The moment Mary entered the square, white house on her return to
Bridnorth, she was aware that both Jane and Fanny knew. The coach had
set her down outside the Royal George, but no faces had been at the
windows as she went by. No servant had been sent up the road to carry
back her bag. Outwardly she smiled. Her disgrace had begun.
This was the end of Bridnorth life for her. Here was to begin a new
phase wherein she had none but herself to lean upon; wherein the whole
world was against her and in that substance of stone already hardening
in her spirit, she must stand alone.
The whole house seemed empty as she came in. She went to her room
without meeting any one. They could not long have finished tea. She
looked into the drawing-room as she went by. No tea had been left out
for her.
Her bed was prepared to sleep in. There were clean towels and a clean
mat on the dressing table; but the sign by which they always welcomed
each other's return after absence was missing. There were no flowers in
the room. The garden was full-yielding. Flowers in profusion were
withering in the beds. There was no bowl of them in her room.
It was here, indeed it was everywhere, she felt the presence of Jane.
It was not Hannah, now that she had time to think it out, it was not
Fanny, but Jane she had come back to meet. Jane with the unyielding
spirit of those laws Mary had found consciousness of, against which she
set herself in no less unyielding antagonism.
It was bitterness, as it is with so many, that had ranged Jane in battle
against her sex. She made no allowances. Almost with a fierce joy, she
kept to the very letter of the law. Hers was the justice of revenge and
there are no circumstances can mitigate one woman in another's eyes when
she transgresses as Mary had done.
In her room she waited, unpacking her things, then sitting and looking
out into the garden until the bell rang for their evening meal. With
sensations divided between a high temper of courage and a feeling of
being outcast in that house she had known so long as home, she went down
to the dining-room.
They were already seated. Jane was carving the joint. She did not look
up. Fanny raised her eyes in silence. The wish to give her welcome was
overawed by wonder of curiosity. It was Hannah who said--
"You told us in your letter you were coming back by this afternoon's
coach, but we weren't quite sure."
Caught in an instant's impulse, with an effort Mary controlled herself
from saying--
"Didn't you do what Jane told you to do?"
She held her tongue and sat down.
It was a strange and oppressive silence that fell upon them during that
meal. Oppressive it was, but electrical as well. Vivid, vital forces
were at work in all their minds. Storms were gathering they all knew
must burst at last. Something there was that had power to gather those
forces to their utmost before they broke and were dispersed in speech.
There they were, four unmarried women, seated about that table with the
two portraits looking down upon them in their silence. So they had
occupied their allotted positions year by year--year by year. Often
there had been quarrelings between them. Often they had not been on
speaking terms. Winds of disagreement had fretted the peaceful surface
of that house again and again.
But this which was upon them now was unlike any silence that had fallen
upon them before. Then they had kept silent because they would. It was
now they kept silent because they must. The pervading presence of
something about them was tying their tongues from speech. Without the
courage to tell themselves what it was, they knew.
There was another in their midst. Those four women, they were not
alone. It was not as it had been for so many years. They knew it could
never be so again. Something had happened to one of them that set her
apart. Each in the variety of her imagination was picturing what that
something was. Hannah it frightened. Jane it enraged. Fanny it
stirred so deeply that many times through the terribleness of that meal,
she thought she must faint.
One and all they might have spoken, had it been no more than this. But
that presence in the midst of them kept their tongues to stillness.
Life was springing up, where for so long there had been all the silence
of a barren field. They could hear it in their hearts. Almost it was a
thunder rolling that awed and overwhelmed.
The sound of their knives and forks, even the swallowing of their food
hammered across that distant thunder to their conscious ears. Each one
knew it was becoming more and more unendurable. Each one knew the
moment must come when she could bear it no longer. It was Mary who
reached that moment first.
Laying down her knife and fork and pushing away her plate unfinished,
she flung back her head with eyes that gathered their eyes to hers.
"Why don't you speak?" she cried to them. "Why can't you say what you're
all wanting to say--what's got to be said sooner or later? I know you
know--all of you. Hannah's told you. And you've thought it all out, as
much as it can be thought out. I don't want any favors from you. This
has been my home. I'm quite ready for it to be my home no longer. In
any case I'm going away. There's no question, if you're afraid of that,
of my appealing to you for pity or generosity. It's only a question of
the spirit in which I go and the spirit of what I leave behind. That's
all. And why can't you say it? Why can't you tell me what it is? You,
Jane! Why don't you speak? You're the one who has anything to say. You
told them not to meet the coach. You told them not to put any flowers
in my room. If it's something really to fight about, let's fight now.
I'm not going to fight again. I'm going away where my child will be
born with all the best that I can give it, but I'll hear what you've got
to say now, only for God's sake say it!"