Perhaps it was the sound of her own name there amongst all those people
which stirred her mind and added a quicker beat of the pulse to Mary
Throgmorton's heart. The full significance of the text, the
circumstance to which it referred, these could not have reached her mind
so swiftly, even though Fanny with a sharp turn of the head had looked
at her.
"'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.'"
It was at first the sound of her name, the more as he repeated it.
Listening to that habitual intonation of the Vicar's voice, it meant
nothing to her as yet that Mary had found favor with her God. The only
effect it had was the more completely to arrest her mind in a manner in
which she had never been conscious of its arrest before. She folded her
hands in her lap. It was a characteristic sign of attention in her.
She folded her hands and raised her eyes steadily to the pulpit.
"There are some things," began the Vicar, "which it is necessary for us
to understand though they are completely outside the range of our
comprehension."
Involuntarily her interest was set back. It was the delivery of such
statements as these with which the Vicar had fed the mind of his
congregation for the last twenty years. For how could one understand
that which was completely outside the range of comprehension? Insensibly
Mary's fingers relaxed as they lay in her lap. She drew a long breath
of disappointment.
"The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary," he continued, "is one of
those mysteries in the teaching of the Church which passes comprehension
but which it is expedient for us to understand, lest we be led away by
it towards such false conceptions as are held by the Church of Rome."
There was scarcely a sermon he preached in which the Vicar lost
opportunity for such attacks as these. He seemed to fear the Roman
Catholic Church as a man fears the alluring attractions of an
unscrupulous woman. From the eminence of his pulpit, he would have
cursed it if he could and, firmly as she had been brought up to
disapprove of the Romish doctrines, Mary often found in her mind a
wonder of this fear of his, an inclination to suspect the power of the
Roman Catholic Church.
From that moment, fully anticipating all they were going to be told, her
mind became listless. She looked about her to see if the Mainwarings
were in Church. Often there were moments in the sermon when she would
catch the old General's eye which for her appreciation would lift
heavenwards with a solemn expression of patient forbearance.
They lived too far out of Bridnorth. It was not to be expected they
would have walked all that distance in the snow. Her eyes had scarcely
turned back from their empty pew when the Vicar's words arrested her
again.
"Because Mary was the sinless mother of Our Lord," he was saying, "is no
justification for us to direct our prayers to her. For this is what it
is necessary for us to understand. It is necessary for us to understand
that Mary was the mother of Our Lord's manhood. His divinity comes from
God alone. What is the Trinity to which we attach our faith? It is the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the three in one. Mary, the
Virgin, has no place here and it is beyond this in our thoughts of
worship we have no power or authority to go.
"The Roman Catholic Church claims the mediation of the Virgin Mary
between the hearts of its people and the divine throne of God. Lest we
should drift into such distress of error as that, let us understand the
mystery of the Immaculate Conception, however much as a mystery we allow
it to be beyond our comprehension. Being the Son of God, Christ must
have been born without sin, yet being the Son of Man, He must, with His
manhood, have shared all the inheritance of suffering which is the
accompaniment of our earthly life. How else could He have been tempted
in the Wilderness? How else could He have passed through His agony on
the Cross?
"To what conclusion then are we thus led? It is to the conclusion that
Mary, the Mother of that manhood in Christ, must have suffered as all
women suffer. She had found favor with God; but the Angel did not say
she had found immunity from that nature which, being born in sin as are
we all, was her inevitable portion.
"So, lest we fall into the temptation of raising her in dignity to the
very throne of God, lest we succumb to the false teaching of those who
would address their prayers to her, it becomes incumbent upon us to see
the Virgin Mary in a clear and no uncertain light. Mystery in her
conception there must always be, but in her giving birth in that manger
of Bethlehem, it is as Mary the wife of Joseph, the carpenter of
Nazareth, we must regard her."
To all those present in the congregation this was no more than one of
the many tirades the Vicar had so often preached against the Roman
Catholic Church. They listened as they had always listened before, with
patience but without interest. It was no real matter of concern to
them. They had no desire to be converted. They had not in the silence
of their homes been reading the works of Roman Catholic authorities as
the Vicar had done. They did not entertain the spirit of rivalry or
feel the sense of competition as he felt it. They listened because it
was their duty to listen and one and all of them except Mary, thinking
of their warm firesides, hoped that he would soon make an end.
Only Mary amongst them all sat now with heart and mind attentive to what
he said, pursuing not the meaning he intended to convey, but a train of
thought, the sudden illumination of an idea which yet she dared not find
words in her consciousness to express.
"We must think of her," the Vicar continued, "as a woman passing through
the hours of her travail. We must think of her brought in secret haste
by the fear of consequence and the expedience of necessity to that
manger in Bethlehem, where, upon her bed of straw, with the cattle all
about her in their stalls, she gave birth to a man child in all the
suffering and all the pain it is the lot of women to endure. For here
is the origin of that manhood in which we must place our faith if we are
to appreciate the fullness of sacrifice our Savior made upon the Cross.
It was a woman, as any one of you, who was the mother of Our Lord. A
woman, blessed above all women to be the link between the divinity of
God the Father and the manhood of God the Son. It was a woman who had
found favor in the eyes of her Creator, such favor as had sought her out
to be the instrument of the will and mercy of God.
"And the Angel said unto her--'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor
with God.'"
So often had Mary's name been repeated that by now no association was
left in Fanny's mind with her sister. She turned and looked at her no
more. But to Mary herself, with this last reiteration of all, the sound
of it throbbed in every vein and beat in violent echoes in her heart.
