The Scent of Water (8 page)

“I liked your cousin,” he said. “In her good times she used to ask me to tea with her in that parlor that feels like a cave under the sea. Always cherry cake and tea so strong it nearly knocked you down. And in her bad times Mrs. Baker used sometimes to fetch me to help get her upstairs to bed. She used to kick our shins like a good un.” His boyish grin made her realize that he was not as old as he looked. “But whether it was the good or bad times, I liked her tremendously. She never complained.”

“I’m glad you liked her,” said Mary. “Do you live in the house at the bottom of my garden?”

“No, that’s Roger Talbot on your right.”

Mary smiled at the stocky man. “Nice to have you there.”

“Long may you think so,” he said. “My wife and I are quiet enough but the kids are at the tree-climbing stage. Should they fall out on your side of the wall I hope you will wallop them and send them back again.”

Children, thought Mary, that’s it. Children in the trees looking at me with hostile eyes. A hostile child under the willow. They played in my garden when Cousin Mary was ill. It’s their garden. Aloud she said, “I like children. I taught them for years.”

“You don’t look like a schoolmarm,” he assured her.

“Don’t I?” said Mary coolly. “I’m sorry. I’d like to look like what I admire.”

He laughed. “
Touché
,” he said.

They turned then and drew Jack Beckett into their talk, until there was the sound of a car outside and Mary and Roger Talbot turned to look out of the window. A smart shooting brake had just drawn up and a large man in immaculate tweeds was emerging from the driving seat. Mary saw only his back but she had an immediate impression of opulence and power. Two others, similarly attired, were climbing out behind. The two men with Mary wordlessly communicated and Paul spoke. “Jack, I’ll take Miss Lindsay out at the side door and show her the barn. It’s the one where you keep your car? I know. It’s this way, Miss Lindsay.”

The side door led through a short passage to the yard at the side of the inn, bounded on one side by the orchard. “That was Hepplewhite, the squire,” explained Paul. “He’s in the city, directing companies or something of that sort, but I never do understand what these blokes do in the city. He spends his weekends here, shooting with his cronies, and they come and have drinks before lunch. Forgive us for hurrying you out as we did. The fact is you would have been cornered. You’d have had to dine there tonight and play bridge afterward. He’d have sent the car to fetch you. He wouldn’t have listened to any excuses. He’s not a listener. Neither of them is. They’re most awfully kind but their hospitality seizes you unawares like a spring trap. You know?”

“I know,” said Mary. “Thank you. I’d rather not be trapped on my first day, and I didn’t come here to play bridge.”

They crossed the road to the orchard and leaned on the gate, the scent of the apple blossom coming to them on the light wind. From the crimson of the unopened buds to the white of the fully opened petals, every gradation of rose color was present in flights and drifts on the lichened branches. The apple trees were old and it seemed a miracle that such misshapen age could support this airy lightness.

“Just by our fence, where our garden joins the orchard,” said Paul, “there’s a fallen tree lying in the grass. But it still has a bit of root in the ground and every spring it breaks into blossom and every autumn it bears apples.” He spoke with awe, from the depths of himself, as only one man or woman in a thousand has the power to do. What did that apple tree mean to him, she wondered, and what did this orchard mean? Far more than it meant to her, though she realized that each spring that she lived here it would mean more.

“I’d like to ask you something,” he said suddenly. “If you haven’t come here to play bridge then why have you come?”

The question shot out at her with a directness which she might have thought rude had she not already begun intuitively to understand this man. Suffering had had an effect with which she was familiar. The refusal of self-pity and despair had turned it from lead to fire, burning up the subterfuges and dishonesties below the surface of the inherited veneer of manners and thought that most men and women think are their true selves, and the veneer with them. He was forged now all of one piece, as he and the dog were of one piece, and spoke as he thought, rude or not. The blindness had helped perhaps. She imagined that if you were blind you must either live shut within yourself or seek with others a true and honest communication. Nothing else would be much use in the dark. It was this true communication he was seeking with her, and she with him, and the suddenness of this conversation did not surprise her. Paul was a man to know what he wanted instantly, and if it was right that he should have it he would take it at once if he could. She knew now why he reminded her of John, for coupled with John’s courtesy, as with Paul’s gift of stillness, there had been an alarming honesty, and his capacity for abrupt action, based on lightning decisions of great insight, had made him a naval commander of genius. She would find other likenesses presently, she believed, for already she was as much humbled before this man who was so much younger than herself as she had been years ago before the man who was so much older. With no premeditation she gave him the truthful answer to his direct question.

