Part 4

Something was wrong. Vaguely she sensed it was the waste of life. It was beyond the function of her mind to follow the reason of that wastage to its source. Her process of thought could not seek out the social laws that had woven themselves about the lives of women until, so much were they the slaves of the law, that they would preach it, earnestly, fervently, believingly as her mother had done.

Something was wrong. That was just all she knew; but in those moments, she knew it well. There were those three women about her to prove how wrong it was. There was she herself nearing that phase when the wrong would be done to her, and she would be powerless as they had been to prevent it.

"Fear not, Mary--" it was as though she heard a voice beckoning within her--"Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God."

Ever since they had come to an age of understanding, their spirits had been warped and twisted with the formalities of life. To fit the plan of those laws man makes by force, they had been bent in their growing to the pattern of his needs. It was those needs of his that had invented the forced virtues of their modesty and self-respect, beneath the pressure of which he kept them as he required them, trained and set back to fulfill the meaning of his self-centered purpose.

Modesty and self-respect, surely these were qualities of all, of men as well as women. By unnatural temperatures to force them in their growth was to produce exotic flowers having none of the simple sweetness of sun-given odors in their scent.

As life was meant, it grew in the open spaces; it was an upright tree, spreading its green boughs under the pure light of heaven. There was nothing artificial about life. It was free.

It was the favor of God. That was the truth she had come by and with her eyes marking that weary look of resignation in Fanny's face, she knew she would not fear it whenever or however it came.

This was the seed, planted in the heart of Mary Throgmorton, which in its season was to bring forth and, for the life of the woman she was, bear the fruit of her being.

PHASE II

I

It was in the summer of 1895 that Julius Liddiard came to Bridnorth. He came alone, having engaged rooms at the White Hart.

From the Throgmorton windows he was observed descending at the George Hotel when, with a glance at Mary, it was announced by Jane that he played golf. As he slung a bulky satchel over his shoulder, Fanny surmised him to be an artist, entertaining for a swift moment as it sped across her mind, a vision of herself sitting beside him, watching his sketches with absorbing interest as they came to life beneath his brush.

It remained with Jane to make the final observation as, accompanied by a man carrying his trunk, he passed the windows on his way back to the White Hart.

"Has his suit case polished," she said. "He's not an artist. Paints for fun. Probably has a valet. Too wealthy for the likes of Bridnorth. Comes here to be alone."

If judging the facts of appearance leads to a concept of truth, these observations of Jane were shrewdly accurate. Time, during the first week, proved the soundness of their deduction.

He was seen by Fanny on the cliff's edge above the bay, painting with pleasing amateurish results and so engrossed in his work as scarcely to notice her presence. She had looked over his shoulder as she passed. She was no critic but had, what is more common to find, the candor of ill-formed opinion.

"It was not bad," she said--"rather slobbery. It was running all over the paper. P'r'aps he pulls it together. Course I didn't stop."

Jane's eyes narrowed. It was superfluous to say she did not stop. That was one of Fanny's lies; one of the lies all women tell which record their conscious intentions while they belie the subconscious things they do. She had not meant to stop. It was obvious to Jane that she did. Her next words proved it.

"Can't understand," she said, "how any one can become so engrossed, messing about with paints on a piece of paper."

She had stopped and he had not noticed her. After a week had passed, Mary came back one evening from the golf club. They were all having tea.

"His name's Liddiard," she said casually in the midst of a silence, and they all knew to whom she alluded and what had occurred.

Questions poured upon her then from all but Hannah, who went on eating her pieces of bread and butter, letting her eyes wander from one to another as they spoke.

She informed them of all she had gathered about him during their game of golf, but gave her information only under pressure of their questioning.

Ever since her eyes had penetrated the veil that for so long had hidden her sisters from her, Mary had resented, while so well she understood, their curiosity about the visitors who came to Bridnorth. There were times when it almost had a savor of indecency to her; times when she felt her cheeks grow warm at the ill-hidden purpose of their interest; times when it seemed to her as though Fanny, revealing her soul, had dressed it in diaphanous garments which almost were immodest in their transparent flimsiness.

She knew Fanny's soul now. She knew the souls of all of them. She knew her own and often she prayed that however Fate might treat her, even if as it now treated them, she still would keep it secret and hidden from eyes that were not meant to see.

"He comes from Somerset," she told them. "He has a large estate there. Something like two thousand acres and I suppose a big house. No--does nothing. I expect looking after a place like that is work enough. Farms himself, I believe--the way he speaks about it. Yes--married."

Jane thought the annoyance with which she gave it out was upon her own account. There was a smile in her eyes when Mary admitted it, as though her rejoinder might have been--"What a suck for you."

