On the threshold, Sarah paused. Mary was still standing contemplating the wreckage of the meal. She was even smiling to herself, a strange, light smile. Now, people hadn't any business to smile like that when they had just made things thoroughly miserable for every one else. Sarah retired to bed.
Mary stood alone in the dining-room. Just through the wall, in John's little gun-room, lay David with a sheet across his face. It was one of the best linen sheets. Mary was sorry that he was in such an uncomfortable place, but the house had been very full and so many policemen and inspectors and people had wanted to look at him, that it seemed the only thing to be done. It was queer how little anyone seemed to think of him, though, because, really, he was much more important than a stack fire. Mary felt quite angry when she thought of Toby and Sarah comfortably asleep upstairs, while David lay on a sofa in the gun-room. Still, it was a linen sheet....
She did not want to go and look at him. It was not fair to go now, when her presence would have embarrassed him so much, had he still lived. There was a note from him in her pocket. He had pushed it under the door that evening after she had driven to Hardrascliffe when Mike thought he was "hanging about up to some mischief." He only said he was glad that he had been able to help in settling the strike, and hoped that Mrs. Robson would regard this as a more substantial form of apology for his recent behaviour, but that he was just as convinced as ever that Anderby was being worked on a pernicious system of patronage, and it would be so splendid if only she would realize it.
One day, she supposed, she might be glad to have this and the articles he had written, but just now she felt too tired to read—too tired even to think properly, though she was sure that there was something very special she had to think about, if only she could combat that queer, vague feeling in her head that made everything so unreal.
What had happened was all her fault.... Mike ... His sudden madness had been her fault in a way, because of something she had said to him in their last interview before the strike. She wasn't quite sure what it was, but she knew that there was something. Then Waite—it had been just his luck that some one should have caught him hiding the paraffin tins in the oilshed—of course, she might have been less unkind to him.... Then John's stroke, and Coast's invitation to Hunting, and the strike, and the fire, and David's death.... All somehow connected with things she had done or left undone.
She began to move about the room, lifting dishes and placing them on the butler's tray, then putting them back again. But the table refused to become any tidier. She ought to tidy it. Every one would be so busy in the morning. She must do her best to make things easy....
She had always done her best. Everything, her rule over the village, her saving of the farm, her treatment of John, even her dismissal of Waite.... What was one to do? Was it her fault that all the ideas she had encountered, all the circumstances surrounding her, tended to make her one kind of person?
She must try and get things straight in her head. If she persisted in blaming herself entirely, she would go mad. Besides, it probably wasn't true. If only there was some one to tell her what was true.... David could have done it.
She sat down by the curtained windows and pressed her hands across her aching eyes.
The broad view.... If one could only take the broad view. David had said, it made everything tolerable. There was something he had quoted once in an article in the Northern Clarion. "There comes a time when out of a false good, there arises a true evil." ... Was that meant for her? David had told her she belonged to a generation that should have passed.... Her work at Anderby might be the best thing of which she was capable, but it was a false good. She looked after people too much. They needed to be taught how to look after themselves, because no one could ever look after people properly. There always came a time when that vicarious strength broke down ... as with John, or the village after Hunting came....