Chapter 7

(She cries again, but her eyes are sparkling through the rain.)

MR. MORLAND(with spirit). He has got as far as that, has he! Does he propose that this marriage should take place to-morrow?

MARY ROSE(eager to soften the blow). Oh no, not for quite a long time. At earliest, not till his next leave.

MRS. MORLAND.Mary Rose!

MARY ROSE.He is waiting down there, Mummy. May I bring him in?

MRS. MORLAND.Of course, dearest.

MR. MORLAND.Don’t come with him, though.

MARY ROSE.Oh! (She wonders what this means.) You know how shy Simon is.

MR. MORLAND.I do not.

MRS. MORLAND.Your father and I must have a talk with him alone, you see.

MARY ROSE.I—I suppose so. He so wants to do the right thing, Mother.

MRS. MORLAND.I am sure he does.

MARY ROSE.Do you mind my going upstairs into the apple-room and sometimes knocking on the floor? I think it would be a help to him to know I am so near by.

MRS. MORLAND.It would be a help to all of us, my sweet.

MARY ROSE(plaintively). You—you won’t try to put him against me, Daddy?

MR. MORLAND.I would try my hardest if I thought I had any chance.

(When she has gone they are a somewhat forlorn pair.)

Poor old mother!

MRS. MORLAND.Poor old father! There couldn’t be a nicer boy, though.

MR. MORLAND.No, but— (He has a distressing thought.)

MRS. MORLAND(quietly). Yes, there’s that.

MR. MORLAND.It got me on the quick when she said, ‘You won’t try to put him against me, Daddy’—because that is just what I suppose I have got to do.

MRS. MORLAND.He must be told.

MR. MORLAND(weakly). Fanny, let us keep it to ourselves.

MRS. MORLAND.It would not be fair to him.

MR. MORLAND.No, it wouldn’t. (Testily.) He will be an ass if it bothers him.

MRS. MORLAND(timidly). Yes.

(SIMONcomes in, a manly youth of twenty-three in naval uniform. Whether he has changed much since breakfast-time we have no means of determining, but he is sufficiently attractive to make one hope that there will be no further change in the immediate future. He seems younger even than his years because he is trying to lookas if a decade or so had passed since the incident of the boat-house and he were now a married man of approved standing. He has come with honeyed words upon his lips, but suddenly finds that he is in the dock. His judges survey him silently, and he can only reply with an idiotic but perhaps ingratiating laugh.)

SIMON.Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! (He ceases uncomfortably, like one who has made his statement.)

MR. MORLAND.You will need to say more than that, you know, Simon, to justify your conduct.

MRS. MORLAND.Oh, Simon, how could you!

SIMON(with a sinking). It seems almost like stealing.

MR. MORLAND.It is stealing.

SIMON(prudently). Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

(From the ceiling there comes a gentle tapping, as from a senior officer who is indicating that England expects her lieutenant this day to do his duty.SIMONinflates.)

It is beastly hard on you, of course; but if you knew what Mary Rose is!

MRS. MORLAND(pardonably). We feel that even we know to some extent what Mary Rose is.

SIMON(tacking). Yes, rather; and so you can see how it has come about. (This effort cheers him.) I would let myself be cut into little chips for her; I should almost like it. (With a brief glance at his misspent youth.) Perhaps you have thought that I was a rather larky sort in the past?

MRS. MORLAND(sarcastically). We see an extraordinary change in you, Simon.

SIMON(eagerly). Have you noticed that? Mary Rose has noticed it too. That is my inner man coming out. (Carefully.) To some young people marriage is a thing to be entered on lightly, but that is not my style. What I want is to give up larks, and all that, and insure my life, and read the political articles.

(Further knocking from above reminds him of something else.)

Yes, and I promise you it won’t be like losing a daughter but like gaining a son.

MRS. MORLAND.Did Mary Rose tell you to say that?

SIMON(guiltily). Well— (Tap, tap.) Oh, another thing, I should consider it well worth being married to Mary Rose just to have you, Mrs. Morland, for a mother-in-law.

MR. MORLAND(pleased). Well said, Simon; I like you the better for that.

MRS. MORLAND(a demon). Did she tell you to say that also?

SIMON.Well— At any rate, never shall I forget the respect and affection I owe to the parents of my beloved wife.

MR. MORLAND.She is not your wife yet, you know.

SIMON(handsomely). No, she isn’t. But can she be? Mrs. Morland, can she be?

MRS. MORLAND.That is as may be, Simon. It is only a possible engagement that we are discussing at present.

