Hetty Dorval (3 page)

So it came that Mrs. Dorval, if it were she, reached the road first, and I had the opportunity of seeing how young she looked, and pretty, too, with a yellow shirt and a soft felt hat, and riding breeches; and how neatly she handled the beautiful mare. She turned in her saddle and waited, looking at me. She must have seen a small figure of the country in a shabby buckskin jacket, riding a pony which could have done with a bit of grooming.

When I came up close to Mrs. Dorval I saw only that her face was very pretty as she smiled gently at me, and so I smiled back, I suppose.

Mrs. Dorval said to me in a very light voice, “Are you riding in to Lytton?” and I said, “Yes.”

Then she said, “What a nice pony, is he yours?” and I said, “Yes.”

And then she said, as we started walking our horses together as though it were taken for granted that we should, “What is your name, little girl?”

Now I would have resented “little girl,” for I was twelve, if it had not been said in that light soft voice of Mrs. Dorval’s. So I said, “My name is Frankie, at least Frances Burnaby,” and then I added, “Mrs. Dorval.”

Mrs. Dorval turned to me with that brilliant expression that I learned to know and said, “How did you know my name?”

I was much too shy to explain that of course everyone in Lytton and for miles round knew her name even if they hadn’t seen her, and that they would know her the minute they saw her; that they knew she “had money,” and had two horses, and a big black dog called Sailor, and lived in the square bungalow standing alone east of Lytton; that a Mrs. Broom lived with her and seemed to do the work, and that Mrs. Dorval never came into Lytton, but that Mrs. Broom did the shopping. I could have told her that people in houses, and on verandahs, and in bedrooms, and in stores, and in stables, asked each other if they knew whether Mrs. Dorval had a husband, and was he dead, and why had she come here? This all swept through my mind, but was so impossible to tell her, that I only stammered, “Oh, I thought you must be.”

We walked our horses side by side, I feeling at the same time diffident and important. Mrs. Dorval did not “make conversation.” I discovered that she never did. It began to seem so easy and natural riding beside her there and no one making an effort at conversation that I was able to steal a few looks at her side face. This was especially easy because she hardly seemed to know that I was beside her; she just took me for granted in a natural fashion. Through the years in the various times and places in which I came to know Mrs. Dorval, I never failed to have the same faint shock of delight as I saw her profile in repose, as it nearly always was. I can only describe it by saying
that it was very pure. Pure is perhaps the best word, or spiritual, shall I say, and I came to think that what gave her profile this touching purity was just the soft curve of her high cheekbone, and the faint hollow below it. Also the innocence of her slightly tilted nose, which afterwards I called in my mind a flirt’s nose, and the slight droop of her mouth whose upper lip was perhaps a little over-full.

We rode along the dusty highway which had a series of hairpin turns at the edge of deep dusty sage-dotted gullies, and this made the distance to Lytton much longer than as the crow flies. We came out on the point of one of the hairpin turns and my ears, which were used to country silences and sounds, heard that sound that will thrill me till I die. I reined Maxey in at once, and, quite forgetting the importance of Mrs. Dorval, pointed up and said, “Look!”

Mrs. Dorval reined in too, and said, “What? Where?” She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up as I did. She could not see as quickly as I could that out of the north came a thin long arrow, high in the sky. Then her eyes picked up the movement of the fluid arrow rapidly approaching overhead, and the musical clamour of the wild geese came more clearly and loudly to us. The valley of the Fraser lay broad below, lit by the September afternoon, and the geese, not too high, were now nearly overhead, travelling fast. The fluid arrow was an acute angle wavering and changing, one line straggling out far behind the other. It cleft the skies, and as always I felt an exultation, an uprush within me joining that swiftly moving company and that loud music of the wild geese. As we gazed, the moving arrow of great birds passed out of sight on its known way to the south, leaving only the memory of sight and sound in the still air. We drew a long breath.

“God,”
said Mrs. Dorval. Then, “What a sight!”

