Chapter XI
A DEFINITION OF FELICITY
April came and brought to Ursula a fine pink boy, whose body, bundled in rolls of shawl, squirmed deliciously in Mary's arms as she cuddled him in a sunny room of the Hardrascliffe nursing-home. Ursula lay on a sofa near the window regarding her offspring with amused satisfaction. Her pale blue gown and lacy cap, and the light rug across her knees mingled so admirably daintiness with discretion, that Mary thought she looked more like an advertisement for somebody's invalid wine than a woman who had recently emerged from the disturbing crisis of motherhood.
The baby roused from a light doze and turned, whimpering a little, in Mary's arms.
"Poor little Thomas! You've woken him up, Mary. I'm sure you're not holding him right. Give him to me. You're crushing his feet or something."
Mary had been gazing dreamily through the window at the circling flight of gulls above the sunlit garden.
"He's all right," she said, rocking Thomas softly with practised hands. "But take him if you like. Hush, little love! Diddums, diddums! Did your old aunt then squeeze your little tootsies?"
She crooned over the bundle, smiling tenderly.
Ursula fidgeted on the sofa.
"There, there, hush-aby, sweet lamb, hush-aby!" cooed Mary.
Thomas nestled comfortably against her.
"Oh, Mary, I wish you wouldn't talk that silly baby talk. It's such nonsense—brings them up to bad habits. I don't intend the kid to hear anything but good English. I read in a book that the misnaming of common objects definitely retards a child's mental development. Fancy calling feet 'tootsies' and dogs 'bow-wows' when the real words are so much easier."
Mary smiled a little.
"Oh, it's all very well to smile. You're so old-fashioned, Mary. Come along to mother, sweetheart. He has been held by a stranger quite long enough, Mary. The new system is that children should be brought up to lie in their cots and not be dandled about all day like handbags. They must hate it. Put him in the cot, will you?"
Mary laid the protesting Thomas in a nest of bows and muslin, and stood waiting for Ursula to gather him up and comfort the wails which greeted his deprivation of protecting arms. But Ursula lay back serenely.
Before the arrival of her son, she had declared that all babies bored her to sobs, but recently, having consumed vast quantities of literature on the subject of their upbringing, she had learnt all about them that was to be known. Mary, who had only nursed several dozens of Anderby infants through croup and colic and teething, and cuddled them in unenlightened arms, felt terribly behind the times. She hated to hear children cry.
"Don't you ever want to cuddle him though, and say silly things? I thought all mothers would."
"Well, of course I consider Thomas's good before my own pleasure." Thomas from his cradle, objected loudly to his mother's altruism, but Ursula only put out a cool, white hand and touched his shawl. "He must be trained. He will soon learn."
The training was still in progress, when half an hour later Mrs. Toby arrived in a state of fluttering jubilation, to congratulate Ursula on her triumphant achievement.
"Well, my dear, this is nice! How lovely! How quite sweet he is! Dear, dear! I must say you look quite well. Better than I did, after my first. Toby drove me over from Market Burton, and I'm sure I wanted to come, though he does go so fast round the corners, and we always break down on Casserby Hill. But I thought I must slip up for a minute and see how you are and the dear child. Why, he's smiling! Dear little man!"
An appropriate tear stole down Mrs. Toby's cheek. She had four children of her own, whose existence had been to her a perpetual source of distressful agitation, but she still regarded the advent of other people's babies as a matter for tearful congratulation.
She hovered over the cot, blinking and smiling, and absent-mindedly dropping one or two little parcels on the floor. Mary decided that those strange, clucking noises she made with her tongue were intended for the edification of Thomas, who ungratefully declined to be amused.
Ursula was politely attentive to the privileged absurdities of a mother of four.
"I thought I might just bring along a few of Lucy's flannels, and the cot cover I bought for Gladys. When you've had four like I have, you'll know how these little things come in handy. And I just slipped one or two other little things into a parcel. Dear me, where is it?"
"How nice of you! That's ripping!"
