“ The future was hers, not his. With that letter he had cancelled all existence in the meaning of life. There was no meaning in him. A mere shell of empty substance had fallen from her. To herself she seemed as though she were looking from a great height down which that hollow thing fluttered into the nothingness of space, leaving her in a radiant ether that none could enter or disturb.
Then of a sudden and in all consciousness now, there came with rushing memory into her mind, the thought of that sermon at Christmas time.
"Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God." ”

“ There in the quiet and the seclusion at Yarningdale, Mary with many another woman those days, not conscious enough of vision to speak their thoughts, saw the world gone mad in its passion to possess.
It seemed to matter little to her at whose door the iniquity of lighting the firebrand lay. War had been inevitable whoever had declared it. The cry of broken treaties and sullied honor stirred but little in her heart as she heard it. What mattered it if a man was true to his word when all through the years he had been false to the very earth he dwelt on? ”

“ Something had driven her beyond her control. Finding herself opposed by a force so infinitely greater than her own, she had struggled and fought. It had been a moment's hysteria in the sudden consciousness of her impotence. Then what power was it? Not merely Mary herself. She could not submit her mind to that admission. It was greater than Mary and yet, becoming the voice of it, she felt that this sister of hers was greater than herself.
To Mary, the shock of realization that Jane had seen them that moment in the bracken was not one that seemed to tremble or emotionalize her at all. ”

“ It was in the summer of 1895 that Julius Liddiard came to Bridnorth. He came alone, having engaged rooms at the White Hart.
From the Throgmorton windows he was observed descending at the George Hotel when, with a glance at Mary, it was announced by Jane that he played golf. As he slung a bulky satchel over his shoulder, Fanny surmised him to be an artist, entertaining for a swift moment as it sped across her mind, a vision of herself sitting beside him, watching his sketches with absorbing interest as they came to life beneath his brush. ”

“ She peered down the field through the trunks of the pollarded willows and saw a dryad dancing before a faun sitting cross-legged in the grass. A fay-looking sight it was in the hazy mist of that sunshine. With unsteady balance, Lucy swayed in and out of the tree shadows, alternately a thing of darkness and a thing of light. And there below her in the grass he sat, with his mop of hair and his profile cut sharp against the dark trunk of a willow tree, looking to Mary who saw him with the mist in his eyes like pagan Nature, back to the times of Pan. ”

“ Climbing back down the cliffs, holding on to one of the pine trees in her descent, Mary had turned and smiled at him. It was an inscrutable smile to Liddiard. It was not that he tried to understand it. It was, as it penetrated his mind, that he knew it to be quite impossible of comprehension. More it was as if Nature had smiled upon him, than the mere bright light of the parting of a woman's lips. In its illumination it seemed to reveal to him the vision of himself in a strange powerlessness. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Peverell indeed had spoken true when she had called him a love-child. His response to passion had been swift and soon. And was he coming, awed to love as once she had said she would teach him to come? Or was he tramping with the pride of victory and possession? The moment she saw this girl, she would know. The world was full of women who asked for no more; who judged the affections of their men by just that measure of animal passion which in their hearts and often upon their tongues they professed to despise. ”

“ At that distance, more sure than Mary, she knew what was going to happen. More sure than either of them, she knew. When suddenly, as though some leaping power had swept upon him unexpectedly, he took her in his arms and their heads were one together, linked with his kisses, Jane had known of it more surely than he.
Feeling those kisses on her own lips, on her eyes, her throat, and like hammers beating in her heart, Jane buried her face in the heather but did not know that she moaned with pain. ”

“ Mary realized as she sat there, fascinated by the terribleness of her thoughts, that they all had escaped from life. Not in one of them had there been the moment's fulfillment of their being. They were women, but it was not as women they had lived. One by one the purpose of life was running slower in their veins. She with the rest of them. Her turn would come. First she would become a Fanny, tired with waiting. That eager look of a spirit hunger would come into her eyes, alternating as events came and passed her by with those dull, dead shadows of fatigue. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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." ”

“ This is the tragedy of a thousand women who pass through life and never touch its meaning; these thousand women who one day will alter the force-made laws for a world built nearer to the purpose of their being; these thousand women to whom the figure of Mary Throgmorton stands there by Bridnorth village in her monument of stone upon the Devon cliffs.
With all this unconsciousness of design in the pattern of her life, the coming of the coach to Mary is well-nigh too subtle to admit of capture in the rigid medium of words. ”

