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The Tree of Heaven written by May Sinclair

M >> May Sinclair >> The Tree of Heaven



THE TREE OF HEAVEN

by

MAY SINCLAIR

Author of _The Belfry_, _The Three Sisters_, etc.

1918







PART I

PEACE



I

Frances Harrison was sitting out in the garden under the tree that her
husband called an ash-tree, and that the people down in her part of the
country called a tree of Heaven.

It was warm under the tree, and Frances might have gone to sleep there
and wasted an hour out of the afternoon, if it hadn't been for
the children.

Dorothy, Michael and Nicholas were going to a party, and Nicky was
excited. She could hear Old Nanna talking to Michael and telling him to
be a good boy. She could hear young Mary-Nanna singing to Baby John.
Baby John was too young himself to go to parties; so to make up for that
he was riding furiously on Mary-Nanna's knee to the tune of the
"Bumpetty-Bumpetty Major!"

It was Nicky's first party. That was why he was excited.

He had asked her for the third time what it would be like; and for the
third time she had told him. There would be dancing and a Magic Lantern,
and a Funny Man, and a Big White Cake covered with sugar icing and
Rosalind's name on it in pink sugar letters and eight little pink wax
candles burning on the top for Rosalind's birthday. Nicky's eyes shone
as she told him.

Dorothy, who was nine years old, laughed at Nicky.

"Look at Nicky," she said, "how excited he is!"

And every time she laughed at him his mother kissed him.

"I don't care," said Nicky. "I don't care if I am becited!"

And for the fifth time he asked, "When will it be time to go?"

"Not for another hour and a half, my sweetheart."

"How long," said Nicky, "is an hour and a half?"

* * * * *

Frances had a tranquil nature and she never worried. But as she sat
under her tree of Heaven a thought came that made a faint illusion of
worry for her mind. She had forgotten to ask Grannie and Auntie Louie
and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie to tea.

She had come to think of them like that in relation to her children
rather than to her or to each other.

It was a Tuesday, and they had not been there since Friday. Perhaps, she
thought, I'd better send over for them now. Especially as it's such a
beautiful afternoon. Supposing I sent Michael?

And yet, supposing Anthony came home early? He was always kind to her
people, but that was the very reason why she oughtn't to let them spoil
a beautiful afternoon for him. It could not be said that any of them
was amusing.

She could still hear Mary-Nanna singing her song about the
Bumpetty-Bumpetty Major. She could still hear Old Nanna talking to
Michael and telling him to be a good boy. That could only end in Michael
being naughty. To avert naughtiness or any other disaster from her
children was the end of Frances's existence.

So she called Michael to come to her. He came, running like a little
dog, obediently.

* * * * *

Michael was glad that he had been sent across the Heath to Grannie's
house with a message. It made him feel big and brave. Besides, it would
put off the moment when Mary-Nanna would come for him, to make him ready
for the party. He was not sure that he wanted to go to it.

Michael did not much like going to Grannie's house either. In all the
rooms there was a queer dark-greenness and creepiness. It smelt of
bird-cages and elder bushes and of Grandpapa's funeral. And when you had
seen Auntie Edie's Senegal wax-bills, and the stuffed fish, and the
inside of Auntie Louie's type-writer there was nothing else to see.

His mother said that Grandpapa's funeral was all over, and that the
green creepiness came from the green creepers. But Michael knew it
didn't. She only said things like that to make you feel nice and comfy
when you were going to bed. Michael knew very well that they had put
Grandpapa into the drawing-room and locked the door so that the funeral
men shouldn't get at him and take him away too soon. And Auntie Louie
had kept the key in her pocket.

Funerals meant taking people away.

Old Nanna wouldn't let him talk about it; but Mary-Nanna had told him
that was what funerals meant. All the same, as he went up the flagged
path, he took care not to look through the black panes of the window
where the elder bush was, lest he should see Grandpapa's coffin standing
in the place where the big table used to be, and Grandpapa lying inside
it wrapped in a white sheet.

Michael's message was that Mummy sent her love, and would Grannie and
Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie Edie come to tea? She was
going to have tea in the garden, and would they please come early? As
early as possible. That was the part he was not to forget.

