VIIIThe 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!"IXNone of them knew their Mary like this. Until that moment scarcely in such fashion had she known herself. New instincts had risen in her blood. Already the creative force was striking a dominant note in her voice, setting to fire a light in her eyes.They felt that evening she had gained power that would never be theirs. Hannah fell obedient to it as one who humbles herself before mighty things; Fanny fell to fear, awed by this note of battle that rang like a challenge in her voice.Jane alone it was who stood out away from them and, from amidst the ranks of that army of women who acknowledge the oath of convention, offering both heart and blood in its service, accepted the call to combat."You talk," she said, with her voice rising swiftly to the pitch of conflict; "you talk as though there were two ways of looking at what you've done. You talk as though there were something fine and splendid in it, but were not quite sure whether we were fine or splendid enough to see it. I never heard anything so arrogant in all my life. You seem to think it's a concession on your part to say you're going away. Of course you're going away. We've lived decently and cleanly in this place all these years. They've had no reason to be ashamed of us," her eyes flashed to the portraits and back to Mary, "not till now. Do you think we're going to flaunt our shame in their faces!"Catching a look of pain in Hannah's eyes, as though that last blow had been too searching and too keen, she struck it home again."It is shame!" she said. "I'm not so different from all of you. I feel ashamed and so do they. What else can we possibly feel--a married man--a man you don't even love. It's filthy! And if you want to find another word for it than that, it's because you've even come to be ashamed of the truth. There's something in decency; there's something in modesty and cleanliness. They taught us it. The whole of their lives they taught us that. They brought us up to be proud of the class we belong to, not to behave like servant girls snatching kisses that don't belong to us with any man who comes along and likes to make a fool of us."Fanny, who up to that moment had been gazing at her sister, caught in a wonder at this flow of speech, now of a sudden dropped her eyes, twining and untwining the fingers in her lap. How could Mary answer that? Cruel as it was, it had the sting of truth. She dared not look at her and could only wait in trembling for her reply.She might have gained courage had she looked. Those blows had not beaten Mary to her knees. With her head thrown back, she waited for the last word, as though, now they had come to it, there were rules to be observed and pride in her own strength put aside all need to ignore them."Have you anything more to say?" she asked with a clear voice."Do you want any more than that?" retorted Jane."I don't mind how much more there is," replied Mary quietly, "we're saying all we feel. We aren't mincing things. I'm going to say what I feel. I'm going to hit and hurt as hard as you, so go on if you want to. This isn't a squabble. I don't want to bicker or cavil or interrupt. We're not just cats fighting now, we're women and we'll try and talk fair. Say anything more you've got to say.""Well, if that's not enough for you," continued Jane, "if it is not enough to allude to what I saw with my own eyes, or to tell you there are servant girls who could behave better than that, then I'll talk of what, thank God, I didn't see and I'll tell you it's worse than shame what you have done and not even the excuse of being betrayed by love that you have to offer for it. I'll say it, Mary, and I don't care now because you've asked for it. You must be a bad woman in your heart, there must be something vile about you that makes you not fit to touch us or be in the same house with us. You've asked for that and you've got it. You've wanted every word there is to say. I should have left that unspoken if you hadn't asked for it. But that's what I feel. If you were a woman off the streets in London and sitting there at our table, I couldn't feel more sick or ashamed at the sight of you.""Jane!" cried Hannah. "Oh, don't say anything so horrible or terrible as that!""What's terrible about it? What's horrible about it?" asked Mary. "It isn't true. Jane knows it isn't true. When a woman's fighting for the conventions Jane's fighting for, she doesn't use the truth--she's incapable of using it.""What is the truth then?" exclaimed Jane. "If you've satisfied yourself you know, if you've invented anything truer than what I've said to make an excuse for yourself, let's hear what it is.""Yes, you shall hear it," said Mary, and a deep breath she drew to steady the torrent of words that was surging in her mind. "First of all it's not true that I didn't love. I did. She's perverted the truth there. I did love. I'm not going to tear my heart open and show you how much. I don't love any longer. That's what Jane has made use of--the best she could. But what I feel now has nothing to do with it. What I feel now is the result of circumstances it won't help any way to explain. What happened that makes the vileness she talks about, happened when I was in love, as deeply in love as any woman can be, and as I never expect to be again. But it's not because of love that I'm going to defend myself. It's not because of love that I show this arrogance, as you call it. That's not the truth I've found or invented for myself. Love's only half the truth when you come to value and add up the things that count in a woman's life. Of all the married people we know, how many women who have found completion and justification for their existence really love their husbands? Love! Oh, I don't know! Love's an ecstasy that gives you a divine impetus towards the great purposes of life. I don't want to talk as though I'd been reading things out of a book. That almost sounds like it. But you can't imagine I haven't been thinking. These two months, these last six months, ever since something that happened last Christmas time, I have. And thinking's like reading, I suppose. It's reading your own thoughts."A smile of security twitched at Jane's lips."Well, is this the wonderful truth?" she asked. "Are we to sit and listen to you, the youngest of us, telling us that love's an ecstasy? Because if you're going to give us a lecture about love, perhaps you'd like a glass of water beside you.""No, that's not the wonderful truth," she replied quietly. She felt Jane could not sting her to anger and somehow she smiled. "The truth is this, which they up there had never learnt and no one seems to know. Life's not for wasting, but what have been our lives here, we four girls--girls! Women now! What has it been? Waste--waste--nothing but waste. Why has Hannah's hair gone gray? Why are you, Jane, bitter and sour and dry in your heart? Why's Fanny drawn and tired and thin and spare? Why do I look older than I am? Because we're waste--because Life's discarded us and thrown us on one side, because for a long time now there's been nothing in the world for us to do but sit in this room with those portraits looking down on our heads and just wait till we filter out like streams that have no flood of purpose to carry them to the sea. Our lives have only been a ditch, for water to stagnate in. We find nothing. We can't even find ourselves. Fanny there, grows thinner every year. And who's to blame for it?"Her eyes shot up to the portraits on the wall and half furtively all their eyes followed hers."They're to blame, but not first of all they aren't. What makes it possible that Jane can speak as she does, talking about what has happened to me as the vilest of all vile things? Men have made it possible, because men have needed children for one reason and one reason only. Possession, inheritance and all the traditions of family and estate. These are the things men have wanted children for and so they made the social laws to meet their needs. But there are more things in the world to inherit than a pile of bricks and a handful of acres. Do you think I want my child to have no more inheritance than that? I tell you almost I'm glad he has no father! I'm glad he won't possess. There are things more wonderful than bricks and acres that are going to be his if I have the power to show them to him. There are things in the world more wonderful than those which you can just call your own. And it's those laws of possession and inheritance we have to thank for the idleness our lives have been set in. Jane thinks herself a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a fierce reserve, but those things are of true value only when they're needed, and what man has needed them of us? Who cares at all whether we've been chaste and pure? None but ourselves! And what's made us care but these false values that make Jane's shame of me?"With flashing eyes she turned to Jane."You've asked for the truth," she cried now. "Well, you shall have it as you thought you gave it to me. You're not really ashamed of me. You're envious, jealous, and you're stung with spite. