She ran to say a word to the others and rejoined him.
They went back to the farm, not talking much, but conscious through every
nerve of the other's nearness. Rachel ran upstairs to change her dress,
and Ellesborough put the fire together, and shut the windows. For the sun
had sunk behind the hill, and a bitter wind was rising. When Rachel came
down again, the wood-fire glowed and crackled, the curtains drawn, and
she stared in astonishment at a small tea-tray beside the fire.
Ellesborough hurriedly apologized.
"I found some boiling water in the kettle, and I know by now where Miss
Janet keeps her tea."
"Janet brought us tea to the field."
"I dare say she did. That was four--this is six. You felt cold just now.
You looked cold. Be good, and take it easy!" He pointed to the only
comfortable chair, which he had drawn up to the fire.
"Are you sure it boiled?" she said sceptically, as she sank into her
chair, her eyes dancing. "No man knows when a kettle boils."
"Try it! For five winters on the Saguenay, I made my own tea--and baked
my own bread. Men are better cooks than women when they give their minds
to it!" He brought her the cup, hot and fragrant, and she sipped it in
pure content while he stood smiling above her, leaning against the
mantelpiece.
"I wanted to see you," he said presently. "I've just got my marching
orders. Let's see. This is October. I shall have just a month. They've
found another man to take over this job, but he can't come till
November."
"And--peace?" said Rachel, looking up.
For Prince Max of Baden had just made his famous peace offer of October
5th, and even in rural Brookshire there was a thrilling sense of opening
skies, of some loosening of those iron bonds in which the world had lain
for four years.
"There will be no peace!" said Ellesborough with sudden energy, "so long
as there is a single German soldier left in Belgium or France!"
She saw him stiffen from head to foot--and thrilled to the flame of
avenging will that suddenly possessed him. The male looked out upon her,
kindling--by the old, old law--the woman in her.
"And if they don't accept that?"
"Then the war will go on," he said briefly, "and I shall be in for the
last lap!"
His colour changed a little. She put down her cup and bent over the fire,
warming her hands.
"If it does go on, it will be fiercer than ever."
"Very likely. If our fellows set the pace there'll be no dawdling.
America's white hot."
"And you'll be in it?"
"I hope so," he said quietly.
There was a pause. Then he, looking down upon her, felt a sudden and
passionate joy invade him--joy which was also longing--longing
irresistible. His mind had been wrestling with many scruples and
difficulties during the preceding days. Ought he to speak--on the eve of
departure--or not? Would she accept him? Or was all her manner and
attitude towards him merely the result of the new freedom of women?
Gradually but surely his mounting passion had idealized her. Not only
her personal ways and looks had become delightful to him, but the
honourable, independent self in him had come to feel a deep admiration
for and sympathy with her honourable independence, for these new powers
in women that made them so strong in spite of their weakness. She had
become to him not only a woman but a heroine. His whole heart approved
and admired her when he saw her so active, so competent, so human. And
none the less the man's natural instinct hungered to take her in his
arms, to work for her, to put her back in the shelter of love and
home--ith her children at her knee....
And how domestic was this little scene in which they stood--the
firelight, the curtained room, the tea-things, her soft, bending form,
with the signs of labour put away!...
The tears rushed to his eyes. He bent over her, and spoke her name,
almost unconsciously.
"Rachel!"
His soul was in the name!
She started, and looked up. While he had been thinking only of her, her
thoughts had gone wandering--far away. And they seemed to have brought
back--not the happy yielding of a woman to her lover--but distress and
fear. A shock ran through him.
"Rachel!--" He held out his hands to her. He could not find words, but
his eyes spoke, and the agitation in every feature.
But she drew back.
"Don't--don't say anything--till--"
His look held her--the surprise in it--the tender appeal. She could not
take hers from it. But the disturbance in him deepened. For in the face
she raised to him there was no flood of maidenly joy. Suddenly--her eyes
were those of a culprit examining her judge. A cry sprang to his lips.
"Wait!--wait!" she said piteously.
She fell back in her chair, covering her face, her breast heaving. He saw
that she was trying to command herself, to steady her voice. One of those
forebodings which are the children of our half-conscious observation shot
through him. But he would not admit it.
He stooped over her and tried again to take her hand. But she drew it
away, and sat up in her chair. She was very white, and there were tears
in her eyes.
"I've got something to say to you," she said, with evident difficulty,
"which--I'm afraid--will surprise you very much. Of course I ought to
have told you--long ago. But I'm a coward, and--and--it was all so
horrible. I am not what you suppose me. I'm--a married woman--at least I
was. I divorced my husband--eighteen months ago. I'm quite free now. I
thought if you really cared about me--I should of course have to tell you
some time--but I've been letting it go on. It was very wrong of me--I
know it was very wrong!"
