A sharp and tender pang went through her. It was like desire; like the
feeling you had when you thought of babies: painful and at the same time
delicious.

"Could you?" said Dr. Charles.

"Of course I can."

"If he's taken care of he might live--"

She stood up and faced him. "How long?"

"I don't know. Perhaps--" He went with her to the door. "Perhaps," he
said, "quite a long time."

(But if he didn't live she would have killed him. She had known all the
time, and she had let him go.)

Through the dining-room window she could see Roddy as he crouched over
the hearth, holding out his hands to the fire.

He was hers, not Mamma's, to take care of. Sharp, delicious pain!


VII.

"Oh, Roddy--look! Little, little grouse, making nice noises."

The nestlings went flapping and stumbling through the roots of the
heather. Roddy gazed at them with his fixed and mournful eyes. He
couldn't share your excitement. He drew back his shoulders, bracing
himself to bear it; his lips tightened in a hard, bleak grin. He grinned
at the absurdity of your supposing that he could be interested in
anything any more.

Roddy's beautiful face was bleached and sharpened; the sallow,
mauve-tinted skin stretched close over the bone; but below the edge of
his cap you could see the fine spring of his head from his neck, like the
spring of Mark's head.

They were in April now. He was getting better. He could walk up the lower
slopes of Karva without panting.

"Why are we ever out?" he said. "Supposing we went home?"

"All right. Let's."

He was like that. When he was in the house he wanted to be on the moor;
when he was on the moor he wanted to be back in the house. They started
to go home, and he turned again towards Karva. They went on till they
came to the round pit sunk below the track. They rested there, sitting on
the stones at the bottom of the pit.

"Mary," he said, "I can't stay here. I shall have to go back. To Canada,
I mean."

"You shall never go back to Canada," she said.

"I must. Not to the Aldersons. I can't go there again, because--I can't
tell you why. But if I could I wouldn't. I was no good there. They let
you know it."

"Jem?"

"No. _He_ was all right. That beastly woman."

"What woman?"

"His aunt. She didn't want me there. I wasn't fit for anything but
driving cattle and cleaning out their stinking pigsties.... She used to
look at me when I was eating. You could see she was thinking 'He isn't
worth his keep.' ... Her mouth had black teeth in it, with horrible gummy
gaps between. The women were like that. I wanted to hit her on the mouth
and smash her teeth.... But of course I couldn't."

"It's all over. You mustn't think about it."

"I'm not. I'm thinking about the other thing.... The thing I did. And the
dog, Mary; the dog."

She knew what was coming.

"You can't imagine what that place was like. Their sheep-run was miles
from the farm. Miles from anything. You had to take it in turns to sleep
there a month at a time, in a beastly hut. You couldn't sleep because of
that dog. Jem _would_ give him me. He yapped. You had to put him in the
shed to keep him from straying. He yapped all night. The yapping was the
only sound there was. It tore pieces out of your brain.... I didn't think
I could hate a dog.... But I did hate him. I simply couldn't stand the
yapping. And one night I got up and hung him. I hung him."

"You didn't, Roddy. You know you didn't. The first time you told me that
story you said you found him hanging. Don't you remember? He was a bad
dog. He bit the sheep. Jem's uncle hung him."

"No. It was me. Do you know what he did? He licked my hands when I was
tying the rope round his neck. He played with my hands. He was a yellow
dog with a white breast and white paws.... And that isn't the worst. That
isn't It."

"It?"

"The other thing. What I did.... I haven't told you that. You couldn't
stand me if you knew. It was why I had to go. Somebody must have known.
Jem must have known."

"I don't believe you did anything. Anything at all."

"I tell you I did."

"No, Roddy. You only think you did. You only think you hung the dog."

They got up out of the pit. They took the track to the schoolhouse lane.
A sheep staggered from its bed and stalked away, bleating, with head
thrown back and shaking buttocks. Plovers got up, wheeling round,
sweeping close. "_Pee_-vit--_Pee_-vit. Pee-_vitt_!"

"This damned place is full of noises," Roddy said.


VIII.

"The mind can bring it about, that all bodily modifications or images of
things may be referred to the idea of God."

