If only he would not keep on telling you you ought to come to London.That was what made you afraid. He might have seen how impossible it was.He had seen Mamma.
"Don't try to dig me out of my 'hole.' Ican'go on living in it for ever' if I'm never taken out. But if I got out once it would be awful coming back. It isn't awful now. Don't make it awful."
He only wrote: "I'll make it awfuller and _aw_fuller, until out you come."
Things were happening in the village.
The old people were dying. Mr. James had died in a fit the day afterChristmas Day. Old Mrs. Heron had died of a stroke in the first week ofJanuary. She had left Dorsy her house and furniture and seventy pounds ayear. Mrs. Belk got the rest.
The middle-aged people were growing old. Louisa Wright's hair hung in a limp white fold over each ear, her face had tight lines in it that pulled it into grimaces, her eyes had milky white rings like speedwell when it begins to fade. Dorsy Heron's otter brown hair was striped with grey; her nose stood up sharp and bleak in her red, withering face; her sharp, tender mouth drooped at the corners. She was forty-nine.
It was cruel, cruel, cruel; it hurt you to see them. Rather than own it was cruel they went about pulling faces and pretending they were happy. Their gestures had become exaggerated, tricks that they would never grow out of, that gave them the illusion of their youth.
The old people were dying and the middle-aged people were growing old.Nothing would ever begin for them again.
Each morning when she got out of bed she had the sacred, solemn certainty that for her everything was beginning. At thirty-nine.
What was thirty-nine? A time-feeling, a feeling she hadn't got. If you haven't got the feeling you are not thirty-nine. You can be any age you please, twenty-nine, nineteen.
But she had been horribly old at nineteen. She could remember what it had felt like, the desperate, middle-aged sadness, the middle-aged certainty that nothing interesting would ever happen. She had got hold of life at the wrong end.
And all the time her youth had been waiting for her at the other end, at the turn of the unknown road, at thirty-nine. All through the autumn and winter Richard Nicholson had kept on writing. Her poems would be out on the tenth of April.
On the third the note came.
"Shall I still find you at Morfe if I come down this week-end?—R.N."
"You will never find me anywhere else.—M.O."
"I shall bike from Durlingham. If you've anything to do in Reyburn it would be nice if you met me at The King's Head about four. We could have tea there and ride out together.—R.N."
"I'm excited. I've never been to tea in an hotel before."
She was chattering like a fool, saying anything that came into her head, to break up the silence he made.
She was aware of something underneath it, something that was growing more and more beautiful every minute. She was trying to smash this thing lest it should grow more beautiful than she could bear.
"You see how I score by being shut up in Morfe. When I do get out it's no end of an adventure." (Was there ever such an idiot?)
Suddenly she left off trying to smash the silence.
The silence made everything stand out with a supernatural clearness, the square, white-clothed table in the bay of the window, the Queen Anne fluting on the Britannia metal teapot, the cups and saucers and plates, white with a gentian blue band, The King's Head stamped in gold like a crest.
Sitting there so still he had the queer effect of creating for both of you a space of your own, more real than the space you had just stepped out of. There, there and not anywhere else, these supernaturally clear things had reality, a unique but impermanent reality. It would last as long as you sat there and would go when you went. You knew that whatever else you might forget you would remember this.
The rest of the room, the other tables and the people sitting at them were not quite real. They stood in another space, a different and inferior kind of space.
"I came first of all," he said, "to bring youthat."
He took out of his pocket and put down between them the thin, new white parchment book of herPoems.
"Oh … Poor thing, I wonder what'll happen to it?" Funny—it was the least real thing. If it existed at all it existed somewhere else, not in this space, not in this time. If you took it up and looked at it the clearness, the unique, impermanent reality would be gone, and you would never get it again.
* * * * *
They had finished the run down Reyburn hill. Their pace was slackening on the level.
He said, "That's a jolly bicycle of yours."
"Isn't it? I'm sure you'll like to know I bought it with the wonderful cheque you gave me. I should never have had it without that."
"I'm glad you got something out of that awful time."
"Awful? It was one of the nicest times I've ever had…. Nearly all my nice times have been in that house."
"I know," he said. "My uncle would let you do anything you liked if you were young enough. He ought to have had children of his own. They'd have kept him out of mischief."
"I can't think," she said to the surrounding hills, "why people get into mischief, or why they go and kill themselves. When they can ride bicycles instead."
Mamma was sitting upright and averted, with an air of self-conscious effacement, holding the thin white book before her like a fan.
Every now and then you could see her face swinging round from behind the cover and her eyes looking at Richard Nicholson, above the rims of her glasses. Uneasy, frightened eyes.
The big pink roses of the chintzes and the gold bordered bowls of the black mirrors looked at you rememberingly.
There was a sort of brutality about it. To come here and be happy, to come here in order to be happy, whentheywere gone; when you had hurt them both so horribly.
"I'm sitting in her chair," she thought.
Richard Nicholson sat, in a purely temporary attitude, by the table in the window. Against the window-pane she could see his side face drawn in a brilliant, furred line of light. His moustache twitched under the shadow of his nose. He was smiling to himself as he wrote the letter to Mamma.
There was a brutality about that, too. She wondered if he had seen old Baxter's pinched mouth and sliding eyes when he took the letter. He was watching him as he went out, waiting for the click of the latch.
"It's all right," he said. "They expect you. They think it's work."
He settled himself (in Mr. Sutcliffe's chair).