Such good nature as she had kept the words from utterance. But as well it was that Mary's annoyance had really had nothing to do with herself. Their question, chimed from Fanny and Jane together, had made the blood tingle in her cheeks. Why did they expose themselves like that? She would sooner have seen them with too short a skirt or too low a bodice. Scarcely conscious of this shame in Mary, it yet had had power to hold back the words from Jane's lips. Nevertheless she credited it to her virtue.

"They say I'm bitter," she thought. "They don't know how bitter I could be."

"Why isn't his wife with him?" she asked.

Mary professed complete indifference and ignorance.

"Do you suppose I asked him?" she said. "Marriage isn't a grazing in one field, is it? Life isn't one acre to everybody."

How interestingly he must have talked about his estate and farming. That came leaping at once into Jane's mind. A grazing in one field--that was a new-learnt phrase for Mary. There was little she knew about grazing and could not tell an acre from a rood.

"How does he play golf?" she inquired.

"Fairly well."

"How many strokes did he give you?"

"None--we played level."

"What did he win by?"

"I did--two and one."

"So you're going to play again?"

"Well, of course. It was a tight match."

Jane rose from the table to go and make out the linen for the laundry. Fanny sat staring at the tea leaves in the bottom of her cup. Hannah inquired in her gentle voice if any one wanted the last piece of bread and butter.

II

It was a closer observation than she knew when Jane said that Julius Liddiard came to Bridnorth to be alone.

He was a lonely man. There is that condition of loneliness more insuperable than others, the loneliness of mind in a body surrounded by the evidences of companionship. In this condition he suffered, unable to explain, unable to express.

Much as he loved it, in his own home at times he felt a stranger, whose presence within its walls was largely upon sufferance. Mastery, he claimed, exacting the purpose of his will, but in the very consciousness that it must be forced upon those about him, he felt his loneliness the more.

Authority was not his conception of a home. He had looked for unity, but could not find it. His wife and her sister who lived with them, the frequent visits of their friends and relations, these were the evidences of a companionship that served merely to drive him further and deeper into the lonely companionship of himself.

She had her right to life, he was forced in common justice to tell himself, and if she chose the transitory gayeties, finding more substance of life in a late night in London than an early morning on Somersetshire downs, that was her view of things to which she was fully entitled.

Of his own accord, he had invited her sister to live with them, seeking to please her; hoping to please himself. She made her home there. It was too late actually to turn her away when he had discovered the habit of her life was an incurable laziness which fretted and jarred against the energies of his mind.

"We make our lives," he said, enigmatically to Mary, that first day when they were playing golf. "Lord knows what powers direct us. I may make the most perfect approach on to this green, but nothing on earth can tell me exactly which way the ball is going to kick."

He had approached his life with all the precision of which he was capable, but the kick had come and it had come the wrong way. There was no accounting for its direction. It was obvious to him he could not see the world through his wife's eyes. After some years it had become no less obvious that she could not see it through his.

He wandered through the rooms of his own house, a stranger to the sounds of meaningless laughter that echoed there. He took his walking-stick, called a dog and strode out on to the downs, glad to be in fact alone.

Gradually such laughter as there was in him--he had his full share of it--died out of him. Much as he loved his wife, much as she loved him, he knew he was becoming more and more of a disappointment to her. In the keener moments of consciousness of his loneliness, she found him morose, until, unable to sing or laugh with the songs and laughter of that house, he came at times to believe he was morose himself.

"What's happening to me," he would say when he was alone; "what's happening to me is that I'm losing the joy of life."

Yet the sight of the countryside at Springtime seemed to himself to give him more sense of joy than all the revels in London that made his wife's eyes dance with youth.

He had laughed inordinately once; had won her heart by the compound of his spirits, grave and gay. It was quite true when she accused him of becoming too serious-minded. He heard the absence of his laughter and sometimes took himself away and alone that she might notice it the less.

There were times when it seemed she had lost all touch with his mind that once had interested her. He took his mind away and left his heart there at Wenlock Hall behind him.

What can happen with a man's mind when he holds it alone in his keeping is what happened to Julius Liddiard.

Jane was more accurate than she knew when she declared that he had come to Bridnorth to be alone.

It was his intention to sketch and play golf with the professional until such time as the longing for his home again would urge him back with a mind ready to ignore its disappointments in the joy of mating and meeting with his heart again.

Upon his first appearance on the golf links, the professional had disappointed him. Mary Throgmorton had stepped into the breach, recommended by the secretary as being able to give him as good a game as many of the members.

For the first half, they had played with little interchange of conversation. As they left the ninth green, she was two up. Then he had looked at her with an increasing interest, seeing what most men saw, the strong shoulders, the straight line of her back, the full strength of her figure, the firm stance she took as she played her game.

