"'Ee's thoughtful, Maidy," Mrs. Peverell said to her when she returned from posting her letter in Lonesome Ford."Am I?""'Ee've had a letter from him.""How did you know?""How do my Peverell know there'd be rain acomin'? He says he feels it in his bones. Men's bones and women's hearts be peculiarsome things."IVIt was a boy. Full in the month of March he came, with a storm rushing across the fields where the rooks already were gathering in the elm trees and the first, dull red of blossom was flushing the winter black of the branches against the clouds of thunder blue.High as was the cry of that southwest wind, sweeping the trees and rattling the windows in their casements, his first cry beneath the thatch of Yarningdale Farm uplifted above every other sound in the ears of Mrs. Peverell and Mary as they heard it.The doctor who attended her from Henley-in-Arden had proposed an anæsthetic."Your first child," he said. "It'll just make things easier."Had her pain been less she would have spoken for herself. Had she spoken, a cry might have escaped with the words between her lips. She looked across at Mrs. Peverell who knew her mind and she shook her head."She wants it just natural," said the farmer's wife."'Ee can see for 'eeself she's strong. 'Tain't no hide and seek affair with her.""It's going to be a bit worse than she thinks," muttered the doctor."Can't be worse'n a woman thinks," retorted Mrs. Peverell. "Let 'ee mind as carefully as 'ee can what she feels--what she thinks'll be beyond 'ee or me."Peverell came back from plowing at midday with the clods of earth on his boots."Come there be no rain to-night," said he. "I'll have that corn sown in to-morrow.""We have our harvest in upstairs a'ready," said she.He wheeled round in his chair with his eyes wide upon her."Damn it!" he exclaimed. "I'd complete forgot our maidy on her birth-bed."She gazed at him a moment in silence, with words unspoken in her glance he had uncomfortable consciousness of, yet did not know one instant all they meant. It left him with a disagreeable sense of inferiority, just when he had been congratulating himself on a piece of work well done."'Ee won't forget when 'ee sows the seed to-morrow in that field," said she quietly. "Come time 'ee has it broadcast sown, the sweat'll be on thy brow, an' 'ee limbs be aching." She lifted the corner of her apron significantly. "I've wiped the sweat off her brow and laid her body comfortable in the bed and now I'll get the meat to put in 'ee stomach."He knew he had made some grievous error somewhere. Forgetting their maidy and her babe upstairs no doubt. He ate the food she brought him in silence, like a child aware of disgrace; but why it should be so, just because he had forgotten about a woman having a baby was more than he could account for. It was not as if it had been a slack day or a Sabbath. That ground was just nice and ready for the wheat to go in. Still, it was no good saying anything. He had hurt her feelings some way and there was an end of it. He knew well that steady look in the sunken eyes, the set line, a little tighter drawn in the thin lips.It worried him as he ate his meal. It always worried him. Somehow it seemed to make the food taste dry in his mouth. It had no such succulence as when all was just right, and he had come in for his dinner after a hard morning's work. For never by conscious word had he hurt her. Never, in all the thirty-seven years they had been married, had there been an instant's intent in him to make her suffer.It was in these unaccountable ways, in chance words, harmless enough in all conscience to him, in little things he did and little things he left undone, that this look she had, came in these sudden moments into her face."Women be queer cattle," he would say to himself. "There be no ways treatin' 'em alike. 'Ee might think 'ee'd got 'em goin' one way when round they'll come and go t'other."As a rule this silent summary of the whole sex would satisfy him in regard to the one in particular he had in mind. With a sweep of his hand across his mouth after his meal was over, he would go back to his work and once his feet felt the fields beneath them, he would forget all about it.Somehow this time he seemed to know there was little hope of forgetting. Whether it was his food tasted drier than usual; whether some meaning of what she had said about the sweat on his brow and the sweat of her who labored upstairs there with her child had reached with faint rays of illumination to his appreciative mind, whatever it was, the fields called in vain to him.He was restless, uneasy. Without cause he knew of, he felt a little ashamed. Rising from the table, he moved about the room lighting his pipe. He felt like some child with a lie or a theft upon his conscience. When his pipe was well lit and hard rammed down, finding he had no patience to sit awhile as was his custom, he went in search of his wife.From something she had said about making as little noise as possible, he knew she was not upstairs with her patient. If he asked her straight out, perhaps she would tell him what was the matter, what he had said, what possibly he had done.She was not in the scullery. Softly he opened the door of the larder and looked in. She was not there. With his heart beating in unaccustomed pulses he crept upstairs to their bedroom, thinking to himself, "Plowed fields be better walking for the likes of me.""Mother," he whispered, and opened the door.She was not there.In despair he turned to the stairs again, drawing a deep breath when he reached the bottom. Only the parlor was left, unless she were out of the house altogether. He looked in. It was empty. He was turning away when there caught his attention the unusual sight of the big Bible lying open on the table. He crossed the room to look at it. Was it so bad she'd had to be reading some of that?It was opened at the first, clean page. No printing was on it, but there in ink, still wet, was written in her handwriting--"John Throgmorton, at Yarningdale, March 17th, 1896."Some idea flashed out from that page as he leant over it. It reached some hitherto unused function of perception in his brain. He knew now why that look had come into her eyes. He knew even what it was he had said, or rather what he had forgotten to say that had hurt her. All this was reminding her how she wanted a child of her own. But had he not wanted one too? Was not the loss as much his that he had no son to take the handles of the plow when his hands had ceased to hold them?He turned as she entered the room with a piece of blotting paper she had fetched from his desk in the kitchen where he wrote out his accounts."Mother," he said, and he fidgeted with his hands, "I know what's worryin' 'ee. I ought t'have thought of it afore now, but we been past it these many years, it had gone out o' my head for the moment. B'lieve me I've wanted one same as 'ee."She knew he was a good man as she looked at him, but could not think of that then."I've wanted 'ee to have fair crops," said she, "but it's only been disappointment to me when they've failed. Yet I've seen it make 'ee feel 'ee was not man enough for the task God had set 'ee."With a steady hand, she blotted the page and shut the book, then taking him by the arm, she led him out of the room and closed the door."There's one of them young black minorcas has the croup," said she."They be plaguy things," he replied.VTalking of the future one day with Mrs. Peverell, Mary had said that if it were a boy, his name must be John. So definite had she been in her decision about this, that without further question the good woman had written it in the big Bible."John's a man's name," Mary had said; "there's work in it." Then, dismissing her smile and speaking still more earnestly, she had continued, "If anything were to happen to me, I should leave him to you. Would you take him?"The sunken eyes were quite steady before the gaze they met."How could we give 'en the bringin' up?" she asked."He shall have no bringing up but this," Mary had replied. "I told you first of all I didn't come here to hide. I chose this place because I knew I could touch life here and make him all I wanted him to be. This is what I want him, a good man and a true man and a real one, like your husband. I want him to know that he owes all to the earth he works in. What money I have shall be yours to keep and clothe him. Indeed I hope nothing will happen for I know so well what I want him to be. I've always known it, it seems to me now. I've only realized it these last few months. Milking these cows, walking in the meadows, living here on this farm, I've learnt to realize it. Giving is life. We can't all give the same thing, but it is in the moment of giving that most we feel alive. Acquiring, possessing, putting a value on things and hoarding them by, there's only a living death, a stagnant despair and discontent in that.""'Ee's talkin' beyond me," said Mrs. Peverell watching her. "'Ee's well taught at school and 'ee's talkin' beyond me. I never had no learnin' what I got of use to me out of books. But come one day an' another, I've learnt that wantin' things may help 'ee gettin' 'em, but it stales 'em when they come. All I could have given my man, ain't there for givin'. God knows best why. Most willing would I have gone wi'out life to give 'en a child to patter its feet on these bricks. He doant know that. I wouldn't tell 'en. He'd say there warn't no sense in my talkin' that way. Men want life to live by, but it seems to me sometimes death's an easy thing to a woman when it comes that way. I s'pose it's what 'ee'd call the moment of givin' and doant seem like death to her."Mary had leant forward, stretching out her hand and taking the knotted knuckles in her fingers."You haven't lost much," she had said, "by not having my advantage of education. What you've just said is bigger than any learning could make it. I don't think we speak any more of truth because we have more words to express it with. I'm sure we think less. Do you think I could find any one better to teach him than you? It is women who teach. Your husband will show him the way, but you will give him that idea in his heart to take it. I long so much to give it to him myself that I haven't your courage. Sometimes I'm afraid I may die. I don't let it have any power over me but sometimes I confess I'm afraid, because you see I want to give him more than his life. I want to give him his ideals. Perhaps that's because I've no one else to give him to. My life won't seem complete unless I can live beyond that. Anyhow I wanted to say this. If I have to give him, I want it to be to you and I want you to know that that is how I wish him to be brought up. If he has big things in life to give, he'll find them out. He'll leave the farm. Perhaps he'll break your heart in leaving--perhaps he'll break mine if I live, but I want him first to learn from the earth itself the life there is in giving and then, let it be what it may, for him to give his best."Mrs. Peverell nodded her head to imply understanding."It's them as doant suffer can talk about sin," she had said, which by no means was Mary's train of thought, though her words had somehow suggested it to Mrs. Peverell's range of comprehension. "I should have called all this sin years ago. Didn't I say 'twas sin when first 'ee told me? Well, it beats me what sin is. 