"It's the best way," he said. "I want to see you and I don't want to frighten your mother. Sheisafraid of me."
"No. She's afraid of the whole thing. She wishes it hadn't happened. She's afraid of what'll happen next. I can't make her see that nothing need happen next."
"She's cleverer than you think. She sees that something's got to happen next. I couldn't stand another evening like the last."
"You couldn't," she agreed. "You couldn't possibly."
"We can't exactly go on like—like this, you know."
"Don't let's think about it. Here we are. Now this minute. It's an hour and a half till dinner time. Why, even if I go at nine we've got three hours."
"That's not enough…. You talk as though we could think or not think, as we chose. Even if we left off thinking we should have to go on living. Your mother knows that."
"I don't think she knows more than we do."
"She knows enough to frighten her. She knows whatIwant…. I want to marry you, Mary."
(This then was what she had been afraid of. But Mamma wouldn't have thought of it.)
"I didn't think you wanted to do that. Why should you?"
"It's the usual thing, isn't it? When you care enough."
"Doyou care enough?"
"More than enough. Don't you? … It's no use saying you don't. I know you do."
"Can you tell?"
"Yes."
"Do I go about showing it?"
"No; there hasn't been time. You only began yesterday."
"When?When?"
"In the hotel. When you stopped talking suddenly. And when I gave you your book. You looked as though you wished I hadn't. As though I'd dragged you away from somewhere where you were happy."
"Yes…. If it only began yesterday we can stop it. Stop it before it gets worse."
"I can't. I've been at it longer than that."
"How long?"
"Oh—I don't know. It might have been that first week. After I'd found out that there was peace when you came into the room; and no peace when you went out. When you're there peace oozes out of you and soaks into me all the time."
"Does it feel like that?"
"Just like that."
"But—if it feels like that now, we should spoil it by marrying."
"Oh no we shouldn't."
"Yes…. If it's peace you want. There won't beanypeace…. Besides, you don't know. Do you remember telling me about your uncle?"
"What's he got to do with it?"
"And that girl. You said I couldn't have known anything about it…. You said I couldn't even have come in for the sad end of it."
"Well?"
"Well…. I did…. Iwasthe sad end of it…. The girl was me."
"But you told me it wasn't true."
…He had got up. He wanted to stand. To stand up high above you.
"Youknow," he said, "you told me it wasn't true."
* * * * *
They would have to go through with it. Dining. Drinking coffee. Talking politely; talking intelligently; talking. Villiers de L'Isle Adam, Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "The symbolistes are finished … Do you know Jean Richepin? 'Il était une fois un pauvre gars Qui aimait celle qui ne l'aimait pas'? … 'Le coeur de ta mère pour mon chien.'" He thinks I lied. "You ought to read Henri de Regnier and Remy de Gourmont. You'd like them." … Le coeur de ta mère. He thinks I lied. Goodness knows what he doesn't think.
The end of it would come at nine o'clock.
* * * * *
"Are you still angry?"
He laughed. A dreadful sniffling laugh that came through his nostrils.
"I'm not. If I were I should let you go on thinking I lied. You see, I didn't know it was true. I didn't know I was the girl."
"You didn'tknow?"
"How could I when he never said a word?"
"I can't understand your not seeing it."
"Would you like me better if I had seen it?"
"N-no…. But I wish you hadn't told me. Why did you?"
"I was only trying to break the shock. You thought I couldn't be old enough to be that girl. I meant you to do a sum in your head: 'If she was that girl and she was seventeen, then she must be thirty-nine now.'"
"Isthatwhat you smashed up our evening for?"
"Yes."
"I shouldn't care if you were fifty-nine. I'm forty-five."
"You're sorry. You're sorry all the same."
"I'm sorry because there's so little time, Mary. Sorry I'm six years older than you…."
Nine o'clock.
She stood up. He turned to her. He made a queer sound. A sound like a deep, tearing sigh.
* * * * *
"If I were twenty I couldn't marry you, because of Mamma. That's one thing. You can't marry Mamma."
"We can talk about your mother afterwards."
"No. Now. There isn't any afterwards. There's only this minute that we're in. And perhaps the next…. You haven't thought what it'll be like. You can't leave London because of your work. I can't leave this place because of Mamma. She'd be miserable in London. I can't leave her. She hasn't anybody but me. I promised my brother I'd look after her…. She'd have to live with me."
"Why not?"
"You couldn't live with her."
"I could, Mary."
"Not you. You said you couldn't stand another evening like yesterday….All the evenings would be like yesterday…. Please…. Even if there wasn't Mamma, you don't want to marry. If you'd wanted to you'd have done it long ago, instead of waiting till you're forty-five. Think of two people tied up together for life whether they both like it or not. It isn't even as if one of them could be happy. How could you if the other wasn't? Look at the Sutcliffes. Think how he hated it…. Andhewas a kind, patient man. You know you wouldn't dream of marrying me if you didn't think it was the only possible way."
"Well—isn't it?"
"No. The one impossible way. I'd do anything for you but that….Anything."
"Would you, Mary? Would you have the courage?"
"It would take infinitely more courage to marry you. We should be risking more. All the beautiful things. If it wasn't for Mamma…. But thereisMamma. So—you see."
She thought: "Hehasn'tkissed me. Hehasn'theld me in his arms.He'll be all right. It won't hurt him."
That was Catty's white apron.
