Mary Olivier: a Life Part 56

The grey curve of the high road glimmered alongside the moor. From the point where her track joined it she could see three lights, two moving, one still. The still light at the turn came from the Aldersons' house.

The moving lights went with the klomp-klomp of hoofs on the road.

Down in the darkness beyond the fields Garthdale lay like a ditch under the immense wall of Greffington Edge. Roddy hated Greffington Edge. He hated Morfe. He _wanted_ to get away.

It would be all right.

The klomp-klomping sounded close behind her. Two shafts of light shot out in front, white on the grey road. Dr. Kendal drove past in his dog-cart.

He leaned out over the side, peering. She heard him say something to himself.

The wheels slowed down with a grating noise. The lights stood still. He had pulled up. He was waiting for her.

She turned suddenly and went back up the moor by the way she had come.

She didn't want to see Dr. Kendal. She was afraid he would say something about Roddy.

XXIII

I.

The books stood piled on the table by her window, the books Miss Wray of Clevehead had procured for her, had given and lent her. Now Roddy had gone she had time enough to read them: Hume's _Essays_, the fat maroon Schwegler, the two volumes of Kant in the hedgesparrow-green paper covers.

"_Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Kritik der reinen Vernunft_." She said it over and over to herself. It sounded nicer than "_The Critique of Pure Reason_." At the sight of the thick black letters on the hedgesparrow-green ground her heart jumped up and down with excitement.

Lucky it was in German, so that Mamma couldn't find out what Kant was driving at. The secret was hidden behind the thick black bars of the letters.

In Schwegler, as you went on you went deeper. You saw thought folding and unfolding, thought moving on and on, thought drawing the universe to itself, pus.h.i.+ng the universe away from itself to draw it back again, closer than close.

s.p.a.ce and Time were forms of thought. They were infinite. So thought was infinite; it went on and on for ever, carrying s.p.a.ce, carrying Time.

If only you knew what the Thing-in-itself was.

II.

"Mamma--"

The letter lay between them on the hall table by the study door. Her mother put her hand over it, quick. A black, long-tailed M showed between her forefinger and her thumb.

They looked at each other, and her mother's mouth began to pout and smile as it used to when Papa said something improper. She took the letter and went, with soft feet and swinging haunches like a cat carrying a mouse, into the study. Mary stared at the shut door.

Maurice Jourdain. Maurice Jourdain. What on earth was he writing to Mamma for?

Five minutes ago she had been quiet and happy, reading Kant's _Critique of Pure Reason_. Now her heart beat like a hammer, staggering with its own blows. The blood raced in her brain.

III.

"Mamma, if you don't tell me I shall write and ask him." Her mother looked up, frightened.

"You wouldn't do that, Mary?"

"Oh, wouldn't I though! I'd do it like a shot."

She wondered why she hadn't thought of it an hour ago.

"Well--If there's no other way to stop you--"

Her mother gave her the letter, picking it up by one corner, as though it had been a dirty pocket-handkerchief.

"It'll show you," she said, "the sort of man he is."

Mary held the letter in both her hands, gently. Her heart beat gently now with a quiet feeling of happiness and satisfaction. She looked a long time at the characters, the long-tailed M's, the close, sharp v's, the t's crossed with a savage, downward stab. She was quiet as long as she only looked. When she read the blood in her brain raced faster and confused her. She stopped at the bottom of the first page.

"I can't think what he means."

"It's pretty plain what he means," her mother said.

"About all those letters. What letters?"

"Letters he's been writing to your father and me and your Uncle Victor."

"When?"

"Ever since you left school. You were sent to school to keep you out of his way; and you weren't back before he began his persecuting. If you want to know why we left Ilford, _that's_ why. He persecuted your poor father. He persecuted your Uncle Victor. And now he's persecuting me."

"Persecuting?"

"What is it but persecuting? Threatening that he won't answer for the consequences if he doesn't get what he wants. He's mistaken if he thinks that's the way to get it."

"What--_does_ he want?"

"I suppose," her mother said, "he thinks he wants to marry you."

"Me? He doesn't say that. He only says he wants to come and see me. Why shouldn't he?"

"Because your father didn't wish it, and your uncle and I don't wish it."

"You don't like him."

"Do _you_?"

"I--love him."

"Nonsense. You don't know what you're talking about. You'd have forgotten all about him if you hadn't seen that letter."

"I thought he'd forgotten me. You ought to have told me. It was cruel not to tell me. He must have loved me all the time. He said I was to wait three years and I didn't know what he meant. He must have loved me then and I didn't know it."