IX.
Mamma was not well enough now to get up and be dressed. They had moved her into Papa's room. It was bright all morning with the sun. She was happy there. She remembered the yellow furniture. She was back in the old bedroom at Five Elms.
Mamma lay in the big bed, waiting for you to brush her hair. She was playing with her white flannel dressing jacket, spread out before her on the counterpane, ready. She talked to herself.
"Lindley Vickers—Vickers Lindley."
But she was not thinking of Lindley Vickers; she was thinking of Dan, trying to get back to Dan.
"Is Jenny there? Tell her to go and see what Master Roddy's doing." She thought Catty was Jenny…. "Has Dan come in?"
Sometimes it would be Papa; but not often; she soon left him for Dan and
Roddy.
Always Dan and Roddy. And never Mark.
Never Mark and never Mary. Had she forgotten Mark or did she remember him too well? Or was she afraid to remember? Supposing there was a black hole in her mind where Mark's death was, and another black hole where Mary had been? Had she always held you together in her mind so that you went down together? Did she hold you together now, in some time and place safer than memory?
She was still playing with the dressing-jacket. She smoothed it, and patted it, and folded it up and laid it beside her on the bed. She took up her pocket-handkerchief and shook it out and folded it and put it on the top of the dressing-jacket.
"What are you doing, you darling?"
"Going to bed."
She looked at you with a half-happy, half-frightened smile, because you had found her out. She was putting out the baby clothes, ready. Serious and pleased and frightened.
"Who will take care of my little children when I'm laid aside?"
She knew what she was lying in the big bed for.