Part 7

In that midnight silence, the fantastic shapes the beams of the candle cast, the heavy darkness of the night outside, slight as the incident was, grossly exaggerated it in her mind. She felt she must tell some one. Jane was the person to tell. Jane's fancies were slowly stirred. She might turn it all to ridicule, but if anything were the matter, she would be practical at least.

Slipping her arms into her dressing gown, she went out onto the landing. The door of Jane's room was at the further end. As she passed Mary's door on her way, something came out of the recesses of her mind and took her heart and held it fast.

Mary's door was open. She stood there staring at it while all the pulses in her body accelerated to the stimulus of her imagination.

Always Mary slept with her door closed. It was not to be understood how she had departed from that habit now that she slept alone. Why had she chosen to sleep alone? Was it more definite a reason than Fanny had supposed? What more definite than thoughts of love?

Scarcely aware of the change of her intentions or that Jane for the instant had dropped completely out of her thoughts, Fanny pushed open the door and softly entered Mary's room.

Just within the threshold, she stopped, half held by darkness and whispered Mary's name.

"Mary--Mary--"

There was no reply. There was no sound of breathing. Never had the whole world seemed so still. She was faintly conscious that her eyes were staring wide in that darkness, staring to find softly what she knew now the dazzling glitter of a light would reveal to her in all its startling truth. All beating of her heart appeared to be arrested as she felt her way across the room to the bedside table where she knew the box of matches lay. Something fluttered in her thin breast, like a thing suspended in mid-air, but it had no relation to the passage of the blood through her veins. It seemed to need purchase, a solid wall against it before it could beat again. Yet no solid wall was there. Flesh and bones in all her substance, Fanny felt as though in those moments her body were a floating thing in an ether of sensation. She found the matches. With fingers that were damp and cold, she struck one. It flamed up with blinding brightness into her staring eyes. She closed them swiftly and then she looked.

The bed was empty. Their Mary was away. With trembling fingers, she lit the candle; then gazed down at the crumpled bedclothes, the sheets thrown back, the pillow tossed.

With automatic calculation she leant down and felt the bedclothes with her hand as one feels a thing just dead.

They were warm--still warm. And where now was the body that had warmed them?

With a sudden catch in her throat that was not a sob and had no more moisture of tears in it than a thing parched dry with the sun, she flung herself down on the bed and leant her body against the warm sheets and buried her head in the warm pillow, fighting for her breath like some frightened beast that has been driven to the last of all its hiding places.

X

They met in silence on the worn path at the foot of Penlock Hill; two black figures joining in the darkness and, without word of greeting, without question of the way, turning by common consent towards the moors and vanishing into the pine trees.

Never was their silence broken while they climbed the hill. They had breath for that ascent, but no more. Coming to a steep place, he offered his hand to help her and then still held it till they reached the moors.

It was a late rising moon that crept up, shimmering wet with its pale light out of the sea. They stood with the heather about their knees and watched it, hand in hand, still silent; but he felt her trembling and she heard when he swallowed in his throat.

"It had to be a night like this," he said presently when the moon at last rose clear and the light seemed to fall from her in glittering drops that splashed like pieces of silver into the sea. "I know this is the one night of my life," he went on. "I know there'll never be moments like it again as long as I live. Perhaps you don't believe that. You'll think I've said such things before; yet the whole of my existence, past, present and future, is all crowded into this hour. I know I shall realize it the more fully as I grow older and Time wipes Time away."

She clung to his arm. It was now she was most afraid. The moors were so still about them. Down in its hollow amongst the firs and the misshapen oaks, the farm lay silent and black. No light was there. She thought of them asleep in their beds. So sleeping, she thought of Hannah, Jane, and Fanny. Only they two were awake in all the world it seemed. Only for some vague yet impelling purpose did the world exist at all and alone for them.

She did not feel at his mercy. She was not afraid of him. Indeed she clung to his arm as they stood in the heather, clung to his arm, trembling, appealing as though he alone were left between herself and Fate to soften it; as though to less terrible a note, he could still the sound of voices shouting in her ears.

These were sensations she had no words for.

"You stand there trembling," he said in a whisper. "What are you thinking of, my dear?"

"It's all so quiet," she whispered in reply, and a short laugh with no mirth in it escaped from her throat. "I don't know why I should expect or want it to be anything else."

"And do you want it to be anything else?"

"I suppose I must, or I shouldn't have said that."

"My dear, are you afraid?"

She jerked her head, reluctant to give assent to that.

No wonder, he thought. My God, no wonder women are afraid. If anything should happen, she'll have the brunt of it. Wouldn't I be afraid if I were her?

Such thoughts as these caught him to hesitation a moment stronger than the urging passion in his blood.