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. You'd give all you know to have what I have, but having allowed yourself to be a slave to the law all you have left is to take a pride in your slavery and deck it out with the pale flowers of modesty and self-respect."She stood up suddenly from her chair and walked to the door. An instant there, she turned."As soon as I can get my things together," she said, "I'm going to a place in Warwickshire. If Hannah wants to know my plans afterwards I'll write and tell her. Don't think I'm not quite aware of being turned out. That's quite as it ought to be from Jane's point of view. You'd dismiss a servant at once. But don't think you've made me ashamed. I only want you to remember I went as proud, prouder than you stayed."This was the real moment of Mary Throgmorton's departure from the square, white house in Bridnorth. When a few days later she left in the old coach that wound its way over the crest of the hill on which so often she had watched it, it was the mere anticlimax of her going and to all who saw that departure must have seemed but a simple happening in her life.PHASE IVIThe hay was made and stacked when Mary returned to Yarningdale Farm. They were thatching the day she arrived, wherefore there was none to meet her. The old fly with its faded green and musty cushions brought her over from the station. Those were long moments for contemplation as they trundled down the country roads and turned into the lanes that led ultimately to the farm.The train had been too swift for arrested concentration of thought. In the train she had not been alone. Here, as the iron-rimmed wheels rumbled beneath her, crunching the grit upon the road with their unvarying monotonous note, she felt at last she had come into her haven and could turn without distraction into the thoughts of her being.Had ever that old vehicle carried such burden before? With the things Jane had said still beating up and down in the cage of memory, she pictured some weeping servant girl dismissed her place, carrying her burden away with her in shame and fearfulness to find a hiding place in a staring, watchful world.Looking out upon the fields as they passed, knowing them as property, to whoever they might belong, again she felt how the right of possession amongst men it was that had made shame of the right of creation amongst women."Trespassers will be prosecuted," she read on a passing board that stood out conspicuously in the hedge as they rolled by.There it was! That was the law! Trespassers upon the rights of man! The law would descend with all its force upon their heads. But had they not trespassed upon the rights of women? Which was the greater? To inherit and possess? To conceive and create? Did not the world reach the utmost marches of its limitations in that grasping passion to possess? Was that not the root of the evil of war, the ugliness of crime, the stagnation of ideals? To possess and to increase his possessions, to number Israel and to keep all he had got, were not these the very letters of the law that held the world in slavery; were not these the chains in which, like bondwomen, she and her sisters had walked wearily through the years of their life?The last lane they passed along led through a heavily timbered wood before they reached the farm. Some children there were gathering fagots into their aprons. She leant out of the window to watch them, her mind set free for that moment of the encompassing sense of possession.That was the spirit that should rule the world. She knew how hopeless it was to think that it could be so. It was the spur of possession that urged men to competition. The whip of competition in turn it was that drove out idleness from the hearts of men. And yet, if women had the forming of ideals in the children that were theirs, might they not conceive some higher and more altruistic plane than this? Giving, not keeping, might not this be the deep source of a new civilization other than that which drove the whole world with the stinging lash of distrust?She was going to bring a child into the world that would have nothing it could call its own, not even a name. The fagots of life it must gather. The berries on the hedgerows which belong to all would be its food. So she would train its heart to wish for only those things that belonged to all. Never should it know the fretting passion of possession. Work was man's justification, not ownership, and a workman he should be; one who gave with the sweat of his brow and who, by the heart to give which she would stir in him, would covet of none the things they called their own.In this spirit--and little more it was in a grasping world than an ecstasy of thought--Mary Throgmorton came to Yarningdale Farm.She knew it was a dream she had had; a dream induced in her by the heat of the day, the monotonous vibrations of that old vehicle she had ridden in, the still quiet of the countryside through which she had passed. Yet, nevertheless, for all its ecstasy, for all the dream it might be, such a dream it was as any woman must surely have, so circumstanced as she; so driven to rely upon what she alone could give her child for walking staff to serve him on his journey. Knowing it was a dream, it seemed no less real to her. Lying that night on the hard-mattressed bed, in her little room beneath the eaves of the thatch, she took the dream in purpose into her very soul. Give she must, and all she had, and what else had she to give but this? For that moment and for all the months to follow it could be given in the utmost fullness of her mind. Was it not now and most of all when he was closer to her being than ever it should so chance again, that she could give out of her heart the spirit that should go to make him strong to face the world that lay before him?Dreams they might be, but such thoughts would she hold with all the tenacity of her mind until, through external means alone, she was compelled to feed him. For all those seven months to come, she herself would work--work in the fields as he must work. The sweat should be on her brow as it should be on his. Her limbs should ache as one day his in happy fatigue of labor should ache as well.It was thus she would make him while yet the time of creation was all her own and then, when out of her breast he was to take his feed of life, there would be ways by which she alone could train him to his purpose.So still she lay, thinking it all out with thoughts that knew no words to hamper them, that when at last she fell asleep, it was as one passing through the hanging of a curtain that just fell into its concealing folds behind her as she went.II"I've told the old man," Mrs. Peverell informed Mary the next morning. "Not all of it, I haven't. Men don't understand what beant just so. He can't abide what's dropped in the farmyard comin' up. ''Tis wheat,' I tell 'en. ''Tain't crops,' says he. ''Twill make a bag of seed,' I says. 'The ground weren't prepared for it,' says he. That's men. Mebbe they're right. 'Nature may have her plan,' I tell 'en, 'but God have his accidents.' 'I can't grow nawthing by accident,' says he. 'You can't,' says I, 'but afore you came, that's the very way they did grow and I guess there's as much rule about accidents as there is of following peas with wheat.' He looks at me then and he says no more, which is good as sayin'--'You women be daft things,' for he picks up his hat and goes out and the understandin' doant come back into his eyes afore he feels the tilled earth under his feet."So Mr. Peverell knew that in certain time Mary was going to have a baby. He looked at her shyly when next they met. It was in the orchard sloping down the hill that drops to the towpath of the canal. He was calculating the yield of apples, just showing their green and red, and she had come to tell him that the midday meal was ready."Thank you, ma'am," said he, when he had always called her "Miss" before. This was the hedge, the boundary of that tilled and cultivated field his mind had placed her in. Beyond that limit, as Mrs. Peverell had said, he would not understand. With a childish simplicity he had accepted all that his wife had told him. She had appeased his need for understanding. Perfectly satisfied, he asked for no more."Are you going to give me work to do?" she asked as they walked back together to the house. "Real work, I mean. I can work and I'm so interested.""Work won't be easy for the likes of you," said he."No, but there are things I could do. Things that aren't quite so laborious as others. I could milk the cows, couldn't I? If once I got the trick of it, it would be easy enough, wouldn't it?""Women beant bad milkers," he agreed with encouragement. "There's no harm in 'ee tryin'.""When could I begin?""'Ee could try a hand this evenin' when our lad brings the cows in. They be fair easy--them's we've got now. Easy quarters they all of them have and they stand quiet enough wi' a bit of coaxin'. I dessay 'ee could coax 'em well enough. 