XI.
Lindley Vickers had gone. Nothing was left of him but Mamma's silence and Dan's, and Nannie's flush as she slunk by and her obscene smirk of satisfaction.
Then Nannie forgot him. As if nothing had happened she hung about Horn's yard and the Back Lane, waiting for young Horn. She smiled her trusting smile again. As long as you lived in Morfe you would remember.
Mary didn't blame her mother and Dan for their awful attitude. She couldn't blink the fact that she had begun to care for a man who was no better than young Horn, who had shown her that he didn't care for her by going to Nannie. If he could go to Nannie he was no better than young Horn.
She thought of Lindley's communion with Nannie as a part of him, essential, enduring. Beside it, her own communion with him was not quite real. She remembered his singing; she remembered playing to him and sitting beside him on the bracken as you remember things that have happened to you a long time ago (if they had really happened). She remembered phrases broken from their context (if they had ever had a context): "Das man vom liebsten was man hat…." "If you don't know I can't tell you—Dear." … "And when—when—Then you won't think, you'll know."
She said to herself, "I must have been mad. It couldn't have happened. I must have made it up."
But, if you made up things like that you were mad. It was what Aunt Charlotte had done. She had lived all her life in a dream of loving and being loved, a dream that began with clergymen and ended with the piano-tuner and the man who did the clocks. Mamma and Dan knew it. Uncle Victor knew it and he had been afraid. Maurice Jourdain knew it and he had been afraid. Perhaps Lindley Vickers knew it, too.
There must be something in heredity. She thought: "If there is I'd rather face it. It's cowardly not to."
Lindley Vickers had told her what to read. Herbert Spencer she knew. Haeckel and Ribot were in the London Library Catalogue at Greffington Hall. And Maudsley: she had seen the name somewhere. It was perhaps lucky that Mr. Sutcliffe had gone abroad early this year; for he had begun to follow her through Balzac and Flaubert and Maupassant, since when he had sometimes interfered with her selection.
The books came down in two days: Herbert Spencer's First Principles, the Principles of Biology, the Principles of Psychology; Haeckel's History of Evolution; Maudsley's Body and Mind, Physiology and Pathology of Mind, Responsibility in Mental Disease; and Ribot's Heredity. Your instinct told you to read them in that order, controlling personal curiosity.
For the first time in her life she understood what Spinoza meant by "the intellectual love of God." She saw how all things work together for good to those who, in Spinoza's sense, love God. If it hadn't been for Aunt Charlotte and Lindley Vickers she might have died without knowing anything about the exquisite movements and connections of the live world. She had spent most of her time in the passionate pursuit of things under the form of eternity, regardless of their actual behaviour in time. She had kept on for fifteen years trying to find out the reality—if there was any reality—that hid behind appearances, piggishly obtuse to the interest of appearances themselves. She had cared for nothing in them but their beauty, and its exciting play on her emotions. When life brought ugly things before her she faced them with a show of courage, but inwardly she was sick with fear.
For the first time she saw the ugliest facts take on enchantment, a secret and terrible enchantment. Dr. Mitchell's ape-faced idiot; Dr. Browne's girl with the goose-face and goose-neck, billing her shoulders like a bird.
There was something in Heredity. But the sheer interest of it made you forget about Papa and Mamma and Aunt Charlotte; it kept you from thinking about yourself. You could see why Ribot was so excited about his laws of Heredity: "They it is that are real…." "To know a fact thoroughly is to know the quality and quantity of the laws that compose it … facts are but appearances, laws the reality."
There was Darwin's Origin of Species. According to Darwin, it didn't seem likely that anything so useless as insanity could be inherited at all; according to Maudsley and Ribot, it seemed even less likely that sanity could survive. To be sure, after many generations, insanity was stamped out; but not before it had run its course through imbecility to idiocy, infecting more generations as it went.
Maudsley was solemn and exalted in his desire that there should be no mistake about it. "There is a destiny made for a man by his ancestors, and no one can elude, were he able to attempt it, the tyranny of his organisation."
