Mary went to find her.
She knew the house: the flagged passage from the front door. The
dining-room on the right. The drawing-room on the left. In there the
chairs and tables drew together to complain of Morfe. View of the
blacksmith's house and yard from the front window. From the side window
Mamma's garden. Green grass-plot. Trees at the far end. Flowers in the
borders: red roses, cream roses, Canterbury bells, white and purple,
under the high walls. In a corner an elder bush frothing greenish white
on green.
Behind the dining-room Papa's tight den. Stairs where the passage turned
to the left behind the drawing-room. Glass door at the end, holding the
green of the garden, splashed with purple, white and red. The kitchen
here in a back wing like a rough barn run out into the orchard.
Upstairs Catty's and Cook's room in the wing; Papa's dressing-room above
the side passage; Roddy's room above Papa's den. Then the three rooms in
front. The one above the drawing-room was nearly filled with the yellow
birch-wood wardrobe and bed. The emerald green of the damask was fading
into the grey.
Her mother was there, sitting in the window-seat, reading the fourteenth
chapter of St. John.
"Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
In my Father's house are many mansions--"
Mamma was different, too, as if she had shrunk through living in the
cramped rooms. She raised her head. The head of a wounded bird, very
gentle.
"Why are you sitting up here all alone?"
"Because sometimes I want to be alone."
"Shall I spoil the aloneness?"
"Not if you're a good girl and keep quiet."
Mary sat on the bed and waited till the chapter should be ended.
She thought: "She talks to me still as though I were a child. What would
she say if I told her about Aunt Charlotte? She wouldn't know what it was
really like. She wasn't there.
"I shall never tell her."
She was thrilled at the thought of her grown-up hardness, her grown-up
silence, keeping her mother safe.
Mamma looked up and smiled; the chapter was ended; they went downstairs.
Papa stood in the doorway of his den and called to Mamma in a queer low
voice.