“Now that I am here, I realize it is to get to know Cousin Mary, Miss Lindsay, whom I saw only once in my life when I was a child, and also to get to know a man who died in the war.”

He seemed to think this a reasonable answer and asked another question. “Before you realized that why did you want to come?”

“For a reason that still holds good. To get to know an England I’ve never known, the England of the deep country, before there’s no deep country left. And also, and this must sound odd to you, it was an act of obedience. I had to come.”

He turned from the gate. “We must get your car, and ourselves, out of the way before the squire comes out. You’ve not lived in the country before?”

“Never. I’m a Londoner.”

“There are people here you’ll like,” he said. “Miss Anderson, one of the three bravest people I know. The other two are Colonel and Mrs. Adams. When they turn up, love them, please.”

“How do you know I am capable of love?” she asked as they walked toward her car. “Steady affection perhaps.”

“If by steady you mean faithful, there you have it; the kernel of love. I imagine men long for God because of that unchanging faithfulness. The rock under the quicksands. The Psalms are full of it.”

When she had put away the car and they were walking down the lane she said, “You are very direct. You haven’t wasted time talking about the weather.”

“Did you want me to?”

“No, but most people have sufficient caution to hover on the brink a bit before they take a header into friendship.”

“The sighted do. The blind don’t have to. One of the advantages of having been blind for a good many years is that you know almost at once what people are like, and if you’re going to get on. Physical appearance, and trying to use it as a relief map to show you the lay of the land, can be distracting. Without the map intuition comes alive. But blindness has its disadvantages and one of them is that you don’t know the time. Should you say I am going to be late for lunch?”

“It’s a quarter to one,” said Mary.

“Dead on time,” he said, and there was profound relief in his tone.

“When I arrived yesterday,” said Mary, “a young woman with beautiful dark hair was painting the front door turquoise. Is she your wife?”

“She’s my wife.”

He spoke in level tones but she was aware of bewildered grief. They had reached a small wooden gate opening from the back garden of Orchard Cottage into the lane, and the dog stopped. His master stopped too, as though at a voice, for the dog had not touched him.

“I think that’s the most wonderful dog I’ve ever seen,” said Mary.

“She’s a good dog,” said Paul, his hand on the dog’s back. “We don’t need the harness in the country, I know my way about so well, but you should see us dashing through the traffic in Westwater, when I have to go to the dentist or something. She and I trained together at Exeter. She’s my second. When Sam died I thought it was the end, but Bess is even more marvelous. She’s still only five years old.” Mary could sense the relief. When the other half of your being can expect a span of life less than a quarter of your own the passage of time must be something you have perpetually to endeavor to forget. “Look out! Mr. Hepplewhite. Good-bye. I believe my wife means to ask you to tea. You’ll come, please.”

He and Bess were inside the garden with the gate shut, and she was leaving the lane for the green with long easy strides. The advantage of long legs was that you could hurry without appearing to do so. Paul had heard the car before she did, but she could hear it now behind her and feel three pairs of male eyes fastened on her back. She was used to this, and sorry for the interested parties when she turned around, for her back was a good twenty years younger than her front. She escaped into The Laurels with a marvelous sense of safety. As Paul had said, you could go deeply in, finding refuge like a cony among the rocks.