You had been wrong all the time. You had thought of your family, Papa and Mamma, perhaps Grandpapa and Grandmamma, as powerful, but independent and separate entities, in themselves sacred and inviolable, working against you from the outside: either with open or secret and inscrutable hostility, hindering, thwarting, crushing you down. But always from the outside. You had thought of yourself as a somewhat less powerful, but still independent and separate entity, a sacred, inviolable self, struggling against them for completer freedom and detachment. Crushed down, but always getting up and going on again; fighting a more and more successful battle for your own; beating them in the end. But it was not so. There were no independent, separate entities, no sacred, inviolable selves. They were one immense organism and you were part of it; you were nothing that they had not been before you. It was no good struggling. You were caught in the net; you couldn't get out.
And so were they. Mamma and Papa were no more independent and separate than you were. Dan had gone like Papa, but Papa had gone like Grandpapa and Grandmamma Olivier. Nobody ever said anything about Grandpapa Olivier; so perhaps there had been something queer about him. Anyhow, Papa couldn't help drinking any more than Mamma could help being sweet and gentle; they hadn't had a choice or a chance.
How senseless you had been with your old angers and resentments. Now that you understood, you could never feel anger or resentment any more. As long as you lived you could never feel anything but love for them and compassion. Mamma, Papa and Aunt Charlotte, Dan and Roddy, they were caught in the net. They couldn't get out.
Dan and Roddy—But Mark had got out. Why not you?
They were not all alike. Papa and Uncle Victor were different; and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lavvy. Papa had married and handed it on; he hadn't cared. Uncle Victor hadn't married; he had cared too much; he had been afraid.
And Maurice Jourdain and Lindley Vickers had been afraid; everybody who knew about Aunt Charlotte would be afraid, and if they didn't know you would have to tell them, supposing—
You would be like Aunt Lavvy. You would live in Morfe with Mamma for years and years as Aunt Lavvy had lived with Grandmamma. First you would be like Dorsy Heron; then like Louisa Wright; then like Aunt Lavvy.
No; when you were forty-five you would go like Aunt Charlotte.
XII.
Anyhow, she had filled in the time between October and March when the
Sutcliffes came back.
If she could talk to somebody about it—But you couldn't talk to Mamma; she would only pretend that she hadn't been thinking about Aunt Charlotte at all. If Mark had been there—But Mark wasn't there, and Dan would only call you a little fool. Aunt Lavvy? She would tell you to love God. Even Aunt Charlotte could tell you that.
She could see Aunt Charlotte sitting up in the big white bed and saying "Love God and you'll be happy," as she scribbled letters to Mr. Marriott and hid them under the bedclothes.
Uncle Victor? Uncle Victor was afraid himself.
Dr. Charles—He looked at you as he used to look at Roddy. Perhaps he knew about Aunt Charlotte and wondered whether you would go like her. Or, if he didn't wonder, he would only give you the iron pills and arsenic he gave to Dorsy.
Mrs. Sutcliffe? You couldn't tell a thing like that to Mrs. Sutcliffe. She wouldn't know what you were talking about; or if she did know she would gather herself up, spiritually, in her shawl, and trail away.
Mr. Sutcliffe—He would know. If you could tell him. You might take back Maudsley and Ribot and ask him if he knew anything about heredity, and what he thought of it.
She went to him one Wednesday afternoon. He was always at home on Wednesday afternoons. She knew how it would be. Mrs. Sutcliffe would be shut up in the dining-room with the sewing-party. You would go in. You would knock at the library door. He would be there by himself, in the big arm-chair, smoking and reading; the small armchair would be waiting for you on the other side of the fireplace. He would be looking rather old and tired, and when he saw you he would jump up and pull himself together and be young again.
The library door closed softly. She was in the room before he saw her.
He was older and more tired than you could have believed. He stooped in his chair; his long hands rested on his knees, slackly, as they had dropped there. Grey streaks in the curly lock of hair that would fall forward and be a whisker.
His mouth had tightened and hardened. It held out; it refused to become old and tired.
"It's Mary," she said.
"My dear—"
He dragged himself to his feet, making his body very straight and stiff. His eyes glistened; but they didn't smile. Only his eyelids and his mouth smiled. His eyes were different, their blue was shrunk and flattened and drawn back behind the lense.
When he moved, pushing forward the small arm-chair, she saw how lean and stiff he was.
"I've been ill," he said.
"Oh—!"
"I'm all right now."
"No. You oughtn't to have come back from Agaye."
"I never do what I ought, Mary."
