Even Jane, with her shrewdness of vision, was misled by this into the belief that Mary cared less than them all what interest the Abbots...o...b.. coach might bring for the moment into their lives.

"I wonder what his handicap is," she had said when they had described a young man descending from the box seat with a bag of golf clubs.

Notwithstanding all Mary's undoubted excellence at that game or indeed at any game to which she gave her hand, Jane, disposed by nature to doubt, would sharply look at her. But apparently there was no intention to deceive. If the book was really engrossing, she would return to its pages no sooner than the remark was made, as though time would prove what sort of performer he was, since all golfers who came to Bridnorth found themselves glad to range their skill against hers on the links.

And when, as it happened, she joined them at those front windows, consenting to their little deceptions of casual interest in the midst of more important occupations--for Jane would say, "Mary, you can't just stare"--it was with no more than calculation as to what amus.e.m.e.nt the visitors would provide that Mary appeared to regard their arrival.

Not one of them, however, not even f.a.n.n.y, knew that there were days in those Spring and Summer months, when Mary, setting forth with her strong stride and walking alone up on to the heathered moors would, with intention, seat herself in a spot where the Abbots...o...b.. coach could be seen winding its way down the hill into Bridnorth. It was one spot alone from which the full stretch of the road could be observed. By accident one day she had found it, just at that hour when the coach went by. She had known and made use of it for six years and more.

At first it was the mere interest of a moving thing pa.s.sing in the far line of vision to its determined destination; the interest of that floating object the stream catches in its eddies and carries in its flowing out of sight.

So it was at first, until in some subconscious way it grew to hold for her a sense of mystery. She would never have called it mystery herself--the attraction had no name in her mind. No more did she do than sit and watch its pa.s.sage, dimly conscious that that little moving speck upon the road, framed in its aura of dust, was moving into the horizon of her life and as soon would move out again, leaving her the same as she was before.

Habit it was to think she would be left the same; yet always whilst it was there in the line of her eyes, it had seemed that something, having no word in her consciousness, might happen to her with its pa.s.sing.

So vividly sometimes it appeared to be moving directly into her life.

So vividly sometimes, when it had gone, it appeared to have left her behind. She would have described it no more graphically or consciously than that.

For during those six years, nothing indeed had happened to her. The pa.s.sing of the coach along that thread of road had remained a mystery.

Companions and acquaintances it had brought and often; women with whom she had formed friendships, men with whom she had played strenuously and enjoyably in their games of golf.

Never had it brought her even such an experience as her elder sister's.

She had never wished it should. There was no such readiness to yield in her as there was in f.a.n.n.y; no undisguised eagerness for life such as might tempt the heartlessness of a man to a pa.s.sing flirtation.

She treated all men the same with the frank candor of her nature, which allowed no familiarity of approach. Only with his heart could a man have reached her, never with his arms or his lips as f.a.n.n.y had been.

Perhaps in those brief acquaintanceships, mainly occupied with their games, there was no time for the deeper emotions of a man's heart to be stirred. But most potent reason of all, it was that she had none of the superficial allurements of her s.e.x. Strength was the beauty of her. It was a common att.i.tude of hers to stand with legs apart set firmly on her feet as she talked. Yet there was no masculinity she conveyed. Only it was that so would a man find her if he sought pa.s.sion in her arms and perhaps they feared the pa.s.sion they might discover.

It was the transitoriness not only of hers but of all those women's touch with life that made the pattern of their destiny. No man had stayed long enough in Bridnorth to discover the tenderness and n.o.bility of Mary Throgmorton. In that cold quality of her beauty they saw her remotely and only in the distances in which she placed herself. None had come close enough to observe that gentle smile the sculptor had curved about her lips, the deep and tender softness of her eyes. It was in outline only they beheld her, never believing that beneath that firm full curve of her breast there could beat a heart as wildly and as fearfully as a netted bird's, or that once beating so, that heart would beat for them forever.

It was just the faint knowledge of this in herself which made that pa.s.sing coach a mystery to Mary. It was not as with f.a.n.n.y that she thought of it as a vehicle of her Destiny, but that, as she sat there on the moors above Bridnorth, it was a link with the world she had so often read of in her books.

It came to her out of the blue over the hill, as a pigeon come with a message under its wing. Detaching that message again and again, she read it in a whisper in her heart.

"There is life away there beyond the hill," it ran. "There is life away there beyond the hill--and life is pain as well as joy and life is sorrow as well as happiness; but life is ours and we are here to live."

That message somewhere in the secrets of her heart she kept and every time the coach pa.s.sed by when she was in the house the horses' hoofs on the village road beat in her thoughts--"Life is ours, we are here to live."

VII

Portraits in oil of Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton hung on the walls of the dining-room in their square, white house. Though painted by a local artist when Mary was quite a child, they had one prominent virtue of execution. They were arresting likenesses.

It is open to question whether a man has a right to impose his will when he is gone upon those who follow after him. With Mr. and Mrs.

Throgmorton it was not so much an imposition of will. Their money had been left without reservation to be divided equally amongst the four girls. If any imposition there might be, it was of their personality.