Catty stood on the cobbled square by the front door, looking for her.When she saw them coming she ran back into the house.
She was waiting in the passage as Mary came in.
"The mistress is upset about something," she said. "After she got Mr.Nicholson's letter."
"There wasn't anything to upset her in that, Catty."
"P'raps not, Miss Mary; but I thought I'd tell you."
Mamma had been crying all evening. Her pocket-handkerchief lay in her lap, a wet rag.
"I thought you were never coming back again," she said.
"Why, where did you think I'd gone?"
"Goodness knows where. I believe there's nothing you wouldn't do. I've no security with you, Mary…. Staying out till all hours of the night…. Sitting up with that man…. You'll be the talk of the place if you don't take care."
(She thought: "I must let her go on. I won't say anything. If I do it'll be terrible.")
"I can't think what possessed you…."
("Why did I do it?Whydid I smash it all up? Uncle Victor suicided.That's what I've done…. I've killed myself…. This isn't me.")
"If that's what comes of your publishing I'd rather your books were sunk to the bottom of the sea. I'd rather see you in your coffin."
"Iamin my coffin."
"I wish I were in mine," her mother said.
* * * * *
Mamma was getting up from her chair, raising herself slowly by her arms.
Mary stooped to pick up the pocket-handkerchief. "Don't, Mamma; I've got it."
Mamma went on stooping. Sinking, sliding down sideways, clutching at the edge of the table.
Mary saw terror, bright, animal terror, darting up to her out of Mamma's eyes, and in a place by themselves the cloth sliding, the lamp rocking and righting itself.
She was dragging her up by her armpits, holding her up. Mamma's arms were dangling like dolls' arms.
And like a machine wound up, like a child in a passion, she still struggled to walk, her knees thrust out, doubled up, giving way, her feet trailing.
Not a stroke. Well, only a slight stroke, a threatening, a warning."Remember she's getting old, Mary."
Any little worry or excitement would do it.
She was worried and excited about me. Richard worried and excited her.
If I could only stay awake till she sleeps. She's lying there like a lamb, calling me "dear" and afraid of giving me trouble…. Her little hands dragged the bedclothes up to her chin when Dr. Charles came. She looked at him with her bright, terrified eyes.
She isn't old. She can't be when her eyes are so bright.
She thinks it's a stroke. She won't believe him. She thinks she'll die like Mrs. Heron.
Perhaps she knows.
Perhaps Dr. Charles really thinks she'll die and won't tell me. Richard thought it. He was sorry and gentle, because he knew. You could see by his cleared, smoothed face and that dreadfully kind, dreadfully wise look. He gave into everything—with an air of insincere, provisional acquiescence, as if he knew it couldn't be for very long. Dr. Charles must have told him.
Richard wants it to happen…. Richard's wanting it can't make it happen.
It might, though. Richard might get at her. His mind and will might be getting at her all the time, making her die. He might do it without knowing he was doing it, because he couldn't help it. He might do it in his sleep.
But I can stop that…. If Richard's mind and will can make her die, my mind and will can keep her from dying…. There was something I did before.
That time I wanted to go away with the Sutcliffes. When Roddy was coming home. Something happened then…. If it happened then it can happen now.
If I could remember how you do it. Flat on your back with your eyes shut; not tight shut. You mustn't feel your eyelids. You mustn't feel any part of you at all. You think of nothing, absolutely nothing; not even think. You keep on not feeling, not thinking, not seeing things till the blackness comes in waves, blacker and blacker. That's how it was before. Then the blackness was perfectly still. You couldn't feel your breathing or your heart beating…. It's coming all right…. Blacker and blacker.
It wasn't like this before.
Thisis an awful feeling. Dying must be like this. One thing going after another. Something holding down your heart, stopping its beat; something holding down your chest, crushing the breath out of it…. Don't think about the feeling. Don't feel. Think of the blackness….
It isn't the same blackness. There are specks and shreds of light in it; you can't get the light away…. Don't think about the blackness and the light. Let everything go except yourself. Hold on to yourself…. But you felt your self going.
Going and coming back; gathered together; incredibly free; disentangled from the net of nerves and veins. It didn't move any more with the movement of the net. It was clear and still in the blackness; intensely real.
Then it willed. Your self willed. It was free to will. You knew that it had never been free before except once; it had never willed before except once. Willing was this. Waves and waves of will, coming on and on, making your will, driving it through empty time…. "The time of time": that was the Self…. Time where nothing happens except this. Where nothing happens except God's will. God's will in your will. Self of your self. Reality of reality…. It had felt like that.
Mamma had waked up. She was saying she was better.
* * * * *
Mamma was better. She said she felt perfectly well. She could walk across the room. She could walk without your holding her.
It couldn't have been that. It couldn't, possibly. It was a tiny haemorrhage and it had dried up. It would have dried up just the same if you hadn't done anything. Those thingsdon't happen.
What did happen was extraordinary enough. The queer dying. The freedom afterwards. The intense stillness, the intense energy; the certainty.
Something was there.
* * * * *
That horrible dream. Dorsy oughtn't to have made me go and see the old woman in the workhouse. A body without a mind. That's what made the dream come. It was Mamma's face; but she was doing what the old woman did.
"Mamma!"—That's the second time I've dreamed Mamma was dead.
The little lamb, lying on her back with her mouth open, making that funny noise: "Cluck-cluck," like a hen.
Why can't I dream about something I want to happen? Why can't I dream about Richard? … Poor Richard, how can he go on believing I shall come to him?