She remembered how beautiful and strong he used to be, when he danced and when he played tennis, and when he walked up and down the hills. His beauty and his strength had never moved her to anything but a happy, tranquil admiration. She remembered how she had seen Maurice Jourdain tired and old (at thirty-three), and how she had been afraid to look at him. She wondered, "Was that my fault, or his? If I'd cared should I have minded? If I cared for Mr. Sutcliffe I wouldn't mind his growing tired and old. The tireder and older he was the more I'd care."
Somehow you couldn't imagine Lindley Vickers growing old and tired.
She gave him back the books: Ribot's Heredity and Maudsley's Physiology and Pathology of Mind. He held them in his long, thin hands, reading the titles. His strange eyes looked at her over the tops of the bindings. He smiled.
"When did you order these, Mary?"
"In October."
"That's the sort of thing you do when I'm away, is it?"
"Yes—I'm afraid you won't care for them very much."
He still stood up, examining the books. He was dipping into Maudsley now and reading him.
"You don't mean to say you've read this horrible stuff?"
"Every word of it. I had to."
"You had to?"
"I wanted to know about heredity."
"And insanity?"
"That's part of it. I wanted to see if there was anything in it.
Heredity, I mean. Do you think there is?"
She kept her eyes on him. He was still smiling.
"My dear child, you know as much as I do. Why are you worrying your poor little head about madness?"
"Because I can't help thinking I may go mad."
"I should think the same if I read Maudsley. I shouldn't be quite sure whether I was a general paralytic or an epileptic homicide."
"You see—I'm not afraid because I've been reading him; I've been reading him because I was afraid. Not even afraid, exactly. As a matter of fact while you're reading about it you're so interested that you forget about yourself. It's only when you've finished that you wonder."
"What makes you wonder?"
He threw Maudsley aside and sat down in the big armchair.
"That's just what I don't think I can tell you."
"You used to tell me things, Mary. I remember a little girl with short hair who asked me whether cutting off her hair would make me stop caring for her."
"Not you caring for me."
"Precisely. So, if you can't tell me who can you tell?"
"Nobody."
"Come, then…. Is it because of your father? Or Dan?"
She thought: "After all, I can tell him."
"No. Not exactly. But it's somebody. One of Papa's sisters—Aunt
Charlotte. You see. Mamma seems to think I'm rather like her."
"Does Aunt Charlotte read Kant and Hegel and Schopenhauer, to find out whether the Thing-in-itself is mind or matter? Does she read Maudsley and Ribot to find out what's the matter with her mind?"
"I don't think she ever read anything."
"What did she do?"
"Well—she doesn't seem to have done much but fall in love with people."
"She'd have been a very abnormal lady if she'd never fallen in love at all, Mary."
"Yes; but then she used to think people were in love with her when they weren't."
"How old is Aunt Charlotte?"
"She must be ages over fifty now."
"Well, my dear, you're just twenty-eight, and I don't think you've been in love yet."
"That's it. I have."
"No. You've only thought you were. Once? Twice, perhaps? You may have been very near it—for ten minutes. But a man might be in love with you for ten years, and you wouldn't be a bit the wiser, if he held his tongue about it…. No. People don't go off their heads because their aunts do, or we should all of us be mad. There's hardly a family that hasn't got somebody with a tile loose."
"Then you don't think there's anything in it?"
"I don't think there's anything in it in your case. Anything at all."
"I'm glad I told you."
She thought: "It isn't so bad. Whatever happens he'll be here."
XIII.
The sewing-party had broken up. She could see them going before her on the road, by the garden wall, by the row of nine ash-trees in the field, round the curve and over Morfe Bridge.
Bobbing shoulders, craning necks, stiff, nodding heads in funny hats, turning to each other.
When she got home she found Mrs. Waugh, and Miss Frewin in the drawing-room with Mamma. They had brought her the news.
The Sutcliffes were going. They were trying to let Greffington Hall. The agent, Mr. Oldshaw, had told Mr. Horn. Mr. Frank, the Major, would be back from India in April. He was going to be married. He would live in the London house and Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe would live abroad.
Mamma said, "If their son's coming back they've chosen a queer time to go away."
XIV.
It couldn't be true.
You knew it when you dined with them, when you saw the tranquil Regency faces looking at you from above the long row of Sheraton chairs, the pretty Gainsborough lady smiling from her place above the sideboard.