“ Time came when he himself could climb a tree and peer within a nest. Down on the ground below, Mary would stand with heart dry on her lips, yet bidding him no more than care of the places where he put his feet. Never should he know fear, she determined, never through her.
So she brought him up and to the life of the farm as well. With Mr. Peverell he spent many of his days. In the hayfields and at harvest time, the measure of his joys was full. He knew the scent of good hay from bad before ever he could handle a rake to gather it. ”

“ She had succeeded, as well she knew she would, in frightening Hannah now. She was trembling. Leaning on her arm, Mary could feel those vibrations of fear. So unused to all but the even flow of life, and finding herself thus suddenly in a morass of apprehension, the poor creature's mind was floundering helplessly. One step of speculation after another only left her the more deeply embedded in her fears.
"Tell me what it is," she whispered--"Tell me quickly. Was it that Mr. Liddiard?"
How surely she had sensed the one thing terrible in her life a woman can have to tell. ”

“ In her first encounter with Mary, Dorothy knew that she had lost. She was no equal, she realized it, to that serene and quiet woman who gave her smile for smile and in whose eyes the smile still lingered when in her own it had faded away.
It was not before the latter end of July that the first whisper of war came to Yarningdale. Conflagrations might burst forth in Europe; the world might be set alight. It mattered little to them at Yarningdale farm. Whatever might happen, the cows had still to be milked, the crops to be gathered, the stacks to be built. ”

“ She repeated the words aloud; hearing them now as she spoke them in her throat and knowing, with all the fullness of its meaning to her, the realization it gave expression to when she voiced the thought which that day in church had followed it.
"Who was the father of the Son of Man?"
Might there not indeed, as here with her, have been no father at all? The mere servant of Nature, whipped with passion to her purpose, then feared by the laws he and his like had made to construct a world; feared by them, disemboweled by them and by Nature herself driven out and cast aside. ”

“ The life of Mary Throgmorton during those months while she worked at Yarningdale Farm was a succession of days so full of peace, so instinct with the real beauties which enter the blood, suffuse the heart, and beat through all the veins, that her soul, as she had meant it should be, was attuned by them to minister to its purpose.
At six every morning she descended from her little room beneath the thatched eaves. At that hour the air was still. The chill of the dew that had fallen was yet in it. The grass as she walked through the meadows was always wet underfoot. ”

“ There, in what seemed not the long but the speedy months to her, she was going to breathe in the scents of the earth, absorbing the clean purposes of life as they are set forth in the tilling of the soil, the sowing of the seed, the reaping of the harvest.
It was to be close to the very earth itself she needed. There is no clear line of argument to trace in a woman's mind. Her marriage bed had been the heathered moors. The scent of the earth had been all about her as she lay in Liddiard's arms. ”

“ I had no shame then. I loved. Loving no longer, I still now have no shame because, and believe me it is not in anger, we have no cause to meet again. I know I am going to have a child. I know he is going to be wonderful if I can make him so. I shall get my love from him as he grows in years and I am sure there is only one love. Passion is only an expression of it. My life will be fuller than yours with all the possessions you have. Bringing him up into the world will absorb the whole heart of me. ”

“ So often had Mary's name been repeated that by now no association was left in Fanny'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. ”

“ And once John had come in contact with life itself, how could she be sure the pressure of his thoughts would not be tinctured with regret. What more bitter inheritance, what more accusing testimony of her failure than that?
Not always a faun could she keep him. Not always with a dryad could he play in happy meadows. The world it seemed had grown too old, too worn, for that. Something must happen to stir human nature to its depths and rearrange the threadbare and accepted values before it could ever be young again. ”

“ It is as though for one instant she had power to arrest the traffic of time that she might take this crossing in the streets of life with unhampered deliberation. For here often she will choose her direction in the full consciousness of thought. No longer dare she leave her destiny to the hazard of chance. It has become, not the Romance that will happen upon her in the glorious and unexpected suddenness of ecstasy, but the Romance she must find, eager in her searching, swift in her choice lest life all go by and the traffic of time sweep over her. ”

“ With that vision all conventionality slipped from her control, even from the very substance of her thoughts. Instinctively she knew she had been witness of something she had neither power nor right to judge when, forcing herself to regard it as all the years of habit and custom would have her do, she shut her eyes to the sight of them in that bracken and called upon her judgment to dispassionate her mind.
That evening she contrived to be alone with Mary after tea. They walked in the garden, round the paths with their borders of thrift in heavy cushions of growth. ”

