“I must say,” Mamma said, “he’s earned his extra half-hour in bed.”
She was pleased because Roddy had built the wall up and because he was well again.
They had turned. They were walking on the flagged path by the flower-border under the house. Mamma walked slowly, with meditative pauses, and bright, sidelong glances for her flowers.
“If only,” she said, “he could work without trampling the flowers down.”
The sun was shining on the flagged path. Mamma was stooping over the bed; she had lifted the stalk of the daffodil up out of the sunk print of Roddy’s boot. Catty was coming down the house passage to the side door. Her mouth was open. Her eyes stared above her high, sallow cheeks. She stood on the doorstep, saying something in a husky voice.
“Miss Mary—will you go upstairs to Master Roddy? I think there’s something the matter with him. I think—”
Upstairs, in his narrow iron bed, Roddy lay on his back, his lips parted, his eyes—white slits under half-open lids—turned up to the ceiling. His arms were squared stiffly above his chest as they had pushed back the bedclothes. The hands had been clenched and unclenched; the fingers still curled in towards the palms. His face had a look of innocence and candour.
Catty’s thick, wet voice soaked through his mother’s crying. “Miss Mary—he went in his first sleep. His hair’s as smooth as smooth.”
X
She was alone with Dan in the funeral carriage.
Her heart heaved and dragged with the grinding of the brakes on the hill; the brake of the hearse going in front; the brake of their carriage; the brake of the one that followed with Dr. Charles in it.
When they left off she could hear Dan crying. He had begun as soon as he got into the carriage.
She tried to think of Dr. Charles, sitting all by himself in the back carriage, calm and comfortable among the wreaths. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t think of anything but Dan and the black hearse in front of them. She could see it when the road turned to the right; when she shut her eyes she could see the yellow coffin inside it, heaped with white flowers; and Roddy lying deep down in the coffin. The sides were made high to cover his arms, squared over his chest as if he had been beating something off. She could see Roddy’s arms beating off his thoughts, and under the fine hair Roddy’s face, innocent and candid.
Dr. Charles said it wasn’t that. He had just raised them in surprise. A sort of surprise. He hadn’t suffered.
Dan’s dark head was bowed forward, just above the level of her knees. His deep, hot eyes were inflamed with grief; they kept on blinking, gushing out tears over red lids. He cried like a child, with loud sobs and hiccups that shook him. Her eyes were dry; burning dry; the lids choked with something that felt like hot sand, and hurt.
(If only the carriage didn’t smell of brandy. That was the driver. He must have sat in it while he waited.)
Dan left off crying and sat up suddenly.
“What’s that hat doing there?”
He had taken off his tall hat as he was getting into the carriage and laid it on the empty seat. He pointed at the hat.
“That isn’t my hat,” he said.
“Yes, Dank. You put it there yourself.”
“I didn’t. My hat hasn’t got a beastly black band on it.”
He rose violently, knocking his head against the carriage roof.
“Here—I must get out of this.”
He tugged at the window-strap, hanging on to it and swaying as he tugged. She dragged him back into his seat.
“Sit down and keep quiet.”
She put her hand on his wrist and held it. Down the road the bell of Renton Church began tolling. He turned and looked at her unsteadily, his dark eyes showing bloodshot as they swerved.
“Mary—is Roddy really dead?”
A warm steam of brandy came and went with his breathing.
“Yes. That’s why you must keep quiet.”
Mr. Rollitt was standing at the open gate of the churchyard. He was saying something that she didn’t hear. Then he swung round solemnly. She saw the flash of his scarlet hood. Then the coffin.
She began to walk behind it, between two rows of villagers, between Dorsy Heron and Mr. Sutcliffe. She went, holding Dan tight, pulling him closer when he lurched, and carrying his tall hat in her hand.
Close before her face the head of Roddy’s coffin swayed and swung as the bearers staggered.
XI
“Roddy ought never to have gone to Canada.”
Her mother had turned again, shaking the big bed. They would sleep together for three nights; then Aunt Bella would come, as she came when Papa died.
“But your Uncle Victor would have his own way.”
“He didn’t know.”
She thought: “But I knew. I knew and I let him go. Why did I?”
It seemed to her that it was because, deep down inside her, she had wanted him to go. Deep down inside her she had been afraid of the unhappiness that would come through Roddy.
“And I don’t think,” her mother said presently, “it could have been very good for him, building that wall.”
“You didn’t know.”
She thought: “I’d have known. If I’d been here it wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have let him. I’d no business to go away and leave him. I might have known.”
“Lord, if Thou hadst been here our brother had not died.”
The yellow coffin swayed before her eyes, heaped with the white flowers. Yellow and white. Roddy’s dog. His yellow dog with a white breast and white paws. And a rope round his neck. Roddy thought he had hanged him.
At seven she got up and dressed and dusted the drawing-room. She dusted everything very carefully, especially the piano. She would never want to play on it again.
The side door stood open.
