If you shut your eyes you could see the flat Essex country spread in a
thin film over Karva. Thinner and thinner. But you could remember what it
had been like. Low, tilled fields, thin trees; sharp, queer, uncertain
beauty. Sharp, queer, uncertain happiness, coming again and again, never
twice to the same place in the same way. It hurt you when you remembered
it.

The beauty of the hills was not like that. It stayed. It waited for you,
keeping faith. Day after day, night after night, it was there.

Happiness was there. You were sure of it every time. Roddy's uneasy eyes,
Papa's feet, shuffling in the passage, Mamma's disapproving, remembering
face, the Kendals' house, smelling of rotten apples, the old man,
coughing and weeping in his chair, they couldn't kill it; they couldn't
take it away.

The mountain sheep waited for you. They stood back as you passed, staring
at you with their look of wonder and sadness.

Grouse shot up from your feet with a "Rek-ek-ek-kek!" in sudden,
explosive flight.

Plovers rose, wheeling round and round you with sharper and sharper cries
of agitation. "_Pee_-vit--_pee_-vit--_pee_-vit! Pee-_vitt_!" They
swooped, suddenly close, close to your eyes; you heard the drumming
vibration of their wings.

Away in front a line of sheep went slowly up and up Karva. The hill made
their bleating mournful and musical.

You slipped back into the house. In the lamp-lighted drawing-room the
others sat, bored and tired, waiting for prayer-time. They hadn't noticed
how long you had been gone.


XII.

"Roddy, I wish you'd go and see where your father is."

Roddy looked up from his sketch-book. He had filled it with pictures of
cavalry on plunging chargers, trains of artillery rushing into battle,
sailing ships in heavy seas.

Roddy's mind was possessed by images of danger and adventure.

He flourished off the last wave of battle-smoke, and shut the sketch-book
with a snap.

Mamma knew perfectly well where Papa was. Roddy knew. Catty and Maggie
the cook knew. Everybody in the village knew. Regularly, about six
o'clock in the evening, he shuffled out of the house and along the High
Row to the Buck Hotel, and towards dinner-time Roddy had to go and bring
him back. Everybody knew what he went for.

He would have to hold Papa tight by the arm and lead him over the
cobblestones. They would pass the long bench at the corner under the
Kendals' wall; and Mr. Oldshaw, the banker, and Mr. Horn, the grocer, and
Mr. Acroyd, the shoemaker, would be sitting there talking to Mr. Belk,
who was justice of the peace. And they would see Papa. The young men
squatting on the flagstones outside the "Farmer's Arms" and the "King's
Head" would see him. And Papa would stiffen and draw himself up, trying
to look dignified and sober.

When he was very bad Mamma would cry, quietly, all through dinner-time.
But she would never admit that he went to the Buck Hotel. He had just
gone off nobody knew where and Roddy had got to find him.

August, September and October passed.


XIII.

"Didn't I tell you to wait? You know them all now. You see what they're
like."

In Roddy's voice there was a sort of tired, bitter triumph.

She knew them all now: Mrs. Waugh and Miss Frewin, and the Kendals; Mr.
Spencer Rollitt, and Miss Louisa Wright who had had a disappointment; and
old Mrs. Heron. They were all old.

Oh, and there was Dorsy Heron, Mrs. Heron's niece. But Dorsy was old too,
twenty-seven. She was no good; she couldn't talk to Roddy; she could only
look at him with bright, shy eyes, like a hare.

Roddy and Mary were going up the Garthdale road. At the first turn they
saw Mrs. Waugh and her son coming towards them. (She had forgotten Norman
Waugh.)

Rodney groaned. "_He's_ here again. I say, let's go back."

"We can't. They've seen us."

"Everybody sees us," Roddy said.

He began to walk with a queer, defiant, self-conscious jerk.

Mrs. Waugh came on, buoyantly, as if the hoop of a crinoline still held
her up.

"Well, Mary, going for another walk?"

She stopped, in a gracious mood to show off her son. When she looked at
Roddy her raised eyebrows said, "Still here, doing nothing?"

"Norman's going back to work on Monday," she said.

The son stood aside, uninterested, impatient, staring past them, beating
the road with his stick. He was thickset and square. He had the stooping
head and heavy eyes of a bull. Black hair and eyebrows grew bushily from
his dull-white Frewin skin.

He would be an engineer. Mr. Belk's brother had taken him into his works
at Durlingham. He wasn't seventeen, yet he knew how to make engines. He
had a strong, lumbering body. His heart would go on thump-thumping with
regular strokes, like a stupid piston, not like Roddy's heart, excited,
quivering, hurrying, suddenly checking. His eyes drew his mother away.
You were glad when they were gone.

"You can see what they think," Roddy said. "Everybody thinks it."

"Everybody thinks what?"

"That I'm a cad to be sticking here, doing nothing, living on Mamma's
money."

"It doesn't matter. They've no business to think."

"No. But Mamma thinks it. She says I ought to get something to do. She
talks about Mark and Dan. She can't see--" He stopped, biting his lip.

"If I were like Mark--if I could do things. That beast Norman Waugh can
do things. He doesn't live on his mother's money. She sees that....

"She doesn't know what's the matter with me. She thinks it's only my
heart. And it isn't. It's me. I'm an idiot. I can't even do office work
like Dan.... She thinks I'll be all right if I go away far enough, where
she won't see me. Mind you, I _should_ be all right if I'd gone into the
Navy. She knows if I hadn't had that beastly rheumatic fever I'd have
been in the Navy or the Merchant Service now. It's all rot not passing
you. As if walking about on a ship's deck was worse for your heart than
digging in a garden. It certainly couldn't be worse than farming in
Canada."

