Open Post of Cleanliness
Mary is exhausted. The week has been spent in America, of all places, climbing mountains, of all things, and without Peredur having lent her sensible clothes she fancies she would probably have killed herself by now tripping on her dresses--at any rate, she's climbed mountains.
And now she's home, insofar as this place is home, in its strangeness and tangledlyness. She isn't busy, she's back to nothing to do but reading and walking and thinking, and that isn't good--she doesn't want time to think, because she doesn't like the way she isn't incapacitated by guilt and horror at herself. True, she wouldn't have any use for being incapacitated, but still, still, there ought to be more trouble in her mind, and because of that there's trouble in her mind.
Obviously keeping very busy is the solution, obviously--so she is cleaning.
She has a basket of rags and polishes, and is going from room to room, rubbing down the glass and mirrors, the wood that gets lighter the longer it goes without care, the occasional piece of leather furniture that will get spots if it isn't loved on by someone with a solution for it. She has her hair handkerchiefed back, as it was the previous week, tied up out of her face; and her apron over her blue, blue dress; and dust on her hands and arms, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, sweat on her forehead, hair coming loose from the kerchief, and a cloth in her hand with which she is earnestly rubbing a dark cherrywood table.
With any luck (with surety) when she goes to bed to-night she'll fall asleep right away.
And now she's home, insofar as this place is home, in its strangeness and tangledlyness. She isn't busy, she's back to nothing to do but reading and walking and thinking, and that isn't good--she doesn't want time to think, because she doesn't like the way she isn't incapacitated by guilt and horror at herself. True, she wouldn't have any use for being incapacitated, but still, still, there ought to be more trouble in her mind, and because of that there's trouble in her mind.
Obviously keeping very busy is the solution, obviously--so she is cleaning.
She has a basket of rags and polishes, and is going from room to room, rubbing down the glass and mirrors, the wood that gets lighter the longer it goes without care, the occasional piece of leather furniture that will get spots if it isn't loved on by someone with a solution for it. She has her hair handkerchiefed back, as it was the previous week, tied up out of her face; and her apron over her blue, blue dress; and dust on her hands and arms, her sleeves rolled up to the elbow, sweat on her forehead, hair coming loose from the kerchief, and a cloth in her hand with which she is earnestly rubbing a dark cherrywood table.
With any luck (with surety) when she goes to bed to-night she'll fall asleep right away.