Chapter VIII

The moment Mary entered the square, white house on her return to Bridnorth, she was aware that both Jane and Fanny knew. The coach had set her down outside the Royal George, but no faces had been at the windows as she went by. No servant had been sent up the road to carry back her bag. Outwardly she smiled. Her disgrace had begun.

This was the end of Bridnorth life for her. Here was to begin a new phase wherein she had none but herself to lean upon; wherein the whole world was against her and in that substance of stone already hardening in her spirit, she must stand alone.

The whole house seemed empty as she came in. She went to her room without meeting any one. They could not long have finished tea. She looked into the drawing-room as she went by. No tea had been left out for her.

Her bed was prepared to sleep in. There were clean towels and a clean mat on the dressing table; but the sign by which they always welcomed each other's return after absence was missing. There were no flowers in the room. The garden was full-yielding. Flowers in profusion were withering in the beds. There was no bowl of them in her room.

It was here, indeed it was everywhere, she felt the presence of Jane. It was not Hannah, now that she had time to think it out, it was not Fanny, but Jane she had come back to meet. Jane with the unyielding spirit of those laws Mary had found consciousness of, against which she set herself in no less unyielding antagonism.

It was bitterness, as it is with so many, that had ranged Jane in battle against her sex. She made no allowances. Almost with a fierce joy, she kept to the very letter of the law. Hers was the justice of revenge and there are no circumstances can mitigate one woman in another's eyes when she transgresses as Mary had done.

In her room she waited, unpacking her things, then sitting and looking out into the garden until the bell rang for their evening meal. With sensations divided between a high temper of courage and a feeling of being outcast in that house she had known so long as home, she went down to the dining-room.

They were already seated. Jane was carving the joint. She did not look up. Fanny raised her eyes in silence. The wish to give her welcome was overawed by wonder of curiosity. It was Hannah who said--

"You told us in your letter you were coming back by this afternoon's coach, but we weren't quite sure."

Caught in an instant's impulse, with an effort Mary controlled herself from saying--

"Didn't you do what Jane told you to do?"

She held her tongue and sat down.

It was a strange and oppressive silence that fell upon them during that meal. Oppressive it was, but electrical as well. Vivid, vital forces were at work in all their minds. Storms were gathering they all knew must burst at last. Something there was that had power to gather those forces to their utmost before they broke and were dispersed in speech.

There they were, four unmarried women, seated about that table with the two portraits looking down upon them in their silence. So they had occupied their allotted positions year by year--year by year. Often there had been quarrelings between them. Often they had not been on speaking terms. Winds of disagreement had fretted the peaceful surface of that house again and again.

But this which was upon them now was unlike any silence that had fallen upon them before. Then they had kept silent because they would. It was now they kept silent because they must. The pervading presence of something about them was tying their tongues from speech. Without the courage to tell themselves what it was, they knew.

There was another in their midst. Those four women, they were not alone. It was not as it had been for so many years. They knew it could never be so again. Something had happened to one of them that set her apart. Each in the variety of her imagination was picturing what that something was. Hannah it frightened. Jane it enraged. Fanny it stirred so deeply that many times through the terribleness of that meal, she thought she must faint.

One and all they might have spoken, had it been no more than this. But that presence in the midst of them kept their tongues to stillness. Life was springing up, where for so long there had been all the silence of a barren field. They could hear it in their hearts. Almost it was a thunder rolling that awed and overwhelmed.

The sound of their knives and forks, even the swallowing of their food hammered across that distant thunder to their conscious ears. Each one knew it was becoming more and more unendurable. Each one knew the moment must come when she could bear it no longer. It was Mary who reached that moment first.

Laying down her knife and fork and pushing away her plate unfinished, she flung back her head with eyes that gathered their eyes to hers.

"Why don't you speak?" she cried to them. "Why can't you say what you're all wanting to say--what's got to be said sooner or later? I know you know--all of you. Hannah's told you. And you've thought it all out, as much as it can be thought out. I don't want any favors from you. This has been my home. I'm quite ready for it to be my home no longer. In any case I'm going away. There's no question, if you're afraid of that, of my appealing to you for pity or generosity. It's only a question of the spirit in which I go and the spirit of what I leave behind. That's all. And why can't you say it? Why can't you tell me what it is? You, Jane! Why don't you speak? You're the one who has anything to say. You told them not to meet the coach. You told them not to put any flowers in my room. If it's something really to fight about, let's fight now. I'm not going to fight again. I'm going away where my child will be born with all the best that I can give it, but I'll hear what you've got to say now, only for God's sake say it!"