"Farming? In Canada?"

"That's her idea. It'll kill me to do what _I_ want. It won't kill me to
do what _she_ wants."

He brooded.

"Mark did what he wanted. He went away and left her. Brute as I am, I
wouldn't have done that. She doesn't know that's why I'm sticking here. I
_can't_ leave her. I'd rather die."

Roddy too. He had always seemed to go his own way without caring, living
his secret life, running, jumping, grinning at you. And he, too, was
compelled to adore Mark and yet to cling helplessly, hopelessly, to
Mamma. When he said things about her he was struggling against her,
trying to free himself. He flung himself off and came back, to cling
harder. And he was nineteen.

"After all," he said, "why shouldn't I stay? It's not as if I didn't dig
in the garden and look after Papa. If I went she'd have to get somebody."

"I thought you wanted to go?" she said.

"So I did. So I do, for some things. But when it comes to the point--"

"When it comes to the point?"

"I funk it."

"Because of Mamma?"

"Because of me. That idiocy. Supposing I _had_ to do something I couldn't
do?... That's why I shall have to go away somewhere where it won't
matter, where she won't know anything about it."

The frightened look was in his eyes again.

In her heart a choking, breathless voice talked of unhappiness, coming,
coming. Unhappiness that no beauty could assuage. Her will hardened to
shut it out.

When the road turned again they met Mr. James. He walked with queer,
jerky steps, his arms bowed out stiffly.

As he passed he edged away from you. His mouth moved as if he were trying
not to laugh.

They knew about Mr. James now. His mind hadn't grown since he was five
years old. He could do nothing but walk. Martha, the old servant, dressed
and undressed him.

"I shall have to go," Roddy said. "If I stay here I shall look like Mr.
James. I shall walk with my arms bowed out, Catty'll dress and undress
me."




XXI


I.

They hated the piano. They had pushed it away against the dark outside
wall. Its strings were stiff with cold, and when the rain came its wooden
hammers swelled so that two notes struck together in the bass.

The piano-tuner made them move it to the inner wall in the large, bright
place that belonged to the cabinet. Mamma was annoyed because Mary had
taken the piano-tuner's part.

Mamma loved the cabinet. She couldn't bear to see it standing in the
piano's dark corner where the green Chinese bowls hardly showed behind
the black glimmer of the panes. The light fell full on the ragged, faded
silk of the piano, and on the long scar across its lid. It was like a
poor, shabby relation.

It stood there in the quiet room, with its lid shut, patient, reproachful,
waiting for you to come and play on it.

When Mary thought of the piano her heart beat faster, her fingers
twitched, the full, sensitive tips tingled and ached to play. When she
couldn't play she lay awake at night thinking of the music.

She was trying to learn the Sonato _Appassionata_, going through it bar
by bar, slowly and softly, so that nobody outside the room should hear
it. That was better than not playing it at all. But sometimes you would
forget, and as soon as you struck the loud chords in the first movement
Papa would come in and stop you. And the Sonata would go on sounding
inside you, trying to make you play it, giving you no peace.

Towards six o'clock she listened for his feet in the flagged passage.
When the front door slammed behind him she rushed to the piano. There
might be a whole hour before Roddy fetched him from the Buck Hotel. If
you could only reach the last movement, the two thundering chords, and
then--the _Presto_.

The music beat on the thick stone walls of the room and was beaten back,
its fine, live throbbing blunted by overtones of discord. You longed to
open all the doors and windows of the house, to push back the stone walls
and let it out.

Terrible minutes to six when Mamma's face watched and listened, when she
knew what you were thinking. You kept on looking at the clock, you
wondered whether this time Papa would really go. You hoped--

Mamma's eyes hurt you. They said, "She doesn't care what becomes of him
so long as she can play."


II.

Sometimes the wounded, mutilated _Allegro_ would cry inside you all day,
imploring you to finish it, to let it pour out its life in joy.

When it left off the white sound patterns of poems came instead. They
floated down through the dark as she lay on her back in her hard, narrow
bed. Out of doors, her feet, muffled in wet moor grass, went to a beat, a
clang.

She would never play well. At any minute her father's voice or her
mother's eyes would stiffen her fingers and stop them. She knew what she
would do; she had always known. She would make poems. They couldn't hear
you making poems. They couldn't see your thoughts falling into sound
patterns.

Only part of the pattern would appear at once while the rest of it went
on sounding from somewhere a long way off. When all the parts came
together the poem was made. You felt as if you had made it long ago, and
had forgotten it and remembered.


III.

The room held her close, cold and white, a nun's cell. If you counted the
window-place it was shaped like a cross. The door at the foot, the window
at the head, bookshelves at the end of each arm. A kitchen lamp with a
tin reflector, on a table, stood in the breast of the cross. Its flame
was so small that she had to turn it on to her work like a lantern.

"Dumpetty, dumpetty dum. Tell them that Bion is dead; he is dead, young
Bion, the shepherd. And with him music is dead and Dorian poetry
perished--"

She had the conceited, exciting thought: "I am translating Moschus, the
Funeral Song for Bion."

Moschus was Bion's friend. She wondered whether he had been happy or
unhappy, making his funeral song.

If you could translate it all: if you could only make patterns out of
English sounds that had the hardness and stillness of the Greek.

   "'Archet', Sikelikai, to pentheos, archet' Moisai,
     adones hai pukinoisin oduramenai poti phullois.'"

The wind picked at the pane. Through her thick tweed coat she could feel
the air of the room soak like cold water to her skin. She curved her
aching hands over the hot globe of the lamp.

--Oduromenai. Mourning? No. You thought of black crape, bunched up
weepers, red faces.

