Mary Olivier: a Life Part 104

She would catch the ten train. That was what the hansom was there for.

"I'll send your things on after you."

The driver and the slog-slogging horse knew that she would catch the train. Richard knew.

He had the same look on his face that was there before when Mamma was ill. Sorrow that wasn't sorrow. And the same clear thought behind it.

x.x.xIV

I.

Dorsey's nerves were in a shocking state. You could see she had been afraid all the time; from the first day when Mamma had kept on saying, "Has Mary come back?"

Dorsy was sure that was how it began; but she couldn't tell you whether it was before or afterwards that she had forgotten the days of the week.

Anybody could forget the days of the week. What frightened Dorsy was hearing her say suddenly, "Mary's _gone_." She said it to herself when she didn't know Dorsy was in the room. Then she had left off asking and wondering. For five days she hadn't said anything about you. Not anything at all. When she heard your name she stared at them with a queer, scared look.

Catty said that yesterday she had begun to be afraid of Dorsy and couldn't bear her in the room. That was what made them send the wire.

What had she been thinking of those five days? It was as though she knew.

Dorsy said she didn't believe she was thinking anything at all. Dorsy didn't know.

II.

Somebody knew. Somebody had been talking. She had found Catty in the room making up the bed for her in the corner. Catty was crying as she tucked in the blankets. "There's some people," she said, "as had ought to be poisoned." But she wouldn't say why she was crying.

You could tell by Mr. Belk's face, his mouth drawn in between claws of nose and chin; by Mrs. Belk's face and her busy eyes, staring. By the old men sitting on the bench at the corner, their eyes coming together as you pa.s.sed.

And Mr. Spencer Rollitt, stretching himself straight and looking away over your head and drawing in his breath with a "Fivv-vv-vv" when he asked how Mamma was. His thoughts were hidden behind his bare, wooden face. He was a just and cautious man. He wouldn't accept any statement outside the Bible without proof.

You had to go down and talk to Mrs. Waugh. She had come to see how you would look. Her mouth talked about Mamma but her face was saying all the time, "I'm not going to ask you what you were doing in London in Mr.

Nicholson's flat, Mary. I'm sure you wouldn't do anything you'd be sorry to think of with your poor mother in the state she's in."

I don't care. I don't care what they think.

There would still be Catty and Dorsy and Louisa Wright and Miss Kendal and Dr. Charles with their kind eyes that loved you. And Richard living his eternal life in your heart.

And Mamma would never know.

III.

Mamma was going backwards and forwards between the open work-table and the cabinet. She was taking out the ivory reels and thimbles and b.u.t.ton boxes, wrapping them in tissue paper and hiding them in the cabinet. When she had locked the doors she waited till you weren't looking to lift up her skirt and hide the key in her petticoat pocket.

She was happy, like a busy child at play.

She was never ill, only tired like a child that plays too long. Her face was growing smooth and young and pretty again; a pink flush under her eyes. She would never look disapproving or reproachful any more. She couldn't listen any more when you read aloud to her. She had forgotten how to play halma.

One day she found the green box in the cabinet drawer. She came to you carrying it with care. When she had put it down on the table she lifted the lid and looked at the little green and white p.a.w.ns and smiled.

"Roddy's soldiers," she said.

Richard doesn't know what he's talking about when he asks me to give up Mamma. He might as well ask me to give up my child. It's no use his saying she "isn't there." Any minute she may come back and remember and know me.

She must have known me yesterday when she asked me to go and see what Papa was doing.

As for "waiting," he may have to wait years and years. And I'm forty-five now.

IV.

The round black eye of the mirror looked at them. Their figures would be there, hers and Richard's, at the bottom of the black crystal bowl, small like the figures in the wrong end of a telescope, very clear in the deep, clear swirl of the gla.s.s.

They were sitting close together on the old rose-chintz-covered couch.

_Her_ couch. You could see him putting the cushions at her back, tucking the wide Victorian skirt in close about the feet in the black velvet slippers. And she would lie there with her poor hands folded in the white cashmere shawl.

Richard knew what you were thinking.

"You can't expect me," he was saying, "to behave like my uncle....

Besides, it's a little too late, isn't it?... We said, whatever we did we wouldn't go back on it. If it wasn't wrong then, Mary, it isn't wrong now."

"It isn't that, Richard."

(No. Not that. Pure and remorseless then. Pure and remorseless now.)

She wondered whether he had heard it. The crunching on the gravel walk under the windows, stopping suddenly when the feet stepped on to the gra.s.s. And the hushed growl of the men's voices. Baxter and the gardener.

They had come to see whether the light would go out again behind the yellow blinds as it had gone out last night.

If you were a coward; if you had wanted to get off scot-free, it was too late.

Richard knows I'm not a coward. Funk wouldn't keep me from him. It isn't _that_.

"What is it, then?"

"Can't you see, can't you feel that it's no use coming again, just for this? It'll never be what it was then. It'll always be like last night, and you'll think I don't care. Something's holding me back from you.

Something that's happened to me. I don't know yet what it is."

"Nerves. Nothing but nerves."