Mary
Katherine
Mansfield
On poetry afternoons Grandmother let Mary and me wear Mrs. Gardner’s
white hem-stitched pinafores (sleeveless apron like garments) because we had
nothing to do with ink or pencil.
Triumphant and feeling unspeakably beautiful, we would fly along the
road, swinging our kits and half chanting, half singing our new piece. I always
knew my poetry, but Mary, who was a year older, never knew hers. In fact,
lessons of any sort worried her soul and body. She could never distinguish
between ‘m’ and ‘n’.
“Now Kass,,,---turmip,” she would say, wrinkling her nose, “t-o-u-r-m-i-p, isn’t it?”
Also in words like ‘celery’ or ‘gallery’ she invariably said “cerely” and “garrely.”
I was a strong, fat child who burst my buttons and shot out of my shorts
to Grandmother’s entire satisfaction, but Mary was a “weed.” She had a continual
little cough. “Poor old Mary’s bark,” as Father called it.
Every spare moment of her time seemed to be occupied in journeying with
Mother to the pantry and being forced to take something out of a
spoon---cod-liver oil,
I am sure, told on
her spirits.
“I can’t bear lessons,” she would say woefully. “I’m all tired in my
elbows and my feet.”
And yet, when she was well she was elfishly gay and bright---danced like
a fairy and sang like a bird. And heroic! She would hold a rooster by the legs
while Pat chopped his head off. She loved boys, and played with a fine sense of
honor and purity. In fact, I think she loved everybody; and I, who did not,
worshipped her. I suffered untold agonies when the girls laughed at her in
class, and when she answered wrongly I put up my hand and cried, “Please,
Teacher, she means something quite different.” Then I would turn to Mary and
say, “You mean ‘island’ and not ‘peninsula’, didn’t you,
dear?”
“Of course,” she would say---“how very silly!”
But on poetry afternoons I could be of no help at all. The class was
divided into two and ranged on both sides of the room. Two of us drew lots as to
which side must begin, and when the first half had each in turn said their
piece, they left the room while Teacher and the remaining ones voted for the
best reciter. Time and again I was top of my side, and time and again Mary was bottom. To stand before all
those girls and Teacher, knowing my piece, loving it so much that I went in the
knees and shivered all over, was joy; but she would stand twisting “Mrs.
Gardner’s white linen stitched,” blundering and finally breaking down
ignominiously. (in shame) There came a day when we had
learned the whole of Thomas Hood’s “I remember, I remember,” and Teacher offered
a prize for the best girl on each side. The prize for our side was a green-plush
bracket (shelf covered with cloth) with a yellow china frog stuck on it. All the
morning these treasures had stood on Teacher’s table; all through playtime and
the dinner hour we had talked of nothing else. It was agreed that it was bound
to fall to me. I saw pictures of myself carrying it home to Grandmother—I saw it
hanging on her wall—never doubting for a moment that she would think it the most
desirable ornament in life. But as we ran to afternoon school, Mary’s memory
seemed weaker than ever before, and suddenly she stopped on the
road.
“Kass,” she said, “think what a s’prise if I got it after all. I
believe Mother would go mad with joy. I know I should. But then---I’m so stupid,
I know.”
She sighed, and we ran on. Oh, from that moment I longed that the prize
might fall to Mary. I said the ‘piece’ to her three times over as we ran up the
last hill and across the playground. Sides were chosen. She and I, as our name
began with “B.” were the first to begin. And alas! That she was older, her turn
was before mine.
The first verse went splendidly. I prayed viciously for another
miracle.
“Oh please, God, dear, do be nice!---If you
won’t---“
The Almighty slumbered. Mary broke down. I saw her standing there all
alone, her pale little freckled face flushed, her mouth quivering, and the thin
fingers twisting and twisting at the unfortunate pinafore frill. She was helped,
in a critical condition, to the very end. I saw Teacher’s face smiling at me
suddenly---the cold, shivering feeling came over me---and then I saw the house
and “the little window where the sun came peeping in at morn.” (lines from the Hood poem that the class is
reciting)
When it was over the girls clapped, and the look of pride and love on
Mary’s face decided me.
