he really busy?" asked Mary with relief. "Then his practice is
going well? I suppose he has a lot to do just now when so much property
is being sold."
The solicitor's wife pushed back her veil. "Well, it's not exactly the
practice. For I'm sure, I don't really know. Poor Toby is so busy with
other things. He doesn't seem to get much time. All this last month he
has been getting a paper ready for the East Yorkshire Archæological
Society. It takes such a lot of time. It's about the churches of the
wold villages or something, and I'm sure he has to go out nearly every
day to look at something or other."
Ursula felt that Mary had blundered on to an unwelcome topic. Tactfully
she changed the subject.
"How is your socialist friend, Mary? The one who stood up and defied
Cousin Sarah in your dining-room? It must have been a glorious scene!
Foster heard about it from Tom Bannister."
"Oh, he's gone," said Mary casually. "I only took him in for a night or
two because he had a bad cold, and it was such horrid weather."
"He sounded an awfully violent young man. You do seem to pick up some
queer characters, Mary. I gathered from what you told me after you
first met him that he was rather odd. What was he really like?"
"Oh--I don't know. Young, you know, and rather excitable!"
"Where has he gone to?"
"He's travelling about the wolds somewhere, speaking on socialism; but
I really don't know."
"Oh, yes, you do! Look at her blushing, Mrs. Toby! Come on, Mary. Tell
us the horrid truth!"
"There's nothing to tell. I met him, as I told you, before driving back
from Hardrascliffe. Starlight knocked him down and I took him home
for three days, as he was quite ill. Then he went to stay at the inn
and talked a lot of nonsense to the villagers, but I don't think they
understood. He stayed about a week, and took up with the schoolmaster
a good deal. He's a most objectionable man, that Coast. But I only saw
Mr. Rossitur twice in the street after he left us, and hardly spoke to
him then."
Mary hoped that she sounded off-hand and uninterested. She kept her
angry, miserable eyes steadfastly on the cradle, so that they should
not betray her.
After that encounter in the moonlit road outside the _Flying Fox_,
she had only seen David once. She had met him in the village climbing
towards the School House--going to visit that wretched Coast, she
supposed.
An overwhelming impulse had conquered her pride and driven her to
invite him to tea. But David had turned away abruptly. "Very sorry,
indeed, Mrs. Robson. It's awfully good of you to ask me. But I've
promised to go up and see your schoolmaster--a most interesting person,
full of ideas. He's part of my job, you see, so I mustn't disappoint
him."
"Part of his job" indeed! This was the second time he had snubbed her.
Very well, then, let him mind his job. Mary would mind hers. She tossed
her head.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know what the world's coming to," chirruped
Mrs. Toby. "Sarah Bannister was only saying yesterday that the wolds
soon won't be fit for any farmers to live on. They've got a labourer's
union down at Holderness, and I'm sure I don't know what will happen if
we start strikes and things on the farms. The coal strikes last year
were bad enough."
"Oh, Sarah Bannister's always thinking we're all going straight to the
dogs," said Ursula. "When she goes to heaven she'll always be expecting
Lucifer to make another war among the angels."
Mary rose and went to the window.
She wished she had not come. She wished that John would arrive to take
her home to Anderby. She wished that she had never left home. It wasn't
worth while being irritated by Ursula's superiority and Mrs. Toby's
silliness when she couldn't even have the compensation of cuddling
Thomas.
She wanted just then to cuddle Thomas very much indeed.
"Why, here's Toby coming along the path," she announced, welcoming a
distraction. "He looks full of news."
"I don't really know whether I'm fit to receive a man," murmured
Ursula, patting the curls below her cap. "Mary, be a dear and hand me
that mirror and the powder. Your husband's so particular," she added
archly to Mrs. Toby.
Mary brought the powder-box and silver mirror. She didn't see why she
should wait on Ursula just because Ursula had a baby.
"Heavens! why didn't some one tell me that my nose was like a
looking-glass? How could you let me go on looking such a fright?"