Dear Dr. Charles, with his head sticking out between the tubes of the stethoscope, like a ram. His poor old mouth hung loose as he breathed. He was out late last night; there was white stubble on his chin.
"It won't do it when you want it to."
"It's doing quite enough…. Let me see, it's two years since your mother had that illness. You must go away, Mary. For a month at least. Dorsy'll come and take care of your mother."
"Does it matter where I go?"
"N-no. Not so much. Go where you'll get a thorough change, my dear. I wouldn't stay with relations, if I were you."
"All right, I'll go if you'll tell me what's the matter with me."
"You've got your brother Rodney's heart. But it won't kill you if you'll take care of yourself."
(Roddy's heart, the net of flesh and blood drawing in a bit of your body.)
Richard had gone up into his own flat and left her to wash and dress and explore. He had told her she was to have Tiedeman's flat. Not knowing who Tiedeman was made it more wonderful that God should have put it into his head to go away for Easter and lend you his flat.
If you wanted anything you could ring and they would come up from the basement and look after you.
She didn't want them to come up yet. She wanted to lie back among her cushions where Richard had packed her, and turn over the moments and remember what they had been like: getting out of the train at King's Cross and finding Richard there; coming with him out of the thin white April light into the rich darkness and brilliant colours of the room; the feeling of Richard's hands as they undid her fur stole and peeled the sleeves of her coat from her arms; seeing him kneel on the hearthrug and make tea with an air of doing something intensely interesting, an air of security and possession. He went about in Tiedeman's rooms as if they belonged to him.
She liked Tiedeman's flat: the big outer room, curtained with thick gentian blue and thin violet. There was a bowl of crimson and purple anemones on the dark oval of the oak table.
Tiedeman's books covered the walls with their coloured bands and stripes and the illuminated gold of their tooling. The deep bookcases made a ledge all round half-way up the wall, and the shallow bookcases went on above it to the ceiling.
But—those white books on the table were Richard's books.Mary Olivier—Mary Olivier. Mybooks that I gave him…. They're Richard's rooms.
She got up and looked about. That long dark thing was her coat and fur stretched out on the flat couch in the corner where Richard had laid them; stretched out in an absolute peace and rest.
She picked them up and went into the inner room that showed through the wide square opening. The small brown oak-panelled room. No furniture but Richard's writing table and his chair. A tall narrow French window looking to the backs of houses, and opening on a leaded balcony. Spindle-wood trees, green balls held up on ramrod stems in green tubs. Richard's garden.
Curtains of thin silk, brilliant magenta, letting the light through. The hanging green bough of a plane tree, high up on the pane, between. A worn magentaish rug on the dark floor.
She went through the door on the right and found a short, narrow passage. Another French window opening from it on to the balcony. A bathroom on the other side; a small white panelled bedroom at the end.
She had no new gown. Nothing but the black chiffon one (black because of Uncle Victor) she had bought two years ago with Richard's cheque. She had worn it at Greffington that evening when she dined with him. It had a long, pointed train. Its thin, open, wide spreading sleeves fell from her shoulders in long pointed wings. It made her feel slender.
* * * * *
There was no light in the inner room. Clear glassy dark twilight behind the tall window. She stood there waiting for Richard to come down.
Richard loved all this. He loved beautiful books, beautiful things, beautiful anemone colours, red and purple with the light coming through them, thin silk curtains that let the light through like the thin silky tissues of flowers. He loved the sooty brown London walls, houses standing back to back, the dark flanks of the back wings jutting out, almost meeting across the trenches of the gardens, making the colours in his rooms brilliant as stained glass.
He loved the sound of the street outside, intensifying the quiet of the house.
It was the backs that were so beautiful at night; the long straight ranges of the dark walls, the sudden high dark cliffs and peaks of the walls, hollowed out into long galleries filled with thick, burning light, rows on rows of oblong casements opening into the light. Here and there a tree stood up black in the trenches of the gardens.
The tight strain in her mind loosened and melted in the stream of the pure new light, the pure new darkness, the pure new colours.
Richard came in. They stood together a long time, looking out; they didn't say a word.
Then, as they turned back to the lighted outer room, "I thought I was to have had Tiedeman's flat?"
"Well, he's up another flight of stairs and the rain makes a row on the skylight. It was simpler to take his and give you mine. I want you to have mine."
She turned off the electric light and shut her eyes and lay thinking. The violent motion of the express prolonged itself in a ghostly vibration, rocking the bed. In still space, unshaken by this tremor, she could see the other rooms, the quiet, beautiful rooms.
I wonder how Mamma and Dorsy are getting on…. I'm not going to think about Mamma. It isn't fair to Richard. I shan't think about anybody but Richard for this fortnight. One evening of it's gone already. It might have lasted quite another hour if he hadn't got up and gone away so suddenly. What a fool I was to let him think I was tired.
There will be thirteen evenings more. Thirteen. You can stretch time out by doing a lot of things in it; doing something different every hour. When you're with Richard every minute's different from the last, and he brings you the next all bright and new.
Heaven would be like that. Imagine an eternity of heaven; being with Richard for ever and ever. But nobody ever did imagine an eternity of heaven. People only talk about it because they can't imagine it. What they mean is that if they had one minute of it they would remember that for ever and ever.
* * * * *
This is Richard's life. This is what I'd have taken from him if I'd let him marry me.
