"Yes, I'll write; indeed I'll write! But you'll come over again before
you go?"
"Rather," he said joyously; "rather! Why, there's a month. You'll be
tired of me before you've done."
A few minutes later she was standing in her own little room, listening to
the retreating rush of his motor-cycle down the road. There was a great
tumult in her mind.
"Am I falling in love with him? Am I--am I?"
But in the dark, when she had put out her light, the cry that shaped
itself in her mind was identical with that sudden misgiving of the
afternoon, when on Ellesborough's arrival she had first heard his voice
downstairs talking to Janet.
"_I wish he knew_!" But this time it was no mere passing qualm. It had
grown into something intense and haunting.
* * * * *
On this same September afternoon, a dark-eyed, shabby woman, with a
little girl, alighted at Millsborough Station. They were met by a man who
had been lounging about the station for some time and whose appearance
had attracted some attention. "See him at a distance, and you might take
him for a lord; but get him close, my word!--" said the station-master to
the booking-clerk, with a shrug, implying many things.
"Wouldn't give a bob for his whole blessed turn-out," said the
booking-clerk. "But right you are, when you sort of get the hang of him,
far enough away on the other platform, might be a dook!"
Meanwhile, the man had shouldered some of the bags and parcels brought by
the woman and the child, though hardly his fair share of them; and they
finally reached the exit from the station.
"If you're going into the town, the bus will be here in a few minutes,"
said a porter civilly to the woman. "It'll help you with all those
things."
The man gruffly answered for her that they preferred to walk, and they
started, the woman and the child dragging wearily beside him.
"Now, you've got to be content with what I've found for you," he said to
her roughly as they reached the first houses of the town. "There isn't
scarcely a lodging or a cottage to be had. Partly it's the holidays
still, and partly it's silly folk like you--scared of raids."
"I couldn't go through another winter like last, for Nina's sake," said
the woman plaintively.
"Why, you silly goose, there won't be any raids this winter. I've told
you so scores of times. We've got the upper hand now, and the Boche will
keep his planes at home. But as you won't listen to me, you've got to
have your way, I suppose. Well, I've got you rooms of a sort. They'll
have to do. I haven't got money enough for anything decent."
The woman made no reply, and to the porter idly looking after them they
were soon lost from sight in the gathering dusk of the road.
V
The little town of Millsborough was _en fête_. There was a harvest
festival going on, and the County Agricultural Committee had taken the
opportunity to celebrate the successful gathering of the crops, and the
part taken in it by the woman land-workers under their care. They had
summoned the land lasses from far and wide; in a field on the outskirts
of the town competitions had been in full swing all the morning, and now
there were to be speeches in the market-place, and a final march of land
girls, boy scouts, and decorated wagons to the old Parish Church, where a
service was to be held.
All Millsborough, indeed, was in the streets to look at the procession,
and the crowd was swelled by scores of cadets from a neighbouring camp,
who were good-heartedly keeping the route, and giving a military air to
the show. But the flower-decked wagons were the centre of interest. The
first in the line was really a brilliant performance. It was an old wagon
of Napoleonic days, lent by a farmer, whose forebears had rented the same
farm since William and Mary. Every spoke of the wheels blazed with red
geraniums; there was a fringe of heather along the edge of the cart,
while vegetables, huge marrows, turnips, carrots, and onions dangled from
its sides, and the people inside sat under a nodding canopy of tall and
splendid wheat, mixed with feathery barley. But the passengers were
perhaps the most attractive thing about it. They were four old women in
lilac sunbonnets. They were all over seventy, and they had all worked
bravely in the harvest. The crowd cheered them vociferously, and they
sat, looking timidly out on the scene with smiling eyes and tremulous
lips, their grey hair blowing about their wrinkled, wholesome faces.
Beside the wagon walked a detachment of land girls. One of them was the
granddaughter of one of the old women, and occasionally a word would
pass between them.
"Eh, Bessie, but I'd like to git down! They mun think us old fools,
dizened up this way."
"No, gran; you must ride. You're the very best bit of the show. Why, just
listen how the folk cheer you!"
The old woman sighed.
"I'd like to look at it mysel'," she said with a childish plaintiveness.
