IV

Mary stayed on at Yarningdale when John was taken away to school. Had

she had fear of the pain it was, she would still have remained. Mr. and

Mrs. Peverell were getting old and so close by this was her life now

knit with theirs, she knew her absence would have made too deep a void

were she to leave them then.

The natural milkmaid she had become, so skillful, so acknowledgable and

conscientious in her work, that Mr. Peverell had increased his

activities in this direction. Where at first there had been but nine

milking cows, there now were fourteen. All through the summer months,

he supplied thirty gallons of milk a day. Filled in the churns, Mary

drove with it every evening in the spring cart to the station. At her

suggestion and by means of her labor he undertook the rearing of his own

calves and the ultimate introduction of them into the milking herd.

Whenever good fortune brought them a promising heifer calf, it was given

into Mary's charge. It became an interest deeper and more exacting than

she knew to wean and rear it for the herd. So they were able to know the

character and history of each beast as it came into service, its milking

qualities, its temper, the stock from which it sprang.

As thus, having weaned him towards the vision of life she had, Mary

would have reared her John.

"Why--why did 'ee let 'en go, Maidy?" Mrs. Peverell had cried to her the

night after John's departure when she lay stretched upon her bed,

staring, staring, staring at the paper on the wall.

"I'd taught him to give," she muttered. "How would he believe what I'd

said one day, when he learnt that I'd kept back? How can you teach

another how to live if you don't know how, yourself? There's only one

way of knowing the truth about life--living it. I shan't lose him. I

know deep and deep and deep in my heart, I shan't. He's gone, but he'll

come back. Should I really have believed if I hadn't let him go? The

belief that's really in the spirit comes out in the flesh. It must! It

must! Or soul and body are never one."

It was to herself she had spoken. Never her hopes, ambitions or faith

for John had she attempted to explain to Mrs. Peverell. None but the

simplest issues of life could that good woman appreciate. Right or

wrong things were with her. No other texture but this they had. In

fullest conviction she knew that Mary had been right in everything she

had done. So close in sympathy with their Maidy was she now that even

in this parting with John, that well-nigh broke her heart, she felt Mary

must be right.

"Shall I cross his name out of the book, Maidy?" she had asked as she

was leaving the room. "'Twon't be nothing to him, this place, when he

comes into his big estate."

Sitting up in the bed, Mary had called Mrs. Peverell to her, clutching

her hands.

"Never do that!" she cried. "That was his birthright. He was born

here. I made him here. Promise me, don't do that. If you did that, I

should feel I'd lost him forever!"

* * * * *

For the first half of every holiday at school John came back to his

mother at Yarningdale. The remainder of his time he spent in Somerset.

How closely she watched him it is not difficult to suppose. Every term

that passed brought him to her again with something she had taught him

gone, with something they had taught him in its place.

To the outward observer, he was the same John. All his love he gave her,

teasing her with it as he grew older, playing the lover to her shyness

when she found him turning from boy to man.

They spoke little of Liddiard or the life in Somerset for the first

year. All invitations to Wenlock Hall though freely offered, she

refused.

"I appreciate your wife's generosity of wish to meet me; don't think me

seeking to make difficulties; really I am trying to avoid them," she

wrote.

In fact it was that Yarningdale was her home and still, pursuant of her

purpose, she would not allow John to associate her in his mind with any

other place. Within a year they had made him feel the substance of his

inheritance. He spoke of Wenlock Hall, knowing it would be his.

Inevitably he made comparisons between their lives and hers, but it was

not until after his first term at Oxford that openly he questioned her

wisdom in staying on the farm.

"They both want you down there, Mater, at Wenlock Hall. And after all,

this is a poky little place, isn't it? Of course the farm's not bad,

but it's a bit ramshackle and sometimes I hate to think of you still

milking the cows in those dingy old stalls. We've got lovely sheds at

Wenlock Hall, asphalt floor, beautifully drained, plenty of light and as

clean as a new pin."

She looked at him steadily.

"For nearly eighteen years, John, I've been milking the cows in those

stalls. Until two weeks before you were born, I sat there milking them.

As soon as I was well again I went back. You've got your little private

chapel at Wenlock Hall. Those stalls are my chapel. That little window

hung with cobwebs through which I've seen the sunset--oh, so many times,

I don't want any more wonderful an altar than that. In those stalls

I've had thoughts no light through stained glass windows could ever have

brought to me. Do you remember sitting beside me there while I milked,

oh, heaps of times, but one time particularly when you asked me about

God?"

He thought an instant and then burst into shouts of laughter.

"What, that time I asked you if God had a beard like old Peverell?"