'Ee've a softy voice to listen to when 'ee's wantin' a thing and means to get it."She laughed."I didn't know I had," she said."No? Women doant know nawthin', seems to me. 'Mazin' 'tis to me how well they manages along."She went into the cow sheds that evening and had her first lesson. It was tiring and trying and unsuccessful and her back ached. But in the last few minutes, just when she was giving up all hope of ever being able to do it and the strain of trying had relaxed in her fingers, a stream of milk shot forth from the quarter she held in response to the simplest pressure of her hand."That's it! That's it!" exclaimed the boy."Doant 'ee get into the way of strippin' 'em with 'ee's fingers, not till they've got to be stripped and 'twon't come t'other way."She rose the next morning early when through her window she heard the cows coming into the yard and slipping on her clothes without thought of how she looked, she went down to the shed and tried again.In three days' time she had mastered it and gave an exhibition of her skill to Mr. Peverell who stood by with smiles suffusing his face."That'll do," said he. "The lad couldn't do no better'n that.""Well, can't I look after the cows altogether?" she begged. "Drive them in and out and feed and milk them? Then you can have the boy for other work.""It's a samesome job," he warned her. "There's clockwork inside them cows' udders and 'tain't always convenient to a lady like yourself to go by it.""Can't you believe me," she exclaimed, "when I tell you I don't consider myself a lady, any more than Mrs. Peverell wastes her time in doing? I'm just a woman like she is and I want to work, not spasmodically, not just here and there, but all the time. Do you remember what you said about helping?""I've no recollection," he replied."Well, you said it wasn't help was wanted in a hay-field, 'twas work. I want to make something of myself while I'm here. I don't just want to think I'm making something. Can't you trust me to do it?"Mr. Peverell looked with a smile at his wife who had come out to witness the exhibition."What do you think, mother?" said he."I think women knows a lot more'n what you understand, Mr. Peverell. You can understand all what you can handle and if you could handle her mind, you'd know well enough she could do it.""So be," said he obediently and he turned to the boy. "You can take cartin' that grass out 'long them hedges this afternoon," he said. "There woant be no cows for 'ee to spend 'ee time milkin'. We've got a milkmaid come to Yarningdale. They'll think I be doin' mighty well with my crops come I tell 'em next market I've got a milkmaid well as a boy."IIIThe life of Mary Throgmorton during those months while she worked at Yarningdale Farm was a succession of days so full of peace, so instinct with the real beauties which enter the blood, suffuse the heart, and beat through all the veins, that her soul, as she had meant it should be, was attuned by them to minister to its purpose.At six every morning she descended from her little room beneath the thatched eaves. At that hour the air was still. The chill of the dew that had fallen was yet in it. The grass as she walked through the meadows was always wet underfoot. Mist of heat on the fine days was lingering over the fields. Out of it the cows lifted their heads in a welcome following their curiosity as she came to drive them back into the farm.When once they had come to know her voice, when once they had come to recognize that straight figure in the cotton frocks she wore, no further need there was for her but to reach the gate and open it, calling a name she knew one by. They ceased their grazing at once and turned towards her. One by one they trooped through into the lane that led to the farm. One after another, she had a name to murmur as they went by.No moment in all that labor there was but had its freedom for contemplation. As she walked through the meadows to gather them; as she followed them down the lanes; as against the flanks of them she leant her cheek, cool with that morning air, stealing their warmth, there ever was opportunity for her thoughts.It soon became automatic that process of milking. Only at the last moment when the hot stream of milk began to be flagging in its flow, did she have to detach her thoughts from the purpose that governed her, and concentrate her mind upon the necessary measure of stripping them to the last drop.But for these moments, her thoughts were never absent from that sacred freight she carried to its journey's end. The very occupation she had chosen all contributed to such meditation as her mind had need of. The milk she wet her fingers with as she settled down upon the stool before each patient beast, hot with the temperature of its blood, was stream of the very fountain of life her thoughts were built on. The rhythmic, sibilant note as it hissed into the pail between her knees, became motif for the melody of her contemplation.She whispered to them sometimes as she milked. Whisperings they were that defy the capture of expression. No words could voice them as she voiced them with the murmur on her lips. Sometimes it was she whispered to the quiet beast against whose velvet flank her cheek was warming. Sometimes she whispered to her child as though his cheek were there fast pressed against her and his lips were drawing the stream of life out of her breast.It cannot be wondered that she thought often of these things while she was milkmaid at Yarningdale Farm. In any environment the mind of a woman at such a time must seek them out, stealing pictures of the future to feed her imagination upon. But there, in those surroundings, Mary Throgmorton was close upon her very purpose as the days turned from morn to evening and the weeks slipped by towards the hour for which she waited.But deeper than all such thoughts as these, there had entered her soul the wider and fuller conceptions of life. Subconsciously she realized the cycle it was, the endless revolving of the circle of design that had no beginning and no end but was forever emerging from and entering into itself in its eternal revolutions, always creating some surplus of the divine essence of energy, always discharging it in thought, in word and deed; flung from it, as drops of water are flung from the speed of the mill wheel while it turns to the ceaseless flowing of the stream.What else could she see with a heart for seeing, what else, so close to Nature as she was, could she see but this? Every day, every night, the cattle ate their fill of the grass that had grown in their pastures. Every morning, every evening, they gave their yield of all they had consumed. It was no definite and conscious observation that brought to her eyes those vivid and luxuriant patches of green in the fields where the cows had manured the grass; it was no determined deduction that conveyed to her the realization how a field must be grazed, must be eaten away and consumed to increase it in the virtue of its bearing. It was no mechanical process of mind which led her to the understanding of how when the field was cut for hay and stacked within the yard to feed the cattle through the winter months, still it returned in its inevitable cycle to the fields to feed the flow of life.Through the winter months the cows were stalled and kept in their pound. In that pound they trod to manure the straw the fields had grown and back again it would come in the early spring to lie once more upon the fields that had given it; so ever and ever in its ceaseless procession, some surplus of the energy that was created would be set free. A calf would go out of the farm and be sold at the nearest market. For three days its mother would cry through the fields, hurt with her loss, grudging her milk, but in the end Nature would assert itself. She would be caught back into the impetus of the everlasting cycle of progression, fulfilling the purpose of life, contributing to the creation of that energy which was to find its expression in the sons of men.All this without knowing it she learnt in the fields