I was brought shockingly to earth. I was quite used to hearing the men round Mr. Rossignol’s stable, and other men too, say “God” for no reason at all. And it goes without saying that the Rev. Mr. Thompson said “God” in church, as it were officially, and that we all sang about God with nothing more than ordinary church-going emotion. But never, never, in our house (except once or twice, Father) or in Ernestine’s house or at Mrs. Dunne’s or in any of our friends’ houses (unless we were saying our prayers) did people ever mention God. It would have seemed an unnatural thing to do, which, come to think of it, is strange. So when I heard Mrs. Dorval say
“God”
in that way, it took her out of the likelihood of Mrs. Dunne’s house or Ernestine’s mother’s, and probably out of the church, and somehow peculiarly connected her with Mr. Rossignol’s stable.

We remained standing there and gazing at the empty sky. Then Mrs. Dorval turned her face on me and I realized all of a sudden that she had another face. This full face was different from the profile I had been studying, and was for the moment animated. Her brows, darker than her fair hair, pointed slightly upwards in the middle in moments of stress and became in appearance tragic, and her eyes which were fringed with thick, short, dark lashes opened wide and looked brilliant instead of serene. The emotion might be caused by pain, by the beauty of fighting geese, by death, or even by some very mild physical discomfort, but the impact on the beholder was the same, and arresting. Ordinarily, Mrs. Dorval’s full face was calm and somewhat indolent. The purity was not there, but there was what I later came to regard as a rather pleasing yet disturbing sensual look, caused I think by the over-fullness of the curved mouth, and by those same rounded high cheekbones which in profile looked so tender. Whatever
it was, it is a fact that the side face and the full face gave not the same impression, but that both had a rapt striking beauty when her eyebrows showed distress.

“Can we often see that?” she asked. “Will it ever come again? Oh Frankie, when we stood there and the geese went over, we didn’t seem to be in our bodies at all, did we? And I seemed to be up with them where I’d really love to be. Did you feel like that?”

That was so exactly how the wild geese always made me feel, that I was amazed. Perhaps Mother and Father felt like that because they, too, dearly loved watching the geese passing overhead, but somehow we would never
never
have said that to each other – it would have made us all feel uncomfortable. But Mrs. Dorval said it naturally, and was not at all uncomfortable, and it gave me a great deal of pleasure to agree with her without confusion and apology.

We began to ride on, talking from time to time, and when we got to the Lytton Bridge, Mrs. Dorval said, “I’m starving, aren’t you? Come home with me and Mouse will give us some tea.”

This was more than I could ever have hoped for, and I did not see that there could be any harm, so I said, “Oh thank you, I’d love to,” feeling very much pleased and impressed. We stopped our horses for a minute on the Bridge, and looked down at the bright water hurrying to be lost in the brown and at the moving line where the one entered the other. Then on the far side of the Bridge we turned up to the left. It happened that as we rode to Mrs. Dorval’s bungalow to have tea we met no one.

When we topped the third slope Sailor came to meet us, barking and wagging and cavorting in his own large way. Mrs. Dorval dismounted and bent to pat Sailor. She called out in
that light voice, “Tea, Mouse, we’re starving! Lots of toast and jam!” and I slid down off Maxey and threw the reins forward over his head. Maxey was very safe that way. Slide the reins over his head and he’d never go away. We went round and stabled Mrs. Dorval’s mare and then we went into the house.

I am not going to describe the house inside because I have seen plenty of houses since, and so has everyone, that are as charming. But it was a revelation to me then, in comfort and colour; so was the little grand piano, and so were the queerly painted book-shelves. Mrs. Broom came to the door of the living-room from the kitchen, I supposed, and gave me a look, and then went back and I heard tea noises. Mrs. Dorval began to ask me about my buckskin jacket, so I told her, and I said, “They make them in white too, and gauntlets for riding; they’re lovely and soft but they’re very expensive.”

“Mouse, do you hear that?” called Mrs. Dorval to the kitchen. “You must order a white buckskin jacket and gloves for me at once. They would be too divine.” I had not heard people say “too divine” before. We didn’t talk like that.

When the tea came in there was tea and toast and jam in a bowl and a fruit cake, not icing cake like we always had. Mrs. Dorval prodded the jam with the spoon. “Something out of a tin,” she said with a little disgust, and she passed it to me. “Have some glue.” When I had helped myself politely I thought it was very nice jam. I decided that Mrs. Dorval must be used to very exalted jam, and admired her all the more even for this.

We were having a lovely time, at least I was, when I looked out of the window and saw the Rev. Mr. Thompson standing at the top of the slope approaching the bungalow as if he were a little puffed with all that climbing. While he was getting his breath he stood and looked at the broad high view.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Dorval,” I said, “but there’s Mr. Thompson.”

