The Rosemary Tree Read online

  He did not know about her private joys, though he supposed she had them, as he had. He did not know how his own awareness of beauty, his intense joy in it for a moment or two, and then his willing loss of joy, was in Margary an awareness of delight in others. She knew when people were happy, whether they laughed or not. Indeed at eight years old she knew already that laughter was not always a sign of happiness. Sometimes when people were completely quiet there came to her that wonderful sense of well-being, and her taut nerves relaxed in peace. But there was the other side of the picture. When others were wretched, even though hiddenly so, she was strung up and anguished. A child still, she knew nothing of herself. She did not understand the reason for the deep alternations of mood that afflicted her, and could not know yet how acceptance of the change from well-being to its opposite, offered for those who suffered, could serve them. That supreme usefulness to which her awareness of the needs of others would eventually lead her was a long way in the future, and before she found the bare cell there would be the desert of ineffectiveness to cross, for she was one whose fear and reserve would make it hard for her to have the normal happy traffic with her fellow human beings.

  But now, three miles away, a man and woman laughed within the shelter of a grey rock, and though a minute before her throat had been tight with the tears she could not shed, now her burden was eased and such a sense of joyous well-being came to her body that her shoulders straightened and she lifted her bent head. Her eyes, blue and lovely, the only beauty she had, looked bravely up at Miss Giles. It was not so much because she had been scathingly scolded for errors in arithmetic that she had been so wretched as because of the ugly misery in the mind of the woman in front of her. It had created a miasma of hopelessness in the classroom. The others had not felt it so much because they hated Miss Giles and got a kick out of their hatred. Margary did not hate. She never would. She was like the mother in Herbert Trench’s dreadful poem whose heart had gone on loving the son who had cut it out of her body. But now the hopelessness was gone, sucked up by distant laughter like unhealthy vapors by the sun, and she looked up at her tormentor and smiled.

  Miss Giles was checked in mid torrent, for this was the first time that this thin, meek child, whom she so delighted to punish for her own wretchedness, had stood up to her; not in the obvious way that Pat stood up to her, with cheekiness and rebellion, but in a way that was new to her. The tranquility in the child’s eyes was something that she did not recognize because she knew nothing of it, but it withstood her. She could not go on. She turned to Winkle, who was solacing her anger at Margary being scolded, and her own boredom with lessons she could not understand, by trying to lick ink off her ruler, and was about to tell her sharply to bring her the ruler, that she might apply it to Winkle’s fat palm, but found she could not. As well as tranquility some power of immense delight came through the child Margary, from a far distance, and withstood her. She was not conscious of the power for she had forfeited her right to any awareness of the amazing joy behind the curtain of material things, she had even forgotten that there had once been a time when she had sometimes caught her breath with awe because the curtain had rippled as though with laughter, but there was a half memory of a forgotten memory and she could not go on tormenting these children.

  “Next please,” she said, and put the question that had baffled eight-year-old Margary to nine-year-old Pat.

  Pat answered it accurately, quickly and contemptuously, her contempt being not for Margary’s ignorance but for Miss Giles’s bad temper. Pat had a cool and critical mind. Admittedly Miss Giles was having a difficult time this morning because Miss O’Hara, who taught the little ones, had gone to have a tooth out and she was having to teach the whole school together, but that was no reason for getting in a filthy temper. And what good did it do? You couldn’t teach kids anything by saying beastly things to them and whacking them. What had Margary and Winkle learned at this stinking school? Nothing. She, Pat, had only picked up a rich and varied vocabulary which she dared not use unedited at home, and a knowledge of the nasty ways of nasty women which made her feel ashamed when she remembered them in her mother’s presence. What she knew in the academic sense, and she knew a good deal, she had picked up from studying her school books at home. She wished Father would take Margary and Winkle away from Oaklands. The fire of questions having passed beyond her she looked out of the window and wrinkled her fine brows in perplexity. She wished she could tell Father about Miss Giles. It was all right for her, for she was leaving, but she was worried about Margary left without her protection. She had tried to tell Mother once that they didn’t like school, but Daphne had replied impatiently that of course they didn’t, no one liked school, but one had to go there all the same. And Oaklands was the only private school within reasonable distance. It was expensive, and Father had all he could do to pay the school bills, and Pat ought to be grateful. She didn’t want to go to the village school, surely?

