Her vehemence made him burst out laughing and rubbing the tears out of her eyes she laughed too. The empty room with its freshly painted walls echoed their laughter.
“I’ll love the smell of paint until I die,” said Mary. “And I’ll love you too so you needn’t be jealous. Now come out into the garden. I’ve a thermos and sandwiches in the basket.”
2
A hilarious and delightful supper party, arranged for very early in the evening so that the children could be present, was drawing to its conclusion with Winkle refusing to be hurried over her peach. Nor did anyone except Pat wish to hurry her. She was right to be as long as possible over every mouthful, to pursue every escaping drop of juice with her exceedingly long hummingbird tongue, and every now and again to heave a heavy sigh of repletion and satisfaction, for she was not likely to taste a peach again in a hurry. She was only tasting it now because this party was in celebration both of her birthday and Mary’s and Michael’s engagement, and Michael had provided the peaches. Miss Wentworth had provided the cherry brandy, the very last bottle left in the Belmaray cellars, and Daphne and Mary together had made the iced birthday and engagement cake, the host of little cakes and the tipsy trifle.
“Hurry up, Winkle,” cried Pat in exasperation, for she knew there were to be games with prizes in the drawing room afterwards.
Winkle squinted sideways at what was left of the trifle. “I didn’t have any of that,” she said.
“Mother!” ejaculated Pat. “If she has that on top she’ll be sick.”
“Queen Alice will not be six years old again,” said Mr. Entwistle.
“Nor will Mary and Michael get engaged again,” said Miss Wentworth. “Let the child alone, Pat.”
“Could I have a bit more trifle, Mother?” asked Margary shyly. She did not really want it but she wanted to keep Winkle company. It must be rather hard to go on eating by yourself with everyone looking at you. One of the things that Margary had not yet discovered, intuitive though she might be, was that other people did not always feel as she felt. Winkle had no objection at all to people watching her while she ate.
“May I have a little more trifle too?” asked Miss Giles, for with Margary in a minority of two, and the party numbering twelve counting Baba and Orlando, plenty of glances would come her way and a faint flush was already coming into her face. In judging Margary by herself Miss Giles was not in error. She had been just such a child, and during the last few weeks of spring memories of her childhood and youth that had been firmly sealed in under the ice had come flooding back on her. She was becoming unfrozen. It was a painful process but she knew that if she could abide it she would be glad.
“Trifle! Giles!” thought Mary. “She’ll have the most awful indigestion. How she must love that child!” She caught Michael’s eyes and smiled at him. They were both enjoying this party. Sharing the honors with Winkle, and Winkle’s lack of inhibition being what it was, they were saved the embarrassment of too much limelight.
“Let’s all begin again,” said John. “Mary didn’t make those wafer biscuits just to be looked at. Daphne, did Harriet have a glass of cherry brandy?”
“I put one on her tray,” said Daphne.
“Isn’t alcohol bad for arthritis?” asked Miss Giles, relishing the sherry in her trifle. It was years since she had dared to eat trifle and she had forgotten how delicious it could be.
“Miss Giles, anything is good for you if you enjoy it,” said Miss Wentworth, and then lowering her voice, “My dear, I’ve a pretty little Queen Anne escritoire that I don’t want to put in the sale. I think it would be just the thing for your bedroom.”
Miss Wentworth and Miss Giles, lately introduced, liked each other. They both deplored the lack of discipline in the present generation. They both thought Daphne unworthy of John. Miss Wentworth, sharing with John the knowledge that the sale of Belmaray had made possible the purchase of Farthing Cottage, found herself in the position of benefactress to Miss Giles and accordingly had a feeling of tenderness for her. Miss Giles, immensely touched by the motherliness that softened the asperity of the old lady’s manner when she talked to her, felt the years slip off her in Miss Wentworth’s presence. When there is no one left in the world to whom you seem young you feel old indeed, and that had been her condition for a long time.