The wick spluttered; the flame leaned from the burner, gave a skip and
went out.

Oduromenai--Grieving; perhaps.

Suddenly she thought of Maurice Jourdain.

She saw him standing in the field path. She heard him say "Talk to _me_.
I'm alive. I'm here. I'll listen. I'll never misunderstand." She saw his
worn eyelids; his narrow, yellowish teeth.

Supposing he was dead--

She would forget about him for months together; then suddenly she would
remember him like that. Being happy and excited made you remember. She
tried not to see his eyelids and his teeth. They didn't matter.


IV.

The season of ungovernable laughter had begun.

"Roddy, they'll hear us. We m-m-mustn't."

"I'm not. I'm blowing my nose."

"I wish _I_ could make it sound like that."

They stood on the Kendals' doorstep, in the dark, under the snow. Snow
powdered the flagstone path swept ready for the New Year's party.

"Think," she said, "their poor party. It would be awful of us."

Roddy rang. As they waited they began to laugh again. Helpless, ruinous,
agonising laughter.

"Oh--oh--I can hear Martha coming. _Do_ something. You might be
unbuckling my snow-shoes."

The party was waiting for them in the drawing-room. Dr. Charles. Miss
Louisa Wright, stiff fragility. A child's face blurred and delicately
weathered; features in innocent, low relief. Pale hair rolled into an
insubstantial puff above each ear. Speedwell eyes, fading milkily. Hurt
eyes, disappointed eyes. Dr. Charles had disappointed her.

Dorsy Heron, tall and straight. Shy hare's face trying to look austere.

Norman Waugh, sulky and superior, in a corner.

As Roddy came in everybody but Norman Waugh turned round and stared at
him with sudden, happy smiles. He was so beautiful that it made people
happy to look at him. His very name, Rodney Olivier, sounded more
beautiful than other people's names.

Dorsy Heron's shy hare's eyes tried to look away and couldn't. Her little
high, red nose got redder.

And every now and then Dr. Charles looked at Rodney, a grave, considering
look, as if he knew something about him that Rodney didn't know.


V.

"She shall play what she likes," Mr. Sutcliffe said. He had come in late,
without his wife.

She was going to play to them. They always asked you to play.

She thought: "It'll be all right. They won't listen; they'll go on
talking. I'll play something so soft and slow that they won't hear it. I
shall be alone, listening to myself."

She played the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. A beating heart, a
grieving voice; beautiful, quiet grief; it couldn't disturb them.

Suddenly they all left off talking. They were listening. Each note
sounded pure and sweet, as if it went out into an empty room. They came
close up, one by one, on tiptoe, with slight creakings and rustlings,
Miss Kendal, Louisa Wright, Dorsy Heron. Their eyes were soft and quiet
like the music.

Mr. Sutcliffe sat where he could see her. He was far away from the place
where she heard herself playing, but she could feel his face turned on
her like a light.

The first movement died on its two chords. Somebody was saying "How
beautifully she plays." Life and warmth flowed into her. Exquisite,
tingling life and warmth. "Go on. Go on." Mr. Sutcliffe's voice sounded
miles away beyond the music.

She went on into the lovely _Allegretto_. She could see their hushed
faces leaning nearer. You could make them happy by playing to them. They
loved you because you made them happy.

Mr. Sutcliffe had got up; he had come closer.

She was playing the _Presto agitato_. It flowed smoothly under her
fingers, at an incredible pace, with an incredible certainty.

Something seemed to be happening over there, outside the place where she
heard the music. Martha came in and whispered to the Doctor. The Doctor
whispered to Roddy. Roddy started up and they went out together.

She thought: "Papa again." But she was too happy to care. Nothing
mattered so long as she could listen to herself playing the Moonlight
Sonata.

Under the music she was aware of Miss Kendal stooping over her, pressing
her shoulder, saying something. She stood up. Everybody was standing up,
looking frightened.

Outside, in the hall, she saw Catty, crying. She went past her over the
open threshold where the snow lay like a light. She couldn't stay to find
her snow-shoes and her coat.

The track across the Green struck hard and cold under her slippers. The
tickling and trickling of the snow felt like the play of cold light
fingers on her skin. Her fear was a body inside her body; it ached and
dragged, stone cold and still.


VI.

The basin kept on slipping from the bed. She could see its
pattern--reddish flowers and green leaves and curlykews--under the
splashings of mustard and water. She felt as if it must slip from her
fingers and be broken. When she pressed it tighter to the edge of the
mattress the rim struck against Papa's breast.

He lay stretched out on the big yellow birchwood bed. The curtains were
drawn back, holding the sour smell of sickness in their fluted folds.

Papa's body made an enormous mound under the green eiderdown. It didn't
move. A little fluff of down that had pricked its way through the cover
still lay where it had settled; Papa's head still lay where it had
dropped; the forefinger still pointed at the fluff of down.

Papa's head was thrown stiffly back on the high pillows; it sank in,
weighted with the blood that flushed his face. Around it on the white
linen there was a spatter and splash of mustard and water. His beard
clung to his chin, soaked in the yellowish stain. He breathed with a
loud, grating and groaning noise.

Her ears were so tired with listening to this noise that sometimes they
would go to sleep for a minute or two. Then it would wake them suddenly
and she would begin to cry again.

You could stop crying if you looked steadily at the little fluff of down.
At each groaning breath it quivered and sank and quivered.

Roddy sat by the dressing-table. He stared, now at his clenched hands,
now at his face in the glass, as if he hated it, as if he hated himself.

Mamma was still dressed. She had got up on the bed beside Papa and
crouched on the bolster. She had left off crying. Every now and then she
stroked his hair with tender, desperate fingers. It struck out between
the white ears of the pillow-slip in a thin, pointed crest.

