"Captain Ellesborough!"
A young man in uniform, with a slouch hat, came forward, leaping over the
logs in his path. He gave a military salute to the two visitors, and a
swift scrutinizing look to each of them. Rachel was aware of a thin,
handsome face bronzed by exposure, a pair of blue eyes, rather pale in
colour, to which the sunburn of brow and cheek gave a singular
brilliance, and a well-cut, determined mouth. The shoulders were those of
an athlete, but on the whole the figure was lightly and slenderly built,
making an impression rather of grace and elasticity than of exceptional
strength.
"You would like to see the camp?" he said, looking at Rachel.
"Aren't you too busy to show it?"
"Not at all. I am not wanted just now. Let me help you over those logs."
He held out his hand.
"Oh, thank you, I don't want any help," said Rachel a little scornfully.
He smiled in approving silence, and she followed his lead, leaping and
scrambling over the piles of wood, with a deer's sureness of foot, till
he invited her to stop and watch the timber girls at their measuring. As
the two visitors approached, land-women and forest-women eyed each other
with friendly looks, but without speech. For talk, indeed, the business
in hand was far too strenuous. The logs were coming in fast; there must
be no slip in measurement or note. The work was hard, and the women doing
it had been at it all day. But on the whole, what a comely and energetic
group, with the bright eyes, the clear skins, the animation born of open
air and exercise.
"They can't talk to you now!" said Mrs. Fergusson in Janet's ear, amid
the din of the engines, "but they'll talk at tea. And there's a dance
to-night."
Janet looked round the wild glen in wonder.
"Who come?"
"Oh, there's an Air Force camp half a mile away--an Army Service camp on
the other side. The officers come--some of them--every Saturday. We take
down the partitions in our huts. You can't think what pretty frocks the
girls put on! And we dance till midnight."
"And you've no difficulty with the men working in the camp?"
"You mean--how do they treat the girls?" laughed Mrs. Fergusson. "They're
_charming_ to the girls! Chivalrous, kind, everything they should be. But
then," she added proudly, "my girls are the pick--educated women all of
them. I could trust them anywhere. And Captain Ellesborough--you won't
get any mischief going on where he is."
Meanwhile the captain, well out of earshot of Mrs. Fergusson's praise,
was explaining the organization of the camp to Rachel as they slowly
climbed the hill, on the opposite side from that by which she and Janet
had descended.
"Which works hardest, I wonder?" she said at last, as they paused to look
down on the scene below. "We on our farm, or you here? I've never had
more than five hours' sleep through the harvest? But now things are
slacker."
He threw his head back with a laugh.
"Why, this seems to me like playing at lumbering! It's all so tiny--so
babyish. Oh, yes, there's plenty of work--for the moment. But it'll be
all done, in one more season; not a stick left. England can't grow a real
forest."
"Compared to America?"
"Well, I was thinking of Canada. Do you know Canada?"
"A little." Then she added hastily: "But I never saw any lumbering."
"What a pity! It's a gorgeous life. Oh, not for women. These women
here--awfully nice girls, and awfully clever too--couldn't make anything
of it in Canada. I had a couple of square miles of forest to look
after--magnificent stuff!--Douglas fir most of it--and two pulping mills,
and about two hundred men--a rough lot."
"But you're not Canadian?"
"Oh, Lord, no! My people live in Maine. I was at Yale. I got trained
at the forest school there, and after a bit went over the Canadian
frontier with my brother to work a big concession in Quebec. We did very
well--made a lot of money. Then came the war. My brother joined up with
the Canadian army. I stayed behind to try and settle up the business,
till the States went in, too. Then they set me and some other fellows to
raise a Forestry battalion--picked men. We went to France first, and last
winter I was sent here--to boss this little show! But I shan't stay here
long! It isn't good enough. Besides, I want to fight! They've promised me
a commission in our own army."
He looked at her with sparkling eyes, and her face involuntarily answered
the challenge of his; so much so that his look prolonged itself. She was
wonderfully pleasant to look upon, this friend of Mrs. Fergusson's. And
she was farming on her own? A jolly plucky thing to do! He decided that
he liked her; and his talk flowed on. He was frank about himself, and
full of self-confidence; but there was a winning human note in it, and
Rachel listened eagerly, talking readily, too, whenever there was an
opening. They climbed to the top of the hill where they stood on the
northern edge of the forest, looking across the basin and the busy throng
below. He pointed out to her a timber-slide to their right, and they
watched the trees rushing down it, dragged, as he now saw plainly, by the
wire cable which was worked by the engine in the hollow. A group of
German prisoners, half-way down, were on the edge of the slide, guiding
the logs.
