IV

In the appointed time, Mary knew that the reality of her life had come

to her. At the first opportunity after the sureness of her knowledge,

she attended Holy Communion in Bridnorth church. It was not so much to

pray she went, as to wait in that silence which falls, even upon the

unimaginative mind, during the elevation of the host and all the

accompanying ceremony of the rubric.

She asked no favor of her God. She waited. She said no prayers. She

listened. It was a spiritual communion, beyond the need of symbols,

above the necessity of words. Psychology has no function to describe

it. It was her first absolute submission of both mind and body to the

mystery of life. Here consciously, she felt she could do nothing.

Here, as it might be, was the instant of conception. Whatever it was,

whether it were God or Nature, this was the moment in which she held

herself in suspension, feeling she had no conscious part to play.

When she rose from her knees, it was with an inner and hidden knowledge

of satisfaction that she had passed successfully through some ordeal of

her soul; that whatever it was within her, it had not failed in the

supreme test of her being; that, in a word, she was a woman at last and

that life had justified itself in her.

If such a moment there be as this instant of conception; if in her soul

where no words conceal and no thoughts have substance, a woman can

spiritually be aware of it, such an instant this was in the life of Mary

Throgmorton.

From this moment onward, she set her mind upon definite things. In two

months' time she had planned everything that she was to do.

Passing once through Warwickshire lanes one summer when she had been

staying with friends in Henley-in-Arden, a storm of rain had driven them

for shelter. They had come to the towpath of the canal near by where it

flows into the lock at Lonesome Ford when the clouds that had been

threatening all day heaped up to thunder and broke above them with a

sudden deluge of rain.

Sharply from the towpath where they walked, the ground rose in high

banks of apple orchard, through the trees of which, on the top of the

hill, could just be seen the half-timbered gables of an old farmhouse.

Taking a gap in the hedge and climbing the orchard hill, they had

hastened there for shelter. It was close upon tea-time. The farmer's

wife had let them in.

She was a sour-visaged woman, slow and sparing of speech, yet in the

silent, considerate way she gave them welcome and tended to their wants,

there had been something intangible yet inviting that attracted Mary to

her.

With an expression upon her long, thin and deeply lined face that

suggested resentment to them all, she showed them into the best parlor,

the room that had its black horsehaired sofa, its antimacassars on all

the chairs, its glass cases containing, one a stuffed white owl, the

other a stuffed jay; the room where the family Bible lay on a

home-worked mat reposing on a small round table; the room that had

nothing to do with their lives, but was an outward symbol of them as

God-fearing and cleanly people.

In time Mary came to learn that with those who work upon the land, there

are no spare moments; that the duties and demands of the earth know no

Sabbath day of rest. That afternoon, she pictured them on Sundays in

that room, with hands folded in their laps, reading perhaps with quaint

intonations and inflections from the massive volume on its crocheted

mat. It was never as thus she saw them.

As they went by, catching a glimpse of the parlor kitchen with its heavy

beams of oak in the ceiling, she had wished they might have had their

tea there. But the old lady was too unapproachable for her to ask such a

favor then. In the best parlor they sat, eating the bread and butter

and homemade bullace jam which she had brought them, commenting upon the

enlarged photographs in their gilt frames on the walls.

One picture there was of a young girl, a very early photograph which had

suffered sadly from unskillful process of enlargement. Yet unskillful

though it had been, the photograph had not been able to destroy its

certain beauty. Mary had called her friends' attention to it, but it

seemed they could not detect the beauty that she saw.

"I don't think a long face like that is beautiful in a woman," one of

them had said.

"I didn't mean the features," replied Mary. "She looks--"

She stopped, words came in no measure with her thoughts in those days.

But when the farmer's wife had returned later to inquire if they wanted

any more bread and butter cut, she questioned her with an interest none

could have resented as to who the girl might be.

"Is she a daughter of yours?" asked Mary.

