Chapter V

Talking of the future one day with Mrs. Peverell, Mary had said that if it were a boy, his name must be John. So definite had she been in her decision about this, that without further question the good woman had written it in the big Bible.

"John's a man's name," Mary had said; "there's work in it." Then, dismissing her smile and speaking still more earnestly, she had continued, "If anything were to happen to me, I should leave him to you. Would you take him?"

The sunken eyes were quite steady before the gaze they met.

"How could we give 'en the bringin' up?" she asked.

"He shall have no bringing up but this," Mary had replied. "I told you first of all I didn't come here to hide. I chose this place because I knew I could touch life here and make him all I wanted him to be. This is what I want him, a good man and a true man and a real one, like your husband. I want him to know that he owes all to the earth he works in. What money I have shall be yours to keep and clothe him. Indeed I hope nothing will happen for I know so well what I want him to be. I've always known it, it seems to me now. I've only realized it these last few months. Milking these cows, walking in the meadows, living here on this farm, I've learnt to realize it. Giving is life. We can't all give the same thing, but it is in the moment of giving that most we feel alive. Acquiring, possessing, putting a value on things and hoarding them by, there's only a living death, a stagnant despair and discontent in that."

"'Ee's talkin' beyond me," said Mrs. Peverell watching her. "'Ee's well taught at school and 'ee's talkin' beyond me. I never had no learnin' what I got of use to me out of books. But come one day an' another, I've learnt that wantin' things may help 'ee gettin' 'em, but it stales 'em when they come. All I could have given my man, ain't there for givin'. God knows best why. Most willing would I have gone wi'out life to give 'en a child to patter its feet on these bricks. He doant know that. I wouldn't tell 'en. He'd say there warn't no sense in my talkin' that way. Men want life to live by, but it seems to me sometimes death's an easy thing to a woman when it comes that way. I s'pose it's what 'ee'd call the moment of givin' and doant seem like death to her."

Mary had leant forward, stretching out her hand and taking the knotted knuckles in her fingers.

"You haven't lost much," she had said, "by not having my advantage of education. What you've just said is bigger than any learning could make it. I don't think we speak any more of truth because we have more words to express it with. I'm sure we think less. Do you think I could find any one better to teach him than you? It is women who teach. Your husband will show him the way, but you will give him that idea in his heart to take it. I long so much to give it to him myself that I haven't your courage. Sometimes I'm afraid I may die. I don't let it have any power over me but sometimes I confess I'm afraid, because you see I want to give him more than his life. I want to give him his ideals. Perhaps that's because I've no one else to give him to. My life won't seem complete unless I can live beyond that. Anyhow I wanted to say this. If I have to give him, I want it to be to you and I want you to know that that is how I wish him to be brought up. If he has big things in life to give, he'll find them out. He'll leave the farm. Perhaps he'll break your heart in leaving--perhaps he'll break mine if I live, but I want him first to learn from the earth itself the life there is in giving and then, let it be what it may, for him to give his best."

Mrs. Peverell nodded her head to imply understanding.

"It's them as doant suffer can talk about sin," she had said, which by no means was Mary's train of thought, though her words had somehow suggested it to Mrs. Peverell's range of comprehension. "I should have called all this sin years ago. Didn't I say 'twas sin when first 'ee told me? Well, it beats me what sin is. 'Tain't what I thought it. We be born with it, they say. Well, if the babes I seen be born with sin, 'tain't what any one thinks it."

It was obvious Mrs. Peverell had not followed her in the flight of her hopes and purposes. The right and the wrong of it, the pain and the joy of it, these were all that her mind grasped. But these she grasped with a clearness of vision that assured Mary's heart of a safe guardianship if ill should befall her. Such a clearness of vision it was as set her high above many of the women she had known.

How was that? What was it about women that so few of them had any vision at all? To how many she knew would she entrust her child? Often she had listened in amazement to Hannah instructing the children at home. She remembered the mistresses where she had been at school herself. She recalled her mother's advice to her when she had left school. Everywhere it was the same.

Only here and there where a woman had suffered at the hands of life did vision seem to be awakened in her. Many were worldly, many were shrewd and clever enough in their dealings with circumstance. But how few there were who knew of any purpose in their souls beyond that of dressing their bodies for honest vanity's sake, or marrying suitably for decent comfort's sake.

Here, was it again the force-made laws, the laws by which men set a paled and barbed fence about the possessions they had won? Were all these women their possessions too, as little capable of freedom of thought as were of action their dogs, their horses, the cattle on their hedged-in fields?

She had heard of votes for women in those days. In Bridnorth as in most places it was a jest. What would they do with the vote when they had it? They laughed with the rest. Women in Parliament! They would only make fools of themselves with their trembling voices raised in a company of men.

She could not herself quite see all that the vote might mean. Little may that be wondered at, seeing that when they obtained it, there would be countless among them who still would be ignorant of its worth and power. Whatever it might mean, she knew in those days that her sex had little of the vision of the ideal; she knew it was little aware of the true values and meanings of life, that thousands of her sisters wasted out their days in ceaseless pandering to the acquisitive passions of men.

"'Ee's thinkin' long and deep, maidy," Mrs. Peverell had said when the silence after her last remarks had closed about them. "Are 'ee wonderin' after all this time what the sin of it might be? Are 'ee thinkin' what the Vicar'll say when 'ee has to explain it all to 'en."

"Why must I tell him?" asked Mary.

"Don't 'ee want the child baptized?"

With all the thoughts she had had, with all the preparation she had made, she had not thought of this. The habit of her religion was about her still. Every Sunday morning she had sat with the Peverells in the pew it was their custom to occupy. Something there was in religion no clearness of vision seemed able to destroy.

"He must be baptized," she had said and turned in their mind to face once more the difficulties with which the world beset her.