Part 9

"Oh, Hannah, I've got such a lot to say," she began, and with an impulse took her sister's arm and of a sudden felt this gentle, gray-haired woman might be as a mother to her when all the world, as now she was realizing with her first confession of it, would be turned against her. "I don't know how to begin. I know you must understand, and I think I want you to understand, more than anybody else. No one else will. Of course I can be sure of that."

She had succeeded, as well she knew she would, in frightening Hannah now. She was trembling. Leaning on her arm, Mary could feel those vibrations of fear. So unused to all but the even flow of life, and finding herself thus suddenly in a morass of apprehension, the poor creature's mind was floundering helplessly. One step of speculation after another only left her the more deeply embedded in her fears.

"Tell me what it is," she whispered--"Tell me quickly. Was it that Mr. Liddiard?"

How surely she had sensed the one thing terrible in her life a woman can have to tell. Never having known the first thrilling thoughts of love, her mind had reached at once to this. Countless little incidents during the time that Liddiard was in Bridnorth, incidents that had attracted her notice but which she had never observed, had come now swiftly together as the filings of iron are drawn to a magnet's point. The times they were together, the letters she had received, sometimes a look in Jane's face when she spoke of him, sometimes a look in Fanny's when she was silent. One by one but with terrible acceleration, they heaped up in her mind to the pinnacle of vague but certain conclusion.

"Was it that Mr. Liddiard?" she repeated.

"Yes."

"I felt it was. I felt it was. Don't say you're in love with him--a married man--Oh, Mary, that would be terrible."

"I'm not in love," said Mary.

The deep sigh that drew through Hannah's lips made her afraid the more. How could she tell her? Every moment it was becoming harder. Every moment the pride she felt was not so much leaving her as being crowded into the back of her mind by these conventional instincts, the habit of affection for her family, the certain knowledge of their shame, the disproportionate value of their thoughts of her.

A few hours before she had asked herself what mattered it if they thought the very worst, if they had no sympathy, if with their contempt of her they turned her from the house. In any case she was going. Never could she stay there. Never could this child of hers breathe first the stifling air that she had breathed so long.

Yet now when her moment of confession was upon her, pride seemed a little thing to help her through. The piteous fear in Hannah weakened it to water in her blood. She felt sorry for her sister who had done nothing to deserve the shame she was sure to feel. Conscious of that sorrow, she almost was ashamed of herself. Nothing was there as yet to whip her pride to life again. With mighty efforts of thought, she tried to revive it, but it lay still in her heart. This fear of Hannah's, her deep relief when the worst she could think of proved untrue, kept it low. With all the strength she had, Mary could not resuscitate her pride.

"What is it then?" Hannah continued less tremulously--"What is it if you're not in love? Was he a brute? Did he make love to you?"

With all the knowledge she had gained, Mary now found herself amazed at this simplicity of mind which once quite well she knew had been her own. For an instant it gave her courage. For an instant it set up this new antagonism she had found against the laws that kept her sex in the bondage of servitude to the needs of man. So in that instant and with that courage, she spoke it out, abruptly, sharply as she had known she must. The swift, the sudden blow, it made the cleanest wound.

"I'm going to have a child, Hannah," she said, and in a moment that garden seemed full of a surging joy to her that now they knew; and in a moment that garden seemed to Hannah a place all horrible with evil growing things that twined about her heart and brought their heavy, nauseating perfume, pungent and overbearing to her nostrils.

She dropped Mary's arm that held her own. With lips already trembling to the inevitable tears, she stood still on the path between those rows of double pinks, now bearing up an evil, heavy scent to her, as she stared before her.

It could not be true! How could it be true? She fought with that, the refusal to believe its truth.

"He was only here a fortnight," she muttered oddly. "You didn't know him. You'd never met him before. You only played golf with him, or you walked on the cliffs. You didn't know him. How can you expect me to believe it happened--in a fortnight? Mother was engaged to father for two years. I--I wasn't born till fourteen months after they'd been married!"

