IVIn 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.VIt 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.VINow this much was accomplished in the schedule of her mind. They would all know. She left it to Hannah to tell them. The next day after this confession to her sister, she went to Yarningdale Farm, having made all arrangements to stay there two or three days and complete her plans for the future.It had been a difficult moment to tell Hannah. She had not quite realized beforehand how difficult it would be. Pride she had calculated would have helped her from the first; pride of the very purposes of life that had passed her sisters by. But pride had not been so ready to her thoughts when the actual moment of contact had come. The habitual instincts of convention had intervened. Pride, when it had come to her aid, had not been pride of herself. It was proud she was of her sex when in the abruptness of that instant she had flung her confession before Hannah.There would be no question of pride; no support could it give her when she came to tell Mrs. Peverell. To that simple farmer's wife it could only seem that here was one, pursued by the error of her ways, seeking sanctuary and hiding her shame in the remotest corner she could find.Giving no reason to Jane or Fanny, but only to Hannah for her sudden departure, she went the next day into Warwickshire."You can tell them when I'm away," she said to Hannah. "It's no good thinking you needn't tell them. Hiding it won't conceal. They must know."With an impulsive gesture she laid her hands on Hannah's shoulders and looked into those eyes that indeed, as she had said, even in those few short hours of knowledge, had grown conscious that she was old."I don't know how much you hate me for bringing all this trouble on you. It shan't be much trouble, I promise you. No one need know why I've gone away. But I sort of feel sure of this, Hannah, you don't hate me for the thing itself--not so much as you might have thought you would have done."Hannah tried to meet the gaze of Mary's eyes. Her own held fast a moment, then faltered and fell. Something in Mary's glance seemed to have tracked down something in her. The one with her child had glimpsed into the heart of her who had none. It had been like a shaft of light, slanting into a cellar, some chamber underground that for long had been locked, the bolts on whose door were rusty and past all use, the floor of which was no longer paved for feet to walk upon.For so many years untenanted had that underground chamber been that, as has been said, Hannah had forgotten its existence. Content had come to her with the house of life she lived in and now by the illumination of this ray of light, shooting through cellar windows, lighting up the very foundations of the structure of her being, she had been made aware, when it was all too late, of the solid and real substance upon which Nature had built the wasted thing she had become."Don't!" she muttered. "Don't--don't!" and almost in shame it might have been she hung her head as though it were Mary who might accuse, as though Mary it were who rose in judgment above her then.* * * * *Mr. Peverell in a spring cart from the nearest station brought Mary to Yarningdale Farm. She had no need to touch Henley-in-Arden. There was no likelihood that whilst there she would ever come across her friends. They had walked many miles that day. It was the highest improbability they would ever walk that way again; and certainly not to visit the farm."It happen be a quiet day," he said as he gathered up the reins, "or I couldn't have come for 'ee with the spring cart. No--I couldn't have come for 'ee with the spring cart if it didn't happen to be a quiet day. I got the machine ready last night and we be cuttin' hay to-morrow."Cutting hay!"May I help?" she asked with an impulsive eagerness. He looked down at her on the lower seat beside him and his eyes were twinkling with a kindly amusement."'Ee can help," said he, "but hay-makin' ain't 'helpin'--it's work. When they cut the grass over at Stapeley--Lord Orford's place there over--there's some of the ladies puts on them dimity-like sunbonnets and come and help. But then you see there's plenty to do the work." His eyes twinkled again. "We've only got hundred and thirteen acres and there's me and the carter and a boy. My missis comes out. So does the carter's wife. But 'tain't helpin'. 