She had made every one unhappy--Aunt Anne, Uncle Mathew, Paul, Grace;
the best thing that she could do now was to go away and hide herself
somewhere.
That, at least, she saw very clearly and she clung to it. If she went
away Paul and Grace need not leave Skeaton; soon they would forget her
and be happy once more as they had been before she came. But where
should she go? All her life she had depended upon her own
self-reliance, but now that had left her. She felt as though she could
not move unless there was some one somewhere who cared for her. But
there was no one. Katherine Mark. No, she certainly could never go
there again. Behind all this was the constant preoccupation that she
must not look, for an instant, at Uncle Mathew's death. If she did
everything would break ... She must not. She must not. She must not.
She went up to her bedroom, took from their box Martin's letters and
the ring with the three pearls, and the tattered programme. She sat on
her bed and turned them over and over. She was bewildered and scarcely
knew where she was. She repeated again and again: "I must go away at
once ... I must go away at once."
Then as though moved by some compelling force that she did not
recognise she fell on her knees beside the bed, crying: "Martin,
Martin, I want you. I don't know where you are but I must find you.
Martin, tell me where you are. I'll go to you anywhere. Martin, where
are you? Where are you?"
It may not have been a vocal cry; perhaps she made no sound, but she
waited, there on her knees, hearing very clearly the bells ringing for
evening service and seeing the evening sun steal across her carpet and
touch gently, the pictures on the wall. Gradually as she knelt there,
calm and reassurance came back to her. She felt as though he, somewhere
lost in the world, had heard her. She laid her cheek upon the quilt of
the bed and, for the first time since Uncle Mathew's death, her
thoughts worked in connected order, her courage returned to her, and
she saw the room and the sun and the trees beyond the window as real
objects, without the mist of terror and despair that had hitherto
surrounded her.
She rose from her knees as though she were withdrawing from a horrible
nightmare. She could remember nothing of the events of the last week
save her talk with Paul that afternoon. She could recall nothing of the
inquest, nor whether she had been to Church, nor any scene with Grace.
"So long as I'm alive and Martin's alive it's all right," she thought.
She knew that he was alive. She would find him. She put away the things
into the box again; she had not yet thought what she would do, but, in
some way, she had received during those few minutes in her room a
reassurance that she was not alone.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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