Margary swallowed, and managed to say, “I don’t think many of them are frightened. They don’t like it, but I think it’s only me who really minds.” The last words came out in a rush. He did not look at her and waited. “You can’t have her sent away just for me.”
“Why not?” asked John.
“Well, Father, you can’t. Where would she go?”
“To another school.”
“Pussy Harker—she’s one of the boarders, the fat one—told me that Annie told her that she’d heard Mrs. Belling telling Miss O’Hara that she only kept Miss Giles out of charity. She had not passed exams when she was young and Mrs. Belling told Miss O’Hara that no other school would be likely to take her.”
“Would you mind saying that again?” asked John. “I’m not sure that I took it all in.”
Margary said it again, whispering it behind the veil of her hair, which had fallen forward over her flushed face.
“It’s complicated,” said John, “but I think I’ve got the gist of it. So she didn’t pass exams. Who was unkind to her? Her parents, perhaps. Does she look to you like someone whose parents have been unkind to her?”
“I don’t know what people look like when their parents have been unkind to them,” said Margary. John was thankful to hear it. Perhaps his marriage was not so mistaken after all. “But I think she must be ill,” went on Margary. “I went back to our form room once, when school was over, because I’d left my eraser behind, and Miss Giles had her head down on her desk and she was—she was—”
“Was what?” asked John.
A tremor went through Margary’s body, for it still frightened her to think of that day. “Making sounds like I’ve never heard before,” she said. “Hurt sounds, but not crying.”
“I know,” said John. “Your poor Miss Giles. It must have been colic. Unkind parents and an unkind body. Is no one kind to her?”
“Miss O’Hara is kind,” said Margary.
“Not the girls?”
“But she’s unkind to them so they can’t be kind to her, can they?”
“Why not?”
Margary sat up and thought about this but the only answer she could find was, “But they don’t feel kind.”
“Why not?” asked John. “Have they all got colic?”
“What’s colic?” asked Margary.
“A peculiarly painful form of indigestion,” said John. “Now it’s a very odd thing but certain illnesses give people certain very unpleasant feelings. Influenza makes them feel very ill-used, and measles makes them irritable, and indigestion makes them feel both ill used and irritable to such an extent that they can’t feel anything else. That’s why I thought the whole school must have colic.”
“I don’t think so,” said Margary.
“Then I’m at a loss to understand why they should be so unkind to Miss Giles.”
“But they’re not unkind, Father, they’re just not kind.”
“Then they must be unkind. You must be one thing or the other. Do the girls ever put flowers on Miss O’Hara’s desk?”
Margary brightened. “Yes, often. Peggy Harris put anemones one week. Bought ones. She’d saved up her pocket money. She has a shilling a week. Her father has a bank.”
“What a plutocrat,” said John. “She gave anemones to Miss Giles too, of course?”
“No, she didn’t,” said Margary. “No one ever gives flowers to Miss Giles.”
“Not even at this time of year, when they are out in the garden?”
“No.”
“One can make up very pretty bunches, just with garden flowers,” said John, and paused nervously as he came at last to the point. “Margary, I do not want you to be unhappy and frightened at school. Would you like to stay at home for the rest of this term and go to some other school next term?”
Margary looked up at him with incredulous joy. “Not go back on Monday?”
“No.”
Her head went down again and there was silence. Never, except when he had asked Daphne to marry him, had he waited so anxiously for a woman’s answer.
“I’ll go back on Monday.”
“Sure?”
“Sure.”
“Mistress Margary Wentworth,” he said with satisfaction.
“With Margerain gentle,
The flower of goodly head,
Embroider’d the mantle
Is of your maidenhead.
Now let’s get on with the stamps.”
Sitting side by side at his desk each knew that the other was happy. John was whistling under his breath, a thing Margary knew he only did when he was glad, and she had the light in her dark-blue eyes that he knew shone through from inward contentment.
“You know your violet frame?” she said shyly.
“I do,” said John.
“Has it any violets in it?”
“A few,” said John. “Tell me when you want them and I’ll take the top off the frame for you.”
“Thank you,” said Margary. “There are plenty of primroses out in the lane.”
Chapter 9
1
On Saturdays, after tea, Daphne always read to the children in the drawing room, and if he could John came and listened too. He came today, and sat in the armchair opposite his wife. Daphne was not one of those women who keep their drawing rooms for special occasions only; she loved hers and used it and enclosed in its beauty felt at rest and happy. For she had got this room as she wanted it. Nothing else in her life had worked out right but this room had. It had in part been John’s wedding gift to her. Whenever she felt bitter towards her husband she remembered the Adam fireplace, the red lacquer Chinese cabinet and Queen Henrietta Maria’s day bed, mirror and chairs.