But her tall granddaughter, in full uniform, with a rake over her
shoulder, thought this a foolish remark, and made no reply.
In the second wagon, Rachel Henderson in full land-dress--tunic,
knee-breeches, and leggings--stood in the front of the cart, guiding two
white horses, their manes and tails gaily plaited with ribbons, and
scarlet badges on their snowy heads.
"Eh, but yon's a fine woman!" said an old farmer of the humbler sort to
his neighbour. "Yo'll not tell me she's a land lassie?"
"Noa, noa; she's the new farmer at Great End--a proud body, they say, an'
a great hustler! The men say she's allus at 'em. But they don't mind
her neither. She treats 'em well. Them's her two land girls walking
beside."
For Betty and Jenny mounted guard, their harvest rakes on their
shoulders, beside their mistress, who attracted all eyes as she passed,
and knew it. Behind her in the cart sat Janet Leighton; and the two
remaining seats were filled by the Vicar of Ipscombe and Lady Alicia
Shepherd, the wife of the owner of Great End Farm and of the middle-sized
estate to which the farm belonged.
Lady Alicia was a thin woman, with an excitable temperament, to judge
from her restless mouth and eyes, which were never still for a moment.
She was very fashionably dressed and held a lace parasol. The crowd
scarcely recognized her, which annoyed her, for in her own estimation she
was an important member of the Women's Committee which looked after the
land girls. The war had done a great deal for Lady Alicia. It had dragged
her from a sofa, where she was rapidly becoming a neurasthenic invalid,
and had gradually drilled her into something like a working day. She
lived in a flurry of committees; but as committees must exist, and Lady
Alicias must apparently be on them; she had found a sort of vocation, and
with the help of other persons of more weight she had not done badly.
She did not quite understand how it was that she found herself in Miss
Henderson's wagon. The committee had refused to have a wagon of its own,
and the good-natured vicar had arranged it for her. She did not herself
much like Miss Henderson. Her husband had sent her to call upon the new
tenants, and she had been much puzzled. They were ladies, she supposed.
They spoke quite nicely, and Miss Henderson seemed to be the daughter of
a clergyman. But she was afraid they were dreadful Socialists! She had
talked to Miss Henderson about the awful--the _wicked_--wages that the
Brookshire board had just fixed for the labourer.
"My husband says they'll simply crush the life out of farming. We shall
all be ruined, and where will the labourer be then?"
And Miss Henderson had looked quite unpleasant. It was high time, she
said, that the labourer should have enough to live on--_decently_; really
thrown the word at you. And Colonel Shepherd had told his wife that he
understood from Hastings Miss Henderson had raised her wages before the
award of the Wages Board. Well, he only hoped the young woman had got
some money behind her, otherwise she would be finding herself in Queer
Street and he would be whistling for his rent.
The wagons drew up in the centre of the market-place, and the band which
the cadets had brought with them struck up "God Save the King." Lady
Alicia rose at once and nudged her little boy, whom she had brought with
her, to take off his cap. She looked approvingly over the crowd, which
was growing denser and denser every moment. It was so that she really
enjoyed the populace--at a safe distance--and ready to lend itself to the
blandishments of its natural leaders. Where was her husband, Colonel
Shepherd? Of course they would want him to speak at some time in the
proceedings. But she looked for him in vain.
Meanwhile, the speaking was beginning from the first cart. A land girl
who had played a rousing part in the recruiting campaign of the early
summer was speaking in a high voice, clearly heard by the crowd. She
was tall and pretty, and spoke without a sign of hesitation or
self-consciousness. She gloried in the harvest, in the splendid news from
the war, in the growth of the Woman's Land Army. "We've just been proud
to do our bit at home while our boys have been fighting over there.
They'll be home soon, perhaps, and won't we give them a welcome! And
we'll show them the harvest that we've helped to reap--the biggest
harvest that England's ever known!--the harvest that's going to beat the
Boche." The young simple voice flowed on, with its simple story and its
note of enthusiasm, and sometimes of humour. "It's hard work, but we love
it! It's cold work often, but we love it! The horses and the cows and the
pigs--they're naughty often, but they're nice!---yes, the pigs, too. It's
the beasts and the fields and the open air we love!"