Was it fair to her? This girl, who in that stagnating corner of the world knew so little, was it fair? Hadn't he strength to resist it even now; to turn their steps back; to let her go, the great-hearted thing she was, as he had found her? If it might be the one moment in his life to him, would it be the less for letting it pass by? Would realization make it the greater? Might it not make it the less?

A surging desire to be master of himself swept over him. A rushing inclination to protect her from the forces of Nature in himself took louder voice than all his needs. She was too wonderful to spoil with the things that might happen in a sordid world.

For what would they say and think, those sisters of hers, and what sort of hell would life become for her in those narrow streets of little Bridnorth?

It was no good saying things might not happen.

What right had he to subject her to chance? She was too fine, too great of heart for that. With all the generosity of her soul she had placed herself in his hands, it was for him to save her even now, before it was too late. She was afraid. Then if there were a God who gave men strength, he could be strong enough to let her go.

He held her even the tighter with his fingers as in his mind he set her free.

"Mary," he said, "I told you it was strength, not weakness that made me kiss you. I expect you didn't believe that. It was true. And I feel stronger now than then. We're going back again, my dear, now, without waiting, I couldn't stay here longer. We're going back."

"Where?"

She said it in her breath.

"Back to Bridnorth--to our beds. I love you, my dear, that's why we're going back."

She felt a sudden chill and shivered.

"Back?" she whispered. No other word but that could her mind grasp.

As swiftly then the chill blew by. She felt as though she stood in scorching flames, as if the very heather were alight about her. There was pain and it gave her a fierce power she never thought she had possessed. It brought her anger to think she could suffer so much for such return.

Back? They could not go back! Not now! She had been through it all. This that must happen was just a moment. It was nothing to the hours her mind had lived till then.

She took off her hat and flung it down beside her in the heather.

"It's stifling, this heat," she muttered. "Everything seems burning."

He saw her throw down her hat. He heard what she said. The blood that had been strong like a courageous wine, turned all to water in his veins. He felt his limbs trembling. Something in her was stronger than the greatest purpose he had ever had in his life. It was a purpose he felt might be even stronger than she, yet knew he could not make it so.

It occurred to him, with an ironical laugh in the thought, that she was master of their moments and not he. And yet not she herself. Men were the stronger sex. That was an inherent thought, whatever might be said in abstract argument. Coming to such a moment in life as this, it was the man who must direct. With all the violence of his passions, he could still control.

This, with a loud voice, he told himself in his mind. Yet there was her hat lying in the heather and there in his ears were the sounds of her breathing as she stood beside him. His eyes fell upon her breast that rose and fell as her heart beat beneath it and he knew the current he had breasted with such confidence of power was bearing him back. In all his bodily consciousness then, it was as though his will were failing.

One last effort he made. Stooping, he picked up her hat.

"Shall we go now?" he said.

She swung in an instant's unsteadiness as she stood before him, but made no movement otherwise. One fear had gone in her, thrusting another in its place. Something terrified her now, a fear in her heart that over-rode all bodily fear.

If he should win in purpose now, the world were such an empty mockery of life as she well knew she had no strength to face. Hannah, Jane, Fanny, they might have survived the hollow meaninglessness of it all. They might have taken place in the senseless procession of Time, puppets of women, wasted lives in the thrusting crowd. Never could she fall in with them now.

Yet what was it she was struggling against? Something that had its purpose as well as she? Somehow she sensed it was the laws that men had made for the best of women to live by. He was attempting the best that was in him. But she had no pity for that. If love and contempt, passion and disgust can link in one, they met together in her then.

She never knew she thought all this. It was not in words she thought it. But those laws were wrong--all wrong. Possession was the very texture of them and all through the intricate fabric of life, she knew possession did not count. In instinct, reaching back, beyond the most distant consciousness of mind, she felt there was no possession in the world. No more would she belong to him than he to her. It was he who must give that which she most needed to take. And why had it resolved itself into this struggle, when all she had ever heard or known of men was nothing but the eagerness of passion to express desire?

These were not thoughts. Through all her substance they swept, a stream of voiceless impulses that had more power than words.

"We're not going now," she said in a strange quietness. "We didn't come here to go back. Not as we came."

Suddenly she put her hands upon his shoulders. He could feel her breath warm and though her voice was so close, it came from far away like the voices of the sirens calling which he knew would always call and which he knew a man must stop his ears and bind his limbs to resist.

"Do you want me to say it?" she whispered. "I'm yours--this moment I'm yours. For God's sake take me now."

It all was darkness then. The moon had no light for them. The very stars were blotted out and far away across the moors, with its insistent note, a night-jar whistled to its mate.

