Chapter VII

The next evening it was, after the first day in the hayfield and while Mr. Peverell in the big barn was sharpening the knives of the mowing machine, that Mary set herself to the task of telling his wife why she wanted to come to the farm.

Hard as she knew it would be, so much the harder it became when alone she found herself watching that sallow face with its sunken and lusterless eyes, the thin, unforgiving line of lip, the chin set square, obediently to turn the other cheek to the smiting hand of Fate.

Mrs. Peverell was knitting.

"A woolly vest," said she--"for the old man, come next winter. Time they leaves be off the apple trees, the wind ain't long afindin' we'd be here top of the hill."

For a while Mary sat in silence counting her stitches--two purl, two plain, two purl, two plain. The needles clicked. The knotted knuckles turned and twisted, catching the light with rhythmic precision. And all the time she kept saying to herself--"Soon he'll come back from the barn and I shan't have said it. Soon he'll come back."

"Did you make all your children's things for them?" she asked with sudden inspiration, striking the note to key her thoughts when she could speak them.

The needles clicked on. The knotted knuckles twisted and turned as though she had never heard. The head was bent, the eyes fastened upon her stitches.

Thinking she had not heard, Mary was about to repeat her question when suddenly she looked. Stone her eyes were, even and gray. Through years, each one of which was notched upon her memory, she looked at Mary across the dim light of their parlor kitchen.

"I had no children," she said hardly; "all the stitches I've ever gathered was for my man."

Her gaze upon Mary continued for a long silence then, as though her needles had called them, her eyes withdrew to her knitting. Saying no more, she continued her occupation.

To Mary could she have said less? There was the gap filled in between that winsome creature whose portrait hung upon the wall in the other room and this woman, sour of countenance, whose blood had turned to vinegar in her heart.

Many another woman would have been still more afraid, possessed of such knowledge as that. With a heart that swelled in her to pity, Mary found her fear had gone.

Somewhere in that forbidding exterior, she knew she could find the response of heart she needed. Even Nature, with her crudest whip, could not drive out the deeper kindliness of the soul. It was only the body she could dry up and wither, with the persisting ferment of discontent; only the external woman she could embitter with her disregard.

For here was one whom circumstance had offered and Nature had flung aside. Great as the tragedy of her sisters' lives might be, Mary knew how much greater a tragedy was this. Here there was no remedy, no fear of convention to make excuse, no want of courage to justify. Like a leper she was outcast amongst women. The knowledge of it was all in her face. And such tragedy as this, though it might wither the body and turn sour the heart, could only make the soul great that suffered it.

Mary's fear was gone. At sight of the unforgiving line of lip and square set chin to meet adversity, she knew a great soul was hidden behind that sallow mask.

The long silence that had followed Mrs. Peverell's admission added a fullness of meaning to Mary's words.

"It'd sound foolish and empty if I said I was sorry," she said quietly, "but I know what you must feel."

The lusterless eyes shot up quickly from their hollows. Almost a light was kindling in them now.

"'Ee bain't a married girl," she said, "Miss Throgmorton or what 'ee call it, that's how I wrote my letter to 'ee."

"Yes."

"How could 'ee know things I'd feel?

"I do."

"How old are 'ee?"

"Thirty next September."

"Why haven't 'ee married?"

"I haven't been asked. Look at me."

"I am."

"But look at me well."

Mrs. Peverell stared into her eyes.

"I have three sisters older than me," Mary went on. "Four girls--four women. We're none of us married. None of us was ever as pretty or sweet as you were when that photograph was taken of you in the other room."

The silence that fell between them then as Mrs. Peverell gazed at her was more significant than words. For all they said, once understanding, they did not need words. Indications of speech sufficed.

"Did any of 'ee want to be married?" asked the farmer's wife. "Did you?"

"Did you?" replied Mary.

"I wanted a good man," said she, "and I got him."

"Yes, but looking back on it now--all these years--back to that photograph in there, was that what you wanted?"