'Tain't what I thought it. We be born with it, they say. Well, if the babes I seen be born with sin, 'tain't what any one thinks it."It was obvious Mrs. Peverell had not followed her in the flight of her hopes and purposes. The right and the wrong of it, the pain and the joy of it, these were all that her mind grasped. But these she grasped with a clearness of vision that assured Mary's heart of a safe guardianship if ill should befall her. Such a clearness of vision it was as set her high above many of the women she had known.How was that? What was it about women that so few of them had any vision at all? To how many she knew would she entrust her child? Often she had listened in amazement to Hannah instructing the children at home. She remembered the mistresses where she had been at school herself. She recalled her mother's advice to her when she had left school. Everywhere it was the same.Only here and there where a woman had suffered at the hands of life did vision seem to be awakened in her. Many were worldly, many were shrewd and clever enough in their dealings with circumstance. But how few there were who knew of any purpose in their souls beyond that of dressing their bodies for honest vanity's sake, or marrying suitably for decent comfort's sake.Here, was it again the force-made laws, the laws by which men set a paled and barbed fence about the possessions they had won? Were all these women their possessions too, as little capable of freedom of thought as were of action their dogs, their horses, the cattle on their hedged-in fields?She had heard of votes for women in those days. In Bridnorth as in most places it was a jest. What would they do with the vote when they had it? They laughed with the rest. Women in Parliament! They would only make fools of themselves with their trembling voices raised in a company of men.She could not herself quite see all that the vote might mean. Little may that be wondered at, seeing that when they obtained it, there would be countless among them who still would be ignorant of its worth and power. Whatever it might mean, she knew in those days that her sex had little of the vision of the ideal; she knew it was little aware of the true values and meanings of life, that thousands of her sisters wasted out their days in ceaseless pandering to the acquisitive passions of men."'Ee's thinkin' long and deep, maidy," Mrs. Peverell had said when the silence after her last remarks had closed about them. "Are 'ee wonderin' after all this time what the sin of it might be? Are 'ee thinkin' what the Vicar'll say when 'ee has to explain it all to 'en.""Why must I tell him?" asked Mary."Don't 'ee want the child baptized?"With all the thoughts she had had, with all the preparation she had made, she had not thought of this. The habit of her religion was about her still. Every Sunday morning she had sat with the Peverells in the pew it was their custom to occupy. Something there was in religion no clearness of vision seemed able to destroy."He must be baptized," she had said and turned in their mind to face once more the difficulties with which the world beset her.VIThe upbringing of John Throgmorton at Yarningdale Farm has more of the nature of an idyll in it than one is wont to ask for in a modern world, where idylls are out of fashion and it has become the habit to set one's teeth at life.Still continuing, as soon as she was strong again, to fulfill the duties of milkmaid for Mr. Peverell, Mary spent all her spare time with her child. No fretting mother she was, but calm and serene in all her doings. He took no fever of spirit from her."Seems as if the milk she give him must almost be cool," said Mrs. Peverell to her husband, who now, since the registration of John's birth had had to be told the truth--that there was no father--that Mary was one of those women who had gone astray."Fair, she beats me," he replied. "Ain't there no shame to her? Not that I want to see her shamed. But it 'mazes me seein' her calm and easy like this. Keep them cows quiet, I told her when she 'gan amilkin'--keep 'em easy. Don't fret 'em. They'll give 'ee half as much milk again if 'ee don't fret 'em. And when the flies were at 'en last summer, dommed if she didn't get more milk than that lad could have got. That's where she's learnt it. She ain't frettin' herself when most women 'ud be hangin' their heads and turnin' the milk to water in their breasts wi' shame. I doant make her out and that's the truth of it."Yet he had made her out far better than he knew. That was where she had learnt the secret, as she had intended she should learn all the secrets it was possible to know. On sunny days she took her baby with her into the fields where the cows were grazing.One by one on the first of these occasions, solemnly she showed them the treasure she brought. Sponsors, they were, she told them, having had recent acquaintance with that word. One by one they stared with velvet eyes at the bundle that was presented to them.When that ceremony was over, solemnly proclaimed with words the written word can give no meaning to, she found for herself a sheltered corner in the hedgerow, there unfastening her dress and with cool fingers lifting her breast for his lips to suckle where none could watch her. The warm spring air on those sunny days was no less food for him than the milk she gave. With gurgling noises he drew it in. With round, dark eyes, set fast with the purposes of life, he took his fill as she gazed upon him.That there was nothing more wonderful to a woman than this, Mary knew in all the certainty of her heart. There alone with her baby, she wanted no other passion, no other love, no other company. This for a woman was the completeness of fulfillment. Yet this it was that men denied to so many.She knew then in those moments that no shame would be too great to bear with patience for such realization of life as this. Realization it was and, to fail in knowing it, was like a fallow field to have yielded naught but a harvest of weeds in which there was shame indeed.Often in the previous summer she had heard Mr. Peverell bitterly accusing himself for the bare and weedy patches in his crops. Twice since she had been there on the farm had a barren cow been sent to market for sale because it was of no use to them. They had been cows she herself had named. She had fretted when they were driven away and had taken herself far from the yard when it came to the moment of their departure.Yet no word of pleading had she said to Mr. Peverell on such occasions. Receive and give, these were the laws she recognized and found no power of sentiment strong enough in her to make her seek or need to disobey them. Gain and keep--against such principles as these her soul had caparisoned and armed itself, clearly knowing how all laws in the operation must carry with them the savor of injustice, uncomplaining if that injustice should be measured for her portion. For never so great an injustice could it be as that which men in their ideals of possession and inheritance had meted out to women. Living there at Yarningdale Farm so close to the land, she had found a greater beneficence in Nature than in all the organized charity of mankind.On the second occasion when the barren cow had been sent to market some delay had been made in her departure and Mary had returned to the house just as the flurried beast had been driven out of the yard. With head averted, she had quickened her steps into the house, finding Mrs. Peverell looking out of the window in the parlor kitchen."Why are they drivin' that cow to market?" she asked. "He said naught to me 'bout sellin' a cow to-day.""She's barren," said Mary. "They sent her four times to the bull. I've milked her nearly dry now. It does seem hard, doesn't it? She was so quiet. But I'm afraid she's no good to us."She had been taking off her hat as she spoke, never appreciating the significance of what she said when, in a moment, she became conscious of Mrs. Peverell's silence and swiftly turned round.She was standing quite motionless with one hand resting on the back of a chair, staring out of the window at the departing beast, yet seeing nothing, for, with a searching steadfastness, her eyes were looking inwards.For a moment Mary's presence of mind had left her. She had swayed in movement, half coming forward when indecision had arrested her. It might not be that her thoughts were what Mary supposed. To comfort her for them if they were not there was only to put them in her mind."What are you thinking of?" she inquired tentatively."I be thinkin'," said Mrs. Peverell, "if he gets a good price for that cow we'd have a new lot o' bricks laid down in that wash-house. There be holes there a body might fall over in the dark."A thousand times more bitter was this than the truth, for still she stood staring inwards with her thoughts and still standing there, with her hand on the back of the chair and her eyes gazing through the window, Mary had left her and gone upstairs.VIISoon after John was born, there had come a letter from Hannah saying that