"Dan, why don't you ask him to stay longer?"
"Because I don't want him to."
"I thought he was your friend."
"He is my friend. The only one I've got."
'Then—why—?"
"That's why." He shut the door on her.
She got up early. Dan was alone in the dining-room.
He said, "What have you come down for?"
"To give you your breakfasts."
"Don't be a little fool. Go back to your room."
Mr. Vickers had come in. He stood by the doorway, looking at her and smiling. "Why this harsh treatment?" he said. He had heard Dan.
Now and then he smiled again at Dan, who sat sulking over his breakfast.
Dan went with him to Durlingham. He was away all night.
Next day, at dinner-time, they appeared again together. Mr. Vickers had brought Dan back. He was going to stay for another week. At the Buck Hotel.
"Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath." He had no business to sing it, to sing it like that, so that you couldn't get the thing out of your head. That wouldn't have mattered if you could have got his voice out of your heart. It hung there, clawing, hurting. She resented this pain.
"Das man vom liebsten was man hat," the dearest that we have, "muss schei-ei-eden, muss schei-ei-eden."
Her fingers pressed and crept over the keys, in guilty, shamed silence; it would be awful if he heard you playing it, if Dan heard you or Mamma.
You had only to play and you could make him come.
Supposing you played the SchubertImpromptu—She found herself playing it.
He didn't come. He wasn't coming. He was going into Reyburn with Dan. And on Monday he would be gone. This time he would really go.
When you left off playing you could still hear him singing in your head. "Das man vom liebsten was man hat." "Es ist bestimmt—" But if you felt like that about it, then—
Her hands dropped from the keys.
It wasn't possible. He only came on Friday evening last week. This was Saturday morning. Seven days. It couldn't happen in seven days. He would be gone on Monday morning. Not ten days.
"I can't—I don't."
Something crossing the window pane made her start and turn. Nannie Learoyd's face, looking in. Naughty Nannie. You could see her big pink cheeks and her scarlet mouth and her eyes sliding and peering. Poor pretty, naughty Nannie. Nannie smiled when she met you on the Green, as if she trusted you not to tell how you saw her after dark slinking about the Back Lane waiting for young Horn to come out to her.
The door opened. Nannie slid away. It was only Mamma.
"Mary," she said, "I wish you would remember that Mr. Vickers has come to see Dan, and that he has only got two days more."
"It's all right. He's going into Reyburn with him."
"I'm sure," her mother said, "I wish he'd stay here."
She pottered about the room, taking things up and putting them down again. Presently Catty came for her and she went out.
Mary began to play the SonataAppassionata. She thought: "I don't care if he doesn't come. I want to play it, and I shall."
He came. He stood close beside her and listened. Once he put his hand on her arm. "Oh no," he said. "Notlike that."
She stood up and faced him. "Tell me the truth, shall I ever be any good?Shall I ever play?"
"Do you really want the truth?"
"Of course I do."
Her mind fastened itself on her playing. It hid and sheltered itself behind her playing.
"Let's look at your hands."
She gave him her hands. He lifted them; he felt the small bones sliding under the skin, he bent back the padded tips, the joints of the fingers.
"There's no reason why you shouldn't have played magnificently," he said.
"Only I don't. I never have."
"No, you never have."
He came closer; she didn't know whether he drew her to him or whether he came closer. A queer, delicious feeling, a new feeling, thrilled through her body to her mouth, to her finger-tips. Her head swam slightly. She kept her eyes open by an effort.
He gave her back her hands. She remembered. They had been talking about her playing.
"I knew," she said, "it was bad in places."
"I don't care whether it's bad or good. It's you. The only part of you that can get out. You're very bad in places, but you do something to me all the same."
"What do I do?"
"You know what you do."
"I don't. I don't really. Tell me."
"If you don't know, I can't tell you—dear—"
He said it so thickly that she was not sure at the time whether he had really said it. She remembered afterwards.
"There's Dan," she whispered.
He swung himself off from her and made himself a rigid figure at the window. Dan stood in the doorway. He was trying to took as if she wasn't there.
"I say, aren't you coming to Reyburn?"
"No, I'm not."
"Why not?"
"I've got a headache."
"What?"
"Headache."
Outside on the flagstones she saw Nannie pass again and look in.
An hour later she was sitting on the slope under the hill road ofGreffington Edge. He lay on his back beside her in the bracken. LindleyVickers.
Suddenly he pulled himself up into a sitting posture like her own. She was then aware that Mr. Sutcliffe had gone up the road behind them; he had lifted his hat and passed her without speaking.
"What does Sutcliffe talk to you about?"
"Farming."
"And what do you do?"
"Listen."
Below them, across the dale, they could see the square of Morfe on its platform.
"How long have you lived in that place?"
"Ten years. No; eleven."
"Women," he said, "are wonderful. I can't think where you come from. I knew your father, I know Dan and your mother, and Victor Olivier and your aunt—"
"Which aunt?"
"The Unitarian lady; and I knew Mark—and Rodney. They don't account for you."
"Does anybody account for anybody else?"
"Yes. You believe in heredity?"
"I don't know enough about it."
