Author of _Robert Elsmere_, _Lady Rose's Daughter_, _Missing_,
_Helena_, etc.
1920
I
Two old labourers came out of the lane leading to Great End Farm. Both
carried bags slung on sticks over their shoulders. One, the eldest and
tallest, was a handsome fellow, with regular features and a delicately
humorous mouth. His stoop and his slouching gait, the gray locks also,
which straggled from under his broad hat, showed him an old man--probably
very near his old-age pension. But he carried still with him a look
of youth, and he had been a splendid creature in his time. The other
was short of stature and of neck, bent besides by field work. A
broadly-built, clumsy man, with something gnome-like about him, and the
cheerful look of one whose country nerves had never known the touch of
worry or long sickness. The name of the taller man was Peter Halsey, and
Joseph Batts was his companion.
It was a fine July evening, with a cold north wind blowing from the plain
which lay stretched to their right. Under the unclouded sun, which by its
own "sun-time" had only reached half-past four in the afternoon, though
the clock in the village church had already struck half-past five, the
air was dry and parching, and the fields all round, the road itself, and
the dusty hedges showed signs of long drought.
"It du want rain," said Peter Halsey, looking at a crop of oats through
an open gate, "it du want rain--_bad_."
"Aye!" said the other, "that it du. Muster Shenstone had better 'a read
the prayer for rain lasst Sunday, I'm thinkin', than all them long ones
as ee _did_ read."
Halsey was silent a moment, his half-smiling eyes glancing from side to
side. At last he said slowly,--
"We du be prayin' a lot about ower sins, and Muster Shenstone is allus
preachin' about 'em. But it's the sins o' the _Garmins_ I be thinkin' of.
If it hadn't a bin for the sins o' the Garmins my Tom wouldn't ha' lost
'is right hand."
"An' ower Jim wouldn't be goin' into them trenches next November as ever
is," put in Batts. "It's the sins o' the Garmins as ha' done _that_, an'
nothin' as you or I ha' done, Peter."
Halsey shook his head assentingly.
"Noa--for all that pratin', pacifist chap was sayin' lasst week. I
didn't believe a word ee said. 'Yis,' I says, 'if you want this war to
stop, I'm o' your mind,' I says, 'but when you tells me as _England_
done it--you'm--'"
The short man burst into a cackling laugh.
"'You'm a liar!' Did you say that, Peter?"
Peter fenced a little.
"There be more ways nor one o' speakin' your mind," he said at last. "But
I stood up to un. Did you hear, Batts, as Great End Farm is let?"
The old man turned an animated look on his companion.
"Well, for sure!" said Batts, astonished. "An' who's the man?"
"It's not a man. It's a woman."
"A woman!" repeated Batts, wondering. "Well, these be funny times to live
in, when the women go ridin' astride an' hay-balin', an' steam-ploughin',
an' the Lord knows what. And now they must be takin' the farms, and
turnin' out the men. Well, for sure."
A mild and puzzled laughter crossed the speaker's face.
Halsey nodded.
"An' now they've got the vote. That's the top on't! My old missis, she
talks poltiks now to me of a night. I don't mind her, now the childer be
all gone. But I'd ha' bid her mind her own business when they was yoong
an' wanted seein' to."
"Now, what can a woman knoa about poltiks?" said Batts, still in the same
tone of pleasant rumination. "It isn't in natur. _We_ warn't given the
producin' o' the babies--we'd ha' cried out if we 'ad been!"
A chuckle passed from one old man to the other.
"Well, onyways the women is all in a flutter about the votin'," said
Halsey, lighting his pipe with old hands that shook. "An' there's chaps
already coomin' round lookin' out for it."
"You bet there is!" was Batts's amused reply. "But they'll take their
toime, will the women. 'Don't you try to hustle-bustle me like you're
doin',' say my missus sharp-like to a Labour chap as coom round lasst
week, 'cos yo' won't get nothin' by it.' And she worn't no more
forthcomin' to the Conservative man when ee called."
