VI.
She was excited because they were going to the ivy house for tea. It looked so pretty and so happy with its green face shining in the sun. Nothing could take from her her belief in happiness hiding behind certain unknown doors. It hid behind the white doors of the ivy house. When you went in something wonderful would happen.
The ivy house belonged to Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin.
The photographs in Mamma's old album showed how they looked when they and Mamma were young. Modest pose of dropped arms, holding mushroom hats in front of them as a protection, the narrow ribbons dangling innocently. Ellen Frewin, small and upright, slender back curved in to the set of shawl and crinoline, prim head fixed in the composure of gentle disdain, small mouth saying always "Oh," Meta, the younger sister, very tall, head bent in tranquil meditation, her mantle slanting out from the fall of the thin shoulders.
They rose up in the small, green lighted drawing-room. Their heads bent forward to kiss.
Ellen Waugh: the photographed face still keeping its lifted posture of gentle disdain, the skin stretched like a pale tight glove, a slight downward swelling of the prim oval, like the last bulge of a sucked peppermint ball, the faded mouth still making its small "oh." She was the widow of a clergyman.
Meta, a beautiful nose leaping out at you in a high curve; narrow, delicate cheeks thinned away so that they seemed part of the nose; sweet rodent mouth smiling up under its tip; blurred violet eyes arching vaguely.
Princess gowns stiffened their shawl and crinoline gestures.
"So this is Mary. She's not like her mother, Caroline. Meta, can you see any likeness?"
Miss Frewin arched her eyes and smiled, without looking at you.
"I can't say I do."
Their heads made little nodding bows as they talked. Miss Frewin's bow was sidelong and slow, Mrs. Waugh's straight and decisive.
"She's not like Rodney," Mrs. Waugh said. "And she's not like Emilius.
Who is she like?"
Mary answered. "I'm rather like Dan and a good bit like Mark. But I'm most of all like myself."
Mrs. Waugh said "Oh." Her mouth went on saying it while she looked at you.
"She is not in the least like Mark," Mamma said.
They settled down, one on each side of Mamma, smiling at her with their small, faded mouths as you smile at people you love and are happy with. You could see that Mamma was happy, too, sitting between them, safe.
Mrs. Waugh said, "I see you've got Blenkiron in again?"
"Well, he's left his ladder in the yard. I suppose that means he'll mend the kitchen chimney some time before winter."
"The Yorkshire workmen are very independent," Mrs. Waugh said.
"They scamp their work like the rest. You'd need a resident carpenter, and a resident glazier, and a resident plumber—"
"Yes, Caroline, you would indeed."
Gentle voices saying things you had heard before in the drawing-room at
Five Elms.
Miss Frewin had opened a black silk bag that hung on her arm, and taken out a minute pair of scissors and a long strip of white stuff with a stitched pattern on it. She nicked out the pattern into little holes outlined by the stitches. Mary watched her, fascinated by the delicate movements of the thin fingers and the slanted, drooping postures of the head.
"Do you like doing it?"
"Yes."
She thought: "What a fool she must think me. As if she'd do it if she didn't like it."
The arching eyes and twitching mouth smiled at your foolishness.
Mrs. Waugh's voice went on. It came smoothly, hardly moving her small, round mouth. That was her natural voice. Then suddenly it rose, like a voice that calls to you to get up in the morning.
"Well, Mary—so you've left school. Come home to be a help to your mother."
A high, false cheerfulness, covering disapproval and reproach.
Their gentleness was cold to her and secretly inimical. They had asked her because of Mamma. They didn't really want her.
Half-past six. It was all over. They were going home across the Green.
"Mary, I wish you could learn to talk without affectation. Telling Mrs. Waugh you 'looked like yourself'! If you could only manage to forget yourself."
Your self? Your self? Why should you forget it? You had to remember. They would kill it if you let them.
What had it done? What was it that they should hate it so? It had been happy and excited about them, wondering what they would be like. And quiet, looking on and listening, in the strange, green-lighted, green-dark room, crushed by the gentle, hostile voices.
Would it always have to stoop and cringe before people, hushing its own voice, hiding its own gesture?
It crouched now, stung and beaten, hiding in her body that walked beside her mother with proud feet, and small lifted head.