Cold Pastoral (18 page)

“Darling,” he pleaded, “go back! Begin with the morning and tell me about the little rites you used to make. Phil hasn't my vulgar curiosity.”

Nor your interest in things like that, she thought to herself.

For his sake she went back, recalling the wonder of that hot-cold day and presenting it to him with vivid memory.

“I know, Mary,” he said sensitively, “our incredible silver thaws! They're very heady. Now tell me about your lovely superstitions.”

David was very satisfactory, driving his car with a timeless rhythm. Very freely she described Josephine's rites for her family.

“Then,” he said with a smile under his black moustache, “it's a moot point whether you were lost or held.”

“Only here, not in the Cove. I'll be a story as long as the Cove.”

“Immortality indeed,” he drawled in his leisured voice. “But what I'm so curious about is how you felt and what you did. Four days is a lot of time to think and feel.”

“There were lots of times I didn't think at all. I was never thirsty as I had snow to eat. Philip said I got light-headed, and imagined the Little People. They looked so pretty in the moonlight,” she said retrospectively.

David's tone was a little dry.

“With all due respect to Philip, my sweet, even he must admit those conditions took time to develop. Come on, darling, empty your mind.”

Waiting, he heard her voice, tentative at first, collecting impressions and experiences that had never found vent in words.

“At first when I knew I couldn't get home the sun was still shining and it didn't seem cold. I remembered Uncle Rich, and how sensible he was when he was held. I did what he did, turned my coat inside out and made the sign of the Cross, and walked on for a long time. But it didn't do any good, so I turned my coat back, because I thought if I was going to be held I would like to be held right side out.”

David laughed out loud. “Mary, I adore you.”

“Then, David, I tried to remember sensible things about the poor man's compass. I knew the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and the junipers pointed to the east. That meant the junipers would be bending away from the sun at that time of the day. That should have been a help, but it wasn't much. I didn't seem to be able to remember where the sun rose and set in the Cove. I tried to put myself back in my bedroom and play it was morning on a sunny day, but it was worse than a sum you couldn't do. Sometimes, when Miss Good does an Algebra problem let
x
equal the unknown quantity, I think that
x
might have helped me. But I didn't know about
x
until I came to town. By that time it was getting dark and I felt cold. I walked to a clearing and found a drift raised up like a wave. It seemed to say stay. I knew Pop lay on spruce-boughs when he went to camp, so I broke off what I could. It was very hard, as the trees were all frozen. They were held, too. A few low down made enough to lie on. I sat down first and thought I'd eat the slice of bread. I hadn't eaten it before because Mom said to keep it until I was well out. It was on the way to my mouth when I thought of Molly Conway.”

“Yes,” he said, “Philip told me about her. The changeling who found you.”

For a moment she paused, seeing poor Molly Conway. “Because of her, David, I stopped eating the bread. I trusted the Little People, but not that much. I was afraid I might lose my looks.”

“It would have been a loss,” he said, smiling at the road.

“So,” she said with a long sacrificial sigh expressing her cold and hunger, “I put the slice of bread under my feet and lay down. Funny enough, I went straight to sleep. I'll never forget it when I woke up. The moon was above me all alone in the sky. There wasn't a star. It was white, awfully white everywhere, and the trees were like ghosts rapping together from a little wind. They sounded more like bones than boughs. It was a glass world, shining in the moonlight. It seemed to get into my head, and when I closed my eyes I saw moons like glass plates. I felt queer, so opened them and ate a bit of my roof. Then I
know
I saw the Little People, just as I like them, with shiny dresses and silver wings. They danced and danced without a sound and ran up to my feet and back, as long as I watched. It was like a game, and I remembered laughing out loud. Then I went to sleep again, and when I woke it was dull and heavy and all the silver was gone. It felt damp and grey and the sky looked like water. A few snowflakes came down and I thought Mother Holle was making her bed. You know, David, when it snows—”

“Yes, I know—Grimm!”

