Part 2

In such a state of mind must many a woman pause. It is as though for one instant she had power to arrest the traffic of time that she might take this crossing in the streets of life with unhampered deliberation. For here often she will choose her direction in the full consciousness of thought. No longer dare she leave her destiny to the hazard of chance. It has become, not the Romance that will happen upon her in the glorious and unexpected suddenness of ecstasy, but the Romance she must find, eager in her searching, swift in her choice lest life all go by and the traffic of time sweep over her.

This choice she must make or work must save her, for life has become as vital to women as it is to men. At twenty-nine this is many a woman's dilemma. Yet at twenty-nine no such consciousness of the need of deliberation had entered the mind of Mary Throgmorton. Perhaps it was because there were no younger creatures about her, growing up to the youth she was leaving behind; perhaps because in the quietness of seclusion, by that Bridnorth stream, the gentle, rippling song of it had never wakened her to life.

In the height of its flood, that Bridnorth stream had never a note to distress the placidity of her thoughts. She had heard indeed the Niagara of life in London, but as a tourist only, standing for a moment on its brink with a guide shouting the mere material facts of so-called interest in her ears. It was all too deafening and astounding to be more than a passing wonder in her mind. She would return to Bridnorth with its thunder roaring in her ears, glad of the quiet stream again and having gained no more experience of life than does an American tourist of the life of London when he counts the steps up to the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral and hurries down to catch the train to the birthplace of Shakespeare.

At twenty-nine, Mary Throgmorton was in many respects still the same girl as when at the age of eighteen she had first bound that fair hair upon her head and looked with all the seriousness of her gray eyes at the vision the reflecting mirror presented to her. Scarcely had she noticed her growth into womanhood for, as has been said, her beauty was not that of the flesh that is pink and white. It was in stone her beauty lay and even her own hands did not warm to the touch of it. But where in Bridnorth was there kindling enough to light so fierce a fire as she needed to overwhelm her?

This is the tragedy of a thousand women who pass through life and never touch its meaning; these thousand women who one day will alter the force-made laws for a world built nearer to the purpose of their being; these thousand women to whom the figure of Mary Throgmorton stands there by Bridnorth village in her monument of stone upon the Devon cliffs.

With all this unconsciousness of design in the pattern of her life, the coming of the coach to Mary is well-nigh too subtle to admit of capture in the rigid medium of words. Truly enough, if deeply engaged in one of the many books she read, there were times and often when, from those front windows of the square, white house, she would let her sisters report upon the new or strange arrivals set down outside the Royal George.

Even Jane, with her shrewdness of vision, was misled by this into the belief that Mary cared less than them all what interest the Abbotscombe coach might bring for the moment into their lives.

"I wonder what his handicap is," she had said when they had described a young man descending from the box seat with a bag of golf clubs.

Notwithstanding all Mary's undoubted excellence at that game or indeed at any game to which she gave her hand, Jane, disposed by nature to doubt, would sharply look at her. But apparently there was no intention to deceive. If the book was really engrossing, she would return to its pages no sooner than the remark was made, as though time would prove what sort of performer he was, since all golfers who came to Bridnorth found themselves glad to range their skill against hers on the links.

And when, as it happened, she joined them at those front windows, consenting to their little deceptions of casual interest in the midst of more important occupations--for Jane would say, "Mary, you can't just stare"--it was with no more than calculation as to what amusement the visitors would provide that Mary appeared to regard their arrival.

Not one of them, however, not even Fanny, knew that there were days in those Spring and Summer months, when Mary, setting forth with her strong stride and walking alone up on to the heathered moors would, with intention, seat herself in a spot where the Abbotscombe coach could be seen winding its way down the hill into Bridnorth. It was one spot alone from which the full stretch of the road could be observed. By accident one day she had found it, just at that hour when the coach went by. She had known and made use of it for six years and more.

At first it was the mere interest of a moving thing passing in the far line of vision to its determined destination; the interest of that floating object the stream catches in its eddies and carries in its flowing out of sight.

So it was at first, until in some subconscious way it grew to hold for her a sense of mystery. She would never have called it mystery herself--the attraction had no name in her mind. No more did she do than sit and watch its passage, dimly conscious that that little moving speck upon the road, framed in its aura of dust, was moving into the horizon of her life and as soon would move out again, leaving her the same as she was before.

Habit it was to think she would be left the same; yet always whilst it was there in the line of her eyes, it had seemed that something, having no word in her consciousness, might happen to her with its passing.

So vividly sometimes it appeared to be moving directly into her life. So vividly sometimes, when it had gone, it appeared to have left her behind. She would have described it no more graphically or consciously than that.