she and Fanny were going to stay with friends in Yorkshire and on their way intended to visit her whether she liked it or not."Every one knows we're going to Yorkshire," she had written, "so they won't guess we've broken the journey."Mary smiled. Almost it was unbelievable to her now that once she herself had thought like that. Absolutely and actually unreal it seemed to her now that the human body could so be led and persuaded by the thoughts of its mind."Come," she wrote back. "We shall be proud to see you.""Proud!" said Hannah, reading that. "It almost seems as if she meant to say she was proud of herself. I know she's not ashamed--but proud?""P'r'aps that's what she does mean," said Fanny. "Though without love, it doesn't seem to me she's got anything to be proud about."Sharply Hannah looked at Fanny, for since these events had happened in the square, white house, there had grown a keener glance in the quiet nature of Hannah's eyes."Don't tell me, Fanny," she whispered, "don't tell me you'd go and do the same?""I'd do anything for love!" exclaimed Fanny hysterically. "Anything I'd do--but it would have to be for love."Hannah went away to her room to pack, considering how swiftly the rupture of the moral code can break down the power of principle."Fanny was never like that before," she muttered as she gathered her things. "At least she would never have said it. Mary's done more harm than ever she knows. Poor Mary! She can't really be proud--that's only her pride."Yet proud indeed they found she was. At the end of the red brick path leading up to the house between the beds now filled with wallflowers, she greeted them with her baby in her arms. This was her challenge. So they must accept her. It was not to be first herself as though nothing had happened and then her child as though what must be, must be borne with. It was they two or never, sisters though they might be, would she wish to see them.Her first thought, as they stepped out of the village fly that brought them, was how old and pinched and worn they looked. For youth now had come back to her with the youth she carried in her arms. Thirty she was then, yet felt a child beside them. For one instant at the sight of her her heart ached for Fanny. Fanny, she knew, was the one whom the sight of her child would hurt the most. But the contact of greeting, the lending him to them for their arms to hold, deep though her heart was filled with pity for them, in that moment there was yet the deeper welling of her pride.He won them, as well she knew he would. In Hannah's arms, he looked up with his deep, black eyes into hers and made bubbles with his lips. No woman could have resisted him and she, who never would have child of her own, clung to him in a piteous weakness of emotion.Fanny stood by, with jerking laughter to hide her eagerness, muttering--"Let me have him, Hannah. Let me take him a moment now."And when in turn she held him, then above Mary's pride that already had had its fill, there rose the consciousness of all her sister was suffering. Twitching with emotion were Fanny's lips as she kissed him. Against that thin breast of hers she held him fast as though she felt for him to give her the sense of life. Not even a foolish word such as Hannah had murmured in his ears was there in her heart to say to him. It was life she was holding so close; life that had never been given her to touch; life, even borrowed like this, that had the power to swell the sluggish race of her blood to flooding; life that stung and hurt and smarted in her eyes, yet made her feel she was a woman in whom the purpose of being might yet be fulfilled.Unable any longer to bear the sight of that, Mary turned away into the house to prepare their coming. John, she left in Fanny's arms, having no heart to rob her of him then."They've come," she whispered to Mrs. Peverell. "They've come.""Well?" she inquired. "Was it to shame 'ee?"For answer Mary took her by the arm and led her to the window."Look," she said, and pointed out over the bowl of daffodils on the window sill, down the red brick path to the gate in the oak palings. And that which Mrs. Peverell beheld was the sight of two women, no longer young, lost to all sense of foolishness in their behavior, emotionalized beyond control, swept beyond self-criticism by a thing, all young with life, that kicked its bare legs and crowed and bubbled at its lips, then lying still, lay looking at them with great eyes of wisdom as though in wonder at their folly.They stayed till later that afternoon, then caught an evening train to Manchester. Mary travelled a mile with them in the old fly, then set out to walk home alone."Don't tire yourself," said Hannah, leaning out of the window, as they drove away. "You must still take care.""Tire myself?" Mary cried back. "I don't feel as if I could ever be tired again."And still leaning out of the window, watching her with her firm stride as she disappeared into the wood, Hannah knew their sister had found a nearer stream to the heart of life than ever that which flowed through Bridnorth.VIIIDays, months and years went by and with each moment of them, Mary gave out of herself the light of her ideals for that green bough to grow in.Still as ever, she continued with her work on the farm, one indeed of them now, and when he could walk, took John with her to fetch the cows, exacting patience from him while he sat there in the stalls beside her watching her milk."We have to work, John," she said. "You and I have to work. I shall never disturb you when you're plowing or dropping the seeds in the ground. Work's a holy thing, John. Do you know that? You wouldn't come and disturb me while I was saying my prayers, would you?"Solemnly John shook his head. He knew too well he always held his breath, because then she had told him God was in the room."Is God in the shed here now, while you're milking?" he asked.She nodded an affirmative to give him the impression that so close God was she dared not speak aloud."Does He get thirsty when He sees all that milk in the pail?"She bit her lips from laughter and shook her head again. That was a moment when many a mother would have taken him in her arms for the charm he had. She would not spoil him so. She would not let him think he said quaint things and so for quaintness' sake or the attention he won by them, set out his childish wits to gain approval. Nothing should he wish to gain. All that he gave of himself he must give without thought of its reward."God's never hungry or thirsty, except through us," she said. "God is in pain when we're in pain. He's happy when we're happy. Everything we feel is what God is feeling because He's everywhere and close to all of us."John's eyes cast downwards to the bucket where the milk was frothing white."He's feeling thirsty now then," said he meditatively."I've no doubt He is," said Mary. "But He knows the milk doesn't belong to Him. He knows the milk belongs to Mr. Peverell and Mrs. Peverell will give Him some at tea-time."For a long while John thought over this. The milk hissed into the pail as Mary watched him with her cheek against the still, warm flank."What is it, John?" she asked presently. "What are you thinking?""I feel so sorry for God," said he."Always feel that," she whispered, seizing eagerly the odd turn of his mind. "He wants your pity as well as your love, little John. He wants the best you have. He's always in you. He's never far away. And if sometimes it seems that He is, then come and give your best to me. I promise you I'll give it back to Him."Tenderly, by his heart she led him, bringing him ever on tiptoe to every wonder in life, whilst all in Nature he found wonderful through her eyes. Supplying herself with everything in literature she could find on subjects of natural history, recalling thereby such memories as she had of bird's nesting and woodland adventures with her brother, it was these books she read now. They held her interest as never a storybook had held it those days in Bridnorth when the old coach rumbled up the cobbled street. John caught the vital energy of her excitement whenever in the fields and hedges she discovered the very documents of Nature she had read of on the printed page.No eggs were allowed to be taken from the nests. No collection of things was made."They're all ours where they are," she would say. "Men who study these things to write about them in the books I read, they're the only ones who can take them. They give them all back again in their books."He did not understand this, but learnt obedience.Time came when he himself could climb a tree and peer within a nest. Down on the ground below, Mary would stand with heart dry on her lips, yet bidding him no more than care of the places where he put his feet. Never should he know fear, she determined, never through her.So she brought him up and to the life of the farm as well. With Mr. Peverell he spent many of his days. In the hayfields and at harvest time, the measure of his joys was full. He knew the scent of good hay from bad before ever he could handle a rake to gather it. He saw the crops thrashed. He saw them sown. In all the procession of those years, the coming and going, the sowing and harvest, the receiving and the giving of life became the statutory values of his world.And there beside him, ever at his listening ear, was Mary to give him the simple purpose of his young ideals.He never knew he learnt. He never realized the soil he grew in. Up to the light he came, the light she gave him from the emotion of her own ideals; up to the light like a sapling tree, well planted in the wood, with space and air to stretch its branches to the sun."Mummy, what's death?" he asked her one day as he sat with her while she milked the cows. "What's death?"For a long time she continued with her milking in silence. She had taught him never to bother for an answer to his questions and only to ask again when he made sure his question had not been heard. Now he leant up against the stall waiting in patience, watching her face. Peeping at her then when making sure she had not heard, he asked once more."Mummy, what's death? Is that too soon?"She smiled and pressed his hand with her own that was warm and wet with