'Tis work. We can't 'ford amusements like helpin' each other. We have to work--if you understand what I mean.""But I mean that too," she said quickly. "I meant to work. Of course I don't know anything about it; but couldn't I really do something?""We'll be beginning half-past five to-morrow morning," he said and she felt he was chuckling in his heart. She felt that all who did not know the land as he knew it were mere children to him."Can't I get up at half-past five?" she asked."Can 'ee?""Of course I can. I want to work. Do you know that's one of the things I want to come here for. When I come and stay--that's what I've come to arrange with Mrs. Peverell--when I come and stay, I want to work. I can do what I'm told.""There's few as can," said he. "Them things we're told to do, get mighty slow in doin'. Could 'ee drive a horse rake?""I can drive a horse."He whipped up the old mare and said no more until she asked him why they had not cut the grass that day. It was so fine, she said, and fine weather she thought was what they wanted first of all."There be plenty of fine days when the grass is green," said he. "'Twill be fine now a few days, time we'd be gettin' it in. We'd a shower yesterday--a nice drop of rain it was. Sun to-day and they trefolium'll have their seed just right and nigh to droppin'. 'Ee want the seed ripe in the stack. 'Tain't no good leavin' it in the bottom of the wagon."She let him talk on. She did not know what trefolium was. He needed a listener, no more. Questions would not have pleased his ear. All the way back he talked about the land and as to one who understood every word he said. There was his heart and there he spoke it as a lover might who needed no more than a listener to hear the charms of his mistress. The mere sound of his voice, the ring it had of vital energy, these were enough to make that talking a thrilling song to her. It echoed to something in her. She did not know what it was. Scarce a word of it did she understand; yet not a word of it would she have lost.This something that there was in him, was something also in her. Indistinctly she knew it was that which she must feed and stimulate to make her child. As little would he have understood that as she had comprehension of his talk of crops and soil. Their language might not be the same, but the same urging force was there to give them speech and thought. Just as he spoke of the land though never of himself or his part with it, so she thought of her child, a thing that needed soil to grow in. No haphazard chance of circumstance did she feel it to be. Tilling must she do and cleansing of the earth, before her harvest could be reaped. Her night would come, that night before, that night when all was ready, that night after rain and sun when the seed was ripe and must be gathered in the stack and none be wasted on the wagon floor."'Ee understand what I'm sayin'," she suddenly heard him interpose between the level of her thoughts."Yes, yes--I understand," said she. "And you don't know how interesting it is."He turned the mare into the farm gate and tossed the reins on to her back."She's a knowsome girl," he said that night as he lay beside his wife. "She's a knowsome girl. 'Twon't rain to-morrow. There was no rain in they clouds."VIIThe next evening it was, after the first day in the hayfield and while Mr. Peverell in the big barn was sharpening the knives of the mowing machine, that Mary set herself to the task of telling his wife why she wanted to come to the farm.Hard as she knew it would be, so much the harder it became when alone she found herself watching that sallow face with its sunken and lusterless eyes, the thin, unforgiving line of lip, the chin set square, obediently to turn the other cheek to the smiting hand of Fate.Mrs. Peverell was knitting."A woolly vest," said she--"for the old man, come next winter. Time they leaves be off the apple trees, the wind ain't long afindin' we'd be here top of the hill."For a while Mary sat in silence counting her stitches--two purl, two plain, two purl, two plain. The needles clicked. The knotted knuckles turned and twisted, catching the light with rhythmic precision. And all the time she kept saying to herself--"Soon he'll come back from the barn and I shan't have said it. Soon he'll come back.""Did you make all your children's things for them?" she asked with sudden inspiration, striking the note to key her thoughts when she could speak them.The needles clicked on. The knotted knuckles twisted and turned as though she had never heard. The head was bent, the eyes fastened upon her stitches.Thinking she had not heard, Mary was about to repeat her question when suddenly she looked. Stone her eyes were, even and gray. Through years, each one of which was notched upon her memory, she looked at Mary across the dim light of their parlor kitchen."I had no children," she said hardly; "all the stitches I've ever gathered was for my man."Her gaze upon Mary continued for a long silence then, as though her needles had called them, her eyes withdrew to her knitting. Saying no more, she continued her occupation.To Mary could she have said less? There was the gap filled in between that winsome creature whose portrait hung upon the wall in the other room and this woman, sour of countenance, whose blood had turned to vinegar in her heart.Many another woman would have been still more afraid, possessed of such knowledge as that. With a heart that swelled in her