As you sat drinking coffee out of the dark blue coffee cups with gold linings you knew it couldn't be true. You were reassured by the pattern of the chintzes—pink roses and green leaves on a pearl-grey ground—by the crystal chains and pendants of the chandelier, by the round black mirror sunk deep in the bowl of its gilt frame.
They couldn't go; for if they went, the quiet, gentle life of these things would be gone. The room had no soul apart from the two utterly beloved figures that sat there, each in its own chintz-covered chair.
"It isn't true," she said, "that you're going?"
She was sitting on the polar bear hearthrug at Mrs. Sutcliffe's feet.
"Yes, Mary."
The delicate, wrinkled hand came out from under the cashmere shawl to stroke her arm. It kept on stroking, a long, loving, slow caress. It made her queerly aware of her arm—white and slender under the big puff of the sleeve—lying across Mrs. Sutcliffe's lap.
"He'll be happier in his garden at Agaye."
She heard herself assenting. "He'll be happier." And breaking out. "But
I shall never be happy again."
"You mustn't say that, my dear."
The hand went on stroking.
"There's no place on earth," she said, "where I'm so happy as I am here."
Suddenly the hand stopped; it stiffened; it drew back under the cashmere shawl.
She turned her head towards Mr. Sutcliffe in his chair on the other side of the hearthrug.
His face had a queer, strained look. His eyes were fixed, fixed on the white, slender arm that lay across his wife's lap.
And Mrs. Sutcliffe's eyes were fixed on the queer, strained face.
XV.
Uncle Victor's letter was almost a relief.
She had not yet allowed herself to imagine what Morfe would be like without the Sutcliffes. And, after all, they wouldn't have to live in it. If Dan accepted Uncle Victor's offer, and if Mamma accepted his conditions.
Uncle Victor left no doubt as to his conditions. He wouldn't take Dan back unless Mamma left Morfe and made a home for him in London. He wanted them all to live together at Five Elms.
The discussion had lasted from a quarter-past nine till half-past ten. Mamma still sat at the breakfast-table, crumpling and uncrumpling the letter.
"I wish I knew what to do," she said.
"Better do what you want," Dan said. "Stay here if you want to. Go back to Five Elms if you want to. But for God's sake don't say you're doing it on my account."
He got up and went out of the room.
"Goodness knows I don't want to go back to Five Elms. But I won't stand in Dan's way. If your Uncle Victor thinks I ought to make the sacrifice, I shall make it."
"And Dan," Mary said, "will make the sacrifice of going back to Victor's office. It would be simpler if he went to Canada."
"Your uncle can't help him to go to Canada. He won't hear of it…. I suppose we shall have to go."
They were going. You could hear Mrs. Belk buzzing round the village with the news. "The Oliviers are going."
One day Mrs. Belk came towards her, busily, across the Green.
She stopped to speak, while her little iron-grey eyes glanced off sideways, as if they saw something important to be done.
The Sutcliffes were not going, after all.
XVI.
When it was all settled and she thought that Dan had gone into Reyburn a fortnight ago to give notice to the landlord's solicitors, one evening, as she was coming home from the Aldersons' he told her that he hadn't been to the solicitors at all.
He had arranged yesterday for his transport on a cattle ship sailing next week for Montreal.
He said he had always meant to go out to Jem Alderson when he had learnt enough from Ned.
"Then why," she said, "did you let Mamma tell poor Victor—"
"I wanted her to have the credit of the sacrifice," he said.
And then: "I don't like leaving you here—"
An awful thought came to her.
"Are you sure you aren't going because of me?"
"You? What on earth are you thinking of?"
"That time—when you wouldn't ask Lindley Vickers to stop on."
"Oh … I didn't ask him because I knew he wanted to stop altogether. And
I don't approve of him."
She turned and stared at him. "Then it wasn't that you didn't approve of me?"
"What put that in your head?"
"Mamma. She told me you couldn't ask anybody again because of me. She said I'd frightened Lindley Vickers away. Like Aunt Charlotte."
Dan smiled, a sombre, reminiscent smile.
"You don't mean to say you still take Mamma seriously? I never did."
"But—Mark—"
"Or him either."
It hurt her like some abominable blasphemy.