Betty looked at Jenny with a grin.
"Jenny!--them pigsties yesterday; d'ye think she's ever cleaned one out?"
"I know she has," said Jenny confidentially. "She's Farmer Green's girl,
out Ralstone way. Ee says there ain't nothing she can't do. Ee don't
want no men while he's got 'er. They offered him soldiers, and ee
wouldn't have 'em."
* * * * *
"Silly, sentimental young woman," said a tall man, with a pipe in his
mouth, who had just lounged up to the outskirts of the crowd, from a side
street. "Who's she going to take in here? What's the good of talking
poetry about farming to a lot of country people? A London shop-girl, I
guess. What does she know about it?"
"You bets she knows a lot," said a young man beside him, who, to judge
from his uniform, was one of the Canadians employed at Ralstone camp.
He had been taken with the "sentimental young woman," and was annoyed by
the uncivil remarks of his neighbour. "Wonder what farm she's on?"
"Oh, you know these parts?" said the other, removing his pipe for a
moment and looking down on his companion.
"Well, not exactly." The reply was hesitating. "My grandfather went out
to Canada from a place near here sixty years ago. I used to hear him and
my mother talk about Millsborough."
"Beastly hole!" said the other, replacing his pipe.
"I don't agree with you at all," said the other angrily. "It's as nice a
little town of its size as you'd find anywhere."
The other shrugged his shoulders. A man a few yards off in the crowd
happened at that moment to be looking in the direction of the two
speakers. It was the ticket-collector at the station, enjoying an
afternoon off. He recognized the taller of the two men as the "dook" he
had seen at Millsborough station about a week ago. The man's splendid
carriage and iron-grey head were not to be mistaken--also his cadaverous
and sickly look, and his shabby clothes. The ticket-collector saw that
the man was holding the dark-eyed, "furrin-looking" child by the hand,
which the woman he met had brought down with her. "Furriners," he
supposed, all of them; part of that stream of fugitives from air raids
that had been flowing out of London during the preceding winter, and was
now flowing out again, as the next winter approached, though in less
volume. Every house and lodging in Millsborough was full, prices had gone
up badly, and life in Millsborough was becoming extremely uncomfortable
for its normal inhabitants--"all along o' these panicky aliens!" thought
the ticket-collector, resentfully, as he looked at the tall man.
The tall man, however, was behaving as though the market-place belonged
to him, talking to his neighbours, who mostly looked at him askance, and
every now and then breaking into a contemptuous laugh, provoked
apparently by the eloquence of the young woman in the wagon. Meanwhile
the little girl whose hand he held was trying to pull him into a better
place for seeing the rest of the procession. For from the place where
they stood on the outskirts of the crowd, the foremost wagon with its
nodding wheat and sheaves, its speaker, its old women, and its bodyguard
of girls entirely hid the cart behind it.
"Dis way, pappa, dis way," said the child, dragging him. He let her draw
him, and suddenly from behind the speaker's cart there emerged the second
wagon with its white horses; Rachel Henderson, the observed of all
beholders, standing flushed and smiling, with the reins in her hands, the
vicar just behind her, and Lady Alicia's lace parasol.
"My God!" said the man.
His sudden start, and clutch at the child's hand made the child cry out.
He checked her with a savage word, and while she whimpered unheeded, he
stood motionless, sheltering himself behind a girl with a large hat who
stood in front of him, his eyes fixed on the Great End wagon. A ghastly
white had replaced the patchy red on his cheeks, and had any careful
observer chanced to notice him at the moment, he or she would have been
struck by the expression of his face--as of some evil, startled beast
aware of its enemy, and making ready to spring.
But the expression passed. With a long breath, Roger Delane pulled
himself together.
"Hold your noise, Nina," he said roughly to the child. "If you'll be a
good girl, I'll put you on my shoulder."
The child stopped crying at once, and Delane, raising her on to his
shoulder, pulling his own soft hat over his eyes and placing the child so
that her dress concealed his own features. Then he resumed an excited
scrutiny of the Great End wagon. At the same moment he saw a man in
uniform making his way through the crowd towards Miss Henderson who was
waving to him. An officer--an American officer. Delane recognized at once
the high collar and the leathern peak to the cap.