I daren't even think what it would have been like if I'd tried to mix up Mamma and Richard in the same house…. And poor little Mamma in a strange place with nothing about it that she could remember, going up and down in it, trying to get at me, and looking reproachful and disapproving all the time. She'd have to be shut in her own rooms because Richard wouldn't have her in his. Sitting up waiting to be read aloud to and played halma with when Richard wanted me. Saying the same things over and over again. Sighing.
Richard would go off his head if he heard Mamma sigh.
He wants to be by himself the whole time, "working like blazes." He likes to feel that the very servants are battened down in the basement so that he doesn't know they're there. He couldn't stand Tiedeman and Peters if they weren't doing the same thing. Tiedeman working like blazes in the flat above him and Peters working like blazes in the flat below.
Richard slept in this room last night. He will sleep in it again when I'm gone.
She switched the light on to look at it for another second: the privet-white panelled cabin, the small wine-coloured chest of drawers, the small golden-brown wardrobe, shining.
My hat's in that wardrobe, lying on Richard's waistcoat, fast asleep.
If Tiedeman's flat's up there, that's Richard walking up and down over my head…. If it rains there'll be a row on the skylight and he won't sleep. He isn't sleeping now.
It would be much nicer to walk home through Kensington Gardens and HydePark.
She was glad that they were going to have a quiet evening. After three evenings at the play and Richard ruining himself in hansoms and not sleeping…. After this unbelievable afternoon. All those people, those terribly important people.
It was amusing to go about with Richard and feel important yourself because you were with him. And to see Richard's ways with them, his nice way of behaving as ifhewasn't important in the least, as if it was you they had made all that fuss about.
To think that the little dried up schoolmasterish man was Professor Lee Ramsden, prowling about outside the group, eager and shy, waiting to be introduced to you, nobody taking the smallest notice of him. The woman who had brought him making soft, sentimental eyes at you through the gaps in the group, and trying to push him in a bit nearer. Then Richard asking you to be kind for one minute to the poor old thing. It hurt you to see him shy and humble and out of it.
And when you thought of his arrogance at Durlingham.
It was the women's voices that tired you so, and their nervous, snapping eyes.
The best of all was going away from them quietly with Richard intoKensington Gardens.
"Did you like it, Mary?"
"Frightfully. But not half so much as this."
She was all alone in the front room, stretched out on the flat couch in the corner facing the door.
He was still writing his letter in the inner room. When she heard him move she would slide her feet to the floor and sit up.
She wanted to lie still with her hands over her shut eyes, making the four long, delicious days begin again and go on in her head.
Richardwouldtake hansoms. You couldn't stop him. Perhaps he was afraid if you walked too far you would drop down dead. When it was all over your soul would still drive about London in a hansom for ever and ever, through blue and gold rain-sprinkled days, through poignant white evenings, through the streaming, steep, brown-purple darkness and the streaming flat, thin gold of the wet nights.
They were not going to have any more tiring parties. There wasn't enough time.
When she opened her eyes he was sitting on the chair by the foot of the couch, leaning forward, looking at her. She saw nothing but his loose, hanging hands and straining eyes.
"Oh, Richard—what time is it?" She swung her feet to the floor and sat up suddenly.
"Only nine."
"Only nine. The evening's nearly gone."
* * * * *
"Is that why you aren't sleeping, Richard? … I didn't know. I didn't know I was hurting you."
"What-did-you-think? What-did-you-think? Isn't it hurting you?"
"Me? I've got used to it. I was so happy just being with you."
"So happy and so quiet that I thought you didn't care…. Well, what wasI to think? If you won't marry me."
"That's because I care so frightfully. Don't let's rake that up again."
"Well, there it is."
She thought: "I've no business to come here to his rooms, turning him out, making him so wretched that he can't sleep. No business…. Unless—"
"And we've got to go on living with it," he said.
He thinks I haven't the courage … I can'ttellhim.
"Yes," she said, "there it is."
Why shouldn't I tell him? … We've only ten days. As long as I'm here nothing matters but Richard … If I keep perfectly still, still like this, if I don't say a word he'll think of it….
"Richard—would you rather I hadn't come?"
"No."
"You remember the evening I came—you got up so suddenly and left me?What did you do that for?"
"Because if I'd stayed another minute I couldn't have left you at all."
He stood up.
"And you're only going now because you can't see that I'm not a coward."
* * * * *
This wouldn't last, the leaping and knocking of her heart, the eyelids screwing themselves tight, the jerking of her nerves at every sound: at the two harsh rattling screams of the curtain rings along the pole, at the light click of the switches. Only the small green-shaded lamp still burning on Richard's writing table in the inner room. She could hear him moving about, softly and secretly, in there.
He was Richard. That was Richard, moving about in there.
Richard thought his flat was a safe place. But it wasn't. People creeping up the stairs every minute and standing still to listen. People would come and try the handle of the door.
"They won't, dear. Nobody ever comes in. It has never happened. It isn't going to happen now."
Yet you couldn't help thinking that just this night it would happen.
She thought that Peters knew. He wouldn't come out of his door till you had turned the corner of the stairs.
She thought the woman in the basement knew. She remembered the evening at Greffington: Baxter's pinched mouth and his eyes sliding sideways to look at you. She knew now what Baxter had been thinking. The woman's look was the female of Baxter's.
As if that could hurt you!
"Mary, do you know you're growing younger every minute?"
"I shall go on growing younger and younger till it's all over."
