On her knees above, upstairs in her bedroom, Mary heard the noise of it. She could guess well the kind of remark from Jane that had evoked it. Until those moments Jane had been a source of amusement to her as much as to any of them. She was a source of amusement no longer. Even there on her knees with the sound of their laughter far away in the distance of the house, it was that sad figure of a woman, shrivelled and dried, bitter with the need of sun to ripen her, that came before her eyes.
Then what were the others? With this new vision, she dreaded to think that she in time must look at them. What thoughts to have on one's knee! What thoughts to bring into the sight and mind of God!
She had come there alone to her bedroom to pray--but what for? How could prayer help? Could she by prayer make numb and dead the motion of her mind? By prayer could she silence her thoughts, inducing oblivion as a drug could induce sleep?
Hastening away alone to her bedroom, she had hoped she could. Even then she cherished the belief of all she had been taught of the efficacy of prayer. But having fallen upon her knees at her bedside, what could she pray? Nothing.
"Oh--God, my heavenly Father," she began, and staring before her with rigid eyes at the pillow on her bed it became a twisted bundle of straw on which for poor comfort rested the pale face of a woman patient and enduring in her hour.
How could prayer put away such visions as these? With conscious muscular effort she closed her eyes and began repeating in a voice her ears could hear--"Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name."
So she would have decoyed herself into the attitude of mind of prayer, but the sound of laughter in the house broke in upon the midst of it. She saw that thin, withered woman in whom the sap of life had dried to pith, and, casting away the formula of supplication, her voice had cried out for understanding of it all.
"Something's all wrong!" she said aloud as though one were there in the room beside her to hear and oppose her accusations. "I don't know what it is. I've never thought it was wrong before. And perhaps after all it's I who am wrong."
She knew what she meant by that. Wrong she might insist it was for her to have thought what she thought in church. And yet some quality of deliberation seemed necessary to compose the substance of evil. What deliberation had there been in her? Out of the even and placid monotony of life had shrilled this voice into her heart.
"Who was the father of the Son of Man?"