The book stood open before her on the kitchen table, propped against the
scales. As long as you were only stripping the strings from the French
beans you could read.

The mind can bring it about. The mind can bring it about. "He who clearly
and distinctly understands himself and his emotions loves God, and so
much the more in proportion as he more understands himself and his
emotions."

Fine slices of French beans fell from the knife, one by one, into the
bowl of clear water. Spinoza's thought beat its way out through the smell
of steel, the clean green smell of the cut beans, the crusty, spicy smell
of the apple pie you had made. "He who loves God cannot endeavour that
God should love him in return."

"'Shall we gather at the river--'" Catty sang as she went to and fro
between the kitchen and the scullery. Catty was happy now that Maggie had
gone and she had only you and Jesus with her in the kitchen. Through the
open door you could hear the clack of the hatchet and the thud on the
stone flags as Roddy, with slow, sorrowful strokes, chopped wood in the
backyard.

"Miss Mary--" Catty's thick, loving voice and the jerk of her black eyes
warned her.

Mamma looked in at the door.

"Put that book away," she said. She hated the two brown volumes of
Elwes's Spinoza you had bought for your birthday. "The dinner will be
ruined if you read."

"It'll be ruined if I don't read."

For then your mind raged over the saucepans and the fragrant, floury
pasteboard, hungry and unfed. It couldn't bring anything about. It
snatched at the minutes left over from Roddy and the house and Mamma and
the piano. You knew what every day would be like. You would get up early
to practise. When the cooking and the housework was done Roddy would want
you. You would play tennis together with Mr. Sutcliffe and Dorsy Heron.
Or you would go up on to the moors and comfort Roddy while he talked
about the "things" he had done in Canada and about getting away and about
the dog. You would say over and over again, "You know you didn't hang
him. It was Jem's uncle. He was a bad dog. He bit the sheep." In the
winter evenings you would sew or play or read aloud to Mamma and Roddy,
and Roddy would crouch over the fender, with his hands stretched out to
the fire, not listening.

But Roddy was better. The wind whipped red blood into his cheeks. He said
he would be well if it wasn't for the bleating of the sheep, and the
crying of the peewits and the shouting of the damned villagers. And
people staring at him. He would be well if he could get away.

Then--he would be well if he could marry Dorsy.

So the first year passed. And the second. And the third year. She was
five and twenty. She thought: "I shall die before I'm fifty. I've lived
half my life and done nothing."


IX.

Old Dr. Kendal was dead. He had had nothing more to live for. He had
beaten Mr. Peacock of Sarrack. Miss Kendal was wearing black ribbons in
her cap instead of pink. And Maggie's sister was dead of her cancer.

The wall at the bottom of the garden had fallen down and Roddy had built
it up again.

He had heaved up the big stones and packed them in mortar; he had laid
them true by the plumb-line; Blenkiron's brother, the stonemason,
couldn't have built a better wall.

It had all happened in the week when she was ill and went to stay with
Aunt Lavvy at Scarborough. Yesterday evening, when she got home, Roddy
had come in out of the garden to meet her. He was in his shirt sleeves;
glass beads of sweat stood out on his forehead, his face was white with
excitement. He had just put the last dab of mortar to the last stone.

In the blue and white morning Mary and her mother stood in the garden,
looking at the wall. In its setting of clean white cement, Roddy's bit
showed like the map of South Africa. They were waiting for him to come
down to breakfast.

"I must say," Mamma said, "he's earned his extra half-hour in bed."

She was pleased because Roddy had built the wall up and because he was
well again.

They had turned. They were walking on the flagged path by the
flower-border under the house. Mamma walked slowly, with meditative
pauses, and bright, sidelong glances for her flowers.

"If only," she said, "he could work without trampling the flowers down."

The sun was shining on the flagged path. Mamma was stooping over the bed;
she had lifted the stalk of the daffodil up out of the sunk print of
Roddy's boot. Catty was coming down the house passage to the side door.
Her mouth was open. Her eyes stared above her high, sallow cheeks. She
stood on the doorstep, saying something in a husky voice.