"Till what's all over?"
"This. So will you, Richard."
"Not in the same way. My hair isn't young any more. My face isn't young any more."
"I don't want it to be young. It wasn't half so nice a face when it was young…. Some other woman loved it when it was young."
"Yes. Another woman loved it when it was young."
"Is she alive and going about?"
"Oh, yes; she's alive and she goes about a lot."
"Does she love you now?"
"I suppose she does."
"I wish she didn't."
"You needn't mind her, Mary. She was never anything to me. She never will be."
"But I do mind her. I mind her awfully. I can't bear to think of her going about and loving you. She's no business to…. Why do I mind her loving you more than I'd mind your loving her?"
"Because you like loving more than being loved."
"How do you know?"
"I know every time I hold you in my arms."
There have been other women then, or he wouldn't know the difference.There must have been a woman that he loved.
I don't care. It wasn't the same thing.
"What are you thinking?"
"I'm thinking nothing was ever the same thing as this."
"No…. Whatever we do, Mary, we mustn't go back on it…. If we could have done anything else. But I can't see…. It's not as if it could last long. Nothing lasts long. Life doesn't last long."
He sounded as if he were sorry, as if already, in his mind, he had gone back on it. After three days.
"You're notsorry, Richard?"
"Only when I think of you. The awful risks I've made you take."
"Can't you see Ilikerisks? I always have liked risks. When we were children my brothers and I were always trying to see just how near we could go to breaking our necks."
"I know you've courage enough for anything. But that was rather a different sort of risk."
"No. No. There are no different sorts of risk. All intense moments ofdanger are the same. It's always the same feeling. I don't know whetherI've courage or not, but I do know that when danger comes you don't care.You're hoisted up above caring."
"Youdocare, Mary."
"About my 'reputation '? You wouldn't like to think I didn't care about it…. Of course, I care frightfully. If I didn't, where's the risk?"
"I hate your having to take it all. I don't risk anything."
"I wish you did. Then you'd be happier. Poor Richard—so safe in his man's world…. You can be sorry about that, if you like. But not about me. I shall never be sorry. Nothing in this world can make me sorry…. I shouldn't like Mamma to know about it. But even Mamma couldn't make me sorry…. I've always been happy about the things that matter, the real things. I hate people who sneak and snivel about real things…. People who have doubts about God and don't like them and snivel. I had doubts about God once, and they made me so happy I could hardly bear it…. Mamma couldn't bear it making me happy. She wouldn't have minded half so much if I had been sorry and snivelled. She wouldn't mind so much if I was sorry and snivelled about this."
"Yousaidyou weren't going to think about your mother."
"I'm not thinking about her. I'm thinking about how happy I have been and am and shall be."
Even thinking about Mamma couldn't hurt you now. Nothing could hurt the happiness you shared with Richard. What it was now it would always be. Pure and remorseless.
Delicious, warm, shining day. She had her coat and hat on ready to go down with him. The hansom stood waiting in the street.
They were looking up the place on the map, when the loud double knock came.
"That's for Peters. He's always getting wires—"
"If we don't go to-day we shall never go. We've only got five more now."
The long, soft rapping on the door of the room. Knuckles rapping out their warning. "You can't say I don't give you time."
Richard took the orange envelope.
"It's for you, Mary."
"Oh, Richard, 'Come at once. Mother ill.—DORSY.'"
She would catch the ten train. That was what the hansom was there for.
"I'll send your things on after you."
The driver and the slog-slogging horse knew that she would catch the train. Richard knew.
He had the same look on his face that was there before when Mamma was ill. Sorrow that wasn't sorrow. And the same clear thought behind it.
Dorsey's nerves were in a shocking state. You could see she had been afraid all the time; from the first day when Mamma had kept on saying, "Has Mary come back?"
Dorsy was sure that was how it began; but she couldn't tell you whether it was before or afterwards that she had forgotten the days of the week.
Anybody could forget the days of the week. What frightened Dorsy was hearing her say suddenly, "Mary'sgone." She said it to herself when she didn't know Dorsy was in the room. Then she had left off asking and wondering. For five days she hadn't said anything about you. Not anything at all. When she heard your name she stared at them with a queer, scared look.
Catty said that yesterday she had begun to be afraid of Dorsy and couldn't bear her in the room. That was what made them send the wire.
* * * * *
What had she been thinking of those five days? It was as though she knew.
Dorsy said she didn't believe she was thinking anything at all. Dorsy didn't know.
Somebody knew. Somebody had been talking. She had found Catty in the room making up the bed for her in the corner. Catty was crying as she tucked in the blankets. "There's some people," she said, "as had ought to be poisoned." But she wouldn't say why she was crying.
You could tell by Mr. Belk's face, his mouth drawn in between claws of nose and chin; by Mrs. Belk's face and her busy eyes, staring. By the old men sitting on the bench at the corner, their eyes coming together as you passed.
And Mr. Spencer Rollitt, stretching himself straight and looking away over your head and drawing in his breath with a "Fivv-vv-vv" when he asked how Mamma was. His thoughts were hidden behind his bare, wooden face. He was a just and cautious man. He wouldn't accept any statement outside the Bible without proof.
You had to go down and talk to Mrs. Waugh. She had come to see how you would look. Her mouth talked about Mamma but her face was saying all the time, "I'm not going to ask you what you were doing in London in Mr. Nicholson's flat, Mary. I'm sure you wouldn't do anything you'd be sorry to think of with your poor mother in the state she's in."
