She had said it all without emotion, almost without one note of feeling in her voice; but the mere words themselves were sufficient to strike terror into Mrs. Throgmorton's heart. That terror showed itself undisguised in her face.

"My dear--my dear--" she whispered--"I pray G.o.d you never do feel so, or if it be His will you should, that you will never forget your modesty or your self-respect so much as to reveal it to any man however much you may love him."

To these four girls in that square, white house in Bridnorth, this was such an influence as still reigned in undisputed sway. The eyes of their parents from those portraits still looked down upon them at their prayers or at their meals. Still the voice of Mrs. Throgmorton whispered in Mary's ears--"I pray G.o.d you will never forget your modesty or your self-respect." Still, even when she was twenty-nine, Mary's eyes would lift to her father's face gazing down from the wall upon her, wondering if he had ever known the life she had suspicion of from the books she read. Still she would glance at them both, prepared to believe that, however dominant it was in their home, the expression of their lives had been only the husk of existence.

And then perhaps at that very moment the coach might pa.s.s by on its way to the Royal George and the horses' hoofs would sing as they beat upon the road--"Life is ours--we are here to live--Life is ours--we are here to live."

Yet there in Bridnorth at twenty-nine, no greater impetus had come to her to live than the most vague wonderings, the most transient of dreams.

VIII

It was the Sunday before Christmas of the year 1894. No coach had come to Bridnorth for three weeks. The snow which had fallen there was still lying six inches deep all over the countryside and on the roads where it had been beaten down at all, was as hard as ice. Footmarks had mottled it. It shone in the sun like the skin of a snow leopard.

The hills around Bridnorth and all the fields as far as eye could see were washed the purest white. Every hedge had its mantle, every tree and every branch its sleeves of snow. The whole world seemed buried.

Scarce one dark object was to be seen. Only the sea stretched dark and gray like ice water, the little waves in that still air there was, falling on the beach with the brittle noises of breaking gla.s.s.

Only for this, a silence had fallen everywhere. Footsteps made no sound.

The birds were hidden in the hearts of the hedges and even when hunger drew them forth in search of berries, it was without noise they went, in swift, dipping flights--a dark thing flashing by, no more.

Every one put on goloshes to climb or descend the hill to church. The Vicar and his wife came stepping over from the Vicarage close by like a pair of storks and when the bell stopped ringing it was as though another cloak of silence had been flung over Bridnorth village. The Vicar felt that additional silence as acutely as any one. It seemed to him it fell to prepare the way for worship in the house of G.o.d and the sermon he was about to preach.

The attendance that morning was no different from what it would have been had the roads been clear. Going to church in the country is a comfortable habit. At their midday meal afterwards the subject of the attendance would crop up at the Vicar's table as it always did, ever full of interest as is the subject of the booking-office returns to a theatrical manager. He would congratulate himself upon the numbers he had seen below him from that eminence of the pulpit and would have been hurt beyond degree had any one suggested it was largely habit that brought them there.

The Throgmorton family would no more have thought of staying away because of the weather than they would have thought of turning the two portraits in the dining-room with their faces to the wall.

They collected in the square hall of the square, white house. They put on their gloves and their goloshes; they held their prayer books in their hands; they each looked for the last time to see that their threepenny bits were safe in the palms of their gloves. Then they set off.

The church in the country is a meeting place in a sense other than that of worship. You may desire at most times the quietness of your own home, but you like to see the world about you in a public place.

They worshipped G.o.d, those people in Bridnorth. Who could hope to maintain that they did not? They were close enough to Him in all conscience and fact on those Devon hills. But that worship was more in the silence of their own hearts, more on the floor at their own bedside than ever it was at the service conducted by the Vicar as so many services are conducted by so many Vicars in so many parishes throughout the length and breadth of the whole country.

The interest of seeing a fresh face, of even seeing an old face if it be under a new hat; the mere interest of human contact, of exchanging a word as they went in or mildly criticizing as they came out; the mild necessity of listening to what the Vicar said from the pulpit, the sterner necessity of trying to understand what he meant; the excitement of wearing a new frock, the speculations upon the new frock worn by another, these were more the causes of a good attendance in the worst of weather, these and that same consciousness of being overlooked, of having one's conduct under the gaze of all who chose to satisfy themselves about it.

