Part 6

Rightly or wrongly in the accepted standards of morality, Mary felt such completed justification in those moments as to be sensitive of the surging intentions of life triumphing within her. This, she knew then, was the fullness of meaning in a woman's life. If it were pleasure, it was not the pleasure of sensation; not even the pleasure of the promise of gratification. None of the joys of amorous delay were mingled in those kisses for her.

What she felt in the rushing torrent in her veins was all subsidiary to the overwhelming sense of fulfillment.

He would have lingered there beside that gateway in the bracken, would have dallied with the joy it was to him to feel her whole being in response to his. But Mary had no need of that.

If this was what her mother had meant by concealment of her own sensations, she surely had it then. This was not an hour of dalliance in her life. It was the deep-sounding prelude to the realization of the very spiritual substance of her being.

At her dictation they left that place in the bracken. In response to her wish they turned from the gateway and sought the beaten path through the heather again. In that moment she wanted no more of his kisses; partly perhaps because in her emotions she could have borne no more; but mostly it was that she wanted space and freedom for her thoughts; to speak them to him if need be, certainly to review them in her mind. It was time she demanded--time to touch the wonder that was coming to her, which, from the power of those kisses, she somehow assumed could not be withheld from her now.

"I could not help that," he said almost apologetically when she insisted upon their going on. "Somehow or other--I don't know--honestly, I couldn't help it, and I suppose I've offended you now."

For one instant she turned her eyes upon him with a searching glance.

"Offended?" she repeated. "Didn't you realize that I let you kiss me--not once--but--" Suddenly she realized in a swift vision the Mary Throgmorton that was; the Mary Throgmorton of the square, white Georgian house; the sister of Hannah and Jane and Fanny, and she could not say how many times he had kissed her. Her cheeks flamed.

"Don't talk about offense," said she almost hotly, and walked on with him some time in silence, saying no more, leaving him in an amaze of wondering what her thoughts could be and whether that denial of offense was not merely a screen to hide from him the shame she felt at what had happened.

Was she ashamed? It seemed to him then that she was. That probably was the last time he would touch her lips, yet having touched them and felt, not the eagerness as with Fanny, but the sureness of their response, there had been awakened in him the full consciousness of desire to touch them with his lips again. For now he felt, not master of her, but a servant. At the mere utterance of her command, he must obey. With all his eagerness to stay there longer at that gate there was no power in him of conflict with her wishes when she expressed the desire to go on.

What was it she was thinking as she walked? Did really she hate him for what he had done? The cry her nature had made to his in those moments of the closeness of their bodies had redoubled and redoubled in its intensity. Yet he was less sure of her than he had been before.

He felt like one struggling blindly through the storm of his emotions, answering some call that was not for help but of command. Was that the end of it all? Would he never again hold her in his arms? Tentatively he took her hand which did not resist his holding as they walked.

"My dear," he said--almost below his breath--"I suppose I've seemed weak--but--I love you. It was not weakness. I can't explain it, but if you knew, really it was strength."

"Please don't say any more--not now," said she and lengthened her stride and threw back her head that all the full sweep of the air might beat upon her face and throat.

It never consciously occurred to her that a woman's throat and the fine column of her neck could express her beauty to a man. Yet as they walked, she knew that his eyes had seen such beauty in hers.

So it was, when Jane looked up again, they had gone. For another half hour and more she sat there in her bed in the heather, trying to appreciate all that it meant. But again and again the sequence of her conventional thoughts was disturbed by the vision of those two as her eyes turned to the gateway in the bracken and she saw them in her mind with lips touching and heads close pressed together in that long embrace.

With that vision all conventionality slipped from her control, even from the very substance of her thoughts. Instinctively she knew she had been witness of something she had neither power nor right to judge when, forcing herself to regard it as all the years of habit and custom would have her do, she shut her eyes to the sight of them in that bracken and called upon her judgment to dispassionate her mind.

That evening she contrived to be alone with Mary after tea. They walked in the garden, round the paths with their borders of thrift in heavy cushions of growth.

In a tone of casual unconcern, Jane asked her about her game of golf.

Her pause in answering was significant. In full confidence, Jane expected the lie and understood her sister still the less when, having weighed the truth against expediency, she replied--

"We didn't play golf. We went up onto the moors above Penlock."

It gave Jane the opportunity she sought, but in the frankness of giving confused her. So had her mind forestalled all the progressions of that conversation, that for a moment she was silent.

What sort of woman was this Mary of theirs who seemed to have no guiltiness of conscience, when from childhood she had been trained to listen to the still, small voice? Did she not realize the enormity of what she was doing? Jane's lips set to their thinnest line.

