THE MOTHER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13524, 23 August 1907, Page 3

THE MOTHER.

.'! ' ■', ' PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.

BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS, Author of " The Secret Woman,"

•* Lying Prophets." etc., etc.

[ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.]

(t [COPYRIGHT

BOOK 11.

CHAPTER XXl.—(Continued.)

BY the time that Lizzie and her husband were ready to start, Ives, at a sudden whim, had climbed the Vixen ; and he. shouted his farewell from that lofty altitude. Then he disappeared and did not return home until long after midnight, to fiud his mother still up and waiting lor him. He was vexed at this and wished her in bed. , , , •• You take no heed for your health," he said; "and the doctor told above- all things that you was to keep an easy mind and a lazy body. You will be doing too much, and now Lizzie's gone you'll work harder than ever." "Don't, fear that. Time will show that I'm halo and hearty again, I hope. And I've got -. great thought about it to put before you, Ives. However, that can wait awhile." I talked tc Codd to-night and I think he's a bit ashamed of himself, though he sticks to it that he'll go this day month." "Then mind he does. Don't yield to him .ieain. Drive him out. I'll not answer for myself if I catch any more of his filthy speeches. Lucky for him I didn't hear him on the edge of the horse-pond, for he'd have been in head over ears if 1 had —a low-mind-ed dog that, he is." "It won't hurt her, however.". .

" No, because no sane man ever listens to such a woman hater. I saw Jill this afternoon up the valley. We met quite by chance and both on the same errand: to eet a little peace from our fellow-creatures. She couldn't pretend she cared much about ■ such a puny, crooked child, for she'm honest enough, whatever else she may be. And I comforted her, I can tell you, mother. And why for not?" The defiance in his voice nevertheless spoke of an uneasy conscience and told his mother more than his words. But she did not remonstrate. . "Why for not indeed? I went up myself to sec Rachel after the people had all gone home. 'Tis a very heartbreaking business and this little death even falls sadder than 'twas bound to fall, because of so much cruel misunderstanding. Rachel was drown- , ed in' tears, but her old eyes flashed anger through them : and Samuel —he's distracted between his wife and his mother, poor soul. The only peaceful thing in the house be the li'l dead girl, Death have quite smoothed out 'her puckered face. It took me back long years, laddie, and I felt as if I was by our Milly when she died." '•'l'm sure that Milly was a long sight prettier, dead or alive, than that poor slip," said Ives. " "l.'was a — cruel thing for Jill to have to -waste her time bringing trash into the world; and she's glad it be dead and will soon be gone and forgotten: and I consoled her a good deal by telling her that I was glad too. Brown don't talk much sense in my hearing, but what ho said on that subject at dinner was true for once." "Time will calm them down. I advised Samuel to take Jill away for a %veek or two ; st any cost presently. If them women—old and young—could "only be separated, and kept out of one another's eyes a while, 'twould be a blessing for both." '" The old one's fault, all the same," . said Ives. "She is—largely," admitted his mother. J "I grant that." Ives continued to discuss Jill and her trials and difficulties. She had' entirely won him round to her side, and Avisa felt somewhat concerned to note his deep and close* interest. It silenced her upon the great, subject which she had mentioned and Bad hoped to speak upon that night. This . related to Ruth Rendle ; but after Ives had been home for two minutes, his mother perceived that the moment was not ripe for mention of "anybody but Jill. Therefore v:the. said nothing, but listened patiently to her son and sympathised with his concern. When he slept, i however, she lay waking, . and saw dangers ahead that as yet Ives neither discovered nor suspected. In this connection Avisa did not fear her son, but ieared' for him; because Jill was a curious, fascinating woman and soon she promised to be a desperate one. That day, made reckless by anger and grief, Rachel had permitted herself to say many things to her friend. The misery "of Samuel's home apparently approached a climax and old Mrs. Bolt, openly declared that she expected Jill to run" away. , She added that the sooner her son's wife took this definite step, the better Samuel and herself would be pleased; but Samuel did not hear the sentiment, or he might have ventured to modify it. •

CHAPTER XXII. CALL OF TUB BLOOD.