It was not until after the game was over and they sat at tea in the Club Room, that he noticed her face with any interest. Had this observation been denied him, he would have gone away from Bridnorth, describing her as a girl of the country, bred on sea air; the type of mother for sons of Englishmen, if ever she found her proper mate.

But across that tea-table, his mind saw more. He saw in flashes of expression out of the gray eyes that faced him, that soul which Mary had only so lately discovered in herself. He saw a range of emotion that could touch in its flight the highest purpose; he heard in her voice the laughter his mind could laugh with, the thoughts his mind could think with.

"Well, we've had a good game," he had said steadily. "Do you think I've a chance of beating you if we play again to-morrow?"

"I like to win," said she, "if there's a chance of being beaten. I expect you'll beat me next time. You don't know the course yet."

"We'll play to-morrow," he said.

And it had been arranged.

III

This time they played in the morning. They had a simple lunch of boiled eggs such as the Club provided. It was a common occurrence for Mary to stay on the links all day.

Hannah thought nothing of her absence at the mid-day meal. Fanny thought a great deal, but said no word. Jane, thinking little, casually questioned why it was always married men who came to Bridnorth.

"And invariably married men who play golf," she added. Indeed in those days the younger men somewhat left the game to their elders. "I believe Mary's a bit of a fool," she went on. "If she really wanted to marry, she'd play tennis or sit on the beach at bathing time. That girl Hyland got married last year throwing pebbles at an old bottle. We've all thought marriage was a serious business. That was the way they brought us up." She looked at her mother's portrait. "That's what's been all wrong with us. It isn't the one who sits quietest who's chosen. It's the one who fusses about and chooses for herself. You've got to be able to throw pebbles at glass bottles now. Crochet hooks aren't any good. All our chances have been lost in two purl and one plain. It's their fault, both of them--it's their fault."

Jane spoke so terribly near the truth sometimes that it was agony for those others to listen to her. To Hannah it was sacrilege almost, against the spirit of those still ruling in that house. To Fanny it was no sacrilege. She too knew it had been their fault. But the truth of it was a whip, driving her, not that she forgot her fatigue, but so as to urge her on, stumbling, feeling the hope in her heart like harness wearing into the flesh.

Almost visibly she aged as she listened. Her expression drooped. Her eyes fixed in a steady gaze upon Jane's face while she was speaking as though the weight of lead were holding them from movement.

"Don't speak like that, Jane!" Hannah exclaimed. "How can you say it's their fault? They did the very best they knew for us. Wouldn't you sooner be as you are than like that girl Hyland?"

"She's got a baby now," Jane replied imperturbably. "She'll steady down. She's contributed more than we have. It isn't much when all you can say is that you've given a few old clothes to jumble sales."

"I know what Jane means," said Fanny. Her memory had caught her back to that late evening on the cliffs when she felt again, like an internal wound, that spareness of her body in the arms which for those few moments had held her close. "I know what Jane means," she repeated, and rose from the table, leaving the room, not waiting for her coffee.

At the Golf Club over their boiled eggs and the gritty coffee while Liddiard smoked, they talked of Wenlock Hall, the history of it, the farm and lands surrounding it, the meaning that it had for him.

"How many children have you?" asked Mary.

"None," said he.

It was a question as to whether they should play the final match that afternoon. Each had won a game.

"Why get through good things all at once?" said he. "That's a sky for sketching--my sort of amiable sketching. The view across the bay from that Penlock hill will be wonderful."

Her readiness to part with his company for the afternoon was simple and genuine.

"Of course," she said, "you're here for a holiday. I was getting selfish. I don't often get a good game, you see. We've plenty of opportunity if, as you say, you don't go till next week."

"Oh, I meant you to come if you would," he explained quickly. "Not much fun, I know. But there's the walk out there and back and I like being talked to while I'm painting. Not much of a conversationalist then, I admit. I'm doing all the selfishness--but one doesn't often get the chance of being talked to--as you talk."

It was the first time she had ever been told that any power of interesting conversation was hers. She felt a catch of excitement in her breath. When she answered him, she could not quite summon her voice to speak on a casual note. It sounded muffled and thick, as though her heart were beating in her throat and she had to speak through it. Yet she was not conscious that it was.

"I'll come if you really want me to," she said, and her acceptance was neither eager nor restrained. She went as freely as she walked and she walked with a loose, swinging stride. It became a mental observation with him as they climbed the cliff path, that their steps fell together with even regularity.

His sketch was a failure. The atmosphere defied him, or the talk they made distracted his mind. He threw the block face downwards on the grass.

"Oh! why do you do that?" she asked, regretting consciously that which she did not know she was glad of--"It looked as if it were going to be so nice."

