Chapter 13: With My Mother

THE house where Mary stopped was of red brick, old-fashioned and stiff-looking, and it stood on an old-fashioned terrace, raised high above the road. There was one window beside the door, and two windows above, and two windows again over that.

“Is the whole of the house yours?” I asked, thinking it wasn’t a pretty house, after my dear old country home.

“No,” said she. “Only the dining-room and two back bedrooms.”

Then she went in, leading the way. It was a narrow dark sort of passage, with faded oilcloth on the floor. I groped along after her; and when she turned into the first room, that was almost as dark, Mary struck a light, and nobody was there except ourselves.

“Your mother must be upstairs,” said she. “Sit down, Kitty.”

I did as she bade me, tired enough to be glad to rest after my journey and long walk. I was longing and yet dreading to see mother. What if she turned from me still? if she was always to turn from me for the rest of my life?

Mary put the candle on the mantel-shelf, and it lighted up the room dimly—only a small room, with poor furniture: old black horse-hair chairs, and a black horse-hair sofa, and a table, and a sort of little sideboard.

“I get through my dressmaking in this room,” said she. “Happily I have plenty of work—more than I can do alone. I had to refuse two orders only last week. Why shouldn’t you and I make a good thing of it, Kitty?” and she smiled, to cheer me up.

“I like pretty work, and mother always says I’m quick. But I shouldn’t like to sit all day long in this room.”

“Ah, we can’t always do just what we like in life,” says she quietly; “can we, Kitty?”

“No!” I said.

“The question isn’t so much what we like, as what God likes for us,” says she.

I got up, and gave her a kiss. “Yes, I’m trying to learn that, Mary, I am really.”

“Then you’ll be taught it, dear,” said she. “God always gives us the teaching we need—if we are willing.” And she added in a cheery sort of voice, — “But I don’t mean you to work all day long, and never to have a breath of air. There’s the Durdham Downs quite close—a great stretch of grass and open sky, ever so much wider than your common—and the river and the rocks and the trees.”

“It isn’t all houses, only houses, then?” I said.

“No, indeed,” Mary answered. “You just wait till you’ve been over our Downs. Your mother says she never saw anything to equal them in all her life.”

“I’m glad! I shan’t mind work,” I said, trying to be brave. “Shall I come with you to find mother? And am I to sleep with her?”

“Not at first, I think. I shall put you in my little room, and sleep with your mother myself for a few days. No, sit here, Kitty, and rest. I’ll bring her to you.”

Then Mary was gone; and I stayed alone in the strange room, with everything strange about me; for though we had furniture of our own, it had all been left at Claxton, till we could settle where to go and what to do. I was glad to think we should have our own furniture again some day, and not live among these dingy chairs and tables.

Mary didn’t come back. I went to the window and looked out. It was very nearly dark outside by now. The terrace pavement was muddy, for there had been rain, and three boys were playing on it, shouting and pulling one another about.

As I stood there, watching them, a sudden recollection of Rupert came. I couldn’t say what brought it, except those boys playing together. Rupert and I had often played together many years before. Or it may have been that I was free at last from bondage to Walter Russell, and so I could spring back to my old liking and thoughts of him. Like a piece of whalebone, you know, that’s bent and tied down; but so soon as ever it’s untied, it’ll leap out straight as it was before.