Chapter XIII: Book FOUR: Maturity (1879-1900) (7)

"Even if I _was_ a bit conceited.... I don't think I was, really. I only wanted to know whether I could do things. I wanted people to tell me just because I didn't know. But even if I was, what did it matter? You must have known I loved you--desperately--all the time."

"I didn't know it, Mary."

"Then you were stup--"

"Oh, say I was stupid. It's what you think. It's what you always have thought."

"You were--you were, if you didn't see it."

"See what?"

"How I cared--I can remember--when I was a kid--the awful feeling. It used to make me ill."

"I didn't know that. If you did care you'd a queer way of showing it."

"That was because I thought you didn't."

"Who told you I didn't care for you?"

"I didn't need to be told. I could see the difference."

Her mother sat fixed in a curious stillness. She held her elbows pressed tight against her sides. Her face was hard and still. Her eyes looked away across the room.

"You were different," she said. "You weren't like any of the others. I was afraid of you. You used to look at me with your little bright eyes. I felt as if you knew everything I was thinking. I never knew what you'd say or do next."

No. Her face wasn't hard. There was something else. Something clear. Clear and beautiful.

"I suppose I--I didn't like your being clever. It was the boys I wanted to do things. Not you."

"Don't--Mamma darling--_don't_."

The stiff, tight body let go its hold of itself. The eyes turned to her again.

"I was jealous of you, Mary. And I was afraid for my life you'd find it out."

V.

Eighteen ninety-eight. Eighteen ninety-nine. Nineteen hundred. Thirty-five--thirty-six--thirty-seven. Three years. Her mind kept on stretching; it held three years in one span like one year. The large rhythm of time appeased and exalted her.

In the long summers while Mamma worked in the garden she translated _Euripides_.

The _Bacchae_. You could do it after you had read Whitman. If you gave up the superstition of singing; the little tunes of rhyme. If you left off that eternal jingling and listened, you could hear what it ought to be.

Something between talking and singing. If you wrote verse that could be chanted: that could be whispered, shouted, screamed as they moved. Agave and her Maenads. Verse that would go with a throbbing beat, excited, exciting; beyond rhyme. That would be nearest to the Greek verse.

* * * * *

September, nineteen hundred.

Across the room she could see the pale buff-coloured magazine, on the table where, five minutes ago, Mamma had laid it down. She could see the black letters of its title and the squat column of the table of contents. The magazine with her poem in it.

And Mamma, sitting very straight, very still.

You would never know what she was thinking. She hadn't said anything. You couldn't tell whether she was glad or sorry; or whether she was afraid.

The air tingled with the thought of the magazine with your poem in it. But you would never know what she was thinking.

VI.

A long letter from Uncle Edward. Uncle Edward was worrying Mamma.

"He never could get on with your poor father. Or your Uncle Victor. He did his best to prevent him being made trustee.... And now he comes meddling, wanting to upset all their arrangements."

"Why?"

"Just because poor Victor's business isn't doing quite so well as it did."

"Yes, but why's he bothering _you_ about it?"

"Well, he says I ought to make another will, leaving half the boys' money to you. That would be taking it from Dan. He always had a grudge against poor Dan."

"But you mustn't do anything of the sort."

"Well--he knows your father provided for you. You're to have the Five Elms money that's in your Uncle Victor's business. You'd suppose, to hear him talk, that it wasn't safe there."

"Just tell him to mind his own business," Mary said.

"Actually," Mamma went on, "advising me not to pay back any more of Victor's money. I shall tell him I sent the last of it yesterday."

There would be no more debts to Uncle Victor. Mark had paid back his; Mamma had paid back Roddy's, scraping and scraping, Mark and Mamma, over ten years, over twenty.

A long letter from Uncle Victor. Uncle Victor was worrying Mamma.

"Don't imagine that I shall take this money. I have invested it for you, in sound securities. Not in my own business. That, I am afraid I ought to tell you, is no longer a sound security."

"Poor Victor--"

"It almost looks," Mamma said, "as if Edward might be right."

So right that in his next letter Uncle Victor prepared you for his bankruptcy.

"It will not affect you and Mary," he wrote. "I may as well tell you now that all the Five Elms money has been reinvested, and is safe. As for myself, I can assure you that, after the appalling anxiety of the last ten years, the thought of bankruptcy is a relief. A blessed relief, Caroline."

All through September and October the long letters came from Uncle Victor.

Then Aunt Lavvy's short letter that told you of his death.

Then the lawyer's letters.

It seemed that, after all, Uncle Victor had been mistaken. His affairs were in perfect order.

Only the Five Elms money was gone; and the money Mark and Mamma had paid back to him. He had taken it all out of his own business, and put it into the Sheba Mines and Joe's Reef, and the Golconda Company where he thought it would be safe.

The poor dear. The poor dear.

VII.

So that you knew--

Mamma might believe what Aunt Lavvy told her, that he had only gone to look out of the window and had turned giddy. Aunt Lavvy might believe that he didn't know what he was doing.

But you knew.

He had been afraid. Afraid. He wouldn't go up to the top-landing after they took Aunt Charlotte away; because he was afraid.

Then, at last, after all those years, he had gone up. When he knew he was caught in the net and couldn't get out. He had found that they had moved the linen cupboard from the window back into the night nursery. And he had bolted the staircase door on himself. He had shut himself up. And the great bare, high window was there. And the low sill. And the steep, bare wall, dropping to the lane below.

END OF BOOK FOUR