Papa's hair. His poor hair. These alterations of the familiar person, the
blood-red flush, the wet, clinging beard, the pointed hair, stirred in
her a rising hysteria of pity.

Mamma had given him the mustard and water. She could see the dregs in the
tumbler on the night-table, and the brown hen's feather they had tickled
his throat with.

They oughtn't to have done it. Dr. Charles would not have let them do it
if he had been there. They should have waited. They might have known the
choking and the retching would kill him. Catty ought to have known.
Somewhere behind his eyes his life was leaking away through the torn net
of the blood vessels, bleeding away over his brain, under his hair, under
the tender, desperate fingers.

She fixed her eyes on the pattern of the wall-paper. A purplish rose-bud
in a white oval on a lavender ground. She clung to it as to some firm,
safe centre of being.


VII.

The first day. The first evening.

She went on hushed feet down the passage to let Dan in. The squeak of the
latch picked at her taut nerves.

She was glad of the cold air that rushed into the shut-up, soundless
house, the sweet, cold air that hung about Dan's face and tingled in the
curling frieze of his overcoat.

She took him into the lighted dining-room where Roddy and Mamma waited
for him. The callous fire crackled and spurted brightness. The table was
set for Dan's supper.

Dan knew that Papa was dead. He betrayed his knowledge by the cramped
stare of his heavy, gentle eyes and by the shamed, furtive movements of
his hands towards the fire. But that was all. His senses were still
uncontaminated by _their_ knowledge. He had not seen Papa. He had not
heard him.

"What was it?"

"Apoplexy."

His eyes widened. Innocent, vague eyes that didn't see.

Their minds fastened on Dan, to get immunity for themselves out of his
unconsciousness. As long as they could keep him downstairs, in his
innocence, their misery receded from them a little way.

But Mamma would not have it so. She looked at Dan. Her eyes were dull and
had no more thought in them. Her mouth quivered. They knew that she was
going to say something. Their thread of safety tightened. In another
minute it would snap.

"Would you like to see him?" she said.

They waited for Dan to come down from the room. He would not be the same
Dan. He would have seen the white sheet raised by the high mound of the
body and by the stiff, upturned feet, and he would have lifted the
handkerchief from the face. He would be like them, and his consciousness
would put a sharper edge on theirs. He would be afraid to look at them,
as they were afraid to look at each other, because of what he had seen.


VIII.

She lay beside her mother in the strange spare room.

She had got into bed straight from her undressing. On the other side of
the mattress she had seen her mother's kneeling body like a dwarfed thing
trailed there from the floor, and her hands propped up on the edge of the
eiderdown, ivory-white against the red and yellow pattern, and her
darling bird's head bowed to her finger-tips.

The wet eyelids had lifted and the drowned eyes had come to life again in
a brief glance of horror. Mamma had expected her to kneel down and pray.
In bed they had turned their backs on each other, and she had the feeling
that her mother shrank from her as from somebody unclean who had omitted
to wash herself with prayer. She wanted to take her mother in her arms
and hold her tight. But she couldn't. She couldn't.

Suddenly her throat began to jerk with a hysterical spasm. She thought:
"I wish I had died instead of Papa."

She forced back the jerk of her hysteria and lay still, listening to her
mother's sad, obstructed breathing and her soft, secret blowing of her
nose.

Presently these sounds became a meaningless rhythm and ceased. She was a
child, dreaming. She stood on the nursery staircase at Five Elms; the
coffin came round the turn and crushed her against the banisters; only
this time she was not afraid of it; she made herself wake because of
something that would happen next. The flagstones of the passage were hard
and cold to her naked feet; that was how you could tell you were awake.
The door of the Morfe drawing-room opened into Mamma's old bedroom at
Five Elms, and when she came to the foot of the bed she saw her father
standing there. He looked at her with a mocking, ironic animosity, so
that she knew he was alive. She thought:

"It's all right. I only dreamed he was dead. I shall tell Mamma."

When she really woke, two entities, two different and discordant
memories, came together with a shock.

Her mother was up and dressed. She leaned over her, tucking the blankets
round her shoulders and saying, "Lie still and go to sleep again, there's
a good girl."

Her memory cleared and settled, filtering, as the light filtered through
the drawn blinds. Mamma and she had slept together because Papa was dead.


IX.

"Mary, do you know why you're crying?"

Roddy's face was fixed in a look of anger and resentment, and of anxiety
as if he were afraid that at any minute he would be asked to do something
that he couldn't do.

They had come down together from the locked room, and gone into the
drawing-room where the yellow blinds let in the same repulsive, greyish,
ochreish light.

Her tears did not fall. They covered her eyes each with a shaking lens;
the chairs and tables floated up to her as if she stood in an aquarium of
thick, greyish, ochreish light.

"You think it's because you care," he said. "But it's because you don't
care.... You're not as bad as I am. I don't care a bit."

"Yes, you do, or you wouldn't think you didn't."

"No. None of us really cares. Except Mamma. And even she doesn't as much
as she thinks she does. If we cared we'd be glad to sit in there, doing
nothing, thinking about him.... That's why we keep on going upstairs to
look at him, to make ourselves feel as if we cared."

She wondered. Was that really why they did it? She thought it was because
they couldn't bear to leave him there, four days and four nights, alone.
She said so. But Roddy went on in his hard, flat voice, beating out his
truth.

"We never did anything to make him happy."

"He _was_ happy," she said. "When Mark went. He had Mamma."

"Yes, but he must have known about us. He must have known about us all
the time."

"What did he know about us?"

"That we didn't care.