.There dawned a misty morning, with a gentle west wind and a grey sky that broke .■:.-'; away to blue as the sun ascended. Towards )■';. noon the clouds dissolved, but something impalpable remained, hung like a glory over ; ; the deep, budding woods, warmed the meadows with light and brooded upon the wak- ,..;. ening expanses of the Moor. This mellow .veil was neither mist nor cloud, but air • made visible: the pearly, transparent vesture of young spring. It spread upon the ' ,'ia'co of "the whole earth, added brilliance •■'■;-. to the emerald and amber of the forest, lustre to the stone and gentleness to the aus- ' terities of those desolate earth planes that swept upward from the valleys to the hills. . Over against his home on the eastern bank of Walla Ives Pomeroy sat on a mossy boulder beside a woman. They talked ",' "'earnestly; and their feet were buried in flowers. Opposite them the Vixen towered above Pomeroy's farm, where it gleamed .with newly whitewashed walls. Beneath : j was the river and her hanging woods ; while : at hand stretched those oaken coppices whose time had come and who now shook ; , forth their last splendour of golden green. Already saw and axe gnawed and struck Vr where the.harvest of oak began to fall. Above thisiscene of activity . the waste sloped toward King Tor and the spring : , gorse arose in sheaves and masses of gold from a bluebell sea.; The warm odour of the furze was intoxicating in its strength; and above the brightness of its flame there '. ascended silver birches, that trembled with infant leaves; there sprang stiff, glitter- . J ing hollies, islanded in the flower light that swept the hill. But the first glory oi the '.■'..' place' arid the hour was a magic of wild ' ,: wood hyacinths that spread their azure in 'one far-thing, fragrant coverlet over glen and dingle. " Through their sweet legions i the lady fern thrust upward; the male fern broke his silver-russet. knobs of fronds; the brake uncurled and fretted the flowers with little shepherds' crooks of pearl. Sap raced ■ and mantled, ebbed and flowed along this "' scented sea. Examined closely, something - of the secret, of this blue wonder woven so radiantly hv wood and heath might be perceived. * Each nodding perianth tube of : all these many millions, now rising like an * image of heaven from the breast of earth, .;■•;, revealed two tints, and each segment of every blossom showed a. strong vein of purest turquoise, broad at the base and running [ to a point, imposed upon the paler violet texture of the petal. Those blended col'■'.'....ours flowed together, made the purple of ■ ' • the flower-masses and closely copied the V splendour of the heaven above them ; while another subtle marvel that set tuned hearts ;; ; aching at its beauty was the simultaneous and pervasive curve of unnumbered .'little steins that nodded under their bells and answered each kiss of .V V the air with a pale flash of light, where they bent together at the stroke the breeze and together sprang upward •Sain when it passed by. To the edge of the granite boulders and aorse clunirs 'bey rolled in waves, like a shallow sea, and the wind blew scent for spray from their lifting ripples; while, instead of ~,, foam,'' the stitchworts scattered their galaxies through the blue. i Everywhere was impersonal, abstracted wellness apart from and independent of '".human imagining or human plan. The secret of the day was told in a pageant of life and bird music, in the flash of , 'ings, the uncurling of leaves, the colour a' the first flowers. Life seemed to make 'he earth pulse under foot, to renew the ~ ' youth of matter and throb int> the heart of * v ? ancient stone, even as it ran a ncl rioted along sappy, newborn tendrils Cl laughed aloud in setting seeds and mat-

