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 G.o.d!" 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 pa.s.sed 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 s.e.x 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 f.a.n.n.y, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt.

"'Ee can help," said he, "but hay-makin' ain't 'helpin'--it's work.

When they cut the gra.s.s 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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.