VII

It would be a false conception of Mary Throgmorton in this phase of her being to picture her as consenting to the common wiles of women.

She fought her battle for her John with weapons the stress of circ.u.mstances made ready for her hand. All men have done the same.

Guile there may seem to have been in her, but none greater than that which in some one form or another is called forth from all human nature in any conflict. The smiles with which Dorothy greeted her had to be met with smiles; the delicate word she so despised demanded no other than the delicate word from her. To have used blunter, heavier weapons than these might indeed have routed her opponent, yet to have won in such a case would have been worse than loss.

Here was war in the true sense as she knew it; not the flinging of a greater force against a lesser, winning on the field of battle and in the very boastful pride of victory, losing in the field of life. It was not to confound her enemy she sought but to win that issue upon which the full justice of her hope was set. Not for herself to gain or keep it had she made her heart of tempered steel, but for another to find the liberty his soul had need of.

It was for John she fought and none of his pity dared she awaken for his Dorothy, well knowing that though by Nature victors themselves, there was little love in the hearts of men for a triumphant woman.

If this was guile, it was such as life demanded of her then. With all n.o.bility of character to criticize herself, she did not pause here for sentiment. If the weapons she must use were not to her liking, necessity yet fitted them readily to her hold.

Never had John seen his mother so gentle or so kind. For the first time in his conscious mind he appreciated the pain of jealousy he knew must be p.r.i.c.king at her heart. For in some sense it was her defeat it seemed to him he witnessed; a brave defeat with head high in pride and eyes that sadness touched but left no tears. He came to realize the ache of loneliness she felt whenever in the fields, about the farm or through the woods he went with Dorothy alone. After a few days, it was he, unprompted, who asked her to accompany them, and Mary whose wisdom it was so readily to find some duty about the house or with the cows that prevented her acceptance.

Gradually she permitted him to come upon suspicion that these excuses were often invented. Gradually she brought him to consciousness of the sacrifice she made. He found he learnt it with effort or intent and appreciated in himself the breadth of vision his heart had come by.

"Did you realize," he said one day to Dorothy in the woods, "that the Mater just invented that excuse not to come with us?"

She shook her head.

He found amaze at that.

"She did," said he. "Those cow stalls don't want whitewashing again.

They're a bit ramshackle compared with ours at Wenlock Hall, but they're as clean as a new pin. Old Peverell told me the inspector said they'd never been so clean before. She invented it."

Suddenly he took Dorothy's arm.

"Do you know you've done that for me?" he whispered.

"Done what?"

"Given me a wider view of things, taught me to realize other people's feelings as well as my own, shown me what she suffers when she sees me go off to Wenlock, what she suffers when I bring you down here and go out with you every day, leaving her alone."

"But why should she suffer?" asked Dorothy. "She's your mother, she must love you. She must want to see you happy. She must be glad you're going to come into that beautiful place in Somersetshire."

He fell to silence, having no answer to that, yet feeling she somehow had not understood what he had meant.

That night he came to Mary's room to say good-night before he went down to the bedroom he had taken at the Crooked Billet. Always. .h.i.therto it had been a knock upon the door, a call of good-night and then her listening to the sound of his footsteps down the thinly carpeted stairs.

This time he asked if he might come in.

By the light of her candle, Mary was lying in her bed reading one of the books from a little shelf at her bedside. More than she knew, this request of his startled yet spurred her no less to the swift expediency of what she must do.

"Just one moment," she called back, steadying the note in her voice.

Quickly then she slipped from her bed, arranging her hair as best she could before the mirror; with a fever almost of speed, changing her night attire for a garment the best she had, fresh with the scent of the lavender she kept with all her things. Not once did her fingers fumble in their haste. Another moment she was back in bed again, her book put back upon the shelf and another, one of those Nature books she used to read when he was a little boy, taken in its place.

"Come in," she said and, because her voice was so low with her control of eagerness, she had to repeat her summons.

It was as the door opened and he entered that she felt like a mistress receiving her lover. Her heart was beating in her throat. Even John found her eyes more bright than he had ever seen them before.

All love of women in that moment she knew was the same. For sons or lovers, if it were their hearts beat too high for the material judgments in a material world, what did that matter if so high they beat as to lift the hearts of men to n.o.bler than material things? This, she realized it, was her function; this the power so many women were denied, having no vision of it in themselves because men did not grant it license in their needs.

Not to give him possession as a lover did she admit him then, but in the sacrifice of her love and of herself to lift him through emotion to the most spiritual conceptions of life that were eternal.

Never in all that relationship between herself and John had she felt the moment so surely placed within her hands as then.

"What is it?" she asked, so gently in her voice that she could have laughed aloud at her own self-possession.

"Just came in to say good-night," said he with an attempt at ease, and came across to the bed and leant over it to kiss her cheek, uplifted to meet his, and found that clean scent of lavender in his nostrils when, before he had really learnt his purpose, he sat down upon the bed at her side and remained there, gazing into her eyes.

"What are you reading?" he asked.

She turned the book round for him to see, making no comment; allowing the memories of childhood to waken in him of their own volition.

He shut the book up, contriving to let his hand find hers as she contrived to let it stay there without seeming of intent.

"What is it, John?" she whispered again.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing except just what I said. I wanted to say good-night." Yet he still lingered; still, without keeping it, his hand remained in hers.

For some while he stayed there, sitting on her bed, saying nothing, playing only with his fingers that held her hand. With a supreme patience she waited in silence, knowing no words were needed there, her heart throbbing with an expectant pulse that rose to riot as suddenly he slipped on to his knees on the floor and leant his head against her breast.

"I want her, Mater," he whispered. "Haven't you guessed that? I'm terribly in love."

Had she guessed that? Indeed! But had she ever dreamt or hoped for this, that his first love-making would be through her? This was the first love scene, the first pa.s.sion in the drama of his life and in awe of what it was, he had chosen her to play it with.

Emotions such as were triumphant in Mary Throgmorton then cannot easily be captured. Here in certain fact was the first hour of love her heart had surely known; an hour, albeit not her own, which for the rest of her life was to remain with its burning embers in her memory.

With deep breaths she lay for a moment still, holding him in her arms.

"Haven't you told her, John?" she asked presently.

He shook his head against her breast.

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I can't just tell her I love her. It's more than that.

She wouldn't understand. If she did, she might hate me for it."

It might have been youth and the utter lack of his experience. He was only just eighteen. But Mary found in it more than that. In the first great emotion in his life, when he was stirred so deep as to touch those very first impressions she had given him in his childhood, he was setting on one side himself and the demands that Nature made on him.

How little his Dorothy would appreciate that, Mary had made certain estimate the first moment they had met. No awe of love was there in her; no vision his need of her could ever destroy. She, with the many others, was amongst those women who, bowing herself to the possessive pa.s.sions of men, would sell her soul in slavery to share them if she could.

Whatever of her training it was they had bereft him of at Wenlock, however out of the true line they had bent that green bough her hands had fashioned, still in the vital elements of his being, he sought the clear light above the forest trees about him. In this swift rush of love, a storm that beat and shook him with the force of it, some spiritual impulse still remained. He felt his Dorothy was some sacred thing, too sweet to touch with hands all fierce as his.