She went into the house and sat down in the kitchen, pale as a sheet, and ten years her age. Listless, she shrugged her shoulders when Mary said she would fetch the doctor. "It's too late, child," she said, "seventeen years too late." And she began to cry softly, who had never cried before.
Mary fetched the old doctor who lived at Mawgan and who had brought her into the world, and as he drove her back in his trap he shook his head at her. "I tell you what it is, Mary," he said; "your mother has spared neither her mind nor her body since your father died, and she has broken down at last. I don't like it. It's come at a bad time."
They drove along the twisting lane to the farmhouse at the top of the village. A neighbour met them at the gate, her face eager to impart bad news. "Your mother's worse," she cried. "She came out of the door just now, staring like a ghost, and she trembled all over, and fell down in the path. Mrs. Hoblyn has gone to her, and Will Searle; they've lifted her inside, poor soul. They say her eyes are shut."
Firmly the doctor pushed the little gaping crowd away from the door. Together he and the man Searle lifted the still figure from the floor and carried her upstairs to the bedroom.
"It's a stroke," said the doctor, "but she's breathing; her pulse is steady. This is what I've been afraid of — that she'd snap suddenly, like this. Why it's come just now after all these years is known only to the Lord and herself. You must prove yourself your parents' child now, Mary, and help her through this. You are the only one who can."
For six long months or more Mary nursed her mother in this her first and last illness, but with all the care she and the doctor gave her it was not the widow's will to recover. She had no wish to fight for her life.
It was as though she longed for release and prayed silently that it would come quickly. She said to Mary, "I don't want you to struggle as I have done. It's a breaking of the body and of the spirit. There's no call for you to stay on in Helford after I am gone. It's best for you to go to your aunt Patience up to Bodmin."
There was no use in Mary telling her mother that she would not die. It was fixed there in her mind, and there was no fighting it.
"I haven't any wish to leave the farm, Mother," she said. "I was born here and my father before me, and you were a Helford woman. This is where the Yellans belong to be. I'm not afraid of being poor, and the farm falling away. You worked here for seventeen years alone, so why shouldn't I do the same? I'm strong; I can do the work of a man; you know that."
"It's no life for a girl," said her mother. "I did it all these years because of your father, and because of you. Working for someone keeps a woman calm and contented, but it's another thing when you work for yourself. There's no heart in it then."
"I'd be no use in a town," said Mary. "I've never known anything but this life by the river, and I don't want to. Going into Helston is town enough for me. I'm best here, with the few chickens that's left to us, and the green stuff in the garden, and the old pig, and a bit of a boat on the river. What would I do up to Bodmin with my Aunt Patience?"
"A girl can't live alone, Mary, without she goes queer in the head, or comes to evil. It's either one or the other. Have you forgotten poor Sue, who walked the churchyard at midnight with the full moon, and called upon the lover she had never had? And there was one maid, before you were born, left an orphan at sixteen. She ran away at Falmouth and went with the sailors.
"I'd not rest in my grave, nor your father neither, if we didn't leave you safe. You'll like your Aunt Patience; she was always a great one for games and laughing, with a heart as large as life. You remember when she came here, twelve years back? She had ribbons in her bonnet and a silk petticoat. There was a fellow working at Trelowarren had an eye to her, but she thought herself too good for him."
Yes, Mary remembered Aunt Patience, with her curled fringe and large blue eyes, and how she laughed and chatted, and how she picked up her skirts and tiptoed through the mud in the yard. She was as pretty as a fairy.
"What sort of a man your Uncle Joshua is I cannot say," said her mother, "for I've never set eyes on him nor known anyone what has. But when your aunt married him ten years ago last Michaelmas she wrote a pack of giddy nonsense you'd expect a girl to write, and not a woman over thirty."
"They'd think me rough," said Mary slowly. "I haven't the pretty manners they'd expect. We wouldn't have much to say to one another."
"They'll love you for yourself and not for any airs and graces. I want you to promise me this, child, that when I'm gone you'll write to your Aunt Patience and tell her that it was my last and dearest wish that you should go to her."
"I promise," said Mary, but her heart was heavy and distressed at the thought of a future so insecure and changed, with all that she had known and loved gone from her, and not even the comfort of familiar trodden ground to help her through the days when they came.
Daily her mother weakened; daily the life ebbed from her. She lingered through harvest-time, and through the fruit picking, and through the first falling of the leaves. But when the mists came in the morning, and the frosts settled on the ground, and the swollen river ran in flood to meet the boisterous sea, and the waves thundered and broke on the little beaches of Helford, the widow turned restlessly in her bed, plucking at the sheets. She called Mary by her dead husband's name, and spoke of things that were gone and of people Mary had never known. For three days she lived in a little world of her own, and on the fourth day she died.
One by one Mary saw the things she had loved and understood pass into other hands. The livestock went at Helston market. The furniture was bought by neighbours, stick by stick. A man from Coverack took a fancy to the house and purchased it; with pipe in mouth he straddled the yard and pointed out the changes he would make, the trees he would cut down to clear his view; while Mary watched him in dumb loathing from her window as she packed her small belongings in her father's trunk.
This stranger from Coverack made her an interloper in her own home; she could see from his eye he wanted her to be gone, and she had no other thought now but to be away and out of it all, and her back turned for ever. Once more she read the letter from her aunt, written in a cramped hand, on plain paper. The writer said she was shocked at the blow that had befallen her niece; that she had had no idea her sister was ill, it was so many years now since she had been to Helford. And she went on: "There have been changes with us you would not know. I no longer live in Bodmin. but nearly twelve miles outside, on the road to Launceston. It's a wild and lonely spot, and if you were to come to us I should be glad of your company, wintertime. I have asked your uncle, and he does not object, he says, if you are quiet-spoken and not a talker, and will give help when needed. He cannot give you money, or feed you for nothing, as you will understand. He will expect your help in the bar, in return for your board and lodging. You see, your uncle is the landlord of Jamaica Inn."
Mary folded the letter and put it in her trunk. It was a strange message of welcome from the smiling Aunt Patience she remembered.
A cold, empty letter, giving no word of comfort, and admitting nothing, except that her niece must not ask for money. Aunt Patience, with her silk petticoat and delicate ways, the wife of an innkeeper! Mary decided that this was something her mother had not known. The letter was very different from the one penned by a happy bride ten years ago.