There came the sound of a voice through the willow trees, across the other side of the stream. It was a st.u.r.dy voice, high and ringing with encouragement.

"Bear up--be brave," it said. "We're coming to the ford. Once the river's crossed there are only a few more miles to go before we're safe."

The smile that rose into Mary's eyes found no place to linger there.

She turned with Liddiard at the sound to see, a faun no longer, a faun transformed to stalwart man, bearing a distressed maiden in his arms--a knight errant shouldering the precious burden of outraged womanhood and bringing her to safety.

Again the smile crept back into Mary's eyes. Again it crept away.

"Has Lucy hurt herself?" she asked. "What's the matter with her?"

"There were two terrible robbers in the wood," said he as he strode with his burden into the stream. "They had tied her to a tree. She was all naked when I found her. I've killed them both--she's--" Then seeing Liddiard for the first time, he stopped. Astonishment leapt into his eyes. He set his Lucy down and stood staring.

"John," said Mary, "this is a friend of mine, a Mr. Liddiard." She turned to Liddiard. "This is my John," she said.

They met and solemnly shook hands. With eyes that sought for subtlest meanings and hidden things, Mary watched them, the touching of their hands, the look of the eyes. So surely she knew, across the unmeasured distance between them, Liddiard was casting the javelin of his soul to pierce John's heart. In that silence as he stood holding John's hand, she knew he was eagerly, determinedly, poignantly conscious of being father of her child and in that silence was straining to project his consciousness into the very soul of John. Would he respond? She watched them both, but closest by far, her John. Was there some voice in life between father and child which all the years and all their silence could not still? With almost a jealous dread she stood before that moment swift in her mind to see the faintest sign. Would he respond?

For a while John's hand lay in Liddiard's, then of himself he took it away.

"Can we go on playing, Mummy?" he asked. When she knew there had been no answer to Liddiard's call; when, sure in her heart he know none but her, she knelt down on the gra.s.s at his side and took his cool cheeks in her hands.

"If you'll kiss me," said she, "if you'll kiss me first."

He framed his lips and kissed her eyes and stood back laughing. He framed his lips again and kissed her mouth, then laughed again and lastly, flinging his arms about her neck, he poured his kisses like a song into her ears, then, shouting to his Lucy, ran away.

In a long silence, Liddiard turned and watched them, faun and dryad once more, spirits of that sunshine and those deep green shades of the trees.

He looked back at Mary.

"You've made a st.u.r.dy, splendid thing of him, Mary," he said emotionally. "You've made him fit for the very best."

She closed her eyes.

"Who's the little girl?" he asked presently.

"Lucy--Lucy Kemp. She's the daughter of a farmer who lives over there.

They're great friends." She half smiled. "I was jealous at first. I know now these things must be. Boy and girl, why shouldn't they begin that way? It's grown to be the sweetest of wooings to me. They're becoming like two young shoots together. One day their roots will twine."

He put on his hat.

"You can't be sure of that," said he. "One day perhaps he'll need his own. I know you think, living here, that cla.s.s means nothing. You rule out heredity altogether. But it comes out. He might be content. Do you think a girl like that could ever make him realize the fullness of life?"

Fear sprang back into her heart again.

"Oh, why did you ever come?" she said. "We were all so happy here!"

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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sociate 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 gla.s.s 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 G.o.d?"

He thought an instant and then burst into shouts of laughter.

"What, that time I asked you if G.o.d 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?"