he began to understand with a horrified pity, her utter indifference to Dick; she had shut out everything that conflicted with her actions, that would revive the code she had been brought up to follow.
She said suddenly; `They said I was not like that, not like that, not like that.' It was like a gramophone that had got stuck at one point.
`Not like what?' he asked blankly.
`Not like that.' The phrase was furtive, sly, yet triumphant. God, the woman is mad as a hatter! he said to himself. And then he thought, but is she, is she? She can't be mad. She doesn't behave as if she were. She behaves simply as if she lives in a world of her own, where other people's standards don't count. She has forgotten what her own people are like. But then, what is madness, but a refuge, a retreating from the world?
Thus the unhappy and bewildered Tony, sitting on his chair beside the water filter, still holding his bottle and glass, staring uneasily at Mary, who began to talk in a sad quiet voice which made him say to himself, as she was speaking, changing his mind again, that she was not mad, at least, not at that moment. `It's a long time since I came here,' she said, looking straight at him, in appeal. `So long I can't quite remember… I should have left long ago. I don't know why I didn't. I don't know why I came. But things are different. Very different.' She stopped. Her face was pitiful; her eyes were painful holes in her face. `I don't know anything. I don't understand. Why is all this happening? I didn't mean it to happen. But he won't go away, he won't go away.' And then, in a different voice, she snapped at him, `Why did you come here? It was all right before you came.' She burst into tears, moaning, `He won't go away.'
Tony rose to go to her: now his only emotion was pity; his discomfort was forgotten. Something made him turn. In the doorway stood the boy, Moses, looking in at them both, his face wickedly malevolent.
`Go away,' said Tony, `go away at once.' He put his arm round Mary's shoulders, for she was shrinking away and digging her fingers into his flesh.
`Go away,' she said suddenly, over his shoulder at the native. Tony realized that she was trying to assert herself: she was using his presence there as a shield in a fight to get back a command she had lost. And she was speaking like a child challenging a grown-up person.
`Madame want me to go?' said the boy quietly. `Yes, go away.'
`Madame want me to go because of this boss?'
It was not the words in themselves that made Tony rise to his feet and stride to the door, but the way in which they were spoken. `Get out,' he said, half-choked with anger. `Get out before I kick you out.'
After a long, slow, evil look the native went. Then he came back. Speaking past Tony, ignoring him, he said to Mary, `Madame is leaving this farm, yes?'
`Yes,' said Mary faintly. `Madame never coming back?' `No, no, no,' she cried out. `And is this boss going too?' 'No,' she screamed. 'Go away.' `Will you go?' shouted Tony. He could have killed this
native: he wanted to take him by his throat and squeeze the life out of him. And then Moses vanished. They heard him walk across the kitchen and out of the back door. The house was empty. Mary sobbed, her head on her arms. `He's gone,' she cried, `he's gone, he's gone!' Her voice was hysterical with relief. And then she suddenly pushed him away, stood in front of him like a mad woman, and hissed, `You sent him away! He'll never come back! It was all right till you came!' And she collapsed in a storm of tears. Tony sat there, his arm round her, comforting her. He was wondering only, `What shall I say to Turner?' But what could he say? The whole thing was better left. The man was half-crazy with worry as it was. It would be cruel to say anything to him – and in any case, in two days both of them would be gone from the farm.
He decided that he would take Dick aside and suggest, only, that the native should be dismissed at once.
But Moses did not return. He was not there that evening at all. Tony heard Dick ask where the native was, and her answer that she `had sent him away'. He heard the blank indifference of her voice: saw that she was speaking to Dick without seeing him.
Tony, at last, shrugged in despair, and decided to do nothing. And the next morning he was off to the lands as usual. It was the last day; there was a great deal to do.
