Things were happening in the village.

The old people were dying. Mr. James had died in a fit the day after
Christmas Day. Old Mrs. Heron had died of a stroke in the first week of
January. She had left Dorsy her house and furniture and seventy pounds a
year. Mrs. Belk got the rest.

The middle-aged people were growing old. Louisa Wright's hair hung in a limp white fold over each ear, her face had tight lines in it that pulled it into grimaces, her eyes had milky white rings like speedwell when it begins to fade. Dorsy Heron's otter brown hair was striped with grey; her nose stood up sharp and bleak in her red, withering face; her sharp, tender mouth drooped at the corners. She was forty-nine.

It was cruel, cruel, cruel; it hurt you to see them. Rather than own it was cruel they went about pulling faces and pretending they were happy. Their gestures had become exaggerated, tricks that they would never grow out of, that gave them the illusion of their youth.

The old people were dying and the middle-aged people were growing old.
Nothing would ever begin for them again.

Each morning when she got out of bed she had the sacred, solemn certainty that for her everything was beginning. At thirty-nine.

What was thirty-nine? A time-feeling, a feeling she hadn't got. If you haven't got the feeling you are not thirty-nine. You can be any age you please, twenty-nine, nineteen.

But she had been horribly old at nineteen. She could remember what it had felt like, the desperate, middle-aged sadness, the middle-aged certainty that nothing interesting would ever happen. She had got hold of life at the wrong end.

And all the time her youth had been waiting for her at the other end, at the turn of the unknown road, at thirty-nine. All through the autumn and winter Richard Nicholson had kept on writing. Her poems would be out on the tenth of April.

On the third the note came.

"Shall I still find you at Morfe if I come down this week-end?—R.N."

"You will never find me anywhere else.—M.O."

"I shall bike from Durlingham. If you've anything to do in Reyburn it would be nice if you met me at The King's Head about four. We could have tea there and ride out together.—R.N."

II.

"I'm excited. I've never been to tea in an hotel before."

She was chattering like a fool, saying anything that came into her head, to break up the silence he made.

She was aware of something underneath it, something that was growing more and more beautiful every minute. She was trying to smash this thing lest it should grow more beautiful than she could bear.

"You see how I score by being shut up in Morfe. When I do get out it's no end of an adventure." (Was there ever such an idiot?)

Suddenly she left off trying to smash the silence.

The silence made everything stand out with a supernatural clearness, the square, white-clothed table in the bay of the window, the Queen Anne fluting on the Britannia metal teapot, the cups and saucers and plates, white with a gentian blue band, The King's Head stamped in gold like a crest.

Sitting there so still he had the queer effect of creating for both of you a space of your own, more real than the space you had just stepped out of. There, there and not anywhere else, these supernaturally clear things had reality, a unique but impermanent reality. It would last as long as you sat there and would go when you went. You knew that whatever else you might forget you would remember this.

The rest of the room, the other tables and the people sitting at them were not quite real. They stood in another space, a different and inferior kind of space.

"I came first of all," he said, "to bring you that."

He took out of his pocket and put down between them the thin, new white parchment book of her Poems.

"Oh … Poor thing, I wonder what'll happen to it?" Funny—it was the least real thing. If it existed at all it existed somewhere else, not in this space, not in this time. If you took it up and looked at it the clearness, the unique, impermanent reality would be gone, and you would never get it again.

* * * * *

They had finished the run down Reyburn hill. Their pace was slackening on the level.

He said, "That's a jolly bicycle of yours."

"Isn't it? I'm sure you'll like to know I bought it with the wonderful cheque you gave me. I should never have had it without that."

"I'm glad you got something out of that awful time."

"Awful? It was one of the nicest times I've ever had…. Nearly all my nice times have been in that house."

"I know," he said. "My uncle would let you do anything you liked if you were young enough. He ought to have had children of his own. They'd have kept him out of mischief."

"I can't think," she said to the surrounding hills, "why people get into mischief, or why they go and kill themselves. When they can ride bicycles instead."

III.

Mamma was sitting upright and averted, with an air of self-conscious effacement, holding the thin white book before her like a fan.