"You should read Haeckel—The History of Evolution, and Herbert Spencer and Ribot'sHeredity. It would interest you…. No, it wouldn't. It wouldn't interest you a bit."
"It sounds as if it would rather."
"It wouldn't…. Look here, promise me you won't think about it, you'll let it alone. Promise me."
He was like Jimmy making you promise not to hang out of top-storey windows.
"No good making promises."
"Well," he said, "there's nothing in it…. I wish I hadn't said that about your playing. I only wanted to see whether you'd mind or not."
"I don't mind. What does it matter? When I'm making music I think there's nothing but music in all the world; when I'm doing philosophy I think there's nothing but philosophy in all the world; when I'm writing verses I think there's nothing but writing in all the world; and when I'm playing tennis I think there's nothing but tennis in all the world."
"I see. And when you suffer you think there's nothing but suffering in all the world."
"Yes."
"And when—and when—"
His face was straight and serious and quiet. His eyes covered her; first her face, then her breasts; she knew he could see her bodice quiver with the beating of her heart. She felt afraid.
"Then," he said, "you'll not think; you'll know."
She thought: "He didn't say it. He won't. He can't. It isn't possible."
"Hadn't we better go?"
He sprang to his feet.
"Much better," he said.
She would not see him again that day. Dan was going to dine with him at the Buck Hotel.
When Dan came back from Reyburn he said he wouldn't go. He had a headache. If Vickers could have a headache, so could he. He sulked all evening in the smoking-room by himself; but towards nine o'clock he thought better of it and went round, he said, to look Vickers up.
Her mother yawned over her book; and the yawns made her impatient; she wanted to be out of doors, walking, instead of sitting there listening to Mamma.
At nine o'clock Mamma gave one supreme yawn and dragged herself to bed.
She went out through the orchard into the Back Lane. She could see Nannie Learoyd sitting on the stone stairs of Horn's granary, waiting for young Horn to come round the corner of his yard. Perhaps they would go up into the granary and hide under the straw. She turned into the field track to the schoolhouse and the highway. In the dark bottom the river lay like a broad, white, glittering road.
She stopped by the schoolhouse, considering whether she would go up to the moor by the high fields and come back down the lane, or go up the lane and come back down the fields.
"Too dark to find the gaps if I come back by the fields." She had forgotten the hidden moon.
There was a breaking twilight when she reached the lane. She came down at a swinging stride. Her feet went on the grass borders without a sound.
At the last crook of the lane she came suddenly on a man and woman standing in her path by the stone wall. It would be Nannie Learoyd and young Horn. They were fixed in one block, their faces tilted backwards, their bodies motionless. The woman's arms were round the man's neck, his arms round her waist. There was something about the queer back-tilted faces—queer and ugly.
As she came on she saw them break loose from each other and swing apart:Nannie Learoyd and Lindley Vickers.
She lay awake all night. Her brain, incapable of thought, kept turning round and round, showing her on an endless rolling screen the images of Lindley and Nannie Learoyd, clinging together, loosening, swinging apart, clinging together. When she came down on Sunday morning breakfast was over.
Sunday—Sunday. She remembered. Last night was Saturday night. Lindley Vickers was coming to Sunday dinner and Sunday supper. She would have to get away somewhere, to Dorsy or the Sutcliffes. She didn't want to see him again. She wanted to forget that she ever had seen him.
Her mother and Dan had shut themselves up in the smoking-room; she found them there, talking. As she came in they stopped abruptly and looked at each other. Her mother began picking at the pleats in her gown with nervous, agitated fingers. Dan got up and left the room.
"Well, Mary, you'll not see Mr. Vickers again. He's just told Dan he isn't coming."
Then he knew that she had seen him in the lane with Nannie.
"I don't want to see him," she said.
"It's a pity you didn't think of that before you put us in such a position."
She understood Lindley; but she wasn't even trying to understand her mother. The vexed face and picking fingers meant nothing to her. She was saying to herself, "I can't tell Mamma I saw him with Nannie in the lane. I oughtn't to have seen him. He didn't know anybody was there. He didn't want me to see him. I'd be a perfect beast to tell her."
Her mother went on: "I don't know what to do with you, Mary. One would have thought my only daughter would have been a comfort to me, but I declare you've given me more trouble than any of my children."
"More than Dan?"
"Dan hadn't a chance. He'd have been different if your poor father hadn't driven him out of the house. He'd be different now if your Uncle Victor had kept him…. It's hard for poor Dan if he can't bring his friends to the house any more because of you."
"Because of me?"
"Because of your folly."
She understood. Her mother believed that she had frightened Lindley away.She was thinking of Aunt Charlotte.
It would have been all right if she could have told her about Nannie; then Mamma would have seen why Lindley couldn't come.
"I don't care," she thought. "She may think what she likes. I can't tell her."
Lindley Vickers had gone. Nothing was left of him but Mamma's silence and Dan's, and Nannie's flush as she slunk by and her obscene smirk of satisfaction.
Then Nannie forgot him. As if nothing had happened she hung about Horn's yard and the Back Lane, waiting for young Horn. She smiled her trusting smile again. As long as you lived in Morfe you would remember.