M
ARY was sitting under the willow tree writing letters. She sat on her traveling rug on the grass, her back against the tree, for the necessary garden chairs were still only on her priority list. It was still only Sunday morning, yet already she felt that she had lived here for years, so happy was she in this place. Her writing pad dropped to the ground and she let it lie there, for except in the evenings and the mornings this was the last lazy day that she would be likely to have for some time. The next few weeks would be full of business, workmen in the house, decisions to make and comings and goings of all sorts. She would enjoy this idleness while she could. It was quiet under the willow tree, for the Sunday bells were momentarily silent. At seven forty-five this morning they had been clamorous and had not allowed her the late sleep she had planned. They were fine bells, deep-toned, loud and lovely, and she had listened to them with acceptance, but their summons had been imperious, bringing before her mind’s eye the strong square tower against the sky. The church was too big to be exactly a comfortable thing to have just over her garden wall. Who had built it and why had they made it so tremendous? She sat for some while in peace, aware of the trunk of the tree behind her back and the ground beneath her as living presences. Her hands moved over the rough grass and she could smell it, and smell the damp growing smell of the tree. I’m going to spend this day entirely alone, she thought, absolutely alone in this peace and quiet. It was the last time she started a fine day in the country with any such expectation.

And then the bells began again and they sounded louder here than they had in her bedroom. They smote upon her temples and her eardrums and she sat enduring them as one endures the crash of thunder and the roar of wind, with exultation but also with alarm. The noise ceased, the clock struck eleven, and in the silence that followed she must have dozed, for suddenly she was awake and painfully alert. There was not a sound to be heard but she knew she was not alone in the garden. She waited, and beyond the willow tree she was aware of a shadow. This is bad, she thought briefly, but not as bad as if, yesterday, I had entered upon the child. Now the child comes to me.

The willow curtain was parted and a brown barelegged girl in a shrunken cotton frock stood in the aperture. In a flash the expression of peace on her thin face was covered by one of alarm and she would have flown like a bird had Mary not been instantly ready to forestall flight. “Come here, please,” she said. Her hand was held out but the voice was the one that no child had ever disobeyed in her teaching days. This child was immobilized by it. She stood where she was, shaking from head to foot. “Come right inside, please,” said Mary. “Come and sit here by me.”

Impelled by the kind, commanding voice Edith came closer. But she would not sit down. She stood by Mary, looking down at her, her eyes dark with hatred. Mary got to her feet and in her turn stood looking down at Edith, for she must get the ascendancy now, quickly. Hatred, even in a child, or perhaps especially in a child, was a thing of such strength that if it was not overcome at once its growth was quickly a stranglehold. Smiling at Edith she said, “What is your name?” There was no answer and she repeated the question. “What is your name?”

“Edith.”

“You live next door?”

The child nodded sullenly, kicking at a tussock of grass with her sandal.

“Edith, I am sorry if by coming to live here I have trespassed in your garden. This is your garden, isn’t it? And is this willow tree your special place? I am sorry. But the garden is not taken from you. We’ll share it together but it will really be yours, and I will only work in it and sit on the lawn because you allow me to. But I won’t sit under this tree again. This, under the tree, is all yours. I won’t come here again. Come and look at the herbaceous border with me and we’ll think what it would be nice to plant in it.”

Edith followed her and they walked along the moss-grown path together. She was unresponsive but when Mary talked quietly of the flowers they would have, looking down at the thin, clever, sensitive brown face, it was attentive and without hatred.

“Did you think I’d be in church?” Mary asked, when they had twice been the length of the border.

Edith spoke for the first time and her voice, as Mary had expected, was low and rapid with a timbre of music in it. “Yes. Everybody goes to church at eleven.”

“Not you?”

“I was sick this morning. Mother said I needn’t. I don’t like church. Rose and Jeremy do. Rose likes wearing her hat and Jeremy likes the mouse.”

“There are three of you?”

“Two really. Rose and Jeremy. I’m only adopted.”

Mary took Edith’s hand and held it firmly. She did not consider herself an intuitive woman but she spoke now without premeditation. “Will you help me with something? My cousin, Miss Lindsay, had a collection of little treasures that she used to keep under a glass case in the window of the parlor. Mrs. Baker put them way for safety. I want to unpack them and put them back where they used to be. Will you help me?”

Edith was transformed. The sun bursting out from behind a cloud, or a leaping lark exploding into song could scarcely have been more miraculously lovely than the change from misery to joy in her face. “Hurry!” she said, tugging at Mary’s hand.