Chapter Eleven
Mary awoke suddenly, as if some big elbow had nudged her. It was still night. Dick lay asleep beside her. The window was creaking on its hinges, and when she looked into the square of darkness, she could see stars moving and flashing among the tree boughs. The sky was luminous; but there was an undertone of cold grey; the stars were bright; but with a weak gleam. Inside the room the furniture was growing into light. She could see a glimmer that was the surface of the mirror. Then a cock crowed in the compound, and a dozen shrill voices answered for the dawn. Daylight? Moonlight? Both. Both mingled together, and it would be sunrise in half an hour. She yawned, settled back on her lumpy pillows, and stretched out her limbs. She thought, that usually her wakings were grey and struggling, a reluctant upheaval of her body from the bed's refuge. Today she was vastly peaceful and rested. Her mind was clear, and her body comfortable. Cradled in ease she locked her hands behind her head and stared at the darkness that held the familiar walls and furniture. Lazily she created the room in imagination, placing each cupboard and chair; then moved beyond the house, hollowing it out of the night in her mind as if her hand cupped it. At last, from a height, she looked down on the building set among the bush – and was filled with a regretful, peaceable tenderness. It seemed as if she were holding that immensely pitiful thing, the farm with its inhabitants, in the hollow of her hand, which curved round it to shut out the gaze of the cruelly critical world. And she felt as if she must weep. She could feel the tears running down her cheeks, which stung rawly, and she put up her fingers to touch the skin. The contact of rough finger with roughened flesh restored her to herself. She continued to cry, but hopelessly for herself, though still from a forgiving distance. Then Dick stirred and woke, sitting up with a jerk. She knew he was turning his head this way and that, in the dark, listening; and she lay quite still. She felt his hand touch her cheek diffidently. But that diffident, apologetic touch annoyed her, and she jerked her head back. `What is the matter, Mary?'
`Nothing,' she replied.
`Are you sorry you are leaving?'
The question seemed to her ridiculous; nothing to do with her at all. And she did not want to think of Dick, except with that distant and impersonal pity. Could he not let her live in this last short moment of peace? `Go to sleep,' she said. `It's not morning yet.'
Her voice seemed to him normal; even her rejection of him was too familiar a thing to waken him thoroughly. In a minute he was asleep again, stretched out as if he had never stirred. But now she could not forget him: she knew he was lying there beside her, could feel his limbs sprawled against hers. She raised herself up, feeling bitter against him, who never left her in peace. Always he was there, a torturing reminder of what she had to forget in order to remain herself. She sat up straight, resting her head on locked hands, conscious again, as she had not been for a very long time, of that feeling of strain, as if she were stretched taut between two immovable poles. She rocked herself slowly back and forth, with a dim, mindless movement, trying to sink back into that region of her mind where Dick did not exist. For it had been a choice, if one could call such an inevitable thing a choice, between Dick and the other, and Dick was destroyed long ago. 'Poor Dick,' she said tranquilly, at last, from her recovered distance from him; and a flicker of terror touched her, an intimation of that terror which would later engulf her. She knew it: she felt transparent, clairvoyant, containing all things. But not Dick. No; she looked at him, a huddle under blankets, his face a pallid glimmer in the growing dawn. It crept in from the low square of window, and with it came a warm, airless breeze. `Poor Dick,' she said, for the last time, and did not think of him again.
She got out of bed and stood by the window. The low sill cut across her thighs. If she bent forward and down, she could touch the ground, which seemed to rise up outside, stretching to the trees. The stars were gone. The sky was colourless and immense. The veld was dim. Everything was on the verge of colour. There was a hint of green in the curve of a leaf, a shine in the sky that was almost blue, and the clear starred outline of the poinsettia flowers suggested the hardness of scarlet.
Slowly, across the sky, spread a marvellous pink flush, and the trees lifted to meet it, becoming tinged with pink and bending out into the dawn she saw the world had put on the colour and shape. The night was over. When the sun rose, she thought, her moment would be over, this marvellous moment of peace and forgiveness granted her by a forgiving God. She crouched against the sill, cramped and motionless, clutching on to her last remnants of