All this time Mrs. Peverell had been holding her needles as though at any moment the conversation might command her full attention no longer and she would return to her knitting. Definitely, at last she laid it in her lap and, leaning forward, she set her eyes, now lit indeed, upon Mary's face before her.

"'Ee know so much," said she slowly. "How did 'ee learn? What is it 'ee have to tell me?"

Without fear, Mary met her gaze. Long it was and keen but she met it full, nor turned, nor dropped her eyes. Brimmed and overflowing that silence was as they sat there. Words would have been empty sounds had they been spoken. Then, but not until it had expressed all their thoughts, Mrs. Peverell's lips parted.

"It's sin," she said.

"Is it?" replied Mary, and, so still her voice was that it made no vibrations to disturb the deeper meaning she implied. In their following silence, that deeper meaning filtered slowly but inevitably through the strata of Mrs. Peverell's mind, till drop by drop it fell into the core of her being. In the far hidden soul of her, she knew it was no sin. She knew moreover that Mary had full realization of her knowledge. Too far the silence had gone for her to deny it now. Whatever were the years between them, in those moments they were just women between whom no screen was set to hide their shame. They had no shame. All that they thought and had no words for was pure as the clearest water in the deepest well.

It was at this moment as they sat there, still, without speech, that the door opened and Mr. Peverell entered. Swiftly his wife turned.

"'Ee'll not be wanted here awhile," she said sharply. "Go and sit in the parlor, or back to the barn, or get to bed maybe. The hay'll make without talking."

Obediently, like a child, he went out at once and closed the door. It was not things they talked of that he might not hear. Not even was it things they talked of that he might not understand. Here it was that no man had place or meaning; in that region their minds were wandering in, no laws existed but those of Nature. They walked in a world where women are alone.

The opening of that door as he came in, the closing of it as obediently he went out, seemed to make definite the thoughts they had. At the sound of his footsteps departing, Mrs. Peverell turned to Mary.

"Say all 'ee've got to say," she muttered. "I'm listenin'."

And as definitely Mary replied--

"I'm going to have a baby. Seven months from now. I don't want you to think I'm hiding here. I could take refuge anywhere. I'm not ashamed. But there are seven months. They won't be long to me. Indeed they'll be all too short. Children aren't just born. They're made. Thousands are born, I know. I don't want just to bear mine. When I came here that day, two years ago, I felt something about this place. You'll think nothing of this. You live here. It's so much part of your life that you don't know what it means. But you're close to the earth--you're all one with growing things. You touch Nature at every turn. Oh--do you understand what I'm saying?"

"I don't understand," said Mrs. Peverell, "but I'm listenin' and I beant too old to feel."

Mary sped on with the words that now were rushing in her thoughts.

"Well--all that means such a lot to me. That's how I want to make my child, as you make your lives here. No cheating. You can't cheat Nature. No pretence--no shame. There's nothing so flagrant or unashamed as Nature when she brings forth. Out there in the world, there where I live, they'd do all they could to make me ashamed. At every turn they'd shriek at me it was a sin. The laws would urge them to it, just as for that one moment they urged you. It's not a sin. It's not a shame. It's the most wonderful thing in the world. Do you think if women had the making of the laws that rule them, they'd ever have made of it the shame it is out there? When I knew that this was going to happen to me, I remembered my impressions of this place two years ago, and I knew it was here I would make him, month by month, while he's leaning in me to make him. Oh--I know I must be talking strangely to you; that half of what I say sounds feather-brained nonsense, but--don't you know it's true, don't you feel it's true?"

With an impulsive gesture when words had failed, she leant forward and caught the knotted knuckles in her hand.

Mrs. Peverell glanced up.

"In that room there," said she, pointing in the direction of the parlor sitting room, "there's a girt Bible lies heavy on a mat. We bought it marriage time to write the names of those we had."

"I saw it," said Mary.

"'Tis clean paper lies on front of it," she went on. "It shan't be clean for long. We'll write his name there."