Mary observed Ursula's occasional lapses from pure English with malicious relish. They compensated a little for her feeling of exclusion from the experience of the two mothers. She was not used to being out of it and disliked the sensation. Even little Mrs. Toby seemed to assume an air of faint patronage towards her uninitiation.
"Toby's talking to your husband, Mary," she said. "I left them together in the market. I thought I'd just slip along and see how Ursula and the precious child were."
Mrs. Toby's deference towards life was so great that she never presumed to make an unqualified statement. She would never go shopping, or visit Ursula: but only "just slipped round the corner to buy a few things" and "slipped along to the nursing house." "Life must be a very slippery affair for her," thought Mary, with uncharacteristic spitefulness. Usually she was rather sorry for Mrs. Toby. To-day, seeing her permitted as an experienced mother to hold Thomas for the unprecedented period of five minutes, she felt inclined to be spiteful. Lately, she had noticed several occasions on which she felt inclined to be spiteful.
"There, there! Hush then, little man!" murmured Mrs. Toby.
Ursula, bowing before a fourfold experience, offered no reproof.
"How's Toby?" she asked instead.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know. I really get a little worried sometimes, my dear. I do indeed. He works so hard, poor dear." Mrs. Toby shook her head, and her dangling veil became entangled with Thomas's safety-pins.
"Is he really busy?" asked Mary with relief. "Then his practice is going well? I suppose he has a lot to do just now when so much property is being sold."
The solicitor's wife pushed back her veil. "Well, it's not exactly the practice. For I'm sure, I don't really know. Poor Toby is so busy with other things. He doesn't seem to get much time. All this last month he has been getting a paper ready for the East Yorkshire Archæological Society. It takes such a lot of time. It's about the churches of the wold villages or something, and I'm sure he has to go out nearly every day to look at something or other."
Ursula felt that Mary had blundered on to an unwelcome topic. Tactfully she changed the subject.
"How is your socialist friend, Mary? The one who stood up and defied Cousin Sarah in your dining-room? It must have been a glorious scene! Foster heard about it from Tom Bannister."
"Oh, he's gone," said Mary casually. "I only took him in for a night or two because he had a bad cold, and it was such horrid weather."
"He sounded an awfully violent young man. You do seem to pick up some queer characters, Mary. I gathered from what you told me after you first met him that he was rather odd. What was he really like?"
"Oh—I don't know. Young, you know, and rather excitable!"
"Where has he gone to?"
"He's travelling about the wolds somewhere, speaking on socialism; but I really don't know."
"Oh, yes, you do! Look at her blushing, Mrs. Toby! Come on, Mary. Tell us the horrid truth!"
"There's nothing to tell. I met him, as I told you, before driving back from Hardrascliffe. Starlight knocked him down and I took him home for three days, as he was quite ill. Then he went to stay at the inn and talked a lot of nonsense to the villagers, but I don't think they understood. He stayed about a week, and took up with the schoolmaster a good deal. He's a most objectionable man, that Coast. But I only saw Mr. Rossitur twice in the street after he left us, and hardly spoke to him then."
Mary hoped that she sounded off-hand and uninterested. She kept her angry, miserable eyes steadfastly on the cradle, so that they should not betray her.
After that encounter in the moonlit road outside the Flying Fox, she had only seen David once. She had met him in the village climbing towards the School House—going to visit that wretched Coast, she supposed.
An overwhelming impulse had conquered her pride and driven her to invite him to tea. But David had turned away abruptly. "Very sorry, indeed, Mrs. Robson. It's awfully good of you to ask me. But I've promised to go up and see your schoolmaster—a most interesting person, full of ideas. He's part of my job, you see, so I mustn't disappoint him."
"Part of his job" indeed! This was the second time he had snubbed her. Very well, then, let him mind his job. Mary would mind hers. She tossed her head.
"Well, I'm sure I don't know what the world's coming to," chirruped Mrs. Toby. "Sarah Bannister was only saying yesterday that the wolds soon won't be fit for any farmers to live on. They've got a labourer's union down at Holderness, and I'm sure I don't know what will happen if we start strikes and things on the farms. The coal strikes last year were bad enough."