"Darter?" She shook her head and where another woman might have smiled

at the compliment of Mary's interest, she merely turned her eyes upon

the portrait as though she looked across the years at some one who had

gone away. "That was me," said she. "It was took of me three days afore

I was married. My old man had it out a few years ago and got it made big

like that. Waste of money I told him."

And with that, having learnt their needs, she went out of the room.

It was later, when they had finished tea, and the sun was striking

through the lace curtains into that room, almost obliterating its

artificialities, when indeed they knew the storm was over, they left the

parlor and finding the farmer with his wife in the kitchen, came there

asking what they must pay.

"We beant settin' out to provide teas," she replied with no gratuity of

manner in her voice.

"I guess you didn't come lookin' for tea," said the farmer, who had

evidently talked it over with her and decided what they should do and

say--"The storm drove 'ee."

While her friends stood arguing upon the issue, Mary had looked about

her, observing the warm color of the brick-paved floor, the homely sense

of confidence in the open chimney with its seats at either side, the jar

of wild flowers, all mingled, that stood upon the window sill, the

farmer's gun on its rest over the mantel-shelf; then the farmer and his

wife themselves.

Once having seen that enlarged portrait, she knew well what it was that

attracted her to the sour visage, the uninviting expression and the

attenuated features of the farmer's wife. The girl she had been, the

wistful creature she had set out for company with through life,

somewhere, lurking, was in company with her still. She needed the

finding, that was all.

"Waste of money," she had told him. There lay much behind that

accusation; much that Mary if she had had time would have liked to find

out.

The farmer himself, at first glance, would have taken the heart of any

one. He smiled at them as he spoke with an ingenuous twinkle of good

humor in his eyes. A mere child he was; a child of the land. Such

wisdom as he had, of the land it was. The world had nothing of it. His

thoughts, his emotions, they were in the soil itself. Adam he was,

turned out of his garden, scarce conscious of the flaming sword that had

driven him from the fruitful places, but seeking the first implement his

hands could find to toil with and bring the earth to good account.

Unable to persuade these two that they should give any return for the

meal they had had, they expressed their gratitude as best they could and

went away. It was not until they had come back through the sloping

orchard and were again upon the towing path of the canal, that Mary

thought of the possibility of returning there at some other time.

The simplicity of the life of those two, the sense she had had of that

nearness to the earth they lived on had touched her imagination deeper

than she knew.

"Just wait for me a moment," said she. "I must go back--" when, before

they could ask her reason, she had left them and was running back

through the orchard.

The door which led into the parlor kitchen was opened to her knocking by

the farmer's wife. Face to face with her purpose, she stammered in

confusion as she spoke.

"I know you don't think of supplying teas or anything like that," she

said awkwardly--"but I do so like your--your farm, your house here, that

I wondered if there'd ever be any chance of coming back again for a

little while; staying here I mean. I wondered if you would let me a

room and--if there'd be any trouble about providing me with meals, then

let me get them for myself. I should like to come here so much that I

had to come back, just to ask."

With no change of expression, no sign of pleasure at Mary's appreciation

of their home, the farmer's wife looked round at her husband still

seated at his tea and said,

"Well--what do 'ee think, Mr. Peverell?"

His mouth was full. He passed the back of his hand across it in the

effort of swallowing to make way for words and then, as best he could,

he mumbled,

"'Tis for you to say, Missis. 'Twon't stop me milking cows or cuttin'

barley."

She turned to Mary.

"'Ee'd have a mighty lot to do for 'eeself," she had said--"If 'ee come,

'twould be no grand lodging. 'Ee'd be one of us."

What better, she had thought. To be one of them was to be one with

everything about them, the fruit trees in the orchards, the dead leaves

and the new. Even then, although she never knew it clearly, the fruitful

scents of the earth had entered and for long were to linger in her

nostrils.