When John had become engaged to Daphne he had tried to visualize her in the vicarage drawing room and failed entirely. Try as he might he had not been able to see his lady’s delicate face against the background of the faded Morris wallpaper, purple pomegranates on a crimson background, or looking out of the windows between the crimson plush curtains with their bobble edging, which had been bequeathed to the vicarage by old Mr. Baker together with the black marble mantelpiece and the black marble clock like the British Museum. He had decided that she must not even see them, and at once gave orders for demolition. The Victorian mantelpiece and grate were wrenched from the wall, the paper was stripped off and the curtains taken down. This revealed a scene of desolation but a well-proportioned room full of sunlight, with two French windows opening on the garden. John then had an Adam fireplace removed from the spare room at the manor, for the first time in his life taking no notice of the feelings or the anger of Aunt Maria, and installed it in the vicarage drawing room. He had the walls and ceiling painted pearl color and delicate candle-brackets fitted round the walls. He had doubts of his own taste in the matter of furnishing but he trusted Rupert’s, for Rupert Wentworth had been an artist and in love with Queen Henrietta Maria, and when she took refuge at the manor during the civil war he had attended to the furnishing of her sitting room himself. Not a great deal of her furniture was left now, but all there was John removed to the vicarage; the Queen’s day bed and her chairs, and her oval French mirror surmounted with cupids. The red lacquer Chinese cabinet he had seen in a shop in Bond Street and bought instantly at an exorbitant price. It was a thing of such beauty that it did not look incongruous with the Queen’s day bed. There he had stopped, leaving Daphne to do the rest.
She had done it with joy and pride, covering the floor with an oyster-grey carpet and hanging curtains of sea-green brocade at the windows. Venetian glass was on the mantelpiece and some Chinese color-prints of birds hung upon the walls. Daphne’s treasures, some special pieces of china, carved jade figures, some old miniatures and a sandalwood box, were in the cabinet, and there were some bookshelves with her favorite books. There were always flowers in the room
, cut flowers in the spring and summer and pots of chrysanthemums in the winter. Most people thought it was disgraceful that a country parson’s wife should have such a room. John thought the room was entirely fitting and he could never come into it without hearing again Daphne’s cry of joy when she had first seen it. The children loved it. Their mother was not quite the same mother in this as in the other rooms in the house. On the threshold of this room she seemed to shed her worries, to become younger and more beautiful, more loving and yet at the same time more remote and mysterious. They loved her here in rather the same way as they loved the room, as something beautiful apart from the stress and strain of everyday.
And the books that she read to them here were also something apart. The school stories beloved by Pat were banned in this room. She read them Hans Andersen and George Macdonald, The Secret Garden and Puck of Pook’s Hill.
“The best thing in the family week,” thought John, watching her as she read. “And today better than usual. Today best of all.” He lay back in his chair and abandoned himself to the perfection of this gift.
Five o’clock and a fine March evening. The window was open and small scented violets grew just outside. A blackbird was singing and the sky was clear. The firelight glinted upon the satin-smooth heads of the children, dark-brown, red-gold and silver-gilt, and warmed Daphne’s checks, giving back to her the youth she had lost. She wore a Chinese coat that John had given her years ago to match the cabinet. It had gold dragons on it and sleeves wide enough to carry one of the little sleeve dogs who years ago had been the fashion in Peking. John looked at her without any of his usual aching anxiety, his sense of inadequacy and failure, for her happiness at this moment was a part of the timelessness of this perfect hour. His love for her burned strong and joyous and the nimbus that it set about her held the children too where they sat on the hearthrug at her feet. Orlando was also there, just on the fringe of the light. His fur was like satin and his whiskers threads of silver. His white forepaws were tucked under him and he purred. John stretched out his long legs and was aware that he was without his customary headache. His catarrh was not bothering him and neither was his lumbago. He had no indigestion in spite of crumpets for tea. His body was so at ease that only the sight of his shoes reminded him that he had it.
“ ‘One evening, just as the sun was setting with unusual brilliancy,’ ” read Daphne, “ ‘a flock of large, beautiful birds rose from out of the brushwood; the Duckling had never seen anything so beautiful before; their plumage was of a dazzling white, and they had long slender necks. They were swans—’ ”
Though past failure and regret cannot obtrude into a perfect hour the memories that are a part of one’s immortality can have their place in it. John was a boy again, sitting cross-legged under the white rhododendron bush by the river. It was in full flower and its blossoms were like snow. Yet when he put up his hands and pulled down two flowering branches one on each side of him like bent wings, the blossoms that touched his face were warm and scented in the sun. The bush was a living thing. He felt safe. He looked out and saw the green grass and the running river, and near at hand he heard the music of the waterfall where it fell from boulder to boulder under the ferns. And then he heard the voice singing. It was like no earthly music that he had ever heard, or ever would hear, though the loveliness of earth was in it. It was not a human voice, though it had something of the clear beauty of a boy’s voice singing, neither was it a bird’s voice, though it held the liquid note of a nightingale or thrush. He thought of the waterfall, of the running river and the wind in the trees, though it was not like any of these. He felt intense longing as he listened and yet triumph too, for the song was triumphant. The dazzling plumage of the bird was all about him . . . such light. . .
“ ‘They uttered a singular cry,’ ” read Daphne, “ ‘spread out their long, splendid wings, and flew away from these cold regions to warmer countries, across the open sea. They flew so high—’ ”
The telephone rang in the hall.
