Mary's first month at Herons' Holt was uneventful: need not be recorded. We are following the passage of the love 'twixt her and George; and within the radius of Mr. Marrapit's eye love durst not creep. She saw little of her George. They were most carefully circumspect in their attitude one to another, and conscience made their circumspection trebly stiff. There are politenesses to be observed between the inmates of a house, but my Mary and my George, in terror lest even these should be misconstrued, studiously neglected them.
The aloofness troubled Margaret. This girl wrapped her sentiment about Mary; delighting in one who, so pretty, so young, so gentle-voiced, must face life in an alien home. The girls came naturally together, and it was not long before Margaret bubbled out her vocation.
The talk was upon books. Margaret turned away her head; said in the voice of one hurrying over a commonplace: “I write, you know.”
She tingled for the “Do you?” from her companion, but it did not come, and this was very disappointing.
She stole a glance at Mary, sitting with a far-away expression in her eyes (the ridiculous girl had heard an engine whistle; knew it to be the train that was taking her George to London). Margaret stole a glance at Mary; repeated louder: “I write, you know.”
It fetched the delicious response. Mary started: “Do you?”
Margaret said hurriedly: “Oh, nothing worth speaking of.”
Mary said: “Oh!”; gave her thoughts again to the train.
It was wretched of her. “Poems,” said Margaret, and stressed the word “Poems.”
Mary came flying back from the train. “Oh, how interesting that is!”
At once Margaret drew away. “Oh, it is nothing,” she said, “nothing.” She put her eyes upon the far clouds; breathed “Nothing” in a long sigh.
From this it was not a far step to reading, with terrible reluctance, her poems to Mary; nor from this again was it other than an obvious step to telling of Bill. Her pretty verses were so clearly written at some heart which throbbed responsive, that Mary must needs put the question. It came after a full hour's reading—the poet sitting upon her bed in a litter of manuscripts, Mary in a low chair before her.
In a tremulous voice the poet concluded the refrain of an exquisite verse:
“Beat for beat, your heart, my darling,
Beats with mine.
Skylarks carol, quick responsive,
Love divine.”
The poet gave a little gulp; laid down her paper.
Mary also gulped. From both their pretty persons emotion welled in a great flood that filled the room.
“I'm sure that is written to somebody,” Mary breathed.
Margaret nodded. This girl was too ravished with the grip of the thing to be capable of words.
Mary implored: “Oh, do tell me!”
Then Margaret told the story of Bill—with intimate details and in the beautiful phrases of the poet mind she told it, and the flooding emotion piled upwards to the very roof.
Love has rightly been pictured as a naked babe. Men together will examine a baby—if they must—with a bashful diffidence that pulls down the clothes each time the infant kicks; women dote upon each inch of its chubby person. And so with love. Men will discuss their love—if they must—with the most prudish decorum; women undress it.
It becomes essential, therefore, that what Margaret said to Mary must not be discovered.
When she had ceased she put out a hand for the price of her confidence: “And have you—are you—I know practically nothing about you, Mary, dear. Do tell me, are you in love?”
Bang went the gates of Mary's emotion. Here was awful danger. She laughed. “Oh, I've no time to fall in love, have I?”
Margaret sighed her sympathy; then gazed at Mary.
Mary read the gaze aright. These were women, and they read one another by knowledge of sex. Mary knew Margaret's gaze to be that of an archer sighting at his mark, estimating the chances of a hit. She saw the arrow that was to come speeding at her breast; gathered her emotions so that she should not flinch at the wound.
Margaret twanged the bow-string. “No time to fall in love?” she murmured. She fitted the shaft; let fly. “Do you like George, dear?”
Mary stooped to her shoe-laces. Despite her preparations the arrow had pierced, and she hid her face to hide the blood.
“George?” said she, head to floor.
“Yes, George. Do you like George?”