Mary didn't blame her mother and Dan for their awful attitude. She couldn't blink the fact that she had begun to care for a man who was no better than young Horn, who had shown her that he didn't care for her by going to Nannie. If he could go to Nannie he was no better than young Horn.
She thought of Lindley's communion with Nannie as a part of him, essential, enduring. Beside it, her own communion with him was not quite real. She remembered his singing; she remembered playing to him and sitting beside him on the bracken as you remember things that have happened to you a long time ago (if they had really happened). She remembered phrases broken from their context (if they had ever had a context): "Das man vom liebsten was man hat…." "If you don't know I can't tell you—Dear." … "And when—when—Then you won't think, you'llknow."
She said to herself, "I must have been mad. It couldn't have happened. I must have made it up."
But, if you made up things like that youweremad. It was what Aunt Charlotte had done. She had lived all her life in a dream of loving and being loved, a dream that began with clergymen and ended with the piano-tuner and the man who did the clocks. Mamma and Dan knew it. Uncle Victor knew it and he had been afraid. Maurice Jourdain knew it and he had been afraid. Perhaps Lindley Vickers knew it, too.
There must be something in heredity. She thought: "If there is I'd rather face it. It's cowardly not to."
Lindley Vickers had told her what to read. Herbert Spencer she knew. Haeckel and Ribot were in the London Library Catalogue at Greffington Hall. And Maudsley: she had seen the name somewhere. It was perhaps lucky that Mr. Sutcliffe had gone abroad early this year; for he had begun to follow her through Balzac and Flaubert and Maupassant, since when he had sometimes interfered with her selection.
The books came down in two days: Herbert Spencer'sFirst Principles, thePrinciples of Biology, thePrinciples of Psychology; Haeckel'sHistory of Evolution; Maudsley'sBody and Mind, Physiology and Pathology of Mind, Responsibility in Mental Disease; and Ribot'sHeredity. Your instinct told you to read them in that order, controlling personal curiosity.
For the first time in her life she understood what Spinoza meant by "the intellectual love of God." She saw how all things work together for good to those who, in Spinoza's sense, love God. If it hadn't been for Aunt Charlotte and Lindley Vickers she might have died without knowing anything about the exquisite movements and connections of the live world. She had spent most of her time in the passionate pursuit of things under the form of eternity, regardless of their actual behaviour in time. She had kept on for fifteen years trying to find out the reality—if there was any reality—that hid behind appearances, piggishly obtuse to the interest of appearances themselves. She had cared for nothing in them but their beauty, and its exciting play on her emotions. When life brought ugly things before her she faced them with a show of courage, but inwardly she was sick with fear.
For the first time she saw the ugliest facts take on enchantment, a secret and terrible enchantment. Dr. Mitchell's ape-faced idiot; Dr. Browne's girl with the goose-face and goose-neck, billing her shoulders like a bird.
There was something in Heredity. But the sheer interest of it made you forget about Papa and Mamma and Aunt Charlotte; it kept you from thinking about yourself. You could see why Ribot was so excited about his laws of Heredity: "They it is that are real…." "To know a fact thoroughly is to know the quality and quantity of the laws that compose it … facts are but appearances, laws the reality."
There was Darwin's Origin of Species. According to Darwin, it didn't seem likely that anything so useless as insanity could be inherited at all; according to Maudsley and Ribot, it seemed even less likely that sanity could survive. To be sure, after many generations, insanity was stamped out; but not before it had run its course through imbecility to idiocy, infecting more generations as it went.
Maudsley was solemn and exalted in his desire that there should be no mistake about it. "There is a destiny made for a man by his ancestors, and no one can elude, were he able to attempt it, the tyranny of his organisation."
You had been wrong all the time. You had thought of your family, Papa and Mamma, perhaps Grandpapa and Grandmamma, as powerful, but independent and separate entities, in themselves sacred and inviolable, working against you from the outside: either with open or secret and inscrutable hostility, hindering, thwarting, crushing you down. But always from the outside. You had thought of yourself as a somewhat less powerful, but still independent and separate entity, a sacred, inviolable self, struggling against them for completer freedom and detachment. Crushed down, but always getting up and going on again; fighting a more and more successful battle for your own; beating them in the end. But it was not so. There were no independent, separate entities, no sacred, inviolable selves. They were one immense organism and you were part of it; you were nothing that they had not been before you. It was no good struggling. You were caught in the net; you couldn't get out.
And so were they. Mamma and Papa were no more independent and separate than you were. Dan had gone like Papa, but Papa had gone like Grandpapa and Grandmamma Olivier. Nobody ever said anything about Grandpapa Olivier; so perhaps there had been something queer about him. Anyhow, Papa couldn't help drinking any more than Mamma could help being sweet and gentle; they hadn't had a choice or a chance.
How senseless you had been with your old angers and resentments. Now that you understood, you could never feel anger or resentment any more. As long as you lived you could never feel anything but love for them and compassion. Mamma, Papa and Aunt Charlotte, Dan and Roddy, they were caught in the net. They couldn't get out.
Dan and Roddy—But Mark had got out. Why not you?
They were not all alike. Papa and Uncle Victor were different; and Aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lavvy. Papa had married and handed it on; he hadn't cared. Uncle Victor hadn't married; he had cared too much; he had been afraid.