to pity, Mary found her fear had gone.Somewhere in that forbidding exterior, she knew she could find the response of heart she needed. Even Nature, with her crudest whip, could not drive out the deeper kindliness of the soul. It was only the body she could dry up and wither, with the persisting ferment of discontent; only the external woman she could embitter with her disregard.For here was one whom circumstance had offered and Nature had flung aside. Great as the tragedy of her sisters' lives might be, Mary knew how much greater a tragedy was this. Here there was no remedy, no fear of convention to make excuse, no want of courage to justify. Like a leper she was outcast amongst women. The knowledge of it was all in her face. And such tragedy as this, though it might wither the body and turn sour the heart, could only make the soul great that suffered it.Mary's fear was gone. At sight of the unforgiving line of lip and square set chin to meet adversity, she knew a great soul was hidden behind that sallow mask.The long silence that had followed Mrs. Peverell's admission added a fullness of meaning to Mary's words."It'd sound foolish and empty if I said I was sorry," she said quietly, "but I know what you must feel."The lusterless eyes shot up quickly from their hollows. Almost a light was kindling in them now."'Ee bain't a married girl," she said, "Miss Throgmorton or what 'ee call it, that's how I wrote my letter to 'ee.""Yes.""How could 'ee know things I'd feel?"I do.""How old are 'ee?""Thirty next September.""Why haven't 'ee married?""I haven't been asked. Look at me.""I am.""But look at me well."Mrs. Peverell stared into her eyes."I have three sisters older than me," Mary went on. "Four girls--four women. We're none of us married. None of us was ever as pretty or sweet as you were when that photograph was taken of you in the other room."The silence that fell between them then as Mrs. Peverell gazed at her was more significant than words. For all they said, once understanding, they did not need words. Indications of speech sufficed."Did any of 'ee want to be married?" asked the farmer's wife. "Did you?""Did you?" replied Mary."I wanted a good man," said she, "and I got him.""Yes, but looking back on it now--all these years--back to that photograph in there, was that what you wanted?"All this time Mrs. Peverell had been holding her needles as though at any moment the conversation might command her full attention no longer and she would return to her knitting. Definitely, at last she laid it in her lap and, leaning forward, she set her eyes, now lit indeed, upon Mary's face before her."'Ee know so much," said she slowly. "How did 'ee learn? What is it 'ee have to tell me?"Without fear, Mary met her gaze. Long it was and keen but she met it full, nor turned, nor dropped her eyes. Brimmed and overflowing that silence was as they sat there. Words would have been empty sounds had they been spoken. Then, but not until it had expressed all their thoughts, Mrs. Peverell's lips parted."It's sin," she said."Is it?" replied Mary, and, so still her voice was that it made no vibrations to disturb the deeper meaning she implied. In their following silence, that deeper meaning filtered slowly but inevitably through the strata of Mrs. Peverell's mind, till drop by drop it fell into the core of her being. In the far hidden soul of her, she knew it was no sin. She knew moreover that Mary had full realization of her knowledge. Too far the silence had gone for her to deny it now. Whatever were the years between them, in those moments they were just women between whom no screen was set to hide their shame. They had no shame. All that they thought and had no words for was pure as the clearest water in the deepest well.It was at this moment as they sat there, still, without speech, that the door opened and Mr. Peverell entered. Swiftly his wife turned."'Ee'll not be wanted here awhile," she said sharply. "Go and sit in the parlor, or back to the barn, or get to bed maybe. The hay'll make without talking."Obediently, like a child, he went out at once and closed the door. It was not things they talked of that he might not hear. Not even was it things they talked of that he might not understand. Here it was that no man had place or meaning; in that region their minds were wandering in, no laws existed but those of Nature. They walked in a world where women are alone.The opening of that door as he came in, the closing of it as obediently he went out, seemed to make definite the thoughts they had. At the sound of his footsteps departing, Mrs. Peverell turned to Mary."Say all 'ee've got to say," she muttered. "I'm listenin'."And as definitely Mary replied--"I'm going to have a baby. Seven months from now. I don't want you to think I'm hiding here. I could take refuge anywhere. I'm not ashamed. But there are seven months. They won't be long to me. Indeed they'll be all too short. Children