Mary Olivier: a Life Part 83

She remembered how beautiful and strong he used to be, when he danced and when he played tennis, and when he walked up and down the hills. His beauty and his strength had never moved her to anything but a happy, tranquil admiration. She remembered how she had seen Maurice Jourdain tired and old (at thirty-three), and how she had been afraid to look at him. She wondered, "Was that my fault, or his? If I'd cared should I have minded? If I cared for Mr. Sutcliffe I wouldn't mind his growing tired and old. The tireder and older he was the more I'd care."

Somehow you couldn't imagine Lindley Vickers growing old and tired.

She gave him back the books: Ribot's _Heredity_ and Maudsley's _Physiology and Pathology of Mind_. He held them in his long, thin hands, reading the t.i.tles. His strange eyes looked at her over the tops of the bindings. He smiled.

"When did you order these, Mary?"

"In October."

"That's the sort of thing you do when I'm away, is it?"

"Yes--I'm afraid you won't care for them very much."

He still stood up, examining the books. He was dipping into Maudsley now and reading him.

"You don't mean to say you've _read_ this horrible stuff?"

"Every word of it. I _had_ to."

"You had to?"

"I wanted to know about heredity."

"And insanity?"

"That's part of it. I wanted to see if there was anything in it.

Heredity, I mean. Do you think there is?"

She kept her eyes on him. He was still smiling.

"My dear child, you know as much as I do. Why are you worrying your poor little head about madness?"

"Because I can't help thinking I may go mad."

"I should think the same if I read Maudsley. I shouldn't be quite sure whether I was a general paralytic or an epileptic homicide."

"You see--I'm not afraid because I've been reading him; I've been reading him because I was afraid. Not even afraid, exactly. As a matter of fact while you're reading about it you're so interested that you forget about yourself. It's only when you've finished that you wonder."

"What makes you wonder?"

He threw Maudsley aside and sat down in the big armchair.

"That's just what I don't think I can tell you."

"You used to tell me things, Mary. I remember a little girl with short hair who asked me whether cutting off her hair would make me stop caring for her."

"Not _you_ caring for _me_."

"Precisely. So, if you can't tell me who _can_ you tell?"

"n.o.body."

"Come, then.... Is it because of your father? Or Dan?"

She thought: "After all, I can tell him."

"No. Not exactly. But it's somebody. One of Papa's sisters--Aunt Charlotte. You see. Mamma seems to think I'm rather like her."

"Does Aunt Charlotte read Kant and Hegel and Schopenhauer, to find out whether the Thing-in-itself is mind or matter? Does she read Maudsley and Ribot to find out what's the matter with her mind?"

"I don't think she ever read anything."

"What _did_ she do?"

"Well--she doesn't seem to have done much but fall in love with people."

"She'd have been a very abnormal lady if she'd never fallen in love at all, Mary."

"Yes; but then she used to think people were in love with her when they weren't."

"How old is Aunt Charlotte?"

"She must be ages over fifty now."

"Well, my dear, you're just twenty-eight, and I don't think you've been in love yet."

"That's it. I have."

"No. You've only thought you were. Once? Twice, perhaps? You may have been very near it--for ten minutes. But a man might be in love with you for ten years, and you wouldn't be a bit the wiser, if he held his tongue about it.... No. People don't go off their heads because their aunts do, or we should all of us be mad. There's hardly a family that hasn't got somebody with a tile loose."

"Then you don't think there's anything in it?"

"I don't think there's anything in it in your case. Anything at all."

"I'm glad I told you."

She thought: "It isn't so bad. Whatever happens he'll be here."

XIII.

The sewing-party had broken up. She could see them going before her on the road, by the garden wall, by the row of nine ash-trees in the field, round the curve and over Morfe Bridge.

Bobbing shoulders, craning necks, stiff, nodding heads in funny hats, turning to each other.

When she got home she found Mrs. Waugh, and Miss Frewin in the drawing-room with Mamma. They had brought her the news.

The Sutcliffes were going. They were trying to let Greffington Hall. The agent, Mr. Oldshaw, had told Mr. Horn. Mr. Frank, the Major, would be back from India in April. He was going to be married. He would live in the London house and Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe would live abroad.