She had not beckoned the voice. It had lifted out of nowhere above the soulless intonation of the Vicar's sermon. But what was more, now once she had heard it, it appeared as though it long had been waiting to cry its message in her ears. She wondered why she had never heard it before. For twenty-nine years she realized as she knelt there on her knees, she had been little more than a child. Now in the lateness of the day she was a woman, knowing more of the world than ever she would have learnt by experience.
The deeper purposes of life they were that had come without seeking upon her imagination. It was not this or that she knew about women, not this or that which had come in revelation to her about men. Only that there was a meaning within herself, pitiably and almost shamefully unfulfilled. Something there was wrong--all wrong. Half she suspected in herself what it was. For those few moments as they walked back from church, she had caught actual sight of it in her sister Jane.
Would she discern it in the others? Discovering it in them would she know what it was in her? Why was she on her knees for thoughts like this? This was not prayer. She could not pray.
The sound of the bell downstairs raised her slowly to her feet. She took off her hat and laid it on the bed. Automatically she crossed to the mirror and began to tidy her hair.
Was there anything in her face that made her heart beat the faster? She stood looking at her reflection, pondering that there was not. What beauty of color was there in her cheeks? What line of beauty in her lips? And why did she look for these things and why, when behind her eyes she saw something in her mind she dared not speak, did her heart set up a beating in every pulse?
With a gesture of impatient self-rebuke, she turned away and went downstairs.
XII
Jane carved. As their father had always done, she still gave them just portions of fat so that the joint might evenly be consumed. There was not the same necessity to eat it when it was hot as there had been when Mr. Throgmorton was alive; yet even still, Fanny with an unconquerable distaste for it, did her best to leave a clean plate.
When Mary came in, they were already seated at the table. Hannah had said grace. They all asked where she had been.
"Tidying up," said she, and pulling out her chair, sat down, beginning her meal at once with her eyes steady upon her plate. Fanny was opposite to her. Being the eldest, Hannah sat at the head of the table. With the new vision of mind that had come to her, there were long moments before Mary could determine to raise her head and look at them. It was sufficient to hear them talking. The subject of Christmas presents was monopolizing the conversation. They were all going in to Exeter for a day's shopping if the roads permitted. Mary found herself caught in astonishment at the apparent note of happiness in their voices.