"There was that wagon--and the boy--in the storm." "Yes--what then?"
"Well--what then? The boy scarcely saw me." "He did see you." "And if he
did--it is the commonest thing in a Canadian winter to be caught by a
storm, to ask shelter from a neighbour." "Still--even if he drew no
malicious conclusion, he saw you--alone in that farm with Dick Tanner,
and he probably knew your name." "How should he know my name?" "He had
seen you before--you had seen him before." "I didn't know his name--I
don't know it now." "No--but in passing your farm once, he had dropped a
parcel for a neighbour--and you had seen him once--at a railway station."
"Is it the least likely that I shall ever see him again--or that he
remembers seeing me at Dick Tanner's door?" "Not likely, perhaps--but
possible--quite possible."
And while this question and answer passed through the brain, the woman
sitting up in bed seemed to be transported to a howling wintry scene of
whirling snow--a November twilight--and against that background, the hood
of a covered wagon, a boy holding the reins, the heavy cape on his
shoulders white with snow, the lamps of the wagon shining dimly on him,
and making a kind of luminous mist round the cart. She heard a parley,
saw a tall and slender man with fair hair go out to the boy with hot
milk and bread, caught directions as to the road, and saw herself as a
half-hidden figure in the partially open door.
And then afterwards--the warm farm kitchen shutting out the storm--a man
at her knees--his arms round her--his kisses on her cheek.
And again the irrevocableness of it closed down upon her. It could
_never_ be undone: that was the terrible commonplace which held her in
its grasp. It could never be wiped out from one human mind, which must
bear the burden of it as best it could, till gradually--steadily--the
life, had been killed out of the ugly, haunting thing, and it had been
buried--drowned, out of sight and memory.
But the piteous dialogue began again.
"How _could_ I have resisted? I was so miserable--so lonely--so weak!"
"You didn't love him!" "No--but I was alone in the world." "Well, then,
tell George Ellesborough--he is a reasonable man--he would understand."
"I can't--I _can't_! I have deceived him up till now by passing as
unmarried. If I confess this, too, there will be no chance for me. He'll
never trust me in anything!--he'll suspect everything I do or say--even
if he goes on loving me. And I couldn't bear it!--nor could he."
And so at last the inward debate wore itself out, and sleep, sudden and
deep, came down upon Rachel Henderson. When she woke in the morning it
was to cleared skies both in her own mind and in the physical world. The
nightmare through which she had passed seemed to her now unreal, even a
little absurd. Her nerves were quieted by sleep, and she saw plainly what
she had to do. That "old, unhappy, far-off thing" lurking in the
innermost depth of memory had nothing more to do with her. She would look
it calmly in the face, and put it finally--for ever--away. But of her
marriage she would tell everything--everything!--to George Ellesborough,
and he should deal with her as he pleased.
* * * * *
The day was misty and still. October, the marvellous October of this
year, was marching on. Every day, Foch on the battlefield of France and
Belgium was bringing down the old Europe, and clearing the ground for the
new. In English villages and English farms, no less than in the big
towns, there was ferment and excitement, though it showed but little.
Would the boys be home by Christmas--the sons, the brothers, the
husbands? What would the change be like--the life after the war? If there
were those who yearned and prayed for it--there were those who feared it.
The war had done well for some, and hideously for others. And all through
the play of individual interests and desires, and even in the dullest
minds there ran the intoxicating sense of Victory, of an England greater
and more powerful than even her own sons and daughters had dared to
dream--an England which knew herself now, by the stern test of the four
years' struggle, to be possessed of powers and resources, spiritual,
mental, physical, which amazed herself. In all conscious minds, brooding
on the approaching time, there rose the question: "What are we going to
do with it?" and even in the unconscious, the same thought was present,
as a vague disturbing impulse.
Janet had just read the war telegrams to Rachel, who had come down late,
complaining of a headache; but when Janet--the reserved and equable
Janet--after going through the news of the recapture of Ostend,
Zeebrugge, and Bruges, broke into the passionate, low-spoken comment:
"The Lord is King--be the people never so unquiet!" or could not, for
tears, finish the account of the entry into recaptured Lille, and the joy
of its inhabitants, Rachel sat irresponsive--or apparently so.
How would it affect Ellesborough--this astounding news? Would it take him
from her the sooner, or delay his going? That was all she seemed capable
of feeling.
Janet was troubled by her look and attitude, and being well aware that
the two had had a long _tête-à-tête_ the day before, wondered how things
were going. But she said nothing; and after breakfast Rachel joined the
two girls in the potato-field, and worked as hard as they, hour after
hour. But her usual gaiety was gone, and the girls noticed at once the
dark rims under her eyes. They wondered secretly what Miss Henderson's
"friend" had been doing. For that the "Cap'n" was courting their employer
had long been plain to them. Betty, of course, had a "friend," the young
soldier whose sick leave was nearly up, and the child's deep velvety eyes
were looking nearly as tired as Miss Henderson's. While Jenny, too, the
timid, undeveloped Jenny had lately begun to take an interest in a
"friend," a young fellow belonging to Ellesborough's forestry camp whom
she had met in Millsborough the day of the Harvest Festival. They had
hardly exchanged half an hour's real conversation. But he had bought her
some sweets at Millsborough, and walked a bit of the way home with her.