The queer thing was that when Michael went to see Grannie and the
Aunties in Grannie's house he saw four old women. They wore black
dresses that smelt sometimes of something sweet and sometimes like your
fingers when you get ink on them. The Aunties looked cross; and Auntie
Emmeline smelt as if she had been crying. He thought that perhaps they
had not been able to stop crying since Grandpapa's funeral. He thought
that was why Auntie Louie's nose was red and shiny and Auntie Edie's
eyelids had pink edges instead of lashes. In Grannie's house they never
let you do anything. They never did anything themselves. They never
wanted to do anything; not even to talk. He thought it was because they
knew that Grandpapa was still there all the time.

But outside it the Aunties were not so very old. They rode bicycles. And
when they came to Michael's Father's house they forgot all about
Grandpapa's funeral and ran about and played tennis like Michael's
mother and Mrs. Jervis, and they talked a lot.

Michael's mother was Grannie's child. To see how she could be a child
you had only to think of her in her nightgown with her long brown hair
plaited in a pigtail hanging down her back and tied with a blue ribbon.
But he couldn't see how the three Aunties could be Grannie's other
children. They were bigger than Grannie and they had grey hair. Grannie
was a little thing; she was white and dry; and she had hair like hay.
Besides, she hardly ever took any notice of them except to make a face
at Auntie Emmeline or Auntie Edie now and then. She did it with her head
a little on one side, pushing out her underlip and drawing it
back again.

Grannie interested Michael; but more when he thought about her than when
she was actually there. She stood for him as the mark and measure of
past time. To understand how old Grannie was you had to think backwards;
this way: Once there was a time when there was no Michael; but there was
Mummy and there was Daddy. And once there was a time when there was no
Mummy and no Daddy; but there was Grannie and there was Grandpapa. Now
there was no Grandpapa. But he couldn't think back far enough to get to
the time when there was no Grannie.

Michael thought that being Grannie must feel like being God.

Before he came to the black window pane and the elder bush he had to run
down the slopes and jump the gullies on his side of the Heath, and cross
the West Road, and climb the other slope to Grannie's side. And it was
not till you got to the row of elms on Judge's Walk that you had to go
carefully because of the funeral.

He stood there on the ridge of the Walk and looked back to his own side.
There were other houses there; but he knew his father's house by the
tree of Heaven in the garden.

* * * * *

The garden stood on a high, flat promontory jutting out into the Heath.
A brown brick wall with buttresses, strong like fortifications on a
breastwork, enclosed it on three sides. From the flagged terrace at the
bottom of the garden you looked down, through the tops of the
birch-trees that rose against the rampart, over the wild places of the
Heath. There was another flagged terrace at the other end of the garden.
The house rose sheer from its pavement, brown brick like the wall, and
flat-fronted, with the white wings of its storm shutters spread open,
row on row. It barred the promontory from the mainland. And at the back
of it, beyond its kitchen garden and its courtyard, a fringe of Heath
still parted it from the hill road that went from "Jack Straw's Castle"
to "The Bull and Bush." You reached it by a lane that led from the road
to the Heath.

The house belonged to the Heath and the open country. It was aware of
nothing but the Heath and the open country between it and Harrow on the
Hill. It had the air of all the old houses of Hampstead, the wonderful
air of not acknowledging the existence of Bank Holidays. It was lifted
up high above the town; shut in; utterly secluded.

* * * * *

Anthony Harrison considered that he had done well when he acquired West
End House for his wife Frances, and for his children, Dorothea, Michael,
Nicholas and John.

Frances had said that, if he was thinking of her, he needn't buy a big
place, because she didn't want one. But he might buy it for the children
if he liked. Anthony had said that she had no idea of what she mightn't
want, once she began to give her mind to it, and that he would like to
think of her living in it after he was gone. Not that he had any
intention of going; he was only thirty-six (not much older than Frances)
and incurably healthy. But since his wife's attention had become
absorbed in the children--to the exclusion of every other interest--he
was always trying to harrow her by the suggestion. And Frances only
laughed at him and told him that he was a silly old thing, and that he
needn't think he was going to get round her that way.

There was no other way open for Anthony; unless he were to go bankrupt
or get pneumonia or peritonitis. Frances would have been the first to
acknowledge that illness or misfortune constituted a claim. And the only
things he ever did get were loud, explosive colds in his head which made
him a mark for derision. His business was so sound that not even a
revolution or a European war could shake it. And his appearance was
incompatible with his pretensions to pathos.