aren't just born. They're made. Thousands are born, I know. I don't want just to bear mine. When I came here that day, two years ago, I felt something about this place. You'll think nothing of this. You live here. It's so much part of your life that you don't know what it means. But you're close to the earth--you're all one with growing things. You touch Nature at every turn. Oh--do you understand what I'm saying?""I don't understand," said Mrs. Peverell, "but I'm listenin' and I beant too old to feel."Mary sped on with the words that now were rushing in her thoughts."Well--all that means such a lot to me. That's how I want to make my child, as you make your lives here. No cheating. You can't cheat Nature. No pretence--no shame. There's nothing so flagrant or unashamed as Nature when she brings forth. Out there in the world, there where I live, they'd do all they could to make me ashamed. At every turn they'd shriek at me it was a sin. The laws would urge them to it, just as for that one moment they urged you. It's not a sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. Do you think if women had the making of the laws that rule them, they'd ever have made of it the shame it is out there? When I knew that this was going to happen to me, I remembered my impressions of this place two years ago, and I knew it was here I would make him, month by month, while he's leaning in me to make him. Oh--I know I must be talking strangely to you; that half of what I say sounds feather-brained nonsense, but--don't you know it's true, don't you feel it's true?"With an impulsive gesture when words had failed, she leant forward and caught the knotted knuckles in her hand.Mrs. Peverell glanced up."In that room there," said she, pointing in the direction of the parlor sitting room, "there's a girt Bible lies heavy on a mat. We bought it marriage time to write the names of those we had.""I saw it," said Mary."'Tis clean paper lies on front of it," she went on. "It shan't be clean for long. We'll write his name there."
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.
VI
Now this much was accomplished in the schedule of her mind. They would all know. She left it to Hannah to tell them. The next day after this confession to her sister, she went to Yarningdale Farm, having made all arrangements to stay there two or three days and complete her plans for the future.
It had been a difficult moment to tell Hannah. She had not quite realized beforehand how difficult it would be. Pride she had calculated would have helped her from the first; pride of the very purposes of life that had passed her sisters by. But pride had not been so ready to her thoughts when the actual moment of contact had come. The habitual instincts of convention had intervened. Pride, when it had come to her aid, had not been pride of herself. It was proud she was of her sex when in the abruptness of that instant she had flung her confession before Hannah.
There would be no question of pride; no support could it give her when she came to tell Mrs. Peverell. To that simple farmer's wife it could only seem that here was one, pursued by the error of her ways, seeking sanctuary and hiding her shame in the remotest corner she could find.
Giving no reason to Jane or Fanny, but only to Hannah for her sudden departure, she went the next day into Warwickshire.
"You can tell them when I'm away," she said to Hannah. "It's no good thinking you needn't tell them. Hiding it won't conceal. They must know."
With an impulsive gesture she laid her hands on Hannah's shoulders and looked into those eyes that indeed, as she had said, even in those few short hours of knowledge, had grown conscious that she was old.
"I don't know how much you hate me for bringing all this trouble on you. It shan't be much trouble, I promise you. No one need know why I've gone away. But I sort of feel sure of this, Hannah, you don't hate me for the thing itself--not so much as you might have thought you would have done."
Hannah tried to meet the gaze of Mary's eyes. Her own held fast a moment, then faltered and fell. Something in Mary's glance seemed to have tracked down something in her. The one with her child had glimpsed into the heart of her who had none. It had been like a shaft of light, slanting into a cellar, some chamber underground that for long had been locked, the bolts on whose door were rusty and past all use, the floor of which was no longer paved for feet to walk upon.
For so many years untenanted had that underground chamber been that, as has been said, Hannah had forgotten its existence. Content had come to her with the house of life she lived in and now by the illumination of this ray of light, shooting through cellar windows, lighting up the very foundations of the structure of her being, she had been made aware, when it was all too late, of the solid and real substance upon which Nature had built the wasted thing she had become.
