John, thought Mary irritably, always spoke of trade unions as if they were a mild though regrettable disease, like mumps or chicken-pox. He had no eyes at all for their real significance. If he had read the Northern Clarion which now arrived every week at the Wold Farm with the library books, he would soon have lost his easy optimism.
But Mary could not bother with John that night. She never knew afterwards what replies she made to his occasional remarks, throughout the evening meal. One point in John's favour was that he never wanted to absorb her attention. It was Saturday, and Violet had cycled in to Hardrascliffe with the young man of the moment, so Mary washed up the tea-things alone in the lamplit kitchen.
So David was in Anderby. Why he had come or whence or for how long mattered little. He was here, quite near to her, and it was an illusion, then, that strange feeling she sometimes had, that she had only dreamed of his existence. Those three days when he had stayed in the house and she had talked to him and argued with him, and watched the foolish tossing of his fiery head and made him pick up cotton reels from the floor for her—all that had been real. She might even speak to him again.
The plates she had washed lay neglected in the sink. The saucepan lay unscrubbed in the cooling water.
No—she was wrong. It mattered very much why he had come. For there was one explanation of his coming which would change the whole world. Why should he not care? Those two meetings, when he had turned away so queerly and been so embarrassed, was it just possible he had been upset because she was a married woman and so beyond his grasp?
She was only twenty-eight. She was quite nice-looking. She had been kind to him. She wasn't quite a fool.
Of course it was nonsense. A dowdy farmer's wife—not even quite a lady.
Yes, but then he was so queer. People weren't like that for nothing. And then—she cared so....
A moth fluttered in through the window and flapped clumsily along the ceiling. The last pale line of sunset died beyond the ridge of the wold. Mary rose and shut the window.
Somewhere in the village was David.