She tried to laugh with him, just as, at the time, she had tried to

control her laughter. This was the difference between John, then and

now; was it not indeed the difference in all of her life?

"That was the end," said she, "that was the last question you asked. We

had said a lot before that. Don't you remember?"

"I was just a kid then," said he. "I suppose I was always asking

questions."

"Don't you now?"

"No, not so much, why should I? Mater, you don't expect me always to be

a silly little fool, do you?"

The breath was deep she drew.

"You were far from being a silly little fool then, John. Those

questions were all wonderful to me, even the last one."

He laid both his hands upon her shoulders and looked far into her eyes.

"You take life so seriously, Mater," he said.

"Only when it loses its seriousness, John," she replied. "I was full of

the joy of it in those days when always you were flinging your earnest

little questions at me. It's now when it seems to me sometimes you want

to play with life that I take it seriously. It's now, when sometimes

you give me the impression you just want to enjoy life, that all the joy

goes out of it. I wonder would you understand, my dearest," she slipped

her arm about his neck, "if I told you you were more of a man to me then

than often you are now."

"Well, dash it, Mater, I can't help it. We don't go mooching about the

'Varsity with long faces wondering about God. Every chap enjoys himself

as much as he can and that all depends on the allowance he gets from his

people. They're jolly decent to me that way. I've a good deal more

than most fellows. Why, I have a corking time up there and why

shouldn't I? I shall be young only once."

"You might always be young," she whispered. "They're teaching you that

youth's a thing to spend, like money when you have it. I know it's all

the training, my dear. I ought never to have let you go. I'd never

have taught you that."

"I shouldn't have got much joy out of working on this bally old farm,

should I?" he retaliated. "The Pater's busy enough down at Wenlock

Hall, but he doesn't actually do manual work. He's always going round

the place. I don't suppose it pays, real profits, I mean, like old

Peverell makes this pay, but it gives plenty of employment."

"Pater? Is that what you call him now?"

After the sound of that word, she had heard no more. It rang with

countless echoes in her brain. What a sound it might have had if ever

she had loved. Was it as hollow to other women as it was to her now?

"He asked me to, this year," said John. "Just before I went up to the

'Varsity. I couldn't refuse, could I? After all, he is my father.

Lots of people say I'm awfully like him."

Mary turned away.

"I must go out and fetch the cows now," she said. "Would you like to

come?"

He showed an instant's pause. Before it had passed, swiftly that

instant her pride arrested it.

"Perhaps you were going to do something else," said she.

"Well, as a matter of fact, I was going to take old Peverell's gun round

by the wood. It's alive with rabbits. He says they're spoiling his

mangolds."

"All right, my dear. I'll see you at supper-time."

She drove the cows into the shed. One by one they filed into their

accustomed stalls. Mechanically she fastened the chains about their

necks and took down her stool and brought her pail. Leaning her cheek

as so many times she had done against the first warm flank, she looked

up. The setting sun was shining through the window.

V

This and many other such conversations revealed in time to Mary that

which she had both known and feared. John was changing. Every fresh

occasion of their meeting he was altered a little more. The possessive

passion, inherent in the very nature of his sex, was stirring in him.

Gradually but inevitably they were wakening in him the pride of

inheritance. Less and less did it seem to her he was creating his own.

It was all too subtle to arrest, too elusive to oppose. Still, as

always, he had his charm. Both Peverell and his wife found him altered,

it was true, but improved.

"There be gettin' the grand manner of the squire about 'en," Peverell

said one day when he went back to Somerset before returning to Oxford.

"How many acres is it coming to 'en? Two thousand! Well! A young man

needs his head set right way on to let none o' that go wastin'."

Not even did Mary let Mrs. Peverell see the wound she had. Scarcely

herself did she realize how deep it had gone. But more than in his

manner and the things he said, it was in his attitude to Lucy she was

made most conscious of his change.

During his first holidays, they had played together as though no

difference had entered their lives to separate them. The next time they

were more reserved. A shyness had come over them which partly Mary

justified to herself, ascribing it to that awkwardness of the schoolboy

who, if he is not playing some manly game or doing some manly thing, is

ever ready to fear the accusation of ridiculousness.

But it was before he went to Oxford, while he was yet at school that the

change in him became more than that merely of confusion. It was plain

to be seen that he avoided her then. A solitary figure, wandering in

the Highfield meadow where first they had met, where, most likely it

was, they still would meet whenever he was at Yarningdale, showed to

Mary the patient heart that watched and waited for him.