Every now and then you could see her face swinging round from behind the cover and her eyes looking at Richard Nicholson, above the rims of her glasses. Uneasy, frightened eyes.

IV.

The big pink roses of the chintzes and the gold bordered bowls of the black mirrors looked at you rememberingly.

There was a sort of brutality about it. To come here and be happy, to come here in order to be happy, when they were gone; when you had hurt them both so horribly.

"I'm sitting in her chair," she thought.

Richard Nicholson sat, in a purely temporary attitude, by the table in the window. Against the window-pane she could see his side face drawn in a brilliant, furred line of light. His moustache twitched under the shadow of his nose. He was smiling to himself as he wrote the letter to Mamma.

There was a brutality about that, too. She wondered if he had seen old Baxter's pinched mouth and sliding eyes when he took the letter. He was watching him as he went out, waiting for the click of the latch.

"It's all right," he said. "They expect you. They think it's work."

He settled himself (in Mr. Sutcliffe's chair).

"It's the best way," he said. "I want to see you and I don't want to frighten your mother. She is afraid of me."

"No. She's afraid of the whole thing. She wishes it hadn't happened. She's afraid of what'll happen next. I can't make her see that nothing need happen next."

"She's cleverer than you think. She sees that something's got to happen next. I couldn't stand another evening like the last."

"You couldn't," she agreed. "You couldn't possibly."

"We can't exactly go on like—like this, you know."

"Don't let's think about it. Here we are. Now this minute. It's an hour and a half till dinner time. Why, even if I go at nine we've got three hours."

"That's not enough…. You talk as though we could think or not think, as we chose. Even if we left off thinking we should have to go on living. Your mother knows that."

"I don't think she knows more than we do."

"She knows enough to frighten her. She knows what I want…. I want to marry you, Mary."

(This then was what she had been afraid of. But Mamma wouldn't have thought of it.)

"I didn't think you wanted to do that. Why should you?"

"It's the usual thing, isn't it? When you care enough."

"Do you care enough?"

"More than enough. Don't you? … It's no use saying you don't. I know you do."

"Can you tell?"

"Yes."

"Do I go about showing it?"

"No; there hasn't been time. You only began yesterday."

"When? When?"

"In the hotel. When you stopped talking suddenly. And when I gave you your book. You looked as though you wished I hadn't. As though I'd dragged you away from somewhere where you were happy."

"Yes…. If it only began yesterday we can stop it. Stop it before it gets worse."

"I can't. I've been at it longer than that."

"How long?"

"Oh—I don't know. It might have been that first week. After I'd found out that there was peace when you came into the room; and no peace when you went out. When you're there peace oozes out of you and soaks into me all the time."

"Does it feel like that?"

"Just like that."

"But—if it feels like that now, we should spoil it by marrying."

"Oh no we shouldn't."

"Yes…. If it's peace you want. There won't be any peace…. Besides, you don't know. Do you remember telling me about your uncle?"

"What's he got to do with it?"

"And that girl. You said I couldn't have known anything about it…. You said I couldn't even have come in for the sad end of it."

"Well?"

"Well…. I did…. I was the sad end of it…. The girl was me."

"But you told me it wasn't true."

…He had got up. He wanted to stand. To stand up high above you.

"You know," he said, "you told me it wasn't true."

* * * * *

They would have to go through with it. Dining. Drinking coffee. Talking politely; talking intelligently; talking. Villiers de L'Isle Adam, Villiers de L'Isle Adam. "The symbolistes are finished … Do you know Jean Richepin? 'Il Était une fois un pauvre gars Qui aimait celle qui ne l'aimait pas'? … 'Le coeur de ta mÈre pour mon chien.'" He thinks I lied. "You ought to read Henri de Regnier and Remy de Gourmont. You'd like them." … Le coeur de ta mÈre. He thinks I lied. Goodness knows what he doesn't think.

The end of it would come at nine o'clock.

* * * * *

"Are you still angry?"

He laughed. A dreadful sniffling laugh that came through his nostrils.

"I'm not. If I were I should let you go on thinking I lied. You see, I didn't know it was true. I didn't know I was the girl."

"You didn't know?"

"How could I when he never said a word?"

"I can't understand your not seeing it."

"Would you like me better if I had seen it?"