It was not that she had any knowledge of the soil, or could have

explained to herself how one crop should follow another. She knew

nothing of the laws a farmer lives by, the servant of Nature that he is,

or the very earth he grows to be a part of and learns to finger as it

were the very ingredient of his being.

She had not been trained to reason. All that she felt of the attraction

of that place did not suggest itself in the direct progression of

purposes to her mind. There were the odors of life in the air. She

took them in through her senses alone. Through her senses alone she

knew their fecundity. That fruitfulness it was which filtered like

drops of some magic elixir into her blood.

It had been two years since she went that day to Yarningdale Farm, yet

the odors still lingered, calling some sense and purpose in her soul

which, until the sermon at that Christmas-time and following her meeting

with Liddiard, had been all vague, illusive and intangible.

Now, with more assurance, she knew. In that old farmhouse, if they

would have her, she was going to bring her child into the world. There,

in what seemed not the long but the speedy months to her, she was going

to breathe in the scents of the earth, absorbing the clean purposes of

life as they are set forth in the tilling of the soil, the sowing of the

seed, the reaping of the harvest.

It was to be close to the very earth itself she needed. There is no

clear line of argument to trace in a woman's mind. Her marriage bed had

been the heathered moors. The scent of the earth had been all about her

as she lay in Liddiard's arms. No soft or spotless pillows had there

been for her head to rest on. In no garments had she decked herself for

his embrace. No ceremony had there been, no formalities observed.

There was nothing that had happened to associate it in her mind with the

conventional wedding night, blessed by the church, approved of by all.

If blessing there had been, and truly she felt there had, then the stars

had blessed them, the soft wind from off the sea across the heather

roots had touched her with its fingers; the dark night with all its

silence had been full approval in her heart.

And he who was to come out of such a union as that, what else could he

be but a wild, uncultivated thing? A seed falling from the tree, not

sowed by the hand of man in exotic places; a young shoot finding its

soil in the rotting fibers of earth that only Nature had prepared; a

green bough that Nature only in her wildest could train, fighting its

way upwards through the forest shades to the clear brilliance of the

eternal light.

Such she felt he was. As such she meant him to be. There was no

science in her purpose, no clear argument of thought. No reason other

than this first impression she had had can be traced to justify the

determination to which she came.

To Mrs. Peverell she wrote asking if they could let her have their

little room beneath the eaves of the thatch when, hearing it was vacant,

she replied that she would come down for a day or two and see them

first.

But before she went, one thing had she set herself to perform. Now her

sisters must know. Her mind was prepared. It was Hannah she determined

to tell.

V

It was a morning in the middle of the week, after the children's lessons

were over. With eyes that recorded intangible impressions to her mind,

Mary watched her eldest sister kissing each one as they went. With each

one, it was not merely a disposal, but a parting; not a formality but an

act, an act that had its meaning, however far removed it might have been

from Hannah's appreciation of it.

"What do you feel about those children?" she asked her, suddenly and

unexpectedly when the last one had gone and the door had closed.

"Feel about them?"

Hannah looked up in surprised bewilderment.

"I've never thought what I felt," she added. "They're darlings--is that

what you mean?"

"No--that's not quite what I mean. Of course they're darlings. Do you

ever think what you feel, Hannah?"

"No."

"Never think in words--all higgledy-piggledy and upside-down, of

course--but words that explain to you, even if they couldn't explain to

anybody else?"

"No."

"I don't believe any of us have ever done that," Mary continued--"unless

perhaps Jane. She thinks in words sometimes, I believe, but I'm sure

they hurt her when she does, so she probably does it as little as

possible. Just to say they're darlings doesn't convey what you feel.

You don't know what you do really feel--do you?"

"No--I suppose I don't."

"I expect that's why, when you have to deal with real things where words

only can explain, they come like claps of thunder and are all

frightening. I've got something to tell you that will frighten you,

Hannah. But it wouldn't have frightened you so much if you'd ever

thought about those children in words. I don't believe it would

frighten Jane. It would only make her angry."