"We don't have any trouble with them," said the captain carelessly.
"They're only too thankful to be here. They've two corporals of their own
who keep order. Oh, of course we have our eyes open. There are some sly
beggars among them. Our men have no truck with them. I shouldn't advise
you to employ them. It wouldn't do for women alone."
His smile was friendly, and Rachel found it pleasant to be advised by
him. As to employing prisoners, she said, even were it allowed, nothing
would induce her to risk it. There were a good many on Colonel Shepherd's
estate, and she sometimes met them, bicycling to and from their billets
in the village, in the evening after work. "Once or twice they've jeered
at me," she said, flushing.
"Jeered at you!" he repeated in surprise.
"At my dress, I mean. It seems to amuse them."
"I see. You wear the land army dress like these girls?"
"When I'm at work."
"Well, I'm glad you don't wear it always," he said candidly. "These girls
here look awfully nice of an evening. They always change."
He glanced at her curiously. Her dress of dark blue linen, her pretty hat
to match, with its bunch of flowers, not to speak of the slender ankles
and feet in their blue stockings and khaki shoes, seemed to him
extraordinarily becoming. But she puzzled him. There was something about
her quite different from the girls of the hostel. She appeared to be
older and riper than they; yet he did not believe she was a day more than
five-and-twenty, and some of them were older than that. Unmarried, he
supposed. "Miss Henderson?" Yes, he was sure that was the name Mrs.
Fergusson had mentioned. His eyes travelled discreetly to her bare, left
hand. That settled it.
"Well, if I came across these fellows jeering at an Englishwoman, I'd
know the reason why!" he resumed hotly. "You should have complained."
She shook her head, smiling. "One doesn't want to be a nuisance in war
time. One can always protect oneself."
He smiled.
"That's what women always say, and--excuse me--they can't!"
She laughed.
"Oh, yes, we can--the modern woman."
"I don't see much difference between the modern woman and the
old-fashioned woman," he said obstinately. "It isn't dress or working at
munitions that makes the difference."
"No, but--what they signify."
"What?--a freer life, getting your own way, seeing more of the world?"
The tone was a trifle antagonistic.
"_Knowing_ more of the world," she said, quietly. "We're not the ignorant
babes our grandmothers were at our age. That's why we can protect
ourselves."
And again he was aware of something sharp or bitter in her--some note of
disillusionment--that jarred with the soft, rather broad face and dreamy
eyes. It stirred him, and they presently found themselves plunged in a
free and exciting discussion of the new place and opportunities of women
in the world, the man from the more conservative, the women from the more
revolutionary point of view. Secretly, he was a good deal repelled by
some of his companion's opinions, and her expression of them. She quoted
Wells and Shaw, and he hated both. He was an idealist and a romantic,
with a volume of poems in his pocket. She, it seemed, was still on a
rising wave of rebellion, moral and social, like so many women; while his
wave had passed, and he was drifting in the trough of it. He supposed she
had dropped religion, like everything else. Well, the type didn't attract
him. He believed the world was coming back to the old things. The war had
done it--made people think. No doubt this girl had rushed through a lot
of things already, and thought she knew everything. But she didn't.
Then, as their talk went on, this first opinion dropped in confusion. For
instead of presenting him with a consistent revolutionist, his companion
was, it appeared, full of the most unexpected veins and pockets of
something much softer and more appealing. She had astonishing returns
upon herself; and after some sentiment that had seemed to him silly or
even outrageous, a hurried "Oh, I dare say that's all nonsense!" would
suddenly bewilder or appease a marked trenchancy of judgment in himself
which was not accustomed to be so tripped up.
The upshot of it was that both Rachel and her new acquaintance enjoyed
an agreeable, an adventurous half hour. They got rapidly beyond
conventionalities. One moment she thought him rude, the next delightful;
just as she alternately appeared to him feminist and feminine. Above them
the doomed beech trees, still green in the late August afternoon, spread
their canopy of leaf, and through their close stems ran dark aisles of
shadow. Below them was the tree-strewn hill-side. In the hollow Rachel
could see Janet Leighton and Mrs. Fergusson among the measuring girls;
the horses moving to and fro; the Canadian lumber-men catching at and
guiding the logs; the trolleys descending the valley; while just opposite
to them trunk after trunk was crashing down the hill, the line of the
steel cable gleaming now and then in a fitful sunshine which had begun
to slip out below a roof of purple cloud. Only one prisoner was left to
look after the slide. The others had just gone down the hill, at a
summons from below. Suddenly Ellesborough sprang to his feet.
