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 st.u.r.dy 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 circ.u.mstance 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 pa.s.sion 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.

VI

It was just before the summer vacation, when John was eighteen, that he had written to Mary, saying--

"I've got special leave to come down next Friday and I want to ask you something. There's a girl I've got to know, well, she's twenty-five and I want you to meet her first before they do at Wenlock Hall."

She had come then and so soon. The first woman of John's own choosing now he was become a man. The jealousy she had known concerning Lucy was as nothing to this she felt with a sickness of apprehension in her now.

Fate, circ.u.mstance, the mere happenings of life, these had brought him his Lucy. But here was one his heart must have sought out, his soul had chosen. She seemed to know there was no chance, but something selective about this. Here the nature that was in him had been called upon. For the first time, with no uncertainty, she was to learn what that nature was.

Mrs. Peverell indeed had spoken true when she had called him a love-child. His response to pa.s.sion had been swift and soon. And was he coming, awed to love as once she had said she would teach him to come? Or was he tramping with the pride of victory and possession? The moment she saw this girl, she would know. The world was full of women who asked for no more; who judged the affections of their men by just that measure of animal pa.s.sion which in their hearts and often upon their tongues they professed to despise.

Only the few there were who, never asking but waiting for the love that she had wished to teach him, inspired it. Had his heart sought out one of these? With fear and trembling she read on.

"I can't explain in writing," the letter continued, "but you must see her before any one else."

The degree of her grat.i.tude for that for a moment drove away all fear, but not for long.

"I've told her everything about myself," she read on. "She's wonderful.

She doesn't mind a bit. I want you to let me bring her down to Yarningdale. She can have my room and I'll doss out at the Inn. I know you'll like her. You must. She's splendid. I've warned her what the farm is like, that it's a bit rough, but she doesn't care and she's longing to meet you."

All Mary's intuitive impressions of her who did not mind when she had heard about her John, she put away from her and, harnessing the light horse in the spring cart, drove down that Friday to the station.

It was characteristic of John's letters that he had not mentioned her name. Many of his friends at the 'Varsity she knew well by his accounts of them, having no more cla.s.sification for them in her mind than the nicknames they went by.

John was leaning out of the carriage window as the train drew in. Swift enough she noted the look of eager excitement in his eyes; but it was that figure in the pale blue frock behind him she saw. As they came down the platform towards her, John first with his bounding stride, still it was the figure behind him her heart was watching, notwithstanding that she gave her eyes to him.

"Here's Dorothy Fielding, Mater," he said, scarcely with pause to exchange their kiss of meeting.

She turned with the smile that hid her hurt to meet those eyes her John had chosen to look into.

It was a quiet woman this Dorothy saw, so calm and serene as made her realize how all those subtle preparations she had made for this meeting were wasted here. That she was well gowned, well shod, that her hair was neither too carefully dressed nor untidy in its effect, that her hat showed confidence in her taste, all these preparations over which she had taken such care she knew could not avail here in the judgment of those eyes that met hers.

This was not just a woman she had to please and satisfy; it was something like an element, like fire or like rushing water her soul must meet, all bare and stripped of the disguising superficialities of life.

"This is the first time I've heard your name," said Mary with that smile she gave her. "John never mentioned it in his letter. But then I don't suppose he's ever told you what I was like."

"Mater! I've told Dorothy everything, haven't I, Dee? Described every little detail about you, rather!"

Mary's hands stretched out and held his. Her eyes she kept for Dorothy.

"Well, I hope you're not disappointed," she said, "because I'm not a bit like it--am I?"

She knew so soon, at once. So far beyond the reach of conscious comprehension had been Dorothy's surprise that now it came rushing to the surface of her mind with Mary's detection of it.

"On the contrary," she replied, "I think I'd have known you anywhere."

Then from that moment they knew they shared no thought in common. That first lie was the sound of their challenge. Each for their separate purposes they were at enmity in their claim of John. He stood beside them, there upon the platform, supremely unconscious of the forces he had set free, sublimely happy in his achievement of bringing them together.

There were two women, dearer to him at that moment than any two other people in the world and all he saw was the smiles they gave each other.

The spiritual and the material need of him they had, for which already they had cried the challenge to battle, this came no more even to the threshold of his mind than came to his ears, intent on all they said, the short, sharp whistle of the departing train.

Each in that first moment had set up her standard. His soul was the sepulchre for which Mary fought. There between those two, lay John's ideals and visions of life. It was they who had the power to make them what they should be. Through them he was to find stimulus for the emotions that should govern all he did. Still was he for molding, still the plastic spirit needing the highest emotion of the highest ideal to give it n.o.blest purpose.

And here, as ever, his mother was she who in that malleable phase set first the welfare of his soul. No conception or consideration of inheritance was there to hinder her. It was not to a man fit for the world she saw him grow, but to equip him for life she gave the essence of her being.

This from the very first, before ever that cry of his lifted above the wind in the elm trees, had been her sure and certain purpose. No possessions in life there were but him to limit the perspective of her vision; and such a possession was he as for whom, if need be, she could make absolute sacrifice.

Already she had done so. Already once she had given her heart for breaking to let him go. Fear there was in her now she had not had courage enough in her purpose. Fear there was she had not trusted enough to faith.

Would he have lived to rebuke her for the opportunity she had thrown away? Might he not have lived, as she would have taught him, to thank her for the sense of life she had given him in exchange for the world that now was at his feet?

Once she had given her heart for breaking and it had healed in the patient endurance of her soul. She had no thought to give it here.

Here in that moment as they met upon the platform, she knew she must fight to the last. Men might make the world, but it was women who created life. Between those two women, laughing like a schoolboy, he stood for his life to be shaped and fashioned and all that appeared upon the surface of things to him was that the world was a happy place.