Looking down at their children from those two portraits on the wall, they still controlled the spirit of that house as surely as when they had been alive.

Every morning and evening, Hannah read the prayers as her father had done before her. No more could she have ceased from doing this than could any one of them have removed his portrait from its exact place in the dining-room.

It was the look in her father's and her mother's eyes more than any comment of her sisters' that f.a.n.n.y feared to meet after her episode with the visitor to Bridnorth.

For in their lifetime, Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton had been parents of that rigid Victorian spirit. Love they must have given their children or their influence would never have survived. Love indeed they did give, but it was a stern and pa.s.sionless affection.

Looking down upon their four daughters in those days of the beginning of this story, they must have been well satisfied that if not one of them had found the sanct.i.ty of married life then at least not one of them, unless perhaps it was f.a.n.n.y, had known the shame of an unhallowed pa.s.sion.

f.a.n.n.y they might have had their doubts about. After that episode she often felt they had; often seemed to detect a glance not so much of pity as of pain in her mother's eyes. At her father, for some weeks after the visitor's departure, she was almost afraid to look. In his life he had been just. He would have been just in his condemnation of her then.

Self-control had been the measure of all his actions. Of self-control in that moment on the cliffs she knew she had had none. She had leant herself into his arms because in the violent beating of her breast it had seemed she had no strength to do otherwise. And when he kissed her, it had felt as though all the strength she had in her soul and body had been taken from her into his.

Had her father known such sensations as that when he talked of self-control?

Well indeed did she know what her mother would have said. To all those four girls she had said the same with parental regard; and to each one severally as they had come to that age when she had felt it expedient to enlighten them.

"G.o.d knows," she had always begun, for the use of the name of G.o.d hallowed such moments as these to her and softened the terribleness of all she had to say, "G.o.d knows, my dear, what future there is in store for you. If it is His will you should never marry, you will be spared much of the pain, much of the trouble and the penalties of life. I love your father. No woman could have loved him more. He is a fine and a good man. But there are things a woman must submit to in her married life--that is the cross she must bear--which no words of mine can describe to you. Nevertheless, don't think I complain. Don't think I do not realize there is a blessed reward. Her children are the light of life to her. Without them, I dread to think what she must suffer at the hands of Nature when the mercy of G.o.d has no recompense in store. Eve was cursed with the bearing of children, but they brought the mercy of G.o.d to her in their little hands when once they were born."

This usually had been her concluding phrase. This without variation she repeated to all of them. Of this phrase, if vanity she had at all, she was greatly proud. It seemed to her, in illuminating language to comprise the whole meaning of her discourse.

Hannah, Jane, f.a.n.n.y, all in their turn had accepted it in silence. It had been left to Mary to say--

"It seems hard on a man that he should have to suffer, because he doesn't get the reward of having children like the woman does. Of course they're his--but he doesn't bring them into the world."

At this issue, Mrs. Throgmorton had taken her daughter's hands in hers and, in a tone of voice Mary had never forgotten, she had replied--

"I never said, my dear, that the man did suffer. He doesn't. If it were not for the sanct.i.ty of marriage, it would have to be described as unholy pleasure to him. That pleasure a woman must submit to. That pleasure it is her bitter duty to give. That's why I say I dread to think what she must suffer, as some unfortunately do, when the mercy of G.o.d does not recompense her with the gift of children."

Closely watching her daughter's face in the silence that followed, Mrs.

Throgmorton had known that Mary's mind was not yet satisfied with the food for thought and conduct she had given it. She became conscious of a dread of what this youngest child of hers would say next. And when Mary spoke at last, her worst fears were realized.

"Can a woman," she said, "give pleasure to the man she loves when all the time she is suffering shame and agony herself? If he loves her, what pleasure could it be to him?"

Mrs. Throgmorton had closed her eyes and doubtless in that moment of their closure she had prayed. So confused had been her mind in face of this question that for the instant she could do no more than say--

"What do you mean?"

"Well--simply--" replied Mary in a childlike innocence--"simply that it seems to me if a woman is giving pleasure to a man she really loves, she must be getting pleasure herself. If I give you a present at Christmas and you like it and it gives you pleasure, I'm not sure it doesn't give me more pleasure than you to see you pleased, because--well, because I love you. Why do you say 'It's more blessed to give than to receive'?"

That little touch of affection from her daughter had stirred Mrs.

Throgmorton's heart. Unable to restrain herself, she had taken Mary's hands again with a closer warmth in her own.

"Ah, more blessed, dear--yes--there is of course the pleasure of blessedness, the satisfaction of duty uncomplainingly done. I have never denied that."

She had spoken this triumphantly, feeling that light at last had been shown in answer to her prayer. Not for a moment was she expectant of her daughter's reply.

"I don't mean that, mother," Mary had said. "Satisfaction seems to me a thing you know in your own heart. No one can share it with you. Of course I don't know the feelings of a man, how could I? I'm not married. But if I were a man it wouldn't give me any pleasure to think that the woman I loved was just satisfied because she'd done her duty.

I should want to share my pleasure with her, not look on at a distance at her satisfaction. If a man ever loves me, I believe I shall feel what he feels and if I do, I shall be glad of it and make him glad too."