“ Who would there ever be here in Yarningdale to tell him? For one instant that thought consoled and the next assailed her with venomous accusations. Was it not the self-confession of weakness to hope for concealment and deception to save her from retribution? The very realization of it shook her faith. To be true, to be worthy, to endure, ideals must be able to face the fiercest light; must live, be tried, be nailed to the cross if necessary. ”

“ Her heart was beating in her throat. Even John found her eyes more bright than he had ever seen them before.
All love of women in that moment she knew was the same. For sons or lovers, if it were their hearts beat too high for the material judgments in a material world, what did that matter if so high they beat as to lift the hearts of men to nobler than material things? This, she realized it, was her function; this the power so many women were denied, having no vision of it in themselves because men did not grant it license in their needs. ”

“ 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?" ”

“ The bay at Bridnorth is inclosed by two headlands of sandy stone. That to the east rises irregularly with belts of pine wood and sea-bent oaks, opening later in heathered moors that stretch in broad plateaus, then sink to sheltered hollows where one farm at least lies hidden in its clump of trees.
It is always a romantic world, that land which lies to the cliff edge beside the sea. The man who farms it is forever at close grips with the elements. He wrestles with Nature as those inland with their screening hedgerows have little knowledge of. ”

“ Ever since her eyes had penetrated the veil that for so long had hidden her sisters from her, Mary had resented, while so well she understood, their curiosity about the visitors who came to Bridnorth. There were times when it almost had a savor of indecency to her; times when she felt her cheeks grow warm at the ill-hidden purpose of their interest; times when it seemed to her as though Fanny, revealing her soul, had dressed it in diaphanous garments which almost were immodest in their transparent flimsiness. ”

“ And when in turn she held him, then above Mary's pride that already had had its fill, there rose the consciousness of all her sister was suffering. Twitching with emotion were Fanny's lips as she kissed him. Against that thin breast of hers she held him fast as though she felt for him to give her the sense of life. Not even a foolish word such as Hannah had murmured in his ears was there in her heart to say to him. It was life she was holding so close; life that had never been given her to touch ”

“ Hannah exclaimed. "How can you say it's their fault? They did the very best they knew for us. Wouldn't you sooner be as you are than like that girl Hyland?"
"She's got a baby now," Jane replied imperturbably. "She'll steady down. She's contributed more than we have. It isn't much when all you can say is that you've given a few old clothes to jumble sales."
"I know what Jane means," said Fanny. Her memory had caught her back to that late evening on the cliffs when she felt again, like an internal wound, that spareness of her body in the arms which for those few moments had held her close. ”

“ This choice she must make or work must save her, for life has become as vital to women as it is to men. At twenty-nine this is many a woman's dilemma. Yet at twenty-nine no such consciousness of the need of deliberation had entered the mind of Mary Throgmorton. Perhaps it was because there were no younger creatures about her, growing up to the youth she was leaving behind; perhaps because in the quietness of seclusion, by that Bridnorth stream, the gentle, rippling song of it had never wakened her to life. ”

“ In the keener moments of consciousness of his loneliness, she found him morose, until, unable to sing or laugh with the songs and laughter of that house, he came at times to believe he was morose himself.
"What's happening to me," he would say when he was alone; "what's happening to me is that I'm losing the joy of life."
Yet the sight of the countryside at Springtime seemed to himself to give him more sense of joy than all the revels in London that made his wife's eyes dance with youth. ”

“ In time Mary came to learn that with those who work upon the land, there are no spare moments; that the duties and demands of the earth know no Sabbath day of rest. That afternoon, she pictured them on Sundays in that room, with hands folded in their laps, reading perhaps with quaint intonations and inflections from the massive volume on its crocheted mat. It was never as thus she saw them.
As they went by, catching a glimpse of the parlor kitchen with its heavy beams of oak in the ceiling, she had wished they might have had their tea there. ”

“ She becomes then as a monument, set up on a high and lonely hill amongst the many of those hills in drowsy Devon, a monument, silently claiming the birthright of all women which the laws men make by force have so ungenerously circumscribed.
There is no woman who could look at that monument without secret emotions of a deep respect, while there were many in her lifetime who spurned Mary Throgmorton with tongue and with a glance of eye, and still would spurn her to-day in the narrow streets where it is their wont to walk. ”

“ 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 substituted a woman--just such a woman it might be as herself. ”