"Do you hear what your mother says?"
Dan's eyes were red-rimmed. He took a double section of cake and tried to
bite his way through.
At the first taste tears came out of his eyes and fell on his cake. And
when Mamma saw that she burst out crying.
Mary put her piece down untasted and bit back her sobs. Roddy pushed his
piece away; and Mark began to eat his, suddenly, bowing over it with an
affectation of enjoyment.
Outside in the road Mr. Parish was descending from the box of his
wagonette. Papa looked at his watch. He was going with them to Chelmsted.
And Mamma whispered to Mark and Dan with her last kiss, "He'll be all
right in the train."
It was all over. Mary and Roddy sat in the dining-room where Mamma had
left them. They had shut their eyes so as not to see the empty chairs
pushed back and the pieces of the sacred cakes, bitten and abandoned.
They had stopped their ears so as not to hear the wheels of Mr. Parish's
wagonette taking Mark and Dan away.
Hours afterwards Mamma came upon Mary huddled up in a corner of the
drawing-room.
"Mamma--Mamma--I _can't_ bear it. I can't live without Mark. And Dan."
Mamma sat down and took her in her arms and rocked her, rocked her
without a word, soothing her own grief.
Papa found them like that when he came back from Chelmsted. He stood in
the doorway looking at them for a moment, then slunk out of the room as
if he were ashamed of himself. When Mamma sent Mary out to say good-bye
to him, he was standing beside the little sumach tree that Mark gave
Mamma on her birthday. He was smiling at the sumach tree as if he loved
it and was sorry for it.
And Mamma got a letter from Mark in the morning to say she was right.
Papa had been quite decent in the train.