Chapter V
THE TREES OF THE VALLEY
It was a dreary winter. All day in the garden shrubbery Mary could hear the drop, drop of water from the trees. Christmas came and went in a sorrowful vapour of drifting rain.
Mary hated it all. She hated the long drives in to market down a fog muffled road. She hated the cold clammy feeling of curtains and sheets in the farm-house. She hated the loosened tile that allowed a slow yellow stain to creep across the ceiling of the best bedroom. Besides, she had a persistent cold in her head. It was all very trying.
She lay awake in bed in the chill half-light, awaiting for the church clock to strike seven. The curtains, drawn almost to the centre of the window, flapped and swayed, while the strip of luminous grey that must be the sky outside contracted and expanded with their wanton motion.
Below the bed-clothes at her side she could see John's humped outline. That fringe of soft darkness against the pillow was his beard. The sheet rose and fell with his even breathing.
The heaviness of his sleep annoyed Mary intensely. She might toss and turn and ruckle up the bed-clothes as she would, on sleepless nights when the harvest was bad, or there was a case of anthrax at Littledale, but the only sign of responsibility John ever gave was an occasional snore.
After all, it was her farm. Why should he worry?
Last night she had slept badly, dreaming that John hit her because she would not put a new cake of soap on his wash-stand. Just now she wished her dream were true. Life with John would be so much more tolerable if he would only just sometimes assert his personality. Strike her? Why, he'd go for days without soap rather than make the effort of asking her for it, and as for helping himself—why, he'd sooner get drunk at the Flying Fox though the soap box was only in the wardrobe by their bed.
She clasped her hands round her bent knees and looked down at him. The Robson relatives said she bullied him. They did not realize that John's total inability ever to disagree with anyone about anything transformed even an attitude of consideration to one of tyranny. If Mary always knew exactly what men she wanted to keep after Martinmas, and what date she wanted the pig to be killed, must she refrain from expressing her desires because John's agreement was assured? What was one to do with a man who said, "Well, honey, you know best," whenever one asked his opinion on any subject from chicken food to Fire Insurance?