"Miss Mary--will you go upstairs to Master Roddy? I think there's
something the matter with him. I think--"

Upstairs, in his narrow iron bed, Roddy lay on his back, his lips parted,
his eyes--white slits under half-open lids--turned up to the ceiling. His
arms were squared stiffly above his chest as they had pushed back the
bedclothes. The hands had been clenched and unclenched; the fingers still
curled in towards the palms. His face had a look of innocence and
candour.

Catty's thick, wet voice soaked through his mother's crying. "Miss
Mary--he went in his first sleep. His hair's as smooth as smooth."


X.

She was alone with Dan in the funeral carriage.

Her heart heaved and dragged with the grinding of the brakes on the hill;
the brake of the hearse going in front; the brake of their carriage; the
brake of the one that followed with Dr. Charles in it.

When they left off she could hear Dan crying. He had begun as soon as he
got into the carriage.

She tried to think of Dr. Charles, sitting all by himself in the back
carriage, calm and comfortable among the wreaths. But she couldn't. She
couldn't think of anything but Dan and the black hearse in front of them.
She could see it when the road turned to the right; when she shut her
eyes she could see the yellow coffin inside it, heaped with white
flowers; and Roddy lying deep down in the coffin. The sides were made
high to cover his arms, squared over his chest as if he had been beating
something off. She could see Roddy's arms beating off his thoughts, and
under the fine hair Roddy's face, innocent and candid.

Dr. Charles said it wasn't that. He had just raised them in surprise. A
sort of surprise. He hadn't suffered.

Dan's dark head was bowed forward, just above the level of her knees. His
deep, hot eyes were inflamed with grief; they kept on blinking, gushing
out tears over red lids. He cried like a child, with loud sobs and
hiccoughs that shook him. _Her_ eyes were dry; burning dry; the lids
choked with something that felt like hot sand, and hurt.

(If only the carriage didn't smell of brandy. That was the driver. He
must have sat in it while he waited.)

Dan left off crying and sat up suddenly.

"What's that hat doing there?"

He had taken off his tall hat as he was getting into the carriage and
laid it on the empty seat. He pointed at the hat.

"That isn't my hat," he said.

"Yes, Dank. You put it there yourself."

"I didn't. My hat hasn't got a beastly black band on it."

He rose violently, knocking his head against the carriage roof.

"Here--I must get out of this."

He tugged at the window-strap, hanging on to it and swaying as he tugged.
She dragged him back into his seat.

"Sit down and keep quiet."

She put her hand on his wrist and held it. Down the road the bell of
Renton Church began tolling. He turned and looked at her unsteadily, his
dark eyes showing bloodshot as they swerved.

"Mary--is Roddy really dead?"

A warm steam of brandy came and went with his breathing.

"Yes. That's why you must keep quiet."

Mr. Rollitt was standing at the open gate of the churchyard. He was
saying something that she didn't hear. Then he swung round solemnly. She
saw the flash of his scarlet hood. Then the coffin.

She began to walk behind it, between two rows of villagers, between Dorsy
Heron and Mr. Sutcliffe. She went, holding Dan tight, pulling him closer
when he lurched, and carrying his tall hat in her hand.

Close before her face the head of Roddy's coffin swayed and swung as the
bearers staggered.


XI.

"Roddy ought never to have gone to Canada."

Her mother had turned again, shaking the big bed. They would sleep
together for three nights; then Aunt Bella would come, as she came when
Papa died.

"But your Uncle Victor would have his own way."

"He didn't know."

She thought: "But _I_ knew. I knew and I let him go. Why did I?"

It seemed to her that it was because, deep down inside her, she had
wanted him to go. Deep down inside her she had been afraid of the
unhappiness that would come through Roddy.

"And I don't think," her mother said presently, "it _could_ have been
very good for him, building that wall."

"You didn't know."

She thought: "I'd have known. If I'd been here it wouldn't have happened.
I wouldn't have let him. I'd no business to go away and leave him. I
might have known."

"Lord, if Thou hadst been here our brother had not died."

The yellow coffin swayed before her eyes, heaped with the white flowers.
Yellow and white. Roddy's dog. His yellow dog with a white breast and
white paws. And a rope round his neck. Roddy thought he had hanged him.

