Chapter IV

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.