"Don't!" she muttered. "Don't--don't!" and almost in shame it might have been she hung her head as though it were Mary who might accuse, as though Mary it were who rose in judgment above her then.
* * * * *
Mr. Peverell in a spring cart from the nearest station brought Mary to Yarningdale Farm. She had no need to touch Henley-in-Arden. There was no likelihood that whilst there she would ever come across her friends. They had walked many miles that day. It was the highest improbability they would ever walk that way again; and certainly not to visit the farm.
"It happen be a quiet day," he said as he gathered up the reins, "or I couldn't have come for 'ee with the spring cart. No--I couldn't have come for 'ee with the spring cart if it didn't happen to be a quiet day. I got the machine ready last night and we be cuttin' hay to-morrow."
Cutting hay!
"May I help?" she asked with an impulsive eagerness. He looked down at her on the lower seat beside him and his eyes were twinkling with a kindly amusement.
"'Ee can help," said he, "but hay-makin' ain't 'helpin'--it's work. When they cut the grass over at Stapeley--Lord Orford's place there over--there's some of the ladies puts on them dimity-like sunbonnets and come and help. But then you see there's plenty to do the work." His eyes twinkled again. "We've only got hundred and thirteen acres and there's me and the carter and a boy. My missis comes out. So does the carter's wife. But 'tain't helpin'. 'Tis work. We can't 'ford amusements like helpin' each other. We have to work--if you understand what I mean."
"But I mean that too," she said quickly. "I meant to work. Of course I don't know anything about it; but couldn't I really do something?"
"We'll be beginning half-past five to-morrow morning," he said and she felt he was chuckling in his heart. She felt that all who did not know the land as he knew it were mere children to him.
"Can't I get up at half-past five?" she asked.
"Can 'ee?"
"Of course I can. I want to work. Do you know that's one of the things I want to come here for. When I come and stay--that's what I've come to arrange with Mrs. Peverell--when I come and stay, I want to work. I can do what I'm told."
"There's few as can," said he. "Them things we're told to do, get mighty slow in doin'. Could 'ee drive a horse rake?"
"I can drive a horse."
He whipped up the old mare and said no more until she asked him why they had not cut the grass that day. It was so fine, she said, and fine weather she thought was what they wanted first of all.
"There be plenty of fine days when the grass is green," said he. "'Twill be fine now a few days, time we'd be gettin' it in. We'd a shower yesterday--a nice drop of rain it was. Sun to-day and they trefolium'll have their seed just right and nigh to droppin'. 'Ee want the seed ripe in the stack. 'Tain't no good leavin' it in the bottom of the wagon."
She let him talk on. She did not know what trefolium was. He needed a listener, no more. Questions would not have pleased his ear. All the way back he talked about the land and as to one who understood every word he said. There was his heart and there he spoke it as a lover might who needed no more than a listener to hear the charms of his mistress. The mere sound of his voice, the ring it had of vital energy, these were enough to make that talking a thrilling song to her. It echoed to something in her. She did not know what it was. Scarce a word of it did she understand; yet not a word of it would she have lost.
This something that there was in him, was something also in her. Indistinctly she knew it was that which she must feed and stimulate to make her child. As little would he have understood that as she had comprehension of his talk of crops and soil. Their language might not be the same, but the same urging force was there to give them speech and thought. Just as he spoke of the land though never of himself or his part with it, so she thought of her child, a thing that needed soil to grow in. No haphazard chance of circumstance did she feel it to be. Tilling must she do and cleansing of the earth, before her harvest could be reaped. Her night would come, that night before, that night when all was ready, that night after rain and sun when the seed was ripe and must be gathered in the stack and none be wasted on the wagon floor.
"'Ee understand what I'm sayin'," she suddenly heard him interpose between the level of her thoughts.
"Yes, yes--I understand," said she. "And you don't know how interesting it is."
He turned the mare into the farm gate and tossed the reins on to her back.