milk."Why do you ask that, John?" she inquired."There were two moles got chopped with the hay knives. I saw them. They were lying in a lump and all bloody and still. Is that death? Mr. Peverell said they was quite dead. Is death being quite dead?"She shook her head and went back to her milking; still for a while in silence.These were moments she feared, yet had no real dread of, seeing they had to be. Here was a young twig seeking to the light, a young twig that one day would become a branch and must be set in surest purpose or in the full growth, sooner or later, would reveal its stunted lines and the need there had been for vision in its training."Death's not the same as being dead," she said presently. "Nothing is quite dead." She stripped her cow, the last that evening and, putting the pail aside from long habits of precaution, she turned and took both his hands in hers."Do you know what a difficult question you've asked me, John?" she said.He shook his head."You have, and awfully badly I want to answer it. I could quite easily if you were a little bit older. I'm so afraid I can't make it simple enough for you to understand now. And if I told you something you didn't understand, you'd make your own understanding of it and it might be all wrong.""Only want to know about the moles," said he."Yes, I know. But what's happened to the moles happens to people.""When?""Oh, all sorts of times. They get caught in the mowing knives.""But can't they tie themselves up with bits of rag and make it all right and stop the blooding?""Not when it cuts into their hearts, they can't. Even a whole tablecloth couldn't stop the bleeding then.""What happens then?""They get all still like the moles.""And are they dead then?""No, that's where it's so difficult to explain. If I were to say--that's death, but they're not dead--how could you understand?""Couldn't," he agreed, and leant his head up against her cheek, sympathizing with her difficulties. "I've always thought death was being quite dead.""Nothing's quite dead," she repeated, half to herself, as though by the reiteration of that she might capture out of the void the inspiration for what she wanted to say."Do you remember what I told you about God?" she asked suddenly.He nodded his head."Well, when things go quite still, they've gone back to God. They can't feel thirsty then, or tired or unhappy. They haven't got any bodies to feel tired or thirsty with.""But what does God do with all the dead things and people?"Mary clasped her courage and went on."He just lets them rest," she said, "rest till they're ready to bear being thirsty and tired again.""Were the moles so thirsty or so tired that they couldn't bear it any more?""They may have been. You can never know when God chooses to take you back again. Life, the thing that makes you move about and laugh and run, the thing that makes you able to bear being thirsty, you can give that back to God just when you feel strongest.""What would you give it back for?""Something that was worth while. Suppose you and I were out for a walk together and I fell in the river and I couldn't swim and I was nearly going to be drowned and be quite still, because when you're under the water you can't breathe and that's another thing that makes you go quite still, what would you do?""I'd jump in and I'd swim and I'd take you in my arms and I'd swim with my legs and I'd get to the bank and then I'd pull you out and I'd call to Mr. Peverell."He felt the tightening of her arm about him."But supposing I was too heavy and yet you still held on and I dragged you down under the water with me and you couldn't breathe and became quite still--then you'd have given the thing that had made you run to the bank and jump into the water, you'd have given it back to God.""That would have been worth while, Mummy," said he."Would it, John?""Well, what would have been the good of going on looking for birds' eggs or making the hay or getting up in the morning if you'd been quite still?""So I fill your life, do I?" she whispered."No fun if you were like the moles," said he without sentiment.And this, she thought of a sudden, is what so many women are denied, this actual virtue of being the very essence of the whole world to one little, living body that had not a lover's sentiments and passions to urge upon its mind, but stood alone absorbed, contained in its beliefs."Well, then, if you gave it back to God for something like that that seemed worth while, it would not be because you were tired then--would it?""No--I shouldn't want no rest. Shouldn't want to be quite still for long."She lifted him up swiftly into her arms, a sudden sight of him quite still chilling through her blood."If you gave it back, generously, like that, my darling," she whispered, "He might accept it like Mr. Peverell always does when you give him an apple out of his own orchard. You always find it on your plate again next morning.""Has God a beard like Mr. Peverell?" he asked.IXIt was when John came to the age of eleven that Mary first learnt the pangs of jealousy.A neighboring farm came into the market one Michaelmas and was bought by a young farmer bringing a wife and three children to the house that lay in the trees at the bottom of the Highfield meadow. No one knew why it was called Highfield, that meadow. It had been so called for centuries, yet it lay low. A brook ran through it. Some winters it lay under water. A kind of rush grew thick in the grass in one corner under the poplar trees. Every year it was put down for hay. Every year, so damp the soil, it grew a generous crop.Farms so close together as Mr. Kemp's and Mr. Peverell's lend each other a helping hand. There is only a friendly rivalry between those whose hearts are in the soil. The spirit of giving maintains if it does not rule. Mr. Peverell's crops were generally better to his way of thinking than any one else's. But he loved the sight of a well grown field nevertheless. He wished no harm but the best to any man who tilled and cleansed his land."Cultivation," he said, "that's taking side wi' Nature. Weeds is folly and Nature can't abide that. A field run fallow makes my stomach turn."It was at the haymaking in the Highfield meadow, when the womenfolk, and at lifting time the men as well, came in to help, that John first met Lucy Kemp.She was a year younger than he; dark haired with solemn, wondering eyes that gazed with steady glances at the world.In the midst of his frolics in the new cut hay, John came suddenly before those eyes, not knowing what he saw, ceased from his antics in a swift arrest."What are you looking at?" he asked with unceremonious directness."Looking at you," said she.He glanced down at his clothes to see if anything was wrong."What's the matter with me?" he inquired."I like you," she replied."Why?""Cos you can stop playing all quick, like this, when you play."She must have had some vague conception of what she meant. He must have had some vague conception of what he understood. It was the first time it had ever been made apparent to him that any one could like him as well as his mother."Aren't you going to play?" he asked."I've got a headache," she replied."What's that?""A pain--all over here!" She laid her hands across her forehead."Does it hurt?"He gave sympathy in his voice at once."Keeps on frobbing," said she."Let God feel it frob and come and play," he suggested with greater wisdom than he knew.That had to be explained to her. They sat down in the hay, the first man in him explaining the mysteries of life to the first woman in her. Mary found them, fast friends, sitting together behind a high cock of hay."I thought I'd lost you, John," she said, and when he did not look up on the instant, knew she had indeed lost something of him she could never find again. No longer was she the only woman in his world. In a strange and unexpected moment he had found some one he could turn to to hide his pain if she became quite still like the moles.They met often after that day. In a little while they became inseparable."Young things must have young things to play with," Mary told herself. It was Nature. They never reared young calves alone on the farm. Always they had companions."They grows better," said Mr. Peverell. "Young and young. It comes that way."So she stilled her heart from painful beating. But one day Mrs. Peverell pointed out those two together in the fields and said--"A love child they say takes easy to love. If that doant please 'ee, 'ee must stop it soon.""Why shouldn't it please me?" she asked and her heart was trembling in swift flutterings that were not pulses in her breast, but were like wings beating, disturbing the air she breathed."Well, she be just an ordinary child, like one of us, and if John stays on the farm and one day takes it after Mr. Peverell, as I doant mind tellin' 'ee Mr. Peverell means 'en to take it if he likes the work, then he'll wed wi' her, you mark my words for it."Mary took the hand with its knuckles far more knotted now and held it for comfort against her breast."You have been good to me," she muttered thickly. "I have never thought till now he could mean to leave the farm to John.""His name's in the Bible," said Mrs. Peverell."Yes, yes, my dear, I know what that means to you. But I never thought you meant it so practically as that. If John does take on the farm, why shouldn't he marry Lucy? Wouldn't that be right? Wouldn't that be the very best?""I thought by the way 'ee looked at them 'ee mind was all against it. I thought 'ee'd got greater prospects for him than that. She's only an ordinary child, I says, and that's all she is. I thought it 'ud upset 'ee plans for 'en.""My plans," said Mary. "They're only for his happiness and the best that's in him. I can't have him always, can I? Not always to myself?" She turned her eyes across the field to where they stood together."She's come--with her big eyes," she whispered and she walked away.
"'Ee's thoughtful, Maidy," Mrs. Peverell said to her when she returned from posting her letter in Lonesome Ford.
"Am I?"
"'Ee've had a letter from him."
"How did you know?"
"How do my Peverell know there'd be rain acomin'? He says he feels it in his bones. Men's bones and women's hearts be peculiarsome things."
