The Green Bough Part 24

Still continuing, as soon as she was strong again, to fulfill the duties of milkmaid for Mr. Peverell, Mary spent all her spare time with her child. No fretting mother she was, but calm and serene in all her doings. He took no fever of spirit from her.

"Seems as if the milk she give him must almost be cool," said Mrs.

Peverell to her husband, who now, since the registration of John's birth had had to be told the truth--that there was no father--that Mary was one of those women who had gone astray.

"Fair, she beats me," he replied. "Ain't there no shame to her? Not that I want to see her shamed. But it 'mazes me seein' her calm and easy like this. Keep them cows quiet, I told her when she 'gan amilkin'--keep 'em easy. Don't fret 'em. They'll give 'ee half as much milk again if 'ee don't fret 'em. And when the flies were at 'en last summer, dommed if she didn't get more milk than that lad could have got. That's where she's learnt it. She ain't frettin' herself when most women 'ud be hangin' their heads and turnin' the milk to water in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s wi'

shame. I doant make her out and that's the truth of it."

Yet he had made her out far better than he knew. That was where she had learnt the secret, as she had intended she should learn all the secrets it was possible to know. On sunny days she took her baby with her into the fields where the cows were grazing.

One by one on the first of these occasions, solemnly she showed them the treasure she brought. Sponsors, they were, she told them, having had recent acquaintance with that word. One by one they stared with velvet eyes at the bundle that was presented to them.

When that ceremony was over, solemnly proclaimed with words the written word can give no meaning to, she found for herself a sheltered corner in the hedgerow, there unfastening her dress and with cool fingers lifting her breast for his lips to suckle where none could watch her. The warm spring air on those sunny days was no less food for him than the milk she gave. With gurgling noises he drew it in. With round, dark eyes, set fast with the purposes of life, he took his fill as she gazed upon him.

That there was nothing more wonderful to a woman than this, Mary knew in all the certainty of her heart. There alone with her baby, she wanted no other pa.s.sion, no other love, no other company. This for a woman was the completeness of fulfillment. Yet this it was that men denied to so many.

She knew then in those moments that no shame would be too great to bear with patience for such realization of life as this. Realization it was and, to fail in knowing it, was like a fallow field to have yielded naught but a harvest of weeds in which there was shame indeed.

Often in the previous summer she had heard Mr. Peverell bitterly accusing himself for the bare and weedy patches in his crops. Twice since she had been there on the farm had a barren cow been sent to market for sale because it was of no use to them. They had been cows she herself had named. She had fretted when they were driven away and had taken herself far from the yard when it came to the moment of their departure.

Yet no word of pleading had she said to Mr. Peverell on such occasions.

Receive and give, these were the laws she recognized and found no power of sentiment strong enough in her to make her seek or need to disobey them. Gain and keep--against such principles as these her soul had caparisoned and armed itself, clearly knowing how all laws in the operation must carry with them the savor of injustice, uncomplaining if that injustice should be measured for her portion. For never so great an injustice could it be as that which men in their ideals of possession and inheritance had meted out to women. Living there at Yarningdale Farm so close to the land, she had found a greater beneficence in Nature than in all the organized charity of mankind.

On the second occasion when the barren cow had been sent to market some delay had been made in her departure and Mary had returned to the house just as the flurried beast had been driven out of the yard. With head averted, she had quickened her steps into the house, finding Mrs.

Peverell looking out of the window in the parlor kitchen.

"Why are they drivin' that cow to market?" she asked. "He said naught to me 'bout sellin' a cow to-day."

"She's barren," said Mary. "They sent her four times to the bull. I've milked her nearly dry now. It does seem hard, doesn't it? She was so quiet. But I'm afraid she's no good to us."

She had been taking off her hat as she spoke, never appreciating the significance of what she said when, in a moment, she became conscious of Mrs. Peverell's silence and swiftly turned round.

She was standing quite motionless with one hand resting on the back of a chair, staring out of the window at the departing beast, yet seeing nothing, for, with a searching steadfastness, her eyes were looking inwards.

For a moment Mary's presence of mind had left her. She had swayed in movement, half coming forward when indecision had arrested her. It might not be that her thoughts were what Mary supposed. To comfort her for them if they were not there was only to put them in her mind.

"What are you thinking of?" she inquired tentatively.

"I be thinkin'," said Mrs. Peverell, "if he gets a good price for that cow we'd have a new lot o' bricks laid down in that wash-house. There be holes there a body might fall over in the dark."

A thousand times more bitter was this than the truth, for still she stood staring inwards with her thoughts and still standing there, with her hand on the back of the chair and her eyes gazing through the window, Mary had left her and gone upstairs.