  “Yes,” Pat had replied cheekily, with a flash of her dark eyes, and Daphne had hastily left the kitchen, where this conversation had taken place, lest they have one of their rows. She and Pat were far too much alike and struck sparks from each other. Father, of course, thought Pat, would listen carefully if she told him about Miss Giles, and remove them instantly from Oaklands. But that would be telling tales. Pat had fine, if extremely eccentric, blood in her veins, loyalty and courage. She could not tell tales. She also had strong nerves, a sturdy body and a stout heart, and though she knew Margary suffered at school she did not know how much she suffered. For Margary never complained. She also had a high, if different, brand of courage.

  Pat sighed, removed her gaze from the window, withdrew a sticky striped sweet from the paper bag in her pocket, and popped it into her left cheek. She sucked blissfully for a moment or two and then suffered a pang of apprehension. “Golly, it’s peppermint,” she thought. The aroma might possibly betray her but even had the peppermint not stuck very firmly to a back tooth she would have scorned to take it out. Only cowards went back on things. People of spunk continued in the chosen course. Besides, she was generally equal to Miss Giles after the wretched woman had been getting her knife into poor old Margary because anger quickened her wits. But she took up her pencil and bent her head over the sum she was supposed to be doing, breathing very carefully downwards. She knew a good deal for her age but she was unaware as yet that hot air always rises.

  Margary, stealing a glance at her, thought how beautiful she looked, serious and absorbed like that. She was nearly as beautiful as Mother, only not quite because Mother’s hair was long and wavy and Pat’s was short and straight. But if it was straight it was dark and silky, not sandy and dull like Margary’s, and fell away from the fringe on her forehead in lovely half moon curves on either side of her thin brown face. Pat’s thinness was not angular like Margary’s but lithe and strong, and under the satin smooth skin her cheeks had a warm flush. She had fine dark eyebrows, a short straight nose, full rosy lips and a strong cleft chin. Mother did not have that chin, and it was perhaps a blemish, but Margary liked it because it was comic, and gave Pat’s face the look that Puck had in Father’s illustrated Shakespeare. Pat was always laughing, always equal to things, and Margary adored her.

  “Who is sucking a peppermint?” demanded Miss Giles suddenly.

  There was no answer, and Pat breathed heavily downwards. Miss Giles located the direction.

  “Patricia!” she ejaculated. “Come here at once.”

  Pat leapt to her feet, placed finger and thumb inside her mouth, dragged the offender from the back tooth and held it trium­phantly aloft.

  “Ninepence a quarter at Jackson’s, Miss Giles,” she said. “I can highly recommend them. Will you have one?”

  Miss Giles, now perambulating the room to look at the children’s sums, put a hand against the wall to steady herself. Her head was worse than usual today; in fact she felt, as always, desperately ill. Her chronic nervou
s dyspepsia was driving her nearly mad. Only indigestion, people said. Little did they know! Day after day, night after night, never a moment of ease, and sleep, when it came briefly, nightmare ridden. She had been to doctor after doctor but none of them had been interested because nervous dyspepsia was not interesting and neither was she. No one nowadays ever looked at her twice. Yet she had a good brain and in her youth she had had a fine contralto voice and a deep love of music, and given a good training she could have done something worth while. But everything had been done for the boys, because they were boys, and nothing for her. And now look at the boys, wasters both of them, and all her father’s money lost in paying their debts. She had been left to sink or swim, marry or die. And she had died. For what had her life been but death? One wretched job after another, and everyone hating her because she had acne that no treatment, however expensive, could get rid of, and a dyspeptic temper as maddening as her pain. The money she had spent on medicines! If she could have had, now, the money she had spent on treatments that did no good, and if her father at his death had been able to leave her a mere tenth of all that had been flung in the sink of the boys’ debts, then she could have bought that cottage on a village green that she had longed for all her life and had peace now she was turned fifty; and would not have had to teach these wretched children, in this third-rate little school. Yes, this was a bad school. What were the parents of these children thinking of to send them to such a place? They didn’t know, of course. It was a pleasant looking house. Mrs. Belling appeared the saintliest of old dears. Mary O’Hara had a face like an advertisement for tooth powder and a name like a glamorous film star, and as for herself she did her best to keep out of the way when parents came. . . That detestable, conceited child Patricia Wentworth had come right up to her and was holding out a paper bag of horrible looking sweets, melted by the warmth of the child’s body and sticking together in a soggy mess. Faintness and nausea swept over Miss Giles but through it she was dimly aware of the wicked merriment in Pat’s eyes and the titter of the class.