IV
It was a boy. Full in the month of March he came, with a storm rushing across the fields where the rooks already were gathering in the elm trees and the first, dull red of blossom was flushing the winter black of the branches against the clouds of thunder blue.
High as was the cry of that southwest wind, sweeping the trees and rattling the windows in their casements, his first cry beneath the thatch of Yarningdale Farm uplifted above every other sound in the ears of Mrs. Peverell and Mary as they heard it.
The doctor who attended her from Henley-in-Arden had proposed an anæsthetic.
"Your first child," he said. "It'll just make things easier."
Had her pain been less she would have spoken for herself. Had she spoken, a cry might have escaped with the words between her lips. She looked across at Mrs. Peverell who knew her mind and she shook her head.
"She wants it just natural," said the farmer's wife.
"'Ee can see for 'eeself she's strong. 'Tain't no hide and seek affair with her."
"It's going to be a bit worse than she thinks," muttered the doctor.
"Can't be worse'n a woman thinks," retorted Mrs. Peverell. "Let 'ee mind as carefully as 'ee can what she feels--what she thinks'll be beyond 'ee or me."
Peverell came back from plowing at midday with the clods of earth on his boots.
"Come there be no rain to-night," said he. "I'll have that corn sown in to-morrow."
"We have our harvest in upstairs a'ready," said she.
He wheeled round in his chair with his eyes wide upon her.
"Damn it!" he exclaimed. "I'd complete forgot our maidy on her birth-bed."
She gazed at him a moment in silence, with words unspoken in her glance he had uncomfortable consciousness of, yet did not know one instant all they meant. It left him with a disagreeable sense of inferiority, just when he had been congratulating himself on a piece of work well done.
"'Ee won't forget when 'ee sows the seed to-morrow in that field," said she quietly. "Come time 'ee has it broadcast sown, the sweat'll be on thy brow, an' 'ee limbs be aching." She lifted the corner of her apron significantly. "I've wiped the sweat off her brow and laid her body comfortable in the bed and now I'll get the meat to put in 'ee stomach."
He knew he had made some grievous error somewhere. Forgetting their maidy and her babe upstairs no doubt. He ate the food she brought him in silence, like a child aware of disgrace; but why it should be so, just because he had forgotten about a woman having a baby was more than he could account for. It was not as if it had been a slack day or a Sabbath. That ground was just nice and ready for the wheat to go in. Still, it was no good saying anything. He had hurt her feelings some way and there was an end of it. He knew well that steady look in the sunken eyes, the set line, a little tighter drawn in the thin lips.
It worried him as he ate his meal. It always worried him. Somehow it seemed to make the food taste dry in his mouth. It had no such succulence as when all was just right, and he had come in for his dinner after a hard morning's work. For never by conscious word had he hurt her. Never, in all the thirty-seven years they had been married, had there been an instant's intent in him to make her suffer.
It was in these unaccountable ways, in chance words, harmless enough in all conscience to him, in little things he did and little things he left undone, that this look she had, came in these sudden moments into her face.
"Women be queer cattle," he would say to himself. "There be no ways treatin' 'em alike. 'Ee might think 'ee'd got 'em goin' one way when round they'll come and go t'other."
As a rule this silent summary of the whole sex would satisfy him in regard to the one in particular he had in mind. With a sweep of his hand across his mouth after his meal was over, he would go back to his work and once his feet felt the fields beneath them, he would forget all about it.
Somehow this time he seemed to know there was little hope of forgetting. Whether it was his food tasted drier than usual; whether some meaning of what she had said about the sweat on his brow and the sweat of her who labored upstairs there with her child had reached with faint rays of illumination to his appreciative mind, whatever it was, the fields called in vain to him.
He was restless, uneasy. Without cause he knew of, he felt a little ashamed. Rising from the table, he moved about the room lighting his pipe. He felt like some child with a lie or a theft upon his conscience. When his pipe was well lit and hard rammed down, finding he had no patience to sit awhile as was his custom, he went in search of his wife.
From something she had said about making as little noise as possible, he knew she was not upstairs with her patient. If he asked her straight out, perhaps she would tell him what was the matter, what he had said, what possibly he had done.
She was not in the scullery. Softly he opened the door of the larder and looked in. She was not there. With his heart beating in unaccustomed pulses he crept upstairs to their bedroom, thinking to himself, "Plowed fields be better walking for the likes of me."
"Mother," he whispered, and opened the door.
She was not there.
In despair he turned to the stairs again, drawing a deep breath when he reached the bottom. Only the parlor was left, unless she were out of the house altogether. He looked in. It was empty. He was turning away when there caught his attention the unusual sight of the big Bible lying open on the table. He crossed the room to look at it. Was it so bad she'd had to be reading some of that?
It was opened at the first, clean page. No printing was on it, but there in ink, still wet, was written in her handwriting--"John Throgmorton, at Yarningdale, March 17th, 1896."
Some idea flashed out from that page as he leant over it. It reached some hitherto unused function of perception in his brain. He knew now why that look had come into her eyes. He knew even what it was he had said, or rather what he had forgotten to say that had hurt her. All this was reminding her how she wanted a child of her own. But had he not wanted one too? Was not the loss as much his that he had no son to take the handles of the plow when his hands had ceased to hold them?
He turned as she entered the room with a piece of blotting paper she had fetched from his desk in the kitchen where he wrote out his accounts.
"Mother," he said, and he fidgeted with his hands, "I know what's worryin' 'ee. I ought t'have thought of it afore now, but we been past it these many years, it had gone out o' my head for the moment. B'lieve me I've wanted one same as 'ee."
She knew he was a good man as she looked at him, but could not think of that then.
"I've wanted 'ee to have fair crops," said she, "but it's only been disappointment to me when they've failed. Yet I've seen it make 'ee feel 'ee was not man enough for the task God had set 'ee."
With a steady hand, she blotted the page and shut the book, then taking him by the arm, she led him out of the room and closed the door.
"There's one of them young black minorcas has the croup," said she.
"They be plaguy things," he replied.
V
Talking of the future one day with Mrs. Peverell, Mary had said that if it were a boy, his name must be John. So definite had she been in her decision about this, that without further question the good woman had written it in the big Bible.
"John's a man's name," Mary had said; "there's work in it." Then, dismissing her smile and speaking still more earnestly, she had continued, "If anything were to happen to me, I should leave him to you. Would you take him?"
The sunken eyes were quite steady before the gaze they met.
"How could we give 'en the bringin' up?" she asked.
"He shall have no bringing up but this," Mary had replied. "I told you first of all I didn't come here to hide. I chose this place because I knew I could touch life here and make him all I wanted him to be. This is what I want him, a good man and a true man and a real one, like your husband. I want him to know that he owes all to the earth he works in. What money I have shall be yours to keep and clothe him. Indeed I hope nothing will happen for I know so well what I want him to be. I've always known it, it seems to me now. I've only realized it these last few months. Milking these cows, walking in the meadows, living here on this farm, I've learnt to realize it. Giving is life. We can't all give the same thing, but it is in the moment of giving that most we feel alive. Acquiring, possessing, putting a value on things and hoarding them by, there's only a living death, a stagnant despair and discontent in that."
"'Ee's talkin' beyond me," said Mrs. Peverell watching her. "'Ee's well taught at school and 'ee's talkin' beyond me. I never had no learnin' what I got of use to me out of books. But come one day an' another, I've learnt that wantin' things may help 'ee gettin' 'em, but it stales 'em when they come. All I could have given my man, ain't there for givin'. God knows best why. Most willing would I have gone wi'out life to give 'en a child to patter its feet on these bricks. He doant know that. I wouldn't tell 'en. He'd say there warn't no sense in my talkin' that way. Men want life to live by, but it seems to me sometimes death's an easy thing to a woman when it comes that way. I s'pose it's what 'ee'd call the moment of givin' and doant seem like death to her."
Mary had leant forward, stretching out her hand and taking the knotted knuckles in her fingers.