"Will she do what _you_ tell her, Batts?" asked Halsey, with an evident
interest in the question.
"Oh, Lord, no!" said Batts placidly, "shan't try. But now about this
yoong woman an' Great End?--"
"Well, I ain't heared much about her--not yet awhile. But they say as
she's nice-lookin', an' Muster Shentsone ee said as she'd been to college
somewhere, where they'd larn't her farmin'."
Batts made a sound of contempt.
"College!" he said, with a twitching of the broad nostrils which seemed
to spread over half his face. "_They_ can't larn yer farmin'!"
"She's been on a farm too somewhere near Brighton, Muster Shenstone says,
since she was at college; and ee told me she do seem to be terr'ble
full o' new notions."
"She'd better be full o' money," said the other, cuttingly. "Notions is
no good without money to 'em."
"Aye, they're wunnerfull costly things is notions. Yo'd better by a long
way go by the folk as know. But they do say she'll be payin' good wages."
"I dessay she will! She'll be obleeged. It's Hobson's choice, as you
might say!" said Batts, chuckling again.
Halsey was silent, and the two old men trudged on with cheerful
countenances. Through the minds of both there ran pleasant thoughts
of the contrast between the days before the war and the days now
prevailing. Both of them could remember a wage of fifteen and sixteen
shillings a week. Then just before the war, it had risen to eighteen
shillings and a pound. And now--why the Wages Board for Brookshire had
fixed thirty-three shillings as a weekly minimum, and a nine-hours' day!
Prices were high, but they would go down some day; and wages would not go
down. The old men could not have told exactly why this confidence lay so
deep in them; but there it was, and it seemed to give a strange new
stability and even dignity to life. Their sons were fighting; and they
had the normal human affection for their sons. They wished the war to
end. But, after all, there was something to be said for the war.
They--old Peter Halsey and old Joe Batts--were more considered and more
comfortable than they would have been before the war. And it was the
consideration more even than the comfort that warmed their hearts.
The evening grew hotter, and the way to the village seemed long. The old
men were now too tired to talk; till just as they came in sight of the
first houses, they perceived the village wagonette coming towards them.
"There she be! I did hear as Webb wor to meet her at the station. He's
took her over once before," said old Halsey, raising his eyes for a
moment and then dropping them again. Batts did the same. The glance was
momentary. But both men had the same impression of a pleasant-faced young
woman sitting erect behind Jonathan Webb, the decrepit driver of the
wagonette, and looking straight at them as they passed her. There was a
general effect of youth and bright colour; of pale brown hair, too,
over very dark eyes.
"Aye, she be quite nice-lookin'," said Batts, with unction, "rayther
uncommon. She minds me summat o' my missis when she wor a young 'un."
Halsey's mouth twitched a little, but though his thoughts were ironical,
he said nothing. It was generally admitted by the older people that Mrs.
Batts had been through many years the village beauty, but her fall from
that high place was now of such ancient date that it seemed foolish of
Batts to be so fond of referring to it.
The wagonette passed on. The woman sitting in it carefully took note of
the scene around her, in a mood of mingled hope and curiosity. She was to
live in this valley without a stream, under these high chalk downs with
their hanging woods, and within a mile or so of the straggling village
she had just driven through. At last, after much wandering, she was to
find a home--a real home of her own. The word "home" had not meant
much--or much at least that was agreeable--to her, till now. Her large
but handsome mouth took a bitter fold as she thought over various past
events.
Now they had left the village behind, and were passing through fields
that were soon to be her fields. Her keen eyes appraised the crops
standing in them. She had paid the family of her predecessor a good
price for them, but they were worth it. And just ahead, on her left, was
a wide stretch of newly-ploughed land rising towards a bluff of grassy
down-land on the horizon. The ploughed land itself had been down up to a
few months before this date; thin pasture for a few sheep, through many
generations. She thought with eagerness of the crops she was going to
make it bear, in the coming year. Wheat, or course. The wheat crops all
round the village were really magnificent. This was going to be the
resurrection year for English farming, after fifty years of "death and
damnation"--comparatively. And there would be many good years to come
after.