Then she had seen him in the village once or twice. He had some relations
there--there was some talk of him, and that old murder at the farm--she
didn't know rightly what it was. But she felt somehow that Miss Henderson
wouldn't want to have him about--Miss Henderson didn't like talk of the
murder--so Jenny had never asked him to look her up. But her raw,
childish mind was full of him, and the ferments of sex were stirring.
In the secret opinion of both girls, "friends" were quite as much pain as
pleasure. No girl could do without them; but they were pretty certain to
cause heart-aches, to make a girl wish at some time or other that she had
never been born. A London factory-girl would have expressed it in the
Cockney way: "Blokes are no good--but you must have a bloke!"
The two girls then concluded that Captain Ellesborough had been causing
trouble, as all men did, at some point; and being sympathetic little
souls, they worked especially hard in the potato-field, and would not
allow Rachel to carry the heavier baskets to the "clamp."
Meanwhile Janet had been wrestling with old Halsey, till he had very
reluctantly yielded to her persuasion, and returned to work.
"I'm not the man I wor," he confided to Peter Betts, as they were eating
their dinner under a hedge in the damp October sunshine. "When I wor a
young man, I wouldn't ha' minded them things, not if it was iver so. But
now they do give me the shivers in my inside."
"What do?" said Peter Betts, with a mouthful of cold bacon. He was still
greatly in the dark as to why Halsey had left work so early in the
afternoon the day before, and why he was now in such a gruff and gloomy
mood. There was indeed a rumour in the village that old Halsey had seen
"summat," but as Halsey had gone to bed immediately after Miss Leighton
had had her say with him, and had refused to be "interviewed" even by
his wife, there was a good deal of uncertainty even in the mind of his
oldest pal, Peter Betts.
"Why--ghostisses!" said Halsey, with a frown, removing his pipe for a
moment to give emphasis to the word. "I don't see as a man can be
expected to deal with ghostisses. Anythin' else yer like in a small
way--mad dogs, or bulls, or snakes, where they keep 'em, which, thank the
Lord, they don't in these parts--but not _them_."
"What did yer see?" said Betts, after a few ruminating pulls.
"Well, I saw old Watson, the keeper, as was murdered sixty years since,
'at's what I saw," said Halsey with slow decisiveness.
"An' what might be like?" asked Betts, with equal deliberation. The day
was mild and sunny; the half-ploughed field on which they had been
working lay alternatively yellow in the stubbles and a rich brown purple
in the new turned furrows under the autumn noon. A sense of well-being
had been diffused in the two old men by food and rest. Halsey's tongue
grew looser.
"Well, I saw a man come creepin' an' crouchin' down yon grass road"--(it
was visible from where they sat, as a green streak on the side of the
hill)--"same as several people afore me 'as seen 'um--same as they allus
say old Watson must ha' come after Dempsey shot 'im. He wor shot in the
body. The doctors as come to look at 'im fust foun' that out. An' if
ye're shot in the body, I understan', yo naterally double up a bit if yo
try to walk. Well--that's jes' how I saw 'im--crouchin' along. Yo
remember it wor a dull evenin' yesterday--an' it wor gettin' dark, though
it worn't dark. It wor not much after fower, by my old watch--but I
couldn't see 'im at all plain. I wor in Top-End field--you know?--as
leads up to that road. An' I watched 'im come along making for that
outside cart-shed--that 'un that's back to back wi' the shippen, where
they foun' Watson lyin'. An' I wor much puzzled by the look on 'im. I
didn't think nothink about old Watson, fust of all--I didn't know what to
think. I was right under the hedge wi' the horses; 'ee couldna' ha' seen
me--an' I watched 'im. He stopped, onst or twice, as though he wor
restin' hisself--pullin' 'isself together--and onst I 'eered 'im cough--"
Halsey looked round suddenly on his companion as though daring him to
mock.
Betts, however, could not help himself. He gave an interrupting and
sceptical chuckle.
"Ghostisses don't cough, as ever I 'eered on."
"And why shouldn't they?" said Halsey testily. "If they can do them
other things they'd used to do when livin'--walkin' an' seein' an'
such-like--why not coughin'?"
Betts shook his head.
"Never 'eered on it," he said, with conviction.
"Well, anyways I seed him come down to that shed, an' then I lost 'im.
But I 'ad the creeps somehow and I called to Jenny to come an' take the
'orses. An' then I went after 'im. But there was all the field an' the
lane to cross, and when I come to the shed, there wasn't no one and
nothink to be seen--excep'--"
The old man paused, and again looked doubtfully at his companion.
"Well?" said Betts eagerly, his philosophic attitude giving way a little.
"Excep'--a large patch o' blood--_fresh blood_--I touched it--on one of
them ole sacks lyin' near the cart," said Halsey slowly. "An' it worn't
there in the afternoon, for I moved the sacks mysel'."