The frost held. A sun of pearl and fire rose over the hill, as the stars
finally faded out in the winter morning, and a brilliant rime lay
sparkling on all the pastures and on the slopes of the down. The
brilliance had partly vanished from the lower grounds when Janet started
on her way; but on the high commons, winter was at its gayest and
loveliest. The distant woods were a mist of brown and azure, encircling
the broad frost-whitened spaces; the great single beeches and oaks under
which Spenser or Sidney--the great Will himself--might have walked, shot
up, magnificent, into a clear sky, proudly sheltering the gnarled thorns
and furze-bushes which marched beside and round them, like dwarfs in a
pageant.
Half way up the hill, Janet came across old Betts bringing down a small
cart-full of furze for fodder, and she stopped to speak to him. A little
later on, nearer to the camp she overtook Dempsey, who rather officiously
joined her, and assuming at once that she was in quest of the Camp
Commandant, directed her to a short cut leading straight to
Ellesborough's quarters. There was a slight something in the manner of
both men that jarred on Janet--as though their lips said one thing and
their eyes another--furtive in the case of Betts, a trifle insolent
in that of Dempsey. She with her tragic knowledge guessed uncomfortably
at what it meant. Dempsey--as she had made up her mind after ten minutes'
talk with him--was a vain gossip. It had been madness on Rachel's part to
give him the smallest hold on her. Very likely he had not yet actually
betrayed her--his hope of favours to come might have been sufficient to
prevent that. But his self-importance would certainly show itself
somehow--in a hint or a laugh. He had probably already roused in the
village mind a prying curiosity, a suspicion of something underhand,
which might alter Rachel's whole relation to her neighbours. For once
give an English country-side reason to suspect a scandal, and it will
pluck it bare in time, with a slow and secret persistence.
Well, after all, if the situation became disagreeable, Rachel would only
have to choose Ellesborough's country as her own, and begin her new life
there.
_Supposing that all went well!_ Janet's mind went through some painful
alterations of confidence and fear, as she walked her bicycle along the
rough forest-track leading to Ellesborough's hut. She believed him to be
deeply in love with Rachel, and the spiritual passion in her seemed to
realize in the man's inmost nature, behind all his practical ability,
and his short business manner, powers of pity and tenderness like her
own. But if she were wrong? If this second revelation put too great a
strain upon one brought up in an exceptionally strict school where
certain standards of conduct were simply taken for granted?
Mystic, and puritan as she was, there were moments when Janet felt
her responsibility almost unbearable. Rachel deserted--Rachel in
despair--Rachel turning on the woman who had advised her to her
undoing--all these images were beating on Janet's tremulous sense, as the
small military hut where Ellesborough and two of his junior officers
lived came into view, together with that wide hollow of the forestry camp
where he and Rachel had first met. The letter in her pocket seemed a
living and sinister thing. She had still power to retain it--to keep it
imprisoned.
A lady in the dress of the Women's Forestry Corps appeared on another
path leading to Ellesborough's hut. Janet recognized Mrs. Fergusson,
and was soon greeted by a shout of welcome.
"Well, so Miss Henderson's engaged to our Captain!" said Mrs. Fergusson,
with a smiling countenance, as they shook hands. "The girls here, and
I, are awfully interested. The camp began it! But do you want the
Captain? I'm afraid he isn't here."
Janet's countenance fell.
"I thought I should be sure to find him in the dinner hour."
"No, he went up to town by the first train this morning on some business
with the Ministry. We expect him back about three."
It was not one o'clock. Janet pondered what to do.
"You wanted to see him?" said Mrs. Fergusson, full of sympathy.
"I brought a letter for him. If I leave it, will he be sure to get it
directly he returns?"
"His servant's in the hut. Let's talk to him."
Mrs. Fergusson rapped at the door of the hut, and walked in. An elderly
batman appeared.
"I have a letter for Captain Ellesborough--an important letter--on
business," said Janet. "I was to wait for an answer. But as he isn't
here, where shall I leave it, so that he will be certain to get it?"
"On his table, if you please, ma'am," said the soldier, opening the door
of the Captain's small sitting-room--"I'll see that he gets it."
"It'll be quite safe?" said Janet anxiously, placing it herself in a
prominent place on the writing-table.
"Lor, yes, ma'am. Nobody comes in here but me, when the Captain's away.
I'll tell him of it directly he comes home."
"May I just write a little note myself? I expected to find Captain
Ellesborough in."
The servant handed her a sheet of paper. She wrote--"I brought Rachel's
letter, and am very disappointed not to see you. Come at once. Don't
delay. Janet Leighton."
She slipped it into an envelope, which she addressed and left beside the
other. Then she reluctantly left the hut with Mrs. Fergusson.
