But evidently Mary could perform a different heroism. So she, Louisa the practical, suddenly felt that Mary, her ideal, was questionable after all. How could she be pure—one cannot be dirty in act and spiritual in being. Louisa distrusted Mary’s high spirituality. It was no longer genuine for her. And if Mary were spiritual and misguided, why did not her father protect her· Because of the money. He disliked the whole affair, but he backed away, because of the money. And the mother frankly did not care:her daughters could do as they liked. Her mother’s pronouncement:
“Whatever happens to him, Mary is safe for life,” —so evidently and shallowly a calculation, incensed Louisa. “I’d rather be safe in the workhouse,” she cried.
“Your father will see to that,” replied her mother brutally. This speech, in its directness, so injured Miss Louisa that she hated her mother deep, deep in her heart, and almost hated herself. It was a long time resolving itself out, this hate. But it worked and worked, and at last the young woman said:
“They are wrong—they are all wrong. They have ground out their souls for what isn’t worth anything, and there isn’t a grain of love in them anywhere. And I will have love. They want us to deny it. They’ve never found it, so they want to say it doesn’t exist. But I will have it. I will love—it is my birthright. I will love the man I marry—that is all I care about.”
So Miss Louisa stood isolated from everybody. She and Mary had parted over Mr. Massy. In Louisa’s eyes, Mary was degraded, married to Mr. Massy. She could not bear to think of her lofty, spiritual sister degraded in the body like this. Mary was wrong, wrong, wrong:she was not superior, she was flawed, incomplete. The two sisters stood apart. They still loved each other; they would love each other as long as they lived. But they had parted ways. A new solitariness came over the obstinate Louisa, and her heavy jaw set stubbornly. She was going on her own way. But which way· She was quite alone, with a blank world before her. How could she be said to have any way· Yet she had her fixed will to love, to have the man she loved.
Ⅶ
When her boy was three years old, Mary had another baby, a girl. The three years had gone by monotonously. They might have been an eternity, they might have been brief as a sleep. She did not know. Only, there was always a weight on top of her, something that pressed down her life. The only thing that had happened was that Mr. Massy had had an operation. He was always exceedingly fragile. His wife had soon learned to attend to him mechanically, as part of her duty.
But this third year, after the baby girl had been born, Mary felt oppressed and depressed. Christmas drew near: the gloomy, unleavened Christmas of the rectory, where all the days were of the same dark fabric. And Mary was afraid. It was as if the darkness were coming upon her.