The crowd had already begun to cheer him. He reached the Great End wagon,
and its mistress, all smiles, bent over to speak to him. She and the
vicar seemed to be giving directions, to which the American with a
laughing shrug assented, going off to the front wagon, evidently in
obedience to orders. There the girl speaker had just sat down amid a
hearty cheer from the crowd; and the chairman of the meeting, a burly
farmer, eagerly came to the side of the wagon, and helped the American
officer into the cart. Then with a stentorian voice the chairman
announced that Captain Ellesborough from Ralstone camp had come "to tell
us what America is doing!" A roar from the crowd. Ellesborough saluted
gaily, and then his hands in his pockets began to talk to them. His
speech, which was a racy summary of all that America was doing to help
the Allies, was delivered to a ringing accompaniment of cheers from the
thronged market-place, rising to special thunder when the captain dwelt
on the wheat and bacon that America was pouring across the Atlantic
to feed a hungry Europe.
"We've tightened our own belts already; we can tighten them, I dare say,
a few holes more. Everybody in America's growing something, and making
something. When a man thinks he's done enough, and wants to rest a bit,
the man next him gets behind him with a bradawl. There's no rest for
anybody. We've just registered _thirteen million_ men. That sounds like
business, doesn't it? No slacking there! Well, we mean business. And you
mean business. And the women mean business."
Then a passage about the women, which set the land girls grinning at each
other, and at the men in the crowd, ending in three cheers for Marshal
Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, which came echoing back from the Fourteenth
Century church and the old houses which ringed the market-place.
All eyes were on the speaker, no one noticed the tall man with the
olive-skinned child on his shoulder. He himself, with thumping pulses,
never ceased to watch the figures and movements in the second wagon. He
saw Miss Henderson sit down and another woman also in tunic and knickers
take her place. He watched her applauding the speaker, or talking with
the clergyman behind her, or the lady with the lace parasol. And when the
speech was over, amid a hurricane of enthusiasm, when the resolution had
been put and carried, and the bells in the old church-tower began to ring
out a deafening joy-peal above the dispersing crowd, he saw the American
officer jump down from the speaker's wagon and return to Miss Henderson.
Steps were brought, and Captain Ellesborough handed out the ladies. Then
he and Rachel Henderson went away side by side, laughing and talking,
towards the porch of the church, where Delane lost them from sight.
The market-place emptied rapidly. The decorated wagons moved off to the
field where the competitions had been held in the morning, and some
of the crowd with them. Another portion streamed into the church, and
soon only a few scattered groups were left.
The tall man put down the child, and was seized with a fit of coughing,
which left him more pallid and sunken-eyed than before. When it was over,
he noticed a group of elderly labourers. They had come late into the
meeting, and were making for the bar of the Cow-roast Inn, but before
they entered it Delane went up to one of them.
"I'm a stranger here," he said carelessly. "Can you tell me who all these
people were in the wagons?"
The man addressed--who was old Halsey--gave the speaker a reconnoitring
look.
"Well, I dunno neither," he said cautiously, "leastways, many of 'em.
There was my old missus, in the first one. She didn't want to go, dressed
up in them sunbonnets. But they made such a fuss of her, she had to.
There was Farmer Broughton I seed, an' I don't know nobody else."
"Well, but the second wagon?" said Delane impatiently.
"Oh, the second wagon. Why, that was Miss Henderson. Don't ye know 'er? I
works for 'er?"
"Is she on the land?"
The old man laughed.
"That she be! She's a farmer, is Miss Henderson, an' she frames pretty
fair. She don't know much yet, but what she don't know Hastings tells,
her."
"Who's Hastings?"
"Why, her bailiff, to be sure. You do be a stranger, not knowin' Muster
Hastings?"
"I'm just here for a few weeks. It's a rum business, isn't it, this of
women taking farms?"
Halsey nodded reflectively.
"Aye, it's a queer business. But they do be cleverer at it than ye'd
think. Miss Henderson's a good head-piece of her own."
"And some money, I suppose?"
"Well, that's not my look out, is it, so long as I gits my wages? I
dessay Colonel Shepherd, ee sees to that. Well, good-day to you. I'm
goin' in to get summat to drink. It's a dryin' wind to-day, and a good
bit walk from Ipscombe."