“Who,” said Mrs. Dorval, “is Mr. Thompson and where is he?”

“He’s our minister,
there,”
I said, pointing.

Mrs. Dorval looked out of the window. Her face was brilliant with tragedy. “Mouse,” she called in agitation, “do something! Send him away! Give him ten dollars, or fifteen – give him anything – he’s come to collect! I don’t want him!”

Mrs. Broom came out of the kitchen and looked almost with distaste at Mrs. Dorval. “Sit down and don’t be childish,” she said, “he’s only come to pay you a call.”

“But I don’t
want
a call!” said Mrs. Dorval with a surprised air, but still in her unhurried way. “I don’t want
any
calls.” She looked at me. “I think,” she said, “it would be better if you slipped into the bedroom because I
don’t
want him to think I’m having callers.”

This all seemed very queer to me, but I did as I was told and went into the bedroom with my cup of tea and sat down rather behind the door but where I could see Mrs. Dorval. Evidently Mrs. Broom let Mr. Thompson in and then she went back to the kitchen. Next I saw Mrs. Dorval get up and hold out her hand in a trustful way just as though she had been wanting Mr. Thompson to come and see her very much indeed. I couldn’t hear what they said at first as they were moving about and then sitting down; but after that I couldn’t help hearing every word, and I could still see Mrs. Dorval but not Mr. Thompson.

“Then you are English,” continued Mr. Thompson.

“Well … no,” said Mrs. Dorval.

“Is your husband English? Or I should say, was your home there?”

“No,” said Mrs. Dorval.

There was a pause.

“I hope your husband will be able to join you here,” said Mr. Thompson.

“Oh, I
do
hope so,” said Mrs. Dorval. She spoke little, but her words did not come snubbingly as Mrs. Broom’s would have done, but gently.

“A reader, I see,” said Mr. Thompson.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Dorval.

Mr. Thompson got up and evidently went over to the book-shelves where I had seen a lot of yellowish paper books.

“Ah, you read French!”

“Yes, I read French.”

“I should like you to meet my wife. She would be very glad to call upon you, she is a reader too.”

“Call?” said Mrs. Dorval vaguely and sweetly. “Oh, not call, you have no idea … Oh, you are so kind, but at present …” and she looked tenderly at Mr. Thompson.

Mr. Thompson murmured something about “restored health” and then after a little more unsatisfactory conversation, said what I had been waiting for him to say, “And now shall we have a word of prayer?”

“Oh,” breathed Mrs. Dorval, sitting motionless.

I knew what Mr. Thompson was doing. I had seen it many times. When Mr. Thompson said, “And now shall we have a word of prayer?” all of us who were assembled in the room rose, turned round, dropped upon our knees, put our elbows on our chair seats, folded our hands, and closed our eyes. Mr. Thompson did the same. Then he prayed out loud. We didn’t like doing it very much but we all liked Mr. Thompson, so of course we did it.

Mrs. Dorval sat motionless and then said, “Do I have to
do that too, or would it be all right if I just did this?” and she clasped her hands and closed her eyes and looked like a saint in ecstasy.

Mr. Thompson in process of getting down on his knees mumbled that that would be all right. There was a silence and then Mr. Thompson said slowly, with pauses, in a sincere and special voice, “Our Dear Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for Thy goodness to us in this our pilgrimage on earth. Thou knowest each of us though we are strangers to one another. Thou knowest our secret hearts, our troubles and our joys. Do, we pray Thee, bless these Thy servants. Keep in our hearts our love to Thee and our love to one another. Bless, our Dear Father, those who live within this house and make them a blessing. We ask this all in the name of Thy Dear Son our Lord.” (I had heard this good prayer before and nearly knew it.) Then Mr. Thompson said the Lord’s Prayer, but he said it alone. There was stillness and a pause in the room.

When after this silence Mr. Thompson rose to his feet, Mrs. Dorval opened her eyes. “Oh, that was beautiful!” she murmured, looking up at Mr. Thompson. “Did you really mean that, Mr. Thompson? It was so kind to ask a blessing on us! I don’t know when I’ve been so touched. I do appreciate it, so very much.” And she stood up to say good-bye. The room seemed full of understanding.