And Maurice Jourdain and Lindley Vickers had been afraid; everybody who knew about Aunt Charlotte would be afraid, and if they didn't know you would have to tell them, supposing—
You would be like Aunt Lavvy. You would live in Morfe with Mamma for years and years as Aunt Lavvy had lived with Grandmamma. First you would be like Dorsy Heron; then like Louisa Wright; then like Aunt Lavvy.
No; when you were forty-five you would go like Aunt Charlotte.
Anyhow, she had filled in the time between October and March when theSutcliffes came back.
If she could talk to somebody about it—But you couldn't talk to Mamma; she would only pretend that she hadn't been thinking about Aunt Charlotte at all. If Mark had been there—But Mark wasn't there, and Dan would only call you a little fool. Aunt Lavvy? She would tell you to love God. Even Aunt Charlotte could tell you that.
She could see Aunt Charlotte sitting up in the big white bed and saying "Love God and you'll be happy," as she scribbled letters to Mr. Marriott and hid them under the bedclothes.
Uncle Victor? Uncle Victor was afraid himself.
Dr. Charles—He looked at you as he used to look at Roddy. Perhaps he knew about Aunt Charlotte and wondered whether you would go like her. Or, if he didn't wonder, he would only give you the iron pills and arsenic he gave to Dorsy.
Mrs. Sutcliffe? You couldn't tell a thing like that to Mrs. Sutcliffe. She wouldn't know what you were talking about; or if she did know she would gather herself up, spiritually, in her shawl, and trail away.
Mr. Sutcliffe—He would know. If you could tell him. You might take back Maudsley and Ribot and ask him if he knew anything about heredity, and what he thought of it.
She went to him one Wednesday afternoon. He was always at home on Wednesday afternoons. She knew how it would be. Mrs. Sutcliffe would be shut up in the dining-room with the sewing-party. You would go in. You would knock at the library door. He would be there by himself, in the big arm-chair, smoking and reading; the small armchair would be waiting for you on the other side of the fireplace. He would be looking rather old and tired, and when he saw you he would jump up and pull himself together and be young again.
The library door closed softly. She was in the room before he saw her.
He was older and more tired than you could have believed. He stooped in his chair; his long hands rested on his knees, slackly, as they had dropped there. Grey streaks in the curly lock of hair thatwouldfall forward and be a whisker.
His mouth had tightened and hardened. It held out; it refused to become old and tired.
"It's Mary," she said.
"My dear—"
He dragged himself to his feet, making his body very straight and stiff. His eyes glistened; but they didn't smile. Only his eyelids and his mouth smiled. His eyes were different, their blue was shrunk and flattened and drawn back behind the lense.
When he moved, pushing forward the small arm-chair, she saw how lean and stiff he was.
"I've been ill," he said.
"Oh—!"
"I'm all right now."
"No. You oughtn't to have come back from Agaye."
"I never do what I ought, Mary."
She remembered how beautiful and strong he used to be, when he danced and when he played tennis, and when he walked up and down the hills. His beauty and his strength had never moved her to anything but a happy, tranquil admiration. She remembered how she had seen Maurice Jourdain tired and old (at thirty-three), and how she had been afraid to look at him. She wondered, "Was that my fault, or his? If I'd cared should I have minded? If I cared for Mr. Sutcliffe I wouldn't mind his growing tired and old. The tireder and older he was the more I'd care."
Somehow you couldn't imagine Lindley Vickers growing old and tired.
She gave him back the books: Ribot'sHeredityand Maudsley'sPhysiology and Pathology of Mind. He held them in his long, thin hands, reading the titles. His strange eyes looked at her over the tops of the bindings. He smiled.
"When did you order these, Mary?"
"In October."
"That's the sort of thing you do when I'm away, is it?"
"Yes—I'm afraid you won't care for them very much."
He still stood up, examining the books. He was dipping into Maudsley now and reading him.
"You don't mean to say you'vereadthis horrible stuff?"
"Every word of it. Ihadto."
"You had to?"
"I wanted to know about heredity."
"And insanity?"
"That's part of it. I wanted to see if there was anything in it.Heredity, I mean. Do you think there is?"
She kept her eyes on him. He was still smiling.
"My dear child, you know as much as I do. Why are you worrying your poor little head about madness?"
"Because I can't help thinking I may go mad."
"I should think the same if I read Maudsley. I shouldn't be quite sure whether I was a general paralytic or an epileptic homicide."
"You see—I'm not afraid because I've been reading him; I've been reading him because I was afraid. Not even afraid, exactly. As a matter of fact while you're reading about it you're so interested that you forget about yourself. It's only when you've finished that you wonder."
"What makes you wonder?"
He threw Maudsley aside and sat down in the big armchair.
"That's just what I don't think I can tell you."
"You used to tell me things, Mary. I remember a little girl with short hair who asked me whether cutting off her hair would make me stop caring for her."
"Notyoucaring forme."
"Precisely. So, if you can't tell me whocanyou tell?"
"Nobody."
"Come, then…. Is it because of your father? Or Dan?"
She thought: "After all, I can tell him."