"Is that where you live?"
"Aye--an' Miss Henderson's place is just t'other side. A good mile to
Ipscombe, and near a mile beyont. I didn't want to come, but my old woman
she nagged me to come an' see her 'ome."
And with another nod, the old man turned into the public, where his mates
were already enjoying the small beer of the moment.
For a few minutes, Delane strolled down the main road in silence, the
child playing at his heels. Then he turned abruptly, called the child,
and went up the side street from which he had appeared when the
meeting began.
A quarter of an hour later he returned to the market-place alone. The
service in the church was still going on. He could hear them singing, the
harvest hymn: "We plough the fields and scatter--The good seed on the
land." But he did not stop to listen. He walked on rapidly in the
direction of Ipscombe.
Delane found the main line from Millsborough to Ipscombe dotted
at intervals with groups of persons returning from the harvest
festival--elderly women with children, a few old labourers, a few
soldiers on leave, with a lively fringe of noisy boys and girls
skirmishing round and about their elders, like so many young animals on
the loose. The evening light was failing. The pools left by a passing
shower, gleamed along the road, and the black elms and oaks, scarcely
touched as yet by autumn gold, stood straight and sharp against a rainy
sky.
The tall, slouching man scrutinized the various groups as he passed them,
as though making up his mind whether to address them or not. He wore a
shabby greatcoat, warmer than the day demanded, and closely buttoned
across the chest. The rest of his dress, felt hat, dark trousers, and tan
boots, had all of it come originally from expensive shops, but was now
only just presentable. The one thing in good condition about him was the
Malacca cane he carried, which had a carved jade handle, and was
altogether out of keeping with his general appearance.
All the same there was something striking in that appearance. Face,
figure and dress represented the wreck of more than one kind of
distinction. The face must once have been exceptionally handsome, before
an underlying commonness and coarseness had been brought out or
emphasized by developments of character and circumstance. The mouth was
now loose and heavy. The hazel eyes had lost their youth, and were
disfigured by the premature wrinkles of either ill-health or dissipation.
None the less, a certain carriage of the head and shoulders, a certain
magnificence in the whole general outline of the man, especially in the
defiant eyes and brow, marked him out from the crowd, and drew attention
of strangers.
Many persons looked at him, as he at them, while he swung slowly along
the road. At last he crossed over towards an elderly man in company with
a young soldier, who was walking lamely with a stick.
"Excuse me," he said, formally, addressing the elder man, "but am I right
for Ipscombe?"
"That you are, muster. The next turnin' to the right'll bring yer to it."
Peter Betts looked the stranger over as he spoke, with an inquisitive
eye.
"You've come from the meeting, I suppose?"
"Ay. We didn't go to the service. That worn't in our line. But we heerd
the speeches out o' doors."
"The carts were fine!--especially the second one."
"Ay--that's our missis. She and the two girls done the dressin' o' the
cart."
"What's her name?"
"Well, her name's Henderson," said the old man, speaking with an amiable,
half careless detachment, the manner rather of a philosopher than a
gossip.
"She's the farmer's wife?"
"Noa, she ain't. She's the farmer herself--'at's what she is. She's took
the farm from Colonel Shepherd--she did--all on her own. To be sure
there's Miss Leighton as lives with her. But it do seem to me as Miss
Henderson's--as you might say--the top 'un. And me an' James Halsey works
for her."
"_Miss_ Henderson? She's not married?"
"Not she!" said old Betts emphatically. "She's like a lot o' women
nowadays, I guess. They doan't want to be married."
"Perhaps nobody 'as wanted to marry 'em, dad!" said his elder son,
grinning at his own stale jest.
Betts shook a meditative head.
"Noa--yo'll not explain it that way," he said mildly. "Some of 'em's
good-looking--Miss Henderson 'ersel', by token. A very 'andsome
up-standin' young woman is Miss Henderson."
Delane followed all these remarks with close attention, and continued a
rather skilful examination. He learnt that Great End was a farm of about
two hundred and fifty acres, that Miss Henderson seemed to have "lots o'
money," and had sold her autumn crops very well, that Miss Leighton
managed the stock and the dairy with the help of two land-girls, and it
was thought by the village that the two ladies "was doin' fine."