It would have paid him better to have been small and weedy, or
lamentably fat, or to have had a bald place coming, or crow's feet
pointing to grey hairs; for then there might have been a chance for him.
But Anthony's body was well made, slender and tall. He had blue eyes and
black-brown hair, and the look of an amiable hawk, alert, fiercely
benevolent. Frances couldn't see any pathos in the kind of figure she
happened to admire most, the only kind she would have tolerated in a
husband. And if she _had_ seen any pathos in it she wouldn't have
married it. Pathos, she said, was all very well in a father, or a
brother, or a friend, but in choosing a husband you had to think of your
children; and she had wanted boys that would look like Michael and
Nicholas and John.

"Don't you mean," Anthony had said, "boys that will look like me?"

"I mean," she had answered, "exactly what I say. You needn't be so
arrogant."

_Her_ arrogance had been beyond all bearing since John, the third son,
had been born.

And it was Frances, after all, who had made him buy West End House for
her own reasons. Both the day nursery and the night nursery had windows
to the south. It was the kind of house she had always dreamed of living
in, and of Michael, or Nicky living in after she and Anthony were gone.
It was not more than seven minutes' walk from the bottom of the lane to
the house where her people lived. She had to think about the old people
when the poor dears had come up to London in order to be thought about.
And it had white storm shutters and a tree of Heaven in the garden.

And, because they had both decided that they would have that house
whatever happened, they began to argue and to tease each other. Anthony
had said it was all right, only the tree of Heaven wasn't a tree of
Heaven; it was a common ash. He was one of the biggest timber merchants
in the country and he ought to know. Frances said she mightn't know
much, but she did know that was the kind of tree the people down in her
part of the country called a tree of Heaven. Anthony said he couldn't
help that. It didn't matter what they called it. It was a common ash.

Then she told him he had no poetry in his composition. She had always
dreamed of having a tree of Heaven in her garden; and he was destroying
her dream. He replied that he didn't want to destroy her dream, but the
tree really _was_ an ash. You could tell by the bark, and by the leaves
and by the number and the shape of the leaflets. And anyhow, that was
the first he'd heard about her dream.

"You don't know," said Frances, "what goes on inside me."

She said that if any of the children developed an imagination he needn't
think _he_ had anything to do with it.

"I shan't," said Anthony. "I wouldn't have anything to do with it if I
could. Facts are good enough for me. The children must be brought up to
realize facts."

An ash-tree was a fact and a tree of Heaven was a fancy; unless by any
chance she meant _ailanthus glandulosa_. (He knew she didn't.) If she
wanted to know, the buds of the ash were black like ebony. The buds of
the tree of Heaven were rose-red, like--like bad mahogany. Wait till the
spring and look at the buds.

Frances waited till the spring and looked at the buds, and, sure enough,
they were black like ebony.

Anthony also said that if they were choosing a house for the children,
it was no earthly use to think about the old people. For the old people
would go and the children would remain.

As if to show how right he was, Grandpapa had died early in that summer
of 'ninety-five, one month after they had moved into West End House.
That still left Grannie and Auntie Louie and Auntie Emmeline and Auntie
Edie for Anthony to look after.

* * * * *

She was thinking of them now. She hoped that they would come early in
time to see the children. She also hoped that they would go early, so
that she and Anthony might have their three sets of tennis before
dinner in peace.

There would be no peace if Louie and Edie wanted to play too. The one
thing that Anthony could not stand was people wanting to do things they
couldn't do, and spoiling them for those who could. He used to say that
the sight of Louie anywhere near the tennis court put him off
his stroke.

Again, the faint illusion of worry was created by the thought that this
dreadful thing might happen, that Louie and Edie might want to play and
that Anthony would be put off his stroke and be annoyed, and that his
annoyance, his just and legitimate annoyance, would spoil the
perfection of the afternoon. And as she played with the illusion it made
more real her tranquillity, her incredible content.

Her hands were busy now putting decorative stitches into a frock for
John. She had pushed aside a novel by George Moore and a volume of
Ibsen's plays. She disliked Ibsen and disapproved of George Moore. Her
firm, tight little character defended itself against every form of
intellectual disturbance. A copy of the _Times_ had fallen from her lap
to her feet. Jane, the cat, had found it there, and, purring loudly, had
trodden it down into a bed, and now lay on it, asleep. Frances had
informed herself of the affairs of the nation.