Yes, Mr. Thomas Wellin, whose death had thrown the farm which she had now
taken on the market, had done well for the land. And it was not his fault
but the landlord's that the farmhouse and buildings had been allowed to
fall into such a state. Mr. Wellin had not wanted the house, since he was
only working the land temporarily in addition to his own farm half a mile
away. But the owner, Colonel Shepherd, ought to have looked after the
farmhouse and buildings better. Still, they were making her a fair
allowance for repairs.
She was longing to know how the workmen from Millsboro had been getting
on. Hastings, the Wellins' former bailiff, now temporarily hers, had
promised to stay behind that evening to meet her at the farm. She only
meant to insist on what was absolutely necessary. Even if she had wished
for anything more, the lack of labour would have prevented it.
The old horse jogged on, and presently from a row of limes beside the
road, a wave of fragrance, evanescent and delicious, passed over the
carriage. Miss Henderson sniffed it with delight. "But one has never
_enough_ of it!" she thought discontentedly. And then she remembered how
as a child--in far-away Sussex--she used to press her face into the
lime-blossom in her uncle's garden--passionately, greedily, trying to get
from it a greater pleasure than it would ever yield. For the more she
tried to compel it, by a kind of violence, the more it escaped her. She
used to envy the bees lying drunk among the blooms. They at least were
surfeited and satisfied.
It struck her that there was a kind of parable in it of her whole
life--so far.
But now there was a new world opening. The past was behind her. She drew
herself stiffly erect, conscious through every limb of youth and
strength, and filled with a multitude of vague hopes. Conscious, too, of
the three thousand pounds that Uncle Robert had so opportunely left her.
She had never realized that money could make so much difference; and she
thought gratefully of the elderly bachelor, her mother's brother, who had
unexpectedly remembered her. It had enabled her to get her year's
training, and to take this farm with a proper margin of capital. She
wished she had been able to tell Uncle Robert before he died what it
meant to her.
They passed one or two pairs of labourers going home, then a group of
girls in overalls, then a spring cart containing four workmen behind a
ragged pony, no doubt the builder's men who had been at work on the Great
End repairs. They all looked at her curiously, and Rachel Henderson
looked back at them--steadily, without shyness. They were evidently aware
of who she was and where she was going. Some of them perhaps would soon
be in her employ. She would be settling all that in a week or two.
Ah, there was the house. She leant forward and saw it lying under the
hill, the woods on the slope coming down to the back of it. Yes, it was
certainly a lonely situation. That was why the house, the farm lands,
too, had been so long unlet, till old Wellin, the farm's nearest
neighbour, having made a good deal of money, had rented the land from
Colonel Shepherd, to add to his own. The farm buildings, too, he had made
some use of, keeping carts and machines, and certain stores there. But
the house he had refused to have any concern with. It had remained empty
and locked up for a good many years.
The wagonette turned into the rough road leading through the middle of a
fine field of oats to the house. The field was gaily splashed with
poppies, which ran, too, along the edges of the crop, swayed by the
evening breeze, and flaming in the level sun. Though lonesome and
neglected, the farm in July was a pleasant and picturesque object. It
stood high and the air about it blew keen and fresh. The chalk hill
curved picturesquely round it, and the friendly woods ran down behind to
keep it company. Rachel Henderson, in pursuit of that campaign she was
always now waging against a natural optimism, tried to make herself
imagine it in winter--the leafless trees, the solitary road, the treeless
pasture or arable fields, that stretched westward in front of the farm,
covered perhaps with snow; and the distant stretches of the plain. There
was not another house, not even a cottage, anywhere in sight. The
village had disappeared. She herself, in the old wagonette, seemed the
only living thing.