At seven she got up and dressed and dusted the drawing-room. She dusted
everything very carefully, especially the piano. She would never want to
play on it again.

The side door stood open. She went out. In the bed by the flagged path
she saw the sunk print of Roddy's foot and the dead daffodil stalk lying
in it. Mamma had been angry.

She had forgotten that. She had forgotten everything that happened in the
minutes before Catty had come down the passage.

She filled in the footprint and stroked the earth smooth above it, lest
Mamma should see it and remember.




XXVII


I.

Potnia, Potnia Nux--

   _Lady, our Lady,
    Night,
    You who give sleep to men, to men labouring and suffering--
    Out of the darkness, come,
    Come with your wings, come down
    On the house of Agamemnon._

Time stretched out behind and before you, time to read, to make music, to
make poems in, to translate Euripides, while Mamma looked after her
flowers in the garden; Mamma, sowing and planting and weeding with a
fixed, vehement passion. You could hear Catty and little Alice, Maggie's
niece, singing against each other in the kitchen as Alice helped Catty
with her work. You needn't have been afraid. You would never have
anything more to do in the house. Roddy wasn't there.

Agamemnon--that was where you broke off two years ago. He didn't keep you
waiting long to finish. You needn't have been afraid.

Uncle Victor's letter came on the day when the gentians flowered. One
minute Mamma had been happy, the next she was crying. When you saw her
with the letter you knew. Uncle Victor was sending Dan home. Dan was no
good at the office; he had been drinking since Roddy died. Three months.

Mamma was saying something as she cried. "I suppose he'll be here, then,
all his life, doing nothing."


II.

Mamma had given Papa's smoking-room to Dan. She kept on going in and out
of it to see if he was there.

"When you've posted the letters you might go and see what Dan's doing."

Everybody in the village knew about Dan. The postmistress looked up from
stamping the letters to say, "Your brother was here a minute ago." Mr.
Horn, the grocer, called to you from the bench at the fork of the roads,
"Ef yo're lookin' for yore broother, he's joost gawn oop daale."

If Mr. Horn had looked the other way when he saw you coming you would
have known that Dan was in the Buck Hotel.

The white sickle of the road; a light at the top of the sickle; the
Aldersons' house.

A man was crossing from the moor-track to the road. He carried a stack of
heather on his shoulder: Jem's brother, Ned. He stopped and stared. He
was thicker and slower than Jem; darker haired; fuller and redder in the
face; he looked at you with the same little, kind, screwed-up eyes.

"Ef yo're lookin' for yore broother, 'e's in t' oose long o' us. Wull yo
coom in? T' missus med gev yo a coop o' tea."

She went in. There was dusk in the kitchen, with a grey light in the
square of the window and a red light in the oblong of the grate. A small
boy with a toasting-fork knelt by the hearth. You disentangled a smell of
stewed tea and browning toast from thick, deep smells of peat smoke and
the sweat drying on Ned's shirt. When Farmer Alderson got up you saw the
round table, the coarse blue-grey teacups and the brown glazed teapot on
a brown glazed cloth.

Dan sat by the table. Dumpling, Ned's three-year-old daughter, sat on
Dan's knee; you could see her scarlet cheeks and yellow hair above the
grey frieze of his coat-sleeve. His mournful black-and-white face stooped
to her in earnest, respectful attention. He was taking a piece of
butterscotch out of the silver paper. Dumpling opened her wet, red mouth.

Rachel, Ned's wife, watched them, her lips twisted in a fond, wise smile,
as she pressed the big loaf to her breast and cut thick slices of
bread-and-jam. She had made a place for you beside her.

"She sengs ersen to slape wid a li'l' song she maakes," Rachel said.
"Tha'll seng that li'l' song for Mester Dan, wuntha?"

Dumpling hid her face and sang. You had to stoop to hear the cheeping
that came out of Dan's shoulder.

   "Aw, dinny, dinny dy-Doomplin',
      Dy-Doomplin', dy-Doomplin',
   Dinny, dinny dy-Doomplin',
      Dy-Doomplin' daay."