For during those six years, nothing indeed had happened to her. The passing of the coach along that thread of road had remained a mystery. Companions and acquaintances it had brought and often; women with whom she had formed friendships, men with whom she had played strenuously and enjoyably in their games of golf.

Never had it brought her even such an experience as her elder sister's. She had never wished it should. There was no such readiness to yield in her as there was in Fanny; no undisguised eagerness for life such as might tempt the heartlessness of a man to a passing flirtation.

She treated all men the same with the frank candor of her nature, which allowed no familiarity of approach. Only with his heart could a man have reached her, never with his arms or his lips as Fanny had been.

Perhaps in those brief acquaintanceships, mainly occupied with their games, there was no time for the deeper emotions of a man's heart to be stirred. But most potent reason of all, it was that she had none of the superficial allurements of her sex. Strength was the beauty of her. It was a common attitude of hers to stand with legs apart set firmly on her feet as she talked. Yet there was no masculinity she conveyed. Only it was that so would a man find her if he sought passion in her arms and perhaps they feared the passion they might discover.

It was the transitoriness not only of hers but of all those women's touch with life that made the pattern of their destiny. No man had stayed long enough in Bridnorth to discover the tenderness and nobility of Mary Throgmorton. In that cold quality of her beauty they saw her remotely and only in the distances in which she placed herself. None had come close enough to observe that gentle smile the sculptor had curved about her lips, the deep and tender softness of her eyes. It was in outline only they beheld her, never believing that beneath that firm full curve of her breast there could beat a heart as wildly and as fearfully as a netted bird's, or that once beating so, that heart would beat for them forever.

It was just the faint knowledge of this in herself which made that passing coach a mystery to Mary. It was not as with Fanny that she thought of it as a vehicle of her Destiny, but that, as she sat there on the moors above Bridnorth, it was a link with the world she had so often read of in her books.

It came to her out of the blue over the hill, as a pigeon come with a message under its wing. Detaching that message again and again, she read it in a whisper in her heart.

"There is life away there beyond the hill," it ran. "There is life away there beyond the hill--and life is pain as well as joy and life is sorrow as well as happiness; but life is ours and we are here to live."

That message somewhere in the secrets of her heart she kept and every time the coach passed by when she was in the house the horses' hoofs on the village road beat in her thoughts--"Life is ours, we are here to live."

VII

Portraits in oil of Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton hung on the walls of the dining-room in their square, white house. Though painted by a local artist when Mary was quite a child, they had one prominent virtue of execution. They were arresting likenesses.

It is open to question whether a man has a right to impose his will when he is gone upon those who follow after him. With Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton it was not so much an imposition of will. Their money had been left without reservation to be divided equally amongst the four girls. If any imposition there might be, it was of their personality. Looking down at their children from those two portraits on the wall, they still controlled the spirit of that house as surely as when they had been alive.

Every morning and evening, Hannah read the prayers as her father had done before her. No more could she have ceased from doing this than could any one of them have removed his portrait from its exact place in the dining-room.

It was the look in her father's and her mother's eyes more than any comment of her sisters' that Fanny feared to meet after her episode with the visitor to Bridnorth.

For in their lifetime, Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton had been parents of that rigid Victorian spirit. Love they must have given their children or their influence would never have survived. Love indeed they did give, but it was a stern and passionless affection.

Looking down upon their four daughters in those days of the beginning of this story, they must have been well satisfied that if not one of them had found the sanctity of married life then at least not one of them, unless perhaps it was Fanny, had known the shame of an unhallowed passion.

Fanny they might have had their doubts about. After that episode she often felt they had; often seemed to detect a glance not so much of pity as of pain in her mother's eyes. At her father, for some weeks after the visitor's departure, she was almost afraid to look. In his life he had been just. He would have been just in his condemnation of her then. Self-control had been the measure of all his actions. Of self-control in that moment on the cliffs she knew she had had none. She had leant herself into his arms because in the violent beating of her breast it had seemed she had no strength to do otherwise. And when he kissed her, it had felt as though all the strength she had in her soul and body had been taken from her into his.

Had her father known such sensations as that when he talked of self-control?

Well indeed did she know what her mother would have said. To all those four girls she had said the same with parental regard; and to each one severally as they had come to that age when she had felt it expedient to enlighten them.

