‘I can see Mercy all in grey,’ Belle sang dreamily.
For the future was a dream.
‘You take Mercy, Rose, for a little,’ suggested Laura, offering the parcel of her child.
‘She is as well with you, miss,’ said the woman, quite unmoved and positive.
‘You are suited to each other,’ she added.
It did, indeed, seem as though this grey-skinned woman were made of a different stuff.
So that Laura felt wrung.
‘But if people should laugh at “Mercy”,’ she had to protest, ‘could we not give her a second name? Mary, for instance?’
‘Ah, people!’ Rose replied.
Then Laura knew that she herself must suffer any derision or opprobrium.
During this intercourse Belle was to some extent mollified by discovering Mercy to be the most amusing creature.
‘A whole chain of dreadful bubbles! Give her to me, Lolly,’ she insisted.
‘Then if Mercy it must be, I will speak to my uncle, and ask him to arrange with Mr Plumpton,’ Laura said. ‘There is no reason why the christening should not take place at once.’
‘Thank you, miss,’ said Rose.
So it was arranged.
But the morning that Mercy was dressed for the font, they began to suspect that her mother had overslept, and on going at last to rouse her maid, Laura Trevelyan discovered that she was gone.
Rose Portion had turned aside her face. The watery blood had stained the pillow, her leather tongue was already stiff, in fact, this poor animal had suffered her last indignity, with the result that the girl who had arrived breathless, blooming with expectation and the roses she had pinned at her throat, was herself turned yellow by the hot wind of death. She was chafing her arms for some time beside the bed. She was gulping uglily, and touching the poor, living hair of the dead woman, her friend and servant.
The christening of Mercy was, very properly, postponed. Instead, her mother was buried at the Sand Hills after a day or two had elapsed, and to that burying-ground the Bonners drove, in the family carriage and a hired fly, for there was the grateful Mr Plumpton to be considered, and Cassie, who was remembering Ireland, and Edith, the young girl, her red knuckles stuffed for the occasion into a first pair of gloves. The mourners smelled of fresh crêpe, supplied by the George Street store, and of the refreshment with which some of the weaker had fortified themselves. These sad smells were soon straying amongst those of baked ivy and thirsty privet at the cemetery gates, where there was an urn, besides, in which someone had left half a dozen apples to rot. The poor, sandy soil soon provided most difficult going, especially for the women, whose heels sank, and whose skirts dragged dreadfully. There were times when it seemed to the ordinarily unimpeded Belle that they were making hardly any progress; nor could the merchant help but suspect, while holding up his distressed wife, that the sun was burning a hole in his back. As for Mrs Bonner, she did suffer a good deal, less in sorrow for her dead servant, than from the presence, the very weight of Death, for while she had been struggling up the crumbly slope, recalling the different illnesses that had carried off her relatives and friends, He had mounted pick-a-back, and there He rode, regardless of a lady’s feelings.
Rather an isolated part of the cemetery had been chosen for the grave of Rose Portion, the emancipist servant, but, of course, as the conciliatory Mr Plumpton pointed out, the whole ground would in time be opened up. So they straggled on towards the mound, and a tree from which wind or insects had torn the foliage, leaving its essential form, or bones.
Now, when the party stood before the grave, and sun and wind were fighting for possession of the black clothes, it was Laura Trevelyan who saw clearest. The bright new box tossed and bumped as they lowered it. Then there was a thump and a spurt of sand, to reply to such human life as persisted in its arrogance. The girl who was watching flung aside the bitter hair that was blowing across her mouth. The terrible body of the dead woman, with its steady nostrils and its carved hands, was altogether resigned, she saw again, through the intervening lid. But what of her own expectant soul, or tender roseflesh of the child? Each grain of merciless sand suggested to the girl that her days of joy had been, in a sense, illusory.
While the thin young clergyman was strewing words, great clouds the colour of bruises were being rolled across the sky from the direction of the ocean. There was such a swirling and whirling that the earth itself pulled loose, all was moving, and the mourners lowered their heads, and braced their feeble legs to prevent themselves from being sent spinning.
Only Laura Trevelyan appeared to stand motionless upon a little hummock.
Laura is so cold, Aunt Emmy lamented. She shivered inside her hot dress, and tried desperately to cling to some comfort of the parson’s words.
But Laura was calm rather than cold, as, all around her, the mourners surrendered up their faces to the fear of anonymity, and above, the clouds were loading lead to aim at men. After the first shock of discovery, it had been exhilarating to know that terrestrial safety is not assured, and that solid earth does eventually swirl beneath the feet. Then, when the wind had cut the last shred of flesh from the girl’s bones, and was whistling in the little cage that remained, she began even to experience a shrill happiness, to sing the wounds her flesh would never suffer. Yet, such was their weakness, her bones continued to crave earthly love, to hold his skull against the hollow where her heart had been. It appeared that pure happiness must await the final crumbling, when love would enter into love, becoming an endlessness, blowing at last, indivisible, indistinguishable, over the brown earth.
‘We can do no more for Rose,’ Mr Bonner was saying; otherwise everyone might have continued to stand.
When she had resumed her body, and noticed the little mound that they had made for her friend, the clods of earth accused Laura’s exaltation, and she went away quickly after the others, holding her clumsy skirt.
As soon as they reached the vehicles, the ladies and the servants climbed inside. They were congratulating one another with elaborate relief that the threatening storm had not burst. But they looked nowhere in particular, certainly not at one another, for the skin of their cheeks had dried, and was feeling too tight. As Jim Prentice and the man from the livery stable were gathering up the reins, Mr Bonner led the parson behind the carriage to pay his fee. Hungry Mr Plumpton, whose name did not fit his form, had been standing there for some other purpose, he would have liked it to appear, but did also have to eat. Mr Bonner rewarded him substantially, for he was only too relieved to escape. And the young parson became gay. The shadow of death was lifted, and all were smelling the sea breeze and the good chaff which the horses had beslavered in their nosebags.
Life resumes possession thus simply. Mr Bonner was again stalking in the midst of his smoothly ordered women, in his impregnable stone house. Laura Trevelyan’s baby grew. She washed it, and powdered it, and wrapped it up tight, but with that humility which lately she had learnt, or rediscovered, for humility is short-lived, and must be born again in anguish.
Similar phases mark the cycle of love. Could I forget my own husband? Laura asked, as she nursed the baby that was playing with her chin. Yet, she did forget, frequently for whole days, and then was conscience-stricken. As one takes one’s own face for granted, so it was, at least she hoped, staring at her reflection in the glass. He is never farther removed, she said, looking at her own, woman’s face. Moreover, there was the baby, that visible token of the love with which she was filled. So a mother will persuade herself.
One evening after she had put her baby in its cot, and deceived it into sleeping, she had gone down and found her uncle talking to a stranger in the hall.