and under the thatch of Yarningdale Farm. All this, as she had meant to do, she assimilated into her being to feed that which she herself, in her own purpose, was creating.So her son should live, if it were a boy she bore. So she planned for him a life that had none of the limitations of possession, but must give back again all that it took with interest compounded of noblest purpose. This alone should be his inheritance, this generosity of heart and soul and being that knew no other impulse than to give the whole and more than it had received.Not one of these impressions came with set outline of idea to the mind of Mary Throgmorton. In the evenings as she sat in the kitchen parlor, sewing the tiny garments she would need and listening to Mr. Peverell talking as he always did about the land, it was thus she absorbed them. Drawn in with her breath they were, as though the mere act of breathing assimilated them rather than a precise effort of receptivity.The same it was in the fields where she walked, in the stalls where she milked her cows. Each breath she took was deep. It was as if the scent of those stalls, the air about the meadows, the lights of morning and evening all taught her that which she wished to learn.Her mind was relaxed and just floating upon life those days. It is not to be understood where she learnt that this must be so. It is not to be conceived how, with her utter inexperience, she knew that no determined effort to create her child could serve the purpose that she had. In through the pores of her being, as it became the very air her lungs inhaled, she took the sensations which day by day were borne upon her.There were times when, after the first physical consciousness of her condition, she forgot she was going to bear a child. There were times when the knowledge of it seemed so distant, that it was as though she walked and lived in a dream, a sensuous dream, where there was no pain, no suffering of mind, but things were and were not, just as they happened like clouds to pass before her vision.There were times when she knew so well all that there lay before her. Then pain seemed almost welcome to her mind. Then she would promise herself with a fierce joy she would not submit to any of the subterfuges of skill to ease her of it."I'll know he's being born," she would say aloud. "I'll know every moment to keep for memory. Why should I hide away from life, or lose an instant because it comes with pain?"So Mary Throgmorton traversed the months that brought her to fulfillment; so time slipped by with its clear mornings and the dropping lights of evening till winter came and still, with the nearing approach of her hour, she continued milking the cows for Mr. Peverell. Not all the persuasion they offered could make her cease from her duties."I'm milkmaid here," she said. "Any farm girl would keep on to the last. There'll be some days yet for my hands to lie in my lap. Let them touch something till then."They let her have her way. Only the carter and the boy were there about the place to see her. She had no sense of shyness with them. Every now and again some cow was taken to a farm near by to profit. It was common talk, unhampered by any reticence, to comment upon the condition of each beast as she neared her calving time. The functions and operations of Nature were part of the vast plan of that ever-revolving cycle to them. They knew no coarseness in their attitude of mind; they knew no preciousness of modesty.Before she had been at Yarningdale for long, Mary realized with the greater fullness of perception how vast a degree of false modesty there was in the world as people congregated in the cities and with brick walls and plaster shut themselves out from the sight of Nature.It had all been false, that modesty which their mother had taught them. Love, pleasure and passion, if these were the fruits of the soul man had won for himself, what shame could there be in permitting them their just expression? Love was uplifting and in the ecstasy it brought were not the drops flung farther, higher from the wheel in the acceleration of its revolutions? Was not the stream in flood, those moments when love came in its torrent to the heart of a man? Once for a moment she had loved and knew now that ecstasy could never come to her again.Pleasure, it was true, she had never known, but the deep passion of motherhood none could rob her of. All those days and weeks and months were hours of passionate joy to her. Never was she idle. Never was her passion still.That moment, one night it was with the moonlight falling on her bed, when first she felt the movement of her child within her, was so passionate a joy of physical realization that she sat up in her bed and, with the pale light on her face, the tears swelled to overflowing in her eyes."What should I have done, what should I have been," she whispered to herself, "if this had never happened to me?"Occasionally during those seven months there were letters reaching her from Bridnorth. Fanny wrote and Hannah wrote. Never was there a letter from Jane. At first they asked if they might come and see her, but when she replied she was happier alone, that seeing her as she was, they might the less be able to understand her happiness, they asked no more.In further letters they wrote giving her Bridnorth news, the people who had come down that summer, the comments that were made upon her absence and later, when the actual truth leaked out."People have been very kind on the whole," wrote Hannah in a subsequent letter. "I think they are really sorry. Only yesterday the Vicar said, 'God has strange ways of visiting us with trouble. We must take it that He means it for the best, impossible though it is for us to see what good can come of it.' I had never realized," was Hannah's comment, "that he was as broad-minded as this, and it has given me much help. I hope you are taking every care of yourself and that the old farmer's wife is competent to give you good advice upon what you ought to do. You say you are still working on the farm. Is that wise? Mother used to go to bed every day for an hour or so before you were born. I remember it so well. Oh, Mary, why did you ever let it happen?"Why? Why? Why had God ever found such favor in her in preference to them? That was all she asked herself.One day a letter lay on her plate at breakfast. It was readdressed from Bridnorth and was in Liddiard's handwriting. For long she debated whether she would open it or not. What memories might it not revive? What wound might it not open, even the scar of which she could hardly trace by now?Her child had no father. Touch with Liddiard's mind again in those moments might make her wish he had; might make her wish she had a hand to hold when her hour should come; might make her need the presence of some one close that she might not feel so completely alone.Yet even nursing these thoughts, her fingers had torn the envelope without volition; her eyes had turned to the paper without intent."I have heard from your sister Jane," he wrote. "She tells me she thinks I ought to know what is happening to you. She writes bitterly in every word as though I had cast you off to bear the burden of this alone. God knows that is not true. In the first letter I wrote you after I left Bridnorth, if you have kept it, you will find how earnestly I assured you I would, in such an event, do all I could. Where are you and why have you never appealed to me? Surely I could have helped and so willingly I would. Wherever you are, won't you let me come and see you? One of these days, of course without mentioning your name, I shall tell my wife everything. I have some feeling in my heart she will understand."That same day, Mary answered his letter."Please take no notice of my sister Jane. She would punish you as she has punished me. That is her view of what has happened. I know you would do all you could. It hurts me a little to hear you think I should doubt it. Do not worry about me. I am away in the country and intensely happy. Never was I so happy. Never I expect will I be quite so happy again. You have nothing to fret yourself about. It would cast some kind of shadow over all this happiness if I thought you were. You have no cause for it. I shall always be grateful to you. I do not put my address at the head of this letter, because somehow I fear you would come to see me, however strong my wishes were that you should not."
VIII
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!"
IX
None of them knew their Mary like this. Until that moment scarcely in such fashion had she known herself. New instincts had risen in her blood. Already the creative force was striking a dominant note in her voice, setting to fire a light in her eyes.