"Don't you remember," he said, "the things we used to say about him?"

She remembered. She could see Dan in the nursery at Five Elms, scowling
and swearing he would kill Papa. She could see Roddy, and Mark with his
red tight face, laughing at him. She could see herself, a baby, kicking
and screaming when he took her in his arms. For months she hadn't thought
about him except to wish he wasn't there so that she could go on playing.
When he was in the fit she had been playing on the Kendals' piano,
conceited and happy, not caring.

Supposing all the time, deep down, in his secret mysterious life, _he_
had cared?

"We must leave off thinking about him," Roddy said. "If we keep on
thinking we shall go off our heads."

"We _are_ off our heads," she said.

Their hatred of themselves was a biting, aching madness. She hated the
conceited, happy self that hadn't cared. The piano, gleaming sombrely in
the hushed light, reminded her of it.

She hated the piano.

They dragged themselves back into the dining-room where Mamma and Dan sat
doing nothing, hiding their faces from each other. The afternoon went on.
Utter callousness, utter weariness came over them.

Their mother kept looking at the clock. "Uncle Victor will have got to
Durlingham," she said. An hour ago she had said, "Uncle Victor will have
got to York." Their minds clung to Uncle Victor as they had clung, four
days ago, to Dan, because of his unconsciousness.


X.

Uncle Victor had put his arm on her shoulder. He was leaning rather
heavily.

He saw what she saw: the immense coffin set up on trestles at the foot of
the bed; the sheeted body packed tight in the padded white lining, the
hands, curling a little, smooth and stiff, the hands of a wax figure; the
firm, sallowish white face; the brown stains, like iodine, about the
nostrils; the pale under lip pushed out, proudly.

A cold, thick smell, like earth damped with stagnant water, came up to
them, mixed with the sharp, piercing smell of the coffin. The vigilant,
upright coffin-lid leaned with its sloping shoulders against the
chimney-piece, ready.

In spite of his heavy hand she was aware that Uncle Victor's
consciousness of these things was different from hers. He did not appear
to be in the least sorry for Papa. On his face, wistful, absorbed, there
was a faint, incongruous smile. He might have been watching a child
playing some mysterious game.

He sighed. His eyes turned from the coffin to the coffin-lid. He stared
at the black letters on the shining brass plate.

   Emilius Olivier.
   Born November 13th, 1827.
   Died January 2nd, 1881.

The grip on her shoulder tightened.

"He was faithful, Mary."

He said it as if he were telling her something she couldn't possibly have
known.


XI.

The funeral woke her. A line of light slid through the chink of the door,
crooked itself and staggered across the ceiling, a blond triangle
throwing the shadows askew. That was Catty, carrying the lamp for the
bearers.

It came again. There was a shuffling of feet in the passage, a secret
muttering at the head of the stairs, the crack of a banister, a thud as
the shoulder of the coffin butted against the wall at the turn. Then the
grinding scream of the brakes on the hill, the long "Shr-issh" of the
checked wheels ploughing through the snow.

She could see her mother's face on the pillow, glimmering, with shut
eyes. At each sound she could hear her draw a shaking, sobbing breath.
She turned to her and took her in her arms. The small, stiff body yielded
to her, helpless, like a child's.

"Oh Mary, what shall I do? To send him away like that--in a train--all
the way.... Your Grandmamma Olivier tried to keep him from me, and now
he's gone back to her."

"You've got Mark."

"What's that you say?"

"Mark. Mark. Nobody can keep Mark from you. He'll never want anybody but
you. He said so."

How small she was. You could feel her little shoulder-blades, weak and
fine under your fingers, like a child's; you could break them. To be
happy with her either you or she had to be broken, to be helpless and
little like a child. It was a sort of happiness to lie there, holding
her, hiding her from the dreadful funeral dawn.

Five o'clock.

The funeral would last till three, going along the road to Reyburn
Station, going in the train from Reyburn to Durlingham, from Durlingham
to King's Cross. She wondered whether Dan and Roddy would keep on feeling
the funeral all the time. The train was part of it. Not the worst part.
Not so bad as going through the East End to the City of London Cemetery.

When it came to the City of London Cemetery her mind stopped with a jerk
and refused to follow the funeral any further.

Ten o'clock. Eleven.

They had shut themselves up in the dining-room, in the yellow-ochreish
light. Mamma sat in her arm-chair, tired and patient, holding her Bible
and her Church Service on her knees, ready. Every now and then she dozed.
When this happened Mary took the Bible from her and read where it opened:
"And he made the candlestick of pure gold: of beaten work made he the
candlestick; his shaft, and his branch, his bowls, his knops, and his
flowers, were of the same.... And in the candlestick were four bowls made
like almonds, his knops and his flowers: And a knop under two branches of
the same, and a knop under two branches of the same, and a knop under two
branches of the same, according to the six branches going out of it.
Their knops and their branches were of the same: all of it was one beaten
work of pure gold."

At two o'clock the bell of Renton Church began to toll. Her mother sat up
in a stiff, self-conscious attitude and opened the Church Service. The
bell went on tolling. For Papa.

It stopped. Her mother was saying something.

"Mary--I can't see with the blind down. Do you think you could read it to
me?"

       *       *       *       *       *

"'I am the Resurrection and the Life--'"

A queer, jarring voice burst out violently in the dark quiet of the room.
It carried each sentence with a rush, making itself steady and hard.

"'...He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live....

"'I said, I will take heed to my ways: that I offend not with my
tongue--'"

"Not that one," her mother said.

"'O Lord, Thou hast been our refuge; from one generation to another.

"'Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever the earth and the
world were made--'"

(Too fast. Much too fast. You were supposed to be following Mr. Propart;
but if you kept up that pace you would have finished the Service before
he had got through the Psalm.)