She laughed--a thin crackle of laughter.

"You're a fool, Mary. You don't know what you're talking about. He was only here a fortnight."

"It's quite true, Hannah," said Mary quietly. "I'm going to have a child."

Her heart was beating evenly now. They knew. Pride was returning with warming blood through her veins. Less and less she felt the chill of fear.

Swiftly Hannah turned upon her.

"But you said you weren't in love!" she exclaimed.

How quickly she was learning! Already love might have explained, excused, extenuated.

"I'm not in love," said Mary--"I know now I'm not in love. I was at the time. At least I know what love is. The thing you love doesn't destroy love when it goes. Once you love, you can't stop loving. The object may alter. Your love doesn't. If there's no object then your love just goes on eating your heart away. But it's there."

"Oh, my God!" cried Hannah--"Where did you learn all this--you! Mary! The youngest of all of us! Whom do you love then if you don't love him? Oh, it's horrible! Is your heart eating itself away?"

"No."

"Then what? What is it? I don't understand! How could I understand? I am an old woman now. Somehow you seem to make me know I'm an old woman. What is it? What do you love?"

"I told you I'm going to have a child," whispered Mary--"Isn't that something to love? It's here with us as I'm talking now. There are three of us, Hannah, not two. Isn't that something to love?"

For a long moment, Hannah gazed at her, then, suddenly clasping her hands about her face she turned and with swift steps ran, almost, down the path and disappeared into the house. It was as she watched her going, that Mary had a flash of knowledge how deep the wound had gone.

VI

Now this much was accomplished in the schedule of her mind. They would all know. She left it to Hannah to tell them. The next day after this confession to her sister, she went to Yarningdale Farm, having made all arrangements to stay there two or three days and complete her plans for the future.

It had been a difficult moment to tell Hannah. She had not quite realized beforehand how difficult it would be. Pride she had calculated would have helped her from the first; pride of the very purposes of life that had passed her sisters by. But pride had not been so ready to her thoughts when the actual moment of contact had come. The habitual instincts of convention had intervened. Pride, when it had come to her aid, had not been pride of herself. It was proud she was of her sex when in the abruptness of that instant she had flung her confession before Hannah.

There would be no question of pride; no support could it give her when she came to tell Mrs. Peverell. To that simple farmer's wife it could only seem that here was one, pursued by the error of her ways, seeking sanctuary and hiding her shame in the remotest corner she could find.

Giving no reason to Jane or Fanny, but only to Hannah for her sudden departure, she went the next day into Warwickshire.

"You can tell them when I'm away," she said to Hannah. "It's no good thinking you needn't tell them. Hiding it won't conceal. They must know."

With an impulsive gesture she laid her hands on Hannah's shoulders and looked into those eyes that indeed, as she had said, even in those few short hours of knowledge, had grown conscious that she was old.

"I don't know how much you hate me for bringing all this trouble on you. It shan't be much trouble, I promise you. No one need know why I've gone away. But I sort of feel sure of this, Hannah, you don't hate me for the thing itself--not so much as you might have thought you would have done."

Hannah tried to meet the gaze of Mary's eyes. Her own held fast a moment, then faltered and fell. Something in Mary's glance seemed to have tracked down something in her. The one with her child had glimpsed into the heart of her who had none. It had been like a shaft of light, slanting into a cellar, some chamber underground that for long had been locked, the bolts on whose door were rusty and past all use, the floor of which was no longer paved for feet to walk upon.

For so many years untenanted had that underground chamber been that, as has been said, Hannah had forgotten its existence. Content had come to her with the house of life she lived in and now by the illumination of this ray of light, shooting through cellar windows, lighting up the very foundations of the structure of her being, she had been made aware, when it was all too late, of the solid and real substance upon which Nature had built the wasted thing she had become.

"Don't!" she muttered. "Don't--don't!" and almost in shame it might have been she hung her head as though it were Mary who might accuse, as though Mary it were who rose in judgment above her then.