"No. Not exactly. But it's somebody. One of Papa's sisters—AuntCharlotte. You see. Mamma seems to think I'm rather like her."
"Does Aunt Charlotte read Kant and Hegel and Schopenhauer, to find out whether the Thing-in-itself is mind or matter? Does she read Maudsley and Ribot to find out what's the matter with her mind?"
"I don't think she ever read anything."
"Whatdidshe do?"
"Well—she doesn't seem to have done much but fall in love with people."
"She'd have been a very abnormal lady if she'd never fallen in love at all, Mary."
"Yes; but then she used to think people were in love with her when they weren't."
"How old is Aunt Charlotte?"
"She must be ages over fifty now."
"Well, my dear, you're just twenty-eight, and I don't think you've been in love yet."
"That's it. I have."
"No. You've only thought you were. Once? Twice, perhaps? You may have been very near it—for ten minutes. But a man might be in love with you for ten years, and you wouldn't be a bit the wiser, if he held his tongue about it…. No. People don't go off their heads because their aunts do, or we should all of us be mad. There's hardly a family that hasn't got somebody with a tile loose."
"Then you don't think there's anything in it?"
"I don't think there's anything in it in your case. Anything at all."
"I'm glad I told you."
She thought: "It isn't so bad. Whatever happens he'll be here."
The sewing-party had broken up. She could see them going before her on the road, by the garden wall, by the row of nine ash-trees in the field, round the curve and over Morfe Bridge.
Bobbing shoulders, craning necks, stiff, nodding heads in funny hats, turning to each other.
When she got home she found Mrs. Waugh, and Miss Frewin in the drawing-room with Mamma. They had brought her the news.
The Sutcliffes were going. They were trying to let Greffington Hall. The agent, Mr. Oldshaw, had told Mr. Horn. Mr. Frank, the Major, would be back from India in April. He was going to be married. He would live in the London house and Mr. and Mrs. Sutcliffe would live abroad.
Mamma said, "If their son's coming back they've chosen a queer time to go away."
It couldn't be true.
You knew it when you dined with them, when you saw the tranquil Regency faces looking at you from above the long row of Sheraton chairs, the pretty Gainsborough lady smiling from her place above the sideboard.
As you sat drinking coffee out of the dark blue coffee cups with gold linings you knew it couldn't be true. You were reassured by the pattern of the chintzes—pink roses and green leaves on a pearl-grey ground—by the crystal chains and pendants of the chandelier, by the round black mirror sunk deep in the bowl of its gilt frame.
They couldn't go; for if they went, the quiet, gentle life of these things would be gone. The room had no soul apart from the two utterly beloved figures that sat there, each in its own chintz-covered chair.
"It isn't true," she said, "that you're going?"
She was sitting on the polar bear hearthrug at Mrs. Sutcliffe's feet.
"Yes, Mary."
The delicate, wrinkled hand came out from under the cashmere shawl to stroke her arm. It kept on stroking, a long, loving, slow caress. It made her queerly aware of her arm—white and slender under the big puff of the sleeve—lying across Mrs. Sutcliffe's lap.
"He'll be happier in his garden at Agaye."
She heard herself assenting. "He'll be happier." And breaking out. "ButI shall never be happy again."
"You mustn't say that, my dear."
The hand went on stroking.
"There's no place on earth," she said, "where I'm so happy as I am here."
Suddenly the hand stopped; it stiffened; it drew back under the cashmere shawl.
She turned her head towards Mr. Sutcliffe in his chair on the other side of the hearthrug.
His face had a queer, strained look. His eyes were fixed, fixed on the white, slender arm that lay across his wife's lap.
And Mrs. Sutcliffe's eyes were fixed on the queer, strained face.
Uncle Victor's letter was almost a relief.
She had not yet allowed herself to imagine what Morfe would be like without the Sutcliffes. And, after all, they wouldn't have to live in it. If Dan accepted Uncle Victor's offer, and if Mamma accepted his conditions.
Uncle Victor left no doubt as to his conditions. He wouldn't take Dan back unless Mamma left Morfe and made a home for him in London. He wanted them all to live together at Five Elms.
The discussion had lasted from a quarter-past nine till half-past ten. Mamma still sat at the breakfast-table, crumpling and uncrumpling the letter.
"I wish I knew what to do," she said.
"Better do what you want," Dan said. "Stay here if you want to. Go back to Five Elms if you want to. But for God's sake don't say you're doing it on my account."
He got up and went out of the room.
"Goodness knows I don't want to go back to Five Elms. But I won't stand in Dan's way. If your Uncle Victor thinks I ought to make the sacrifice, I shall make it."
"And Dan," Mary said, "will make the sacrifice of going back to Victor's office. It would be simpler if he went to Canada."
"Your uncle can't help him to go to Canada. He won't hear of it…. I suppose we shall have to go."
They were going. You could hear Mrs. Belk buzzing round the village with the news. "The Oliviers are going."
One day Mrs. Belk came towards her, busily, across the Green.
She stopped to speak, while her little iron-grey eyes glanced off sideways, as if they saw something important to be done.
The Sutcliffes were not going, after all.
When it was all settled and she thought that Dan had gone into Reyburn a fortnight ago to give notice to the landlord's solicitors, one evening, as she was coming home from the Aldersons' he told her that he hadn't been to the solicitors at all.
