II.
The asters had come. She had carried out the long, shallow boxes into the garden. She had left her mother kneeling beside them, looking with adoration into the large, round, innocent faces, white and purple, mauve and magenta and amethyst and pink. If the asters had not come the memory of the awful things they had said to each other would have remained with them till bed-time; but Mamma would be happy with the asters like a child with its toys, planning where they were to go and planting them.
She went up to her room. After thirteen years she had still the same childish pleasure in the thought that it was hers and couldn't be taken from her, because nobody else wanted it.
The bookshelves stretched into three long rows on the white wall above her bed to hold the books Mr. Sutcliffe had given her; a light blue row for the Thomas Hardys; a dark blue for the George Merediths; royal blue and gold for the Rudyard Kiplings. And in the narrow upright bookcase in the arm of the T facing her writing-table, Mark's books: the Homers and the Greek dramatists. Their backs had faded from puce colour to drab.
Mark's books.—When she looked at them she could still feel her old, childish lust for possession, her childish sense of insecurity, of defeat. And something else. The beginning of thinking things about Mamma. She could see herself standing in Mark's bedroom at Five Elms and Mamma with her hands on Mark's books. She could hear herself saying, "You're afraid."
"What did I think Mamma was afraid of?"
Mamma was happy out there with the asters.
There would be three hours before dinner.
She began setting down the fragments of the "Dream-Play" that had come to her: then the outlines. She saw very clearly and precisely how it would have to be. She was intensely happy.
* * * * *
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."