No, there was a man emerging from the farm-gate, and coming to meet
her--the bailiff, George Hastings. She had only seen him once before, on
her first hurried visit, when, after getting a rough estimate from him of
the repairs necessary to the house and buildings, she had made up her
mind to take the farm, if the landlord would agree to do them.
"Yon's Muster Hastings," said Jonathan Webb, turning on her a benevolent
and wrinkled countenance, with two bright red spots in the midst of each
weather-beaten cheek. Miss Henderson again noticed the observant
curiosity in the old man's eyes. Everybody, indeed, seemed to look at her
with the same expression. As a woman farmer she was no doubt just a
freak, a sport, in the eyes of the village. Well, she prophesied they
would take her seriously before long.
"I'm afraid I haven't as much to show you, miss, as I'd like," said
Hastings, as he helped her to alight. "It's cruel work nowadays trying to
do anything of this kind. Two of the men that began work last week have
been called up, and there's another been just 'ticed away from me this
week. The wages that some people about will give are just mad!" He threw
up his hands. "Colonel Shepherd says he can't compete."
Miss Henderson replied civilly but decidedly that somehow or other the
work would have to be done. If Colonel Shepherd couldn't find the wages,
she must pay the difference. Get in some time, during August, she must.
The bailiff looked at her with a little sluggish surprise. He was not
used to being hustled, still less to persons who were ready to pay rather
than be kept waiting. He murmured that he dared say it would be all
right, and she must come and look.
They turned to the right up a stony pitch, through a dilapidated gate,
and so into the quadrangle of the farm. To the left was a long row of
open cow-sheds, then cow-houses and barns, the stables, a large shed in
which stood an old and broken farm cart, and finally the house, fronting
the barns.
The house was little more than a large cottage built in the shabbiest way
forty years ago, and of far less dignity than the fine old barn on which
it looked. It abutted at one end on the cart-shed, and between it and the
line of cow-sheds was the gate into the farmyard.
Miss Henderson stepped up to the house and looked at it.
"It is a poor place!" she said discontentedly; "and those men don't seem
to have done much to it yet."
Hastings admitted it. But they had done a little, he said, shamefacedly,
and he unlocked the door. Miss Henderson lingered outside a moment.
"I never noticed," she said, "that the living room goes right through.
What draughts there'll be in the winter!"
For as she stood looking into the curtainless window that fronted the
farm-yard, she saw through it a further window at the back of the room,
and beyond that a tree. Both windows were large and seemed to take up
most of the wall on either side of the small room. The effect was
peculiarly comfortless, as though no one living in the room could
possibly enjoy any shred of privacy. There were no cosy corners in it
anywhere, and Miss Henderson's fancy imagined rows of faces looking in.
Inside a little papering and whitewashing had been done, but certainly
the place looked remarkably unviting. A narrow passage ran from front
to back, on one side of which was the living room with the two windows,
while on the other were the kitchen and scullery. Upstairs there were two
good-sized bedrooms with a small third room in a lean-to at the back, the
lower part of which was occupied by a wash-house. Through the windows
could be seen a neglected bit of garden, and an untidy orchard.
But when she had wandered about the rooms a little, Rachel Henderson's
naturally buoyant temperament reasserted itself. She had brought some
bright patterns of distemper with her which she gave to Hastings with
precise instructions. She had visions of casement curtains to hide the
nakedness of the big windows with warm serge curtains to draw over them
in the winter. The floors must be stained. There should be a deep
Indian-red drugget in the sitting-room, with pigeon-blue walls, and she
thought complacently of the bits of old furniture she had been
collecting, which were stored in a friend's flat in town. An old dresser,
a grandfather's clock, some bits of brass, two arm-chairs, an old oak
table--it would all look very nice when it was done, and would cost
little. Then the bedrooms. She had brought with her some rolls of flowery
paper. She ran to fetch them from the wagonette, and pinned some pieces
against the wall. The larger room with the south aspect should be
Janet's. She would take the north room for herself. She saw them both in
her mind's eye already comfortably furnished; above all fresh and bright.