SIMON.Yes, yes, of course. (Becoming more difficult to resist as his reason goes.) I used to be careless about money, but I have thought of a trick of writing the word Economy in the insideof my watch, so that I’ll see it every time I wind up. My people——

MR. MORLAND.We like them, Simon.

(The tapping is resumed.)

SIMON.I don’t know whether you have noticed a sound from up above?

MR. MORLAND.I did think I heard something.

SIMON.That is Mary Rose in the apple-room.

MRS. MORLAND.No!

SIMON.Yes; she is doing that to help me. I promised to knock back as soon as I thought things were going well. What do you say? May I?

(He gives them an imploring look, and mounts a chair, part of a fishing rod in his hand.)

MR. MORLAND(an easy road in sight). I think, Fanny, he might?

MRS. MORLAND(braver). No. (Tremulously.) There is a little thing, Simon, that Mary Rose’s father and I feel we ought to tell you about her before—before you knock, my dear. It is not very important, I think, but it is something she doesn’t know of herself, and it makes her a little different from other girls.

SIMON(alighting—sharply). I won’t believe anything against Mary Rose.

MRS. MORLAND.We have nothing to tell you against her.

MR. MORLAND.It is just something that happened, Simon. She couldn’t help it. It hasn’t troubled us in the least for years, but we always agreed that she mustn’t be engaged before we told the man. We must have your promise, before we tell you, that you will keep it to yourself.

SIMON(frowning). I promise.

MRS. MORLAND.You must never speak of it even to her.

SIMON.Not to Mary Rose? I wish you would say quickly what it is.

(They are now sitting round the little table.)

MR. MORLAND.It can’t be told quite in a word. It happened seven years ago, when Mary Rose was eleven. We were in a remote part of Scotland—in the Outer Hebrides.

SIMON.I once went on shore there from theGadfly, very bleak and barren, rocks and rough grass, I never saw a tree.

MR. MORLAND.It is mostly like that. There is a whaling-station. We went because I was fond of fishing. I haven’t had the heart to fish since. Quite close to the inn where we put up there is—a little island.

(He sees that little island so clearly that he forgets to go on.)

MRS. MORLAND.It is quite a small island, Simon, uninhabited, no sheep even. I suppose there are only about six acres of it. There are trees there, quite a number of them, Scotch firs and a few rowan-trees, they have red berries, you know. There seemed to us to be nothing very particular about the island, unless, perhaps, that it is curiously complete in itself. There is a tiny pool in it that might be called a lake, out of which a stream flows. It has hillocks and a glade, a sort of miniature land. That was all we noticed, though it became the most dreaded place in the world to us.

MR. MORLAND(considerately). I can tell him without your being here, Fanny.

MRS. MORLAND.I prefer to stay, James.

MR. MORLAND.I fished a great deal in theloch between that island and the larger one. The sea-trout were wonderful. I often rowed Mary Rose across to the island and left her there to sketch. She was fond of sketching in those days, we thought them pretty things. I could see her from the boat most of the time, and we used to wave to each other. Then I would go back for her when I stopped fishing.

MRS. MORLAND.I didn’t often go with them. We didn’t know at the time that the natives had a superstition against landing on the island, and that it was supposed to resent this. It had a Gaelic name which means ‘The Island that Likes to be Visited.’ Mary Rose knew nothing of this, and she was very fond of her island. She used to talk to it, call it her darling, things like that.

SIMON(restless). Tell me what happened.

MR. MORLAND.It was on what was to be our last day. I had landed her on this island as usual, and in the early evening I pulled across to take her off. From the boat I saw her, sitting on a stump of a tree that was her favourite seat, and she waved gaily to me and I to her.Then I rowed over, with, of course, my back to her. I had less than a hundred yards to go, but, Simon, when I got across she wasn’t there.

SIMON.You seem so serious about it. She was hiding from you?

MRS. MORLAND.She wasn’t on the island, Simon.

SIMON.But—but—oh, but——

MR. MORLAND.Don’t you think I searched and searched?

MRS. MORLAND.All of us. No one in the village went to bed that night. It was then we learned how they feared the island.

MR. MORLAND.The little pool was dragged. There was nothing we didn’t try; but she was gone.

SIMON(distressed). I can’t—there couldn’t—but never mind that. Tell me how you found her.

MRS. MORLAND.It was the twentieth day after she disappeared. Twenty days!

SIMON.Some boat——?

MR. MORLAND.There was no boat but mine.

SIMON.Tell me.

