Nevertheless, once under the shadow of the
great looming church, among the graves, she felt immune from the world,
reserved within the thick churchyard wall as in another country.
Carefully she clipped the grass from the grave, and arranged the
pinky-white, small chrysanthemums in the tin cross. When this was done,
she took an empty jar from a neighbouring grave, brought water, and
carefully, most scrupulously sponged the marble headstone and the
coping-stone.
It gave her sincere satisfaction to do this. She felt in immediate
contact with the world of her mother. She took minute pains, went through
the park in a state bordering on pure happiness, as if in performing this
task she came into a subtle, intimate connexion with her mother. For the
life she followed here in the world was far less real than the world of
death she inherited from her mother.
The doctor's house was just by the church. Fergusson, being a mere hired
assistant, was slave to the countryside. As he hurried now to attend to
the outpatients in the surgery, glancing across the graveyard with his
quick eye, he saw the girl at her task at the grave. She seemed so intent
and remote, it was like looking into another world. Some mystical element
was touched in him. He slowed down as he walked, watching her as if
spell-bound.
She lifted her eyes, feeling him looking. Their eyes met. And each looked
again at once, each feeling, in some way, found out by the other.
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