Daphne stopped short in her reading and pulling his legs in abruptly John suffered a sudden stab of pain in the lumbar muscles. Pat said, “Blast!” and Winkle most surprisingly burst into tears. Margary’s hair was no longer red-gold but ginger, and the blackbird stopped singing. The perfect hour had ended almost before it had begun. Daphne’s and John’s eyes met and there passed between them a wordless message of fear; and the bell went on ringing.
“Now who’s there?” asked Daphne with an effort. “John, why don’t you go?”
“I’ll go,” said Pat, pirouetting to the door. “It’s the grocer to say there’s no chunky marmalade and will that other mucky stuff do.”
“Pat’s language!” mourned Daphne when she had gone. “Winkle, what are you crying about?”
“It was dark,” sobbed Winkle, “and there was a nightingale singing. Now there isn’t.”
“It wasn’t a nightingale,” said Margary. “It was a blackbird.”
“It wasn’t,” snapped Winkle. “It was a nightingale.”
“You’ve never heard a nightingale, Winkle,” said John gently. “They don’t sing in these parts.”
“Mine does,” contradicted Winkle. “In the dark.”
“You were asleep, Winkle,” said Daphne.
“I wasn’t,” said Winkle crossly.
The swan sang in the light, thought John, and touched Winkle’s cheek. “I believe you,” he said.
Pat came back. “It’s some man who’s staying with Aunt Maria. She’s got more rhubarb than she knows what to do with and would you like some, because if so he’s bringing it down.”
“So have I got more rhubarb than I know what to do with,” said Daphne quickly. “Say thank you very much but I won’t deprive Aunt Maria.”
“I’ve said thank you very much and rung off,” said Pat. “He’s bringing it down.”
“Pat! I’ve told you before you are not to ring off without bringing the message to me first. And you don’t like rhubarb.”
“I like men,” said Pat simply.
John sighed. The idea that in the upbringing of Pat the worst was yet to come had occurred to him before. Then he brightened. “It’s the chap I told you about, Daphne. I’d like you to meet him.”
“I’ve not the least wish to meet him,” said Daphne, almost as cross as Winkle. “We were just enjoying ourselves.”
“Then let’s go on enjoying ourselves until he comes,” said John. “Let’s finish The Ugly Duckling.”
“You finish it,” said Daphne, passing the book across. “I just don’t feel like it any more.”
She leaned back in her chair and John went on with the story. He read aloud well and though the perfection of the hour was shattered the perfection of the story did not fail to take hold of them again. At the end the children were laughing and talking so loudly that Michael, finding the vicarage bell out of order, could not make his knocking heard. During the last twenty-four hours such a measure of self-respect had been restored to him that instead of putting the basket of rhubarb down in the porch and going away again he opened the door and went into the hall. He saw the line of light showing under the drawing-room door and heard the children’s voices, and a wave of nostalgia went over him; not for his own childhood, that had so soon become unhappy, but for the days when he had been a welcome guest at many homes. So often he had arrived unannounced like this, crossed the hall, turned the handle of the drawing-room door and walked in. Scarcely realizing what he was doing he did just that, only remembering as he opened the door the alarming mental picture he had already formed of John’s wife; shrewish, middle-aged, with greying sandy hair screwed back in a bun. But it was too late to turn back now and he went in, shut the door behind him and presented himself.
His apologies were cut short by the beauty of the room and then by the beauty of the woman who first rose rather languidly to greet him and then stood extremely still, o
ne hand at her throat, the other resting on the mantelpiece. The little silence lengthened painfully.
He had forgotten how tall and slender she was. The Chinese coat, a royal garment of gleaming gold and midnight blue, suited that little air of arrogance, of unapproachability, that she had always had. She wore it over a soft long black skirt and below the hem of the skirt were silken ankles and scarlet Chinese mules. She wore her long thick hair as she had always worn it, swept right back from her forehead and gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck. It was the rare kind of shining black hair that seems to have blue lights in it. He had seen her face so many times in his dreams; the dark eyes so full of light under the fine brows, the short straight nose, the lips that were a little too thin, a little lacking in generosity, the wide cheekbones and the rather hollowed cheeks. What detestable luck, what detestable damnable luck for both him and for her. Couldn’t you ever do a thing and be done with it in this world? Could you never come to a new bit of road and not have the past running along behind the hedge on either side, mocking at you? . . . Even in this lost valley. . .
She was coming towards him, her right hand held out, the charming noncommittal smile of the practiced hostess on her thin, vivid lips. She had always used a too-bright lipstick as though she had known her lips did not equal her eyes in warmth and beauty. She came nearer and he saw that the color in her cheeks was only from the warmth of the fire and that her skin had become roughened and lined, and there was grey in her hair. Only for a short moment of memory had she had her old astonishing beauty. He smiled and took her hand. John was murmuring an introduction and she was speaking clear words of welcome, and introducing her children. Her voice was the same. They had moved for long in the world, he and she, and had made a fine art of dissimulation. Nothing had betrayed her but that momentary stillness. Only he knew that the beads of sweat on his forehead had not been brought there by quick walking.