"Oh, Sarah Bannister's always thinking we're all going straight to the dogs," said Ursula. "When she goes to heaven she'll always be expecting Lucifer to make another war among the angels."
Mary rose and went to the window.
She wished she had not come. She wished that John would arrive to take her home to Anderby. She wished that she had never left home. It wasn't worth while being irritated by Ursula's superiority and Mrs. Toby's silliness when she couldn't even have the compensation of cuddling Thomas.
She wanted just then to cuddle Thomas very much indeed.
"Why, here's Toby coming along the path," she announced, welcoming a distraction. "He looks full of news."
"I don't really know whether I'm fit to receive a man," murmured Ursula, patting the curls below her cap. "Mary, be a dear and hand me that mirror and the powder. Your husband's so particular," she added archly to Mrs. Toby.
Mary brought the powder-box and silver mirror. She didn't see why she should wait on Ursula just because Ursula had a baby.
"Heavens! why didn't some one tell me that my nose was like a looking-glass? How could you let me go on looking such a fright?" Ursula's busy hand dabbed at her already well powdered face.
It was obvious, thought Mary, that she was delighted with the contrast between her daintiness and her visitors' dishevelment. Mary had driven to Hardrascliffe between scattering showers of April rain. Her hair was blown just anyhow, and there was a hole in her driving gloves.
Toby entered with a boisterous flourish. He liked Ursula tremendously. She was a good sort. Had more go in her than the rest of the family. She knew a thing or two. Not a conceited frump like Mary.
"They said that I might come in for a minute if I was very good. Well, Ursula, how are you? And how's the nipper? By Jove, the very image of his father. By the way, I saw Foster in the town. Never met a man so set up in my life! Well, Mary, I've been talking to your man in the market—you come baby worshipping? By Jove, Ursula, wait till you've got four! Then you'll say something!"
He winked at her delightedly, caught Thomas from his wife's reluctant arms, and held him at arm's length for inspection.
"Oh, by the way," he exclaimed suddenly, almost dropping Thomas back on to Ursula's sofa, "I've got something for you, Mary. Have you seen this week's Northern Clarion? By Jove, your little friend's been at it all right. There's a stinger there, a regular stinger. He's got you farmers pretty well on toast. He's going to make things hum a bit."
"What little friend?" asked Mary indifferently.
Her heart was in her mouth. She hardly dare open her lips lest Toby should see it.
"That socialist chap who set Sarah by the ears. We've all heard about that little business, Mary. You can't hide your light under a bushel in the East Riding. I met a chap at the Archæological Society who told me to read this. He'd met your young fellow—what's his name? Rossitur? up beyond Foxhaven way, ranting round like a Salvation Army soul-snatcher. Great little fellow, what? You read this."
He handed Mary the crumpled leaves of a newspaper.
The black letters danced madly on the printed page. Mary folded it, laughing rather breathlessly.
"Oh, it's too long to read now. I came to look at the baby, not to read the newspaper."
She could not face it here, in this little room, before the scrutiny of six unfriendly eyes. Toby, no doubt, thought it all a great joke; and Mrs. Toby, silly little hen! Mary Robson of Anderby Wold, who had always thought herself so clever and superior—that she of all people should have harboured a raging socialist, let him insult her relations in her own dining-room, and then go away and write inflammatory articles about her and her village in the most notorious of radical papers! Her hands round the paper tightened.
Toby, highly amused by her confusion, continued his chaffing. "By Jove, he's let you all have it! Starvation wages and coals at Christmas! 'Coddlin' and short' he calls it—coddlin' your men and paying them short. Do you read your Dickens? Good joke, eh? No ... that was in the letter. There's a letter too, by a chap called Hunting. Same thing though—friend of Rossitur's."
"Oh, is there?" Mary spoke with cold indifference.
"And there's a bit on rural education. Says the farmers won't have the children properly educated because that makes 'em discontented. All about the intrigue that goes on behind the schoolboards—children being snatched away to work in the fields before their time is up and all that. Quite a real scandal!"