«ng. creatures. From the honey-coloured hazes over the < forest;'-' tothe first' violet in the marsh; from the tiny earthquake., where a molo broke soil, to the cuckoo's unimpassioned monotony, the hour was rife and pregnant and precious—an hour when youth clove to youth, burnt for youth and learned from youth to conquer and to love. But, though man seemed not remembered in this vernal pomp and dayspring of another year's fruition, yet he had set his own mark very stonily upon the season, and where oak-rinding began, havoc of steel gaped in cruel wounds on the gentle bosom of May. Rank upon rank the regiments of the sapling oaks lay thrown; and those still standing shone all wan and naked, stripped of their bark as high as a man might tear it from them. The ghostly fallen made a dazzle of raw white under the sunshine, and the skeletons above them waited to fall. Now flung open to the sky, the coppice showed itself as a steep hillside of moss-clad boulders and countless shorn boles. A scatter of chips from the axe. spread red and white among the ferns and bluebells; in each clearing rose littlo stacks of bark and faggots of small wood; while the poles were being gradually trimmed and cast into piles for removal/ Alone the limits of the Pomeroy copses there arose others, whose destruction was reserved for future years, and vet others again, that had recently fallen and whereon nature was now working to repair the past havoc. Some stretched joyous and full of hte along the boundaries" of the fallen trees. Here the oaks stood, young, silvery, shoulder to shoulder, and'from their ranks peeped the hawthorn making ready, sprang the rowan in flower, and climbed the honeysuckles, hanging out their quiet harmonies of leaves, blue-green against the more brilliant foliage of their neighbours. The sun shone impartially into the prosperous glades, upon their stricken neighbours, and over those tracts shorn in a "recent year and where now began the task of building up another coppice for the axes of men unborn to fell. In the theatre where these hidden souls would labour, Time made ready. No unsightly stump showed here; ,• instead, the bluebells clusered close, and front their midst each deep-ly-rooted bole already lifted twigs covered with lush, carmine-tinctured leaves. These branchlets in their turn would bear the hillsides' music-making canopies of green, would contribute to the earth's beauty for many- years, would fulfil destiny, when a quarter-century was past, and fall to the ceaseless need of man.

Ives sat beside Jill Bolt. They met by appointment without secrecy; and within sight of them where they sat, Rupert Johnson, (Emanual Codd, and several others wore working. She retraced recent events, for they had not spoken together of late days. "After Christmas the old woman "peared to grow a bit more friendly. Samuel v asill then, you remembev, and oft' work for nearly six weeks. She wanted him to go in the hospital, for she mistrusts me, ;>nd thinks I can't look after him but he wouldn't go, and lie's pretty right again now. A dog's life; I suppose 'twill be better when his mother dies." She looked straight before hex, and he fixed his gaze on her profileher strange face, and heavy eyes; her hair, like a wild fire of wind-blown flame; her round, deep bosom. She bad grown thinner of late, he thought, but she was none the worse for it. He carried an ash sapling in his hand, and, after patting the ground idly with it, patted her shoe. She did not heed him." "How's your husband's uncle nov?" psked Ives. "Nearly all right, I believe. 'Twas a scare about nought seemingly." " You were married under false preteces then, Jill." She smiled. " Not —only a cruel, bad bargain. My race be a very unlucky onenothing ever falls out well with us The only good thing that's happened to me since I married was making your mother rny friend. She understands" pretty near all I've got to suffer—nobody else does." " I'm very sure I do." " You understand all that a man can— I grant that. Oh, Ives, you don't know how I love you for being so large-minded: but there's a lot of things no man could understand, and that your mother does. A very wonderful creature. I hope to God she's growing stronger and no sign of any more trouble." ; ; .■/<.. His face grew gloomy. "As for that, she makes light of it. but I don't. She's going i into Tavistock again next, week—for (my satisfaction, though she vows that all be very well. T see her hand go up sometimes, when she thinks none be looking, and I feel the stab of the pain as if 'twas in my own breast." " I'd lay down my life for that woman," said Jill; "and so would you, if I know you." He nodded and was silent. Then his voice changed a little, and she marked an echo of the old, masterful intonation when ho courted her. But it shook a trifle, too, as though he was not quite certain of himself. " Look at me, Jill," he commanded; and she obeyed instantly. Her pale eyes, under the droop of the upper lid, fixed themselves on his dark ones. She did not look horizontally into his face, but obliquely and sidelong. The glance was gentle, humble, and trusting. "You said you loved me just now." "Well, and I do. I'm not ashamed of truthnever was. Is it a sin? I always loved youalways, save in those few black days when wo were fools, the pair of us, and I left you. But don't think no more, of it. What's done, be done." " 'Tis a brave man's part to undo what's done sometimes," he said. . (To be continued daily.)