"You haven't lost much," she had said, "by not having my advantage of education. What you've just said is bigger than any learning could make it. I don't think we speak any more of truth because we have more words to express it with. I'm sure we think less. Do you think I could find any one better to teach him than you? It is women who teach. Your husband will show him the way, but you will give him that idea in his heart to take it. I long so much to give it to him myself that I haven't your courage. Sometimes I'm afraid I may die. I don't let it have any power over me but sometimes I confess I'm afraid, because you see I want to give him more than his life. I want to give him his ideals. Perhaps that's because I've no one else to give him to. My life won't seem complete unless I can live beyond that. Anyhow I wanted to say this. If I have to give him, I want it to be to you and I want you to know that that is how I wish him to be brought up. If he has big things in life to give, he'll find them out. He'll leave the farm. Perhaps he'll break your heart in leaving--perhaps he'll break mine if I live, but I want him first to learn from the earth itself the life there is in giving and then, let it be what it may, for him to give his best."
Mrs. Peverell nodded her head to imply understanding.
"It's them as doant suffer can talk about sin," she had said, which by no means was Mary's train of thought, though her words had somehow suggested it to Mrs. Peverell's range of comprehension. "I should have called all this sin years ago. Didn't I say 'twas sin when first 'ee told me? Well, it beats me what sin is. 'Tain't what I thought it. We be born with it, they say. Well, if the babes I seen be born with sin, 'tain't what any one thinks it."
It was obvious Mrs. Peverell had not followed her in the flight of her hopes and purposes. The right and the wrong of it, the pain and the joy of it, these were all that her mind grasped. But these she grasped with a clearness of vision that assured Mary's heart of a safe guardianship if ill should befall her. Such a clearness of vision it was as set her high above many of the women she had known.
How was that? What was it about women that so few of them had any vision at all? To how many she knew would she entrust her child? Often she had listened in amazement to Hannah instructing the children at home. She remembered the mistresses where she had been at school herself. She recalled her mother's advice to her when she had left school. Everywhere it was the same.
Only here and there where a woman had suffered at the hands of life did vision seem to be awakened in her. Many were worldly, many were shrewd and clever enough in their dealings with circumstance. But how few there were who knew of any purpose in their souls beyond that of dressing their bodies for honest vanity's sake, or marrying suitably for decent comfort's sake.
Here, was it again the force-made laws, the laws by which men set a paled and barbed fence about the possessions they had won? Were all these women their possessions too, as little capable of freedom of thought as were of action their dogs, their horses, the cattle on their hedged-in fields?
She had heard of votes for women in those days. In Bridnorth as in most places it was a jest. What would they do with the vote when they had it? They laughed with the rest. Women in Parliament! They would only make fools of themselves with their trembling voices raised in a company of men.
She could not herself quite see all that the vote might mean. Little may that be wondered at, seeing that when they obtained it, there would be countless among them who still would be ignorant of its worth and power. Whatever it might mean, she knew in those days that her sex had little of the vision of the ideal; she knew it was little aware of the true values and meanings of life, that thousands of her sisters wasted out their days in ceaseless pandering to the acquisitive passions of men.
"'Ee's thinkin' long and deep, maidy," Mrs. Peverell had said when the silence after her last remarks had closed about them. "Are 'ee wonderin' after all this time what the sin of it might be? Are 'ee thinkin' what the Vicar'll say when 'ee has to explain it all to 'en."
"Why must I tell him?" asked Mary.
"Don't 'ee want the child baptized?"
With all the thoughts she had had, with all the preparation she had made, she had not thought of this. The habit of her religion was about her still. Every Sunday morning she had sat with the Peverells in the pew it was their custom to occupy. Something there was in religion no clearness of vision seemed able to destroy.
"He must be baptized," she had said and turned in their mind to face once more the difficulties with which the world beset her.
VI
The upbringing of John Throgmorton at Yarningdale Farm has more of the nature of an idyll in it than one is wont to ask for in a modern world, where idylls are out of fashion and it has become the habit to set one's teeth at life.
Still continuing, as soon as she was strong again, to fulfill the duties of milkmaid for Mr. Peverell, Mary spent all her spare time with her child. No fretting mother she was, but calm and serene in all her doings. He took no fever of spirit from her.
"Seems as if the milk she give him must almost be cool," said Mrs. Peverell to her husband, who now, since the registration of John's birth had had to be told the truth--that there was no father--that Mary was one of those women who had gone astray.
"Fair, she beats me," he replied. "Ain't there no shame to her? Not that I want to see her shamed. But it 'mazes me seein' her calm and easy like this. Keep them cows quiet, I told her when she 'gan amilkin'--keep 'em easy. Don't fret 'em. They'll give 'ee half as much milk again if 'ee don't fret 'em. And when the flies were at 'en last summer, dommed if she didn't get more milk than that lad could have got. That's where she's learnt it. She ain't frettin' herself when most women 'ud be hangin' their heads and turnin' the milk to water in their breasts wi' shame. I doant make her out and that's the truth of it."
Yet he had made her out far better than he knew. That was where she had learnt the secret, as she had intended she should learn all the secrets it was possible to know. On sunny days she took her baby with her into the fields where the cows were grazing.
One by one on the first of these occasions, solemnly she showed them the treasure she brought. Sponsors, they were, she told them, having had recent acquaintance with that word. One by one they stared with velvet eyes at the bundle that was presented to them.
When that ceremony was over, solemnly proclaimed with words the written word can give no meaning to, she found for herself a sheltered corner in the hedgerow, there unfastening her dress and with cool fingers lifting her breast for his lips to suckle where none could watch her. The warm spring air on those sunny days was no less food for him than the milk she gave. With gurgling noises he drew it in. With round, dark eyes, set fast with the purposes of life, he took his fill as she gazed upon him.
That there was nothing more wonderful to a woman than this, Mary knew in all the certainty of her heart. There alone with her baby, she wanted no other passion, no other love, no other company. This for a woman was the completeness of fulfillment. Yet this it was that men denied to so many.
She knew then in those moments that no shame would be too great to bear with patience for such realization of life as this. Realization it was and, to fail in knowing it, was like a fallow field to have yielded naught but a harvest of weeds in which there was shame indeed.
Often in the previous summer she had heard Mr. Peverell bitterly accusing himself for the bare and weedy patches in his crops. Twice since she had been there on the farm had a barren cow been sent to market for sale because it was of no use to them. They had been cows she herself had named. She had fretted when they were driven away and had taken herself far from the yard when it came to the moment of their departure.
Yet no word of pleading had she said to Mr. Peverell on such occasions. Receive and give, these were the laws she recognized and found no power of sentiment strong enough in her to make her seek or need to disobey them. Gain and keep--against such principles as these her soul had caparisoned and armed itself, clearly knowing how all laws in the operation must carry with them the savor of injustice, uncomplaining if that injustice should be measured for her portion. For never so great an injustice could it be as that which men in their ideals of possession and inheritance had meted out to women. Living there at Yarningdale Farm so close to the land, she had found a greater beneficence in Nature than in all the organized charity of mankind.
On the second occasion when the barren cow had been sent to market some delay had been made in her departure and Mary had returned to the house just as the flurried beast had been driven out of the yard. With head averted, she had quickened her steps into the house, finding Mrs. Peverell looking out of the window in the parlor kitchen.
"Why are they drivin' that cow to market?" she asked. "He said naught to me 'bout sellin' a cow to-day."
"She's barren," said Mary. "They sent her four times to the bull. I've milked her nearly dry now. It does seem hard, doesn't it? She was so quiet. But I'm afraid she's no good to us."
She had been taking off her hat as she spoke, never appreciating the significance of what she said when, in a moment, she became conscious of Mrs. Peverell's silence and swiftly turned round.
She was standing quite motionless with one hand resting on the back of a chair, staring out of the window at the departing beast, yet seeing nothing, for, with a searching steadfastness, her eyes were looking inwards.
For a moment Mary's presence of mind had left her. She had swayed in movement, half coming forward when indecision had arrested her. It might not be that her thoughts were what Mary supposed. To comfort her for them if they were not there was only to put them in her mind.
"What are you thinking of?" she inquired tentatively.
"I be thinkin'," said Mrs. Peverell, "if he gets a good price for that cow we'd have a new lot o' bricks laid down in that wash-house. There be holes there a body might fall over in the dark."
A thousand times more bitter was this than the truth, for still she stood staring inwards with her thoughts and still standing there, with her hand on the back of the chair and her eyes gazing through the window, Mary had left her and gone upstairs.
VII
Soon after John was born, there had come a letter from Hannah saying that she and Fanny were going to stay with friends in Yorkshire and on their way intended to visit her whether she liked it or not.