Ursula's busy hand dabbed at her already well powdered face.
It was obvious, thought Mary, that she was delighted with the contrast
between her daintiness and her visitors' dishevelment. Mary had driven
to Hardrascliffe between scattering showers of April rain. Her hair was
blown just anyhow, and there was a hole in her driving gloves.
Toby entered with a boisterous flourish. He liked Ursula tremendously.
She was a good sort. Had more go in her than the rest of the family.
She knew a thing or two. Not a conceited frump like Mary.
"They said that I might come in for a minute if I was very good. Well,
Ursula, how are you? And how's the nipper? By Jove, the very image of
his father. By the way, I saw Foster in the town. Never met a man so
set up in my life! Well, Mary, I've been talking to your man in the
market--you come baby worshipping? By Jove, Ursula, wait till you've
got four! Then you'll say something!"
He winked at her delightedly, caught Thomas from his wife's reluctant
arms, and held him at arm's length for inspection.
"Oh, by the way," he exclaimed suddenly, almost dropping Thomas back on
to Ursula's sofa, "I've got something for you, Mary. Have you seen this
week's _Northern Clarion_? By Jove, your little friend's been at it all
right. There's a stinger there, a regular stinger. He's got you farmers
pretty well on toast. He's going to make things hum a bit."
"What little friend?" asked Mary indifferently.
Her heart was in her mouth. She hardly dare open her lips lest Toby
should see it.
"That socialist chap who set Sarah by the ears. We've all heard about
that little business, Mary. You can't hide your light under a bushel in
the East Riding. I met a chap at the Archæological Society who told me
to read this. He'd met your young fellow--what's his name? Rossitur? up
beyond Foxhaven way, ranting round like a Salvation Army soul-snatcher.
Great little fellow, what? You read this."
He handed Mary the crumpled leaves of a newspaper.
The black letters danced madly on the printed page. Mary folded it,
laughing rather breathlessly.
"Oh, it's too long to read now. I came to look at the baby, not to read
the newspaper."
She could not face it here, in this little room, before the scrutiny
of six unfriendly eyes. Toby, no doubt, thought it all a great joke;
and Mrs. Toby, silly little hen! Mary Robson of Anderby Wold, who had
always thought herself so clever and superior--that she of all people
should have harboured a raging socialist, let him insult her relations
in her own dining-room, and then go away and write inflammatory
articles about her and her village in the most notorious of radical
papers! Her hands round the paper tightened.
Toby, highly amused by her confusion, continued his chaffing. "By Jove,
he's let you all have it! Starvation wages and coals at Christmas!
'Coddlin' and short' he calls it--coddlin' your men and paying them
short. Do you read your Dickens? Good joke, eh? No ... that was in
the letter. There's a letter too, by a chap called Hunting. Same thing
though--friend of Rossitur's."
"Oh, is there?" Mary spoke with cold indifference.
"And there's a bit on rural education. Says the farmers won't have the
children properly educated because that makes 'em discontented. All
about the intrigue that goes on behind the schoolboards--children being
snatched away to work in the fields before their time is up and all
that. Quite a real scandal!"
"He got that from Coast," thought Mary. She wondered how much David
had learned from Coast--how much about her and her kingdom at Anderby.
How they must have laughed at her together in that hideous parlour at
the School House! Her visits to Mrs. Watts, the Christmas Tree, the
dances she organized. Probably Coast had been immensely entertained by
the story of the embrocation, and the way in which she made David fold
sheets, and her naive delight in having an author to stay in the house.
Toby and his wife were bending over the cradle, Ursula lay back on her
cushions smiling luxuriously at them. The atmosphere of violet powder
and hot milk and drying flannel became suddenly stifling.
Mary rose, clutching the paper.
"Oh, Ursula, I've just remembered. I have to order some cheese at
Maryson's. I'll go now, and if John calls please tell him to wait."