"Do you think it's wise," she began, and in that tone of voice which, with a sharp edge, cut the plain pattern of her meaning--"Do you think it's wise to go about so much with this man? Even if he weren't married--do you think it's wise?"

The sharp glance which Jane stole at her sister then revealed Mary possessed and unconcerned. So well had she known what Jane was going to say that surprise had no power to disconcert her. But beyond that, there was in some chamber of her mind a certain sureness of herself, a steadying confidence in all she did. This it had also been even in the high torrent of her emotion when she would have no more of his kisses and seemed in that moment to him the substance of unyielding stone his temperature of passion had heated but a moment and no more.

"I think," she replied, after a moment's silence; "I think that this wisdom you talk about--worldly wisdom--is a very over-rated virtue. I think we've lost a lot--all of us--by cultivating it. I find Mr. Liddiard much more interesting than any one or any thing in Bridnorth. Life after all is short enough--dull enough. Why shouldn't I take what interest it offers when I can, while I can? He goes in a few days. What's worldly wisdom to the feeling that your mind is growing instead of stagnating? If you mean you think I ought not to go out with him again, I can't agree with you."

She spoke like a woman addressing a community of women, not as one sister to another. There was a note of detachment in her voice, Jane had never heard before. In all that household, Jane always assumed she had herself the final power of control. She felt it no longer here. So long as Mary was speaking, it appeared to her as though she were one listening to some authority far superior to her own. It was in Mary's voice and yet seemed outside and beyond her as well. There was power behind it. She could not sense the direction or origin of that power, but it dominated her. She felt small beside it, and feeling small and realizing that it was this Mary, their youngest, who was the voice of it, she grew angry. All control of that situation she had intended to conduct left her. It left her fretting with the sensation of her own impotence.

"You can't agree with me, can't you!" retorted Jane hotly. "You wouldn't agree, I suppose, if I said that, beside being unwise, I thought it beastly and sinful and horrible altogether, to see a girl kissing a married man, kissing him in a beastly way too?"

Never, even from the first moment of her discovery, had she ever meant to say this. This was not Jane's method. What flood of emotion had borne her thus far out of her course? Fully it had been her intention to speak of Mary's friendship with Liddiard as though it were a flippant and a passing thing; to belittle it until, in its littleness, she had shown this foolish sister of hers what folly it was.

How had it happened she had thus exaggerated its importance by the heat of her words? Something had pricked and spurred her. Something had driven her beyond her control. Finding herself opposed by a force so infinitely greater than her own, she had struggled and fought. It had been a moment's hysteria in the sudden consciousness of her impotence. Then what power was it? Not merely Mary herself. She could not submit her mind to that admission. It was greater than Mary and yet, becoming the voice of it, she felt that this sister of hers was greater than herself.

To Mary, the shock of realization that Jane had seen them that moment in the bracken was not one that seemed to tremble or emotionalize her at all. If she felt any anger at the thought that she had been spied upon--for swiftly recalling the place of that happening, she knew Jane must have been in hiding,--it was an anger that burnt out, like ignited powder, a flash, no more. It left no trace. All her consciousness assembled in her mind to warn her that the meaning of Life which had come in those last two weeks to her was in jeopardy of being made meaningless. It did not frighten her, but set the beating of her heart to a slow and deliberate measure.

Whatever Jane knew and however she intended to use her knowledge, Mary determined to fight for this new-found purpose of her existence. If they were fools, if theirs was the folly of waste, if they let all life go by them to be worldly wise, she could not help or wait for them now.

Something had come with its promise of fulfillment to her, her nature urged her not to ignore. What if he was married? There had been moments in the inception and growth of their relationship when she had thought first of his wife. She thought first of her no longer. She was stealing no intrinsic thing. In a few days he would go back to his house in Somerset and what he had given her of his mind, as she had seen, had been his to give her; and, if he had kissed her, what had she stolen from his wife in that? He would still kiss his wife. She knew that. As plainly as if they were there before her, she could see their embrace. It meant nothing to her. They would not be the same kisses he had given Mary.

Whatever had been the call of Nature to him in that moment when passion had spoken out of his lips, his eyes, the power she felt in his arms as they crushed her, it had been not through the channel of his body, but his mind.

Insensibly she was learning the multitudinous courses by which Nature came to claim her own. She was stealing nothing from his wife. All that was coming to her was her own and with the sudden realization of Jane's knowledge of what had happened, her first sensation was a warning that her very soul was in jeopardy.

There was nothing to be said then; no defense that she could, or cared to, offer. She knew quite well from those long years of knowledge, how horrible their kisses must have seemed to Jane. Once upon a time, she might have thought them horrible herself. Now, there was nothing to be said that might serve in her defense.

