Chapter V

If it were Fanny who first had sense of what was happening, it was Jane who, when she discovered it, spoke out her mind about the matter.

Fanny knew by instinct, long before the first suspicions had fermented her elder sister's thoughts. She detected a sharper, brighter look in Mary's eyes; she calculated a greater distance in Mary's meditative glance.

At first it was as subtle a detection as the record of that weightless rider one straddles on the balance arm. Faintly the scales of her suspecting answered to the application of the signs which she observed. Faintly the weight of a thought was registered upon her consciousness.

If it was not as yet that Mary was in love, at least her mind was centering on that which any moment might turn to burning thoughts.

They occupied the same room together, these two. This had been a habit from childhood. Since the death of Mr. and Mrs. Throgmorton, the accommodation of that house did not necessitate it. But they had grown used to each other's company. They would have missed the sound of each other's voices those moments before the approach of sleep, the exchange of more lucid conversation in the mornings as they dressed.

It was in unaccustomed pauses as she undressed at night that Fanny's mind found the first whispers of her instinct about Mary. It was not that she said to herself--"I used to sit on my bed like that--I used to stare at the wall--I can just remember what I used to think about." Far more it was that, at the sight of Mary doing these things, there came, like an echo into Fanny's pulses, the old emotions through which she had passed when she had been walking round those cliff paths waiting for the destiny that should declare itself for her.

She watched her sister, even more closely than she knew. It was emotional, not conscious observation. Once the matter had fastened itself upon her imagination, the whole spirit of it emotionalized her. She noted all the indications of Mary's condition of mind, without looking for them; almost without knowing she had seen them.

The processes of her thought during that first fortnight when at the last Liddiard was meeting Mary every day, were subtle, subliminal and beyond any conscious intent. Often watching her sister as, regarding herself in the mirror while she did her hair, with those indefinite touches of greater care and more calculating consideration, she found a pain fretting at her heart--a hunger-pain as of one who is ill-nourished, keeping life together but no more.

In this it was as also in the choice of the skirts and blouses Mary wore. It needed no great selection of wardrobe to trace this to its source.

Fanny could never have dreamt of expressing the knowledge that women dress to the dictation of their emotions even if it be something that is never revealed, the color of a ribbon on their undergarments, even the choice of those undergarments themselves. That which touches their skin means insensibly something to them when their emotions are astir. It was not that Fanny had learnt this; she knew it. But it was not that she could speak of her knowledge.

All that happened with Fanny those days was that the observation of these things in Mary emotionalized her. Lying in bed there, watching her sister as she dressed, she found her pulses beating more quickly. She felt a restlessness of body as well as mind. She threw the bedclothes from her and got up, not because she wanted to be dressed herself, but because she could not stay in bed any longer.

And then, when one morning, Mary said--

"I've been thinking, Fanny--why shouldn't I turn that room looking over the garden into a bedroom? We're awfully cramped here. It's just like us to go on with the same arrangements, merely because we're used to them."

Then Fanny knew, and her knowledge was more of an upheaval in her mind than any thought of this revolution against the placid routine of their existence. So much greater was it that she could not even bestir herself to resentment against Mary for preferring to be alone.

The thought crossed her mind--

"How do I interfere with her? It's awfully selfish of her to want to be alone. It isn't as if we hadn't shared the same room for years."

Such thoughts as these would have been poignant at any other time. Mary was prepared for the assertion of them. But they seemed idle to Fanny then--foolish and utterly devoid of purpose.

She sat on the side of her bed, staring at Mary busily engaged in doing her hair. And she knew so well what the meaning of that centered occupation was. Such a moment she would have chosen herself for an announcement of that nature.

Mary was in love, and with a man who had a wife already. She was surprised in her own soul at the littleness of weight the second half of that realization carried in her thoughts. She did not ask herself what--this being so--Mary was going to do about it. As a problem of impenetrable solution, it meant scarcely anything to her. All that kept repeating itself in her mind was just the knowledge that Mary was in love--Mary was in love.

She felt a sickness in her throat. It was not of fear. It was not exactly of joy. She might have been seized of an ague, for she trembled. The sensation was like waves breaking over her; as though she were in water, fathoms deep, and were struggling to keep her lips above the surface that she might breathe freely. But she could not breathe; only in stolen moments, as if breath were no longer hers to hold.

Mary was in love. She wanted that room by herself so that at night she could lie alone with her thoughts and none could touch or spoil them with their presence. She wanted that room alone so that in the morning she could wake with none but her thoughts beside her. She was in love. Suddenly the world to Fanny seemed bitter and black and cold. She was out of it. It had gone by. She was left there on the roadside--trembling.

Love was the magic by which she herself could be revealed to herself when, coming upon this sudden knowledge of Mary, it was that she realized there was no magic in the world for her.

She was alone, unloved, unloving. In that there was merely consciousness, a staring, hungry consciousness of herself. Only in the abandonment of generosity that came with love could she find any meaning in her soul. Only by giving could she gain.

The tragedy of Fanny Throgmorton and the countless women that are like her was that she had none to whom she could give.

All this, without a word in her thoughts that could have given it expression, was what she felt about Mary as she sat on her bedside that morning and watched her sister doing her hair.