There should be no dirt or dinginess in the house, if she could help it.
In the country whitewash and distemper are cheap.
Then Hastings followed her about through the farm buildings, where her
quick eye, trained in modern ways, perceived a number of small
improvements to be made that he would never have noticed. She was always
ready, he saw, to spend money on things that would save labour or lessen
dirt. But she was not extravagant, and looking through the list of her
directions and commissions, as he hastily jotted them down, he admitted
to himself that she seemed to know what she was about. And being an
honest man himself, and good-tempered, though rather shy and dull, he
presently recognized the same qualities of honesty and good temper in
her; and took to her. Insensibly their tone to each other grew friendly.
Though he was temporarily in the landlord's employ, he had been for some
years in the service of the Wellin family. Half-consciously he contrasted
Miss Henderson's manner to him with theirs. In his own view he had been
worse treated than an ordinary farm labourer throughout his farming life,
though he had more education, and was expected naturally to have more
brains and foresight than the labourer. He was a little better paid; but
his work and that of his wife was never done. He had got little credit
for success and all the blame for failure. And the Wellin women-folk had
looked down on his wife and himself. A little patronage sometimes, and
worthless gifts, that burnt in the taking; but no common feeling, no real
respect. But Miss Henderson was different. His rather downtrodden
personality felt a stimulus. He began to hope that when she came into
possession she would take him on. A woman could not possibly make
anything of Great End without a bailiff!
Her "nice" looks, no doubt, counted for something. Her face was, perhaps,
a little too full for beauty--the delicately coloured cheeks and the
large smiling mouth. But her brown eyes were very fine, with very dark
pupils, and marked eyebrows; and her nose and chin, with their soft,
blunted lines, seemed to promise laughter and easy ways. She was very
lightly and roundly made; and everything about her, her step, her
sunburn, her freckles, her evident muscular strength, spoke of open-air
life and physical exercise. Yet, for all this general aspect of a comely
country-woman, there was much that was sharply sensitive and individual
in the face. Even a stranger might well feel that its tragic, as well as
its humorous or tender possibilities, would have to be reckoned with.
"All right!" said Miss Henderson at last, closing her little notebook
with a snap, "now I think we've been through everything. I'll take
over one cart, and Mrs. Wellin must remove the other. I'll buy the
chaff-cutter and the dairy things, but not the reaping machine--"
"I'm afraid that'll put Mrs. Wellin out considerably!" threw in Hastings.
"Can't help it. I can't have the place cluttered up with old iron like
that. It's worth nothing. I'm sure _you_ wouldn't advise me to buy it!"
She looked with bright decision at her companion, who smiled a little
awkwardly, and said nothing. The old long habit of considering the Wellin
interest first, before any other in the world, held him still, though he
was no longer their servant.
Miss Henderson moved back towards the house.
"And you'll hurry these men up?--as much as you can? They _are_
slow-coaches! I must get in the week after next. Miss Leighton and I
intend to come, whatever happens."
Hastings understood that "Miss Leighton" was to be Miss Henderson's
partner in the farm, specially to look after the dairy work. Miss
Henderson seemed to think a lot of her.
"And you must please engage those two men you spoke of. Neither of them,
you say, under sixty! Well, there's no picking and choosing now. If they
were eighty I should have to take them! till the harvest's got in. There
are two girls coming from the Land Army, and you've clinched that other
girl from the village?"
Hastings nodded.
"Well, I dare say we shall get the harvest in somehow," she said,
standing at the gate, and looking over the fields. "Miss Leighton and I
mean to put our backs into it. But Miss Leighton isn't as strong as I
am."
Her eyes wandered thoughtfully over the wheat-field, ablaze under the
level gold of the sun. Then she suddenly smiled.
"I expect you think it a queer business, Mr. Hastings, women taking to
farming?"
"Well, it's new, you see, Miss Henderson."
