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 the jolly good sense not to try. You couldn't be Jehovah and jump ditches.
Emilius Olivier was everything a father ought to be.
Then suddenly, for no reason at all, he left off being Jehovah and began trying to behave like Mr. Batty.
It was at dinner, the last Sunday before the thirteenth. Mamma had moved Roddy and Mary from their places so that Mark and Dan could sit beside her. Mary was sitting at the right hand of Papa in the glory of the Father. The pudding had come in; blanc-mange, and Mark's pudding with whipped cream hiding the raspberry jam. It was Roddy's turn to be helped; his eyes were fixed on the snow-white, pure blanc-mange shuddering in the glass dish, and Mamma had just asked him which he would have when Papa sent Mark and Dan out of the room. You couldn't think why he had done it this time unless it was because Mark laughed when Roddy said in his proud, dignified voice, "I'll have a little piece of the Virgin's womb, please, first." Or it may have been because of Mark's pudding. He never liked it when they had Mark's pudding. Anyhow, Mark and Dan had to go, and as they went he drew Mary's chair closer to him and heaped her plate with cream and jam, looking very straight at Mamma as he did it.
"You might have left them alone," Mamma said, "on their last Sunday. They won't be here to annoy you so very long."
Papa said, "There are three days yet till the thirteenth."
"Three days! You'll count the hours and the minutes till you've got what you want."
"What I want is peace and quiet in my house and to get a word in edgeways, sometimes, with my own wife."
"You've no business to have a wife if you can't put up with your own children."
"It isn't my business to have a wife," Papa said. "It's my pleasure. My business is to insure ships. And you see me putting up with Mary very well. I suppose she's my own child."
"Mark and Dan are your own children first."
"Are they? To judge by your infatuation I should have said they weren't. 'Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow? Silver bells and cockle shells, and chocolate creams all in a row.'"
He took a large, flat box of chocolates out of his pocket and laid it beside her plate. And he looked straight at Mamma again.
"If those are the chocolates I reminded you to get for—for the hamper, I won't have them opened."
"They are not the chocolates you reminded me to get for—the hamper. I suppose Mark's stomach is a hamper. They are the chocolates I reminded myself to get for Mary."
Then Mamma said a peculiar thing.
"Are you trying to show me that you're not jealous of Mary?"
"I'm not trying to show you anything. You know I'm not jealous of Mary.
And you know there's no reason why I should be."
"To hear you, Emilius, anybody would think I wasn't fond of my own daughter. Mary darling, you'd better run away."
"And Mary darling," he mocked her, "you'd better take your chocolates with you."
Mary said: "I don't want any chocolates, Papa."
"Is that her contrariness, or just her Mariness?"
"Whatever it is it's all the thanks you get, and serve you right, too," said Mamma.
She went upstairs to persuade Dan that Papa didn't mean it. It was just his way, and they'd see he would be different to-morrow.
But to-morrow and the next day and the next he was the same. He didn't actually send Mark and Dan out of the room again, but he tried to pretend to himself that they weren't there by refusing to speak to them.
"Do you think," Mark said, "he'll keep it up till the last minute?"
He did; even when he heard the sound of Mr. Parish's wagonette in the road, coming to take Mark and Dan away. They were sitting at breakfast, trying not to look at him for fear they should laugh, or at Mamma for fear they should cry, trying not to look at each other. Catty brought in the cakes, the hot buttered Yorkshire cakes that were never served for breakfast except on Christmas Day and birthdays. Mary wondered whether Papa would say or do anything. He couldn't. Everybody knew those cakes were sacred. Catty set them on the table with a sort of crash and ran out of the room, crying. Mamma's mouth quivered.
Papa looked at the cakes; he looked at Mamma; he looked at Mark. Mark was staring at nothing with a firm grin on his face.
"The assuagers of grief," Papa said. "Pass round the assuagers."
The holy cakes were passed round. Everybody took a piece except Dan.
Papa pressed him. "Try an assuager. Do."
And Mamma pleaded, "Yes, Dank."
"Do you hear what your mother says?"
Dan's eyes were red-rimmed. He took a double section of cake and tried to bite his way through.
At the first taste tears came out of his eyes and fell on his cake. And when Mamma saw that she burst out crying.
Mary put her piece down untasted and bit back her sobs. Roddy pushed his piece away; and Mark began to eat his, suddenly, bowing over it with an affectation of enjoyment.
Outside in the road Mr. Parish was descending from the box of his wagonette. Papa looked at his watch. He was going with them to Chelmsted.
And Mamma whispered to Mark and Dan with her last kiss, "He'll be all right in the train."
It was all over. Mary and Roddy sat in the dining-room where Mamma had left them. They had shut their eyes so as not to see the empty chairs pushed back and the pieces of the sacred cakes, bitten and abandoned. They had stopped their ears so as not to hear the wheels of Mr. Parish's wagonette taking Mark and Dan away.
Hours afterwards Mamma came upon Mary huddled up in a corner of the drawing-room.
"Mamma—Mamma—I can't bear it. I can't live without Mark. And Dan."
Mamma sat down and took her in her arms and rocked her, rocked her without a word, soothing her own grief.
Papa found them like that when he came back from Chelmsted. He stood in the doorway looking at them for a moment, then slunk out of the room as if he were ashamed of himself. When Mamma sent Mary out to say good-bye to him, he was standing beside the little sumach tree that Mark gave Mamma on her birthday. He was smiling at the sumach tree as if he loved it and was sorry for it.
And Mamma got a letter from Mark in the morning to say she was right.
Papa had been quite decent in the train.