Sometimes at Mary's invitation she joined and walked with them. Often

it was no more than a shouted greeting from John, flung into the wind

over his shoulder, after which the little figure would disappear through

the willow trees and for the rest of those holidays perhaps be seen no

more, or ever be mentioned by John.

"Have you lost all interest in Lucy?" Mary asked him straightly once

when, at the end of his time at Yarningdale, he was packing up his

things for the rest of his holiday in Somerset.

He looked up, at first surprised and then with color rising in his

cheeks.

"What do you mean by interest?" he asked. "I like her very much. If

you mean I haven't seen her these holidays, I can't go hunting her out,

can I?"

"Can't you? You used to once."

"Well, I was a kid then. So was she. She's nearly seventeen now."

"Doesn't it all come back to a matter of interest though? You can't be

interested, of course, if you're not. I'm not suggesting that you're

being willfully unkind to her. I don't think you'd be willfully unkind

to any one; but do you know what will happen as soon as you've gone?"

"What?"

"She'll come round here on some pretext. She'll contrive to seek me out

and gradually we shall begin to talk about you and then, most cunningly

it will seem to herself she is doing it, she'll ask whether you said

anything about her while you were here and if you did what it was and

how you said it or what I think you meant by it."

John flung the things into his bag.

"I wish you wouldn't encourage her, Mater," he exclaimed.

She came across the room to him. She took his hands that clumsily were

folding some garment before he could pack it. She forced him to turn

his face to hers.

"It's just as much that she encourages me," she said. "Do you know I was

jealous of her once?"

He guffawed with laughter and took her face in his hands and kissed her

between the eyes.

"I was," she whispered, her voice made more than tender with that kiss.

"When she first took your thoughts a moment from me, that day you met

her when we were making hay in the Highfield meadow, I was jealous then.

Now we have one thing, so closely in common that, though she's only

sixteen and I'm forty-seven we've become inseparable friends."

"What do you mean, one thing in common?"

"The old John."

For an instant she gave lease to her emotion and gently clung to him.

"That was the young John," she added in a whisper, "the little boy with

the mop of hair who was a pirate captain and a Claude Duval and a

hundred sturdy men all contained, John, in the simplest, sweetest mind

that held one thought. It was to be a man like Mr. Peverell and till

the soil with labor from sunrise to the sunset, a man like Mr. Peverell

who owed no thanks to any, but out of his own heart and with his own

energy made his pride, a man like Mr. Peverell who gave all that he had

to the earth which gave all back again to him."

Her voice was almost trembling now. Chance of circumstance had placed

this moment in her hands. She knew she was fighting for her ideals,

perhaps with the last opportunity that would ever be given her.

Would he respond? Her heart fluttered in her breast with fear. Had

this opportunity come too late? Was he past answering to it now? She

hung upon the moment with catching breath, scarce daring to watch his

eyes, lest she should know too soon.

Feeling his arm slip round her shoulder, finding his lips against her

cheek, she could have cried aloud for joy, yet all in strange perversity

kept the stiller in his arms.

This was response. The touch of her mind had not yet gone from his. He

had emotions yet that answered to her own. The possessive passion had

not won him wholly for its own. A heart he had that still could beat

with hers, that still could urge the love in him to take her in his

arms.

She knew he was going to speak and waited, saying no more herself to

prompt the answer he might give, but laying her cheek against his lips,

hearing the breath he drew as he replied.

"I don't feel that I've changed, Mater," he murmured to her. "I'm a bit

older, that's all. Being up at Oxford makes you see things differently,

and it's awfully different at Wenlock Hall from what it is here. You get

out of the way of doing things for yourself, there are so many people to

do them for you. Why don't you come down there? It's awfully jolly.

They'd give you an awfully good time. I know they would. Let me send a

wire and say you're coming these holidays, with me, now? Do! Will

you?"

She shook her head. He did not know what temptation he offered. But

there, in Yarningdale was the citadel of her faith. Deeply as she

longed always to be with him, she dared not sally forth on such

adventure as that. Only her faith was there to be its garrison. Only

by setting her standard there upon its walls did she feel she could

defend the fortress of her ideals.

If she could but keep his love, as now in his arms she felt she had it

sure, then always there was hope she might draw him back to the life

that she had planned for him. A brave hope it was while she rested

there in his arms. For one moment it soared high indeed; the next it

fluttered like a shot bird to the earth.

"Don't ask me about Lucy," he said as still he held her to him. "You

can't expect me to feel the same about her, or that it should grow into

anything more than it was. After all, she's only Kemp's daughter."

She looked away. Her hold of him loosened. Scarcely realizing it, she

had slipped from his arms and was standing alone.