"Ef tha'll seng for Mester Dan," Farmer Alderson said, "tha'llt seng for
tha faather, wuntha, Doomplin'?"

"Naw."

"For Graffer then?"

"Naw."

Dumpling put her head on one side, butting under Dan's chin like a cat.
Dan's arm drew her closer. He was happy there, in the Aldersons' kitchen,
holding Dumpling on his knee. There was something in his happiness that
hurt you as Roddy's unhappiness had hurt. All your life you had never
really known Dan, the queer, scowling boy who didn't notice you, didn't
play with you as Roddy played or care for you as Mark had cared. And
suddenly you knew him; better even than Roddy, better than Mark.


III.

The grey byre was warm with the bodies of the cows and their grassy,
milky breath. Dan, in his clean white shirt sleeves, crouched on Ned's
milking stool, his head pressed to the cow's curly red and white flank.
His fingers worked rhythmically down the teat and the milk squirted and
hissed and pinged against the pail. Sometimes the cow swung round her
white face and looked at Dan, sometimes she lashed him gently with her
tail. Ned leaned against the stall post and watched.

"Thot's t' road, thot's t' road. Yo're the foorst straanger she a' let
milk 'er. She's a narvous cow. 'Er teats is tander."

When the milking was done Dan put on his well-fitting coat and they went
home over Karva to the schoolhouse lane.

Dan loved the things that Roddy hated: the crying of the peewits, the
bleating of the sheep, the shouts of the village children when they saw
him and came running to his coat pockets for sweets. He liked to tramp
over the moors with the shepherds; he helped them with the dipping and
shearing and the lambing.

"Dan, you ought to be a farmer."

"I know," he said, "that's why they stuck me in an office."


IV.

"If the killer thinks that he kills, if the killed thinks that he is
killed, they do not understand; for this one does not kill, nor is that
one killed."

Passion Week, two years after Roddy's death; Roddy's death the measure
you measured time by still.

Mamma looked up from her Bible; she looked over her glasses with eyes
tired of their everlasting reproach.

"What have you got there, Mary?"

"The Upanishads from the Sacred Book of the East."

"Tchtt! It was that Buddhism the other day."

"Religion."

"Any religion except your own. Or else it's philosophy. You're destroying
your soul, Mary. I shall write to your Uncle Victor and tell him to ask
Mr. Sutcliffe not to send you any more books from that library."

"I'm seven and twenty, Mamma ducky."

"The more shame for you then," her mother said.

The clock on the Congregational Chapel struck six. They put down their
books and looked at each other.

"Dan not back?" Mamma knew perfectly well he wasn't back.

"He went to Reyburn."

"T't!" Mamma's chin nodded in queer, vexed resignation. She folded her
hands on her knees and waited, listening.

Sounds of wheels and of hoofs scraping up the hill. The Morfe bus, back
from Reyburn. Catty's feet, running along the passage. The front door
opening, then shutting. Dan hadn't come with the bus.

"Perhaps," Mamma said, "Ned Anderson'll bring him."

"Perhaps.... ('There is one eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal
thoughts, who, though one, fulfils the desires of many....') Mamma--why
won't you let him go to Canada?"

"It was Canada that killed poor Roddy."

"It won't kill Dan. He's different."

"And what good would he be there? If your Uncle Victor can't keep him,
who will, I should like to know?"

"Jem Alderson would. He'd take him for nothing. He told Ned he would. To
make up for Roddy."

"Make up! He thinks that's the way to make up! I won't have Dan's death
at my door. I'd rather keep him for the rest of my life."

"How about Dan?"

"Dan's safe here."

"He's safe on the moor with Alderson looking after the sheep, and he's
safe in the cowshed milking the cows; but he isn't safe when Ned drives
into Reyburn market."

"Would it be safer in Canada?"

"Yes. He'd be thirty miles from the nearest pub. He'd be safer here if
you didn't give him money."

"The boy has to have money to buy clothes."

"I could buy them."

"I daresay! You can't treat a man of thirty as if he was a baby of
three."

She thought. "No. You can only treat a woman.... 'There is one eternal
thinker'--"

A knock on the door.

"There," her mother said, "that's Dan."