Michael accepted the cigarette John offered him and sat back happily behind its smoke. He looked round the table counting heads. Mary, Daphne and John and their children. Miss Wentworth. Miss Giles. Entwistle. The dog and the cat. Of the group of people who had drawn so close to each other these last weeks only Annie, old Bob and the Abbot were not in this room. But Annie and old Bob were in the kitchen, taking high tea with Mrs. Wilmot and Mrs. Prescott, and whenever there was a pause in the dining room conversation, sounds of mirth could be heard coming from that direction. And the Abbot was very much present with Michael. Looking out of the uncurtained window he could imagine he saw his tall figure in the shadows of the trees.
And there was the old nanny upstairs. She had not been well and neither he nor Mary had seen her yet and so he kept forgetting her. She probably belonged too.
It was odd how they had been drawn together like this, their lives intertwined to their immense happiness and advantage, all in a few weeks of this unusually lovely spring. Did rhythmic times of fresh growth come in the lives of men and women, as in the world of nature? And did one growth help another, as birds build their nests where the new leaves will hide them? What was the motive power behind it all? “The Word.” When he saw the Abbot again he must ask him what he had been talking about that day.
Winkle was satisfied at last and the others went into the drawing room while Michael and Mary went upstairs and knocked at Harriet’s door. Michael had a bunch of pink carnations that he had bought for Harriet in Silverbridge. Mary in her heart thought he had been highly extravagant. He had not even seen Harriet before and the garden was full of flowers. She wished they had not got to visit this sick old woman on their engagement day. She was feeling her usual dread of illness. She was ashamed of herself but she couldn’t help it. It was no good; when people were ill and suffering they scared her stiff. Unconsciously she slipped her hand into Michael’s and he smiled down at her reassuringly. He supposed she was feeling shy and was oddly touched, as he always was when she showed him by word or look that she was not as old as she looked. Only twenty. It was she, not he, who would set the tone and direction of their lives, he knew that and rejoiced in it, but it was he who had the age and experience and every now and then she showed him by a gentle deference that she knew it.
“Come in,” said Harriet’s clear decided voice, and they went into her fresh room hand in hand like a couple of children. “Come in. I’m pleased to see you. I’ve had a good look at you both out of my window and you are no strangers to me. What, Sir? These carnations for me? Why, I’ve not been given such flowers since I was the age of your young lady. And carnations, my favorite flower of them all! There now, anyone would think it was my engagement day. You’ll make your young lady jealous. And she’s pretty as a picture; though she shouldn’t wear pink with that hair.”
Mary laughed and sat down, her shrinking gone. Harriet, bright-eyed and inquisitive as a cock robin, was not at all her idea of a suffering invalid. Except for her wheel chair and the rug over her knees there was no sign of invalidism about her. The vivacious humorous old face held Mary’s eyes and she did not look down at the twisted hands lying in Harriet’s lap. Michael did and pity wrenched at him as he remembered that Harriet’s legs were almost useless to her. Awful to be imprisoned like, that, your freedom gone, entirely dependent. He sat down on the window sill and began to laugh and joke with Harriet, his thin charming face alight with fun and tenderness. As they talked he noticed that Harriet’s tray had not been fetched and was in her way, and he moved it. Her rug slipped and he tucked it skilfully round her again. He fetched a vase and filled
it with water and arranged the flowers better than Mary could have done. This to Mary was a new Michael. He would be far better at looking after her when she was ill than she would be at looking after him when he was. They had fallen in love knowing so little of each other, but as the days passed she was increasingly loving in Michael all that they revealed.
Mary defended with spirit her choice of a pink frock. To say that pink was not to be worn with red hair was merely superstition, like saying you mustn’t be married in green. Didn’t she look nice in her pink frock? And she would be married in green just to flout superstition again. Irish green, with shamrock in her buttonhole. Michael could have a leek in his. They thanked heaven they were not English. They were Celts.
“And when will you be married, love?” asked Harriet.
“Not until after Christmas,” said Mary. “I promised Miss Giles to help her with her school before Michael asked me to marry him and I can’t let her down. I must get her well started before I leave her.”
Harriet nodded approval. “And Mr. Davis, he’ll get himself well started in business and a bit laid by before the two of you set up house.”
