It was just before the summer vacation, when John was eighteen, that he
had written to Mary, saying--
"I've got special leave to come down next Friday and I want to ask you
something. There's a girl I've got to know, well, she's twenty-five and
I want you to meet her first before they do at Wenlock Hall."
She had come then and so soon. The first woman of John's own choosing
now he was become a man. The jealousy she had known concerning Lucy was
as nothing to this she felt with a sickness of apprehension in her now.
Fate, circumstance, the mere happenings of life, these had brought him
his Lucy. But here was one his heart must have sought out, his soul had
chosen. She seemed to know there was no chance, but something selective
about this. Here the nature that was in him had been called upon. For
the first time, with no uncertainty, she was to learn what that nature
was.
Mrs. Peverell indeed had spoken true when she had called him a
love-child. His response to passion had been swift and soon. And was
he coming, awed to love as once she had said she would teach him to
come? Or was he tramping with the pride of victory and possession? The
moment she saw this girl, she would know. The world was full of women
who asked for no more; who judged the affections of their men by just
that measure of animal passion which in their hearts and often upon
their tongues they professed to despise.
Only the few there were who, never asking but waiting for the love that
she had wished to teach him, inspired it. Had his heart sought out one
of these? With fear and trembling she read on.
"I can't explain in writing," the letter continued, "but you must see
her before any one else."
The degree of her gratitude for that for a moment drove away all fear,
but not for long.
"I've told her everything about myself," she read on. "She's wonderful.
She doesn't mind a bit. I want you to let me bring her down to
Yarningdale. She can have my room and I'll doss out at the Inn. I know
you'll like her. You must. She's splendid. I've warned her what the
farm is like, that it's a bit rough, but she doesn't care and she's
longing to meet you."
All Mary's intuitive impressions of her who did not mind when she had
heard about her John, she put away from her and, harnessing the light
horse in the spring cart, drove down that Friday to the station.
It was characteristic of John's letters that he had not mentioned her
name. Many of his friends at the 'Varsity she knew well by his accounts
of them, having no more classification for them in her mind than the
nicknames they went by.
John was leaning out of the carriage window as the train drew in. Swift
enough she noted the look of eager excitement in his eyes; but it was
that figure in the pale blue frock behind him she saw. As they came
down the platform towards her, John first with his bounding stride,
still it was the figure behind him her heart was watching,
notwithstanding that she gave her eyes to him.
"Here's Dorothy Fielding, Mater," he said, scarcely with pause to
exchange their kiss of meeting.
She turned with the smile that hid her hurt to meet those eyes her John
had chosen to look into.
It was a quiet woman this Dorothy saw, so calm and serene as made her
realize how all those subtle preparations she had made for this meeting
were wasted here. That she was well gowned, well shod, that her hair was
neither too carefully dressed nor untidy in its effect, that her hat
showed confidence in her taste, all these preparations over which she
had taken such care she knew could not avail here in the judgment of
those eyes that met hers.
This was not just a woman she had to please and satisfy; it was
something like an element, like fire or like rushing water her soul must
meet, all bare and stripped of the disguising superficialities of life.
"This is the first time I've heard your name," said Mary with that smile
she gave her. "John never mentioned it in his letter. But then I don't
suppose he's ever told you what I was like."
"Mater! I've told Dorothy everything, haven't I, Dee? Described every
little detail about you, rather!"
Mary's hands stretched out and held his. Her eyes she kept for Dorothy.
"Well, I hope you're not disappointed," she said, "because I'm not a bit
like it--am I?"
She knew so soon, at once. So far beyond the reach of conscious
comprehension had been Dorothy's surprise that now it came rushing to
the surface of her mind with Mary's detection of it.
"On the contrary," she replied, "I think I'd have known you anywhere."
Then from that moment they knew they shared no thought in common. That
first lie was the sound of their challenge. Each for their separate
purposes they were at enmity in their claim of John. He stood beside
them, there upon the platform, supremely unconscious of the forces he
had set free, sublimely happy in his achievement of bringing them
together.
There were two women, dearer to him at that moment than any two other
people in the world and all he saw was the smiles they gave each other.
The spiritual and the material need of him they had, for which already
they had cried the challenge to battle, this came no more even to the
threshold of his mind than came to his ears, intent on all they said,
the short, sharp whistle of the departing train.
Each in that first moment had set up her standard. His soul was the
sepulchre for which Mary fought. There between those two, lay John's
ideals and visions of life. It was they who had the power to make them
what they should be. Through them he was to find stimulus for the
emotions that should govern all he did. Still was he for molding, still
the plastic spirit needing the highest emotion of the highest ideal to
give it noblest purpose.
And here, as ever, his mother was she who in that malleable phase set
first the welfare of his soul. No conception or consideration of
inheritance was there to hinder her. It was not to a man fit for the
world she saw him grow, but to equip him for life she gave the essence
of her being.
This from the very first, before ever that cry of his lifted above the
wind in the elm trees, had been her sure and certain purpose. No
possessions in life there were but him to limit the perspective of her
vision; and such a possession was he as for whom, if need be, she could
make absolute sacrifice.
Already she had done so. Already once she had given her heart for
breaking to let him go. Fear there was in her now she had not had
courage enough in her purpose. Fear there was she had not trusted
enough to faith.
Would he have lived to rebuke her for the opportunity she had thrown
away? Might he not have lived, as she would have taught him, to thank
her for the sense of life she had given him in exchange for the world
that now was at his feet?
Once she had given her heart for breaking and it had healed in the
patient endurance of her soul. She had no thought to give it here.
Here in that moment as they met upon the platform, she knew she must
fight to the last. Men might make the world, but it was women who
created life. Between those two women, laughing like a schoolboy, he
stood for his life to be shaped and fashioned and all that appeared upon
the surface of things to him was that the world was a happy place.