They felt that evening she had gained power that would never be theirs. Hannah fell obedient to it as one who humbles herself before mighty things; Fanny fell to fear, awed by this note of battle that rang like a challenge in her voice.
Jane alone it was who stood out away from them and, from amidst the ranks of that army of women who acknowledge the oath of convention, offering both heart and blood in its service, accepted the call to combat.
"You talk," she said, with her voice rising swiftly to the pitch of conflict; "you talk as though there were two ways of looking at what you've done. You talk as though there were something fine and splendid in it, but were not quite sure whether we were fine or splendid enough to see it. I never heard anything so arrogant in all my life. You seem to think it's a concession on your part to say you're going away. Of course you're going away. We've lived decently and cleanly in this place all these years. They've had no reason to be ashamed of us," her eyes flashed to the portraits and back to Mary, "not till now. Do you think we're going to flaunt our shame in their faces!"
Catching a look of pain in Hannah's eyes, as though that last blow had been too searching and too keen, she struck it home again.
"It is shame!" she said. "I'm not so different from all of you. I feel ashamed and so do they. What else can we possibly feel--a married man--a man you don't even love. It's filthy! And if you want to find another word for it than that, it's because you've even come to be ashamed of the truth. There's something in decency; there's something in modesty and cleanliness. They taught us it. The whole of their lives they taught us that. They brought us up to be proud of the class we belong to, not to behave like servant girls snatching kisses that don't belong to us with any man who comes along and likes to make a fool of us."
Fanny, who up to that moment had been gazing at her sister, caught in a wonder at this flow of speech, now of a sudden dropped her eyes, twining and untwining the fingers in her lap. How could Mary answer that? Cruel as it was, it had the sting of truth. She dared not look at her and could only wait in trembling for her reply.
She might have gained courage had she looked. Those blows had not beaten Mary to her knees. With her head thrown back, she waited for the last word, as though, now they had come to it, there were rules to be observed and pride in her own strength put aside all need to ignore them.
"Have you anything more to say?" she asked with a clear voice.
"Do you want any more than that?" retorted Jane.
"I don't mind how much more there is," replied Mary quietly, "we're saying all we feel. We aren't mincing things. I'm going to say what I feel. I'm going to hit and hurt as hard as you, so go on if you want to. This isn't a squabble. I don't want to bicker or cavil or interrupt. We're not just cats fighting now, we're women and we'll try and talk fair. Say anything more you've got to say."
"Well, if that's not enough for you," continued Jane, "if it is not enough to allude to what I saw with my own eyes, or to tell you there are servant girls who could behave better than that, then I'll talk of what, thank God, I didn't see and I'll tell you it's worse than shame what you have done and not even the excuse of being betrayed by love that you have to offer for it. I'll say it, Mary, and I don't care now because you've asked for it. You must be a bad woman in your heart, there must be something vile about you that makes you not fit to touch us or be in the same house with us. You've asked for that and you've got it. You've wanted every word there is to say. I should have left that unspoken if you hadn't asked for it. But that's what I feel. If you were a woman off the streets in London and sitting there at our table, I couldn't feel more sick or ashamed at the sight of you."
"Jane!" cried Hannah. "Oh, don't say anything so horrible or terrible as that!"
"What's terrible about it? What's horrible about it?" asked Mary. "It isn't true. Jane knows it isn't true. When a woman's fighting for the conventions Jane's fighting for, she doesn't use the truth--she's incapable of using it."
"What is the truth then?" exclaimed Jane. "If you've satisfied yourself you know, if you've invented anything truer than what I've said to make an excuse for yourself, let's hear what it is."
"Yes, you shall hear it," said Mary, and a deep breath she drew to steady the torrent of words that was surging in her mind. "First of all it's not true that I didn't love. I did. She's perverted the truth there. I did love. I'm not going to tear my heart open and show you how much. I don't love any longer. That's what Jane has made use of--the best she could. But what I feel now has nothing to do with it. What I feel now is the result of circumstances it won't help any way to explain. What happened that makes the vileness she talks about, happened when I was in love, as deeply in love as any woman can be, and as I never expect to be again. But it's not because of love that I'm going to defend myself. It's not because of love that I show this arrogance, as you call it. That's not the truth I've found or invented for myself. Love's only half the truth when you come to value and add up the things that count in a woman's life. Of all the married people we know, how many women who have found completion and justification for their existence really love their husbands? Love! Oh, I don't know! Love's an ecstasy that gives you a divine impetus towards the great purposes of life. I don't want to talk as though I'd been reading things out of a book. That almost sounds like it. But you can't imagine I haven't been thinking. These two months, these last six months, ever since something that happened last Christmas time, I have. And thinking's like reading, I suppose. It's reading your own thoughts."
A smile of security twitched at Jane's lips.
"Well, is this the wonderful truth?" she asked. "Are we to sit and listen to you, the youngest of us, telling us that love's an ecstasy? Because if you're going to give us a lecture about love, perhaps you'd like a glass of water beside you."
"No, that's not the wonderful truth," she replied quietly. She felt Jane could not sting her to anger and somehow she smiled. "The truth is this, which they up there had never learnt and no one seems to know. Life's not for wasting, but what have been our lives here, we four girls--girls! Women now! What has it been? Waste--waste--nothing but waste. Why has Hannah's hair gone gray? Why are you, Jane, bitter and sour and dry in your heart? Why's Fanny drawn and tired and thin and spare? Why do I look older than I am? Because we're waste--because Life's discarded us and thrown us on one side, because for a long time now there's been nothing in the world for us to do but sit in this room with those portraits looking down on our heads and just wait till we filter out like streams that have no flood of purpose to carry them to the sea. Our lives have only been a ditch, for water to stagnate in. We find nothing. We can't even find ourselves. Fanny there, grows thinner every year. And who's to blame for it?"
Her eyes shot up to the portraits on the wall and half furtively all their eyes followed hers.
"They're to blame, but not first of all they aren't. What makes it possible that Jane can speak as she does, talking about what has happened to me as the vilest of all vile things? Men have made it possible, because men have needed children for one reason and one reason only. Possession, inheritance and all the traditions of family and estate. These are the things men have wanted children for and so they made the social laws to meet their needs. But there are more things in the world to inherit than a pile of bricks and a handful of acres. Do you think I want my child to have no more inheritance than that? I tell you almost I'm glad he has no father! I'm glad he won't possess. There are things more wonderful than bricks and acres that are going to be his if I have the power to show them to him. There are things in the world more wonderful than those which you can just call your own. And it's those laws of possession and inheritance we have to thank for the idleness our lives have been set in. Jane thinks herself a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a fierce reserve, but those things are of true value only when they're needed, and what man has needed them of us? Who cares at all whether we've been chaste and pure? None but ourselves! And what's made us care but these false values that make Jane's shame of me?"