"N-no…. But I wish you hadn't told me. Why did you?"

"I was only trying to break the shock. You thought I couldn't be old enough to be that girl. I meant you to do a sum in your head: 'If she was that girl and she was seventeen, then she must be thirty-nine now.'"

"Is that what you smashed up our evening for?"

"Yes."

"I shouldn't care if you were fifty-nine. I'm forty-five."

"You're sorry. You're sorry all the same."

"I'm sorry because there's so little time, Mary. Sorry I'm six years older than you…."

Nine o'clock.

She stood up. He turned to her. He made a queer sound. A sound like a deep, tearing sigh.

* * * * *

"If I were twenty I couldn't marry you, because of Mamma. That's one thing. You can't marry Mamma."

"We can talk about your mother afterwards."

"No. Now. There isn't any afterwards. There's only this minute that we're in. And perhaps the next…. You haven't thought what it'll be like. You can't leave London because of your work. I can't leave this place because of Mamma. She'd be miserable in London. I can't leave her. She hasn't anybody but me. I promised my brother I'd look after her…. She'd have to live with me."

"Why not?"

"You couldn't live with her."

"I could, Mary."

"Not you. You said you couldn't stand another evening like yesterday…. All the evenings would be like yesterday…. Please…. Even if there wasn't Mamma, you don't want to marry. If you'd wanted to you'd have done it long ago, instead of waiting till you're forty-five. Think of two people tied up together for life whether they both like it or not. It isn't even as if one of them could be happy. How could you if the other wasn't? Look at the Sutcliffes. Think how he hated it…. And he was a kind, patient man. You know you wouldn't dream of marrying me if you didn't think it was the only possible way."

"Well—isn't it?"

"No. The one impossible way. I'd do anything for you but that….
Anything."

"Would you, Mary? Would you have the courage?"

"It would take infinitely more courage to marry you. We should be risking more. All the beautiful things. If it wasn't for Mamma…. But there is Mamma. So—you see."

She thought: "He hasn't kissed me. He hasn't held me in his arms.
He'll be all right. It won't hurt him."

V.

That was Catty's white apron.

Catty stood on the cobbled square by the front door, looking for her.
When she saw them coming she ran back into the house.

She was waiting in the passage as Mary came in.

"The mistress is upset about something," she said. "After she got Mr.
Nicholson's letter."

"There wasn't anything to upset her in that, Catty."

"P'raps not, Miss Mary; but I thought I'd tell you."

Mamma had been crying all evening. Her pocket-handkerchief lay in her lap, a wet rag.

"I thought you were never coming back again," she said.

"Why, where did you think I'd gone?"

"Goodness knows where. I believe there's nothing you wouldn't do. I've no security with you, Mary…. Staying out till all hours of the night…. Sitting up with that man…. You'll be the talk of the place if you don't take care."

(She thought: "I must let her go on. I won't say anything. If I do it'll be terrible.")

"I can't think what possessed you…."

("Why did I do it? Why did I smash it all up? Uncle Victor suicided.
That's what I've done…. I've killed myself…. This isn't me.")

"If that's what comes of your publishing I'd rather your books were sunk to the bottom of the sea. I'd rather see you in your coffin."

"I am in my coffin."

"I wish I were in mine," her mother said.

* * * * *

Mamma was getting up from her chair, raising herself slowly by her arms.

Mary stooped to pick up the pocket-handkerchief. "Don't, Mamma; I've got it."

Mamma went on stooping. Sinking, sliding down sideways, clutching at the edge of the table.

Mary saw terror, bright, animal terror, darting up to her out of Mamma's eyes, and in a place by themselves the cloth sliding, the lamp rocking and righting itself.

She was dragging her up by her armpits, holding her up. Mamma's arms were dangling like dolls' arms.

And like a machine wound up, like a child in a passion, she still struggled to walk, her knees thrust out, doubled up, giving way, her feet trailing.

VI.

Not a stroke. Well, only a slight stroke, a threatening, a warning.
"Remember she's getting old, Mary."

Any little worry or excitement would do it.

She was worried and excited about me. Richard worried and excited her.