My Mary sat up, brazen. “George? Oh, you mean your cousin? I daresay he's very nice. Practically I've never even spoken to him since I've been here.”
“I know. Of course he's very busy just now. Do you think you would like him if you did know him?”
It was murderous work. Mary was beginning to quiver beneath the arrows; was in terror lest she should betray the secret. A desperate kick was necessary. She wildly searched for a foothold; found it; kicked:
“I'm sure I shouldn't like him.”
The poet softly protested: “Oh why, Mary?”
“He's clean-shaven.”
“And you don't like a—”
“I can't stand a—”
“But if he had a—”
“Oh, if he had a—Margaret, I hear Mr. Marrapit calling. I must fly.” She fled.
Upon a sad little sigh the poet moved to her table; drew heliotrope paper towards her; wrote:
“Why are your hearts asunder, ye so fair?”
A thought came to her then, and she put her pen in her mouth; pursued the idea. That evening she walked to the gate and met George upon his return. After a few paces, “George,” she asked, “do you like Mary?”
George was never taken aback. “Mary? Mary who?”
“Miss Humfray.”
“Oh, is her name Mary?”
“Of course it is.” Margaret slipped her arm through George's; gazed up at him. “Do you like her, George?”
“Like whom?”
“Why, Mary—Miss Humfray.”
“Oh, I think she's a little better than Mrs. Major—in some ways. If that's what you mean.”
Margaret sighed. Such mulish indifference was a dreadful thing to this girl. But she had set her heart on this romance.
“George, dear, I wish you would do something for me.”
“Anything.”
“How nice you are! Will you grow a moustache?”
She anxiously awaited the answer. George took his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his eyes. He did not speak.
She asked him: “What is the matter?”
He said brokenly: “You know not what you ask. I cannot grow a moustache. It is my secret sorrow, my little cross. There is only one way. It is by pushing up the hairs from inside with the handle of a tooth-brush and tying a knot to prevent them slipping back. You have to do it every morning, and I somehow can never remember it.”
Margaret slipped her arm free; without a word walked to the house.
She was hurt. This girl had the artistic temperament, and the artistic temperament feels things most dreadfully. It even feels being kept waiting for its meals.
George followed the pained young woman into the house; set down in the hall the books he carried; left the house again; out through the gate, and so, whistling gaily along roads and lanes, came to the skirts of an outlying copse. By disused paths he twisted this way and that to approach, at length, a hut that once was cottage, whose dilapidated air advertised long neglect.
It was a week after Mary's arrival at Herons' Holt that, quite by chance, George had stumbled upon this hut. He had taken his books into the copse, had somehow lost his way in getting out, and through thick undergrowth had plumped suddenly upon the building. Curiosity had taken him within, shown him an outer and an inner room, and, in the second, a sight that had given him laughter; for he discovered there sundry empty bottles labelled “Old Tom,” a glass, an envelope addressed to Mrs. Major. It was clear that in this deserted place—somehow chanced upon—the masterly woman had been wont, safe from disturbance, to meet the rascal who, taken to Herons' Holt on that famous night, had so villainously laid her by the heels.
Nothing more George had thought of the place until the morning of this day when, leaving for hospital, his Mary had effected a brief whispered moment to tell him that Mr. Marrapit had thought her looking pale, had told her to take a long walk that afternoon. Immediately George gave her directions for the hut; there he would meet her at five o'clock; there not the most prying eye could reach them.
Now he approached noiselessly; saw his pretty Mary, back towards him, just within the threshold of the open door. It was their first secluded meeting since she had come to Herons' Holt.
Upon tip-toe George squirmed up to her; hissed “I have thee, girl”; sprang on his terrified Mary; hugged her to him.
“The first moment together in Paltley Hill!” he cried. “The first holy kiss!”
His Mary wriggled. “George! You frightened me nearly out of my life. It's not holy. You're hurting me awfully.”
“My child, it is holy. Trust in me.”
“George, you are hurting.”