She fled from the room. On the stairs she turned and, through the
half-closed door, caught the sound of her name and David's, and then
Toby's laugh.
The esplanade was deserted. The straight, shower-washed streets shone
like polished metal above the dancing grey and silver of the sea.
Blank, flat-chested boarding houses with lace-veiled windows lay swept
and garnished, ready for the transitory influx of summer visitors. A
paper bag blew forlornly along the path till it found a resting-place
in the gutter at Mary's feet.
The breeze pulled at her scarf, and the newspaper in her hands flapped
and struggled like a live thing. She found a seat facing the sea, and
sheltered on three sides from the wind by an erection of glass and
wood, built for the convenience of summer visitors. There she sat and
unfolded the paper.
The _Northern Clarion_ was unfamiliar to her. She missed the genial
friendliness with which the _Yorkshire Chronicle_ greeted her each
morning. She wrestled with the fluttering pages, turning them over and
over to find David's article.
His name suddenly faced her at the head of a column.
"Progress and the Wolds" by David Rossitur. There was a column and a
half of little black letters, dancing and wriggling on the paper. If
they only would keep still for a minute, she could read what he had to
say--what he had the amazing impertinence and ingratitude to say!
She folded the paper and began to read steadily, from the head on one
column to its foot, then up again and half-way down the next, and that
was all. She lowered her hands, and looked across the sea.
It might have been worse. After all, he really said very little. The
tone of the article was more restrained than that of his book. He had
begun by drawing a picture of the agricultural conditions, in East
Yorkshire--a little exaggerated in outline, of course, but less grossly
distorted than she had imagined. The passage about starvation wages was
rather bitter, but the reference to education might have applied to
anybody--not specially to her. Perhaps Coast had never even mentioned
to him the incident of Jack Greenwood.
Perhaps her anger was unjust. David had to do his work after all.
Perhaps she had not taken him seriously enough because he was such a
boy. He sounded serious enough here. She shifted her position on the
seat and turned to Hunting's letter. This surely was "the stinger."
Toby had confused the two writers. Hunting declared that he wished to
confirm David Rossitur's theories. He denounced the Eastern Farmers
in half a column of crude virulence, and finally stated his intention
of following up Mr. Rossitur's valuable work by the organization of a
union among farm labourers.
Mary frowned.
Was this really what David meant when he spoke of the fellowship and
courage necessary for reform? She turned again to the last passage in
his article. It contained an appeal to the organizers of more advanced
industries to have patience and sympathy with their comrades, the
agriculturists. Although the evils of the countrymen were less flagrant
and the sufferers less articulate, there was just the same need for
encouragement. He warned them against the cowardice of complacency.
"Progress is not the movement towards a single, recognized goal.
Because some of you have reached a condition of comparative prosperity,
that is no reason why you should now withdraw from the race. It is
cowardice to refuse to relinquish present good for the sake of future
excellence. 'Felicity is the continual progresse of the desire from
one object to another, the attaining of the former being still, but
the way to the later ... so that, in the first place, I put for a
generall inclination of mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of
power after power which ceaseth only after death and there shall be no
contentment but proceeding.'"
Mary read that, and one passage further back about kings and queens. It
was addressed to the masters of hired labourers. "You, who think you
hold suzerainty over men, beware lest you find that time has robbed
you of dominion. For those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned
above their generation and rule circumstance."
He had said something like that to her, standing by the mantelpiece in
the Anderby dining-room, smiling at her with wistful, half-humorous
eyes. Here it seemed a direct appeal to her understanding. Did he mean
her to read it and remember?
She put down the paper. A man and a girl passed the shelter linked arm
in arm. The girl wore a dark hat, trimmed with bright little scarlet
wings. She looked up, laughing, in the man's face. He bent towards her,
and Mary could not hear what he murmured, though they passed so close
that the girl's skirt brushed her knee.