* * * * *

Mr. Peverell in a spring cart from the nearest station brought Mary to Yarningdale Farm. She had no need to touch Henley-in-Arden. There was no likelihood that whilst there she would ever come across her friends. They had walked many miles that day. It was the highest improbability they would ever walk that way again; and certainly not to visit the farm.

"It happen be a quiet day," he said as he gathered up the reins, "or I couldn't have come for 'ee with the spring cart. No--I couldn't have come for 'ee with the spring cart if it didn't happen to be a quiet day. I got the machine ready last night and we be cuttin' hay to-morrow."

Cutting hay!

"May I help?" she asked with an impulsive eagerness. He looked down at her on the lower seat beside him and his eyes were twinkling with a kindly amusement.

"'Ee can help," said he, "but hay-makin' ain't 'helpin'--it's work. When they cut the grass over at Stapeley--Lord Orford's place there over--there's some of the ladies puts on them dimity-like sunbonnets and come and help. But then you see there's plenty to do the work." His eyes twinkled again. "We've only got hundred and thirteen acres and there's me and the carter and a boy. My missis comes out. So does the carter's wife. But 'tain't helpin'. 'Tis work. We can't 'ford amusements like helpin' each other. We have to work--if you understand what I mean."

"But I mean that too," she said quickly. "I meant to work. Of course I don't know anything about it; but couldn't I really do something?"

"We'll be beginning half-past five to-morrow morning," he said and she felt he was chuckling in his heart. She felt that all who did not know the land as he knew it were mere children to him.

"Can't I get up at half-past five?" she asked.

"Can 'ee?"

"Of course I can. I want to work. Do you know that's one of the things I want to come here for. When I come and stay--that's what I've come to arrange with Mrs. Peverell--when I come and stay, I want to work. I can do what I'm told."

"There's few as can," said he. "Them things we're told to do, get mighty slow in doin'. Could 'ee drive a horse rake?"

"I can drive a horse."

He whipped up the old mare and said no more until she asked him why they had not cut the grass that day. It was so fine, she said, and fine weather she thought was what they wanted first of all.

"There be plenty of fine days when the grass is green," said he. "'Twill be fine now a few days, time we'd be gettin' it in. We'd a shower yesterday--a nice drop of rain it was. Sun to-day and they trefolium'll have their seed just right and nigh to droppin'. 'Ee want the seed ripe in the stack. 'Tain't no good leavin' it in the bottom of the wagon."

She let him talk on. She did not know what trefolium was. He needed a listener, no more. Questions would not have pleased his ear. All the way back he talked about the land and as to one who understood every word he said. There was his heart and there he spoke it as a lover might who needed no more than a listener to hear the charms of his mistress. The mere sound of his voice, the ring it had of vital energy, these were enough to make that talking a thrilling song to her. It echoed to something in her. She did not know what it was. Scarce a word of it did she understand; yet not a word of it would she have lost.

This something that there was in him, was something also in her. Indistinctly she knew it was that which she must feed and stimulate to make her child. As little would he have understood that as she had comprehension of his talk of crops and soil. Their language might not be the same, but the same urging force was there to give them speech and thought. Just as he spoke of the land though never of himself or his part with it, so she thought of her child, a thing that needed soil to grow in. No haphazard chance of circumstance did she feel it to be. Tilling must she do and cleansing of the earth, before her harvest could be reaped. Her night would come, that night before, that night when all was ready, that night after rain and sun when the seed was ripe and must be gathered in the stack and none be wasted on the wagon floor.

"'Ee understand what I'm sayin'," she suddenly heard him interpose between the level of her thoughts.

"Yes, yes--I understand," said she. "And you don't know how interesting it is."

He turned the mare into the farm gate and tossed the reins on to her back.

"She's a knowsome girl," he said that night as he lay beside his wife. "She's a knowsome girl. 'Twon't rain to-morrow. There was no rain in they clouds."