Taking a deep breath, she looked straight in Jane's eyes and stood there, arresting their movement on the garden path to paint the defiant attitude of her mind.

"Well--if you've seen," said she, "you've seen. There's no more to be said about it. We've all lived together so long, I suppose it's hard for any one of us to realize that our lives are really all separate things. You talk about it as being beastly. I can assure you there was nothing beastly in our minds. However, you must think whatever your mind suggests to you to think, and you must start yourself all the talk about us you say is bound to come when I'm seen about with him, if you feel that way inclined. But I'll tell you just one thing--you can't make me ashamed of myself. I'm twenty-nine."

She turned away, walked with all the firmness of her stride into the house and left Jane, standing there, withered and dry between those borders of spreading thrift and flowers all dropping their seed into the mold that waited for them.

VIII

Liddiard was returning to Somerset in three days' time. Before their parting that day above Penlock, he had urged for their next meeting as soon as she was free of household duties the following day.

"Only three more chances," said he, "of being with you, and when I thought most I understood you, understood you so well that my arms seemed the only place in which to hold you, I find I understand you less than ever. You don't ask what it means. You don't say "What are we going to do?" I've told you I love you, but you don't appear to want to know anything about the future. It seems to me that any other girl would be wanting to know what was to become of her. You're so quiet--so silent."

Climbing back down the cliffs, holding on to one of the pine trees in her descent, Mary had turned and smiled at him. It was an inscrutable smile to Liddiard. It was not that he tried to understand it. It was, as it penetrated his mind, that he knew it to be quite impossible of comprehension. More it was as if Nature had smiled upon him, than the mere bright light of the parting of a woman's lips. In its illumination it seemed to reveal to him the vision of himself in a strange powerlessness. He felt like some tool of a workman as it lies idle on the bench, waiting the moment for those hands to pick it up and give it purpose. So it appeared to him might a carpenter have smiled with pleasure at the chisel he knew his hands could wield for perfect work. All the more that he had meant to say dried into silence on his lips.

"I don't want to know anything about the future," said Mary as she walked on, "I know you love me and I think I understand what you love and why you love. I know I'm not sophisticated. I've no experience of the world. I don't pretend to understand these things in the light of experience. I haven't got any wisdom about it, but I feel it's not unreal or impossible for you to love me and love your wife as well. I don't feel I want you to say you don't love your wife in order to prove that you love me. I think it would finish everything in my mind if you said you didn't love her. I'm not thinking about the future, because there is no future as you used the word. I don't ask what we're going to do, because I know what we're going to do."

"What are we going to do?" he asked.

"In two days' time," she replied, "you're going home to Somerset and I'm going to stay on here in Bridnorth."

Suddenly she turned again swiftly and barred his passage as he came along down the cliff path behind her.

"Why don't you understand me?" she asked abruptly. "It all seems so plain. Don't you realize how I've been brought up? I know there's a certain sacredness in marriage. I've been trained to regard it as one of the most unbreakable ties in the world. I wouldn't dream of expecting or claiming anything from you, however much you said you loved me. Whatever happened, I shouldn't dream of that. You're half afraid of it. I can see you are. I don't love you any the less because I see it. It seems natural you should be afraid. It seems to me most men would be with most women. But you needn't be."

She had let him be drawn close to her again. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked with all his passion into her eyes.

"That's the first time you've said you loved," he whispered. "Do you know what it sounded like to me?"

She shook her head.

"Like an organ playing in an empty church. My God! You're wonderful."

Then she had let him kiss her again; again, herself, being the one to draw away when emotion rose to stifling in her throat. Again was he obedient to her wishes.

They had arranged to meet the next morning on the cliffs. Liddiard had promised he would bring lunch.

"They'll think we're up at the Golf dub," he had said, for already in their minds had appeared that urgency for deception which should secure for them the certainty of their meeting.

But the next morning, after her conversation with Jane, Mary dispatched a note to Liddiard at the White Hart Hotel.

He tore it open with fingers that had dread in them.

"Meet me on the beach at 11.30," she had written, "near the bathing tents. Don't bother about lunch."

With a sudden chill it struck him. It was all over. The night had brought her calmer thoughts. Emotion was steadied in her now. She was not going to trust herself alone with him again. It was all finished. On an impulse he took a piece of paper and wrote on it--

"Have been called back to Somerset this morning; so sorry I shall have no opportunity to say good-by."

When he had written, he stared at it, reading it again and again.

