She was still thinking of it as she went across the Green to the post office, instead of wondering why the postmistress had sent for her, and why Miss Horn waited for her by the house door at the side, or why she looked at her like that, with a sort of yearning pity and fear. She followed her into the parlour behind the post office.
Suddenly she was awake to the existence of this parlour and its yellow cane-bottomed chairs and round table with the maroon cloth and the white alabaster lamp that smelt. The orange envelope lay on the maroon cloth. Miss Horn covered it with her hand.
“It’s for Mr. Dan,” she said. “I daren’t send it to the house lest your mother should get it.”
She gave it up with a slow, unwilling gesture.
“It’s bad news, Miss Mary.”
… Your Brother Died This Evening. …
Her heart stopped, staggered and went on again.
“Poona”—Mark—
Your Brother Died This Evening.—Symonds.
“This evening” was yesterday. Mark had died yesterday.
Her heart stopped again. She had a sudden feeling of suffocation and sickness.
Her mind left off following the sprawl of the thick grey-black letters on the livid pink form.
It woke again to the extraordinary existence of Miss Horn’s parlour. It went back to Mark, slowly, by the way it had come, by the smell of the lamp, by the orange envelope on the maroon cloth.
Mark. And something else.
Mamma—Mamma. She would have to know.
Miss Horn still faced her, supporting herself by her spread hands pressed down on to the table. Her eyes had a look of gentle, helpless interrogation, as if she said, “What are you going to do about it?”
She did all the necessary things; asked for a telegram form, filled it in: “Send Details, Mary Olivier”; and addressed it to Symonds of “E” Company. And all the time, while her hand moved over the paper, she was thinking, “I shall have to tell Mamma.”
III
The five windows of the house stared out at her across the Green. She avoided them by cutting through Horn’s yard and round by the Back Lane into the orchard. She was afraid that her mother would see her before she had thought how she would tell her that Mark was dead. She shut herself into her room to think.
She couldn’t think.
She dragged herself from the window seat to the chair by the writing-table and from the chair to the bed.
She could still feel her heart staggering and stopping. Once she thought it was going to stop altogether. She had a sudden pang of joy. “If it would stop altogether—I should go to Mark. Nothing would matter. I shouldn’t have to tell Mamma that he’s dead.” But it always went on again.
She thought of Mark now without any feeling at all except that bodily distress. Her mind was fixed in one centre of burning, lucid agony. Mamma.
“I can’t tell her. I can’t. It’ll kill her. … I don’t see how she’s to live if Mark’s dead. … I shall send for Aunt Bella. She can do it. Or I might ask Mrs. Waugh. Or Mr. Rollitt.”
She knew she wouldn’t do any of these things. She would have to tell her.
She heard the clock strike the half hour. Half-past five. Not yet. “When it strikes seven I shall go and tell Mamma.”
She lay down on her bed and listened for the strokes of the clock. She felt nothing but an immense fatigue, an appalling heaviness. Her back and arms were loaded with weights that held her body down on to the bed.
“I shall never be able to get up and tell her.”
Six. Half-past. At seven she got up and went downstairs. Through the open side door she saw her mother working in the garden.
She would have to get her into the house.
“Mamma—darling.”
But Mamma wouldn’t come in. She was planting the last aster in the row. She went on scooping out the hole for it, slowly and deliberately, with her trowel, and patting the earth about it with wilful hands. There was a little smudge of grey earth above the crinkles in her soft, sallow-white forehead.
“You wait,” she said.
She smiled like a child pleased with itself for taking its own way.
Mary waited.
She thought: “Three hours ago I was angry with her. I was angry with her. And Mark was dead then. And when she read his letter. He was dead yesterday.”
IV
Time was not good to you. Time was cruel. Time made you see.
Yet somehow they had gone through time. Nights of August and September when you got up before daybreak to listen at her door. Days when you did nothing. Mamma sat upright in her chair with her hands folded on her lap. She kept her back to the window: you saw her face darkening in the dusk. When the lamp came she raised her arm and the black shawl hung from it and hid her face. Nights of insane fear when you had to open her door and look in to see whether she were alive or dead. Days when you were afraid to speak, afraid to look at each other. Nights when you couldn’t sleep for wondering how Mark had died. They might have told you. They might have told you in one word. They didn’t, because they couldn’t; because the word was too awful. They would never say how Mark died. Mamma thought he had died of cholera.
You started at sounds, at the hiss of the flame in the grate, the fall of the ashes on the hearth, the tinkling of the front door bell.
You heard Catty slide back the bolt. People muttered on the doorstep. You saw them go back past the window, quietly, their heads turned away. They were ashamed.
You began to go out. You walked slowly, weighted more than ever by your immense, inexplicable fatigue. When you saw people coming you tried to go quicker; when you spoke to them you