VII

Soon after John was born, there had come a letter from Hannah saying that she and f.a.n.n.y were going to stay with friends in Yorks.h.i.+re and on their way intended to visit her whether she liked it or not.

"Every one knows we're going to Yorks.h.i.+re," she had written, "so they won't guess we've broken the journey."

Mary smiled. Almost it was unbelievable to her now that once she herself had thought like that. Absolutely and actually unreal it seemed to her now that the human body could so be led and persuaded by the thoughts of its mind.

"Come," she wrote back. "We shall be proud to see you."

"Proud!" said Hannah, reading that. "It almost seems as if she meant to say she was proud of herself. I know she's not ashamed--but proud?"

"P'r'aps that's what she does mean," said f.a.n.n.y. "Though without love, it doesn't seem to me she's got anything to be proud about."

Sharply Hannah looked at f.a.n.n.y, for since these events had happened in the square, white house, there had grown a keener glance in the quiet nature of Hannah's eyes.

"Don't tell me, f.a.n.n.y," she whispered, "don't tell me you'd go and do the same?"

"I'd do anything for love!" exclaimed f.a.n.n.y hysterically. "Anything I'd do--but it would have to be for love."

Hannah went away to her room to pack, considering how swiftly the rupture of the moral code can break down the power of principle.

"f.a.n.n.y was never like that before," she muttered as she gathered her things. "At least she would never have said it. Mary's done more harm than ever she knows. Poor Mary! She can't really be proud--that's only her pride."

Yet proud indeed they found she was. At the end of the red brick path leading up to the house between the beds now filled with wallflowers, she greeted them with her baby in her arms. This was her challenge. So they must accept her. It was not to be first herself as though nothing had happened and then her child as though what must be, must be borne with. It was they two or never, sisters though they might be, would she wish to see them.

Her first thought, as they stepped out of the village fly that brought them, was how old and pinched and worn they looked. For youth now had come back to her with the youth she carried in her arms. Thirty she was then, yet felt a child beside them. For one instant at the sight of her her heart ached for f.a.n.n.y. f.a.n.n.y, she knew, was the one whom the sight of her child would hurt the most. But the contact of greeting, the lending him to them for their arms to hold, deep though her heart was filled with pity for them, in that moment there was yet the deeper welling of her pride.

He won them, as well she knew he would. In Hannah's arms, he looked up with his deep, black eyes into hers and made bubbles with his lips. No woman could have resisted him and she, who never would have child of her own, clung to him in a piteous weakness of emotion.

f.a.n.n.y stood by, with jerking laughter to hide her eagerness, muttering--"Let me have him, Hannah. Let me take him a moment now."

And when in turn she held him, then above Mary's pride that already had had its fill, there rose the consciousness of all her sister was suffering. Twitching with emotion were f.a.n.n.y's lips as she kissed him.

Against that thin breast of hers she held him fast as though she felt for him to give her the sense of life. Not even a foolish word such as Hannah had murmured in his ears was there in her heart to say to him. It was life she was holding so close; life that had never been given her to touch; life, even borrowed like this, that had the power to swell the sluggish race of her blood to flooding; life that stung and hurt and smarted in her eyes, yet made her feel she was a woman in whom the purpose of being might yet be fulfilled.

Unable any longer to bear the sight of that, Mary turned away into the house to prepare their coming. John, she left in f.a.n.n.y's arms, having no heart to rob her of him then.

"They've come," she whispered to Mrs. Peverell. "They've come."

"Well?" she inquired. "Was it to shame 'ee?"

For answer Mary took her by the arm and led her to the window.

"Look," she said, and pointed out over the bowl of daffodils on the window sill, down the red brick path to the gate in the oak palings.

And that which Mrs. Peverell beheld was the sight of two women, no longer young, lost to all sense of foolishness in their behavior, emotionalized beyond control, swept beyond self-criticism by a thing, all young with life, that kicked its bare legs and crowed and bubbled at its lips, then lying still, lay looking at them with great eyes of wisdom as though in wonder at their folly.

They stayed till later that afternoon, then caught an evening train to Manchester. Mary travelled a mile with them in the old fly, then set out to walk home alone.

"Don't tire yourself," said Hannah, leaning out of the window, as they drove away. "You must still take care."

"Tire myself?" Mary cried back. "I don't feel as if I could ever be tired again."

And still leaning out of the window, watching her with her firm stride as she disappeared into the wood, Hannah knew their sister had found a nearer stream to the heart of life than ever that which flowed through Bridnorth.