He had arranged yesterday for his transport on a cattle ship sailing next week for Montreal.
He said he had always meant to go out to Jem Alderson when he had learnt enough from Ned.
"Then why," she said, "did you let Mamma tell poor Victor—"
"I wanted her to have the credit of the sacrifice," he said.
And then: "I don't like leaving you here—"
An awful thought came to her.
"Are you sure you aren't going because of me?"
"You? What on earth are you thinking of?"
"That time—when you wouldn't ask Lindley Vickers to stop on."
"Oh … I didn't ask him because I knew he wanted to stop altogether. AndI don't approve of him."
She turned and stared at him. "Then it wasn't that you didn't approve ofme?"
"What put that in your head?"
"Mamma. She told me you couldn't ask anybody again because of me. She said I'd frightened Lindley Vickers away. Like Aunt Charlotte."
Dan smiled, a sombre, reminiscent smile.
"You don't mean to say you still take Mamma seriously?Inever did."
"But—Mark—"
"Or him either."
It hurt her like some abominable blasphemy.
Nothing would ever happen. She would stay on in Morfe, she and Mamma: without Mark, without Dan, without the Sutcliffes….
They were going….
They were gone.
She lay out on the moor, under the August sun. Her hands were pressed like a bandage over her eyes. When she lifted them she caught the faint pink glow of their flesh. The light throbbed and nickered as she pressed it out, and let it in.
The sheep couched, panting, in the shade of the stone covers. She lay so still that the peewits had stopped their cry.
Something bothered her….
And in the east one pure, prophetic star—one pure prophetic star—Trembles between the darkness and the dawn.
What you wrote last year. No reason why you shouldn't write modern plays in blank verse if you wanted to. Only people didn't say those things. You couldn't do it that way.
Let the thing go. Tear it to bits and burn them in the kitchen fire.
If you lay still, perfectly still, and stopped thinking the other thing would come back.
In dreams He has made you wise,With the wisdom of silence and prayer,God, who has blinded your eyes,With the dusk of your hair.
The Mother. The Mother. Mother and Son.
You and he are near akin. Would you slay your brother-in-sin? What he does yourself shall do—
That was the Son's hereditary destiny.
Lying on her back under Karva, she dreamed her "Dream-Play"; saying the unfinished verses over and over again, so as to remember them when she got home. She was unutterably happy.
She thought: "I don't care what happens so long as I can go on."
She jumped up to her feet. "I must go and see what Mamma's doing."
Her mother was sewing in the drawing-room and waiting for her to come to tea. She looked up and smiled.
"What are you so pleased about?" she said.
"Oh, nothing."
Mamma was adorable, sitting there like a dove on its nest, dressed in a dove's dress, grey on grey, turning dove's eyes to you in soft, crinkly lids. She held her head on one side, smiling at some secret that she kept. Mamma was happy, too.
"What are you looking such an angel for?"
Mamma lifted up her work, showing an envelope that lay on her lap, the crested flap upwards, a blue gun-carriage on a white ground, and the motto: "Ubique."
Catty had been into Reyburn to shop and had called for the letters. Mark was coming home in April.
"Oh—Mamma—"
"There's a letter for you, Mary."
(Not from Mark.)
"If he gets that appointment he won't go back." She thought: "She'll never be unhappy again. She'll never be afraid he'll get cholera."
For a minute their souls met and burned together in the joy they shared.
Then broke apart.
"Aren't you going to show me Mr. Sutcliffe's letter?"
"Why should I?"
"You don't mean to say there's anything in it I can't see?"
"You can see it if you like. There's nothing in it."
That was why she hadn't wanted her to see it. For anything there was in it you might never have known him. But Mrs. Sutcliffe had sent her love.
Mamma looked up sharply.
"Did you write to him, Mary?"
"Of course I did."
"You'll not write again. He's let you know pretty plainly he isn't going to be bothered."
(It wasn't that. It couldn't be that.)
"Did they say anything more about your going there?"
"No."
"That ought to show you then…. But as long as you live you'll give yourself away to people who don't want you."
"I'd rather you didn't talk about them."
"I should like to know what Icantalk about," said Mamma.
She folded up her work and laid it in the basket.
Her voice dropped from the sharp note of resentment.
"I wish you'd go and see if those asters have come."
The asters had come. She had carried out the long, shallow boxes into the garden. She had left her mother kneeling beside them, looking with adoration into the large, round, innocent faces, white and purple, mauve and magenta and amethyst and pink. If the asters had not come the memory of the awful things they had said to each other would have remained with them till bed-time; but Mamma would be happy with the asters like a child with its toys, planning where they were to go and planting them.
She went up to her room. After thirteen years she had still the same childish pleasure in the thought that it was hers and couldn't be taken from her, because nobody else wanted it.
The bookshelves stretched into three long rows on the white wall above her bed to hold the books Mr. Sutcliffe had given her; a light blue row for the Thomas Hardys; a dark blue for the George Merediths; royal blue and gold for the Rudyard Kiplings. And in the narrow upright bookcase in the arm of the T facing her writing-table, Mark's books: the Homers and the Greek dramatists. Their backs had faded from puce colour to drab.