“I tried to get up, but I couldn't, because the backs of my rubbers were frozen to the ground and I didn't feel my hands at all. I took off my mitts and I saw my fingers were gone. I knew what to do and I dug them into the roof of my house, and by the middle of the morning they came back. How they tingled, David! It was much worse than the frostbite, so I let them go again. When I woke up I didn't know whether I had any feet or hands. After that it got mixed and I only knew when it was dark and light. Sometimes I'd be myself and think of Mom home washing dishes and then I'd be seeing the Little People hopping around me. When the snow fell in big flakes I thought it might cover me, but it fell so lightly that I scarcely felt it. I was sure I was the only person left in the world. Everybody had died, and though I felt queer I didn't feel sick. I thought I had to die, but it was easy and the silence was lovely. When I was free and running round I used to be sorry for the trees and flowers because they had to stay in the same place. But when I was part of the ground I felt part of it, as if I was just another plant or something that was dying to come up again in the spring. The wind used to sing me to sleep, and it was white and cold, and I felt like winter. David,” she almost screamed, looking into his expressive face, “you've got a tear in your eye.”

Without the smallest embarrassment he pulled at the handbrake, stopping by a clump of spruce trees, sheltering a round blue pond.

“Yes,” he confessed. “I was always an emotional fool.” He extracted a large handkerchief and wiped his glasses, and she thought his eyes looked naked without them.

“Mary,” he told her in adult language, “people write learned books about the things you've said so simply. They exhaust themselves talking about microcosm in relation to macrocosm, which, in simpler form, is man in relation to the great whole—”

“Talk sense, David,” she said in Benedict's manner.

He laughed, starting his car again.

“You remind me of cold dew, and then…”

There was silence, while she watched the country with irresponsible eyes. David recalled her again.

“I suppose there were many materialists who believed nothing but the bare outlines of your adventure.”

She examined his face and then answered with great illumination, “I suppose you mean the people who said I was cracked.”

“Probably,” he said with a slight grimace, “though I hate slang from a dryad mouth.”

The Fitz Henrys were exacting! Tim was the only human who thought she was right as she was. Driving through the country she occupied herself with the making of a man. Philip, David and Tim were shaken up in a bag to make a blend.

“Mary?”

“Yes,” she said very politely.

“Have you told Philip how you felt in the woods?”

“Of course not,” she said at once.

“Why?”

“He doesn't want to hear.”

David gave her a very acute sidelong glance.

“What makes you say that?”

She hesitated.

“Tell David,” he said beguilingly.

Instinct told her what she said would stay with him.

“Philip,” she said quickly, “is only interested in Mary Fitz Henry.”

“M'mm,” he said, frowning. “No room for Mary Keilly?”

“None,” she said lightly, as if it didn't matter.

“Do you mind?”

“No, of course not. Philip is—”

“I know, darling, like St. Joseph.”

They both laughed together with sunny mutuality.

A wide curve brought them in view of the sea. The world fell away in a valley, full of alders and spruce, and a pair of waterfalls frothing as twins. There was enough beach for a whole shore. Descending, the road flattened and rose again to the height of a headland. Then David stopped beside a rustic fence with one row of dark trees. Peering through, she could see a long, low house.

“This, Mary, is my humble abode.”

“It's grand for a cottage,” she said, impressed.

“A few minor comforts, my dear. Out you get.”

Through a rustic gate they went up a gravel path ending in a one-storyed garage concealed by a trellis. Morning glory climbed up, straining in the air like young question-marks. The house stood in a big square, sloping to a fence with a gate, opening on the headland. The sea seemed endless, widening away to dim land making a bay.

“Let's look at the sea first,” he suggested, walking down the slope. The only garden had been suppressed to herbaceous borders growing at the base of the solid fences. Pale perennials seemed dimmed by a flaunt of peonies.

Mary Immaculate was running, sniffing and savouring.

“David, how gorgeous to smell the sea without fish. It gives you a chance to smell the earth, too. I love it. I killed one of Mater's plants just to get that wet smell.”