At the bottom of her mind was the conviction (profound, because
unconscious) that the affairs of the nation were not to be compared for
interest with her own affairs, and an attitude of condescension, as if
she honoured the _Times_ by reading it and the nation by informing
herself of its affairs; also the very distinct impression that evening
papers were more attractive than morning papers. She would have admitted
that they owed their attraction to the circumstance that Anthony brought
them home with him in his pocket, and that in the evening she was not
obliged to inform herself of what might be happening. Anthony was
certain to inform her.

Not that anything ever did happen. Except strikes; and even then, no
sooner did the features of the strike begin to get dramatic than they
were instantly submerged in the flood of conversation that was let loose
over them. Mrs. Anthony pitied the poor editors and reporters while
Parliament was sitting. She saw them as rather silly, violent and
desperate men, yet pathetic in their silliness, violence and
desperation, snatching at divorces, and breach of promise cases, and
fires in paraffin shops, as drowning men snatch at straws.

Her imagination refused to picture any end to this state of things.
There would just be more speeches and more strikes, and still more
speeches, going on for ever and ever at home; while foreign affairs and
the British Empire went on for ever and ever too, with no connection
between the two lines of sequence, and no likeness, except that both
somehow went on and on.

That was Anthony's view of England's parliament and of her imperial
policy; and it was Mrs. Anthony's. Politics, Anthony said, had become
static; and he assured Frances that there was no likelihood that they
would ever become dynamic again--ever.

Anthony's view of politics was Mrs. Anthony's view of life.

Nothing ever really happened. Things did not change; they endured; they
went on. At least everything that really mattered endured and went on.
So that everything that really mattered could--if you were given to
looking forward--be foreseen. A strike--a really bad one--might
conceivably affect Anthony's business, for a time; but not all the
strikes in the world, not all the silly speeches, not all the meddling
and muddling of politicians could ever touch one of those
enduring things.

Frances believed in permanence because, in secret, she abhorred the
thought of change. And she abhorred the thought of change because, at
thirty-three, she had got all the things she wanted. But only for the
last ten years out of the thirty-three. Before that (before she was Mrs.
Anthony), wanting things, letting it be known that you wanted them, had
meant not getting them. So that it was incredible how she had contrived
to get them all. She had not yet left off being surprised at her own
happiness. It was not like things you take for granted and are not aware
of. Frances was profoundly aware of it. Her happiness was a solid,
tangible thing. She knew where it resided, and what it was made of, and
what terms she held it on. It depended on her; on her truth, her love,
her loyalty; it was of the nature of a trust. But there was no illusion
about it. It was the reality.

She denied that she was arrogant, for she had not taken one of them for
granted, not even Dorothy; though a little arrogance might have been
excusable in a woman who had borne three sons and only one daughter
before she was thirty-two. Whereas Grannie's achievement had been four
daughters, four superfluous women, of whom Anthony had married one and
supported three.

To be sure there was Maurice. But he was worse than superfluous,
considering that most of the time Anthony was supporting Maurice, too.

She had only known one serious anxiety--lest her flesh and blood should
harbour any of the blood and flesh left over after Morrie was made. She
had married Anthony to drive out Morrie from the bodies and souls of her
children. She meant that, through her and Anthony, Morrie should go, and
Dorothea, Michael, Nicholas and John should remain.

As Frances looked at the four children, her mouth tightened itself so as
to undo the ruinous adoration of her eyes. She loved their slender
bodies, their pure, candid faces, their thick, straight hair that parted
solidly from the brush, clean-cut and shining like sheets of polished
metal, brown for Dorothy, black-brown for Nicholas, red gold for Michael
and white gold for John. She was glad that they were all made like that;
slender and clear and hard, and that their very hair was a thing of
clean surfaces and definite edges. She disliked the blurred outlines of
fatness and fuzziness and fluffiness. The bright solidity of their forms
helped her to her adored illusion, the illusion of their childhood as
going on, lasting for ever and ever.