For now no longer could she keep back the conscious words that sought
expression of those thoughts in her mind. She knew beyond concealment
the idea which had forced itself in a suspicion upon her acceptance.
In all his eagerness to lead their minds away from worship of the Virgin
Mary, the Vicar had destroyed for her every shred of that mystery it had
been his earnest intention to maintain. Now indeed it seemed she did
understand and nothing was left that lay beyond her comprehension.
It was the woman, as he had urged them, whom she saw, the woman on her
bed of straw, with that look in the eyes, the look of a woman waiting
for her hour which often she had seen in the eyes of others it had been
her duty to visit in Bridnorth. It was the woman, eager and suffering,
with that eagerness she sometimes had felt as though it were a vision
seen within herself. He had substituted a woman--just such a woman it
might be as herself.
And here it was then that the thought leapt upon her like some ambushed
thing, bearing her down beneath its weight; beating at her heart,
lacerating her mind so that she knew she never in any time to come could
hide from herself the scars it made.
"If she had suffered," Mary asked herself--"must she not also have
known?" And then, shaking her with the terror of its blasphemy, there
sprang upon her mind the words--
"Who was the father of the Son of Man?"
"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost!" a
voice intoned in a far distance and with all the others she rose
automatically to her feet. Her eyes were glazed. She scarcely could see
the Vicar as he descended from the pulpit. Her heart was thumping in
her breast. She could hear only that.
X
They walked home in groups and in couples when the service was over.
Only Fanny kept alone. A verse of poetry was building itself in her
mind. One couplet already had formed a rounded phrase. It had been
revolving in her thoughts all through the sermon. Round and about she
had beaten it as with a pestle in a mortar until she had pounded it into
shape.
"Were all the trees as green to you
As they were green to me?"
It was not so much what rhymed with "you" or "me" that was troubling her
as what more she could continue to make the full matter of her verse.
She could think of no more. The whole substance of life was summed up
in those two lines to her. She walked alone that morning, cutting words
to a measure that would not meet and had no meaning.
Mary walked with Jane. The sound of the voice and the laughter of
others behind her in that sharp air was like the breaking of china
falling upon a floor as hard as that beaten snow beneath their feet.
She was still in an amaze with the bewilderment of what she had thought.
Every long-trained sense in her was horrified at the knowledge of its
blasphemy. She tried to believe she had never thought it. To induce
that belief, she would have persuaded herself if she could that the
Vicar had never preached his sermon, that it was not to church they had
been, that it was all a dream, horrible and more vivid than life itself,
but a dream.
For life was peaceful and sweet enough there in Bridnorth.
Notwithstanding the song the hoofs of the coach horses had always beaten
out for her on the roads, she had been well content with it. Often
doubtless the call of life had come to her there beyond the hill; it
came with its cry of pain and joy, its voice of sorrow as well as
happiness. But now, here amongst the peace and the sweetness, where
none of these vital contrasts had ever existed, there had come something
more terrible than pain, more cruel and relentless than sorrow.
In moments she was astonished at herself that she did not dismiss it all
with one sweep of her mind, dismiss it all as lies and blasphemy, as
machinations of the Devil himself. For what was the good just of
telling herself it was a dream, of pretending to hide her thoughts from
it as though it were not there? It was there! She had thought it and
so had the thought come to her like a light suddenly in dark corners,
that she knew it was true. Never now could she cast out its
significance from the processes of her mind. In the desperate fear that
the very foundations of her religious beliefs were shaken, she might
buttress her faith with the determined exclusion of all blasphemy in her
thoughts. Never again might she allow her mind to dwell upon the origin
of the manhood of that figure of Christ, still dearer to her than life
itself. With persistent effort of will, she knew she could make blind
her vision of that scene in the manger at Bethlehem which the Vicar in
his ignorance and the pettiness of his apprehensions had conjured forth
so clearly in her sight.
All this she might do, clinging to the faith in which she had been
brought up; but never could she efface the change which in those few
moments had been made in her. How could she know so soon what that
change might be? She knew only it was there. She was a different
being. Already she felt apart and aloof from her sisters. Even Jane,
walking there beside her, appeared at a strange distance in which was a
clearer light for her to see by, a crystal atmosphere through which she
could distinguish nothing but the truth.
Suddenly as they walked together, these two in silence, Jane looked up
and said--
"I wish some one would kill that bee in the Vicar's bonnet. As if there
was the slightest chance of any of us becoming Roman Catholics!"
It was like Jane, that remark. Suddenly Mary knew how like it was. But
more she knew in that moment the change had not come to her sisters.
They had not seen what she had seen. No vision such as hers had been
vouchsafed to them. Still they were happy, contented, and at peace in
their garden of Eden. It was she alone who had tasted of the fruit; she
alone who now had knowledge of good and evil.
Already she felt the edge of the sword of the angel of God turned
against her. The gates of that garden they lived in were opened. In
the deep consciousness of her heart she felt she was being turned away.
How it would difference her life, where she should go now that she had
been driven forth, what even the world outside those gates might be, she
did not know.
All she realized was that for twenty-nine years a Mary Throgmorton had
been living in Bridnorth, that now she had gone and another Mary
Throgmorton had taken her place.
Looking down at Jane beside her when she spoke, she saw for the first
time a sad figure of a woman, shrivelled and dried of heart, bitter and
resentful of mind. No longer was she the Jane who, with her sharp
tongue, had often made them laugh, who, with her shrewd criticisms had
often shown them their little weaknesses and the pettiness of their
thoughts. In place of her she saw a woman wilted and seared, a body
parched with the need of the moisture of life; one who had been cut from
the tree to wither and decay, one, the thought then sprang upon her, who
had never found favor with God or man.