  “Patricia, go to Mrs. Belling,” she said.

  For a child like Pat it was no punishment, Mrs. Belling being what she was, but it was all she could think of in this moment of weakness. Pat always seemed on the warpath when she was most unwell; and also, she was inclined to think, after that little fool Margary had been scolded. Pat was clever.

  “Thank you, Miss Giles,” said Pat, and vanished from the room with a delightful swirl of her tunic skirt. Only Pat could have made a skimpy inadequate skirt swirl like that. She had the gift of imparting her own vivacity even to the things she used and the clothes she wore. The moment she had gone the titter stopped and the class was silent with apprehension. Without Pat here they were all afraid of Miss Giles.

  All except Winkle who was merely angry and bored. Lessons were fun with Miss O’Hara but she could not understand these grown-up lessons. Nor did she want to. What was the use of arithmetic? It seemed to have no purpose except to make people lose their tempers. She hated it here and decided she had had enough. Up went her hand.

  “Please may I be excused?”

  Miss Giles gave impatient permission but was not deceived by the face of dewy innocence raised to hers. Winkle, too, in her different way, was clever. She arose and stumped off. Dreadful despair, all the worse because it was such a swing of the pendulum from her previous joy, fell upon Margary. Without her two warm brave sisters she was alone indeed, and all the powers of evil were arrayed against her.

  2

  In the passage Winkle bypassed the lavatory and went into the broom cupboard next door. There was a housemaid’s box on the floor and she sat down upon it with much satisfaction. She had a naturally cheerful disposition and could be happy anywhere, but in school hours she was happiest inside the weeping willow on Mrs. Belling’s lawn or inside the broom cupboard. It was the peace and privacy that she liked in these retreats. No one bothered her and she could escape to her country without fear of being seized and dragged back again before she had even had time to knock on the door. Sitting with her fat hands folded in her lap she looked with affection at the whitewashed wall opposite her, and wished the sun would move upon it in the way she liked. But it was a grey day today. She turned towards the small square high window and saw it framing the branch of a plum tree with its blossom white against the grey sky. A ringdove alighted on the branch and swung there. She sighed with contentment and her eyes did not leave the flowering branch and the blue-grey wonder of the bird.

  “Please,” she said softly, “could I go there now?”

  She had a moment of anxiety, wondering if she would be able to go. When she had been very small she had never wondered, the mere flash of a bird’s wing, a snowflake looking in at the window or the scent of a flower had been enough to send her back. Lying in her cot, rolling about on a rug on the lawn, sitting in her high chair eating her bread and milk, she had gone back with ease to that other place. And she had not exactly gone back, she had been lifted back by the small lovely sights and sounds and scents as though it were easier for her to be there than here. But now she was five years old it was easier to be here than there. She could not go back without first secluding herself in some hiding place such as the apple tree at home, the rosemary tree in the manor house garden or the willow tree here, without climbing the steps to the door with the least suspicion of an effort, and that little pang of anxiety lest today she might not be able to make the effort. And always at the back of her mind nowadays there was the fear that the day might come when not only would she be unable to make the effort, but that she would not want to go back. Even now, at home, she did not find herself wanting to go back very often, because it was nice at home. It was here at school that the longing to go back came upon her so overwhelmingly, though not so overwhelmingly as it used to do. Perhaps one day she would have forgotten that she ever had gone back. Nothing would remain of her returns to the other place but a vague longing.