The fact did not seem to depress him. He was smiling at the way her hair blew back from her face. Limping behind, he quoted to her back: “The divine earth sent forth new grass and dewy lotus, crocus and hyacinth!”

“David,'' she said reverently, “what lovely things you know!”

She brought up on her feet, frankly admiring his range. He went ahead, smiling at the sea.

“I was preparing for you all winter, Mary, by reading how much Greek and Roman poetry is identified with nature. You see, there
is
a unity. Come on,” he invited, opening the gate.

With a wild young spurt she rushed through.

“Stop!” he almost roared.

She brought up on a brink. Poised on an overhanging bank she saw it fall steeply away. Steps broken by several platforms descended to the beach. Fastened to the fence was a bench built for long-gazing. David sat down, grabbing her with a long arm.

“You're a reckless little fool. You nearly went over.”

“The sea couldn't drown me,” she said omnipotently. “I was born on it.”

“It couldn't wet you either, I suppose?”

Searching his face, she knew he was more amused than irritated. Her mind leaped ahead to her lunch. He would let her eat with supreme indifference to well-balanced food.

“David, you're lovely,” she said from a full heart.

“Like St. Joseph, I suppose?”

“No,” she said definitely. “St. Joseph is much more particular.”

“SO YOUNG AND SO UNTENDER.”

H
er introductions were providential, weighted with cues lending hints of direction. She entered no one's life unobtrusively. Mild presentations and maidenly shrinkings did not belong to her. Her quality of youth could be piercing, blinding those of “gone by” with the light of “to come”. Her step was impulsive, long and flowing from the hips as if to annihilate distance to many Meccas. Because she was Mary Immaculate of many identifications, her nose had begun to similize the Fitz Henry nostril. Her blood had been oxygenated at birth. She was born to breathe big.

Felice arrived at a time when she was unable to meet the boat. Signalled on Sunday morning, Mary Immaculate saw it enter the harbour, on her way to eleven o'clock Mass. There was an interminable sermon, the antithesis of the day.

Outside summer was in its prime. Inside, sunlight streamed through the stained-glass robes of saints and martyrs. Patches of blood-red, purple and blue coloured the congregation. Muffled through the panes came the sounds of the world. There seemed to be barks, shouts, swishes, and a sense of humanity urged hither and thither. Summer was fugitive, overfull of sea, sky and gourmand youth. As if oppressed with red blood, the priest preached of modesty, virtue, the brevity of bathing-suits and the audacity of shorts.

When the congregation was unleashed it surged in one leap from the thong of the Mass. Separating herself, Mary Immaculate ran under a stone arch bearing an exalted statue of St. John. When she arrived at the Place she found Felice and David had gone to the cottage.

Mary Immaculate could regret him as a delightful time-waster, an incessant talker and a frequent playmate, until he went with Philip on the train. He returned just as he left; pale, leisured and full of other conversation. He spoke of sportsmen he had met, flies he had not used, books he intended to read and silvery salmon he had not caught. Philip said nothing, but looked refreshed and well. Lightly bronzed, he unpacked a box of delicately smoked salmon and some fat trout lying in moss. Almost at once he put his holiday behind him in a quick change to the dark clothes of his profession.

Mary Immaculate's disappointment was mitigated by Philip's intention of motoring her to the cottage. It appeared Rufus had not travelled well and needed to be settled at once. Costing three pounds to transport, his appetite had failed and he had refused his first land meal.

Early afternoon found the mater immovable in a canopied chair on her lawn. The air was drowsy, insects idle and languid in their hum. Philip went without conscience. Feeling the measure of his mother's content, it bequeathed him his own. Further comfort in the disposal of his patients released him to the enjoyment of Mary Immaculate. Gay in a sprigged dress with a drawstring neck, she sat up with forward-gazing eyes. Lady Fitz Henry was training her to a control of her legs and arms, but she found it impossible to loll. Ease against cushions lessened the scope of vision. Rounding the curve descending to David's village, the sea appeared blue, green and lucent with copper paths. People bathed or stretched their bodies on smooth grey stones. She felt naked flesh must rise from the sea, stained with colour.