"God knows," she had always begun, for the use of the name of God hallowed such moments as these to her and softened the terribleness of all she had to say, "God knows, my dear, what future there is in store for you. If it is His will you should never marry, you will be spared much of the pain, much of the trouble and the penalties of life. I love your father. No woman could have loved him more. He is a fine and a good man. But there are things a woman must submit to in her married life--that is the cross she must bear--which no words of mine can describe to you. Nevertheless, don't think I complain. Don't think I do not realize there is a blessed reward. Her children are the light of life to her. Without them, I dread to think what she must suffer at the hands of Nature when the mercy of God has no recompense in store. Eve was cursed with the bearing of children, but they brought the mercy of God to her in their little hands when once they were born."

This usually had been her concluding phrase. This without variation she repeated to all of them. Of this phrase, if vanity she had at all, she was greatly proud. It seemed to her, in illuminating language to comprise the whole meaning of her discourse.

Hannah, Jane, Fanny, all in their turn had accepted it in silence. It had been left to Mary to say--

"It seems hard on a man that he should have to suffer, because he doesn't get the reward of having children like the woman does. Of course they're his--but he doesn't bring them into the world."

At this issue, Mrs. Throgmorton had taken her daughter's hands in hers and, in a tone of voice Mary had never forgotten, she had replied--

"I never said, my dear, that the man did suffer. He doesn't. If it were not for the sanctity of marriage, it would have to be described as unholy pleasure to him. That pleasure a woman must submit to. That pleasure it is her bitter duty to give. That's why I say I dread to think what she must suffer, as some unfortunately do, when the mercy of God does not recompense her with the gift of children."

Closely watching her daughter's face in the silence that followed, Mrs. Throgmorton had known that Mary's mind was not yet satisfied with the food for thought and conduct she had given it. She became conscious of a dread of what this youngest child of hers would say next. And when Mary spoke at last, her worst fears were realized.

"Can a woman," she said, "give pleasure to the man she loves when all the time she is suffering shame and agony herself? If he loves her, what pleasure could it be to him?"

Mrs. Throgmorton had closed her eyes and doubtless in that moment of their closure she had prayed. So confused had been her mind in face of this question that for the instant she could do no more than say--

"What do you mean?"

"Well--simply--" replied Mary in a childlike innocence--"simply that it seems to me if a woman is giving pleasure to a man she really loves, she must be getting pleasure herself. If I give you a present at Christmas and you like it and it gives you pleasure, I'm not sure it doesn't give me more pleasure than you to see you pleased, because--well, because I love you. Why do you say 'It's more blessed to give than to receive'?"

That little touch of affection from her daughter had stirred Mrs. Throgmorton's heart. Unable to restrain herself, she had taken Mary's hands again with a closer warmth in her own.

"Ah, more blessed, dear--yes--there is of course the pleasure of blessedness, the satisfaction of duty uncomplainingly done. I have never denied that."

She had spoken this triumphantly, feeling that light at last had been shown in answer to her prayer. Not for a moment was she expectant of her daughter's reply.

"I don't mean that, mother," Mary had said. "Satisfaction seems to me a thing you know in your own heart. No one can share it with you. Of course I don't know the feelings of a man, how could I? I'm not married. But if I were a man it wouldn't give me any pleasure to think that the woman I loved was just satisfied because she'd done her duty. I should want to share my pleasure with her, not look on at a distance at her satisfaction. If a man ever loves me, I believe I shall feel what he feels and if I do, I shall be glad of it and make him glad too."

She had said it all without emotion, almost without one note of feeling in her voice; but the mere words themselves were sufficient to strike terror into Mrs. Throgmorton's heart. That terror showed itself undisguised in her face.

"My dear--my dear--" she whispered--"I pray God you never do feel so, or if it be His will you should, that you will never forget your modesty or your self-respect so much as to reveal it to any man however much you may love him."

To these four girls in that square, white house in Bridnorth, this was such an influence as still reigned in undisputed sway. The eyes of their parents from those portraits still looked down upon them at their prayers or at their meals. Still the voice of Mrs. Throgmorton whispered in Mary's ears--"I pray God you will never forget your modesty or your self-respect." Still, even when she was twenty-nine, Mary's eyes would lift to her father's face gazing down from the wall upon her, wondering if he had ever known the life she had suspicion of from the books she read. Still she would glance at them both, prepared to believe that, however dominant it was in their home, the expression of their lives had been only the husk of existence.

And then perhaps at that very moment the coach might pass by on its way to the Royal George and the horses' hoofs would sing as they beat upon the road--"Life is ours--we are here to live--Life is ours--we are here to live."

Yet there in Bridnorth at twenty-nine, no greater impetus had come to her to live than the most vague wonderings, the most transient of dreams.

