Going and coming back; gathered together; incredibly free; disentangled from the net of nerves and veins. It didn’t move any more with the movement of the net. It was clear and still in the blackness; intensely real.
Then it willed. Your self willed. It was free to will. You knew that it had never been free before except once; it had never willed before except once. Willing was this. Waves and waves of will, coming on and on, making your will, driving it through empty time. … “The time of time”: that was the Self. … Time where nothing happens except this. Where nothing happens except God’s will. God’s will in your will. Self of your self. Reality of reality. … It had felt like that.
Mamma had waked up. She was saying she was better.
Mamma was better. She said she felt perfectly well. She could walk across the room. She could walk without your holding her.
It couldn’t have been that. It couldn’t, possibly. It was a tiny haemorrhage and it had dried up. It would have dried up just the same if you hadn’t done anything. Those things don’t happen.
What did happen was extraordinary enough. The queer dying. The freedom afterwards. The intense stillness, the intense energy; the certainty.
Something was there.
That horrible dream. Dorsy oughtn’t to have made me go and see the old woman in the workhouse. A body without a mind. That’s what made the dream come. It was Mamma’s face; but she was doing what the old woman did.
“Mamma!”—That’s the second time I’ve dreamed Mamma was dead.
The little lamb, lying on her back with her mouth open, making that funny noise: “Cluck-cluck,” like a hen.
Why can’t I dream about something I want to happen? Why can’t I dream about Richard? … Poor Richard, how can he go on believing I shall come to him?
VII
Dear Dr. Charles, with his head sticking out between the tubes of the stethoscope, like a ram. His poor old mouth hung loose as he breathed. He was out late last night; there was white stubble on his chin.
“It won’t do it when you want it to.”
“It’s doing quite enough. … Let me see, it’s two years since your mother had that illness. You must go away, Mary. For a month at least. Dorsy’ll come and take care of your mother.”
“Does it matter where I go?”
“N‑no. Not so much. Go where you’ll get a thorough change, my dear. I wouldn’t stay with relations, if I were you.”
“All right, I’ll go if you’ll tell me what’s the matter with me.”
“You’ve got your brother Rodney’s heart. But it won’t kill you if you’ll take care of yourself.”
(Roddy’s heart, the net of flesh and blood drawing in a bit of your body.)
Chapter XXXIII
I
Richard had gone up into his own flat and left her to wash and dress and explore. He had told her she was to have Tiedeman’s flat. Not knowing who Tiedeman was made it more wonderful that God should have put it into his head to go away for Easter and lend you his flat.
If you wanted anything you could ring and they would come up from the basement and look after you.
She didn’t want them to come up yet. She wanted to lie back among her cushions where Richard had packed her, and turn over the moments and remember what they had been like: getting out of the train at King’s Cross and finding Richard there; coming with him out of the thin white April light into the rich darkness and brilliant colours of the room; the feeling of Richard’s hands as they undid her fur stole and peeled the sleeves of her coat from her arms; seeing him kneel on the hearthrug and make tea with an air of doing something intensely interesting, an air of security and possession. He went about in Tiedeman’s rooms as if they belonged to him.
She liked Tiedeman’s flat: the big outer room, curtained with thick gentian blue and thin violet. There was a bowl of crimson and purple anemones on the dark oval of the oak table.
Tiedeman’s books covered the walls with their coloured bands and stripes and the illuminated gold of their tooling. The deep bookcases made a ledge all round halfway up the wall, and the shallow bookcases went on above it to the ceiling.
But—those white books on the table were Richard’s books. Mary Olivier—Mary Olivier. My books that I gave him. … They’re Richard’s rooms.
She got up and looked about. That long dark thing was her coat and fur stretched out on the flat couch in the corner where Richard had laid them; stretched out in an absolute peace and rest.
She picked them up and went into the inner room that showed through the wide square opening. The small brown oak-panelled room. No furniture but Richard’s writing table and his chair. A tall narrow French window looking to the backs of houses, and opening on a leaded balcony. Spindle-wood trees, green balls held up on ramrod stems in green tubs. Richard’s garden.
Curtains of thin silk, brilliant magenta, letting the light through. The hanging green bough of a plane tree, high up on the pane, between. A worn magentaish rug on the dark floor.
She went through the door on the right and found a short, narrow passage. Another French window opening from it on to the balcony. A bathroom on the other side; a small white panelled bedroom at the end.
She had no new gown. Nothing but the black chiffon one (black because of Uncle Victor) she had bought two years ago with Richard’s cheque. She had worn it at Greffington that evening when she dined with him. It had a long, pointed train. Its thin, open, wide spreading sleeves fell from her shoulders in
