MRS

MRS. KEITH’S CRIME

CHAPTER IX

WE have been three days here at Marseille. There was some mistake about the boats; they only call once a fortnight now, so it will be nearly a week before we start for Malagra. I am glad of it. These days are very quiet and peaceful, of a great calm to come. Molly looks so well that it makes my heart beat quick with hope to look at her. The travelling did not tire her. The journey from Calais to Paris she slept through, and then the strange sights and trees of Paris—for we stayed a night there—delighted her, and made her open her blue eyes wide with wonder, and break out into little ripples of laughter, almost as if she were suddenly quite well again.

‘It is so nice, mummy!’ she cried, with a long-drawn sigh of content. We strolled on through the streets, watching the light-hearted French people. In the Rue de Rivoli there was a man selling dolls that, when wound up, danced on a little metal table. We stood watching them for a few minutes.

‘Would you like one?’ I asked Molly.

‘Yes, mother,’ she answered, in a whisper; and so for a franc and a half we bough one, and all the way for Paris to Marseille it was with her. But she tired of that long journey, and once or twice began to cry for Jack.

‘Oh, mummy dear, where is Jack? Do tell me where Jack really is. Won’t he ever come back?’

And I could only answer, ‘He was very ill, my darling, and now he is fast asleep. You would not like dear Jack to suffer pain?’

‘But I do want him so,’ she sobbed; ‘and perhaps he would get well again.’

‘Won’t mother do for you, my sweet? She loves you, and do everything in the world for you. Won’t poor mother do?’ I asked.

‘Oh, but you are not little, mother dear, and Jack is, you know: and then Jack sings so beautifully. I do want Jack.’

But while she was still sobbing we were getting nearer and nearer to Marseille, and, putting my head out of the window, I caught sight of the gilt statue of Notre Dame de la Garde, which towers above the city. I held Molly up to see it, and she gave a cry of surprise and was satisfied, and did not even see the tears I brushed away, or, if she did, looked on them as belonging to the past—the past of just a few minutes since, as her own had done, and to be forgotten as they were.

It seems so strange to be here alone with Molly. We are never apart for five minutes. the thought of work comes now and then, but since Jack died my hands have lost their sense of power, and feel as if they could only wait on Molly. It satisfies and soothes me, this life lived in her service, and it forces me to be cheerful, knowing that a hundred times a day her eyes seek my face that she may set her little heart by its expression.

We have spent the says almost entirely out in the sunshine, beneath the southern sky, in sight of the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Many parts of Marseille are dreary enough, but surely the Cannebière is one of the brightest, grandest streets in Europe? Molly is delighted to walk by my side slowly along the wide pavement, beneath the great awnings outside the cafés. They are wonderful cafés ; we are afraid to enter them, but we can see the palms and the looking-glasses and the pictures, as we go slowly past. Outside, on the pavement, are the little round tables, and the happy French folk drinking their coffee, and talking or reading the little newspapers with all their usual eagerness and all the blessed forgetfulnes of care that is so characteristic of the nation. We wander on toward the quay, and look at the great ships and tall masts, and I, wondering whence they have come and whither they are going, tell Molly of stange lands far away; and she, understanding better since she left her home that the world stretches far beyond it, listens as if she were listening to some new fairy-tale. We stop as we come back, and turn down the Rue de Grignan, and coming to the post-office, ask if there are any letters. To my surprise, there is one from the sardine. He has found out about the alteration in the boats, and says how sorry he is at the delay; but I am not. We shall not be happier in Malaga than we are here. We walk on till we come to the Cannebière again, and linger by the shops that have placed their wares on wide stalls outside their windows, and Molly talks of spending her little store of money; but when we get nearer to them the things that have looked so bright in the distance are all commonplace and useless, and most of them are English, and even Molly is not tempted. She likes the flower-market better than anything else in Marseille. We go there every morning. The first time she saw the women in the raised wooden stalls so like pulpits, with the great bouquets on the counter, and the baskets brimming over with flowers at their feet, she laughed aloud for joy.

Yesterday we saw an Arab sitting on the ground, selling black beads made of rose-leaves, and baskets of coloured cloth, and charms of shells, and all manner of little odds and ends. We had nether of us even seen an Arab before, and we stood together looking at him like a couple of foolish children. To Molly he was merely a strange being, with a brown face and a red fez and funny clothes; but to me he was a whole past suddenly risen up before me, and swiftly I thought of the people he had descended from, of their teaching and their learning, of the universities they had founded and the palaces they had built, of all their glories and triumphs, and of the beggars and the ruins that remained. All in a moment they seemed mixed up before my eyes in the odd, incoherent manner that all things pass before me now, for nothing is clear or consecutive. The Arab tried to tempt us with his wares, and I bought one of the rose-leaf necklaces for Molly. They say there is a charm in them, but it looked so black about her neck that it made me shudder.