"Good Heavens! what's that?" For a loud cry had rung out, accompanied by
what sounded like a report. The man who had been standing among the dead
brushwood on the other side of the descending timber, about a hundred
yards away, had disappeared; and the huge beech just launched from above
had ceased to move.
Another cry for help.
"The cable's broken!" said Ellesborough, starting at full speed for the
slide. Rachel rushed after him, and presently caught him up where he
knelt beside a man lying on the ground, and writhing in great pain. The
prisoner's cap had fallen off, and revealed a young German lad of
nineteen or twenty, hardly conscious, and groaning pitifully at
intervals. As he lay crouched on his face, the red patches on his back,
intended to guide the aim of an armed guard in case of any attempt to
escape, showed with a sinister plainness.
"The cable snapped, and has caught him round the body," Ellesborough
explained. "Give him this brandy, please, while I try and make out--"
With skilled and gentle fingers he began to explore the injury.
"A rib broken, I think." He looked with anxiety at some blood that had
begun to appear on the lips. "I must go down and get some men and a
stretcher. They won't know what to do without me. My second in command is
off duty for the day. Can you look after him while I go? Awfully sorry
to--"
He gave her a swift, investigating glance.
She interrupted him.
"Tell me what to do, and I'll do it."
He loosened the boy's collar and very gently tried to ease his position.
"Mamma!" murmured the boy, with the accent of a miserable child in a bad
dream. Ellesborough's face softened. He bent over him and said something
in German. Rachel did not understand it--only the compassionate look in
the man's blue eyes.
"Give him more brandy if you can, and try and keep him still," said
Ellesborough as he rose to his feet. "I shall be back directly."
Her glance answered. By this time there was commotion below, the engine
had stopped working and men were running up the hill. Ellesborough went
bounding down the steep slope to meet them. They turned back with him,
and Rachel supposed they had gone to fetch a stretcher, and if possible a
doctor, from the small camp hospital which Mrs. Fergusson had pointed out
to her near the gate. Meanwhile, for a few minutes, she was alone with
this suffering lad. Was he fatally hurt--dying? She managed to get some
brandy down, and then he lay groaning and unconscious, murmuring
incoherent words. She caught "Mamma" again, then "Lisa," "Hans," and
broken phrases that meant nothing to her. Was his mind back in some
German home, which, perhaps, he would never see again?
All sorts of thoughts passed through her: vague memories gathered
from the newspapers, of what the Germans had done in Belgium and
France--horrible, indescribable things! Oh, not this boy, surely!
He could not be more than nineteen. He must have been captured in the
fighting of July, perhaps in his first action. Captain Ellesborough had
said to her that there was no fighting spirit among any of the prisoners.
They were thankful to find themselves out of it, "safely captured," as
one of them had had the bravado to say, and with enough to eat. No doubt
this boy had dreamt day and night of peace, and getting back to Germany,
to "Mamma" and "Lisa" and "Hans." To die, if he was to die, by this
clumsy accident, in an enemy country, was hard!
Pity, passionate pity sprang up in her, and it warmed her heart to
remember the pity in the face of Captain Ellesborough. She would have
hated him if he had shown any touch of a callous or cruel spirit towards
this helpless creature. But there had been none.
In a few more minutes she was aware of Mrs. Fergusson and Janet climbing
rapidly towards her. And behind them came stretcher-bearers, the captain,
and possibly a doctor.
* * * * *
The accident broke up the working afternoon. The injured lad was carried
to hospital, where the surgeon shook his head, and refused to prophesy
till twenty-four hours were over.
Captain Ellesborough disappeared, while Rachel and Janet were given tea
at the woman's hostel and shown the camp. Rachel took an absorbed
interest in it all. This world of the new woman, with its widening
horizons, its atmosphere of change and discovery, its independence of
men, soothed some deep smart in her that Janet was only now beginning
to realize. And yet, Janet remembered the vicar, and had watched the talk
with Ellesborough. Clearly to be the professed enemy of man did not
altogether disincline you for his company!
