Chapter 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.