Because of the mortgage she had lived for twenty-eight years on the Wolds under the shadow of their reproach. In her lonely childhood the fields of Anderby had assumed for her a more definite personality than any of the people whom she knew. Land was, after all, the thing that mattered most. That was why she had been so miserable when her father brushed aside the foreman's suggestions of improvement with a curt "We can't afford it. So there's an end on't." That was why she had laboured for nearly a whole day, trying to stuff up the cracks along the cowshed wall with bits of mud and straw because she was sure the Wolds must despise such shabby buildings.
And then that haunting fear that one day "They" would suddenly swoop down upon the farm and carry it away as the jinns in the fairy book carried off Solomon's palace ... and the restless uncertainty that seemed to stand between her father and any joy of possession.... All this, he had constantly explained with increasing emphasis as the farm grew more dilapidated, was not his fault, but the result of the mortgage.
Well, there was no need to lie any longer, as eight-year-old Mary had lain, with the bed-clothes drawn up round her ears to shut out the voice of the wind howling along the corridors, because it might be the voice of the mortgage, come at last from the dark sky to carry off "every stick and stone, lassie, every stick and stone." Her father had said that this would happen, and he must know.
He must know—must know what? Why, of course, that a bowl of water placed in the middle of the room prevented it from reeking with stale tobacco for days after a party. She must go and get one.
Mary rubbed a drowsy hand across her eyes. She must have been half asleep, sitting in the big arm-chair while the room grew colder and colder. Wearily she rose and walked towards the door.
Then she stood still.
Out in the hall she heard a faint rustling sound. It could not be a mouse. No one would be walking about now. It must be ever so late. She looked at the clock—half-past two.
A click as though a door shut. The dining-room door. Some one was up. Not John. She would have heard him move. Who then?
She stood hesitating, the handle of the dining-room door in her hand. It was strange to wait again like this, wondering whether one ought to go on into the dining-room because Father was there and the whisky bottle and that was an undesirable combination....
Well, it couldn't be that now anyway. She opened the door and walked across the hall.