I don't care. I don't care what they think.
There would still be Catty and Dorsy and Louisa Wright and Miss Kendal and Dr. Charles with their kind eyes that loved you. And Richard living his eternal life in your heart.
And Mamma would never know.
Mamma was going backwards and forwards between the open work-table and the cabinet. She was taking out the ivory reels and thimbles and button boxes, wrapping them in tissue paper and hiding them in the cabinet. When she had locked the doors she waited till you weren't looking to lift up her skirt and hide the key in her petticoat pocket.
She was happy, like a busy child at play.
She was never ill, only tired like a child that plays too long. Her face was growing smooth and young and pretty again; a pink flush under her eyes. She would never look disapproving or reproachful any more. She couldn't listen any more when you read aloud to her. She had forgotten how to play halma.
One day she found the green box in the cabinet drawer. She came to you carrying it with care. When she had put it down on the table she lifted the lid and looked at the little green and white pawns and smiled.
"Roddy's soldiers," she said.
* * * * *
Richard doesn't know what he's talking about when he asks me to give up Mamma. He might as well ask me to give up my child. It's no use his saying she "isn't there." Any minute she may come back and remember and know me.
She must have known me yesterday when she asked me to go and see whatPapa was doing.
As for "waiting," he may have to wait years and years. And I'm forty-five now.
The round black eye of the mirror looked at them. Their figures would be there, hers and Richard's, at the bottom of the black crystal bowl, small like the figures in the wrong end of a telescope, very clear in the deep, clear swirl of the glass.
They were sitting close together on the old rose-chintz-covered couch.Hercouch. You could see him putting the cushions at her back, tucking the wide Victorian skirt in close about the feet in the black velvet slippers. And she would lie there with her poor hands folded in the white cashmere shawl.
Richard knew what you were thinking.
"You can't expect me," he was saying, "to behave like my uncle…. Besides, it's a little too late, isn't it?… We said, whatever we did we wouldn't go back on it. If it wasn't wrong then, Mary, it isn't wrong now."
"It isn't that, Richard."
(No. Not that. Pure and remorseless then. Pure and remorseless now.)
She wondered whether he had heard it. The crunching on the gravel walk under the windows, stopping suddenly when the feet stepped on to the grass. And the hushed growl of the men's voices. Baxter and the gardener. They had come to see whether the light would go out again behind the yellow blinds as it had gone out last night.
If you were a coward; if you had wanted to get off scot-free, it was too late.
Richard knows I'm not a coward. Funk wouldn't keep me from him. It isn'tthat.
"What is it, then?"
"Can't you see, can't you feel that it's no use coming again, just for this? It'll never be what it was then. It'll always be like last night, and you'll think I don't care. Something's holding me back from you. Something that's happened to me. I don't know yet what it is."
"Nerves. Nothing but nerves."
"No. I thought it was nerves last night. I thought it was this room.Those two poor ghosts, looking at us. I even thought it might be Mark andRoddy—all of them—tugging at me to get me away from you…. But itisn't that. It's something in me."
"You're trying to tell me you don't want me."
"I'm trying to tell you what happened. I did want you, all last year. It was so awful that I had to stop it. You couldn't go on living like that…. I willed and willed not to want you."
"So did I. All the willing in the world couldn't stop me."
"It isn't that sort of willing. You might go on all your life like that and nothing would happen. You have to find it out for yourself; and even that might take you all your life…. It isn't the thing people call willing at all. It's much queerer. Awfully queer."
"How—queer?"
"Oh—the sort of queerness you don't like talking about."
"I'm sorry, Mary. You seem to be talking about something, but I haven't the faintest notion what it is. But you can make yourself believe anything you like if you keep on long enough."
"No. Half the time I'm doing it I don't believe it'll come off…. But it always does. Every time it's the same. Every time; exactly as if something had happened."
"Poor Mary."
"But, Richard, it makes you absolutely happy. That's the queer part of it. It's how you know."
"Knowwhat?"
He was angry.
"That there's something there. That it's absolutely real."
"Real?"
"Why not? If it makes you happy without the thing you care most for in the whole world…. There must be something there. It must be real. Real in a way that nothing else is."
"You aren't happy now," he said.
"No. And you're with me. And I care for you more than anything in the whole world."
"I thought you said that was all over."
"No. It's only just begun."
"I can't say I see it."
"You'll see it all right soon…. When you've gone."
It was no use not marrying him, no use sending him away, as long as he was tied to you by his want.
You had no business to be happy. It wasn't fair. There was he, tied to you tighter than if youhadmarried him. And there you were in your inconceivable freedom. Supposing you could give him the same freedom, the same happiness? Supposing you could "work" it for him, make It (whatever it was) reach out and draw him into your immunity, your peace?
Whatever It was It was there. You could doubt away yourself and Richard, but you couldn't doubt away It.
It might leave you for a time, but it came back. It came back. Its going only intensified the wonder of its return. You might lose all sense of it between its moments; but the thing was certain while it lasted. Doubt it away, and still what had been done for you lasted. Done for you once for all, two years ago. And that wasn't the first time.
Even supposing you could doubt away the other times.—You might have made the other things happen by yourself. But not that. Not giving Richard up and still being happy. That was something you couldn't possibly have done yourself. Or you might have done it in time—time might have done it for you—but not like that, all at once, making that incredible, supernatural happiness and peace out of nothing at all, in one night, and going on in it, without Richard. Richard himself didn't believe it was possible. He simply thought it hadn't happened.
