And then she recalled the refusal of Sim Gage himself to think of marriage. He had said he was not good enough for her. How could she then marry him, even if she so wished? Must she woo him and persuade him, argue with him? All her own virginal soul, all the sanctity of her life, rebelled against that thought also.
Object, matrimony! What a cruel jest it all had been. What a terrible dilemma, this into which it all had resolved itself. Object, matrimony!
So if this man—so she reasoned again, wearily—if this man who had been kind at least, even if uncouth, was willing to take her with all her stories told, and all shortcomings known and understood—if he was willing to take chances and be content—was that indeed the only way out for her, Mary Warren?
What made it all most bitter, most difficult, most horrible for her was the strength of her own soul. Was it the right thing to do—was it the courageous and valiant thing to do? Those were the two questions which alone allowed her to face that way for an answer; and they were the very two which drove her hardest. Could she not do much, if in the line of duty? Sacrifice was no new thing for women.… And the war!… This was not a time for little thoughts.
Such are some of the questions a woman must ask and answer, because she is a woman. They are asked and answered every day of the world; perhaps not often so cruelly as here in this little cabin.
She began, weakly, to try to resign herself to some frame of mind by which she could entertain the bare, brutal thought of this alternative. She had come more than a thousand miles to meet this man by plan, by arrangement. Oh, no (so she argued), it could not be true that there was but one man for one woman, one woman for a man, in all the world. Annie must have been right. Propinquity did it—was that not why men and women nearly always married in their own village, their own social circle? Well, then, here was propinquity. Object, matrimony! Would propinquity solve all this at last, as though this were a desert island, they two alone remaining? God!
Was it indeed true, asked Mary Warren, in her bitter darkness, that the rude doctrine of material ideas alone must rule the world now in this strange, new, inchoate, revolutionary age? Was it indeed true that sentiment, the emotions, the tenderer things of life, a woman's immeasurable inheritance—must all these things go also into the discards of the world's vast bloody bargain counter?
She remembered Annie's rude but well-meant words, back there where they once crudely struggled with these great questions. "What's the use of trying to change the world, Sis?" she had said. "Something's going wrong every minute of the day and night—something's coming up all the time that ought to be different. But we ain't got nothing to do with running the world—just running our own two lives is enough for us."
Hours or moments later—she could not have told which—she raised her head suddenly. What was it that she had heard? There was a cough, a footfall in the yard.
Oh, then he was coming home! Why not have the whole thing out now, over once and for all? Why not speak plainly and have it done? He had not been so terrible. He was an ignorant man, but not unkind, not brutal.