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
anaesthetic.
"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.