They would be the nicest looking children at Mrs. Jervis's party. They
would stand out solid from the fluffiness and fuzziness and fatness of
the others. She saw people looking at them. She heard them saying: "Who
are the two little boys in brown linen?"--"They are Michael and Nicholas
Harrison." The Funny Man came and said: "Hello! I didn't expect to see
you here!" It was Michael and Nicholas he didn't expect to see; and the
noise in the room was Nicky's darling laughter.

Music played. Michael and Nicholas danced to the music. It was Michael's
body and Nicky's that kept for her the pattern of the dance, their feet
that beat out its measure. Sitting under the tree of Heaven Frances
could see Mrs. Jervis's party. It shimmered and clustered in a visionary
space between the tree and the border of blue larkspurs on the other
side of the lawn. The firm figures of Michael and Nicholas and Dorothy
held it together, kept it from being shattered amongst the steep blue
spires of the larkspurs. When it was all over they would still hold it
together, so that people would know that it had really happened and
remember having been there. They might even remember that Rosalind had
had a birthday.

* * * * *

Frances had just bestowed this life after death on Mrs. Jervis's party
when she heard Michael saying he didn't want to go to it.

He had no idea why he didn't want to go except that he didn't.

"What'?" said Frances. "Not when Nicky and Dorothy are going?"

He shook his head. He was mournful and serious.

"And there's going to be a Magic Lantern"--

"I know."

"And a Funny Man"--

"I know."

"And a Big White Cake with sugar icing and Rosalind's name on it in pink
letters, and eight candles--"

"I know, Mummy." Michael's under lip began to shake.

"I thought it was only little baby boys that were silly and shy."

Michael was not prepared to contest the statement. He saw it was the
sort of thing that in the circumstances she was bound to say. All the
same his under lip would have gone on shaking if he hadn't stopped it.

"I thought you were a big boy," said Frances.

"So I _was_, yesterday. To-day isn't yesterday, Mummy."

"If John--John was asked to a beautiful party _he_ wouldn't be afraid to
go."

As soon as Michael's under lip had stopped shaking his eyelids began.
You couldn't stop your eyelids.

"It's not _afraid_, exactly," he said.

"What is it, then?"

"It's sort--sort of forgetting things."

"What things?"

"I don't know, Mummy. I think--it's pieces of me that I want to
remember. At a party I can't feel all of myself at once--like I do now."

She loved his strange thoughts as she loved his strange beauty, his
reddish yellow hair, his light hazel eyes that were not hers and not
Anthony's.

"What will you do, sweetheart, all afternoon, without Nicky and Dorothy
and Mary-Nanna?"

"I don't want Nicky and Dorothy and Mary-Nanna. I want Myself. I want to
play with Myself."

She thought: "Why shouldn't he? What right have I to say these things to
him and make him cry, and send him to stupid parties that he doesn't
want to go to? After all, he's only a little boy."

She thought of Michael, who was seven, as if he were younger than
Nicholas, who was only five.

* * * * *

Nicky was different. You could never tell what Michael would take it
into his head to think. You could never tell what Nicky would take it
into his head to do. There was no guile in Michael. But sometimes there
was guile in Nicky. Frances was always on the look out for
Nicky's guile.

So when Michael remarked that Grannie and the Aunties would be there
immediately and Nicky said, "Mummy, I think my ear is going to ache,"
her answer was--"You won't have to stay more than a minute, darling."

For Nicky lived in perpetual fear that his Auntie Louie might kiss at
him.

Dorothy saw her mother's profound misapprehension and she hastened to
put it right.

"It isn't Auntie Louie, Mummy. His ear is really aching."

And still Frances went on smiling. She knew, and Nicky knew that, if a
little boy could establish the fact of earache, he was absolved from all
social and family obligations for as long as his affliction lasted. He
wouldn't have to stand still and pretend he liked it while he was being
kissed at.

Frances kept her mouth shut when she smiled, as if she were trying not
to. It was her upper lip that got the better of her. The fine, thin
edges of it quivered and twitched and curled. You would have said the
very down was sensitive to her thought's secret and iniquitous play. Her
smile mocked other people's solemnities, her husband's solemnity, and
the solemnity (no doubt inherited) of her son Michael; it mocked the
demureness and the gravity of her face.

She had brought her face close to Nicky's; and it was as if her mouth
had eyes in it to see if there were guile in him.

"Are you a little humbug?" she said.