MRS. MORLAND.The search had long been given up, but we couldn’t come away.

MR. MORLAND.I was wandering one day along the shore of the loch, you can imagine in what state of mind. I stopped and stood looking across the water at the island, and, Simon, I saw her sitting on the tree-trunk sketching.

MRS. MORLAND.Mary Rose!

MR. MORLAND.She waved to me and went on sketching. I—I waved back to her. I got into the boat and rowed across just in the old way, except that I sat facing her, so that I could see her all the time. When I landed, the first thing she said to me was, ‘Why did you row in that funny way, Dad?’ Then I saw at once that she didn’t know anything had happened.

SIMON.Mr. Morland! How could—? Where did she say she had been?

MRS. MORLAND.She didn’t know she had been anywhere, Simon.

MR. MORLAND.She thought I had just come for her at the usual time.

SIMON.Twenty days. You mean she had been on the island all that time?

MR. MORLAND.We don’t know.

MRS. MORLAND.James brought her back to me just the same merry unselfconscious girl, with no idea that she had been away from me for more than an hour or two.

SIMON.But when you told her——

MRS. MORLAND.We never told her; she doesn’t know now.

SIMON.Surely you——

MRS. MORLAND.We had her back again, Simon; that was the great thing. At first we thought to tell her after we got her home; and then, it was all so inexplicable, we were afraid to alarm her, to take the bloom off her. In the end we decided never to tell her.

SIMON.You told no one?

MR. MORLAND.Several doctors.

SIMON.How did they explain it?

MR. MORLAND.They had no explanation for it except that it never took place. You can think that, too, if you like.

SIMON.I don’t know what to think. It has had no effect on her, at any rate.

MR. MORLAND.None whatever—and you can guess how we used to watch.

MRS. MORLAND.Simon, I am very anxious to be honest with you. I have sometimes thought that our girl is curiously young for her age—as if—you know how just a touch of frost may stop the growth of a plant and yet leave it blooming—it has sometimes seemed to me as if a cold finger had once touched my Mary Rose.

SIMON.Mrs. Morland!

MRS. MORLAND.There is nothing in it.

SIMON.What you are worrying about is just her innocence—which seems a holy thing to me.

MRS. MORLAND.And indeed it is.

SIMON.If that is all——

MR. MORLAND.We have sometimes thought that she had momentary glimpses back into that time, but before we could question her in a cautious way about them the gates had closed and she remembered nothing. You never saw her talking to—to some person who wasn’t there?

SIMON.No.

MRS. MORLAND.Nor listening, as it were, for some sound that never came?

SIMON.A sound? Do you mean a sound from the island?

MRS. MORLAND.Yes, we think so. But at any rate she has long outgrown those fancies.

(She fetches a sketch-book from a drawer.)

Here are the sketches she made. You can take the book away with you and look at them at your leisure.

SIMON.It is a little curious that she has never spoken to me of that holiday. She tells me everything.

MRS. MORLAND.No, that isn’t curious, it is just that the island has faded from her memory. I should be troubled if she began to recall it. Well, Simon, we felt we had to tell you. That is all we know, I am sure it is all we shall ever know. What are you going to do?

SIMON.What do you think!

(He mounts the chair again, and knocks triumphantly. A happy tapping replies.)

You heard? That means it’s all right. You’ll see how she’ll come tearing down to us!

MRS. MORLAND(kissing him). You dear boy, you will see how I shall go tearing up to her. (She goes off.)

SIMON.I do love Mary Rose, sir.

MR. MORLAND.So do we, Simon. I suppose that made us love her a little more than other daughters are loved. Well, it is dead and done with, and it doesn’t disturb me now at all. I hope you won’t let it disturb you.

SIMON(undisturbed). Rather not. (Disturbed.) I say, I wonder whether Ihavenoticed her listening for a sound?

MR. MORLAND.Not you. We did wisely, didn’t we, in not questioning her?

SIMON.Oh, lord, yes. ‘The Island that Likes to be Visited.’ It is a queer name. (Boyishly.) I say, let’s forget all about it. (He looks at the ceiling.) I almost wish her mother hadn’t gone up to her. It will make Mary Rose longer in coming down.

MR. MORLAND(humorous). Fanny will think of nicer things to say to her than you could think of, Simon.

SIMON.Yes, I know. Ah, now you arechaffing me. (Apologetically.) You see, sir, my leave is up to-morrow.

(MARY ROSEcomes rushing in.)

Mary Rose!

(She darts past him into her father’s arms.)

