Mary was wrapped
up in her husband and her house, and in her social relations and young
Grierson's Platonic passion, so tightly wrapped that these things
formed round her an impenetrable shell. They hid a secret and
inaccessible Mary.
Alice was wrapped up in her husband and children, in the boy of
three who was so like Gwenda, and in the baby girl who was so like
Greatorex. But through them she had become approachable. She had the
ways of some happy household animal, its quick rushes of affection,
and its gaze, the long, spiritual gaze of its maternity, mysterious
and appealing. She loved Gwenda with a sad-eyed, remorseful love. She
said to herself, "If I hadn't been so awful, Gwenda might have married
Steven." She saw the appalling extent of Gwenda's sacrifice. She saw
it as it was, monstrous, absurd, altogether futile.
It was the futility of it that troubled Alice most. Even if Gwenda
had been capable of sacrificing herself for Mary, which had been by
no means her intention, that would have been futile too. Alice was of
Rowcliffe's opinion that young Grierson would have done every bit as
well for Mary.
Better, for Mary had no children.
"And how," said Alice, "could she expect to have them?"
She saw in Mary's childlessness not only God's but Nature's justice.
* * * * *
There were moments when Mary saw it too. But she left God out of it
and called it Nature's cruelty.
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