And bowing her face on her knees, she burst into a passion of weeping,
the weeping of a child who was yet a woman. The mingled immaturity and
intensity of her nature found its expression in the very abandonment of
her tears.
Ellesborough, too, had turned pale. He was astounded by what
she said. His thoughts rushed back over the six weeks of their
friendship--recalling his first impressions of something mysterious
and unexplained.
But of late, he had entirely forgotten them. She had talked so frankly
and simply of her father and mother--of her father's missionary work in
Canada, and her early journeys with him; and of her brother in Ontario,
his children and his letters. Once she had handed him a letter from this
brother to read, and he had been struck by the refined and affectionate
tone of it. Here were the same family relations as his own. His heart,
his taste were satisfied. If Rachel Henderson accepted him he would be
bringing his mother a daughter she would find it easy to love.
And all the time--instead of an unmarried girl, with the experiences
of love and marriage before her--she had been already married--and
divorced! Another man had loved and possessed her--and even if she were
innocent--but of course she was innocent!--there must be some ugly story
involved.
He tried to collect his thoughts--but all his consciousness seemed to be
bruised and in pain. He could only put his hand on her hair, and say
incoherent things,--
"Don't cry so, dear--don't cry!"
And even as he spoke he felt with bewilderment how--in a moment--their
respective attitudes had changed. She checked her sobs.
"Sit there!" she said, pointing peremptorily to a seat opposite. Then she
looked round her.
"Where is Janet?"
"She went to the village."
Rachel dried her eyes, and with trembling hands smoothed her hair back
from her face.
"I'll try and tell it shortly. It's a horrible tale."
"Do you feel able to tell it?"
For he was aghast at her pallor--the alteration in her whole aspect.
"I must," she wailed. "Weren't you--weren't you just going to ask me to
marry you?"
Strange question!--strange frowning eyes!
"I was," he said gravely. "Didn't you know I should?"
"No, no, I didn't know!" she said piteously. "I was never _sure_--till
you looked at me then. I wouldn't be sure!"
He said nothing. Speech was ice-bound till he had heard what she had to
say.
"It all began to happen three years ago," she said hurriedly, hiding her
face from him with her hand while she hung over the fire. "I was living
with my brother, who was then near Winnipeg. He offered me a home after
my father died. But he was married, and I didn't get on with his wife. I
dare say it was my fault, but I wasn't happy, and I wanted to get away.
Then a man--an Englishman--bought the next section to us, and we began
to know him. He was a gentleman--he'd been to Cambridge--his father had
some land and a house in Lincolnshire. But he was the third son, and
he'd been taught land agency, he said, as a training for the colonies.
That was all we knew. He was very good-looking, and he began courting me.
I suppose I was proud of his being a University man--a public school boy,
and all that. He told me a lot of stories about his people, and his
money--most of which were lies. But I was a fool--and I believed them. My
brother tried to stop it. Well, you know from his letters what sort of
man he is," and again she brushed the sudden tears away. "But his wife
made mischief, and I was set on having a place of my own. So I stuck to
it--and married him."
She rose abruptly from her seat and began to move restlessly about the
room, taking up a book or her knitting from the table, and putting them
down again, evidently unconscious of what she was doing. Ellesborough
waited. His lean, sharply-cut face revealed a miserable, perhaps an
agonized suspense. This crisis into which she had plunged him so suddenly
was bringing home to him all that he had at stake. That she mattered to
him so vitally he had never known till this moment.
"What's the good of going into it!" she said at last desperately. "You
can guess--what it means"--a sudden crimson rushed to her cheeks--"to
be tied to a man--without honour--or principle--or refinement--who
presently seemed to me vile all through--in what he said--or what he did.
And I was at his mercy. I had married him in such a hurry he had a right
to despise me, and he used it! And when I resisted and turned against
him, then I found out what his temper meant." She raised her shoulders
with a gesture which needed no words. "Well--we got on somehow till my
little girl was born--"
Ellesborough started. Rachel turned on him her sad, swimming eyes. But
the mere mention of her child had given her back her dignity and strength
to go on. She became visibly more composed, as she stood opposite to him,
her beautiful dark head against the sunset clouds outside.
"She only lived a few weeks. Her death was largely owing to him. But
that's a long story. And after her death I couldn't stand it any more. I
ran away. And soon I heard that he had taken up with an Italian girl.
There was a large camp of Italians on the C.P.R., quite close to us. She
was the daughter of one of the foremen. So then my brother made me go to
his lawyers in Winnipeg. We collected evidence very easily. I got my
divorce eighteen months ago. The decree was made absolute last February.
So, of course, I'm quite free--quite--_quite_ free!"
She spoke the last words almost savagely, and after them she moved away
to the window looking on the down, and stood gazing through it, as though
she had forgotten Ellesborough's presence.
"The action was not defended?" he asked, in a low voice.