And it seemed to her, as she looked at his puzzled, unhappy face, that she had lived through all this before. She wondered, searching through her past. Yes: long, long ago, she had turned towards another young man, a young man from a farm, when she was in trouble and had not known what to do. It had seemed to her that she would be saved from herself by marrying him. And then, she had felt this emptiness when, at last, she had known there was to be no release and that she would live on the farm till she died. There was nothing new even in her death; all this was familiar, even her feeling of helplessness.
She rose to her feet with a queerly appropriate dignity, a dignity that left Tony speechless, for the protective pity with which he had been going to address her, now seemed useless.
She would walk out her road alone, she thought. That was the lesson she had to learn. If she had learned it, long ago, she would not be standing here now, having been betrayed for the second time by her weak reliance on a human being who should not be expected to take the responsibility for her.
'Mrs Turner,' asked the young man awkwardly, 'did you want to see me about something?'
'I was,' she said. 'But it's no good: it's not you…' But she could not discuss it with him. She glanced over her shoulder at the evening sky; long trails of pinkish cloud hung there, across the fading blue. `Such a lovely evening,' she said conventionally.
`Yes… Mrs Turner, I have been talking to your husband.'
`Have you?' she asked, politely.
`We thought… I suggested that tomorrow, when you get into town, you might go and see a doctor. You are ill, Mrs Turner.'
`I have been ill for years,' she said tartly. `Inside, somewhere. Inside. Not ill, you understand. Everything wrong, somewhere.' She nodded to him, and stepped over the threshold. Then she turned back. `He is there,' she whispered secretively. `In there.' She nodded in the direction of the store.
`Is he?' asked the young man dutifully, humouring her. She went back to the house, looking round vaguely at the little brick buildings that would soon have vanished. Where she walked, with the warm sand of the path under her feet, small animals would walk proudly through trees and grass.
She entered the house, and faced the long vigil of her death. With deliberation and a stoical pride she sat down on the old sofa that had worn into the shape of her body, and folded her hands and waited, looking at the windows for the light to fade. But after a while she realized that Dick was seated at the table under a lighted lamp, gazing at her.
`Have you finished packing your things?' he asked. `You know we must be gone by tomorrow morning.'
She began to laugh. `Tomorrow!' she said. She cackled with laughter; until she saw him get up, abruptly, and go out, his hand over his face. Good, now she was alone.
But later she watched the two men carry in plates and food, and begin to eat, sitting down opposite her. They offered her a cup of liquid which she refused impatiently, waiting for them to go. It would be over soon; soon, in a few hours it would be over. But they would not go. They seemed to be sitting there because of her. She went outside, blindly, feeling with her hands at the edge of the door. There was no lessening of the heat; the invisible dark sky bent over the house, weighing down upon it. Behind her she heard Dick say something about rain. `It will rain,' she said to herself, `after I am dead.'
`Bed?' said Dick from the doorway, at last.
The question seemed to have nothing to do with her; she was standing on the verandah, where she knew she would have to wait, watching the darkness for movement.
`Come to bed, Mary!' She saw that she would first of all have to go to bed, because they would not leave her alone until she did. Automatically, she turned the lamp down in the front room, and went to lock the back door. It seemed essential that the back door should be locked; she felt she must be protected from the back; the blow would come from the front. Outside the back door stood Moses, facing her. He seemed outlined in stars. She stepped back, her knees gone to water, and locked the door.
`He's outside,' she remarked breathlessly to Dick, as if this was only to be expected.
`Who is?'
She did not reply. Dick went outside. She could hear him moving, and saw the swinging beams of light from the hurricane lamp he carried. `There is nothing there, Mary,' he said, when he returned. She nodded, in affirmation, and went again to lock the back door. Now the oblong of night was blank; Moses was not there. He would have gone into the bush, at the front of the house, she thought, in order to wait until she appeared: Back in the bedroom she stood in the middle of the floor. She might have forgotten how to move.
`Aren't you getting undressed?' asked Dick at last, in that hopeless, patient voice.
Obediently she pulled off her clothes and got into bed, lying alertly awake, listening. She felt him put out a hand to touch her, and at once became inert. But he was a long way off, he did not matter to her: he was like a person on the other side of a thick glass wall.
`Mary?' he said. She remained silent.
'Mary, listen to me. You are ill. You must let me take you to the doctor.'
It seemed to her the young Englishman was speaking; from him had originated this concern for her, this belief in her essential innocence, this absolution from guilt.
`Of course, I am ill,' she said confidingly, addressing the Englishman. `I've always been ill, ever since I can remember. I am ill here.' She pointed to her chest, sitting bolt upright in bed. But her hand dropped, she forgot the Englishman, Dick's voice sounded in her ears like the echo of a voice across a valley. She was listening to the night outside. And, slowly, the terror engulfed her which she had known must come. Once she lay down, and turned her face into the darkness of the pillows; but her eyes were alive with light, and against the light she saw a dark, waiting shape. She sat up again, shuddering. He was in the room, just beside her! But the room was empty. There was nothing. She heard a boom of thunder, and saw, as she had done so many times, the lightning flicker on a shadowed wall. Now it seemed as if the night were closing in on her, and the little house was bending over like a candle, melting in the heat. She heard the crack, crack; the restless moving of the iron above, and it seemed to her that a vast black body, like a human spider, was crawling over the roof, trying to get inside. She was alone. She was defenceless. She was shut in a small black box, the walls closing in on her, the roof pressing down. She was in a trap, cornered and helpless. But she would have to go out and meet him. Propelled by fear, but also by knowledge, she rose out of bed, not making a sound. Gradually, hardly moving, she let her legs down over the dark edge of the bed; and then, suddenly afraid of the dark gulfs of the floor, she ran to the centre of the room. There she paused. A movement of lightning on the walls drove her forward again. She stood in the curtain-folds, feeling the hairy stuff on her skin, like a hide. She shook them off, and stood poised for flight across the darkness of the front room, which was full of menacing shapes. Again the fur of animals; but this time on her feet. The long loose paw of a wildcat caught in her foot as she darted over it, so that she gave a sharp little moan of fear, and glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen door. It was locked and dark. She was on the verandah. She moved backwards till she was pressed against the wall. That was protected; she was standing as she should be, as she knew she had to wait. It steadied her.