They ran across the lawn together, Edith racing ahead. Mary had opened the parlor window at the bottom that morning and the child was in the room and dancing with impatience by the time she had reached the conservatory. The night before she had found the glass case and the stand and put them on the table but she had waited for the daylight to unpack the little things. “They’re here,” she said, pulling out the top drawer of the escritoire. But it held only a collection of shabby leather-covered books that looked like old diaries. The two cardboard boxes containing the little things were in the second drawer.

“You have one box to unpack and I’ll have the other,” she said to Edith.

She lifted the glass case off the stand and they sat down together on the floor and began slowly to undo the tissue paper and cotton wool in which Mrs. Baker had wrapped the little things. It was hard to tell which of them was the more excited. One by one they appeared, the treasures of silver and gold, of jade, pinchbeck, glass, ebony and ivory, and Edith greeted each of them with delighted recognition. “Here’s the mandarin who nods his head. Here’s the peacock and the ivory mouse. Here’s the little thimble and scissors in the silver basket. Here’s the bluebird in the cage of golden wire. The lantern with the ruby glass. The dwarf with the red cap. The telescope with Brighton Pier at the end when you look through it. The elephant with a house on his back.” Her voice murmured on in a happy monotone as she deftly put the little things back on the black velvet of the shelves. When Mary placed anything there she immediately altered the position, but without rudeness, and smiling shyly at Mary. Only she knew where they all had to be.

“Did Miss Lindsay show you her little things, Edith?” asked Mary.

Edith shook her head. “No. I never came into the house. I used to look at them through the window. By myself. Rose and Jeremy haven’t seen them.”

“I must have been about your age when I first saw them,” said Mary, and she told Edith about that day of her childhood, making a story of it, remembering for Edith’s benefit how the trees had seemed to move and the old wall and the door had looked like a painted picture. Edith listened gravely and when Mary had finished she said, “Yes, the trees move. I’ve never gone inside the green door, up the steps. I’ve never rung the bell.”

“I’ll ask you and Rose and Jeremy to tea with me,” said Mary. “And you shall ring the bell and come in through the green door.”

She had said the wrong thing. For the first time Edith’s fingers fumbled and a minute tortoiseshell cat with emerald eyes fell to the carpet. Stooping to pick it up she whispered, “By myself.”

“I must ask the others too,” said Mary. “The first time. Other times we will be by ourselves. But if you want the little things to be a secret between you and me for the present, I’ll put them out of sight in my bedroom when you all come.”

Edith looked up. “Not for the present. Always.”

“It’s not right to possess beautiful things by oneself,” said Mary, “and presently you will want to share them.”

“I won’t!” said Edith.

Mary changed the subject. “We’ve unpacked them all,” she said. “But I’m afraid my old cousin must have given some of them away. The things I loved best when I was a child aren’t here. There was a tea set of clear blue glass and a wonderful ivory coach with Queen Mab inside. They were the best of all. You would have loved them, Edith. I wish they were still here.”

Edith’s head was lowered. “I think,” she said in a small voice, “that I’m going to be sick again.”

They ran, gaining the bathroom only just in time. Later, under the willow tree with Edith wrapped in Mary’s rug and imbibing warm milk with apparent enjoyment, Mary asked, “Does your tummy hurt at all?”

“Just sore.”

“It didn’t hurt before you were sick?”

“No, it never hurts.”

Not appendix, thought Mary. What’s worrying the child? “Keep still,” she said. “I haven’t got my books here yet, and so I can’t read aloud to you, but I’ll tell you a story.”

