With flashing eyes she turned to Jane.
"You've asked for the truth," she cried now. "Well, you shall have it as you thought you gave it to me. You're not really ashamed of me. You're envious, jealous, and you're stung with spite. Calling me a servant girl or a woman of the streets only feeds your spite, it doesn't satisfy your heart. You'd give all you know to have what I have, but having allowed yourself to be a slave to the law all you have left is to take a pride in your slavery and deck it out with the pale flowers of modesty and self-respect."
She stood up suddenly from her chair and walked to the door. An instant there, she turned.
"As soon as I can get my things together," she said, "I'm going to a place in Warwickshire. If Hannah wants to know my plans afterwards I'll write and tell her. Don't think I'm not quite aware of being turned out. That's quite as it ought to be from Jane's point of view. You'd dismiss a servant at once. But don't think you've made me ashamed. I only want you to remember I went as proud, prouder than you stayed."
This was the real moment of Mary Throgmorton's departure from the square, white house in Bridnorth. When a few days later she left in the old coach that wound its way over the crest of the hill on which so often she had watched it, it was the mere anticlimax of her going and to all who saw that departure must have seemed but a simple happening in her life.
PHASE IV
I
The hay was made and stacked when Mary returned to Yarningdale Farm. They were thatching the day she arrived, wherefore there was none to meet her. The old fly with its faded green and musty cushions brought her over from the station. Those were long moments for contemplation as they trundled down the country roads and turned into the lanes that led ultimately to the farm.
The train had been too swift for arrested concentration of thought. In the train she had not been alone. Here, as the iron-rimmed wheels rumbled beneath her, crunching the grit upon the road with their unvarying monotonous note, she felt at last she had come into her haven and could turn without distraction into the thoughts of her being.
Had ever that old vehicle carried such burden before? With the things Jane had said still beating up and down in the cage of memory, she pictured some weeping servant girl dismissed her place, carrying her burden away with her in shame and fearfulness to find a hiding place in a staring, watchful world.