VII

The next evening it was, after the first day in the hayfield and while Mr. Peverell in the big barn was sharpening the knives of the mowing machine, that Mary set herself to the task of telling his wife why she wanted to come to the farm.

Hard as she knew it would be, so much the harder it became when alone she found herself watching that sallow face with its sunken and lusterless eyes, the thin, unforgiving line of lip, the chin set square, obediently to turn the other cheek to the smiting hand of Fate.

Mrs. Peverell was knitting.

"A woolly vest," said she--"for the old man, come next winter. Time they leaves be off the apple trees, the wind ain't long afindin' we'd be here top of the hill."

For a while Mary sat in silence counting her stitches--two purl, two plain, two purl, two plain. The needles clicked. The knotted knuckles turned and twisted, catching the light with rhythmic precision. And all the time she kept saying to herself--"Soon he'll come back from the barn and I shan't have said it. Soon he'll come back."

"Did you make all your children's things for them?" she asked with sudden inspiration, striking the note to key her thoughts when she could speak them.

The needles clicked on. The knotted knuckles twisted and turned as though she had never heard. The head was bent, the eyes fastened upon her stitches.

Thinking she had not heard, Mary was about to repeat her question when suddenly she looked. Stone her eyes were, even and gray. Through years, each one of which was notched upon her memory, she looked at Mary across the dim light of their parlor kitchen.

"I had no children," she said hardly; "all the stitches I've ever gathered was for my man."

Her gaze upon Mary continued for a long silence then, as though her needles had called them, her eyes withdrew to her knitting. Saying no more, she continued her occupation.

To Mary could she have said less? There was the gap filled in between that winsome creature whose portrait hung upon the wall in the other room and this woman, sour of countenance, whose blood had turned to vinegar in her heart.

Many another woman would have been still more afraid, possessed of such knowledge as that. With a heart that swelled in her to pity, Mary found her fear had gone.

Somewhere in that forbidding exterior, she knew she could find the response of heart she needed. Even Nature, with her crudest whip, could not drive out the deeper kindliness of the soul. It was only the body she could dry up and wither, with the persisting ferment of discontent; only the external woman she could embitter with her disregard.

For here was one whom circumstance had offered and Nature had flung aside. Great as the tragedy of her sisters' lives might be, Mary knew how much greater a tragedy was this. Here there was no remedy, no fear of convention to make excuse, no want of courage to justify. Like a leper she was outcast amongst women. The knowledge of it was all in her face. And such tragedy as this, though it might wither the body and turn sour the heart, could only make the soul great that suffered it.

Mary's fear was gone. At sight of the unforgiving line of lip and square set chin to meet adversity, she knew a great soul was hidden behind that sallow mask.

The long silence that had followed Mrs. Peverell's admission added a fullness of meaning to Mary's words.

"It'd sound foolish and empty if I said I was sorry," she said quietly, "but I know what you must feel."

The lusterless eyes shot up quickly from their hollows. Almost a light was kindling in them now.

"'Ee bain't a married girl," she said, "Miss Throgmorton or what 'ee call it, that's how I wrote my letter to 'ee."

"Yes."

"How could 'ee know things I'd feel?

"I do."

"How old are 'ee?"

"Thirty next September."

"Why haven't 'ee married?"

"I haven't been asked. Look at me."

"I am."

"But look at me well."

Mrs. Peverell stared into her eyes.

"I have three sisters older than me," Mary went on. "Four girls--four women. We're none of us married. None of us was ever as pretty or sweet as you were when that photograph was taken of you in the other room."

The silence that fell between them then as Mrs. Peverell gazed at her was more significant than words. For all they said, once understanding, they did not need words. Indications of speech sufficed.

"Did any of 'ee want to be married?" asked the farmer's wife. "Did you?"

"Did you?" replied Mary.

"I wanted a good man," said she, "and I got him."