"Every one knows we're going to Yorkshire," she had written, "so they won't guess we've broken the journey."
Mary smiled. Almost it was unbelievable to her now that once she herself had thought like that. Absolutely and actually unreal it seemed to her now that the human body could so be led and persuaded by the thoughts of its mind.
"Come," she wrote back. "We shall be proud to see you."
"Proud!" said Hannah, reading that. "It almost seems as if she meant to say she was proud of herself. I know she's not ashamed--but proud?"
"P'r'aps that's what she does mean," said Fanny. "Though without love, it doesn't seem to me she's got anything to be proud about."
Sharply Hannah looked at Fanny, for since these events had happened in the square, white house, there had grown a keener glance in the quiet nature of Hannah's eyes.
"Don't tell me, Fanny," she whispered, "don't tell me you'd go and do the same?"
"I'd do anything for love!" exclaimed Fanny hysterically. "Anything I'd do--but it would have to be for love."
Hannah went away to her room to pack, considering how swiftly the rupture of the moral code can break down the power of principle.
"Fanny was never like that before," she muttered as she gathered her things. "At least she would never have said it. Mary's done more harm than ever she knows. Poor Mary! She can't really be proud--that's only her pride."
Yet proud indeed they found she was. At the end of the red brick path leading up to the house between the beds now filled with wallflowers, she greeted them with her baby in her arms. This was her challenge. So they must accept her. It was not to be first herself as though nothing had happened and then her child as though what must be, must be borne with. It was they two or never, sisters though they might be, would she wish to see them.
Her first thought, as they stepped out of the village fly that brought them, was how old and pinched and worn they looked. For youth now had come back to her with the youth she carried in her arms. Thirty she was then, yet felt a child beside them. For one instant at the sight of her her heart ached for Fanny. Fanny, she knew, was the one whom the sight of her child would hurt the most. But the contact of greeting, the lending him to them for their arms to hold, deep though her heart was filled with pity for them, in that moment there was yet the deeper welling of her pride.
He won them, as well she knew he would. In Hannah's arms, he looked up with his deep, black eyes into hers and made bubbles with his lips. No woman could have resisted him and she, who never would have child of her own, clung to him in a piteous weakness of emotion.
Fanny stood by, with jerking laughter to hide her eagerness, muttering--"Let me have him, Hannah. Let me take him a moment now."
And when in turn she held him, then above Mary's pride that already had had its fill, there rose the consciousness of all her sister was suffering. Twitching with emotion were Fanny's lips as she kissed him. Against that thin breast of hers she held him fast as though she felt for him to give her the sense of life. Not even a foolish word such as Hannah had murmured in his ears was there in her heart to say to him. It was life she was holding so close; life that had never been given her to touch; life, even borrowed like this, that had the power to swell the sluggish race of her blood to flooding; life that stung and hurt and smarted in her eyes, yet made her feel she was a woman in whom the purpose of being might yet be fulfilled.
Unable any longer to bear the sight of that, Mary turned away into the house to prepare their coming. John, she left in Fanny's arms, having no heart to rob her of him then.
"They've come," she whispered to Mrs. Peverell. "They've come."
"Well?" she inquired. "Was it to shame 'ee?"
For answer Mary took her by the arm and led her to the window.
"Look," she said, and pointed out over the bowl of daffodils on the window sill, down the red brick path to the gate in the oak palings. And that which Mrs. Peverell beheld was the sight of two women, no longer young, lost to all sense of foolishness in their behavior, emotionalized beyond control, swept beyond self-criticism by a thing, all young with life, that kicked its bare legs and crowed and bubbled at its lips, then lying still, lay looking at them with great eyes of wisdom as though in wonder at their folly.
They stayed till later that afternoon, then caught an evening train to Manchester. Mary travelled a mile with them in the old fly, then set out to walk home alone.
"Don't tire yourself," said Hannah, leaning out of the window, as they drove away. "You must still take care."
"Tire myself?" Mary cried back. "I don't feel as if I could ever be tired again."
And still leaning out of the window, watching her with her firm stride as she disappeared into the wood, Hannah knew their sister had found a nearer stream to the heart of life than ever that which flowed through Bridnorth.
VIII
Days, months and years went by and with each moment of them, Mary gave out of herself the light of her ideals for that green bough to grow in.
Still as ever, she continued with her work on the farm, one indeed of them now, and when he could walk, took John with her to fetch the cows, exacting patience from him while he sat there in the stalls beside her watching her milk.
"We have to work, John," she said. "You and I have to work. I shall never disturb you when you're plowing or dropping the seeds in the ground. Work's a holy thing, John. Do you know that? You wouldn't come and disturb me while I was saying my prayers, would you?"
Solemnly John shook his head. He knew too well he always held his breath, because then she had told him God was in the room.
"Is God in the shed here now, while you're milking?" he asked.
She nodded an affirmative to give him the impression that so close God was she dared not speak aloud.
"Does He get thirsty when He sees all that milk in the pail?"
She bit her lips from laughter and shook her head again. That was a moment when many a mother would have taken him in her arms for the charm he had. She would not spoil him so. She would not let him think he said quaint things and so for quaintness' sake or the attention he won by them, set out his childish wits to gain approval. Nothing should he wish to gain. All that he gave of himself he must give without thought of its reward.
"God's never hungry or thirsty, except through us," she said. "God is in pain when we're in pain. He's happy when we're happy. Everything we feel is what God is feeling because He's everywhere and close to all of us."
John's eyes cast downwards to the bucket where the milk was frothing white.
"He's feeling thirsty now then," said he meditatively.
"I've no doubt He is," said Mary. "But He knows the milk doesn't belong to Him. He knows the milk belongs to Mr. Peverell and Mrs. Peverell will give Him some at tea-time."
For a long while John thought over this. The milk hissed into the pail as Mary watched him with her cheek against the still, warm flank.
"What is it, John?" she asked presently. "What are you thinking?"
"I feel so sorry for God," said he.
"Always feel that," she whispered, seizing eagerly the odd turn of his mind. "He wants your pity as well as your love, little John. He wants the best you have. He's always in you. He's never far away. And if sometimes it seems that He is, then come and give your best to me. I promise you I'll give it back to Him."
Tenderly, by his heart she led him, bringing him ever on tiptoe to every wonder in life, whilst all in Nature he found wonderful through her eyes. Supplying herself with everything in literature she could find on subjects of natural history, recalling thereby such memories as she had of bird's nesting and woodland adventures with her brother, it was these books she read now. They held her interest as never a storybook had held it those days in Bridnorth when the old coach rumbled up the cobbled street. John caught the vital energy of her excitement whenever in the fields and hedges she discovered the very documents of Nature she had read of on the printed page.
No eggs were allowed to be taken from the nests. No collection of things was made.
"They're all ours where they are," she would say. "Men who study these things to write about them in the books I read, they're the only ones who can take them. They give them all back again in their books."
He did not understand this, but learnt obedience.
Time came when he himself could climb a tree and peer within a nest. Down on the ground below, Mary would stand with heart dry on her lips, yet bidding him no more than care of the places where he put his feet. Never should he know fear, she determined, never through her.
So she brought him up and to the life of the farm as well. With Mr. Peverell he spent many of his days. In the hayfields and at harvest time, the measure of his joys was full. He knew the scent of good hay from bad before ever he could handle a rake to gather it. He saw the crops thrashed. He saw them sown. In all the procession of those years, the coming and going, the sowing and harvest, the receiving and the giving of life became the statutory values of his world.
And there beside him, ever at his listening ear, was Mary to give him the simple purpose of his young ideals.
He never knew he learnt. He never realized the soil he grew in. Up to the light he came, the light she gave him from the emotion of her own ideals; up to the light like a sapling tree, well planted in the wood, with space and air to stretch its branches to the sun.
"Mummy, what's death?" he asked her one day as he sat with her while she milked the cows. "What's death?"
For a long time she continued with her milking in silence. She had taught him never to bother for an answer to his questions and only to ask again when he made sure his question had not been heard. Now he leant up against the stall waiting in patience, watching her face. Peeping at her then when making sure she had not heard, he asked once more.
"Mummy, what's death? Is that too soon?"
She smiled and pressed his hand with her own that was warm and wet with milk.
"Why do you ask that, John?" she inquired.