“Scorn that. It is delicious!”
He let her from his arms; but he held her hands, and for a space, looking at one another, they did not speak. Despite he was in wild spirits, despite her roguishness, for a space they did not speak. His hands were below hers and about hers. The contact of their palms was the junction whence each literally could feel the other's spirit being received and pouring inwards. The metals were laid true, and without hitch or delay the delectable thrill came pouring; above, between their eyes, on wires invisible they signalled its safe arrival.
They broke upon a little laugh that was their utmost expression of the intoxication of this draught of love, just as a man parched with thirst will with a little sigh put down the glass that has touched him back to vigour. Dumb while they drank, their innate earthiness made them dumb before effort to express the spiritual heights to which they had been whirled. In that moment when, spirit mingling with spirit through the medium of what we call love, all our baseness is driven out of us, we are nearest heaven. But our vocabulary being only fitted for the needs about us, we have no words to express the elevation. Debase love and we can speak of it; let it rush upwards to its apotheosis and we must be dumb.
With a little laugh they broke.
“Going on all right, old girl?” George asked.
“Splendidly.”
“Happy?”
She laughed and said: “I will give the proper answer to that. How can I be other than happy, oh, my love, when daily I see your angel form?”
“I forgot that. Yes, you're a lucky girl in that way—very, very lucky. Beware lest you do not sufficiently prize your treasure. Cherish it, tend it, love it.”
“Oh, don't fool, George. Whenever we have two minutes together you waste them in playing the goat. Georgie, tell me—about your exam.”
“To-morrow.”
She was at once serious. “To-morrow?”
“To-morrow I thrust my angel form into the examination room. To-morrow my angel voice trills in the examiners' ears.”
“I thought you had a paper first, before the viva?”
“Do not snap me up, girl. I speak in metaphors. To-morrow my angel hand glides my pen over the paper. On Thursday my angel tongue gives forth my wisdom with the sound of a tinkling cymbal.”
“The paper to-morrow, the viva on Thursday?”
He bowed his angel head.
“George, don't, don't fool. Are you nervous? Will you pass?”
“I shall rush, I shall bound. I shall hurtle through like a great boulder.”
“Georgie! Will you?”
He dropped his banter. “I believe I shall, old girl. I really think I shall. I've simply sweated my life out these weeks—all for you.”
She patted his hand. “Dear old George! How I shall think of you! And then?”
“Then—why, then, we'll marry! Mary, I shall hear the result immediately after the viva. Then I shall rush back here and tackle old Marrapit at once. If he won't give me the money I think perhaps he'll lend it, and then we'll shoot off to Runnygate and take up that practice and live happily ever after.”
With the brave ardour of youth they discussed the delectable picture; arranged the rooms they had never seen; planned the daily life of which they had not the smallest experience.
Twice in our lives we can play at Make-Believe—once when we are children, once when we are lovers. And these are the happiest times of our lives. We are not commoners then; we are emperors. We touch the sceptre and it is a magic wand. We rule the world, shaping it as we will, dropping from between our fingers all the stony obstacles that would interfere with its plasticity. Between childhood and love, and between love and death, the world rules us and bruises us. But in childhood, and again in love, we rule the world.
So they ruled their world.
That night Mary prayed her George might pass his examination—a prayer to make us wise folk laugh. The idea of our conception of the Divinity deliberately thrusting into George's mind knowledge that he otherwise had not, the idea of the Divinity deliberately prompting the examiners to questions that George could answer—these are ludicrous to us in our wisdom. We have the superiority of my simple Mary in point of intelligence; well, let us hug that treasure and make the most of it. Because we miss the sense of confidence with which Mary got from her knees; passed into her dreams. With our fine intellects we should lie awake fretting such troubles. These simple, stupid Marys just hand the tangle on and sleep comforted. They call it Faith.
Yes, but isn't it grand to be of that fine, brave, intellectual, prove? Rather!
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