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.