Mark's books.—When she looked at them she could still feel her old, childish lust for possession, her childish sense of insecurity, of defeat. And something else. The beginning of thinking things about Mamma. She could see herself standing in Mark's bedroom at Five Elms and Mamma with her hands on Mark's books. She could hear herself saying, "You're afraid."
"What did I think Mamma was afraid of?"
Mamma was happy out there with the asters.
There would be three hours before dinner.
She began setting down the fragments of the "Dream-Play" that had come to her: then the outlines. She saw very clearly and precisely how it would have to be. She was intensely happy.
* * * * *
She was still thinking of it as she went across the Green to the post office, instead of wondering why the postmistress had sent for her, and why Miss Horn waited for her by the house door at the side, or why she looked at her like that, with a sort of yearning pity and fear. She followed her into the parlour behind the post office.
Suddenly she was awake to the existence of this parlour and its yellow cane-bottomed chairs and round table with the maroon cloth and the white alabaster lamp that smelt. The orange envelope lay on the maroon cloth. Miss Horn covered it with her hand.
"It's for Mr. Dan," she said. "I daren't send it to the house lest your mother should get it."
She gave it up with a slow, unwilling gesture.
"It's bad news, Miss Mary."
"Your Brother Died This Evening."
Her heart stopped, staggered and went on again."Poona"—Mark—
"Your Brother Died This Evening.—SYMONDS."
"This evening" was yesterday. Mark had died yesterday.
Her heart stopped again. She had a sudden feeling of suffocation and sickness.
Her mind left off following the sprawl of the thick grey-black letters on the livid pink form.
It woke again to the extraordinary existence of Miss Horn's parlour. It went back to Mark, slowly, by the way it had come, by the smell of the lamp, by the orange envelope on the maroon cloth.
Mark. And something else.
Mamma—Mamma. She would have to know.
Miss Horn still faced her, supporting herself by her spread hands pressed down on to the table. Her eyes had a look of gentle, helpless interrogation, as if she said, "What are you going to do about it?"
She did all the necessary things; asked for a telegram form, filled it in: "Send Details, MARY OLIVIER"; and addressed it to Symonds of "E" Company. And all the time, while her hand moved over the paper, she was thinking, "I shall have to tell Mamma."
The five windows of the house stared out at her across the Green. She avoided them by cutting through Horn's yard and round by the Back Lane into the orchard. She was afraid that her mother would see her before she had thought how she would tell her that Mark was dead. She shut herself into her room to think.
She couldn't think.
She dragged herself from the window seat to the chair by the writing-table and from the chair to the bed.
She could still feel her heart staggering and stopping. Once she thought it was going to stop altogether. She had a sudden pang of joy. "If it would stop altogether—I should go to Mark. Nothing would matter. I shouldn't have to tell Mamma that he's dead." But it always went on again.
She thought of Mark now without any feeling at all except that bodily distress. Her mind was fixed in one centre of burning, lucid agony. Mamma.
"I can't tell her. I can't. It'll kill her…. I don't see how she's to live if Mark's dead…. I shall send for Aunt Bella. She can do it. Or I might ask Mrs. Waugh. Or Mr. Rollitt."
She knew she wouldn't do any of these things. She would have to tell her.
She heard the clock strike the half hour. Half-past five. Not yet. "When it strikes seven I shall go and tell Mamma."
She lay down on her bed and listened for the strokes of the clock. She felt nothing but an immense fatigue, an appalling heaviness. Her back and arms were loaded with weights that held her body down on to the bed.
"I shall never be able to get up and tell her."
Six. Half-past. At seven she got up and went downstairs. Through the open side door she saw her mother working in the garden.
She would have to get her into the house.
"Mamma—darling."
But Mamma wouldn't come in. She was planting the last aster in the row. She went on scooping out the hole for it, slowly and deliberately, with her trowel, and patting the earth about it with wilful hands. There was a little smudge of grey earth above the crinkles in her soft, sallow-white forehead.
"You wait," she said.
She smiled like a child pleased with itself for taking its own way.
Mary waited.
She thought: "Three hours ago I was angry with her. I was angry with her. And Mark was dead then. And when she read his letter. He was dead yesterday."
Time was not good to you. Time was cruel. Time made you see.
Yet somehow they had gone through time. Nights of August and September when you got up before daybreak to listen at her door. Days when you did nothing. Mamma sat upright in her chair with her hands folded on her lap. She kept her back to the window: you saw her face darkening in the dusk. When the lamp came she raised her arm and the black shawl hung from it and hid her face. Nights of insane fear when youhadto open her door and look in to see whether she were alive or dead. Days when you were afraid to speak, afraid to look at each other. Nights when you couldn't sleep for wondering how Mark had died. They might have told you. They might have told you in one word. They didn't, because they couldn't; because the word was too awful. They would never say how Mark died. Mamma thought he had died of cholera.
You started at sounds, at the hiss of the flame in the grate, the fall of the ashes on the hearth, the tinkling of the front door bell.
You heard Catty slide back the bolt. People muttered on the doorstep. You saw them go back past the window, quietly, their heads turned away. They were ashamed.