MARY ROSE.It isn’t you I am thinking of; it is father, it is poor father. Oh, Simon, how could you? Isn’t it hateful of him, Daddy!

MR. MORLAND.I should just say it is. Is your mother crying too?

MARY ROSE(squeaking). Yes.

MR. MORLAND.I see I am going to have an abominable day. If you two don’t mind very much being left alone, I think I’ll go up and sit in the apple-room and cry with your mother. It is close and dark and musty up there, and when we feel we can’t stick it any longer I’ll knock on the floor, Simon, as a sign that we are coming down.

(He departs on this light note. We see how the minds of these two children match.)

SIMON.Mary Rose!

MARY ROSE.Oh, Simon—you and me.

SIMON.You and me, that’s it. We areus, now. Do you like it?

MARY ROSE.It is so fearfully solemn.

SIMON.You are not frightened, are you?

(She nods.)

Not at me?

(She shakes her head.)

What at?

MARY ROSE.Atit— Being—married. Simon, after we are married you will sometimes let me play, won’t you?

SIMON.Games?

(She nods.)

Rather. Why, I’ll go on playing rugger myself. Lots of married people play games.

MARY ROSE(relieved). I’m glad; Simon, do you love me?

SIMON.Dearest—precious—my life—my sweetheart. Which name do you like best?

MARY ROSE.I’m not sure. They are all very nice. (She is conscious of the ceiling.) Oughtn’t we to knock to those beloveds to come down?

SIMON.Please don’t. I know a lot about old people, darling. I assure you they don’t mind very much sitting in dull places.

MARY ROSE.We mustn’t be selfish.

SIMON.Honest Injun, is isn’t selfishness. You see, I have a ton of things to tell you. About how I put it to them, and how I remembered what you told me to say, and the way I got the soft side of them. They have heard it all already, so it would really be selfish to bring them down.

MARY ROSE.I’m not so sure.

SIMON.I’ll tell you what we’ll do. Let’s go back to the boat-house, and then they can come down and be cosy here.

MARY ROSE(gleeful). Let’s! We can stay there till tea-time. (She wants to whirl him away at once.)

SIMON.It is fresh down there; put on a jacket, my star.

MARY ROSE.Oh, bother!

SIMON(firmly). My child, you are in my care now; I am responsible for you, and I order you to put on a jacket.

MARY ROSE.Order! Simon, you do say the loveliest things. I’ll put it on at once.

(She is going towards the little door at the back, but turns to say something important.)

Simon, I’ll tell you a funny thing about me.I may be wrong, but I think I’ll sometimes love you to kiss me, and sometimes it will be better not.

SIMON.All right. Tell me, what were you thinking as you sat up there in the apple-room, waiting?

MARY ROSE.Holy things.

SIMON.About love?

(She nods.)

MARY ROSE.We’ll try to be good, won’t we, Simon, please?

SIMON.Rather. Honest Injun, we’ll be nailers. Did you think of—our wedding-day?

MARY ROSE.A little.

SIMON.Only a little?

MARY ROSE.But frightfully clearly. (Suddenly.) Simon, I had such a delicious idea about our honeymoon. There is a place in Scotland—in the Hebrides—I should love to go there.

SIMON(taken aback). The Hebrides?

MARY ROSE.We once went to it when I was little. Isn’t it funny, I had almost forgotten about that island, and then suddenly I saw it quite clearly as I was sitting up there. (Senselessly.)Of course it was the little old woman who pointed it out to me.

(SIMONis disturbed.)

SIMON(gently). Mary Rose, there are only yourselves and the three maids in the house, aren’t there?

MARY ROSE(surprised). You know there are. Whatever makes you ask?

SIMON(cautiously). I thought—I thought I had a glimpse of a little old woman on the stair to-day.

MARY ROSE(interested). Who on earth could that be?

SIMON.It doesn’t matter, I had made a mistake. Tell me, what was there particular about that place in the Hebrides?

MARY ROSE.Oh, the fishing for father. But there was an island where I often— My little island!

SIMON(perhaps quite unnecessarily). What are you listening for, Mary Rose?

MARY ROSE.Was I? I don’t hear anything. Oh, my dear, my dear, I should love to show you the tree-trunk and the rowan-treewhere I used to sketch while father was in the boat. I expect he used to land me on the island because it was such a safe place.

SIMON(troubled). That had been the idea. I am not going to spend my honeymoon by the sea, though. And yet I should like to go to the Hebrides—some day—to see that island.

MARY ROSE.Yes, let’s.

(She darts off through the little door for her jacket.)

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