Chapter V

This and many other such conversations revealed in time to Mary that which she had both known and feared. John was changing. Every fresh occasion of their meeting he was altered a little more. The possessive passion, inherent in the very nature of his sex, was stirring in him. Gradually but inevitably they were wakening in him the pride of inheritance. Less and less did it seem to her he was creating his own.

It was all too subtle to arrest, too elusive to oppose. Still, as always, he had his charm. Both Peverell and his wife found him altered, it was true, but improved.

"There be gettin' the grand manner of the squire about 'en," Peverell said one day when he went back to Somerset before returning to Oxford. "How many acres is it coming to 'en? Two thousand! Well! A young man needs his head set right way on to let none o' that go wastin'."

Not even did Mary let Mrs. Peverell see the wound she had. Scarcely herself did she realize how deep it had gone. But more than in his manner and the things he said, it was in his attitude to Lucy she was made most conscious of his change.

During his first holidays, they had played together as though no difference had entered their lives to separate them. The next time they were more reserved. A shyness had come over them which partly Mary justified to herself, ascribing it to that awkwardness of the schoolboy who, if he is not playing some manly game or doing some manly thing, is ever ready to fear the accusation of ridiculousness.

But it was before he went to Oxford, while he was yet at school that the change in him became more than that merely of confusion. It was plain to be seen that he avoided her then. A solitary figure, wandering in the Highfield meadow where first they had met, where, most likely it was, they still would meet whenever he was at Yarningdale, showed to Mary the patient heart that watched and waited for him.

Sometimes at Mary's invitation she joined and walked with them. Often it was no more than a shouted greeting from John, flung into the wind over his shoulder, after which the little figure would disappear through the willow trees and for the rest of those holidays perhaps be seen no more, or ever be mentioned by John.

"Have you lost all interest in Lucy?" Mary asked him straightly once when, at the end of his time at Yarningdale, he was packing up his things for the rest of his holiday in Somerset.

He looked up, at first surprised and then with color rising in his cheeks.

"What do you mean by interest?" he asked. "I like her very much. If you mean I haven't seen her these holidays, I can't go hunting her out, can I?"

"Can't you? You used to once."

"Well, I was a kid then. So was she. She's nearly seventeen now."

"Doesn't it all come back to a matter of interest though? You can't be interested, of course, if you're not. I'm not suggesting that you're being willfully unkind to her. I don't think you'd be willfully unkind to any one; but do you know what will happen as soon as you've gone?"

"What?"

"She'll come round here on some pretext. She'll contrive to seek me out and gradually we shall begin to talk about you and then, most cunningly it will seem to herself she is doing it, she'll ask whether you said anything about her while you were here and if you did what it was and how you said it or what I think you meant by it."

John flung the things into his bag.

"I wish you wouldn't encourage her, Mater," he exclaimed.

She came across the room to him. She took his hands that clumsily were folding some garment before he could pack it. She forced him to turn his face to hers.

"It's just as much that she encourages me," she said. "Do you know I was jealous of her once?"

He guffawed with laughter and took her face in his hands and kissed her between the eyes.

"I was," she whispered, her voice made more than tender with that kiss. "When she first took your thoughts a moment from me, that day you met her when we were making hay in the Highfield meadow, I was jealous then. Now we have one thing, so closely in common that, though she's only sixteen and I'm forty-seven we've become inseparable friends."

"What do you mean, one thing in common?"

"The old John."

For an instant she gave lease to her emotion and gently clung to him.

"That was the young John," she added in a whisper, "the little boy with the mop of hair who was a pirate captain and a Claude Duval and a hundred sturdy men all contained, John, in the simplest, sweetest mind that held one thought. It was to be a man like Mr. Peverell and till the soil with labor from sunrise to the sunset, a man like Mr. Peverell who owed no thanks to any, but out of his own heart and with his own energy made his pride, a man like Mr. Peverell who gave all that he had to the earth which gave all back again to him."

Her voice was almost trembling now. Chance of circumstance had placed this moment in her hands. She knew she was fighting for her ideals, perhaps with the last opportunity that would ever be given her.

Would he respond? Her heart fluttered in her breast with fear. Had this opportunity come too late? Was he past answering to it now? She hung upon the moment with catching breath, scarce daring to watch his eyes, lest she should know too soon.

Feeling his arm slip round her shoulder, finding his lips against her cheek, she could have cried aloud for joy, yet all in strange perversity kept the stiller in his arms.

This was response. The touch of her mind had not yet gone from his. He had emotions yet that answered to her own. The possessive passion had not won him wholly for its own. A heart he had that still could beat with hers, that still could urge the love in him to take her in his arms.

She knew he was going to speak and waited, saying no more herself to prompt the answer he might give, but laying her cheek against his lips, hearing the breath he drew as he replied.

"I don't feel that I've changed, Mater," he murmured to her. "I'm a bit older, that's all. Being up at Oxford makes you see things differently, and it's awfully different at Wenlock Hall from what it is here. You get out of the way of doing things for yourself, there are so many people to do them for you. Why don't you come down there? It's awfully jolly. They'd give you an awfully good time. I know they would. Let me send a wire and say you're coming these holidays, with me, now? Do! Will you?"

She shook her head. He did not know what temptation he offered. But there, in Yarningdale was the citadel of her faith. Deeply as she longed always to be with him, she dared not sally forth on such adventure as that. Only her faith was there to be its garrison. Only by setting her standard there upon its walls did she feel she could defend the fortress of her ideals.

If she could but keep his love, as now in his arms she felt she had it sure, then always there was hope she might draw him back to the life that she had planned for him. A brave hope it was while she rested there in his arms. For one moment it soared high indeed; the next it fluttered like a shot bird to the earth.

"Don't ask me about Lucy," he said as still he held her to him. "You can't expect me to feel the same about her, or that it should grow into anything more than it was. After all, she's only Kemp's daughter."

She looked away. Her hold of him loosened. Scarcely realizing it, she had slipped from his arms and was standing alone.