Chapter IX

None of them knew their Mary like this. Until that moment scarcely in such fashion had she known herself. New instincts had risen in her blood. Already the creative force was striking a dominant note in her voice, setting to fire a light in her eyes.

They felt that evening she had gained power that would never be theirs. Hannah fell obedient to it as one who humbles herself before mighty things; Fanny fell to fear, awed by this note of battle that rang like a challenge in her voice.

Jane alone it was who stood out away from them and, from amidst the ranks of that army of women who acknowledge the oath of convention, offering both heart and blood in its service, accepted the call to combat.

"You talk," she said, with her voice rising swiftly to the pitch of conflict; "you talk as though there were two ways of looking at what you've done. You talk as though there were something fine and splendid in it, but were not quite sure whether we were fine or splendid enough to see it. I never heard anything so arrogant in all my life. You seem to think it's a concession on your part to say you're going away. Of course you're going away. We've lived decently and cleanly in this place all these years. They've had no reason to be ashamed of us," her eyes flashed to the portraits and back to Mary, "not till now. Do you think we're going to flaunt our shame in their faces!"

Catching a look of pain in Hannah's eyes, as though that last blow had been too searching and too keen, she struck it home again.

"It is shame!" she said. "I'm not so different from all of you. I feel ashamed and so do they. What else can we possibly feel--a married man--a man you don't even love. It's filthy! And if you want to find another word for it than that, it's because you've even come to be ashamed of the truth. There's something in decency; there's something in modesty and cleanliness. They taught us it. The whole of their lives they taught us that. They brought us up to be proud of the class we belong to, not to behave like servant girls snatching kisses that don't belong to us with any man who comes along and likes to make a fool of us."

Fanny, who up to that moment had been gazing at her sister, caught in a wonder at this flow of speech, now of a sudden dropped her eyes, twining and untwining the fingers in her lap. How could Mary answer that? Cruel as it was, it had the sting of truth. She dared not look at her and could only wait in trembling for her reply.

She might have gained courage had she looked. Those blows had not beaten Mary to her knees. With her head thrown back, she waited for the last word, as though, now they had come to it, there were rules to be observed and pride in her own strength put aside all need to ignore them.

"Have you anything more to say?" she asked with a clear voice.

"Do you want any more than that?" retorted Jane.

"I don't mind how much more there is," replied Mary quietly, "we're saying all we feel. We aren't mincing things. I'm going to say what I feel. I'm going to hit and hurt as hard as you, so go on if you want to. This isn't a squabble. I don't want to bicker or cavil or interrupt. We're not just cats fighting now, we're women and we'll try and talk fair. Say anything more you've got to say."

"Well, if that's not enough for you," continued Jane, "if it is not enough to allude to what I saw with my own eyes, or to tell you there are servant girls who could behave better than that, then I'll talk of what, thank God, I didn't see and I'll tell you it's worse than shame what you have done and not even the excuse of being betrayed by love that you have to offer for it. I'll say it, Mary, and I don't care now because you've asked for it. You must be a bad woman in your heart, there must be something vile about you that makes you not fit to touch us or be in the same house with us. You've asked for that and you've got it. You've wanted every word there is to say. I should have left that unspoken if you hadn't asked for it. But that's what I feel. If you were a woman off the streets in London and sitting there at our table, I couldn't feel more sick or ashamed at the sight of you."

"Jane!" cried Hannah. "Oh, don't say anything so horrible or terrible as that!"

"What's terrible about it? What's horrible about it?" asked Mary. "It isn't true. Jane knows it isn't true. When a woman's fighting for the conventions Jane's fighting for, she doesn't use the truth--she's incapable of using it."

"What is the truth then?" exclaimed Jane. "If you've satisfied yourself you know, if you've invented anything truer than what I've said to make an excuse for yourself, let's hear what it is."