"I believe it's going to be very common. Why shouldn't the women do it!"
She frowned a little.
"Oh, no reason at all," said Hastings hurriedly, thinking he had offended
her. "I've nothing against it myself. And there won't be men enough to go
round, after the war."
She looked at him sharply.
"You've got a son in the war?"
"Two, and one's been killed."
"Last year?"
"No, last month."
Miss Henderson said nothing, but her look was full of softness. "He was
to have been allowed home directly," Hastings went on, "for two or three
months. He was head woodman before the war on Lord Radley's property." He
pointed to the wooded slopes of the hill. "And they were to have given
him leave to see to the cutting of these woods."
"These woods!" Miss Henderson turned a startled face upon him. "You don't
mean to say they're coming down!"
"Half of them commandeered," said Hastings, with a shrug. "The Government
valuers have been all over them these last weeks. They're splendid
timber, you know. There's been a timber camp the other side of the hills
a long while. They've got Canadians, and no doubt they'll move on here."
Miss Henderson made another quick movement. She said nothing, however.
She was staring at the woods, which shone in the glow now steadily
creeping up the hill, and Hastings thought she was protesting from the
scenery point of view.
"Well, the Government must have the wood," he said, with resignation.
"We've got to win the war. But it does seem a pity."
"I don't know that I should have taken the farm," she said, under her
breath--
"If you had known? I wish I'd thought to tell you. But it was really only
settled a few days ago."
"I don't like having a lot of strange men about the farm," she said
abruptly, "especially when I have girls to look after."
"Oh, the camp's a long way from the farm," he said consolingly. "And
these woods will come last."
Still Miss Henderson's face did not quite recover its cheerfulness. She
looked at her watch.
"Don't let me keep you, Mr. Hastings. I'll lock up the house, if you'll
tell me where to leave the key."
He showed her where to put it, in a corner of the stable, for him to find
on the morrow. Then, in her rapid way, Miss Henderson offered him the
post of bailiff on the farm, from the date of her entry. He agreed at
once; his salary was settled, and he departed with a more cheerful aspect
than when he arrived. The hopefulness and spring of youth had long since
left him, and he had dreaded the new experience of this first meeting
with a woman-farmer, from whom he desired employment simply because he
was very badly off, he was getting old, and Mr. Wellin's widow had
treated him shabbily. He had lost his nerve for new ventures. But Miss
Henderson had made things easy. She had struck him as considerate and
sensible--a "good sort." He would do his best for her.
Rachel Henderson, left to herself, did not immediately re-enter the
house. She went with a face on which the cloud still rested to look at
the well which was to be found under the cart-shed, at the eastern end of
the house.
It was covered with a wooden lid which she removed. Under the shed roof
there was but little light left. A faint gleam showed the level of the
water, which, owing to the long drought, was very low. Hastings had told
her that the well was extremely deep---150 feet at least, and
inexhaustible. The water was chalky but good. It would have to be pumped
up every morning for the supply of the house and stables.
The well had a brick margin. Rachel sat down upon it, her eyes upon that
distant gleam below. The dusk was fast possessing itself of all the farm,
and an evening wind was gustily blowing through the cart-shed, playing
with some old guano sacks that had been left there, and whistling round
the corners of the house. Outside, Rachel could hear the horse fidgeting,
and old Jonathan coughing--no doubt as a signal to her that she had kept
him long enough.
Still, she sat bent together on the margin of the well. Then she drew off
her glove, and felt for something in the leather bag she carried on her
wrist. She took it out, and the small object sparkled a little as she
held it poised for a moment--as though considering. Then with a rapid
movement, she bent over the well, and dropped it into the water. There
was a slight splash.
Rachel Henderson raised herself and stood up.
"That's done with!" she said to herself, with a straightening of all her
young frame.
Yet all the way back to London she was tormented by thoughts of what she
had declared was "done with"; of scenes and persons, that is, which she
was determined to forget, and had just formally renounced for ever by her
symbolic action at the well.