Something indeed, as she had cried up there alone in her room, something was wrong. She had come as just a few women do to that conscious realization. But her vision had not power to show her what it was. In those moments it never occurred to her to raise her eyes to the portrait of her father on the wall. She was not didactic enough of mind to argue it with herself or trace the origin of those conventions which had bound and still were binding the lives of those three women her eyes were watching.
Something was wrong. Vaguely she sensed it was the waste of life. It was beyond the function of her mind to follow the reason of that wastage to its source. Her process of thought could not seek out the social laws that had woven themselves about the lives of women until, so much were they the slaves of the law, that they would preach it, earnestly, fervently, believingly as her mother had done.
Something was wrong. That was just all she knew; but in those moments, she knew it well. There were those three women about her to prove how wrong it was. There was she herself nearing that phase when the wrong would be done to her, and she would be powerless as they had been to prevent it.
"Fear not, Mary--" it was as though she heard a voice beckoning within her--"Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favor with God."
Ever since they had come to an age of understanding, their spirits had been warped and twisted with the formalities of life. To fit the plan of those laws man makes by force, they had been bent in their growing to the pattern of his needs. It was those needs of his that had invented the forced virtues of their modesty and self-respect, beneath the pressure of which he kept them as he required them, trained and set back to fulfill the meaning of his self-centered purpose.
Modesty and self-respect, surely these were qualities of all, of men as well as women. By unnatural temperatures to force them in their growth was to produce exotic flowers having none of the simple sweetness of sun-given odors in their scent.
As life was meant, it grew in the open spaces; it was an upright tree, spreading its green boughs under the pure light of heaven. There was nothing artificial about life. It was free.
It was the favor of God. That was the truth she had come by and with her eyes marking that weary look of resignation in Fanny's face, she knew she would not fear it whenever or however it came.
This was the seed, planted in the heart of Mary Throgmorton, which in its season was to bring forth and, for the life of the woman she was, bear the fruit of her being.
PHASE II