It was no difficult matter to rise unheard at midnight in her room,
unheard to creep quietly downstairs, to open and close the kitchen door
into the yard. Having accomplished that, it was but a few steps to the
door through the wall into the road.
Now that she slept alone in that room at the back of the house, Mary had
no fear of discovery. Nevertheless her heart was beating, an even but
heavy throb, nor settling to the normal pulse, even when she found
herself out in the lane and turning towards the path across the marshes
by the mouth of the River Watchett that leads a solitary way to Penlock
Head.
She questioned herself in nothing that she did. Her mind was made. It
was no moment for questioning. All questions such as there had been, and
doubtless there were many, she had answered. It was no habit of hers to
look back over her shoulder. She fixed her destination with firm
resolve, and, once the fear of immediate discovery was left behind, she
walked with a firm stride. Imagination played no havoc with her nerves.
Already her heart was in their meeting place.
A restive heart it was, all bounding at sudden visions, leaping, shying;
at moments in riot almost at thought of lying in his arms. Sometimes
even there was fear, a fear, not of the thing she would fly; not a fear
that made the heart craven. Rather it was a fear that steeled her
courage to face whatever might befall.
Some sense undoubted she had of the mad riot of passion, that it could
terrify, that it was frightening like sudden thunder bursting. But just
as she would lie still in her bed at home through the fiercest storm, so
now she knew, however deep her fear, that she would not complain.
She walked that way through the marshes to their meeting place at the
foot of Penlock Hill like one, firm in her step, who went to a glorious
death. Death was terrible, but in all the meaning it had, she felt no
fear of it.
In such manner as this did Mary Throgmorton go to the confirmation of
her faith in Life, and behind her, in the square, white house, she left
one to the bitterest of its realizations.
Fanny could not sleep that night. Near midnight, she lit a candle and
began to read. But no reading could still the unsettled temper of her
mind. Again and again her eyes lifted from the printed page, seeking
corners of the room where, in that candlelight, the shadows gathered,
harbor for the vague wandering of her thoughts.
Long after midnight, in the communicating silence which falls about a
sleeping house, she heard a sound and sat up in bed. Some one had
opened and shut the gate into the lane. She got up and went to the
window. If any one passed into the road in front of the house, she must
see them. No one came. All was silence again.
Yet something within her insisted upon her conviction that she had not
been mistaken. Some one had left the house and, if they had turned the
other way, could not possibly have been seen by her.
In that midnight silence, the fantastic shapes the beams of the candle
cast, the heavy darkness of the night outside, slight as the incident
was, grossly exaggerated it in her mind. She felt she must tell some
one. Jane was the person to tell. Jane's fancies were slowly stirred.
She might turn it all to ridicule, but if anything were the matter, she
would be practical at least.
Slipping her arms into her dressing gown, she went out onto the landing.
The door of Jane's room was at the further end. As she passed Mary's
door on her way, something came out of the recesses of her mind and took
her heart and held it fast.
Mary's door was open. She stood there staring at it while all the
pulses in her body accelerated to the stimulus of her imagination.
Always Mary slept with her door closed. It was not to be understood how
she had departed from that habit now that she slept alone. Why had she
chosen to sleep alone? Was it more definite a reason than Fanny had
supposed? What more definite than thoughts of love?
Scarcely aware of the change of her intentions or that Jane for the
instant had dropped completely out of her thoughts, Fanny pushed open
the door and softly entered Mary's room.
Just within the threshold, she stopped, half held by darkness and
whispered Mary's name.
"Mary--Mary--"
There was no reply. There was no sound of breathing. Never had the
whole world seemed so still. She was faintly conscious that her eyes
were staring wide in that darkness, staring to find softly what she knew
now the dazzling glitter of a light would reveal to her in all its
startling truth. All beating of her heart appeared to be arrested as
she felt her way across the room to the bedside table where she knew the
box of matches lay. Something fluttered in her thin breast, like a
thing suspended in mid-air, but it had no relation to the passage of the
blood through her veins. It seemed to need purchase, a solid wall
against it before it could beat again. Yet no solid wall was there.