"She's a knowsome girl," he said that night as he lay beside his wife. "She's a knowsome girl. 'Twon't rain to-morrow. There was no rain in they clouds."
VII
The next evening it was, after the first day in the hayfield and while Mr. Peverell in the big barn was sharpening the knives of the mowing machine, that Mary set herself to the task of telling his wife why she wanted to come to the farm.
Hard as she knew it would be, so much the harder it became when alone she found herself watching that sallow face with its sunken and lusterless eyes, the thin, unforgiving line of lip, the chin set square, obediently to turn the other cheek to the smiting hand of Fate.
Mrs. Peverell was knitting.
"A woolly vest," said she--"for the old man, come next winter. Time they leaves be off the apple trees, the wind ain't long afindin' we'd be here top of the hill."
For a while Mary sat in silence counting her stitches--two purl, two plain, two purl, two plain. The needles clicked. The knotted knuckles turned and twisted, catching the light with rhythmic precision. And all the time she kept saying to herself--"Soon he'll come back from the barn and I shan't have said it. Soon he'll come back."
"Did you make all your children's things for them?" she asked with sudden inspiration, striking the note to key her thoughts when she could speak them.
The needles clicked on. The knotted knuckles twisted and turned as though she had never heard. The head was bent, the eyes fastened upon her stitches.
Thinking she had not heard, Mary was about to repeat her question when suddenly she looked. Stone her eyes were, even and gray. Through years, each one of which was notched upon her memory, she looked at Mary across the dim light of their parlor kitchen.
"I had no children," she said hardly; "all the stitches I've ever gathered was for my man."
Her gaze upon Mary continued for a long silence then, as though her needles had called them, her eyes withdrew to her knitting. Saying no more, she continued her occupation.
To Mary could she have said less? There was the gap filled in between that winsome creature whose portrait hung upon the wall in the other room and this woman, sour of countenance, whose blood had turned to vinegar in her heart.
Many another woman would have been still more afraid, possessed of such knowledge as that. With a heart that swelled in her to pity, Mary found her fear had gone.
Somewhere in that forbidding exterior, she knew she could find the response of heart she needed. Even Nature, with her crudest whip, could not drive out the deeper kindliness of the soul. It was only the body she could dry up and wither, with the persisting ferment of discontent; only the external woman she could embitter with her disregard.
For here was one whom circumstance had offered and Nature had flung aside. Great as the tragedy of her sisters' lives might be, Mary knew how much greater a tragedy was this. Here there was no remedy, no fear of convention to make excuse, no want of courage to justify. Like a leper she was outcast amongst women. The knowledge of it was all in her face. And such tragedy as this, though it might wither the body and turn sour the heart, could only make the soul great that suffered it.
Mary's fear was gone. At sight of the unforgiving line of lip and square set chin to meet adversity, she knew a great soul was hidden behind that sallow mask.
The long silence that had followed Mrs. Peverell's admission added a fullness of meaning to Mary's words.
"It'd sound foolish and empty if I said I was sorry," she said quietly, "but I know what you must feel."
The lusterless eyes shot up quickly from their hollows. Almost a light was kindling in them now.
"'Ee bain't a married girl," she said, "Miss Throgmorton or what 'ee call it, that's how I wrote my letter to 'ee."
"Yes."
"How could 'ee know things I'd feel?
"I do."
"How old are 'ee?"
"Thirty next September."
"Why haven't 'ee married?"
"I haven't been asked. Look at me."
"I am."
"But look at me well."
Mrs. Peverell stared into her eyes.
"I have three sisters older than me," Mary went on. "Four girls--four women. We're none of us married. None of us was ever as pretty or sweet as you were when that photograph was taken of you in the other room."
The silence that fell between them then as Mrs. Peverell gazed at her was more significant than words. For all they said, once understanding, they did not need words. Indications of speech sufficed.
"Did any of 'ee want to be married?" asked the farmer's wife. "Did you?"
"Did you?" replied Mary.
"I wanted a good man," said she, "and I got him."