"What is it?" asked Hannah. She was not frightened as yet. Mary's

voice was so quiet, her manner so undisturbed and assured, that as yet

no faint suspicion of what she was to hear was troubling her mind.

"Let's come out into the garden," said Mary.

Even there, with that issue, she felt she wanted the light of open air,

the growing things about her, the environment her whole body now was

tuned to. That room was confined, and suffocating to her. There were

the two portraits on the wall, who never, with all their love, would be

able to understand what she had to tell. There were the echoes of

countless family prayers that had had no meaning. There was all the

atmosphere of conventional formality in which she felt neither she nor

her child had any place. It was of him she was going to tell. She

could not tell it there.

"Come out into the garden," she repeated and herself led the way, when

there being something to hear which already Mary had wrapped in this

mystery of introduction, Hannah could do no less than follow with

obedience.

It was between those borders, now massed white with double pinks,

softening the air with the scent of them as they breathed it in, that

they walked, just as Jane and she had done before.

"Do you ever wish you'd had a child, Hannah?" Mary asked presently, and

Hannah replied--

"I don't think I've ever really wanted to be married."

So much was it an answer that would have satisfied her once, that Mary

smiled to think how different she had become. Not for one moment had it

been her meaning that Hannah should see that smile. Not for one moment

would she have understood it. Yet she saw. The sudden seizing of her

fingers on Mary's arm almost frightened.

"You smiled," she whispered--"Why did you smile?"

The honest simplicity of her brought Mary to a sudden confusion. She

could not answer. Seeing that smile, Hannah had caught her unawares in

her thoughts. She knew then she was going to hurt this gentle creature

with her simple view of life and her infinite forbearance of the world's

treatment of her.

Here was the first moment when truly she felt afraid. Here was the

first time she realized that pain is the inevitable accompaniment of

life. She tried to begin what she had to say, but fear dried up the

words. She moistened her lips, but could not speak.

"Tell me why you smiled," repeated Hannah importunately. "What is it

you've got to say?"

Mary had thought it would be easy. So proud, so sure she was, that

abruptness had seemed as though it must serve her mood. She tried to be

abrupt, but failed.

"Oh, Hannah, I've got such a lot to say," she began, and with an impulse

took her sister's arm and of a sudden felt this gentle, gray-haired

woman might be as a mother to her when all the world, as now she was

realizing with her first confession of it, would be turned against her.

"I don't know how to begin. I know you must understand, and I think I

want you to understand, more than anybody else. No one else will. Of

course I can be sure of that."

She had succeeded, as well she knew she would, in frightening Hannah

now. She was trembling. Leaning on her arm, Mary could feel those

vibrations of fear. So unused to all but the even flow of life, and

finding herself thus suddenly in a morass of apprehension, the poor

creature's mind was floundering helplessly. One step of speculation

after another only left her the more deeply embedded in her fears.

"Tell me what it is," she whispered--"Tell me quickly. Was it that Mr.

Liddiard?"

How surely she had sensed the one thing terrible in her life a woman can

have to tell. Never having known the first thrilling thoughts of love,

her mind had reached at once to this. Countless little incidents

during the time that Liddiard was in Bridnorth, incidents that had

attracted her notice but which she had never observed, had come now

swiftly together as the filings of iron are drawn to a magnet's point.

The times they were together, the letters she had received, sometimes a

look in Jane's face when she spoke of him, sometimes a look in Fanny's

when she was silent. One by one but with terrible acceleration, they

heaped up in her mind to the pinnacle of vague but certain conclusion.

"Was it that Mr. Liddiard?" she repeated.

"Yes."

"I felt it was. I felt it was. Don't say you're in love with him--a

married man--Oh, Mary, that would be terrible."

"I'm not in love," said Mary.

The deep sigh that drew through Hannah's lips made her afraid the more.