"'Lord God most holy--'"

"I can't _hear_ you, Mary."

"I'm sorry. 'O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour,
deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

"'Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts: shut not Thy merciful
ears to our prayers: but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most Mighty, O
holy and merciful Saviour--'"

(Prayers, abject prayers for themselves. None for him. Not one word. They
were cowards, afraid for themselves, afraid of death; their funk had made
them forget him. It was as if they didn't believe that he was there. And,
after all, it was _his_ funeral.)

"'Suffer us not, at our last hour--'"

The hard voice staggered and dropped, picked itself and continued on a
note of defiance.

"'...For on pains of death, to fall from Thee....'"

(They would have come to the grave now, by the black pointed cypresses.
There would be a long pit of yellow clay instead of the green grass and
the white curb. Dan and Roddy would be standing by it.)

"'Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His mercy to take unto
Himself the soul of our dear brother--'"

The queer, violent voice stopped.

"I can't--I can't."

Mamma seemed gratified by her inability to finish the Order for the
Burial of the Dead.


XII.

"You can say _that_, with your poor father lying in this grave--"

It was the third evening after the funeral. A minute ago they were at
perfect peace, and now the everlasting dispute about religion had begun
again. There had been no Prayers since Papa died, because Mamma couldn't
trust herself to read them without breaking down. At the same time, it
was inconceivable to her that there should be no Prayers.

"I should have thought, if you could read the Burial Service--"

"I only did it because you asked me to."

"Then you might do this because I ask you."

"It isn't the same thing. You haven't got to believe in the Burial
Service. But either you believe in Prayers or you don't believe in them.
If you don't you oughtn't to read them. You oughtn't to be asked to read
them."

"How are we going on, I should like to know? Supposing I was to be laid
aside, are there to be no Prayers, ever, in this house because you've set
yourself up in your silly self-conceit against the truth?"

The truth. The truth about God. As if anybody really knew it; as if it
mattered; as if anything mattered except Mamma.

Yet it did matter. It mattered more than anything in the whole world, the
truth about God, the truth about anything; just the truth. Papa's death
had nothing to do with it. It wasn't fair of Mamma to talk as if it had;
to bring it up against you like that.

"Let's go to bed," she said.

Her mother took no notice of the suggestion. She sat bolt upright in her
chair; her face had lost its look of bored, weary patience; it flushed
and flickered with resentment.

"I shall send for Aunt Bella," she said.

"Why Aunt Bella?"

"Because I must have someone. Someone of my own."


XIII.

It was three weeks now since the funeral.

Mamma and Aunt Bella sat in the dining-room, one on each side of the
fireplace. Mamma looked strange and sunken and rather yellow in a widow's
cap and a black knitted shawl, but Aunt Bella had turned herself into a
large, comfortable sheep by means of a fleece of white shawl and an
ice-wool hood peaked over her cap.

There was a sweet, inky smell of black things dyed at Pullar's. Mary
picked out the white threads and pretended to listen while Aunt Bella
talked to Mamma in a woolly voice about Aunt Lavvy's friendship with the
Unitarian minister, and Uncle Edward's lumbago, and the unreasonableness
of the working classes.

She thought how clever it was of Aunt Bella to be able to keep it up like
that. "I couldn't do it to save my life. As long as I live I shall never
be any good to Mamma."

The dining-room looked like Mr. Metcalfe, the undertaker. Funereal
hypocrisy. She wondered whether Roddy would see the likeness.

She thought of Roddy's nervous laugh when Catty brought in the first
Yorkshire cakes. His eyes had stared at her steadily as he bit into his
piece. They had said: "You don't care. You don't care. If you really
cared you couldn't eat."

There were no more threads to pick.

She wondered whether she would be thought unfeeling if she were to take a
book and read.

Aunt Bella began to talk about Roddy. Uncle Edward said Roddy ought to go
away and get something to do.

If Roddy went away there would be no one. No one.

She got up suddenly and left them.


XIV.

The air of the drawing-room braced her like the rigour of a cold bath.
Her heartache loosened and lost itself in the long shiver of chilled
flesh.

The stone walls were clammy with the sweat of the thaw; they gave out a
sour, sickly smell. Grey smears of damp dulled the polished lid of the
piano.

They hadn't used the drawing-room since Papa died. It was so bright, so
heartlessly cheerful compared with the other rooms, you could see that
Mamma would think you unfeeling if you wanted to sit in it when Papa was
dead. She had told Catty not to light the fire and to keep the door shut,
for fear you should be tempted to sit in it and forget.

The piano. Under the lid the keys were stiffening with the damp. The
hammers were swelling, sticking together. She tried not to think of the
piano.

She turned her back on it and stood by the side window that looked out on
to the garden. Mamma's garden. It mouldered between the high walls
blackened by the thaw. On the grass-plot the snow had sunk to a thin
crust, black-pitted. The earth was a black ooze through ulcers of grey
snow.

She had a sudden terrifying sense of desolation.

Her mind clutched at this feeling and referred it to her father. It sent
out towards him, wherever he might be, a convulsive emotional cry.

"You were wrong. I do care. Can't you see that I can never be happy
again? Yet, if you could come back I would be happy. I wouldn't mind
your--your little funny ways."

It wasn't true. She _would_ mind them. If he were really there he would
know it wasn't true.

She turned and looked again at the piano. She went to it. She opened the
lid and sat down before it. Her fingers crept along the keyboard; they
flickered over the notes of the Sonata _Appassionata_, a ghostly, furtive
playing, without pressure, without sound.

And she was ashamed as if the piano were tempting her to some cruel,
abominable sin.




