03 Mary Wakefield (26 page)

That glimpse of him was enough. This was a spot where she could not meet him. It was too beautiful in the sunset, with the trees bending their load of burnished apples, and an oriole singing his farewell song from the very branch where hung his empty nest. Mary ran swiftly away from the path and among the trees till, at the far side of the orchard she came to the shed where barrels and crates were stored to be convenient for the packing. She entered it and stood in a dim corner draped with cobwebs. A broken toy of Renny’s lay on the floor. She felt safe from Philip here. She pressed her hand on her side to quiet the beating of her heart.

The oriole indolently let fall his notes as though he felt the silence of autumn creeping close to him. The chipmunk ran chattering across the roof of the shed, then peered in at Mary through a crack. She heard Philip’s step turning in that direction. The chipmunk had given her hiding place away. Now, as he scrabbled about, he sent a sifting of dust down through the crack. Mary waited for the step to pass. It did not and Philip now stood in the doorway.

At first he could not see her, then her form separated itself from the gloom. He saw her white hands and face.

“Why did you hide from me?” he asked.

“Hide? I — just came in here.”

“You hid from me and I will tell you why. You were ashamed because you’d treated me so badly.”

Mary’s eyes dilated. She was frightened by the very solidity of his accusing presence. After a silence, in which she collected her strength for defence, she said:

“I don’t think I have treated you badly — unless you mean —”

“Well — what?”

“Not giving you proper notice?”

“You know that is not what I mean?’

“Then you mean about my engagement?”

“Yes.”

“It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it? It amounts to my leaving the children without a —”

He interrupted, “Why will you go on talking to me as an employer?”

She answered, with a new note in her voice, “I don’t know how you want me to talk to you, Mr. Whiteoak. I never have known.”

“
Mr. Whiteoak
!” He shot out his name with scorn.

“Surely you don’t expect me call you by your Christian name!”

“I expected you,” he returned fiercely, “to treat me as a friend. I behaved in a friendly way to you, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Do you call it treating me like a friend to let me go off with my mother, all unsuspecting that you were carrying on a courtship with Clive Busby and were, in fact, engaged to him — you were engaged to him before I left, weren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You kept it all secret. Then, at the moment I return, my mother tells me what everyone but myself has known all the while. Why did you hide it from me?”

Mary came from behind the barrels that smelt sweetly of new wood. There was a look of challenge in her eyes.

“I didn’t think it mattered to you,” she said.

“Not matter to me! Not after the way we waltzed together! Do you forget that, Mary?”

It was the first time he had called her Mary. It was the first time he had spoken of the dance which she looked back on as the most precious moment of her life. She put both hands on the barrel behind her and leaned against it as though for support.

“I shall never forget it.” He could barely hear her words.

“And yet,” he went on, the flush deepening on his face, “you’ve engaged yourself to another man. I don’t understand you.”

“And I don’t understand you.” Her voice had come back to her. It was almost harsh. “You never noticed me on the night of the dance — not till everyone but Lily was gone. Then you remembered that I had been there. You looked about and saw me and thought, ‘Poor thing, I really should give her the pleasure of a dance with me!’ We waltzed and our steps suited. We danced too well. Your mother didn’t like it. I think she was right. A man who cares nothing for a girl shouldn’t dance with her like that.”

“But I did care!” he cried.

“For that one waltz,” she answered, almost as though she forced coldness on herself, “you cared. But since then you’ve hardly given me a thought.”

“I have given you a thousand thoughts. But I’m not one of those men who can’t let a woman they’re attracted to, alone. I looked on you as rather remote — detached.”

In a shaken voice she asked, “After the waltz? I thought I let myself go shamelessly.”

“Mary — did you love me that night?”

“No, for I didn’t think. I hadn’t a thought in my head.”

“You were just carried away by the pleasure of it. So was I. Let’s look at it like that. Let’s think calmly of our relations. They were friendly from the start, weren’t they?”

“Yes.”

“There was even something special in them.”

“Yes.”