VIII

It was the Sunday before Christmas of the year 1894. No coach had come to Bridnorth for three weeks. The snow which had fallen there was still lying six inches deep all over the countryside and on the roads where it had been beaten down at all, was as hard as ice. Footmarks had mottled it. It shone in the sun like the skin of a snow leopard.

The hills around Bridnorth and all the fields as far as eye could see were washed the purest white. Every hedge had its mantle, every tree and every branch its sleeves of snow. The whole world seemed buried. Scarce one dark object was to be seen. Only the sea stretched dark and gray like ice water, the little waves in that still air there was, falling on the beach with the brittle noises of breaking glass.

Only for this, a silence had fallen everywhere. Footsteps made no sound. The birds were hidden in the hearts of the hedges and even when hunger drew them forth in search of berries, it was without noise they went, in swift, dipping flights--a dark thing flashing by, no more.

Every one put on goloshes to climb or descend the hill to church. The Vicar and his wife came stepping over from the Vicarage close by like a pair of storks and when the bell stopped ringing it was as though another cloak of silence had been flung over Bridnorth village. The Vicar felt that additional silence as acutely as any one. It seemed to him it fell to prepare the way for worship in the house of God and the sermon he was about to preach.

The attendance that morning was no different from what it would have been had the roads been clear. Going to church in the country is a comfortable habit. At their midday meal afterwards the subject of the attendance would crop up at the Vicar's table as it always did, ever full of interest as is the subject of the booking-office returns to a theatrical manager. He would congratulate himself upon the numbers he had seen below him from that eminence of the pulpit and would have been hurt beyond degree had any one suggested it was largely habit that brought them there.

The Throgmorton family would no more have thought of staying away because of the weather than they would have thought of turning the two portraits in the dining-room with their faces to the wall.

They collected in the square hall of the square, white house. They put on their gloves and their goloshes; they held their prayer books in their hands; they each looked for the last time to see that their threepenny bits were safe in the palms of their gloves. Then they set off.

The church in the country is a meeting place in a sense other than that of worship. You may desire at most times the quietness of your own home, but you like to see the world about you in a public place.

They worshipped God, those people in Bridnorth. Who could hope to maintain that they did not? They were close enough to Him in all conscience and fact on those Devon hills. But that worship was more in the silence of their own hearts, more on the floor at their own bedside than ever it was at the service conducted by the Vicar as so many services are conducted by so many Vicars in so many parishes throughout the length and breadth of the whole country.

The interest of seeing a fresh face, of even seeing an old face if it be under a new hat; the mere interest of human contact, of exchanging a word as they went in or mildly criticizing as they came out; the mild necessity of listening to what the Vicar said from the pulpit, the sterner necessity of trying to understand what he meant; the excitement of wearing a new frock, the speculations upon the new frock worn by another, these were more the causes of a good attendance in the worst of weather, these and that same consciousness of being overlooked, of having one's conduct under the gaze of all who chose to satisfy themselves about it.

As the Vicar climbed the pulpit steps, the congregation settled themselves down with that moving in their pews with all customary signs of that spirit of patience every priest believes to be one of interest. Leaning her square, strong shoulders against the upright back of the Throgmorton pew, Mary composed her mind with mild attention. Fanny shifted her hassock to the most restful position for her feet. That sharp interrogative look of criticism drew itself out in the line of Jane's lips and steadied itself in her eyes. Hannah was the only one upon whose face a rapt expression fell. With all her gray hair and her forty years, she was the youngest of them all, still cherishing her ideals of the infallible priest in the man of cloth; still believing that the voice of God could speak even through the inferior brain of a country Vicar. Above all there were her children who the next morning would ask her what the sermon meant. It was necessary if only for their sakes she should not lose a word that was said.

After that pause on his knees when the Vicar's head was bent in prayer, he rose to his feet and, as he spread out the pages of his sermon before him, cast a significant glance around the church. This was preliminary to every sermon he preached. It was as though he said--"I cannot have any signs of inattention. If your minds have wandered at all during the service, they must wander no more. I feel I have got something to say which is vital to all of you."

All this happened that December morning, just as it had occurred every morning for the twenty years he had been the shepherd of their souls. It was almost as long as Mary could remember.

Having cast that glance about him, he cleared his throat--the same sounds as Jane once caustically remarked they had heard one thousand times, allowing two Sundays in the year for a _locum tenens_.

Then he gave out his text: "And the Angel said unto her--'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.'"

IX

Perhaps it was the sound of her own name there amongst all those people which stirred her mind and added a quicker beat of the pulse to Mary Throgmorton's heart. The full significance of the text, the circumstance to which it referred, these could not have reached her mind so swiftly, even though Fanny with a sharp turn of the head had looked at her.

"'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God.'"