Mamma said, “I shall be quite sorry when the new glasses come.”
Mary was sorry too. They had been so happy.
XI
April. Mark’s ship had left Port Said nine days ago.
Mamma had come in with the letter.
“I’ve got news for you. Guess.”
“Mark’s coming today.”
“No. … Mr. Jourdain was married yesterday.”
“Who—to?”
“Some girl he used to see in Sussex.”
(That one. She was glad it was the little girl, the poor one. Nice of Maurice to marry her.)
“Do you mind, Mary?”
“No, not a bit. I hope they’ll be happy. I want them to be happy. … Now, you see—that was why he didn’t want to marry me.”
Her mother sat down on the bed. There was something she was going to say.
“Well—thank goodness that’s the last of it.”
“Does Mark know?”
“No, he does not. You surely don’t imagine anybody would tell him a thing like that about his sister?”
“Like what?”
“Well—he wouldn’t think it very nice of you.”
“You talk as if I was Aunt Charlotte. … Do you think I’m like her?”
“I never said you were like her. …”
“You think—you think and won’t say.”
“Well, if you don’t want to be thought like your Aunt Charlotte you should try and behave a little more like other people. For pity’s sake, do while Mark’s here, or he won’t like it, I can tell you.”
“I don’t do anything Mark wouldn’t like.”
“You do very queer things sometimes, though you mayn’t think so. … I’m not the only one that notices. If you really want to know, that was what Mr. Jourdain was afraid of—the queer things you say and do. You told me yourself you’d have gone to him if he hadn’t come to you.”
She remembered. Yes, she had said that.
“Did he know about Aunt Charlotte?”
“You may be sure he did.”
Mamma didn’t know. She never would know what it had been like, that night. But there were things you didn’t know, either.
“What did Aunt Charlotte do?”
“Nothing. She just fell in love with every man she met. If she’d only seen him for five minutes she was off after him. Ordering her trousseau and dressing herself up. She was no more mad than I am except just on that one point.”
“Aunt Lavvy said that was why Uncle Victor never married. He was afraid of something—something happening to his children. What do you think he thought would happen?”
Her mother’s foot tapped on the floor.
“I’m sure I can’t tell you what he thought. And I don’t know what there was to be afraid of. I wish you wouldn’t throw your stockings all about the room.”
Mamma picked up the stockings and went away. You could see that she was annoyed. Annoyed with Uncle Victor for having been afraid to marry.
A dreadful thought came to her. “Does Mamma really think I’m like Aunt Charlotte? I won’t be like her. I won’t. … I’m not. There was Jimmy and there was Maurice Jourdain. But I didn’t fall in love with the Proparts or the Manistys, or Norman Waugh, or Harry Craven, or Dr. Charles. Or Mr. Sutcliffe. … She said I was as bad as Aunt Charlotte. Because I said I’d go to Maurice. … I meant, just to see him. What did she think I meant? … Oh, not that. … Would I really have gone? Got into the train and gone? Would I?”
She would never know.
“I wish I knew what Uncle Victor was afraid of.”
Wondering what he had been afraid of, she felt afraid.
Chapter XXV
I
She waited.
Mamma and Mark had turned their backs to her as they clung together. But there was his sparrow-brown hair, clipped close into the nape of his red-brown neck. If only Mamma wouldn’t cry like that—
“Mark—”
“Is that Minky?”
They held each other and let go in one tick of the clock, but she had stood a long time seeing his eyes arrested in their rush of recognition. Disappointed.
The square dinner-table stretched itself into an immense white space between her and Mark. It made itself small again for Mark and Mamma. Across the white space she heard him saying things: about Dan meeting him at Tilbury, and poor Victor coming to Liverpool Street, and Cox’s. Last night he had stayed at Ilford, he had seen Bella and Edward and Pidgeon and Mrs. Fisher and the Proparts. “Do you remember poor Edward and his sheep? And Mary’s lamb!”
Mark hadn’t changed, except that he was firmer and squarer, and thinner, because he had had fever. And his eyes—He was staring at her with his disappointed eyes.
She called to him. “You don’t know me a bit, Mark.”
He laughed. “I thought I’d see somebody grown up. Victor said Mary was dreadfully mature. What did he mean?”
Mamma said she was sure she didn’t know.
“What do you do with yourself all day, Minky?”
“Nothing much. Read—work—play tennis with Mr. Sutcliffe.”
“Mr.—Sutcliffe?”
“Never mind Mr. Sutcliffe. Mark doesn’t want to hear about him.”
“Is there a Mrs. Sutcliffe?”
“Yes.”
“Does she play?”
“No. She’s too old. Much older than he is.”
“That’ll do, Mary.”
Mamma’s eyes blinked. Her forehead was pinched with vexation. Her foot tapped on the floor.
Mark’s eyes kept up their puzzled stare.
“What’s been happening?” he said. “What’s the matter? Everywhere I go there’s a mystery. There was a mystery at Ilford. About Dan. And about poor Charlotte. I come down here and there’s a mystery about some people called Sutcliffe. And a mystery about Mary.” He laughed again. “Minky seems to be in disgrace, as if she’d done something. … It’s awfully queer. Mamma’s the only person something hasn’t happened to.”
“I should have thought everything had happened to me,” said Mamma.
“That makes it queerer.”
Mamma went up with Mark into his room. Papa’s room. You could hear her feet going up and down in it, and the squeaking wail of the wardrobe door as she opened and shut it.
She waited, listening. When she heard her mother come downstairs she went to him.
Mark didn’t know that the room had been Papa’s room. He didn’t know that she shivered when she saw him