Flesh and bones in all her substance, Fanny felt as though in those
moments her body were a floating thing in an ether of sensation. She
found the matches. With fingers that were damp and cold, she struck
one. It flamed up with blinding brightness into her staring eyes. She
closed them swiftly and then she looked.
The bed was empty. Their Mary was away. With trembling fingers, she lit
the candle; then gazed down at the crumpled bedclothes, the sheets
thrown back, the pillow tossed.
With automatic calculation she leant down and felt the bedclothes with
her hand as one feels a thing just dead.
They were warm--still warm. And where now was the body that had warmed
them?
With a sudden catch in her throat that was not a sob and had no more
moisture of tears in it than a thing parched dry with the sun, she flung
herself down on the bed and leant her body against the warm sheets and
buried her head in the warm pillow, fighting for her breath like some
frightened beast that has been driven to the last of all its hiding
places.
X
They met in silence on the worn path at the foot of Penlock Hill; two
black figures joining in the darkness and, without word of greeting,
without question of the way, turning by common consent towards the moors
and vanishing into the pine trees.
Never was their silence broken while they climbed the hill. They had
breath for that ascent, but no more. Coming to a steep place, he
offered his hand to help her and then still held it till they reached
the moors.
It was a late rising moon that crept up, shimmering wet with its pale
light out of the sea. They stood with the heather about their knees and
watched it, hand in hand, still silent; but he felt her trembling and
she heard when he swallowed in his throat.
"It had to be a night like this," he said presently when the moon at
last rose clear and the light seemed to fall from her in glittering
drops that splashed like pieces of silver into the sea. "I know this is
the one night of my life," he went on. "I know there'll never be
moments like it again as long as I live. Perhaps you don't believe that.
You'll think I've said such things before; yet the whole of my
existence, past, present and future, is all crowded into this hour. I
know I shall realize it the more fully as I grow older and Time wipes
Time away."
She clung to his arm. It was now she was most afraid. The moors were
so still about them. Down in its hollow amongst the firs and the
misshapen oaks, the farm lay silent and black. No light was there. She
thought of them asleep in their beds. So sleeping, she thought of
Hannah, Jane, and Fanny. Only they two were awake in all the world it
seemed. Only for some vague yet impelling purpose did the world exist at
all and alone for them.
She did not feel at his mercy. She was not afraid of him. Indeed she
clung to his arm as they stood in the heather, clung to his arm,
trembling, appealing as though he alone were left between herself and
Fate to soften it; as though to less terrible a note, he could still the
sound of voices shouting in her ears.
These were sensations she had no words for.
"You stand there trembling," he said in a whisper. "What are you
thinking of, my dear?"
"It's all so quiet," she whispered in reply, and a short laugh with no
mirth in it escaped from her throat. "I don't know why I should expect
or want it to be anything else."
"And do you want it to be anything else?"
"I suppose I must, or I shouldn't have said that."
"My dear, are you afraid?"
She jerked her head, reluctant to give assent to that.
No wonder, he thought. My God, no wonder women are afraid. If anything
should happen, she'll have the brunt of it. Wouldn't I be afraid if I
were her?
Such thoughts as these caught him to hesitation a moment stronger than
the urging passion in his blood.
Was it fair to her? This girl, who in that stagnating corner of the
world knew so little, was it fair? Hadn't he strength to resist it even
now; to turn their steps back; to let her go, the great-hearted thing
she was, as he had found her? If it might be the one moment in his life
to him, would it be the less for letting it pass by? Would realization
make it the greater? Might it not make it the less?
A surging desire to be master of himself swept over him. A rushing
inclination to protect her from the forces of Nature in himself took
louder voice than all his needs. She was too wonderful to spoil with
the things that might happen in a sordid world.
For what would they say and think, those sisters of hers, and what sort
of hell would life become for her in those narrow streets of little
Bridnorth?
It was no good saying things might not happen.
