V.
It was dreadful and at the same time funny when you thought of Mr. Batty and Mr. Propart with their little round hats and their black coats and their stiff, dignified faces. And there was Uncle Edward and his whiskers. It couldn't be true.
Yet all true things came like that, with a queer feeling, as if you remembered them.
Jenny's wedding dress. It would be true even of Jenny. Mamma had said she would rather see her in her coffin than married to Mr. Spall. That was why.
But—if it was true of everybody it would be true of Mamma and Papa. That was what you hated knowing. If only you had gone on looking at the water instead of listening to Bertha—
Mamma's face, solemn and tender, when you said your prayers, playing with the gold tassel of her watch-chain. Papa's face, on your birthday, when he gave you the toy lamb. She wouldn't like you to know about her. Mark wouldn't like it.
Mark: her mind stood still. Mark's image stood still in clean empty space. When she thought of her mother and Mark she hated Bertha.
And there was Jimmy. That was why they wouldn't talk about him.
Jimmy. The big water-jump into the plantation. Jimmy's arms, the throb of the hard muscles as he held you. Jimmy's hand, your own hand lying in it, light and small. Jimmy's eyes, looking at you and smiling, as if they said, "It's all right, Minky, it's all right."
Perhaps when Papa was young Mamma thought about him as you thought about
Jimmy; so that it couldn't be so very dreadful, after all.