We spent hours on the Prado, looking up at the trees and the little bits of blue sky we can see between the green leaves, or listening to the trickling of the fountains, and watching the busy groups and the carriages and the tramcars going past in the Cannebière beyond. We sat on one of the seats for a long time yesterday, after our bargaining with the Arab, and amused ourselves by watching the dancing sunshine that came through the leaves. And Molly looked so well and happy that even with the past fresh and sore upon me, I felt that if only the world might stand still at that one moment I could for ever be content. Did not Keats envy the shepherd and the shepherdess on the urn, and the happy chase through all the ages? If only the world would stand still as it had for those two lovers, how good it would be. But that would not be life, for crystallisation is death; and yet for death so sweet would not life be a trifling price to pay? Sometimes it is not warm enough to sit long on the Prado, and then we walk slowly up and down; and if Molly looks tired or cold, I take her up in my arms and carry her. Her weight makes me stagger now and then, but it is only because I am so broken down, for she is very light, and it is a blessed thing to carry her in my arms again, as I used in the little garden at home when she was still a baby; it makes me think of Jack, the first little one of all, whose coming made our hearts sing for joy in the happy days gone by.

This is a wonderful city. Every day it grows more impressive; for, as it knows one better, it seems to take one into its confidence, and to tell one how full it is of memories. I am never tired of watching the water, and thinking of the ships that sailed upon it hundreds of years ago, or of wondering what it all looked like when the Greeks came and built their city. It seems to be like a dream now, just as these days are like a dream. Oh that the waking might never come!

How odd are some things of which we can give no rational account. Last night, while Molly was in bed, I sat by her, as I always do—half through the night sometimes, for it seems a pity to waste too much of this most precious time in sleep. And as I watched her, in her little white gown, with her head upon the pillow, she looked like some pure spirit come into the world to bless it. ‘She will not surely go?’ I thought; and then something—ah, what was it?—seemed to say to me half pityingly. ‘Can you not submit? There may be a worse fate still than seeing your little one die; a day may come, perhaps, when you will wonder that you cried out at Death, that only lingered near in mercy, and to save you.’ To save me? ‘There are some things worse than death,’ Mrs. Marshall said. Oh, but it is all nonsense and madness and folly. What can anything matter more if Molly does but live? If Molly lives and gets stronger, then Fate is powerless, and all the world may try its worst, for all blows have fallen. Pain and poverty or anything in the world may come if this one little life remains. Sometimes at night, when I hear her short, quick breathing, I stand still and tremble and clasp my hands in fear; but then she turns in her sleep, and is easier, and a new spell of hope comes again; and so the days go by.

We went an excursion to-day, in one of the tramcars with the seats that reverse. It seemed a pity to spend money on a carriage, and the people in the tramcars looked so happy that we longed to be among them. It is terrible how one hungers for happiness when one is still young; it is only the old that can be content with sorrow, and make it their accepted lot. We looked at each other with satisfaction as we took our seats. We both felt the same, I think—like two children overdone by fate, and longing to be happy. We went far out to a suburb, but its name I have already forgotten. When the car stopped and went no farther, we got down and walked about, and found some trees that looked like sturdy green carubas, the evergreen of John the Baptist, and, in the half-dazed fashion I have got into, they set me dreaming again. And then we came to a long white sunny road, with seats here and there, and a high stone wall on one side, and the blue sea on the other. Over the wall some bright flowers hung in masses. I picked a bunch and made a wreath and put it round Molly’s straw hat, and she looked so lovely that it made me laugh right out. Laugh out! though it is not six weeks since I laid my boy to rest, and the sun shines on us is shining on the grass above him. My heart quaked at the sound of my own merriment; and yet—and yet, Molly dear, get well, and I will laugh for you, my sweet.

As we got up from the seat, Molly gave a cry of wonder and surprise, for a long green lizard darted past, and she had never seen one before. We stood still, hand in hand, and watched it for a moment as it disappeared among the stones. Then we crossed the road and went over to the sea, and walked a little way, but she looked so tired that I carried her, and so we went on till we came to a café. It was a little countrified place, with a table outside and two chairs slanting into the sandy ground, and a red curtain hung across the doorway to keep the inside cool. We entered and rested. It was half a restaurant too, for they had bread and wine, and very hard cheese and fruit. It had some coffee, and Molly ate some small black grapes, while the old Frenchwoman looked at her, and told me she was beautiful; and when I smiled and seemed pleased she added that she did not look like a strong child, as if she thought it well to show that she had discriminating eyes, and wished to qualify the pleasure she had given. But she was a kind old woman, and when she left she came out of the door and stood watching us on our way, as though she thought it a good thing to keep so sweet a little child in sight as long as possible. The tramcar seemed as if it would never come, so when a chance fly overtook us we stopped it, for Molly was very tired; but she brightened up as we got in. It was an open fly, and the cushions were covered with red and white striped holland.

‘Such a pretty carriage,’ she said, and sat up proudly on the seat beside me. The soft wind blew back her hair, and I felt proud to think that she was my own little daughter, and wondered what she would look like some day when she had grown to be a woman. She crept a little close to me, and whispered ‘Mother dear, what are you thing about?’ and for answer I put my arms around her and drew her closer, and so we drove to the city of Marseille, and to the hotel.

This morning the ship has come, and we are to sail at four o’clock. We take our last walk down the Cannebière, a last walk among the flowers. We pass the Arab with the beads; there are two or three of his countrymen about to-day. We walk once more along the Prado, looking up at the trees, and sit down on the seat for a few minutes, so that the sunshine coming through the leaves above may fleck us with its gold once more. A few hours later we are driving to the quay, and say good-bye to Marseille, while the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde seems to be watching us on our way to Malaga.

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