"He got that from Coast," thought Mary. She wondered how much David had learned from Coast—how much about her and her kingdom at Anderby. How they must have laughed at her together in that hideous parlour at the School House! Her visits to Mrs. Watts, the Christmas Tree, the dances she organized. Probably Coast had been immensely entertained by the story of the embrocation, and the way in which she made David fold sheets, and her naive delight in having an author to stay in the house.
Toby and his wife were bending over the cradle, Ursula lay back on her cushions smiling luxuriously at them. The atmosphere of violet powder and hot milk and drying flannel became suddenly stifling.
Mary rose, clutching the paper.
"Oh, Ursula, I've just remembered. I have to order some cheese at Maryson's. I'll go now, and if John calls please tell him to wait."
She fled from the room. On the stairs she turned and, through the half-closed door, caught the sound of her name and David's, and then Toby's laugh.
The esplanade was deserted. The straight, shower-washed streets shone like polished metal above the dancing grey and silver of the sea. Blank, flat-chested boarding houses with lace-veiled windows lay swept and garnished, ready for the transitory influx of summer visitors. A paper bag blew forlornly along the path till it found a resting-place in the gutter at Mary's feet.
The breeze pulled at her scarf, and the newspaper in her hands flapped and struggled like a live thing. She found a seat facing the sea, and sheltered on three sides from the wind by an erection of glass and wood, built for the convenience of summer visitors. There she sat and unfolded the paper.
The Northern Clarion was unfamiliar to her. She missed the genial friendliness with which the Yorkshire Chronicle greeted her each morning. She wrestled with the fluttering pages, turning them over and over to find David's article.
His name suddenly faced her at the head of a column.
"Progress and the Wolds" by David Rossitur. There was a column and a half of little black letters, dancing and wriggling on the paper. If they only would keep still for a minute, she could read what he had to say—what he had the amazing impertinence and ingratitude to say!
She folded the paper and began to read steadily, from the head on one column to its foot, then up again and half-way down the next, and that was all. She lowered her hands, and looked across the sea.
It might have been worse. After all, he really said very little. The tone of the article was more restrained than that of his book. He had begun by drawing a picture of the agricultural conditions, in East Yorkshire—a little exaggerated in outline, of course, but less grossly distorted than she had imagined. The passage about starvation wages was rather bitter, but the reference to education might have applied to anybody—not specially to her. Perhaps Coast had never even mentioned to him the incident of Jack Greenwood.
Perhaps her anger was unjust. David had to do his work after all. Perhaps she had not taken him seriously enough because he was such a boy. He sounded serious enough here. She shifted her position on the seat and turned to Hunting's letter. This surely was "the stinger." Toby had confused the two writers. Hunting declared that he wished to confirm David Rossitur's theories. He denounced the Eastern Farmers in half a column of crude virulence, and finally stated his intention of following up Mr. Rossitur's valuable work by the organization of a union among farm labourers.
Mary frowned.
Was this really what David meant when he spoke of the fellowship and courage necessary for reform? She turned again to the last passage in his article. It contained an appeal to the organizers of more advanced industries to have patience and sympathy with their comrades, the agriculturists. Although the evils of the countrymen were less flagrant and the sufferers less articulate, there was just the same need for encouragement. He warned them against the cowardice of complacency.
"Progress is not the movement towards a single, recognized goal. Because some of you have reached a condition of comparative prosperity, that is no reason why you should now withdraw from the race. It is cowardice to refuse to relinquish present good for the sake of future excellence. 'Felicity is the continual progresse of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still, but the way to the later ... so that, in the first place, I put for a generall inclination of mankind, a perpetuall and restlesse desire of power after power which ceaseth only after death and there shall be no contentment but proceeding.'"
Mary read that, and one passage further back about kings and queens. It was addressed to the masters of hired labourers. "You, who think you hold suzerainty over men, beware lest you find that time has robbed you of dominion. For those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their generation and rule circumstance."
He had said something like that to her, standing by the mantelpiece in the Anderby dining-room, smiling at her with wistful, half-humorous eyes. Here it seemed a direct appeal to her understanding. Did he mean her to read it and remember?