“Then Clive appeared on the scene.” Philip came closer to her and gently took one of her wrists in his hand. “Tell me, did Clive come between us from the start? Was it love — almost at first
sight? It must have been, because he hasn’t been here very long.”

She drew her hand away and the wrist he had held tingled as though a briar had bound it.

“How can I tell?” she asked, and then she broke out, “Clive couldn’t come between us because — you weren’t there!”

“I wasn’t there — in your affections, you mean.”

“Yes … Clive loved me. He wanted to marry me.”

“And you love him?”

“Yes.”

“And you never felt anything approaching love — for me?”

“How can you be so cruel, Mr. Whiteoak! You have no right —”

“It’s you who are cruel, Mary.” He spoke with a childlike appeal, deliberately putting it in his voice and his eyes, she thought, and steadied herself to answer:

“If you loved me you kept your love well hidden. There have been weeks when you have scarcely looked in my direction.”

“I was happy just to feel that you were under the same roof. I thought you …”

“Tell the truth,” she interrupted wildly. “You did not give me a second thought. You were satisfied with your fishing — the life you lead — and no wonder. I don’t think I’ve ever known a man more happily placed. You’ve everything.”

“I have an indolent nature. I’m willing to let things take their course.”

“Then, let them take their course. You know what it is.”

“Good Lord God!” he shouted, “am I to lose you without raising my hand to prevent it?”

“It’s too late.”

He could see the beat of her heart, in her throat.

“That means,” he said, more quietly, “that you did — perhaps still do — love me.”

She looked into his eyes, without speaking.

“Can you love two men, Mary?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“It’s impossible! Or it’s not the same sort of love. I think you
feel affection, kindness toward Clive. I think you love me … But you don’t feel kindness toward me, Mary.”

“What kind of love do you feel for me,” she cried, “when a few scornful remarks from your mother were enough to make you shun me for weeks?”

“I think you shunned me too. I think we both were a little shy. We’d felt an emotion we weren’t prepared for.”

“Perhaps.” She hesitated and then brought out what had so rankled in her mind. “I’ve wondered what emotion you felt when you drove Miss Craig home, with her head on your shoulder.”

He was so disconcerted that he was for a moment comical, then he made a grimace.

“Discomfort,” he said. “Acute discomfort. Nothing more. I swear I said nothing that should have made her feel sentimental and by the time we were round the bend in the road she was sitting up properly. Muriel has never had any real attraction for me, but, all the while you’ve been at Jalna, Mary, my love for you has been taking a greater hold on me. You have heard of entertaining an angel unawares. I’ve done that with my love for you.”

“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t say such things.” She shook her head from side to side as though looking at some object that moved her to pity. And she repeated, “It’s too late.”

“Now I’m conscious,” he continued, as though she had not spoken, “all through me, of how much I love you.”

She stepped swiftly past him into the orchard. Then, facing him, said:

“I can’t treat Clive like this. I can’t listen to such words from another man. Do you think I have no loyalty in me?”

“Then, you’re going to marry him?”

“Yes.”

He followed her and put his arm about her.

“I won’t let you.”

“Nothing can stop me. I’ve promised.”

“You don’t love him.”

“I love him dearly.”

“Not as you do me.” Both his arms were about her and he held her close to him. The enchantment she had felt in his touch, on the night of the dance, now flowed through her, intensified to the point of ecstasy. The oriole, his plumage gilded by the sun’s last rays, may have felt so, as he poured out his song.

Philip bent his face to hers whispering, “My dearest, sweetest, Mary … My darling one … I won’t let you go … You can’t make me … Kiss me, Mary.”

She returned his kisses.

“There’ll be a moon tonight, Mary,” he said. “We’ll go out in the moonlight together.”

“No.” She put her hands on his chest and would have pushed him from her but he would not let her go.

For an enchanted moment they were as still as though turned to stone. Then Philip was roused by clumping steps on the orchard path. He released her and they saw a farm labourer, Noah Binns, drawing near, his dinner pail swinging in his hand, his pleased grin showing black and broken teeth, though he was still young.