What right had he to subject her to chance? She was too fine, too great
of heart for that. With all the generosity of her soul she had placed
herself in his hands, it was for him to save her even now, before it was
too late. She was afraid. Then if there were a God who gave men
strength, he could be strong enough to let her go.
He held her even the tighter with his fingers as in his mind he set her
free.
"Mary," he said, "I told you it was strength, not weakness that made me
kiss you. I expect you didn't believe that. It was true. And I feel
stronger now than then. We're going back again, my dear, now, without
waiting, I couldn't stay here longer. We're going back."
"Where?"
She said it in her breath.
"Back to Bridnorth--to our beds. I love you, my dear, that's why we're
going back."
She felt a sudden chill and shivered.
"Back?" she whispered. No other word but that could her mind grasp.
As swiftly then the chill blew by. She felt as though she stood in
scorching flames, as if the very heather were alight about her. There
was pain and it gave her a fierce power she never thought she had
possessed. It brought her anger to think she could suffer so much for
such return.
Back? They could not go back! Not now! She had been through it all.
This that must happen was just a moment. It was nothing to the hours
her mind had lived till then.
She took off her hat and flung it down beside her in the heather.
"It's stifling, this heat," she muttered. "Everything seems burning."
He saw her throw down her hat. He heard what she said. The blood that
had been strong like a courageous wine, turned all to water in his
veins. He felt his limbs trembling. Something in her was stronger than
the greatest purpose he had ever had in his life. It was a purpose he
felt might be even stronger than she, yet knew he could not make it so.
It occurred to him, with an ironical laugh in the thought, that she was
master of their moments and not he. And yet not she herself. Men were
the stronger sex. That was an inherent thought, whatever might be said
in abstract argument. Coming to such a moment in life as this, it was
the man who must direct. With all the violence of his passions, he
could still control.
This, with a loud voice, he told himself in his mind. Yet there was her
hat lying in the heather and there in his ears were the sounds of her
breathing as she stood beside him. His eyes fell upon her breast that
rose and fell as her heart beat beneath it and he knew the current he
had breasted with such confidence of power was bearing him back. In all
his bodily consciousness then, it was as though his will were failing.
One last effort he made. Stooping, he picked up her hat.
"Shall we go now?" he said.
She swung in an instant's unsteadiness as she stood before him, but made
no movement otherwise. One fear had gone in her, thrusting another in
its place. Something terrified her now, a fear in her heart that
over-rode all bodily fear.
If he should win in purpose now, the world were such an empty mockery of
life as she well knew she had no strength to face. Hannah, Jane, Fanny,
they might have survived the hollow meaninglessness of it all. They
might have taken place in the senseless procession of Time, puppets of
women, wasted lives in the thrusting crowd. Never could she fall in
with them now.
Yet what was it she was struggling against? Something that had its
purpose as well as she? Somehow she sensed it was the laws that men had
made for the best of women to live by. He was attempting the best that
was in him. But she had no pity for that. If love and contempt,
passion and disgust can link in one, they met together in her then.
She never knew she thought all this. It was not in words she thought
it. But those laws were wrong--all wrong. Possession was the very
texture of them and all through the intricate fabric of life, she knew
possession did not count. In instinct, reaching back, beyond the most
distant consciousness of mind, she felt there was no possession in the
world. No more would she belong to him than he to her. It was he who
must give that which she most needed to take. And why had it resolved
itself into this struggle, when all she had ever heard or known of men
was nothing but the eagerness of passion to express desire?
These were not thoughts. Through all her substance they swept, a stream
of voiceless impulses that had more power than words.
"We're not going now," she said in a strange quietness. "We didn't come
here to go back. Not as we came."
Suddenly she put her hands upon his shoulders. He could feel her breath
warm and though her voice was so close, it came from far away like the
voices of the sirens calling which he knew would always call and which
he knew a man must stop his ears and bind his limbs to resist.
"Do you want me to say it?" she whispered. "I'm yours--this moment I'm
yours. For God's sake take me now."
It all was darkness then. The moon had no light for them. The very
stars were blotted out and far away across the moors, with its insistent
note, a night-jar whistled to its mate.