At any rate it seemed quite natural to Janet Leighton that, when it was
time to go, and a charming girl in khaki with green facings caught the
pony, and harnessed it for Mrs. Fergusson's parting guests, Ellesborough
should turn up, as soon as the farewells were over; and that she should
find herself driving the pony-carriage up the hill, while Ellesborough
and Rachel walked behind, and at a lengthening distance. Once or twice
she looked back, and saw that the captain was gathering some of the
abounding wild flowers which had sprung up on the heels of the retreating
forest, and that Rachel had fastened a bunch of them into her hat. She
smiled to herself, and drove steadily on. Rachel was young and pretty.
Marriage with some man--some day--was certainly her fate. The kind,
unselfish Janet intended to "play up."
Then, with a jerk, she remembered there was a story. Nonsense! An unhappy
love affair, no doubt, which had happened in her first youth, and in
Canada. Well, such things, in the case of a girl with the temperament of
Rachel, are only meant to be absorbed in another love affair. They are
the leaf mould that feeds the final growth. Janet cheerfully said to
herself that, probably, her partnership with Rachel would only be a short
one.
The pair behind were, indeed, much occupied with each other. The tragic
incident of the afternoon seemed to have carried them rapidly through the
preliminary stages of acquaintance. At least, it led naturally to talk
about things and feelings more real and intimate than generally haunt the
first steps. And in this talk each found the other more and more
congenial. Ellesborough was now half amused, half touched, by the mixture
of childishness and maturity in Rachel. One moment her ignorance
surprised him, and the next, some shrewd or cynical note in what she was
saying scattered the _ingénue_ impression, and piqued his curiosity
afresh. She was indeed crassly ignorant about many current affairs in
which he himself was keenly interested, and of which he supposed all
educated women must by now have learnt the ABC. She could not have given
him the simplest historical outline of the great war; he saw that she was
quite uncertain whether Lloyd George or Asquith were Prime Minister; and
as to politics and public persons in Canada, where she had clearly lived
some time, her mind seemed to be a complete blank. None the less she had
read a good deal--novels and poetry at least--and she took a queerly
pessimistic view of life. She liked her farm work; she said so frankly.
But on a sympathetic reply from him to the effect that he knew several
other women who had taken to it, and they all seemed to be "happy" in it,
she made a scornful mouth.
"Oh, well--'happy'?--that's a different thing. But it does as well as
anything else."
The last thing she wanted, apparently, was to talk about Canada. He,
himself, as a temporary settler in the Great Dominion, cherished an
enthusiasm for Canada and a belief in the Canadian future, not, perhaps,
very general among Americans; but although her knowledge of the country
gave them inevitably some common ground, she continually held back from
it, she entered on it as little as she could. She had been in the
Dominion, he presently calculated, about seven or eight years; but she
avoided names and dates, how adroitly, he did not perceive till they had
parted, and he was thinking over their walk. She must have gone out to
Canada immediately after leaving school. He gathered that her father had
been a clergyman, and was dead; that she knew the prairie life, but had
never been in British Columbia, and only a few days in Montreal and
Toronto. That was all that, at the end of their walk, he knew; and all
apparently she meant him to know. Whereas she on her side showed a
beguiling power of listening to all he had to say about the mysterious
infinity of the Canadian forest-lands and the wild life that, winter or
spring, a man may live among them, which flattered the very human conceit
of a strong and sensitive nature.
But at last they had climbed the tree-strewn slope, and were on the open
ridge with the northern plain in view. The sun was now triumphantly out,
just before his setting; the clouds had been flung aside, and he shone
full upon the harvest world--such a harvest world as England had not seen
for a century. There they lay, the new and golden fields, where, to north
and south, to east and west, the soil of England, so long unturned, had
joyously answered once more to its old comrade the plough.
"'An enemy hath done this,'" quoted Ellesborough, with an approving
smile, as he pointed towards the plain. "But there was a God behind him!"
Rachel laughed. "Well, I've got three fields still to get in," she said.
"And they're the best. Goodnight."
She gave him her hand, standing transfigured in the light, the wind
blowing her beautiful hair about her.
"May I come and see you?" he asked, rather formally.
She smiled assent.
"Next week _everything_ will be in, and some of it threshed. I shall be
freer then. You'll like our place."
He pressed her hand, and she was off, running like a fawn after the
retreating pony carriage.
He turned away, a little dazzled and shaken. The image of her on the
ridge remained; but what perhaps had struck deepest had been the
sweetness of her as she hung above the injured boy. He went slowly
towards the camp, conscious that the day now departing had opened a new
door in the House of Life.