The Green Bough Part 26

"And are they dead then?"

"No, that's where it's so difficult to explain. If I were to say--that's death, but they're not dead--how could you understand?"

"Couldn't," he agreed, and leant his head up against her cheek, sympathizing with her difficulties. "I've always thought death was being quite dead."

"Nothing's quite dead," she repeated, half to herself, as though by the reiteration of that she might capture out of the void the inspiration for what she wanted to say.

"Do you remember what I told you about G.o.d?" she asked suddenly.

He nodded his head.

"Well, when things go quite still, they've gone back to G.o.d. They can't feel thirsty then, or tired or unhappy. They haven't got any bodies to feel tired or thirsty with."

"But what does G.o.d do with all the dead things and people?"

Mary clasped her courage and went on.

"He just lets them rest," she said, "rest till they're ready to bear being thirsty and tired again."

"Were the moles so thirsty or so tired that they couldn't bear it any more?"

"They may have been. You can never know when G.o.d chooses to take you back again. Life, the thing that makes you move about and laugh and run, the thing that makes you able to bear being thirsty, you can give that back to G.o.d just when you feel strongest."

"What would you give it back for?"

"Something that was worth while. Suppose you and I were out for a walk together and I fell in the river and I couldn't swim and I was nearly going to be drowned and be quite still, because when you're under the water you can't breathe and that's another thing that makes you go quite still, what would you do?"

"I'd jump in and I'd swim and I'd take you in my arms and I'd swim with my legs and I'd get to the bank and then I'd pull you out and I'd call to Mr. Peverell."

He felt the tightening of her arm about him.

"But supposing I was too heavy and yet you still held on and I dragged you down under the water with me and you couldn't breathe and became quite still--then you'd have given the thing that had made you run to the bank and jump into the water, you'd have given it back to G.o.d."

"That would have been worth while, Mummy," said he.

"Would it, John?"

"Well, what would have been the good of going on looking for birds' eggs or making the hay or getting up in the morning if you'd been quite still?"

"So I fill your life, do I?" she whispered.

"No fun if you were like the moles," said he without sentiment.

And this, she thought of a sudden, is what so many women are denied, this actual virtue of being the very essence of the whole world to one little, living body that had not a lover's sentiments and pa.s.sions to urge upon its mind, but stood alone absorbed, contained in its beliefs.

"Well, then, if you gave it back to G.o.d for something like that that seemed worth while, it would not be because you were tired then--would it?"

"No--I shouldn't want no rest. Shouldn't want to be quite still for long."

She lifted him up swiftly into her arms, a sudden sight of him quite still chilling through her blood.

"If you gave it back, generously, like that, my darling," she whispered, "He might accept it like Mr. Peverell always does when you give him an apple out of his own orchard. You always find it on your plate again next morning."

"Has G.o.d a beard like Mr. Peverell?" he asked.

IX

It was when John came to the age of eleven that Mary first learnt the pangs of jealousy.

A neighboring farm came into the market one Michaelmas and was bought by a young farmer bringing a wife and three children to the house that lay in the trees at the bottom of the Highfield meadow. No one knew why it was called Highfield, that meadow. It had been so called for centuries, yet it lay low. A brook ran through it. Some winters it lay under water. A kind of rush grew thick in the gra.s.s in one corner under the poplar trees. Every year it was put down for hay. Every year, so damp the soil, it grew a generous crop.

Farms so close together as Mr. Kemp's and Mr. Peverell's lend each other a helping hand. There is only a friendly rivalry between those whose hearts are in the soil. The spirit of giving maintains if it does not rule. Mr. Peverell's crops were generally better to his way of thinking than any one else's. But he loved the sight of a well grown field nevertheless. He wished no harm but the best to any man who tilled and cleansed his land.

"Cultivation," he said, "that's taking side wi' Nature. Weeds is folly and Nature can't abide that. A field run fallow makes my stomach turn."

It was at the haymaking in the Highfield meadow, when the womenfolk, and at lifting time the men as well, came in to help, that John first met Lucy Kemp.

She was a year younger than he; dark haired with solemn, wondering eyes that gazed with steady glances at the world.

In the midst of his frolics in the new cut hay, John came suddenly before those eyes, not knowing what he saw, ceased from his antics in a swift arrest.

"What are you looking at?" he asked with unceremonious directness.

"Looking at you," said she.

He glanced down at his clothes to see if anything was wrong.

"What's the matter with me?" he inquired.

"I like you," she replied.

"Why?"

"Cos you can stop playing all quick, like this, when you play."

She must have had some vague conception of what she meant. He must have had some vague conception of what he understood. It was the first time it had ever been made apparent to him that any one could like him as well as his mother.

"Aren't you going to play?" he asked.

"I've got a headache," she replied.

"What's that?"

"A pain--all over here!" She laid her hands across her forehead.