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."