With flashing eyes she turned to Jane.
"You've asked for the truth," she cried now. "Well, you shall have it as you thought you gave it to me. You're not really ashamed of me. You're envious, jealous, and you're stung with spite. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. You'd give all you know to have what I have, but having allowed yourself to be a slave to the law all you have left is to take a pride in your slavery and deck it out with the pale flowers of modesty and self-respect."
She stood up suddenly from her chair and walked to the door. An instant there, she turned.
"As soon as I can get my things together," she said, "I'm going to a place in Warwickshire. If Hannah wants to know my plans afterwards I'll write and tell her. Don't think I'm not quite aware of being turned out. That's quite as it ought to be from Jane's point of view. You'd dismiss a servant at once. But don't think you've made me ashamed. I only want you to remember I went as proud, prouder than you stayed."
This was the real moment of Mary Throgmorton's departure from the square, white house in Bridnorth. When a few days later she left in the old coach that wound its way over the crest of the hill on which so often she had watched it, it was the mere anticlimax of her going and to all who saw that departure must have seemed but a simple happening in her life.
PHASE IV
I
The hay was made and stacked when Mary returned to Yarningdale Farm. They were thatching the day she arrived, wherefore there was none to meet her. The old fly with its faded green and musty cushions brought her over from the station. Those were long moments for contemplation as they trundled down the country roads and turned into the lanes that led ultimately to the farm.
The train had been too swift for arrested concentration of thought. In the train she had not been alone. Here, as the iron-rimmed wheels rumbled beneath her, crunching the grit upon the road with their unvarying monotonous note, she felt at last she had come into her haven and could turn without distraction into the thoughts of her being.
Had ever that old vehicle carried such burden before? With the things Jane had said still beating up and down in the cage of memory, she pictured some weeping servant girl dismissed her place, carrying her burden away with her in shame and fearfulness to find a hiding place in a staring, watchful world.
Looking out upon the fields as they passed, knowing them as property, to whoever they might belong, again she felt how the right of possession amongst men it was that had made shame of the right of creation amongst women.
"Trespassers will be prosecuted," she read on a passing board that stood out conspicuously in the hedge as they rolled by.
There it was! That was the law! Trespassers upon the rights of man! The law would descend with all its force upon their heads. But had they not trespassed upon the rights of women? Which was the greater? To inherit and possess? To conceive and create? Did not the world reach the utmost marches of its limitations in that grasping passion to possess? Was that not the root of the evil of war, the ugliness of crime, the stagnation of ideals? To possess and to increase his possessions, to number Israel and to keep all he had got, were not these the very letters of the law that held the world in slavery; were not these the chains in which, like bondwomen, she and her sisters had walked wearily through the years of their life?
The last lane they passed along led through a heavily timbered wood before they reached the farm. Some children there were gathering fagots into their aprons. She leant out of the window to watch them, her mind set free for that moment of the encompassing sense of possession.
That was the spirit that should rule the world. She knew how hopeless it was to think that it could be so. It was the spur of possession that urged men to competition. The whip of competition in turn it was that drove out idleness from the hearts of men. And yet, if women had the forming of ideals in the children that were theirs, might they not conceive some higher and more altruistic plane than this? Giving, not keeping, might not this be the deep source of a new civilization other than that which drove the whole world with the stinging lash of distrust?
She was going to bring a child into the world that would have nothing it could call its own, not even a name. The fagots of life it must gather. The berries on the hedgerows which belong to all would be its food. So she would train its heart to wish for only those things that belonged to all. Never should it know the fretting passion of possession. Work was man's justification, not ownership, and a workman he should be; one who gave with the sweat of his brow and who, by the heart to give which she would stir in him, would covet of none the things they called their own.
In this spirit--and little more it was in a grasping world than an ecstasy of thought--Mary Throgmorton came to Yarningdale Farm.
She knew it was a dream she had had; a dream induced in her by the heat of the day, the monotonous vibrations of that old vehicle she had ridden in, the still quiet of the countryside through which she had passed. Yet, nevertheless, for all its ecstasy, for all the dream it might be, such a dream it was as any woman must surely have, so circumstanced as she; so driven to rely upon what she alone could give her child for walking staff to serve him on his journey. Knowing it was a dream, it seemed no less real to her. Lying that night on the hard-mattressed bed, in her little room beneath the eaves of the thatch, she took the dream in purpose into her very soul. Give she must, and all she had, and what else had she to give but this? For that moment and for all the months to follow it could be given in the utmost fullness of her mind. Was it not now and most of all when he was closer to her being than ever it should so chance again, that she could give out of her heart the spirit that should go to make him strong to face the world that lay before him?
Dreams they might be, but such thoughts would she hold with all the tenacity of her mind until, through external means alone, she was compelled to feed him. For all those seven months to come, she herself would work--work in the fields as he must work. The sweat should be on her brow as it should be on his. Her limbs should ache as one day his in happy fatigue of labor should ache as well.
It was thus she would make him while yet the time of creation was all her own and then, when out of her breast he was to take his feed of life, there would be ways by which she alone could train him to his purpose.
So still she lay, thinking it all out with thoughts that knew no words to hamper them, that when at last she fell asleep, it was as one passing through the hanging of a curtain that just fell into its concealing folds behind her as she went.
II
"I've told the old man," Mrs. Peverell informed Mary the next morning. "Not all of it, I haven't. Men don't understand what beant just so. He can't abide what's dropped in the farmyard comin' up. ''Tis wheat,' I tell 'en. ''Tain't crops,' says he. ''Twill make a bag of seed,' I says. 'The ground weren't prepared for it,' says he. That's men. Mebbe they're right. 'Nature may have her plan,' I tell 'en, 'but God have his accidents.' 'I can't grow nawthing by accident,' says he. 'You can't,' says I, 'but afore you came, that's the very way they did grow and I guess there's as much rule about accidents as there is of following peas with wheat.' He looks at me then and he says no more, which is good as sayin'--'You women be daft things,' for he picks up his hat and goes out and the understandin' doant come back into his eyes afore he feels the tilled earth under his feet."
So Mr. Peverell knew that in certain time Mary was going to have a baby. He looked at her shyly when next they met. It was in the orchard sloping down the hill that drops to the towpath of the canal. He was calculating the yield of apples, just showing their green and red, and she had come to tell him that the midday meal was ready.
"Thank you, ma'am," said he, when he had always called her "Miss" before. This was the hedge, the boundary of that tilled and cultivated field his mind had placed her in. Beyond that limit, as Mrs. Peverell had said, he would not understand. With a childish simplicity he had accepted all that his wife had told him. She had appeased his need for understanding. Perfectly satisfied, he asked for no more.