Mary went to the door. Ned Alderson stood outside; he stood slantways,
not looking at her.

"Ah tried to maake yore broother coom back long o' us, but 'e would na."

"Hadn't I better go and meet him?"

"Naw. Ah would na. Ah wouldn' woorry; there's shepherds on t' road wi' t'
sheep. Mebbe 'e'll toorn oop long o' they. Dawn' woorry ef tes laate
like."

He went away.

They waited, listening while the clock struck the hours, seven; eight;
nine. At ten her mother and the servants went to bed. She sat up, and
waited, reading.

"...My son, that subtle essence which you do not perceive there, of
that very essence this great Nyagrodha tree exists.... That which is the
subtile essence, in it all that exists has its self. It is the True. It
is the Self, and thou, O Svetaketu, art it."

Substance, the Thing-in-itself--You were It. Dan was It. You could think
away your body, Dan's body. One eternal thinker, thinking non-eternal
thoughts. Dreaming horrible dreams. Dan's drunkenness. Why?

Eleven. A soft scuffle. The scurry of sheep's feet on the Green. A dog
barking. The shepherds were back from Reyburn.

Feet shuffled on the flagstone. She went to the door. Dan leaned against
the doorpost, bent forward heavily; his chin dropped to his chest.
Something slimy gleamed on his shoulder and hip. Wet mud of the ditch he
had fallen in. She stiffened her muscles to his weight, to the pull and
push of his reeling body.

Roddy's room. With one lurch he reached Roddy's white bed in the corner.

She looked at the dressing-table. A strip of steel flashed under the
candlestick. The blue end of a matchbox stuck up out of the saucer. There
would be more matches in Dan's coat pocket. She took away the matches and
the razor.

Her mother stood waiting in the doorway of her room, small and piteous in
her nightgown. Her eyes glanced off the razor, and blinked.

"Is Dan all right?"

"Yes. He came back with the sheep."


V.

The Hegels had come: The _Logik_. Three volumes. The bristling Gothic
text an ambush of secret, exciting, formidable things. The titles flamed;
flags of strange battles; signals of strange ships; challenging, enticing
to the dangerous adventure.

After the first enchantment, the Buddhist Suttas and the Upanishads were
no good. Nor yet the VedГўnta. You couldn't keep on saying, "This is
That," and "Thou art It," or that the Self is the dark blue bee and the
green parrot with red eyes and the thunder-cloud, the seasons and the
seas. It was too easy, too sleepy, like lying on a sofa and dropping
laudanum, slowly, into a rotten, aching tooth. Your teeth were sound and
strong, they had to have something hard to bite on. You wanted to think,
to keep on thinking. Your mind wasn't really like a tooth; it was like a
robust, energetic body, happy when it was doing difficult and dangerous
things, balancing itself on heights, lifting great weights of thought,
following the long march into thick, smoky battles.

"Being and Not-Being are the same": ironic and superb defiance. And then
commotion; as if the infinite stillness, the immovable Substance, had got
up and begun moving--Rhythm of eternity: the same for ever: for ever
different: for ever the same.

Thought _was_ the Thing-in-itself.

This man was saying, over and over and all the time what you had wanted
Kant to say, what he wouldn't say, what you couldn't squeeze out of him,
however you turned and twisted him.

You jumped to where the name "Spinoza" glittered like a jewel on the
large grey page.

Something wanting. You knew it, and you were afraid. You loved him. You
didn't want him to be found out and exposed, like Kant. He had given you
the first incomparable thrill.

Hegel. Spinoza. She thought of Spinoza's murky, mysterious face. It said,
"I live in you, still, as he will never live. You will never love that
old German man. He ran away from the cholera. He bolstered up the Trinity
with his Triple Dialectic, to keep his chair at Berlin. _I_ refused their
bribes. They excommunicated me. You remember? Cursed be Baruch Spinoza in
his going out and his coming in."

You had tried to turn and twist Spinoza, too; and always he had refused
to come within your meaning. His Substance, his God stood still, in
eternity. He, too; before the noisy, rich, exciting Hegel, he drew back
into its stillness; pure and cold, a little sinister, a little ironic.
And you felt a pang of misgiving, as if, after all, he might have been
right. So powerful had been his hold.