PHASE III

I

Many times Fanny tried to speak of that night and of the night that followed before Liddiard went away, but there was a strange serenity in Mary's face in those days which suppressed all Fanny's emotions of sympathy, confidence and vital curiosity.

There were times when she hoped Mary might speak herself, if not of what actually had happened, at least in some measure of Liddiard and herself. Ever since their youth, being much of an age together, sharing the same room, they had had few secrets from each other. If she were to ask no more than Fanny's opinion of Liddiard, it would have afforded loophole for confidence. One discussion would have led to another. If necessary, Fanny would even have revived in her memory all that she had told Mary about her own little tragedy on those cliffs. To have gained that confidence every sense in her needed so much, she would have suffered the crudest flagellation of memory; the more cruel it was, the more exquisite would have been her pain.

But never had Mary been more aloof. Never had she been more distant and reserved. To Hannah perhaps, if to any, she showed an even closer affection, sometimes helping her with the teaching of her children and every day spending an hour and even more in their prattling company.

For long walks she went alone. Frequently at night, when she had retired to her room and Fanny on some feminine pretext came to her door, she found it locked.

"What is it?" asked Mary from within.

"Just Fanny."

"What do you want?"

"Oh--nothing! I wondered if you'd finished with that book." Such as this might be her excuse.

"Yes, I have. I left it downstairs in the dining-room."

"Well--good-night, Mary."

"Good-night, Fanny."

No more than this. That locked door seemed symbolical of Mary in those days. So had she barred all entrance to her soul from them and like the Holy of Holies behind the locked gates of the Temple was inapproachable to their unsanctified feet.

And all this seeming was no less than the actual truth. To Mary her body had indeed become the sanctuary, the very chalice of the Host of sacred things. She knew she was going to have a child. Such knowledge was pure folly and had no foundation upon fact. It lay only in her imagination.

Yet lying awake at night and waking early in the mornings with the first light the sun cast into her room, she had sensations, inventions only of the fancy, that were unmistakable to her.

Already she was conscious of the dual life of her being. Such had happened to her as indeed had separated her in difference from them all in that house.

Her thoughts of Liddiard were glowing thoughts. Sometimes as she lay, half sleeping in her bed, she felt him there beside her. But in all her fully conscious moments, she had no need of his return.

Their meetings upon the cliffs those two nights before he had gone from Bridnorth, had left her calm rather than excited. Almost she would have resented his actual presence in her life just then. In the distance which separated them, she felt the warm sense of that part of her being he had become; but his absence was not fretting her with the need of his embraces. No furnace of sexual inclination had there been set alight in her. In this respect he had not differenced her. She was the same Mary Throgmorton of outwardly passionless stone, only the hidden flame he had set light within her was that, unquenchable, which the stress of circumstance in time would burn with such a fervid purpose as none of them could stay.

Behind that locked door of her bedroom the night after his departure, she sat and wrote to him. A short letter it was, free of restraint, as though across some narrow space dividing them, she had just called out of her heart to him and laughed.

"I love you," she wrote. "Don't let it interfere with life. You have given some greater thing than you could ever dream of, and need not think of breaking hearts or things that do not happen in a healthy world. I am not thinking of the future. For just these few moments, the present is wonderful enough. Just because I belong to you, I sign myself--YOUR MARY."

Herself, with jealous hands, that morning she posted it and when she came back to the house a letter from him was awaiting her.

Both Jane and Fanny watched her as, with an amazing calmness, she picked it up and put it in her lap.

Both, knowing what they knew, were swift to ask themselves again, was this their Mary who had grown so confident with love.

A smile of expectation twitched about Jane's lips as Hannah, simple as a child, inquired who it was had written.

This would confuse her, Jane thought, and almost with the eagerness of spite, she waited for the flaming cheeks, for all the discomfort of her lip and eye.

Mary looked up quietly from her plate. Almost she felt sorry for them then that they were ignorant of all she knew. What was there to hide in telling them that? She realized Jane knew. She felt her waiting for those signs of the distressing confusion of a guilty heart. She had no guilt in her heart. She was not ashamed. They had no power to shame her.

"It's from Mr. Liddiard," she replied openly.

"Mr. Liddiard!" repeated Hannah. "What's he writing to you about?"

"I shall know when I read the letter," replied Mary quietly.

"I wonder how you can manage to wait till then," said Jane.

"I don't suppose it's very important," said Hannah, and Jane laughed, but Fanny could bear it no longer. None of them knew what she knew. She left the room.

II

Alone to her room, Mary brought her letter. That room had become the chapel of her most sacred thoughts. There, in that house, she was alone. There, as though it were the very script of her faith, she brought her letter and, locking the door, took it across to her chair by the window and sat down.