“Kass has got it; there’s no good trying now,”
was the spirit on the rest of my side. Finally they left the room. I waited
until the moment the door was shut. Then I went over to Teacher and
whispered:
“If I’ve got it, put Mary’s name. Don’t tell anybody, and don’t let the
others tell her—oh, please.”
I shot out the last word at her, and Teacher looked
astounded.
She shook her head at me in a way I could not understand. I ran out and
joined the others. They were gathered in the passage, twittering like birds.
Only Mary stood apart, clearing her throat and trying to hum a little tune. I
knew she would cry if I talked to her, so I paid her no attention. I felt I
would like to run out of school and never come back again. Trying not to be
sorry for what I had done—trying not to think of that heavenly green bracket,
which seemed big and beautiful enough now to give Queen
“The first prize,” said Teacher, “is awarded to
Mary Beetham.” A great burst of clapping; but above it
all I heard Mary’s little cry of joy. For a moment I could not look up, but when
I did, and saw her walking to the desk, so happy, so confident, so utterly
unsuspecting, when I saw her going back to her place with the green-plush
bracket in her hands, it needed all my wildest expostulations with the Deity
(prayers to God) to keep back my tears. The rest of the afternoon passed like a
dream; but when school broke up, Mary was the heroine of the hour. Boys and
girls followed her---held the prize in their “own hands”---and all looked at me
with pitying contempt, especially those who were in on the secret and knew what
I had done.
On the way home we passed the Karori bus going
home from town full of businessmen. The driver gave us a lift, and we bundled
in. We knew all the people.
“I’ve won a prize for po’try!” cried Mary, in a
high, excited voice.
“Good old Mary!” they chorused.
Again she was the center of admiring people.
“Well, Kass, you needn’t look so doleful,” said
Mr.
“I know,” I answered, wishing I were dead and
buried.
I did not go into the house when we reached home, but wondered down to
the loft and watched Pat mixing the chicken food.
But the bell rang at last, and with slow steps I crept up to the
nursery.
Mother and Grandmother were there with two callers.
“Well, that’s wonderful, Mary,” Mother was saying. “Such a lovely prize, too. Now, you see what you really can
do, darling.”
“That will be nice for you to show your little girls when you grow up,”
said Grandmother.
Slowly I slipped into my chair.
“Well, Kass, you don’t look very pleased,”
cried one of the tactful callers.
Mother looked at me severely.
“Don’t say you are going to be a sulky child about your sister,” she
said.
Even Mary’s bright little face clouded.
“You are glad, aren’t you?” she questioned.
“I’m frightfully glad,” I said, holding on to the handle of my mug, and
seeing all too plainly the glance of understanding that passed between the
grownups.
We had the yellow frog for tea, we had the green-plush bracket for the
entire evening when Father came home, and even when Mary and I had been sent to
bed she sang a little song made out of her own head:
I got a yellow frog for a prize,
An’ it had china eyes.
But she tried to fit this to the tune of “Sun of My Soul,” which
Grandmother thought a little irreverent, and stopped.
Mary’s bed was in the opposite corner of the room. I lay with my head
pressed into the pillow. Then the tears came. I pulled the clothes over my head.
The sacrifice was too great. I stuffed a corner of the sheet into my mouth to
stop me from shouting out the truth. Nobody loved me, nobody understood me, and
they loved Mary without the frog, and now that she had it I decided they loved
me less.
A long time seemed to pass. I got hot and stuffy, and came up to breathe.
And the Devil entered my soul. I decided to tell Mary the truth. From that
moment I was happy and light again, but I felt savage. I sat up---then got out
of bed. The linoleum was very cold. I crossed over to the other
corner.
The moon shone through the window straight onto Mary’s bed. She lay on
her side, one hand against her cheek, soundly sleeping. Her little plait of hair
stood straight up from her head; it was tied with a piece of pink wool. Very
white was her small face, and the funny freckles I could see even in this light;
she had thrown off half the bedclothes; one button of her nightdress was undone,
showing her flannel chest protector.
I stood there for a moment, on one leg, watching her sleep. I looked at
the green-plush bracket already hung on the wall above her head, at that perfect
yellow frog with china eyes, and then again at Mary, who stirred and flung out
one arm across the bed.
Suddenly I stooped and kissed her.