Was not this the best? It was too wonderful to be true; too wonderful to last. He knew himself well enough to realize that any prolonged deception with his wife would be impossible. He had the honesty of his emotions; the courage of his thoughts. He could not practice deception with any ease. Wonderful as it was, could any wonder compensate for the utter wrecking of his home? It was not as though in the wonder that had come to her, she refused to recognize his wife. That was what brought him such amaze of her. Any other woman he would have expected to be jealous, exacting, cruel. She appeared to be none of these.

What, in the name of God, was it she wanted? The sudden wish to understand, the sudden curiosity to find out communicated with the energy in his fingers. He tore up the note he had written and flung the pieces away, sending back the messenger without a reply.

It was playing with life, a sport that in other men earned for them his deepest contempt. It was playing with life, yet the call to it was greater than he could or cared to resist.

At half-past eleven, he went down to the beach where all the inhabitants of Bridnorth sat and whiled away their time till the midday meal, and there he found her, dressed with more care and more effect than she had ever been before. She was lying down under the warm shade of a brilliantly colored parasol and, as he approached her, it seemed to him that there was a deeper beauty in her then than in any other woman in the world.

"Why this?" he said as he sat down. "Here of all places? Do you know very nearly I didn't come?"

"Yes, I was afraid of that," she replied. "Afraid for a moment. Not really afraid. But I couldn't explain in my note."

"What is it then?"

"We were seen yesterday."

"Who by?"

"My sister--Jane."

"Seen where?"

"By that gate in the bracken."

He screwed up his mouth and bit at a piece of loose skin on his lip.

"What's she going to do?" he asked.

"Nothing. What can she do? No one must know if we meet again--that's all. We must be more careful."

He stared at her in bewildered astonishment.

"I don't understand you," he muttered. "Sometimes you seem like adamant when your voice is softest of all."

She looked at him and with her eyes told him that she loved him and with a little odd twist of her lips, which scarcely she herself knew of, she kissed his lips and at that distance at which he sat from her, he felt the kiss like a leaf falling with a flutter to the ground.

"What do you mean--we must be more careful?" he said thickly. "What do you mean by that? How can we be more careful? Where else could we hope to be more alone than on those cliffs--unless--unless--" His breath clung in his throat. He swallowed it back and went on in a hoarse voice--"Unless it were the time we went there."

"What time?" she asked.

"Night," said he. "Midnight and all the hours of early morning."

She lay back on her cushion beneath the warm shadow of her parasol and closed her eyes, saying nothing while he sat staring at the curved line of her throat.

IX

It was no difficult matter to rise unheard at midnight in her room, unheard to creep quietly downstairs, to open and close the kitchen door into the yard. Having accomplished that, it was but a few steps to the door through the wall into the road.

Now that she slept alone in that room at the back of the house, Mary had no fear of discovery. Nevertheless her heart was beating, an even but heavy throb, nor settling to the normal pulse, even when she found herself out in the lane and turning towards the path across the marshes by the mouth of the River Watchett that leads a solitary way to Penlock Head.

She questioned herself in nothing that she did. Her mind was made. It was no moment for questioning. All questions such as there had been, and doubtless there were many, she had answered. It was no habit of hers to look back over her shoulder. She fixed her destination with firm resolve, and, once the fear of immediate discovery was left behind, she walked with a firm stride. Imagination played no havoc with her nerves. Already her heart was in their meeting place.

A restive heart it was, all bounding at sudden visions, leaping, shying; at moments in riot almost at thought of lying in his arms. Sometimes even there was fear, a fear, not of the thing she would fly; not a fear that made the heart craven. Rather it was a fear that steeled her courage to face whatever might befall.

Some sense undoubted she had of the mad riot of passion, that it could terrify, that it was frightening like sudden thunder bursting. But just as she would lie still in her bed at home through the fiercest storm, so now she knew, however deep her fear, that she would not complain.

She walked that way through the marshes to their meeting place at the foot of Penlock Hill like one, firm in her step, who went to a glorious death. Death was terrible, but in all the meaning it had, she felt no fear of it.

In such manner as this did Mary Throgmorton go to the confirmation of her faith in Life, and behind her, in the square, white house, she left one to the bitterest of its realizations.

Fanny could not sleep that night. Near midnight, she lit a candle and began to read. But no reading could still the unsettled temper of her mind. Again and again her eyes lifted from the printed page, seeking corners of the room where, in that candlelight, the shadows gathered, harbor for the vague wandering of her thoughts.

Long after midnight, in the communicating silence which falls about a sleeping house, she heard a sound and sat up in bed. Some one had opened and shut the gate into the lane. She got up and went to the window. If any one passed into the road in front of the house, she must see them. No one came. All was silence again.

Yet something within her insisted upon her conviction that she had not been mistaken. Some one had left the house and, if they had turned the other way, could not possibly have been seen by her.