Arrived at the village, Betts turned into his cottage, with a nod to his
companion, and Delane went on his way.
The lane on the farther side of the village was dark under branching
trees. Delane stumbled along it, coughing at intervals, and gripped by
the rising chill of the September evening. A little beyond the trees he
caught sight of the farm against the hill. Yes, it was lonesome, as the
old man said, but a big, substantial-looking place. Rachel's place! And
Rachel had "lots o' money"--and as to her health and well-being, why the
sight of her on that cart was enough. That vision of her indeed--of the
flushed, smiling face under the khaki hat, of the young form in the trim
tunic and leggings, and, not least, of the admiring crowd about her, kept
returning upon the man's furious sense as something not to be borne, a
recurrent blow from which he could not escape.
And that American chap--that Yankee officer who had walked off with her
to the church--what was the meaning of that? They were not strangers,
that was plain. She had beckoned to him from the cart. The manner of
their short conversation, indeed, showed them well acquainted. She told
him to go and speak--and he had gone--with alacrity--smiling back at her.
Courting, no doubt! Rachel could never let a man alone--or live, without
a man after her. A brutal phrase shaped itself--a vile epithet or
two--flung into the solitude of the lane.
When he emerged from the trees into a space of greater light between two
stubble fields, Delane suddenly drew a letter from his pocket. While
Rachel was flaunting with "lots of money"--this was how his affairs were
going.
"DEAR ROGER,--I can do nothing for you. Your demands are simply
insatiable. If you write me any more begging letters, or if you attempt
again to force your way into my house as you did last week, I shall tell
the bank to cancel your allowance, and wash my hands of you altogether.
My husband's determined to stop this kind of thing. Don't imagine you can
either threaten us, or come round us. We have tried again and again to
help and reform you. It is no good--and now we give you up. You have
worn us out. If you are wise, you will not answer this--and if you keep
quiet the allowance shall be continued. MARIANNE TILNEY."
That was a nice letter to get from a man's only sister! Allowance! What
was £100 a year to a woman as rich as Marianne? And what was the use
of £100 a year to him, with living at the price it was now? His wretched
pittance besides, doled out to him by his father's trustees under his
father's will, brought his whole income up to £300 a year. How was a man
to live on that, and support a woman and child?
And here was Rachel--free--bursting with health--and possessed of "lots
of money." She thought, no doubt, that she had done with him--thrust him
out of her life altogether. He'd let her see! Whose fault was it that he
had taken up with Anita? Nagging, impossible creature!--with her fine
ladyisms and her tempers, and her insolent superior ways!
He walked on, consumed with a bitterness which held him like a physical
anguish. By now he had reached the farm gate. The sunset had cleared and
deepened. Great rosy thunder-clouds topped the down, and strong lights
were climbing up the bronzed masses of wood behind the house. No one to
be seen. At Millsborough they could hardly be out of church yet. He had
time before him. He walked cautiously up the farm-lane, diverging to the
left as he reached the buildings so as to escape the notice of any one
who might be left in charge. As he slipped under the large cart-shed
which backed on the cow-house, he heard somebody whistling inside. It was
old Halsey, who had done the afternoon milking in the absence of the
girls. Delane could hear the movements of the labourer, and the munching
of the cows. A little farther on was the stable, and two horses' heads,
looking pensively out from the open half of the door. Delane peered into
the stable with the eye of one to whom all farming matters were familiar.
Three fine horses--d---d fine horses!--must have cost £100 a piece at
least. No doubt the cows were equally good stuff. And he had noticed
under the outer cart-shed a brand-new reaper and binder, and other farm
implements and machines of the best quality. Rachel was doing the thing
in style.
