“Here’s Miss Mary come to talk to you, Father.”
She set a chair for you beside him. He turned his head slowly to you, waking out of his doze.
“What did she say your name was, my dear?”
“Olivier. Mary Olivier.”
“I don’t call to mind anybody of that name in the Dale. But I suppose I brought you into the world same as the rest of ’em.”
Miss Kendal gave a little bound in her chair. “Does anybody know where Pussy is?”
The claw hand stirred in the red and yellow pocket-handkerchief.
“Ye’ve come to see the old man, have ye? Ay. Eh.”
When he talked he coughed. A dreadful sound, as if he dragged up out of himself a long, rattling chain.
It hurt you to look at him. Pity hurt you.
Once he had been young, like Roddy. Then he had been middle-aged, with hanging jaw and weak eyelids, like Dr. Charles. Now he was old, old; he sat doubled up, coughing and weeping, in a chair. But you could see that Miss Kendal was proud of him. She thought him wonderful because he kept on living.
Supposing he was your father and you had to sit with him, all your life, in a room smelling of rotten apples, could you bear it? Could you bear it for a fortnight? Wouldn’t you wish—wouldn’t you wish—supposing Papa—all your life.
But if you couldn’t bear it that would mean—
No. No. She put her hand on the arm of his chair, to protect him, to protect him from her thoughts.
The claw fingers scrabbled, groping for her hand.
“Would ye like to be an old man’s bedfellow?”
“Pussy says it isn’t her bedtime yet, Father.”
When you went away Miss Kendal stood on the doorstep looking after you. The last you saw of her was a soft grimace of innocent gaiety.
X
The Vicar of Renton. He wanted to see her.
Mamma had left her in the room with him, going out with an air of self-conscious connivance.
Mr. Spencer Rollitt. Hard and handsome. Large face, square-cut, clean-shaved, bare of any accent except its eyebrows, its mouth a thin straight line hardly visible in its sunburn. Small blue eyes standing still in the sunburn, hard and cold.
When Mr. Rollitt wanted to express heartiness he had to fall back on gesture, on the sudden flash of white teeth; he drew in his breath, sharply, between the straight, close lips, with a sound: “Fivv‑vv!”
She watched him. Under his small handsome nose his mouth and chin together made one steep, straight line. This lower face, flat and naked, without lips, stretched like another forehead. At the top of the real forehead, where his hat had saved his skin, a straight band, white, like a scar. Yet Mr. Spencer Rollitt’s hair curled and clustered out at the back of his head in perfect innocence.
He was smiling his muscular smile, while his little hard cold eyes held her in their tight stare.
“Don’t you think you would like to take a class in my Sunday School?”
“I’m afraid I wouldn’t like it at all.”
“Nothing to be afraid of. I should give you the infants’ school.”
For a long time he sat there, explaining that there was nothing to be afraid of, and that he would give her the infants’ school. You felt him filling the room, crushing you back and back, forcing his will on you. There was too much of his will, too much of his face. Her will rose up against his will and against his face, and its false, muscular smile.
“I’m sure my mother didn’t say I’d like to teach in a Sunday School.”
“She said she’d be very glad if I could persuade you.”
“She’d say that. But she knows perfectly well I wouldn’t really do it.”
“It was not Mrs. Olivier’s idea.”
He got up. When he stood his eyes stared at nothing away over your head. He wouldn’t lower them to look at you.
“It was Mrs. Sutcliffe’s.”
“How funny of Mrs. Sutcliffe. She doesn’t know me, either.”
“My dear young lady, you were at school when your father and mother dined at Greffington Hall.”
He was looking down at her now, and she could feel herself blushing; hot, red waves of shame, rushing up, tingling in the roots of her hair.
“Mrs. Sutcliffe,” he said, “is very kind.”
She saw it now. He had been at the Sutcliffes that evening. He had seen Papa. He was trying to say, “Your father was drunk at Greffington Hall. He will never be asked there again. He will not be particularly welcome at the Vicarage. But you are very young. We do not wish you to suffer. This is our kindness to you. Take it. You are not in a position to refuse.”
“And what am I to say to Mrs. Sutcliffe?”
“Oh, anything you like that wouldn’t sound too rude.”
“Shall I say that you’re a very independent young lady, and that she had better not ask you to join her sewing-class? Would that sound too rude?”
“Not a bit. If you put it nicely. But you would, wouldn’t you?”
He looked down at her again. His thick eyes had thawed slightly; they let out a twinkle. But he was holding his lips so tight that they had disappeared. A loud, surprising laugh forced them open.
He held out his hand with a gesture, drawing back his laugh in a tremendous “Fiv‑v‑v‑v.”
When he had gone she opened the piano and played, and played. Through the window of the room Chopin’s Fontana Polonaise went out after him, joyous, triumphant and defiant, driving him before it. She exulted in her power over the Polonaise. Nothing could touch you, nothing could hurt you while you played. If only you could go on playing forever—
Her mother came in from the garden.
“Mary,” she said, “if you will play, you must play gently.”
“But Mamma—I can’t. It goes like that.”
“Then,” said her mother, “don’t play it. You can be heard all over the village.”
“Bother the village. I don’t care. I don’t care if I’m heard all over everywhere!”
She went on playing.
But