Still, even then, you might have said it didn't count so long as it was nothing but your private adventure; but not now, never again now when it had happened to Richard.
His letter didn't tell you whether he thought there was anything in it.He saw the "queerness" of it and left it there:
"Something happened that night after you'd gone. You know how I felt. I couldn't stop wanting you. My mind was tied to you and couldn't get away. Well—that night something let go—quite suddenly. Something went.
"It's a year ago and it hasn't come back.
"I didn't know what on earth you meant by 'not wanting and still caring'; but I think I see now. I don't 'want' you any more and I 'care' more than ever….
"Don't 'work like blazes.' Still I'm glad you like it. I can get you any amount of the same thing—more than you'll care to do."
He didn't know how hard it was to "work like blazes." You had to keep your eyes ready all the time to see what Mamma was doing. You had to take her up and down stairs, holding her lest she should turn dizzy and fall. If you left her a minute she would get out of the room, out of the house and on to the Green by herself and be frightened.
Mamma couldn't remember the garden. She looked at her flowers with dislike.
You had brought her on a visit to a strange, disagreeable place and left her there. She was angry with you because she couldn't get away.
Then, suddenly, for whole hours she would be good: a child playing its delicious game of goodness. When Dr. Charles came in and you took him out of the room to talk about her you would tell her to sit still until you came back. And she would smile, the sweet, serious smile of a child that is being trusted, and sit down on the parrot chair; and when you came back you would find her sitting there, still smiling to herself because she was so good.
Why do I love her now, when she is like this—when "this" is what I was afraid of, what I thought I could not bear—why do I love her more, if anything, now than I've ever done before? Why am I happier now than I've ever been before, except in the times when I was writing and the times when I was with Richard?
Forty-five. Yesterday she was forty-five, and to-day. To-morrow she would be forty-six. She had come through the dreadful, dangerous year without thinking of it, and nothing had happened. Nothing at all. She couldn't imagine why she had ever been afraid of it; she could hardly remember what being afraid of it had felt like.
Aunt Charlotte—Uncle Victor—
If I were going to be mad I should have gone mad long ago: when Roddy came back; when Mark died; when I sent Richard away. I should be mad now.
It was getting worse.
In the cramped room where the big bed stuck out from the wall to within a yard of the window, Mamma went about, small and weak, in her wadded lavender Japanese dressing-gown, like a child that can't sit still, looking for something it wants that nobody can find. You couldn't think because of the soft pad-pad of the dreaming, sleepwalking feet in the lamb's-wool slippers.
When you weren't looking she would slip out of the room on to the landing to the head of the stairs, and stand there, vexed and bewildered when you caught her.
Mamma was not well enough now to get up and be dressed. They had moved her into Papa's room. It was bright all morning with the sun. She was happy there. She remembered the yellow furniture. She was back in the old bedroom at Five Elms.
Mamma lay in the big bed, waiting for you to brush her hair. She was playing with her white flannel dressing jacket, spread out before her on the counterpane, ready. She talked to herself.
"Lindley Vickers—Vickers Lindley."
But she was not thinking of Lindley Vickers; she was thinking of Dan, trying to get back to Dan.
"Is Jenny there? Tell her to go and see what Master Roddy's doing." She thought Catty was Jenny…. "Has Dan come in?"
Sometimes it would be Papa; but not often; she soon left him for Dan andRoddy.
Always Dan and Roddy. And never Mark.
Never Mark and never Mary. Had she forgotten Mark or did she remember him too well? Or was she afraid to remember? Supposing there was a black hole in her mind where Mark's death was, and another black hole where Mary had been? Had she always held you together in her mind so that you went down together? Did she hold you together now, in some time and place safer than memory?
She was still playing with the dressing-jacket. She smoothed it, and patted it, and folded it up and laid it beside her on the bed. She took up her pocket-handkerchief and shook it out and folded it and put it on the top of the dressing-jacket.
"What are you doing, you darling?"
"Going to bed."
She looked at you with a half-happy, half-frightened smile, because you had found her out. She was putting out the baby clothes, ready. Serious and pleased and frightened.
"Who will take care of my little children when I'm laid aside?"
She knew what she was lying in the big bed for.
It was really bedtime. She was sitting up in the armchair while Catty who was Jenny made her bed. The long white sheet lay smooth and flat on the high mattress; it hung down on the floor.
Mamma was afraid of the white sheet. She wouldn't go back to bed.
"There's a coffin on the bed. Somebody's died of cholera," she said.
Cholera? That was what she thought Mark had died of.
* * * * *
She knows who I am now.
Richard had written to say he was married. On the twenty-fifth ofFebruary. That was just ten days after Mamma died.
"We've known each other the best part of our lives. So you see it's a very sober middle-aged affair."
He had married the woman who loved him when he was young. "A very sober middle-aged affair." Not what it would have been if you and he—He didn't want you to think thatthatwould ever happen again. He wanted you to see that with him and you it had been different, that you had loved him and lived with him in that other time he had made for you where you were always young.
He had only made it for you. She, poor thing, would have to put up with other people's time, time that made them middle-aged, made them old.
You had got to write and tell him you were glad. You had got to tell him Mamma died ten days ago. And he would say to himself, "If I'd waited another ten days—" There was nothing he could say to you.
That was why he didn't write again. There was nothing to say.