If I could only stay awake till she sleeps. She's lying there like a lamb, calling me "dear" and afraid of giving me trouble…. Her little hands dragged the bedclothes up to her chin when Dr. Charles came. She looked at him with her bright, terrified eyes.

She isn't old. She can't be when her eyes are so bright.

She thinks it's a stroke. She won't believe him. She thinks she'll die like Mrs. Heron.

Perhaps she knows.

Perhaps Dr. Charles really thinks she'll die and won't tell me. Richard thought it. He was sorry and gentle, because he knew. You could see by his cleared, smoothed face and that dreadfully kind, dreadfully wise look. He gave into everything—with an air of insincere, provisional acquiescence, as if he knew it couldn't be for very long. Dr. Charles must have told him.

Richard wants it to happen…. Richard's wanting it can't make it happen.

It might, though. Richard might get at her. His mind and will might be getting at her all the time, making her die. He might do it without knowing he was doing it, because he couldn't help it. He might do it in his sleep.

But I can stop that…. If Richard's mind and will can make her die, my mind and will can keep her from dying…. There was something I did before.

That time I wanted to go away with the Sutcliffes. When Roddy was coming home. Something happened then…. If it happened then it can happen now.

If I could remember how you do it. Flat on your back with your eyes shut; not tight shut. You mustn't feel your eyelids. You mustn't feel any part of you at all. You think of nothing, absolutely nothing; not even think. You keep on not feeling, not thinking, not seeing things till the blackness comes in waves, blacker and blacker. That's how it was before. Then the blackness was perfectly still. You couldn't feel your breathing or your heart beating…. It's coming all right…. Blacker and blacker.

It wasn't like this before.

This is an awful feeling. Dying must be like this. One thing going after another. Something holding down your heart, stopping its beat; something holding down your chest, crushing the breath out of it…. Don't think about the feeling. Don't feel. Think of the blackness….

It isn't the same blackness. There are specks and shreds of light in it; you can't get the light away…. Don't think about the blackness and the light. Let everything go except yourself. Hold on to yourself…. But you felt your self going.

Going and coming back; gathered together; incredibly free; disentangled from the net of nerves and veins. It didn't move any more with the movement of the net. It was clear and still in the blackness; intensely real.

Then it willed. Your self willed. It was free to will. You knew that it had never been free before except once; it had never willed before except once. Willing was this. Waves and waves of will, coming on and on, making your will, driving it through empty time…. "The time of time": that was the Self…. Time where nothing happens except this. Where nothing happens except God's will. God's will in your will. Self of your self. Reality of reality…. It had felt like that.

Mamma had waked up. She was saying she was better.

* * * * *

Mamma was better. She said she felt perfectly well. She could walk across the room. She could walk without your holding her.

It couldn't have been that. It couldn't, possibly. It was a tiny haemorrhage and it had dried up. It would have dried up just the same if you hadn't done anything. Those things don't happen.

What did happen was extraordinary enough. The queer dying. The freedom afterwards. The intense stillness, the intense energy; the certainty.

Something was there.

* * * * *

That horrible dream. Dorsy oughtn't to have made me go and see the old woman in the workhouse. A body without a mind. That's what made the dream come. It was Mamma's face; but she was doing what the old woman did.

"Mamma!"—That's the second time I've dreamed Mamma was dead.

The little lamb, lying on her back with her mouth open, making that funny noise: "Cluck-cluck," like a hen.

Why can't I dream about something I want to happen? Why can't I dream about Richard? … Poor Richard, how can he go on believing I shall come to him?

VII.

Dear Dr. Charles, with his head sticking out between the tubes of the stethoscope, like a ram. His poor old mouth hung loose as he breathed. He was out late last night; there was white stubble on his chin.

"It won't do it when you want it to."

"It's doing quite enough…. Let me see, it's two years since your mother had that illness. You must go away, Mary. For a month at least. Dorsy'll come and take care of your mother."

"Does it matter where I go?"

"N-no. Not so much. Go where you'll get a thorough change, my dear. I wouldn't stay with relations, if I were you."

"All right, I'll go if you'll tell me what's the matter with me."

"You've got your brother Rodney's heart. But it won't kill you if you'll take care of yourself."

(Roddy's heart, the net of flesh and blood drawing in a bit of your body.)