"Yes, but looking back on it now--all these years--back to that photograph in there, was that what you wanted?"
All this time Mrs. Peverell had been holding her needles as though at any moment the conversation might command her full attention no longer and she would return to her knitting. Definitely, at last she laid it in her lap and, leaning forward, she set her eyes, now lit indeed, upon Mary's face before her.
"'Ee know so much," said she slowly. "How did 'ee learn? What is it 'ee have to tell me?"
Without fear, Mary met her gaze. Long it was and keen but she met it full, nor turned, nor dropped her eyes. Brimmed and overflowing that silence was as they sat there. Words would have been empty sounds had they been spoken. Then, but not until it had expressed all their thoughts, Mrs. Peverell's lips parted.
"It's sin," she said.
"Is it?" replied Mary, and, so still her voice was that it made no vibrations to disturb the deeper meaning she implied. In their following silence, that deeper meaning filtered slowly but inevitably through the strata of Mrs. Peverell's mind, till drop by drop it fell into the core of her being. In the far hidden soul of her, she knew it was no sin. She knew moreover that Mary had full realization of her knowledge. Too far the silence had gone for her to deny it now. Whatever were the years between them, in those moments they were just women between whom no screen was set to hide their shame. They had no shame. All that they thought and had no words for was pure as the clearest water in the deepest well.
It was at this moment as they sat there, still, without speech, that the door opened and Mr. Peverell entered. Swiftly his wife turned.
"'Ee'll not be wanted here awhile," she said sharply. "Go and sit in the parlor, or back to the barn, or get to bed maybe. The hay'll make without talking."
Obediently, like a child, he went out at once and closed the door. It was not things they talked of that he might not hear. Not even was it things they talked of that he might not understand. Here it was that no man had place or meaning; in that region their minds were wandering in, no laws existed but those of Nature. They walked in a world where women are alone.
The opening of that door as he came in, the closing of it as obediently he went out, seemed to make definite the thoughts they had. At the sound of his footsteps departing, Mrs. Peverell turned to Mary.
"Say all 'ee've got to say," she muttered. "I'm listenin'."
And as definitely Mary replied--
"I'm going to have a baby. Seven months from now. I don't want you to think I'm hiding here. I could take refuge anywhere. I'm not ashamed. But there are seven months. They won't be long to me. Indeed they'll be all too short. Children aren't just born. They're made. Thousands are born, I know. I don't want just to bear mine. When I came here that day, two years ago, I felt something about this place. You'll think nothing of this. You live here. It's so much part of your life that you don't know what it means. But you're close to the earth--you're all one with growing things. You touch Nature at every turn. Oh--do you understand what I'm saying?"
"I don't understand," said Mrs. Peverell, "but I'm listenin' and I beant too old to feel."
Mary sped on with the words that now were rushing in her thoughts.
"Well--all that means such a lot to me. That's how I want to make my child, as you make your lives here. No cheating. You can't cheat Nature. No pretence--no shame. There's nothing so flagrant or unashamed as Nature when she brings forth. Out there in the world, there where I live, they'd do all they could to make me ashamed. At every turn they'd shriek at me it was a sin. The laws would urge them to it, just as for that one moment they urged you. It's not a sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. Do you think if women had the making of the laws that rule them, they'd ever have made of it the shame it is out there? When I knew that this was going to happen to me, I remembered my impressions of this place two years ago, and I knew it was here I would make him, month by month, while he's leaning in me to make him. Oh--I know I must be talking strangely to you; that half of what I say sounds feather-brained nonsense, but--don't you know it's true, don't you feel it's true?"
With an impulsive gesture when words had failed, she leant forward and caught the knotted knuckles in her hand.
Mrs. Peverell glanced up.
"In that room there," said she, pointing in the direction of the parlor sitting room, "there's a girt Bible lies heavy on a mat. We bought it marriage time to write the names of those we had."
"I saw it," said Mary.
"'Tis clean paper lies on front of it," she went on. "It shan't be clean for long. We'll write his name there."