You began to go out. You walked slowly, weighted more than ever by your immense, inexplicable fatigue. When you saw people coming you tried to go quicker; when you spoke to them you panted and felt absurd. A coldness came over you when you saw Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin with their heads on one side and their shocked, grieved faces. You smiled at them as you panted, but they wouldn't smile back. Their grief was too great. They would never get over it.
You began to watch for the Indian mail.
One day the letter came. You read blunt, jerky sentences that told you Mark had died suddenly, in the mess room, of heart failure. Captain Symonds said he thought you would want to know exactly how it happened…. "Well, we were 'cock-fighting,' if you know what that is, after dinner. Peters is the heaviest man in our battery, and Major Olivier was carrying him on his back. We oughtn't to have let him do it. But we didn't know there was anything wrong with his heart. He didn't know it himself. We thought he was fooling when he dropped on the floor…. Everything was done that could be done…. He couldn't have suffered…. He was happy up to the last minute of his life—shouting with laughter."
She saw the long lighted room. She saw it with yellow walls and yellow lights, with a long, white table and clear, empty wine-glasses. Men in straw-coloured bamboo armchairs turning round to look. She couldn't see their faces. She saw Mark's face. She heard Mark's voice, shouting with laughter. She saw Mark lying dead on the floor. The men stood up suddenly. Somebody without a face knelt down and bent over him.
It was as if she had never known before that Mark was dead and knew it now. She cried for the first time since his death, not because he was dead, but because he had died like that—playing.
He should have died fighting. Why couldn't he? There was the Boer War and the Khyber Pass and Chitral and the Soudan. He had missed them all. He had never had what he had wanted.
And Mamma who had cried so much had left off crying.
"The poor man couldn't have liked writing that letter, Mary. You needn't be angry with him."
"I'm not angry with him. I'm angry because Mark died like that."
"Heigh-h—" The sound in her mother's throat was like a sigh and a sob and a laugh jerking out contempt.
"You don't know what you're talking about. He's gone, Mary. If you were his mother it wouldn't matter to you how he died so long as he didn't suffer. So long as he didn't die of cholera."
"If he could have got what he wanted—"
"What's that you say?"
"If he could have got what he wanted."
"None of us ever get what we want in this world," said Mamma.
She thought: "It was her son—herson she loved, not Mark's real, secret self. He's got away from her at last—altogether."
She sewed.
Every day she went to the linen cupboard and gathered up all the old towels and sheets that wanted mending, and she sewed.
Her mother had a book in her lap. She noticed that if she left off sewing Mamma would take up the book and read, and when she began again she would put it down.
Her thoughts went from Mamma to Mark, from Mark to Mamma. She used tobe pleased when she saw you sewing. "Nothing will ever please her now.She'll never be happy again…. I ought to have died instead of Mark….That's Anthony Trollope she's reading."
The long sheet kept slipping. It dragged on her arm. Her arms felt swollen, and heavy like bars of lead. She let them drop to her knees…. Little Mamma.
She picked up the sheet again.
"Why are you sewing, Mary?"
"I must dosomething."
"Why don't you take a book and read?"
"I can't read."
"Well—why don't you go out for a walk?"
"Too tired."
"You'd better go and lie down in your room."
She hated her room. Everything in it reminded her of the day after Mark died. The rows of new books reminded her; and Mark's books in the narrow bookcase. They were hers. She would never be asked to give them back again. Yesterday she had taken out the Aeschylus and looked at it, and she had forgotten that Mark was dead and had felt glad because it was hers. To-day she had been afraid to see its shabby drab back lest it should remind her of that, too.
Her mother sighed and put her book away. She sat with her hands before her, waiting.
Her face had its old look of reproach and disapproval, the drawn, irritated look you saw when you came between her and Mark. As if your grief for Mark came between her and her grief, as if, deep down inside her, she hated your grief as she had hated your love for him, without knowing that she hated it.
Suddenly she turned on you her blurred, wounded eyes.
"Mary, when you look at me like that I feel as if you knew everything I'm thinking."
"I don't. I shall never know."
Supposing all the time she knew what you were thinking? Supposing Mark knew? Supposing the dead knew?
She was glad of the aching of her heart that dragged her thought down and numbed it.
The January twilight crept between them. She put down her sewing. At the stroke of the clock her mother stirred in her chair.
"What day of the month is it?" she said.
"The twenty-fifth."
"Then—yesterday was your birthday…. Poor Mary. I forgot…. I sit here, thinking. My own thoughts. They make me forget…. Come here."
She went to her, drawn by a passion stronger than her passion for Mark, her hard, proud passion for Mark.
Her mother put up her face. She stooped down and kissed her passionately, on her mouth, her wet cheeks, her dove's eyes, her dove's eyelids. She crouched on the floor beside her, leaning her head against her lap. Mamma's hand held it there.
"Are you twenty-nine or thirty?"
"Thirty."
"You don't look it. You've always been such a little thing…. You remember the silly question you used to ask me? 'Mamma—would you love me better if I was two?'"
She remembered. Long ago. When she came teasing for kisses. The silly question.
"You rememberthat?"
"Yes. I remember."
Deep down inside her there was something you would never know.