"Yes, you shall hear it," said Mary, and a deep breath she drew to steady the torrent of words that was surging in her mind. "First of all it's not true that I didn't love. I did. She's perverted the truth there. I did love. I'm not going to tear my heart open and show you how much. I don't love any longer. That's what Jane has made use of--the best she could. But what I feel now has nothing to do with it. What I feel now is the result of circumstances it won't help any way to explain. What happened that makes the vileness she talks about, happened when I was in love, as deeply in love as any woman can be, and as I never expect to be again. But it's not because of love that I'm going to defend myself. It's not because of love that I show this arrogance, as you call it. That's not the truth I've found or invented for myself. Love's only half the truth when you come to value and add up the things that count in a woman's life. Of all the married people we know, how many women who have found completion and justification for their existence really love their husbands? Love! Oh, I don't know! Love's an ecstasy that gives you a divine impetus towards the great purposes of life. I don't want to talk as though I'd been reading things out of a book. That almost sounds like it. But you can't imagine I haven't been thinking. These two months, these last six months, ever since something that happened last Christmas time, I have. And thinking's like reading, I suppose. It's reading your own thoughts."

A smile of security twitched at Jane's lips.

"Well, is this the wonderful truth?" she asked. "Are we to sit and listen to you, the youngest of us, telling us that love's an ecstasy? Because if you're going to give us a lecture about love, perhaps you'd like a glass of water beside you."

"No, that's not the wonderful truth," she replied quietly. She felt Jane could not sting her to anger and somehow she smiled. "The truth is this, which they up there had never learnt and no one seems to know. Life's not for wasting, but what have been our lives here, we four girls--girls! Women now! What has it been? Waste--waste--nothing but waste. Why has Hannah's hair gone gray? Why are you, Jane, bitter and sour and dry in your heart? Why's Fanny drawn and tired and thin and spare? Why do I look older than I am? Because we're waste--because Life's discarded us and thrown us on one side, because for a long time now there's been nothing in the world for us to do but sit in this room with those portraits looking down on our heads and just wait till we filter out like streams that have no flood of purpose to carry them to the sea. Our lives have only been a ditch, for water to stagnate in. We find nothing. We can't even find ourselves. Fanny there, grows thinner every year. And who's to blame for it?"

Her eyes shot up to the portraits on the wall and half furtively all their eyes followed hers.

"They're to blame, but not first of all they aren't. What makes it possible that Jane can speak as she does, talking about what has happened to me as the vilest of all vile things? Men have made it possible, because men have needed children for one reason and one reason only. Possession, inheritance and all the traditions of family and estate. These are the things men have wanted children for and so they made the social laws to meet their needs. But there are more things in the world to inherit than a pile of bricks and a handful of acres. Do you think I want my child to have no more inheritance than that? I tell you almost I'm glad he has no father! I'm glad he won't possess. There are things more wonderful than bricks and acres that are going to be his if I have the power to show them to him. There are things in the world more wonderful than those which you can just call your own. And it's those laws of possession and inheritance we have to thank for the idleness our lives have been set in. Jane thinks herself a true woman just because she's clung to modesty and chastity and a fierce reserve, but those things are of true value only when they're needed, and what man has needed them of us? Who cares at all whether we've been chaste and pure? None but ourselves! And what's made us care but these false values that make Jane's shame of me?"

With flashing eyes she turned to Jane.

"You've asked for the truth," she cried now. "Well, you shall have it as you thought you gave it to me. You're not really ashamed of me. You're envious, jealous, and you're stung with spite. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. You'd give all you know to have what I have, but having allowed yourself to be a slave to the law all you have left is to take a pride in your slavery and deck it out with the pale flowers of modesty and self-respect."

She stood up suddenly from her chair and walked to the door. An instant there, she turned.

"As soon as I can get my things together," she said, "I'm going to a place in Warwickshire. If Hannah wants to know my plans afterwards I'll write and tell her. Don't think I'm not quite aware of being turned out. That's quite as it ought to be from Jane's point of view. You'd dismiss a servant at once. But don't think you've made me ashamed. I only want you to remember I went as proud, prouder than you stayed."

This was the real moment of Mary Throgmorton's departure from the square, white house in Bridnorth. When a few days later she left in the old coach that wound its way over the crest of the hill on which so often she had watched it, it was the mere anticlimax of her going and to all who saw that departure must have seemed but a simple happening in her life.

PHASE IV