"There were two moles got chopped with the hay knives. I saw them. They were lying in a lump and all bloody and still. Is that death? Mr. Peverell said they was quite dead. Is death being quite dead?"
She shook her head and went back to her milking; still for a while in silence.
These were moments she feared, yet had no real dread of, seeing they had to be. Here was a young twig seeking to the light, a young twig that one day would become a branch and must be set in surest purpose or in the full growth, sooner or later, would reveal its stunted lines and the need there had been for vision in its training.
"Death's not the same as being dead," she said presently. "Nothing is quite dead." She stripped her cow, the last that evening and, putting the pail aside from long habits of precaution, she turned and took both his hands in hers.
"Do you know what a difficult question you've asked me, John?" she said.
He shook his head.
"You have, and awfully badly I want to answer it. I could quite easily if you were a little bit older. I'm so afraid I can't make it simple enough for you to understand now. And if I told you something you didn't understand, you'd make your own understanding of it and it might be all wrong."
"Only want to know about the moles," said he.
"Yes, I know. But what's happened to the moles happens to people."
"When?"
"Oh, all sorts of times. They get caught in the mowing knives."
"But can't they tie themselves up with bits of rag and make it all right and stop the blooding?"
"Not when it cuts into their hearts, they can't. Even a whole tablecloth couldn't stop the bleeding then."
"What happens then?"
"They get all still like the moles."
"And are they dead then?"
"No, that's where it's so difficult to explain. If I were to say--that's death, but they're not dead--how could you understand?"
"Couldn't," he agreed, and leant his head up against her cheek, sympathizing with her difficulties. "I've always thought death was being quite dead."
"Nothing's quite dead," she repeated, half to herself, as though by the reiteration of that she might capture out of the void the inspiration for what she wanted to say.
"Do you remember what I told you about God?" she asked suddenly.
He nodded his head.
"Well, when things go quite still, they've gone back to God. They can't feel thirsty then, or tired or unhappy. They haven't got any bodies to feel tired or thirsty with."
"But what does God do with all the dead things and people?"
Mary clasped her courage and went on.
"He just lets them rest," she said, "rest till they're ready to bear being thirsty and tired again."
"Were the moles so thirsty or so tired that they couldn't bear it any more?"
"They may have been. You can never know when God chooses to take you back again. Life, the thing that makes you move about and laugh and run, the thing that makes you able to bear being thirsty, you can give that back to God just when you feel strongest."
"What would you give it back for?"
"Something that was worth while. Suppose you and I were out for a walk together and I fell in the river and I couldn't swim and I was nearly going to be drowned and be quite still, because when you're under the water you can't breathe and that's another thing that makes you go quite still, what would you do?"
"I'd jump in and I'd swim and I'd take you in my arms and I'd swim with my legs and I'd get to the bank and then I'd pull you out and I'd call to Mr. Peverell."
He felt the tightening of her arm about him.
"But supposing I was too heavy and yet you still held on and I dragged you down under the water with me and you couldn't breathe and became quite still--then you'd have given the thing that had made you run to the bank and jump into the water, you'd have given it back to God."
"That would have been worth while, Mummy," said he.
"Would it, John?"
"Well, what would have been the good of going on looking for birds' eggs or making the hay or getting up in the morning if you'd been quite still?"
"So I fill your life, do I?" she whispered.
"No fun if you were like the moles," said he without sentiment.
And this, she thought of a sudden, is what so many women are denied, this actual virtue of being the very essence of the whole world to one little, living body that had not a lover's sentiments and passions to urge upon its mind, but stood alone absorbed, contained in its beliefs.
"Well, then, if you gave it back to God for something like that that seemed worth while, it would not be because you were tired then--would it?"
"No--I shouldn't want no rest. Shouldn't want to be quite still for long."
She lifted him up swiftly into her arms, a sudden sight of him quite still chilling through her blood.
"If you gave it back, generously, like that, my darling," she whispered, "He might accept it like Mr. Peverell always does when you give him an apple out of his own orchard. You always find it on your plate again next morning."
"Has God a beard like Mr. Peverell?" he asked.
IX
It was when John came to the age of eleven that Mary first learnt the pangs of jealousy.
A neighboring farm came into the market one Michaelmas and was bought by a young farmer bringing a wife and three children to the house that lay in the trees at the bottom of the Highfield meadow. No one knew why it was called Highfield, that meadow. It had been so called for centuries, yet it lay low. A brook ran through it. Some winters it lay under water. A kind of rush grew thick in the grass in one corner under the poplar trees. Every year it was put down for hay. Every year, so damp the soil, it grew a generous crop.
Farms so close together as Mr. Kemp's and Mr. Peverell's lend each other a helping hand. There is only a friendly rivalry between those whose hearts are in the soil. The spirit of giving maintains if it does not rule. Mr. Peverell's crops were generally better to his way of thinking than any one else's. But he loved the sight of a well grown field nevertheless. He wished no harm but the best to any man who tilled and cleansed his land.
"Cultivation," he said, "that's taking side wi' Nature. Weeds is folly and Nature can't abide that. A field run fallow makes my stomach turn."
It was at the haymaking in the Highfield meadow, when the womenfolk, and at lifting time the men as well, came in to help, that John first met Lucy Kemp.
She was a year younger than he; dark haired with solemn, wondering eyes that gazed with steady glances at the world.
In the midst of his frolics in the new cut hay, John came suddenly before those eyes, not knowing what he saw, ceased from his antics in a swift arrest.
"What are you looking at?" he asked with unceremonious directness.
"Looking at you," said she.
He glanced down at his clothes to see if anything was wrong.
"What's the matter with me?" he inquired.
"I like you," she replied.
"Why?"
"Cos you can stop playing all quick, like this, when you play."
She must have had some vague conception of what she meant. He must have had some vague conception of what he understood. It was the first time it had ever been made apparent to him that any one could like him as well as his mother.
"Aren't you going to play?" he asked.
"I've got a headache," she replied.
"What's that?"
"A pain--all over here!" She laid her hands across her forehead.
"Does it hurt?"
He gave sympathy in his voice at once.
"Keeps on frobbing," said she.
"Let God feel it frob and come and play," he suggested with greater wisdom than he knew.
That had to be explained to her. They sat down in the hay, the first man in him explaining the mysteries of life to the first woman in her. Mary found them, fast friends, sitting together behind a high cock of hay.
"I thought I'd lost you, John," she said, and when he did not look up on the instant, knew she had indeed lost something of him she could never find again. No longer was she the only woman in his world. In a strange and unexpected moment he had found some one he could turn to to hide his pain if she became quite still like the moles.
They met often after that day. In a little while they became inseparable.
"Young things must have young things to play with," Mary told herself. It was Nature. They never reared young calves alone on the farm. Always they had companions.
"They grows better," said Mr. Peverell. "Young and young. It comes that way."
So she stilled her heart from painful beating. But one day Mrs. Peverell pointed out those two together in the fields and said--
"A love child they say takes easy to love. If that doant please 'ee, 'ee must stop it soon."
"Why shouldn't it please me?" she asked and her heart was trembling in swift flutterings that were not pulses in her breast, but were like wings beating, disturbing the air she breathed.
"Well, she be just an ordinary child, like one of us, and if John stays on the farm and one day takes it after Mr. Peverell, as I doant mind tellin' 'ee Mr. Peverell means 'en to take it if he likes the work, then he'll wed wi' her, you mark my words for it."
Mary took the hand with its knuckles far more knotted now and held it for comfort against her breast.
"You have been good to me," she muttered thickly. "I have never thought till now he could mean to leave the farm to John."
"His name's in the Bible," said Mrs. Peverell.
"Yes, yes, my dear, I know what that means to you. But I never thought you meant it so practically as that. If John does take on the farm, why shouldn't he marry Lucy? Wouldn't that be right? Wouldn't that be the very best?"
"I thought by the way 'ee looked at them 'ee mind was all against it. I thought 'ee'd got greater prospects for him than that. She's only an ordinary child, I says, and that's all she is. I thought it 'ud upset 'ee plans for 'en."
"My plans," said Mary. "They're only for his happiness and the best that's in him. I can't have him always, can I? Not always to myself?" She turned her eyes across the field to where they stood together.
"She's come--with her big eyes," she whispered and she walked away.