“You know a lot about us, Harriet,” said Michael. He was smiling but he did not speak lightly and Harriet answered with a grave sweet seriousness.
“Yes, Sir, I know a good deal about you but you mustn’t mind that. Mrs. Wentworth and I, we’re the only two women in the house and whom should we talk to if not to each other? And I’ve known Mr. Wentworth since he was a child. I can’t rightly say that of you but it’s hard for me to believe that I can’t. Some people you can see every day for years and never do more than pass the time of day as with a stranger, and others you can see just a few times from your window and it seems as though you were old friends.”
Mary got up and picked up Harriet’s tray. “I can hear them washing up downstairs,” she said. “You stay here, Michael. Please may I come and see you another day, Harriet?”
Harriet, bright-eyed, nodded to the girl. She was a good girl. A girl as young as that who knew the right moment to efface herself was a very good girl indeed. Mary went out and closed the door gently behind her.
“She’s a good girl,” Harriet repeated to Michael.
“Too good for me,” said Michael. It was not the usual conventional remark, and Harriet was quick to sense the panic that had come over him. “You should have no fear,” said Harriet. “There’s no sense in fear.”
“I’ve been afraid all my life, Harriet,” said Michael.
“Nonsensical all your life, you mean,” said Harriet. “But a person being nonsensical through the first half of his life is no reason to my way of thinking why he should be nonsensical through the second half too. It’s nice to have a bit of change.”
Michael laughed. “You don’t get much change, Harriet.”
“I get more than you’d think,” she said. “The weather, now, that’s always changing. Yesterday it was as gay as a knight in armor, and today it’s a grey day like it was the day you came to Belmaray.”
“Harriet, how wonderful of you to remember what the weather was like then.”
“Not at all,” said Harriet tartly. “When Mrs. Wentworth told me about you, just the other day it was, I remembered that the day you’d come I’d been praying for prisoners because it was a grey day.”
“You think prisoners lead a grey life?” he asked. “Well they do, of course.”
“To be sure,” said Harriet. “But it wasn’t for that reason. I’d been thinking that not only colors are imprisoned on grey days but the sun too. For when there’s a grey wall between one and the other who’s to say which is prisoner and which is free? When the heart aches one for the other there’s little to choose between them. That’s a cruel thing men do to God, making a prisoner of Him.”
“I don’t think I know what you mean,” said Michael.
“The grey clouds, they are like men’s unbelief,” said Harriet. “And men live frozen and afraid when a touch of the sun would change all that. But they imprison the sun.”
“Many who would like to believe, can’t, Harriet,” said Michael.
“That’s a lie,” said Harriet calmly. “If you want a good thing badly enough you get it. Not overnight, maybe. But you get it.”
Michael looked at the old woman keenly. Like Mary, she had power, and far more power than Mary. He began to understand what immense concentration of power there can be in a life withdrawn if discipline can keep pace with withdrawal. Without discipline withdrawal was a disintegration, but with it what he felt in Harriet. This spring day was a festival day, a day for rejoicing in new warmth and new life for several people. How much that had to do with Harriet’s refusal to imprison the sun, with one soul’s power to dispel the clouds for another, he’d no idea.
“Perhaps faith is hard to come by when you’re alone, Harriet,” he said. “Until now I’ve been alone.”
“We’re never alone,” said Harriet. “That’s the mistake so many make. There’d be less fear if folk knew how little alone they are.”
She moved her left hand, that had been lying on her lap, and opened it with difficulty. A small old-fashioned pearl ring lay in the palm of her hand. Michael looked at it in bewilderment for he was sure he had seen it before.
“Your mother’s,” said Harriet. “You gave it to Daphne. I asked her to give it to me to give back to you. You can’t give one woman’s engagement ring to another, that would never do, but in a couple of years’ time you could give it to Mary as a Christmas gift. You’ve forgotten your mother, maybe?”
“No, I never forget her,” said Michael.
“Then it’s an odd thing you thought yourself alone,” said Harriet.
Elizabeth Goudge, The Rosemary Tree
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