"It had got out of hand," said he. "They do, so often. I know when I can't pull 'em together. Besides, talking's better, isn't it? You can't give your whole interest to two things at once."

How long had they known each other? Two days--less! He felt he had been talking to her constantly, over a long period of time. She knew he felt that and was kept in wonder as to what her interest could be to him.

Once definitely having put his sketch out of his mind, he lay back on the close, sharp-bitten grass, looking no more across the bay, but talking to Mary about herself. Tentative and restrained as his questions were, they sought her out. She felt no desire for concealment, but sat there, upright, as one would most times find her, drawing a thread of sea grass backwards and forwards through her fingers, answering the questions he asked, sometimes briefly, sometimes with far excursion into her mind, expressing thoughts she scarcely had been conscious of till then.

"You make me a great egotist," she said presently, with a laugh.

"Isn't yours the age for egotism?" he answered. "Why shouldn't you think about yourself when you're young, and all's in front of you? When you come up with it you'll have no time."

"When I'm young," she laughed. "You'd better guess how old I am," and she laughed again, knowing what Hannah or Jane would think to hear her.

"I don't want to guess," said he. "Suppose you were twenty-eight--or even thirty, I say all's in front of you. That's your age. That's the impression you give me."

"I'm twenty-nine," said she, and her eyebrow lifted with suppressed laughter as he sat up in his surprise to look at her.

"Twenty-nine?" he repeated. "What have you been doing with your life? Why are you here, playing an occasional game of golf, attending mothers' meetings, going to your little church every Sunday to listen to that fool of a parson you have? It's waste--waste--utter waste!"

"Have you ever thought how many women do waste in the world?" she asked and then of a sudden felt the hot sweep of blood into her face. How had it happened she had come to talk to a man and a stranger like this? Yet wasn't it true, and wasn't there some sort of exciting satisfaction in saying it? She could not have said that to Hannah, to Jane, not even to Fanny. Why was it possible to exchange such intimate thoughts with a man and he, an utter stranger she had met only the day before?

Suddenly, in the speaking of that thought, she had learnt something about herself and not herself only but about all women and the whole of life. All that her mother had taught her was wrong. Concealment, deception, fraud, these were not the outward symbols of modesty. Just as for the ailments of her body she could not have gone to a woman doctor, so with the smoldering fever of her inmost thoughts, it was only to a man she could speak.

Then did men understand? With the rest of her sex she had always argued that they did not. If it was not for understanding, then why had she spoken? It must be that they understood; but not with their minds, not cruelly, scorchingly, calculatingly, as women did, judging shrewdly the relation between character and the fact confided, but more spiritually than this; the inner meaning, the deeper purpose, relating that confidence to the soul of the woman who made it, rather than to her conduct.

In that moment she had learnt the indefinable complement between the sexes. In that moment, Mary Throgmorton had for the first time in her life answered to the cry of Nature calling mate to mate.

The heat of the blood lifted in temperature in her cheeks as she came upon her knowledge, but he said nothing of the flush that lingered in them. A woman would have noticed that and to her shrewd observation they would have burnt the more. As he sat there, not looking at her, but staring through the pine trees across the bay, she found a feeling of comfort in being with him as her cheeks grew cool again.

Never looking at her, he asked if women were conscious of that sense of waste, and the tone of his voice was neither searching nor inquisitive. It had no suggestion of personal curiosity behind it. He spoke from inside himself, from inner purposes and from the inner purposes within herself she answered him, feeling no sense of restraint.

"Do you imagine they wouldn't be?" she replied. "Not perhaps in their everyday life, but in moments in those days when even in a crowd you suddenly drop out of existence, like a star falling, and find yourself alone. Of course they feel it. Every energy of man it seems to me has been to keep women from the touch of life. But sometimes they find a loophole and get out and find the sense of it, if it's only in the tips of their fingers. They may be only moments, but every woman has them."

She had never talked like this to any one before. Had there been any one to talk to? Would she have spoken to them in such a fashion if there had? It was only since that sermon, the Christmas before, she had been aware such thoughts were in the composition of her mind and never had they expressed themselves so definitely as this.

Yet her wonder was more of him than of herself. Until that moment she could never have believed a man could have understood. And it was not from what he said that she felt he did. He was sitting up now and he was nursing his knees as he gazed out across the bay towards Kingsnorth. It was in the abstract penetration of his gaze, the silence about him as he listened that she sensed his understanding.

Yet had she known it, he was thinking more of himself than of her. Something echoed in him with all she had said. It was not that he had never gained, but that he had lost his touch with life. The spirit in him was wandering and alone and it had chanced upon hers, wandering also.