"Yes, but looking back on it now--all these years--back to that photograph in there, was that what you wanted?"

All this time Mrs. Peverell had been holding her needles as though at any moment the conversation might command her full attention no longer and she would return to her knitting. Definitely, at last she laid it in her lap and, leaning forward, she set her eyes, now lit indeed, upon Mary's face before her.

"'Ee know so much," said she slowly. "How did 'ee learn? What is it 'ee have to tell me?"

Without fear, Mary met her gaze. Long it was and keen but she met it full, nor turned, nor dropped her eyes. Brimmed and overflowing that silence was as they sat there. Words would have been empty sounds had they been spoken. Then, but not until it had expressed all their thoughts, Mrs. Peverell's lips parted.

"It's sin," she said.

"Is it?" replied Mary, and, so still her voice was that it made no vibrations to disturb the deeper meaning she implied. In their following silence, that deeper meaning filtered slowly but inevitably through the strata of Mrs. Peverell's mind, till drop by drop it fell into the core of her being. In the far hidden soul of her, she knew it was no sin. She knew moreover that Mary had full realization of her knowledge. Too far the silence had gone for her to deny it now. Whatever were the years between them, in those moments they were just women between whom no screen was set to hide their shame. They had no shame. All that they thought and had no words for was pure as the clearest water in the deepest well.

It was at this moment as they sat there, still, without speech, that the door opened and Mr. Peverell entered. Swiftly his wife turned.

"'Ee'll not be wanted here awhile," she said sharply. "Go and sit in the parlor, or back to the barn, or get to bed maybe. The hay'll make without talking."

Obediently, like a child, he went out at once and closed the door. It was not things they talked of that he might not hear. Not even was it things they talked of that he might not understand. Here it was that no man had place or meaning; in that region their minds were wandering in, no laws existed but those of Nature. They walked in a world where women are alone.

The opening of that door as he came in, the closing of it as obediently he went out, seemed to make definite the thoughts they had. At the sound of his footsteps departing, Mrs. Peverell turned to Mary.

"Say all 'ee've got to say," she muttered. "I'm listenin'."

And as definitely Mary replied--

"I'm going to have a baby. Seven months from now. I don't want you to think I'm hiding here. I could take refuge anywhere. I'm not ashamed. But there are seven months. They won't be long to me. Indeed they'll be all too short. Children aren't just born. They're made. Thousands are born, I know. I don't want just to bear mine. When I came here that day, two years ago, I felt something about this place. You'll think nothing of this. You live here. It's so much part of your life that you don't know what it means. But you're close to the earth--you're all one with growing things. You touch Nature at every turn. Oh--do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Peverell, "but I'm listenin' and I beant too old to feel."

Mary sped on with the words that now were rushing in her thoughts.

"Well--all that means such a lot to me. That's how I want to make my child, as you make your lives here. No cheating. You can't cheat Nature. No pretence--no shame. There's nothing so flagrant or unashamed as Nature when she brings forth. Out there in the world, there where I live, they'd do all they could to make me ashamed. At every turn they'd shriek at me it was a sin. The laws would urge them to it, just as for that one moment they urged you. It's not a sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. Do you think if women had the making of the laws that rule them, they'd ever have made of it the shame it is out there? When I knew that this was going to happen to me, I remembered my impressions of this place two years ago, and I knew it was here I would make him, month by month, while he's leaning in me to make him. Oh--I know I must be talking strangely to you; that half of what I say sounds feather-brained nonsense, but--don't you know it's true, don't you feel it's true?"

With an impulsive gesture when words had failed, she leant forward and caught the knotted knuckles in her hand.

Mrs. Peverell glanced up.

"In that room there," said she, pointing in the direction of the parlor sitting room, "there's a girt Bible lies heavy on a mat. We bought it marriage time to write the names of those we had."

"I saw it," said Mary.

"'Tis clean paper lies on front of it," she went on. "It shan't be clean for long. We'll write his name there."

VIII