"Are you going to give me work to do?" she asked as they walked back together to the house. "Real work, I mean. I can work and I'm so interested."
"Work won't be easy for the likes of you," said he.
"No, but there are things I could do. Things that aren't quite so laborious as others. I could milk the cows, couldn't I? If once I got the trick of it, it would be easy enough, wouldn't it?"
"Women beant bad milkers," he agreed with encouragement. "There's no harm in 'ee tryin'."
"When could I begin?"
"'Ee could try a hand this evenin' when our lad brings the cows in. They be fair easy--them's we've got now. Easy quarters they all of them have and they stand quiet enough wi' a bit of coaxin'. I dessay 'ee could coax 'em well enough. 'Ee've a softy voice to listen to when 'ee's wantin' a thing and means to get it."
She laughed.
"I didn't know I had," she said.
"No? Women doant know nawthin', seems to me. 'Mazin' 'tis to me how well they manages along."
She went into the cow sheds that evening and had her first lesson. It was tiring and trying and unsuccessful and her back ached. But in the last few minutes, just when she was giving up all hope of ever being able to do it and the strain of trying had relaxed in her fingers, a stream of milk shot forth from the quarter she held in response to the simplest pressure of her hand.
"That's it! That's it!" exclaimed the boy.
"Doant 'ee get into the way of strippin' 'em with 'ee's fingers, not till they've got to be stripped and 'twon't come t'other way."
She rose the next morning early when through her window she heard the cows coming into the yard and slipping on her clothes without thought of how she looked, she went down to the shed and tried again.
In three days' time she had mastered it and gave an exhibition of her skill to Mr. Peverell who stood by with smiles suffusing his face.
"That'll do," said he. "The lad couldn't do no better'n that."
"Well, can't I look after the cows altogether?" she begged. "Drive them in and out and feed and milk them? Then you can have the boy for other work."
"It's a samesome job," he warned her. "There's clockwork inside them cows' udders and 'tain't always convenient to a lady like yourself to go by it."
"Can't you believe me," she exclaimed, "when I tell you I don't consider myself a lady, any more than Mrs. Peverell wastes her time in doing? I'm just a woman like she is and I want to work, not spasmodically, not just here and there, but all the time. Do you remember what you said about helping?"
"I've no recollection," he replied.
"Well, you said it wasn't help was wanted in a hay-field, 'twas work. I want to make something of myself while I'm here. I don't just want to think I'm making something. Can't you trust me to do it?"
Mr. Peverell looked with a smile at his wife who had come out to witness the exhibition.
"What do you think, mother?" said he.
"I think women knows a lot more'n what you understand, Mr. Peverell. You can understand all what you can handle and if you could handle her mind, you'd know well enough she could do it."
"So be," said he obediently and he turned to the boy. "You can take cartin' that grass out 'long them hedges this afternoon," he said. "There woant be no cows for 'ee to spend 'ee time milkin'. We've got a milkmaid come to Yarningdale. They'll think I be doin' mighty well with my crops come I tell 'em next market I've got a milkmaid well as a boy."
III
The life of Mary Throgmorton during those months while she worked at Yarningdale Farm was a succession of days so full of peace, so instinct with the real beauties which enter the blood, suffuse the heart, and beat through all the veins, that her soul, as she had meant it should be, was attuned by them to minister to its purpose.
At six every morning she descended from her little room beneath the thatched eaves. At that hour the air was still. The chill of the dew that had fallen was yet in it. The grass as she walked through the meadows was always wet underfoot. Mist of heat on the fine days was lingering over the fields. Out of it the cows lifted their heads in a welcome following their curiosity as she came to drive them back into the farm.
When once they had come to know her voice, when once they had come to recognize that straight figure in the cotton frocks she wore, no further need there was for her but to reach the gate and open it, calling a name she knew one by. They ceased their grazing at once and turned towards her. One by one they trooped through into the lane that led to the farm. One after another, she had a name to murmur as they went by.
No moment in all that labor there was but had its freedom for contemplation. As she walked through the meadows to gather them; as she followed them down the lanes; as against the flanks of them she leant her cheek, cool with that morning air, stealing their warmth, there ever was opportunity for her thoughts.
It soon became automatic that process of milking. Only at the last moment when the hot stream of milk began to be flagging in its flow, did she have to detach her thoughts from the purpose that governed her, and concentrate her mind upon the necessary measure of stripping them to the last drop.
But for these moments, her thoughts were never absent from that sacred freight she carried to its journey's end. The very occupation she had chosen all contributed to such meditation as her mind had need of. The milk she wet her fingers with as she settled down upon the stool before each patient beast, hot with the temperature of its blood, was stream of the very fountain of life her thoughts were built on. The rhythmic, sibilant note as it hissed into the pail between her knees, became motif for the melody of her contemplation.
She whispered to them sometimes as she milked. Whisperings they were that defy the capture of expression. No words could voice them as she voiced them with the murmur on her lips. Sometimes it was she whispered to the quiet beast against whose velvet flank her cheek was warming. Sometimes she whispered to her child as though his cheek were there fast pressed against her and his lips were drawing the stream of life out of her breast.
It cannot be wondered that she thought often of these things while she was milkmaid at Yarningdale Farm. In any environment the mind of a woman at such a time must seek them out, stealing pictures of the future to feed her imagination upon. But there, in those surroundings, Mary Throgmorton was close upon her very purpose as the days turned from morn to evening and the weeks slipped by towards the hour for which she waited.
But deeper than all such thoughts as these, there had entered her soul the wider and fuller conceptions of life. Subconsciously she realized the cycle it was, the endless revolving of the circle of design that had no beginning and no end but was forever emerging from and entering into itself in its eternal revolutions, always creating some surplus of the divine essence of energy, always discharging it in thought, in word and deed; flung from it, as drops of water are flung from the speed of the mill wheel while it turns to the ceaseless flowing of the stream.
What else could she see with a heart for seeing, what else, so close to Nature as she was, could she see but this? Every day, every night, the cattle ate their fill of the grass that had grown in their pastures. Every morning, every evening, they gave their yield of all they had consumed. It was no definite and conscious observation that brought to her eyes those vivid and luxuriant patches of green in the fields where the cows had manured the grass; it was no determined deduction that conveyed to her the realization how a field must be grazed, must be eaten away and consumed to increase it in the virtue of its bearing. It was no mechanical process of mind which led her to the understanding of how when the field was cut for hay and stacked within the yard to feed the cattle through the winter months, still it returned in its inevitable cycle to the fields to feed the flow of life.
Through the winter months the cows were stalled and kept in their pound. In that pound they trod to manure the straw the fields had grown and back again it would come in the early spring to lie once more upon the fields that had given it; so ever and ever in its ceaseless procession, some surplus of the energy that was created would be set free. A calf would go out of the farm and be sold at the nearest market. For three days its mother would cry through the fields, hurt with her loss, grudging her milk, but in the end Nature would assert itself. She would be caught back into the impetus of the everlasting cycle of progression, fulfilling the purpose of life, contributing to the creation of that energy which was to find its expression in the sons of men.