As the Vicar climbed the pulpit steps, the congregation settled themselves down with that moving in their pews with all customary signs of that spirit of patience every priest believes to be one of interest.

Leaning her square, strong shoulders against the upright back of the Throgmorton pew, Mary composed her mind with mild attention. f.a.n.n.y shifted her ha.s.sock to the most restful position for her feet. That sharp interrogative look of criticism drew itself out in the line of Jane's lips and steadied itself in her eyes. Hannah was the only one upon whose face a rapt expression fell. With all her gray hair and her forty years, she was the youngest of them all, still cherishing her ideals of the infallible priest in the man of cloth; still believing that the voice of G.o.d could speak even through the inferior brain of a country Vicar. Above all there were her children who the next morning would ask her what the sermon meant. It was necessary if only for their sakes she should not lose a word that was said.

After that pause on his knees when the Vicar's head was bent in prayer, he rose to his feet and, as he spread out the pages of his sermon before him, cast a significant glance around the church. This was preliminary to every sermon he preached. It was as though he said--"I cannot have any signs of inattention. If your minds have wandered at all during the service, they must wander no more. I feel I have got something to say which is vital to all of you."

All this happened that December morning, just as it had occurred every morning for the twenty years he had been the shepherd of their souls.

It was almost as long as Mary could remember.

Having cast that glance about him, he cleared his throat--the same sounds as Jane once caustically remarked they had heard one thousand times, allowing two Sundays in the year for a _loc.u.m tenens_.

Then he gave out his text: "And the Angel said unto her--'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with G.o.d.'"

IX

Perhaps it was the sound of her own name there amongst all those people which stirred her mind and added a quicker beat of the pulse to Mary Throgmorton's heart. The full significance of the text, the circ.u.mstance to which it referred, these could not have reached her mind so swiftly, even though f.a.n.n.y with a sharp turn of the head had looked at her.

"'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with G.o.d.'"

It was at first the sound of her name, the more as he repeated it.

Listening to that habitual intonation of the Vicar's voice, it meant nothing to her as yet that Mary had found favor with her G.o.d. The only effect it had was the more completely to arrest her mind in a manner in which she had never been conscious of its arrest before. She folded her hands in her lap. It was a characteristic sign of attention in her.

She folded her hands and raised her eyes steadily to the pulpit.

"There are some things," began the Vicar, "which it is necessary for us to understand though they are completely outside the range of our comprehension."

Involuntarily her interest was set back. It was the delivery of such statements as these with which the Vicar had fed the mind of his congregation for the last twenty years. For how could one understand that which was completely outside the range of comprehension? Insensibly Mary's fingers relaxed as they lay in her lap. She drew a long breath of disappointment.

"The immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary," he continued, "is one of those mysteries in the teaching of the Church which pa.s.ses comprehension but which it is expedient for us to understand, lest we be led away by it towards such false conceptions as are held by the Church of Rome."

There was scarcely a sermon he preached in which the Vicar lost opportunity for such attacks as these. He seemed to fear the Roman Catholic Church as a man fears the alluring attractions of an unscrupulous woman. From the eminence of his pulpit, he would have cursed it if he could and, firmly as she had been brought up to disapprove of the Romish doctrines, Mary often found in her mind a wonder of this fear of his, an inclination to suspect the power of the Roman Catholic Church.

From that moment, fully antic.i.p.ating all they were going to be told, her mind became listless. She looked about her to see if the Mainwarings were in Church. Often there were moments in the sermon when she would catch the old General's eye which for her appreciation would lift heavenwards with a solemn expression of patient forbearance.

They lived too far out of Bridnorth. It was not to be expected they would have walked all that distance in the snow. Her eyes had scarcely turned back from their empty pew when the Vicar's words arrested her again.