But where was the farm-house? Then as he crept round the third side of
the rough quadrangle, he became aware of a large window with white
curtains. Looking through it with his face against the glass, he was
startled to find that he was looking straight into the farm-yard through
another window of equal size on the other side of the room. And at the
moment Halsey came out of the cow-shed carrying a pail of milk in either
hand. Delane drew hastily back into the shelter of an old holly that grew
against the wall, till the old man had disappeared. Then he eagerly
examined the room, which was still suffused by the sunset. Its prettiness
and comfort were so many fresh exasperations. He contrasted it inwardly
with the wretched lodging from which he had just come. Why, he knew the
photographs on the walls--her father, the old parson, and her puritanical
mother, whom Rachel had always thrown in his teeth. Her eldest brother,
too, who had been drowned at sea. And that engraving--that sentimental
thing by Watts, "Love and Death," that Rachel had bought once on a visit
to Toronto, and he had scolded her for buying. There it was, as large as
life. How did it come there? Was it her property or his? He believed he
could claim it, if he chose. Gad!--what would she say if she knew where
he was at that moment, and what he was doing!
For eighteen months she had hidden herself so cleverly that he had
entirely lost sight of her. When her lawyers communicated with him in the
spring they had been careful to give no address. On the whole he had
believed her to be still in Canada. She, on the other hand, unless she
were a greater fool than he thought her, _must_ have guessed that he
would get back to England somehow. Why, the farm had ended in bankruptcy,
and what else was there to do but to come home and dun his relations!
Yet she had not been afraid to come home herself, and set up in this
conspicuous way. She supposed, of course, that she had done with him for
good--kicked him off like an old shoe! The rage in his blood set his
heart beating to suffocation. Then his cough seized him again. He stifled
it as best he could, flattened against the wall, in the shadow of a
yew-tree.
The sound, however, was apparently heard, for there were rapid steps
across the farm-yard, and a gate opened. "Hallo--who's there?" The voice
was, no doubt, that of the labourer he had seen. Delane slipped
noiselessly along the wall, and to the back of the stables, till all was
quiet again within the farm.
But outside in the road there were persons approaching. He mounted the
hill a little way into the shelter of the trees which covered the steep
face of the down, and ran up into the great woods along the crest.
Through the gathering dusk he saw the large farm-cart clattering up the
lane with several figures in it. The cart carried lamps, which sent
shafts of light over the stubbles. There was a sound of talk and
laughter, and alongside the cart he saw a man leading a motor-bicycle,
and apparently talking to the women in the cart. A man in uniform.
The American, no doubt!
The cart drew up at the farm-yard gates, and the old labourer came to
open them. Everybody dismounted, except one of the girls, who, standing
in the wagon, drove the horses. Then, for a time, Delane could see
nothing more. The farm quadrangle had absorbed the party. Occasionally a
light flashed, or a voice could be heard calling, or laughter came
floating up the hill through an open door or window. But in a little
while all was silence.
Delane sat down on a fallen trunk, and watched. All kinds of images were
rushing through his brain--wide wheat fields with a blazing sun on the
stooks--a small frame house set nakedly on the flat prairie with a bit of
untidy garden round it--its living room in winter, with a huge fire, and
a woman moving about--the creek behind it, and himself taking horses down
to water. They were images of something that had once meant happiness and
hope--a temporary break or interlude in a dismal tale which had closed
upon it before and after.
Darkness came down. The man on the hill said to himself, "Now they are
having supper," and he crept down again to the farm, and crouching and
wriggling along he made his way again to the big window, over which the
curtains had been drawn. There was no one in the sitting-room, however,
to judge from the silence, but from the kitchen across the passage came a
rush of voices, together with a clatter of plates. The kitchen looked out
on the front of the farm, and a wooden shutter had been fastened across
the window. But the wood of the shutter was old and full of chinks, and
Delane, pressing his face to the window, was able to get just a glimpse
of the scene within--Rachel at the head of the table, the man in uniform
beside her--three other women. A paraffin lamp threw the shadow of the
persons at the table sharply on the white distempered wall. There were
flowers on the table, and the meal wore a home-like and tempting air to
the crouching spy outside. Rachel smiled incessantly, and it seemed to
Delane that the handsome man beside her could not take his eyes from her.
Nor could Delane. Her brown head and white throat, her soft, rose-tinted
face emerging from the black dress, were youth itself--a vision of youth
and lusty-hood brilliantly painted on the white wall.
Delane looked his fill. Then he dropped down the bank on which the farm
stood, and avoiding the open track through the fields, he skirted a hedge
which led down to the road, and was lost in the shadows of advancing
night.