How could she tell her? Every moment it was becoming harder. Every

moment the pride she felt was not so much leaving her as being crowded

into the back of her mind by these conventional instincts, the habit of

affection for her family, the certain knowledge of their shame, the

disproportionate value of their thoughts of her.

A few hours before she had asked herself what mattered it if they

thought the very worst, if they had no sympathy, if with their contempt

of her they turned her from the house. In any case she was going.

Never could she stay there. Never could this child of hers breathe

first the stifling air that she had breathed so long.

Yet now when her moment of confession was upon her, pride seemed a

little thing to help her through. The piteous fear in Hannah weakened it

to water in her blood. She felt sorry for her sister who had done

nothing to deserve the shame she was sure to feel. Conscious of that

sorrow, she almost was ashamed of herself. Nothing was there as yet to

whip her pride to life again. With mighty efforts of thought, she tried

to revive it, but it lay still in her heart. This fear of Hannah's, her

deep relief when the worst she could think of proved untrue, kept it

low. With all the strength she had, Mary could not resuscitate her

pride.

"What is it then?" Hannah continued less tremulously--"What is it if

you're not in love? Was he a brute? Did he make love to you?"

With all the knowledge she had gained, Mary now found herself amazed at

this simplicity of mind which once quite well she knew had been her own.

For an instant it gave her courage. For an instant it set up this new

antagonism she had found against the laws that kept her sex in the

bondage of servitude to the needs of man. So in that instant and with

that courage, she spoke it out, abruptly, sharply as she had known she

must. The swift, the sudden blow, it made the cleanest wound.

"I'm going to have a child, Hannah," she said, and in a moment that

garden seemed full of a surging joy to her that now they knew; and in a

moment that garden seemed to Hannah a place all horrible with evil

growing things that twined about her heart and brought their heavy,

nauseating perfume, pungent and overbearing to her nostrils.

She dropped Mary's arm that held her own. With lips already trembling

to the inevitable tears, she stood still on the path between those rows

of double pinks, now bearing up an evil, heavy scent to her, as she

stared before her.

It could not be true! How could it be true? She fought with that, the

refusal to believe its truth.

"He was only here a fortnight," she muttered oddly. "You didn't know

him. You'd never met him before. You only played golf with him, or you

walked on the cliffs. You didn't know him. How can you expect me to

believe it happened--in a fortnight? Mother was engaged to father for

two years. I--I wasn't born till fourteen months after they'd been

married!"

She laughed--a thin crackle of laughter.

"You're a fool, Mary. You don't know what you're talking about. He was

only here a fortnight."

"It's quite true, Hannah," said Mary quietly. "I'm going to have a

child."

Her heart was beating evenly now. They knew. Pride was returning with

warming blood through her veins. Less and less she felt the chill of

fear.

Swiftly Hannah turned upon her.

"But you said you weren't in love!" she exclaimed.

How quickly she was learning! Already love might have explained,

excused, extenuated.

"I'm not in love," said Mary--"I know now I'm not in love. I was at the

time. At least I know what love is. The thing you love doesn't destroy

love when it goes. Once you love, you can't stop loving. The object

may alter. Your love doesn't. If there's no object then your love just

goes on eating your heart away. But it's there."

"Oh, my God!" cried Hannah--"Where did you learn all this--you! Mary!

The youngest of all of us! Whom do you love then if you don't love him?

Oh, it's horrible! Is your heart eating itself away?"

"No."

"Then what? What is it? I don't understand! How could I understand? I

am an old woman now. Somehow you seem to make me know I'm an old woman.

What is it? What do you love?"

"I told you I'm going to have a child," whispered Mary--"Isn't that

something to love? It's here with us as I'm talking now. There are

three of us, Hannah, not two. Isn't that something to love?"

For a long moment, Hannah gazed at her, then, suddenly clasping her

hands about her face she turned and with swift steps ran, almost, down

the path and disappeared into the house. It was as she watched her

going, that Mary had a flash of knowledge how deep the wound had gone.