There was something she needed in this message from him. Courage had not failed her. No pricks of conscience fretted her peace of mind. More it was that in the conventional outlook of that house, in the atmosphere indeed of all Bridnorth, she felt set aside. Nor did she fear to be thus separated. Only it was at moments that it was chill. At times she shivered as though the cold edge of a draught through unsuspected chinks had found her out and for the moment set back the temperature of her courage.

Merely momentary were these misgivings. With a shaking of her shoulders, she could dispel them. The touch of his hand across that distance which separated them, the sound of his voice, all to be contained in her letter, these would drive them utterly away.

Alone there in that house, she needed her letter and her fingers were warm and her heart was beating with a quiet assurance as she tore open the envelope.

"Mary--" it began. She liked that. Her heart answered to it. It was not the passionate embrace she sought; rather it was the firm touch of a hand in her own. This simple use of her name fully gave it her.

"Mary--I have been wanting to write to you, my dear, ever since I came home. I even tried in the train coming back when, not only my hand on the paper, but it seemed my mind as well, were so jolted about that I gave it up as a bad job.

"I want you to believe, my dear, that I know my own weakness, but only for your sake do I honestly regret it. For myself, I have no real regrets at all. Knowing you, as I have done, has made a greater fullness in my life. Knowing me, as you have done, can only have brought bitterness and, I am ashamed to think of it, perhaps shame to yours."

Mary laid the letter down in her lap. Fingers of ice were touching on her heart. He thought he had brought her shame. Shame? What shame? If with his wife it were greater fullness to him, what fullness must it not be to her with none other than him beside her? She picked up the letter and the pupils of her eyes as she read on were sharpened to the finest pinpoints.

"I blame myself utterly and I blame myself alone. Life was all new to you. It was not new to me. I should have had the courage of my experience. If my character had been worth anything at all, I ought to have had the will of restraint even to the last. I wonder will you ever forgive me, for believe me, my dear, it is a great wish in my heart, always to be thought well of by you. I suppose thoughts are prayers and if they are, then you do not know how often I pray that nothing may happen to you. But if my thoughts are not answered and you have to suffer, for my weakness, you may know I will do all I can. None need ever know. With care that could be achieved, but we will not talk of that yet, or will I think of it if I can help it until you let me know for certain. Not once did you mention it, even after the first time we were alone in the wonderful still night on those cliffs. So many another woman would. So many another would have reckoned the cost before she knew the full account. You said nothing. You are wonderful, Mary, and if any woman deserves to escape the consequences of passion, it is you."

Again she laid the letter down. For a while she could read no more. The consequences of passion! Reckoned the cost! The full account! God! Was that the little mind her own had met with?

None need ever know! With care that could be achieved! She started to her feet in sudden impulse of feeling that her body held a hateful thing. Instinctively she turned to the mirror on her dressing table, standing there some moments and looking at her reflection, as though in her face she might find truly whether it were hateful or not.

Seemingly she found her answer, for as she stood there, without the effort of speech or conscious motion of the muscles of her throat, the words came between her lips--"Fear not, Mary--" Scarcely did she know she had said them, yet, nevertheless, they were the voice of something more deep and less approachable than the mere thoughts of her mind.

It was not hateful. There was all of wonder and something more beautiful about it than she could express.

Had she been told she was to receive such a letter, she would have feared to open it lest it should destroy courage and make hideous the very sight of life. But in trust and confidence having opened it, and in gradual realization having read, its effect upon her had been utterly different from what she might have anticipated.

Such an effect as this upon any other woman it might have had. But this Mary Throgmorton was of imperishable stone, set, not in sheltered places, or protected from the winds of ill-repute, but apart and open for all the storms of heaven to beat upon with failing purpose to destroy.

It may have alienated her that letter. Indeed it cut off and put her consciously alone. She knew in that moment she no longer loved. She knew how in the deepest recesses of her soul there did not live a father to her child. It was hers. It was hers alone. If this was a man, then men were nothing to women. Two nights of burning passion he had been with her and for those moments they had been inseparably one. But now he had gone as though the whole world divided them. The future was hers, not his. With that letter he had cancelled all existence in the meaning of life. There was no meaning in him. A mere shell of empty substance had fallen from her. To herself she seemed as though she were looking from a great height down which that hollow thing fluttered into the nothingness of space, leaving her in a radiant ether that none could enter or disturb.

Then of a sudden and in all consciousness now, there came with rushing memory into her mind, the thought of that sermon at Christmas time.

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

She repeated the words aloud; hearing them now as she spoke them in her throat and knowing, with all the fullness of its meaning to her, the realization it gave expression to when she voiced the thought which that day in church had followed it.

"Who was the father of the Son of Man?"