She put down the paper. A man and a girl passed the shelter linked arm in arm. The girl wore a dark hat, trimmed with bright little scarlet wings. She looked up, laughing, in the man's face. He bent towards her, and Mary could not hear what he murmured, though they passed so close that the girl's skirt brushed her knee.
Their footsteps died away along the pavement. Mary was left alone with the wheeling gulls, and the sound of the wind striking the shelter.
David had said very little, but it was enough. She knew now what he thought about her.
David and his kind, the man and girl who had just passed her, the young labourers at Anderby, Jack Greenwood and Fred Stephens, they were the heirs of the future. They wanted to go forward because "there shall be no contentment but proceeding."
But Mary had placed herself in the ranks of the older generation who would have time leaden-footed. She cherished no longing to proceed. "Her restlesse and perpetuall desire for power after power" had taken her as far as she dared go.
She had John. She had Anderby.
Further progress could bring her no increase of power, only enforced abdication from the only dominion she could hold.
"Those alone are kings and queens who sit enthroned above their generation and rule circumstance."
She stared across the sea.
A gleaming sail, far out across the bay, caught a momentary flash of sunlight, then vanished into the grey waste of water.
And she was no older than David and Fred Stephens and Ursula and Violet—only different.
The sharp clop, clop of hoofs along the Esplanade caught her attention. She turned her head. Through the glass at the back of the shelter she saw John driving towards the nursing-home. She waited until he turned the corner, then rose and quickly followed.
The dog-cart was drawn up outside the gates of the nursing-home. John saw her coming, and raised his hand.
"Where have you been, honey? I thought you were with Ursula?"
"I went out on the Front a bit." She climbed wearily into the seat beside him.
Once, on the drive home, he broke the silence: "I was talking to Toby up in the market. He was saying to me that the Diamond Assurance Company, the one we deal with for the house and farm buildings and so on—fire insurance—it's going to pot. He says we ought to transfer our policy to Mallesons'. They're clients of his—good people. What do you think?"
Mary was not listening. Her eyes were looking beyond the falling road to the grey village, in the cup-shaped hollow of the walls.
"Eh, honey?"
"Oh, yes, if you think so."
Between the generation that was passing and the one coming forward was a great gulf fixed—Mary and John were on one side. For a moment rebellion seized her. Why could she not relinquish this—the dim hills before her, the bearded figure beside her, the responsibilities that preyed upon her? Why not escape to the other side?
They were passing the cross-roads where Starlight had picked up the stone in his shoe. Mary leaned forward; one vision rose before her; her rebellion culminated in one need—David, David Rossitur.
She saw him again as she had last seen him, climbing the hill towards the School House, his lean figure bent forward against the wind, the sun on his eager face, his red hair blowing in untidy locks across his forehead, the sleeves that were always too short for his long wrists....
John spoke again.
"Then you think it will be all right if I tell Toby to transfer that Insurance Policy?"
"Oh, yes. Anything you like," answered Mary.
On the hall-table at Anderby a note awaited her. She opened it listlessly while John removed his hat and coat.
"Anything the matter?" he asked suddenly, noticing her white face. "What's that?"
"This? Oh, nothing. Only a note from Coast to say he's afraid he can't let the boys have a holiday to go brassocking this year. He is a fool."
"There's going to be trouble with that fellow," muttered John. "Brassocks will grow like anything this spring unless we get in extra boys to hoe them. You can't expect the men to get the fields cleared quick enough."
"Oh, you're always seeing trouble ahead! You're as bad as Sarah," snapped Mary. "Why can't you look on the cheerful side of things for a change? Anyone would think you were an old man from the way you talk."
John looked up, hurt and surprised. Mary's outburst was unexpected. She never said such things.
His puzzled glance curbed her irritation, the instinct to comfort being stronger than the desire to wound some one else.
"I didn't meant that," she said quickly. "I didn't mean that, John. I don't know what I'm saying. I've got such a headache."
His surprise deepened to speechless bewilderment when she turned and suddenly kissed him on the forehead, then fled upstairs to her room.
John stood in the hall, silently scratching his head.
"Now what on earth did she do that for?" he inquired of the hatstand.
It ventured no reply.