The Green Bough

by E. Temple Thurston

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. Truly enough, if deeply engaged in one of the many books she read, there were times and often when, from those front windows of the square, white house, she would let her sisters report upon the new or strange arrivals set down outside the Royal George.

Even Jane, with her shrewdness of vision, was misled by this into the belief that Mary cared less than them all what interest the Abbotscombe coach might bring for the moment into their lives.

"I wonder what his handicap is," she had said when they had described a young man descending from the box seat with a bag of golf clubs.

Notwithstanding all Mary's undoubted excellence at that game or indeed at any game to which she gave her hand, Jane, disposed by nature to doubt, would sharply look at her. But apparently there was no intention to deceive. If the book was really engrossing, she would return to its pages no sooner than the remark was made, as though time would prove what sort of performer he was, since all golfers who came to Bridnorth found themselves glad to range their skill against hers on the links.

And when, as it happened, she joined them at those front windows, consenting to their little deceptions of casual interest in the midst of more important occupations--for Jane would say, "Mary, you can't just stare"--it was with no more than calculation as to what amusement the visitors would provide that Mary appeared to regard their arrival.

Not one of them, however, not even Fanny, knew that there were days in those Spring and Summer months, when Mary, setting forth with her strong stride and walking alone up on to the heathered moors would, with intention, seat herself in a spot where the Abbotscombe coach could be seen winding its way down the hill into Bridnorth. It was one spot alone from which the full stretch of the road could be observed. By accident one day she had found it, just at that hour when the coach went by. She had known and made use of it for six years and more.

At first it was the mere interest of a moving thing passing in the far line of vision to its determined destination; the interest of that floating object the stream catches in its eddies and carries in its flowing out of sight.

So it was at first, until in some subconscious way it grew to hold for her a sense of mystery. She would never have called it mystery herself--the attraction had no name in her mind. No more did she do than sit and watch its passage, dimly conscious that that little moving speck upon the road, framed in its aura of dust, was moving into the horizon of her life and as soon would move out again, leaving her the same as she was before.

Habit it was to think she would be left the same; yet always whilst it was there in the line of her eyes, it had seemed that something, having no word in her consciousness, might happen to her with its passing.

So vividly sometimes it appeared to be moving directly into her life. So vividly sometimes, when it had gone, it appeared to have left her behind. She would have described it no more graphically or consciously than that.