Their footsteps died away along the pavement. Mary was left alone with
the wheeling gulls, and the sound of the wind striking the shelter.
David had said very little, but it was enough. She knew now what he
thought about her.
David and his kind, the man and girl who had just passed her, the young
labourers at Anderby, Jack Greenwood and Fred Stephens, they were the
heirs of the future. They wanted to go forward because "there shall be
no contentment but proceeding."
But Mary had placed herself in the ranks of the older generation who
would have time leaden-footed. She cherished no longing to proceed.
"Her restlesse and perpetuall desire for power after power" had taken
her as far as she dared go.
She had John. She had Anderby.
Further progress could bring her no increase of power, only enforced
abdication from the only dominion she could hold.
"Those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their
generation and rule circumstance."
She stared across the sea.
A gleaming sail, far out across the bay, caught a momentary flash of
sunlight, then vanished into the grey waste of water.
And she was no older than David and Fred Stephens and Ursula and
Violet--only different.
The sharp clop, clop of hoofs along the Esplanade caught her attention.
She turned her head. Through the glass at the back of the shelter she
saw John driving towards the nursing-home. She waited until he turned
the corner, then rose and quickly followed.
The dog-cart was drawn up outside the gates of the nursing-home. John
saw her coming, and raised his hand.
"Where have you been, honey? I thought you were with Ursula?"
"I went out on the Front a bit." She climbed wearily into the seat
beside him.
Once, on the drive home, he broke the silence: "I was talking to Toby
up in the market. He was saying to me that the Diamond Assurance
Company, the one we deal with for the house and farm buildings and so
on--fire insurance--it's going to pot. He says we ought to transfer our
policy to Mallesons'. They're clients of his--good people. What do you
think?"
Mary was not listening. Her eyes were looking beyond the falling road
to the grey village, in the cup-shaped hollow of the walls.
"Eh, honey?"
"Oh, yes, if you think so."
Between the generation that was passing and the one coming forward
was a great gulf fixed--Mary and John were on one side. For a moment
rebellion seized her. Why could she not relinquish this--the dim hills
before her, the bearded figure beside her, the responsibilities that
preyed upon her? Why not escape to the other side?
They were passing the cross-roads where Starlight had picked up the
stone in his shoe. Mary leaned forward; one vision rose before her; her
rebellion culminated in one need--David, David Rossitur.
She saw him again as she had last seen him, climbing the hill towards
the School House, his lean figure bent forward against the wind, the
sun on his eager face, his red hair blowing in untidy locks across his
forehead, the sleeves that were always too short for his long wrists....
John spoke again.
"Then you think it will be all right if I tell Toby to transfer that
Insurance Policy?"
"Oh, yes. Anything you like," answered Mary.
On the hall-table at Anderby a note awaited her. She opened it
listlessly while John removed his hat and coat.
"Anything the matter?" he asked suddenly, noticing her white face.
"What's that?"
"This? Oh, nothing. Only a note from Coast to say he's afraid he can't
let the boys have a holiday to go brassocking this year. He is a fool."
"There's going to be trouble with that fellow," muttered John.
"Brassocks will grow like anything this spring unless we get in extra
boys to hoe them. You can't expect the men to get the fields cleared
quick enough."
"Oh, you're always seeing trouble ahead! You're as bad as Sarah,"
snapped Mary. "Why can't you look on the cheerful side of things for a
change? Anyone would think you were an old man from the way you talk."
John looked up, hurt and surprised. Mary's outburst was unexpected. She
never said such things.
His puzzled glance curbed her irritation, the instinct to comfort being
stronger than the desire to wound some one else.
"I didn't meant that," she said quickly. "I didn't mean that, John. I
don't know what I'm saying. I've got such a headache."
His surprise deepened to speechless bewilderment when she turned and
suddenly kissed him on the forehead, then fled upstairs to her room.
John stood in the hall, silently scratching his head.
"Now what on earth did she do that for?" he inquired of the hatstand.
It ventured no reply.