XXII


I.

The consultation had lasted more than an hour.

From the cobbled square outside you could see them through the window,
Mamma, Uncle Edward, Uncle Victor and Farmer Alderson, sitting round the
dining-room table and talking, talking, talking about Roddy.

It was awful to think that things--things that concerned you--could go on
and be settled over your head without your knowing anything about it. She
only knew that Papa had made Uncle Victor and Uncle Edward the trustees
and guardians of his children who should be under age at his death (she
and Roddy were under age), and that Mamma had put the idea of farming in
Canada into Uncle Edward's head, and that Uncle Victor had said he
wouldn't hear of letting Roddy go out by himself, and that the landlord
of the Buck Hotel had told Victor that Farmer Alderson's brother Ben had
a big farm somewhere near Montreal and young Jem Alderson was going out
to him in March and they might come to some arrangement.

They were coming to it now.

Roddy and she, crouching beside each other on the hearthrug in the
drawing-room, waited till it should be over. Through the shut doors they
could still distinguish Uncle Edward's smooth, fat voice from Uncle
Victor's thin one. The booming and baying were the noises made by Farmer
Alderson.

"I can't think what they want to drag _him_ in for," Roddy said. "It'll
only make it more unpleasant for them."

Roddy's eyes had lost their fear; they were fixed in a wise, mournful
stare. He stared at his fate.

"They don't know yet quite _how_ imbecile I am. If I could have gone out
quietly by myself they never need have known. Now they'll _have_ to.
Alderson'll tell them. He'll tell everybody.... I don't care. It's their
own look-out. They'll soon see I was right."

"Listen," she said.

The dining-room door had opened. Uncle Edward's voice came out first,
sounding with a sort of complacent finality. They must have settled it.
You could hear Farmer Alderson stumping his way to the front door. His
voice boomed from the step.

"Ah doan't saay, look ye, 'e'll mak mooch out of en t' farst ye-ear--"

"Damn him, you can hear his beastly voice all over the place."

"Ef yore yoong mon's dead set to larn fa-armin', an' ef 'e've got a head
on 'is shoulders our Jem can larn 'en. Ef 'e '_aven't_, ah tall yo
stra-aight, Mr. Ollyveer, ye med joost's well tak yore mooney and trow it
in t' mistal."

Roddy laughed. "_I_ could have told them that," he said.

"Money?"

"Rather. They can't do it under two hundred pounds. I suppose Victor'll
stump up as usual."

"Poor Victor."

"Victor won't mind. He'll do anything for Mamma. They can call it a
premium if it makes them any happier, but it simply means that they're
paying Alderson to get rid of me."

"No. They've got it into their heads that it's bad for you sticking here
doing nothing."

"So it is. But being made to do what I can't do's worse.... I'm not
likely to do it any better with that young beast Alderson looking at me
all the time and thinking what a bloody fool I am.... They ought to have
left it to me. It would have come a lot cheaper. I was going anyhow. I
only stayed because of Papa. But I can't tell _them_ that. After all, I
was the only one who looked after him. If I'd gone you'd have had to."

"Yes."

"It would even come cheaper," he said, "if I stayed. I can prove it."

He produced his pocket sketch-book. The leaves were scribbled over with
sums, sums desperately begun and left unfinished, sums that were not
quite sure of themselves, sums scratched out and begun again. He crossed
them all out and started on a fresh page.

"Premium, two hundred. Passage, twenty. Outfit, say thirty. Two hundred
and fifty.

"Land cheap, lumber cheap. Labour expensive. Still, Alderson would be so
pleased he might do the job himself for a nominal sum and only charge you
for the wood. Funeral expenses, say ten dollars.

"How much does it cost to keep me here?"

"I haven't an idea."

"No, but think."

"I can't think."

"Well, say I eat ten shillings' worth of food per week, that's twenty-six
pounds a year. Say thirty. Clothes, five. Thirty-five. Sundries, perhaps
five. Forty. But I do the garden. What's a gardener's wages? Twenty?
Fifteen?

"Say fifteen. Fifteen from forty, fifteen from forty--twenty-five. How
much did Papa's funeral come to?"

"Oh--Roddy--I don't know."

"Say thirty. Twenty-five from two hundred and fifty, two hundred and
twenty-five. Deduct funeral. One hundred and ninety-five.

"There you are. One hundred and ninety-five pounds for carting me to
Canada."

"If you feel like that about it you ought to tell them. They can't make
you go if you don't want to."

"They're not making me go. I'm going. I couldn't possibly stay after the
beastly things they've said."

"What sort of things?"

"About my keep and my being no good and making work in the house."

"They didn't--they couldn't."

"Edward did. He said if it wasn't for me Mamma wouldn't have to have
Maggie. Catty could do all the work. And when Victor sat on him and said
Mamma was to have Maggie whatever happened, he jawed back and said she
couldn't afford both Maggie and me."

"Catty could do Maggie's work and I could do Catty's, if you'd stop. It
would be only cleaning things. That's nothing. I'd rather clean the whole
house and _have_ you."

"You wouldn't. You only think you would."

"I would, really. I'll tell them."

"It's no use," he said. "They won't let you."

"I'll make them. I'll go and tell Edward and Victor now."

She had shot up from the floor with sudden energy, and stood looking down
at Roddy as he still crouched there. Her heart ached for him. He didn't
want to go to Canada; he wanted to stay with Mamma, and Mamma was driving
him away from her, for no reason except that Uncle Edward said he ought
to go.

She could hear the dining-room door open and shut again. They were
coming.

Roddy rose from the floor. He drew himself up, stretching out his arms in
a crucified attitude, and grinned at her.