Dan looked up. "What are you reading, Mary?"

"Hegel."

"Haeckel--that's the chap Vickers talks about."

Vickers--she remembered. Dan lived with Vickers when he left Papa.

"He's clever," Dan said, "but he's an awful ass."

"Who? Haeckel?"

"No. Vickers."

"You mean he's an awful ass, but he's clever."


VI.

One Friday evening an unusual smell of roast chicken came through the
kitchen door. Mary put on the slender, long-tailed white gown she wore
when she dined at the Sutcliffes'.

Dan's friend, Lindley Vickers, was sitting on the sofa, talking to Mamma.
When she came in he left off talking and looked at her with sudden happy
eyes. She remembered Maurice Jourdain's disappointed eyes, and Mark's.
Dan became suddenly very polite and attentive.

All through dinner Mr. Vickers kept on turning his eyes away from Mamma
and looking at her; every time she looked she caught him looking. His
dark hair sprang in two ridges from the parting. His short, high-bridged
nose seemed to be looking at you, too, with its wide nostrils, alert. His
face did all sorts of vivid, interesting things; you wondered every
minute whether this time it would be straight and serious or crooked and
gay, whether his eyes would stay as they were, black crystals, or move
and show grey rings, green speckled.

He was alive, running over with life; no, not running over, vibrating
with it, holding it in; he looked as if he expected something delightful
to happen, and waited, excited, ready.

He began talking, about Hegel. "'Plus Г§a change, plus c'est la mГЄme
chose.'"

She heard herself saying something. Dan turned and looked at her with a
sombre, thoughtful stare. Mamma smiled, and nodded her chin as much as to
say "Did you ever hear such nonsense?" She knew that was the way to stop
you.

Mr. Vickers's eyes were large and attentive. When you stopped his mouth
gave such a sidelong leap of surprise and amusement that you laughed.
Then he laughed.

Dan said, "What's the joke?" And Mr. Vickers replied that it wasn't a
joke.

In the drawing-room Mamma said, "I won't have any of those asides between
you and Mr. Vickers, do you hear?"

Mary thought that so funny that she laughed. She knew what Mamma was
thinking, but she was too happy to care. Her intelligence had found its
mate.

You played, and at the first sound of the piano he came in and stood by
you and listened.

You had only to play and you could make him come to you. He would get up
and leave Dan in the smoking-room; he would leave Mamma in the garden.
When you played the soft Schubert _Impromptu_ he would sit near you, very
quiet; when you played the _Appassionata_ he would get up and stand close
beside you. When you played the loud, joyful Chopin _Polonaise_ he would
walk up and down; up and down the room.

Saturday evening. Sunday evening. (He was going on Monday very early.)

He sang,

   "'Es ist bestimmt in Gottes Rath
     Das man vom liebsten was man hat
     Muss scheiden.'"

Dan called out from his corner, "Translate. Let's know what it's all
about."

He pounded out the accompaniment louder. "We won't, will we?" He jumped
up suddenly. "Play the _Appassionata_."

She played and he talked.

"I can't play if you talk."

"Yes, you can. I wish I hadn't got to go to-morrow."

"Have you" (false note) "got to go?"

"I suppose so."

"If Dan asked you, would you stop?"

"Yes."

He slept in Papa's room. When she heard his door shut she went to Dan.

"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.


VII.

"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 Schubert _Impromptu_--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 Sonata _Appassionata_. 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. "_Not_ like 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.


VIII.

An hour later she was sitting on the slope under the hill road of
Greffington Edge. He lay on his back beside her in the bracken. Lindley
Vickers.

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's _Heredity_. 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.


IX.

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.


X.

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."


XI.

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'll
_know_."

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 you _were_ mad. 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's _First Principles_,
the _Principles of Biology_, the _Principles of Psychology_; Haeckel's
_History of Evolution_; Maudsley's _Body and Mind, Physiology and
Pathology of Mind, Responsibility in Mental Disease_; and Ribot's
_Heredity_. 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.


XII.

Anyhow, she had filled in the time between October and March when the
Sutcliffes 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.