"Because Mary was the sinless mother of Our Lord," he was saying, "is no justification for us to direct our prayers to her. For this is what it is necessary for us to understand. It is necessary for us to understand that Mary was the mother of Our Lord's manhood. His divinity comes from G.o.d alone. What is the Trinity to which we attach our faith? It is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the three in one. Mary, the Virgin, has no place here and it is beyond this in our thoughts of worship we have no power or authority to go.

"The Roman Catholic Church claims the mediation of the Virgin Mary between the hearts of its people and the divine throne of G.o.d. Lest we should drift into such distress of error as that, let us understand the mystery of the Immaculate Conception, however much as a mystery we allow it to be beyond our comprehension. Being the Son of G.o.d, Christ must have been born without sin, yet being the Son of Man, He must, with His manhood, have shared all the inheritance of suffering which is the accompaniment of our earthly life. How else could He have been tempted in the Wilderness? How else could He have pa.s.sed through His agony on the Cross?

"To what conclusion then are we thus led? It is to the conclusion that Mary, the Mother of that manhood in Christ, must have suffered as all women suffer. She had found favor with G.o.d; but the Angel did not say she had found immunity from that nature which, being born in sin as are we all, was her inevitable portion.

"So, lest we fall into the temptation of raising her in dignity to the very throne of G.o.d, lest we succ.u.mb to the false teaching of those who would address their prayers to her, it becomes inc.u.mbent upon us to see the Virgin Mary in a clear and no uncertain light. Mystery in her conception there must always be, but in her giving birth in that manger of Bethlehem, it is as Mary the wife of Joseph, the carpenter of Nazareth, we must regard her."

To all those present in the congregation this was no more than one of the many tirades the Vicar had so often preached against the Roman Catholic Church. They listened as they had always listened before, with patience but without interest. It was no real matter of concern to them. They had no desire to be converted. They had not in the silence of their homes been reading the works of Roman Catholic authorities as the Vicar had done. They did not entertain the spirit of rivalry or feel the sense of compet.i.tion as he felt it. They listened because it was their duty to listen and one and all of them except Mary, thinking of their warm firesides, hoped that he would soon make an end.

Only Mary amongst them all sat now with heart and mind attentive to what he said, pursuing not the meaning he intended to convey, but a train of thought, the sudden illumination of an idea which yet she dared not find words in her consciousness to express.

"We must think of her," the Vicar continued, "as a woman pa.s.sing through the hours of her travail. We must think of her brought in secret haste by the fear of consequence and the expedience of necessity to that manger in Bethlehem, where, upon her bed of straw, with the cattle all about her in their stalls, she gave birth to a man child in all the suffering and all the pain it is the lot of women to endure. For here is the origin of that manhood in which we must place our faith if we are to appreciate the fullness of sacrifice our Savior made upon the Cross.

It was a woman, as any one of you, who was the mother of Our Lord. A woman, blessed above all women to be the link between the divinity of G.o.d the Father and the manhood of G.o.d the Son. It was a woman who had found favor in the eyes of her Creator, such favor as had sought her out to be the instrument of the will and mercy of G.o.d.

"And the Angel said unto her--'Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with G.o.d.'"

So often had Mary's name been repeated that by now no a.s.sociation was left in f.a.n.n.y's mind with her sister. She turned and looked at her no more. But to Mary herself, with this last reiteration of all, the sound of it throbbed in every vein and beat in violent echoes in her heart.

For now no longer could she keep back the conscious words that sought expression of those thoughts in her mind. She knew beyond concealment the idea which had forced itself in a suspicion upon her acceptance.

In all his eagerness to lead their minds away from worship of the Virgin Mary, the Vicar had destroyed for her every shred of that mystery it had been his earnest intention to maintain. Now indeed it seemed she did understand and nothing was left that lay beyond her comprehension.

It was the woman, as he had urged them, whom she saw, the woman on her bed of straw, with that look in the eyes, the look of a woman waiting for her hour which often she had seen in the eyes of others it had been her duty to visit in Bridnorth. It was the woman, eager and suffering, with that eagerness she sometimes had felt as though it were a vision seen within herself. He had subst.i.tuted a woman--just such a woman it might be as herself.