"Do you suppose," he said, "I'd let you?"

He grinned at Uncle Edward and Uncle Victor as they came in.

"Uncle Victor," she said, "Why should Roddy go away? If it's Maggie, we
don't really want her. I'll do Catty's work and he'll do the garden. So
he can stay, can't he?"

"He _can_, Mary, but I don't think he will."

"Of course I won't. If you hadn't waited to mix me up with Alderson I
could have cleared out and got there by this time. You don't suppose I
was going to sponge on my mother for ever, do you?"

He stood there, defying Uncle Edward and Uncle Victor, defying their
thoughts of him. She wondered whether he had forgotten the two hundred
pounds and whether they were thinking of it. They didn't answer, and
Roddy, after fixing on them a look they couldn't meet, strode out of the
room.

She thought: How like Mark he is, with his tight, squared shoulders,
holding his head high. His hair was like Mark's hair, golden brown, close
clipped to the nape of his neck. When he had gone it would be like Mark's
going.

"It's better he should go," Uncle Victor said. "For his own sake."

Uncle Edward said, "Of course it is."

His little blue eyes glanced up from the side of his nose, twinkling. His
mouth stretched from white whisker to white whisker in a smile of
righteous benevolence. But Uncle Victor's eyes slunk away as if he were
ashamed of himself.

It was Uncle Victor who had paid the two hundred pounds.


II.

"Supposing there's something the matter with him, will he still have to
go?"

"I don't see why you should suppose there's anything the matter with
him," her mother said. "Is it likely your Uncle Victor would be paying
all that money to send him out if he wasn't fit to go?"

It didn't seem likely that Victor would have done anything of the sort;
any more than Uncle Edward would have let Aunt Bella give him an overcoat
lined with black jennet.

They were waiting for Roddy to come back from the doctor's. Before Uncle
Victor left Morfe he had made Roddy promise that for Mamma's satisfaction
he would go and be overhauled. And it was as if he had said "You'll see
then how much need there is to worry."

You might have kept on hoping that something would happen to prevent
Roddy's going but for the size and solidity and expensiveness of the
preparations. You might forget that his passage was booked for the first
Saturday in March, that to-day was the first Wednesday, that Victor's two
hundred pounds had been paid to Jem Alderson's account at the bank in
Montreal, and still the black jennet lining of the overcoat shouted at
you that nothing _could_ stop Roddy's going now. Uncle Victor might be
reckless, but Uncle Edward and Aunt Bella took no risks.

Unless, after all, Dr. Kendal stopped it--if he said Roddy mustn't go.

She could hear Roddy's feet coming back. They sounded like Mark's feet on
the flagged path outside.

He came into the room quickly. His eyes shone, he looked pleased and
excited.

Mamma stirred in her chair.

"That's a bright face. We needn't ask if you've got your passport," she
said.

He looked at her, a light, unresting look.

"How right you are," he said. "And wise."

"Well, I didn't suppose there was much the matter with you."

"There isn't."

He went to the bookshelf where he kept his drawing-blocks.

"I wouldn't sit down and draw if I were you. There isn't time."

"There'll be less after Saturday."

He sat down and began to draw. He was as absorbed and happy as if none of
them had ever heard of Canada.

He chanted:

   "'Cannon to right of them,
     Cannon to left of them,
     Cannon in front of them
        Volleyed and thundered.'"

The pencil moved excitedly. Volumes of smoke curled and rolled and
writhed on the left-hand side of the sheet. The guns of Balaclava.

   "'Into the jaws of Death,
     Into the mouth of Hell,
        Rode the six hundred.'"

A rush of hoofs and heads and lifted blades on the right hand. The horses
and swords of the Light Brigade.

   "'Theirs not to make reply,
     Theirs not to reason why,
     Theirs but to do and die'"--

"You ought to be a soldier, Roddy, like Mark, not a farmer."

"Oh wise! Oh right!

   "'Forward, the Light Brigade!
     Was there a man dismayed?
     Not though the soldier knew
        Someone had blundered.'"


III.

She was going up the schoolhouse lane towards Karva, because Roddy and
she had gone that way together on Friday, his last evening.

It was Sunday now; six o'clock: the time he used to bring Papa home. His
ship would have left Queenstown, it would be steering to the west.

She wondered how much he had really minded going. Perhaps he had only
been afraid he wouldn't be strong enough; for after he had seen the
doctor he had been different. Pleased and excited. Perhaps he didn't
mind so very much.

If she could only remember how he had looked and what he had said. He had
talked about the big Atlantic liner, and the Canadian forests. With luck
the voyage might last eleven or twelve clear days. You could shoot moose
and wapiti. Wapiti and elk. Elk. With his eyes shining. He was not quite
sure about the elk. He wished he had written to the High Commissioner for
Canada about the elk. That was what the Commissioner was there for, to
answer questions, to encourage you to go to his beastly country.

She could hear Roddy's voice saying these things as they walked over
Karva. He was turning it all into an adventure, his imagination playing
round and round it. And on Saturday morning he had been sick and couldn't
eat his breakfast. Mamma had been sorry, and at the same time vexed and
irritable as if she were afraid that the arrangements might, after all,
be upset. But in the end he had gone off, pleased and excited, with Jem
Alderson in the train.

She could see Jem's wide shoulders pushing through the carriage door
after Roddy. He had a gentle, reddish face and long, hanging moustaches
like a dying Gladiator. Little eyes that screwed up to look at you. He
would be good to Roddy.

It would be all right.

She stood still in the dark lane. A disturbing memory gnawed its way
through her thoughts that covered it: the way Roddy had looked at Mamma,
that Wednesday, the way he had spoken to her. "Oh wise. Oh right!"