Noah Binns’ little pig’s eyes were fixed on them in curiosity but, to show that his mind was occupied by other affairs, he remarked:

“Bugs is breedin’”

“Bugs! What bugs?” asked Philip.

“Tater bugs. Where there was one, there’s ten.”

He clumped on.

Mary and Philip stood looking after him. Their moment was broken. They didn’t know what to say. Then Mary gave a little laugh. “What a strange creature! Every time I meet him he says something about bugs or worms or rot or decay.” She laughed nervously.

“He enjoys thinking of life like that … He saw us, Mary.”

“Does that mean he’ll tell?”

“Of course. But it doesn’t matter.”

“It matters terribly to me, as I’m going to be married so soon. People will talk. But I needn’t mind. I’m going far away.”

“Mary, are you being deliberately cruel?”

“I’m trying to put this afternoon behind me.”

“You can’t! No more than I can. It would be there between you and Clive, if you were to marry him … But you can’t marry him … It wouldn’t be fair to him, Mary, loving me as you do.”

She had turned her face away from him but now she looked into his eyes. “What has just passed,” she said, “was only a little moment in our lives.”

“It has made everything different,” he said, “I knew I loved you but — now I know you love me.”

“You loved me!” she cried. “Then why in God’s name didn’t you say so?”

“I was a fool … I was willing to drift along.”

“Now it’s too late.”

“Mary,” he took her hand and drew her back into the shed where the air was heavy with the smell of apples. “Let’s talk this over. It’s not too late. No one can keep us apart.”

She suffered herself to be led. Her eyes were wide and shining with tears. They were tears of pity for him and for herself. Each one was the haven the other had sought. What was either but a fragile being whose life might, at any moment, be engulfed? She raised her face to his and put her arms about his neck.

And, though, at the moment there was no strength in her, power from her passed through him like a flame. He felt capable of sweeping her up in his arms, away from the very face of the earth. He kissed her hands, the little hollow of her throat, her lips.

“Now let me go,” she said, and he did not restrain her.

She followed the orchard path, crossed the field where the old pear tree stood whose fruit now shone like gold. The windows of the house shone too, flaming in the sunset. But, as she drew near it, the sun sank behind the pine wood and the house stood in chill twilight. She met no on in the passages. The sound of Nicholas’ playing on the piano came from the drawing-room. Mary went straight to her own room.

N
OAH
B
INNS PLODDED
on. His boots had so many times been wet through and dried in the oven that they no longer seemed to be made of leather but of some rough and corrugated wood. Their toes turned stiffly upward, their laces dangled as he clumped over the road. Every now and again he gave out a “
Whew
” of relish.

He saw Lily Pink coming toward him along the quiet road. She carried a bottle of blackberry cordial, a present from her mother to Adeline Whiteoak. She smiled gently at Noah Binns and enquired about his mother’s rheumatism.

“It’s no better, thank you, and it’ll get worse, as I keep a’tellin’ her.”

“But that’s not a cheerful way to talk to her. My father says you should always comfort a sick person.”

“That’s your father’s business, Miss, to comfort the sick and bury the dead. He’s paid for it. I’m not.”

Lily looked at him blankly, unable to find anything to say.

“Would you be going in the direction of Jalna?” he asked.

“Yes,” She answered coldly. What business was it of his?

“Then, Miss, I advise you to keep away from the apple-packin’ shed.”

“Why!”

Noah shook his dinner pail up and down, listening to the rattle of the tin cup inside, as though the sound afforded him sensuous pleasure. Then he answered, “There’s love-makin’ goin’ on by the shed.”

Lily drew back from him in horror.

“What — why —” she stammered.

He grinned at her discomposure. “Don’t mind — don’t mind — it’s all over now, I guess. I guess you’d be safe goin’ that way now.”

She stood fascinated.

Noah went on, “I guess the boss has a right to make love to the governess, or whatever they call her, if he wants to, but she’s been traipsin’ through these woods steady with that there Mr. Busby, hasn’t she?”

“I don’t know,” answered Lily, fiercely. She left him and hurried in the direction of Jalna but took the path outside the orchard.