Edith settled herself comfortably, looking up at the domed roof over her head. Mary looked too. The branches sprang from the central stem and curved outward like the ribbed vaulting of some cathedral chantry, and between them the green and gold leaves were stippled on the blue sky. And it’s mine, she thought with awe. This chantry is mine. And then quickly, No, Edith’s. What story should she tell her? She didn’t know the modern children’s classics and she had to turn back to her own childhood.
The Cat That Walked by Itself.
That rather suited Edith. She was a good storyteller and presently there was color in Edith’s lips, her eyes were bright and her body relaxed. Several times during the morning Mary had been aware of singing, so muted that it had been no more than a background to the music of birds and bees, but now twelve o’clock boomed loudly and a moment later the story and the quiet were torn in pieces by the clamor of human creatures let loose. It was not the shrill noise of children let out of school but it would have been but for the restraints of age and good breeding. Then came the banging of car doors and the purring of engines starting up. Edith leapt to her feet and flew out from under the willow tree and down the garden, Mary after her. “You’ve plenty of time, darling,” she said when she had caught up with her at the edge of the copse and had her in her arms.

“Mother said I was to lie on the drawing-room sofa and not move,” said Edith.

Mary took her arms away. “Off with you then. And remember, it’s your garden and your willow tree. Come and go as you like. Good-bye, Edith.”

“ ’Bye,” called Edith. She was already climbing up the apple tree. She stepped nimbly from there to the wall, turned to wave to Mary, then climbed into the mulberry tree beyond. She’s going to be beautiful, thought Mary, watching her. She’s going to be a remarkable woman. Edith suits her. It’s a grave, still name.

She went back to the willow tree and picked up the rug and her writing things. It had been a rewarding interlude, she thought, and now she would go on with her solitary day, though not under Edith’s willow tree. The bell clanged. She ran into the house through the conservatory and went down the passage to the green door. She dragged it back as far as she could, farther than she had ever dragged it before, for the woman standing on the steps would not have been able to squeeze through the usual aperture.

“Good morning,” said Mary. “Please come in.”

“May I? How kind. I felt I couldn’t wait to welcome you to our little community. You know we’re just like one big family here. It’s so charming. My name is Hermione Hepplewhite. My dear, I won’t stay a moment, but my husband and I want you to dine tonight. Now you mustn’t refuse us, for we’ll send the car, and then you’ll have no trouble in finding the way to the manor. I’ve just dropped in after church. Unconventional of me but that’s one of the joys of the country. We’re not conventional here. Not that I ever was. I was a very unconventional girl. I like people. I like
knowing
people. How lovely your wistaria is. Your poor old cousin. Such a recluse. I don’t believe I’ve ever been inside the house. I used to inquire, you know. Bring her flowers, poor soul. How old and strange this hall is. And this pretty parlor. My dear, I feel we’re going to be great friends. It was in my stars yesterday that I should make a good friend and I took to you at once. I always know.”

The kind flood of talk seemed to Mary to be slowly filling the little room, mounting higher and higher up the paneled walls like—no, not like honey, for there was strength and power in honey, but like warm very runny apricot jam. She pulled one of the little gold chairs forward, hoping it would bear Mrs. Hepplewhite’s weight. Laughter was rising in her, and iron determination not to dine tonight, and at the same time a liking for Mrs. Hepplewhite, and admiration for the perfection of her presentation. That was the right word, Mary thought. To say that Mrs. Hepplewhite dressed well was true but inadequate. With her immaculate makeup, in her perfect tweeds, a wreath of soft blue feathers on her beautiful blue-rinsed white hair and a single string of fine pearls around her neck, she presented the countrywoman of wealth and taste as a great actress would have done, everything she wore as integral a part of her presentation as her movements and the inflections of her voice. She
was
a great actress and it was the genius of the actress that Mary admired, though her liking was reserved for a woman now so buried that she might never know her. She did not believe that Mrs. Hepplewhite had been christened Hermione. What had made her choose the name? Did it symbolize for her the new woman she had put on so costingly? One could tell that the attainment had been hard, for there was a look of strain about her kind blue eyes and her color beneath her powder was too high. But for vigorous corseting, and probably dieting, she would have been stout, and Mary realized with keen sympathy that she would have liked to be stout, would have loved to let her tall upright figure sag in private moments of fatigue, but that she never did. The stiff armor of her corsets was a symbol of some dedication in her. To what? To whom? wondered Mary, and returning suddenly to the surface realized that for the last three minutes Mrs. Hepplewhite’s conversation had been mounting about her without her comprehension. “Archer shall fetch you in the Bentley at seven-thirty,” was the final sentence.