All this without knowing it she learnt in the fields and under the thatch of Yarningdale Farm. All this, as she had meant to do, she assimilated into her being to feed that which she herself, in her own purpose, was creating.
So her son should live, if it were a boy she bore. So she planned for him a life that had none of the limitations of possession, but must give back again all that it took with interest compounded of noblest purpose. This alone should be his inheritance, this generosity of heart and soul and being that knew no other impulse than to give the whole and more than it had received.
Not one of these impressions came with set outline of idea to the mind of Mary Throgmorton. In the evenings as she sat in the kitchen parlor, sewing the tiny garments she would need and listening to Mr. Peverell talking as he always did about the land, it was thus she absorbed them. Drawn in with her breath they were, as though the mere act of breathing assimilated them rather than a precise effort of receptivity.
The same it was in the fields where she walked, in the stalls where she milked her cows. Each breath she took was deep. It was as if the scent of those stalls, the air about the meadows, the lights of morning and evening all taught her that which she wished to learn.
Her mind was relaxed and just floating upon life those days. It is not to be understood where she learnt that this must be so. It is not to be conceived how, with her utter inexperience, she knew that no determined effort to create her child could serve the purpose that she had. In through the pores of her being, as it became the very air her lungs inhaled, she took the sensations which day by day were borne upon her.
There were times when, after the first physical consciousness of her condition, she forgot she was going to bear a child. There were times when the knowledge of it seemed so distant, that it was as though she walked and lived in a dream, a sensuous dream, where there was no pain, no suffering of mind, but things were and were not, just as they happened like clouds to pass before her vision.
There were times when she knew so well all that there lay before her. Then pain seemed almost welcome to her mind. Then she would promise herself with a fierce joy she would not submit to any of the subterfuges of skill to ease her of it.
"I'll know he's being born," she would say aloud. "I'll know every moment to keep for memory. Why should I hide away from life, or lose an instant because it comes with pain?"
So Mary Throgmorton traversed the months that brought her to fulfillment; so time slipped by with its clear mornings and the dropping lights of evening till winter came and still, with the nearing approach of her hour, she continued milking the cows for Mr. Peverell. Not all the persuasion they offered could make her cease from her duties.
"I'm milkmaid here," she said. "Any farm girl would keep on to the last. There'll be some days yet for my hands to lie in my lap. Let them touch something till then."
They let her have her way. Only the carter and the boy were there about the place to see her. She had no sense of shyness with them. Every now and again some cow was taken to a farm near by to profit. It was common talk, unhampered by any reticence, to comment upon the condition of each beast as she neared her calving time. The functions and operations of Nature were part of the vast plan of that ever-revolving cycle to them. They knew no coarseness in their attitude of mind; they knew no preciousness of modesty.
Before she had been at Yarningdale for long, Mary realized with the greater fullness of perception how vast a degree of false modesty there was in the world as people congregated in the cities and with brick walls and plaster shut themselves out from the sight of Nature.
It had all been false, that modesty which their mother had taught them. Love, pleasure and passion, if these were the fruits of the soul man had won for himself, what shame could there be in permitting them their just expression? Love was uplifting and in the ecstasy it brought were not the drops flung farther, higher from the wheel in the acceleration of its revolutions? Was not the stream in flood, those moments when love came in its torrent to the heart of a man? Once for a moment she had loved and knew now that ecstasy could never come to her again.
Pleasure, it was true, she had never known, but the deep passion of motherhood none could rob her of. All those days and weeks and months were hours of passionate joy to her. Never was she idle. Never was her passion still.
That moment, one night it was with the moonlight falling on her bed, when first she felt the movement of her child within her, was so passionate a joy of physical realization that she sat up in her bed and, with the pale light on her face, the tears swelled to overflowing in her eyes.
"What should I have done, what should I have been," she whispered to herself, "if this had never happened to me?"
Occasionally during those seven months there were letters reaching her from Bridnorth. Fanny wrote and Hannah wrote. Never was there a letter from Jane. At first they asked if they might come and see her, but when she replied she was happier alone, that seeing her as she was, they might the less be able to understand her happiness, they asked no more.
In further letters they wrote giving her Bridnorth news, the people who had come down that summer, the comments that were made upon her absence and later, when the actual truth leaked out.
"People have been very kind on the whole," wrote Hannah in a subsequent letter. "I think they are really sorry. Only yesterday the Vicar said, 'God has strange ways of visiting us with trouble. We must take it that He means it for the best, impossible though it is for us to see what good can come of it.' I had never realized," was Hannah's comment, "that he was as broad-minded as this, and it has given me much help. I hope you are taking every care of yourself and that the old farmer's wife is competent to give you good advice upon what you ought to do. You say you are still working on the farm. Is that wise? Mother used to go to bed every day for an hour or so before you were born. I remember it so well. Oh, Mary, why did you ever let it happen?"
Why? Why? Why had God ever found such favor in her in preference to them? That was all she asked herself.
One day a letter lay on her plate at breakfast. It was readdressed from Bridnorth and was in Liddiard's handwriting. For long she debated whether she would open it or not. What memories might it not revive? What wound might it not open, even the scar of which she could hardly trace by now?
Her child had no father. Touch with Liddiard's mind again in those moments might make her wish he had; might make her wish she had a hand to hold when her hour should come; might make her need the presence of some one close that she might not feel so completely alone.
Yet even nursing these thoughts, her fingers had torn the envelope without volition; her eyes had turned to the paper without intent.
"I have heard from your sister Jane," he wrote. "She tells me she thinks I ought to know what is happening to you. She writes bitterly in every word as though I had cast you off to bear the burden of this alone. God knows that is not true. In the first letter I wrote you after I left Bridnorth, if you have kept it, you will find how earnestly I assured you I would, in such an event, do all I could. Where are you and why have you never appealed to me? Surely I could have helped and so willingly I would. Wherever you are, won't you let me come and see you? One of these days, of course without mentioning your name, I shall tell my wife everything. I have some feeling in my heart she will understand."
That same day, Mary answered his letter.
"Please take no notice of my sister Jane. She would punish you as she has punished me. That is her view of what has happened. I know you would do all you could. It hurts me a little to hear you think I should doubt it. Do not worry about me. I am away in the country and intensely happy. Never was I so happy. Never I expect will I be quite so happy again. You have nothing to fret yourself about. It would cast some kind of shadow over all this happiness if I thought you were. You have no cause for it. I shall always be grateful to you. I do not put my address at the head of this letter, because somehow I fear you would come to see me, however strong my wishes were that you should not."