  But that time was a long way off yet, and meanwhile with relief and unspeakable joy she found herself making the effort and climbing the steps. They were silvery steps and might have been made of light, and they led to the low small door in the rock that had a knocker on it, just like the knocker on the door of the doll’s house where Hunca Munca and Tom Thumb had such adventures in the Tale of Two Bad Mice. When Winkle knocked with the knocker the door was opened from the inside. A year ago the door had opened at once but now she sometimes had to wait a little, and just occasionally felt worried lest this time it should not open. A year ago she had been small enough to pass through the door without bending her head, but now she had to stoop. If she got much bigger even stooping would not get her through for it was an exceedingly small door.

  She knocked, waited a moment, the door opened and she stepped through into the branch of swaying blossom. Beside her was the dove and they swung there together in the still grey peace.

  “Coo coo, coo-coo,” said the dove. Winkle never knew quite what it would be that cradled her. It might be golden praise or the blue of purity or scarlet courage, or just light, or just darkness. It depended on the day and the time. They were all good, but the light was very good because it enabled her to see right to the horizons of the country where the mountains were. The darkness was best of all even though she saw nothing and did nothing in it, because it loved her.

  Nowadays she always enjoyed the nearest things first because they were the most familiar, bearing some likeness to the things she had left behind. As she passed on things became more glorious and less familiar. Once, she half remembered, it had been the other way. The things that bore some likeness to the things of this world had been less familiar than what was beyond, and she had passed through them very quickly in her haste to get home.

  Yet though there was a likeness in the silvery whiteness of the flowers about her to the blossoms on Mrs. Belling’s plum tree, that bloomed before the apple tree at home had even stuck out it
s first green spikes of leaves, they were different here from there. They were beautiful there but here they were not just beautiful but beauty. They were so light that they were a foam of whiteness like moonbeams about her, and yet she could lie back on them, and they held her so gently that she felt nothing but the gentleness and yet so strongly that she had never felt so safe. The whiteness was not just something that was clean for the moment, like a newly washed pinafore that trembled for itself, but something that sparkled with a purity that was fearless because it was for ever. The gentleness was not only gentleness but an absence of all violence for always. The strength was not just strength but no possibility of weakness or failure. Everything here was like that. It was two things, and the second thing was always something that made the first thing immortal with its own immortality.

  With invisible sweet airs rocking the fragrance and the light that held her Winkle gazed at the miracle of a plum blossom that swung above her. It seemed to her the same size as she was and so she could see its perfection in a way that she could not do in the world on the other side of the door. But perhaps it was not quite true to say it was the same size as she was, because size did not exist here. It was simply that here she and a flower and a dove were on a complete equality. She could not, here, have trodden on a plum blossom and crushed it. The dove beside her could not have pecked her and hurt her. That sort of thing did not happen here. But the remembrance that she had once trodden on a flower made Winkle look at the blossom with a humble adoration that was the same as being on her knees. Indeed she thought she was kneeling as she looked at the flower face to face. The six white petals were like the sails of a small ship, exactly the size for a child to sail away in upon the sea of peace. They were exquisitely shaped, beautifully shadowed, and veined with light, and a fragrance drifted from them that was the scent of the grey peace. The group of long silvery stamens tipped with gold, rising from the delicate green heart of the flower, were like an angel’s crown. She could look deep into the heart, down into a green cavern of refreshment. It was like drinking cold water when you are thirsty. Beyond the flowers light shone through the silk curtains of the green leaves, and beyond them was depth beyond depth of peace. It held Winkle, and held the dove too as she leaned back against its warm breast.