Mark and Dan were going to school at Chelmsted on the thirteenth of September, and it was the last week in August now. Mark and Mamma were always looking for each other. Mamma would come running up to the schoolroom and say, “Where’s Mark? Tell Mark I want him”; and Mark would go into the garden and say, “Where’s Mamma? I want her.” And Mamma would put away her trowel and gardening gloves and go walks with him which she hated; and Mark would leave Napoleon Bonaparte and the plan of the Battle of Austerlitz to dig in the garden (and he loathed digging) with Mamma.
This afternoon he had called to Mary to come out brook-jumping. Mark could jump all the brooks in the fields between Ilford and Barkingside, and in the plantations beyond Drake’s Farm; he could jump the Pool of Siloam where the water from the plantations runs into the lake below Vinings. Where there was no place for a little girl of seven to cross he carried her in his arms and jumped. He would stand outside in the lane and put his hands on the wall and turn heels over head into the garden.
She said to herself: “In six years and five months I shall be fourteen. I shall jump the Pool of Siloam and come into the garden head over heels.” And Mamma called her a little humbug when she said she was afraid to go for a walk with Jenny lest a funeral should be coming along the road.
II
The five elm trees held up their skirts above the high corn. The flat surface of the corn-tops was still. Hot glassy air quivered like a thin steam over the brimming field.
The glazed yellow walls of the old nursery gave out a strong light and heat. The air indoors was dry and smelt dusty like the hot, crackling air above the corn. The children had come in from their play in the fields; they leaned out of the windows and talked about what they were going to be.
Mary said, “I shall paint pictures and play the piano and ride in a circus. I shall go out to the countries where the sand is and tame zebras; and I shall marry Mark and have thirteen children with blue eyes like Meta.”
Roddy was going to be the captain of a cruiser. Dan was going to Texas, or some place where Papa couldn’t get at him, to farm. Mark was going to be a soldier like Marshal McMahon.
It was Grandpapa and Grandmamma’s fault that he was not a soldier now.
“If,” he said, “they’d let Papa marry Mamma when he wanted to, I might have been born in eighteen fifty-two. I’d be eighteen by this time. I should have gone into the French Army and I should have been with McMahon at Sedan now.”
“You might have been killed,” Mary said.
“That wouldn’t have mattered a bit. I should have been at Sedan. Nothing matters, Minky, as long as you get what you want.”
“If you were killed Mamma and me would die, too, the same minute. Papa would be sorry, then; but not enough to kill him, so that we should go to heaven together without him and be happy.”
“Mamma wouldn’t be happy without him. We couldn’t shut him out.”
“No,” Mary said; “but we could pray to God not to let him come up too soon.”
III
Sedan—Sedan—Sedan.
Papa came out into the garden where Mamma was pulling weeds out of the hot dry soil. He flapped the newspaper and read about the Battle of Sedan. Mamma left off pulling weeds out and listened.
Mark had stuck the picture of Marshal McMahon over the schoolroom chimneypiece. Papa had pinned the war-map to the library door. Mark was restless. He kept on going into the library to look at the war-map and Papa kept on turning him out again. He was in a sort of mysterious disgrace because of Sedan. Roddy was excited about Sedan. Dan followed Mark as he went in and out; he was furious with Papa because of Mark.
Mamma had been a long time in the library talking to Papa. They sent for Mark just before dinnertime. When Mary ran in to say good night she found him there.
Mark was saying, “You needn’t think I want your beastly money. I shall enlist.”
Mamma said, “If he enlists, Emilius, it’ll kill me.”
And Papa, “You hear what your mother says, sir. Isn’t that enough for you?”
Mark loved Mamma; but he was not going to do what she wanted. He was going to do something that would kill her.
IV
Papa walked in the garden in the cool of the evening, like the Lord God. And he was always alone. When you thought of him you thought of Jehovah.
There was something funny about other people’s fathers. Mr. Manisty, of Vinings, who rode along Ley Street with his two tall, thin sons, as if he were actually proud of them; Mr. Batty, the Vicar of Barkingside, who called his daughter Isabel his “pretty one”; Mr. Farmer, the curate of St. Mary’s Chapel, who walked up and down the room all night with the baby; and Mr. Propart, who went about the public roads with Humphrey and Arthur positively hanging on him. Dan said Humphrey and Arthur were tame and domestic because they were always going about with Mr. Propart and talking to him as if they liked it. Mark had once seen Mr. Propart trying to jump a ditch on the Aldborough Road. It was ridiculous. Humphrey and Arthur had to grab him by the arms and pull him over. Mary was sorry for the Propart boys because they hadn’t got a mother who was sweet and pretty like Mamma and a father called Emilius Olivier. Emilius couldn’t jump ditches any more than Mr. Propart; but then he knew he couldn’t, and as Mark said, he had