"I am so sorry you didn't find him," said that lady. "Was it something
about the wedding?" she added, smiling, her feminine curiosity getting
the better of her.
"Oh, no--not yet," said Janet, startled.
"Well, I suppose it won't be long," laughed Mrs. Fergusson. "He's
desperately in love, you know!"
Janet smiled in return, and Mrs. Fergusson, delighted to have the chance,
broke out into praises of her Commandant.
"You see, we women who are doing all this new work with men, we know a
jolly deal more about them than we ever did before. I can tell you, it
searches us out, this joint life--both women and men. In this camp you
can't hide what you are--the sort of man--or the sort of woman. And
there isn't a woman in this camp, if she's been here any time, who
wouldn't trust the Captain for all she's worth--who wouldn't tell him her
love-affairs, or her debts--or march up to a machine-gun, if he told her.
In a sense, they're in love with him, because--as you've no doubt found
out, he has a way with him! But they all know that he's never been
anything to them but the best of Commandants, and a good friend. Oh, I
could never have run this camp but for him. He and I'll go together! Of
course we're shutting up very soon."
So the pleasant Irishwoman ran on, as she walked beside Janet and her
bicycle to the top of the hill. Janet listened and smiled. Her own mind
said ditto to it all. But nevertheless, the more Ellesborough was set on
a pinnacle by this enthusiastic friend and spectator of his daily life,
the more Rachel's friend trembled for Rachel. A lover "not too bright and
good" to understand--and forgive--that was what was wanted.
She reached the farm-gate about two o'clock, and Rachel was there,
waiting for her. But before they met, Rachel watching her approach, saw
that there was no news for her.
"He wasn't there?" she said, drearily, as Janet reached her.
Janet explained, and they walked up the farm lane together.
"I would have waited if I could," she said in distress. "But it would
have looked strange. Mrs. Fergusson would have suspected something
wrong."
"Oh no, you couldn't have waited," said Rachel, decidedly. "Well!"--she
threw her arms out in a great stretch--"it's done. In half an hour he'll
be reading the letter. It's like waiting for one's execution, isn't it?
Nothing can stop it; I may be dead before tea!" She gave a wild laugh.
"Rachel!"
"Well, that's how I feel. If he gives me up, it will be death--though I
dare say I shall go on fussing round the farm, and people will still talk
to me as if I were alive. But!"--she shrugged her shoulders.
"He won't give you up--" said Janet, much troubled--"because--because
he's a good man."
"All the more reason. If I were he, I should give me up. Shall I tell you
a queer thing, Janet? I hate Roger, as much as I can hate anybody. It
would be a great relief to me if I heard he were dead. And yet at the
same time I see--oh yes, I see quite plainly--that I treated him badly.
He told me so the other night--and it is so--it's _true_. I never had the
least patience with him. And now he's dying--at least he says so--and
though I hate him--though I pray I may never, never see him again, yet
I'm sorry for him. Isn't that strange?"
She looked at Janet with a queer flickering defiance, which was also a
kind of remorse, in her eyes.
"No, it isn't strange."
"Why not?--when I hate him?"
"One can be sorry even for those one hates. I suppose God is," Janet
added, after a pause.
Rachel made a little face of scorn.
"Why should God hate any one? He made us. He's responsible. He must have
known what He was doing. If He really pitied us, would He have made us at
all?"
Janet made a little protesting sound--a sound of pain.
"Does it give you the shivers, old woman, when I talk like that?" Rachel
slipped her hand affectionately through Janet's arm. "Well, I won't,
then. But if--" she caught her breath a little--"if George casts me off,
don't expect me to sing psalms and take it piously. I don't know myself
just lately--I seem quite strange to myself."
And Janet, glancing at her sideways, wondered indeed where all that
rosy-cheeked, ripe bloom had gone, which so far had made the constant
charm of Rachel Henderson. Instead a bloodless face, with pinched lines,
and heavy-lidded eyes! What a formidable thing was this "love," that she
herself had never known, though she had had her quiet dreams of husband
and children, like her fellows.
Rachel, however, would not let herself be talked with or pitied. She
walked resolutely to the house, and went off to the fields to watch
Halsey cutting and trimming a hedge.
"If he doesn't come before dark," she said, under her breath, to Janet,
before setting off--"it will be finished. If he does--"
She hurried away without finishing the sentence, and was presently taking
a lesson from old Halsey, in what is fast becoming one of the rarest of
the rural arts. But in little more than half an hour, Janet bringing in
the cows, saw her return and go into the house. The afternoon was still
lovely--the sky, a pale gold, with thin bars of grey cloud lying across
it, and the woods, all delicate shades of brown and purple, with their
topmost branches clear against the gold. The old red walls and tiled
roofs of the farm, the fields, the great hay and straw stacks, were all
drenched in the soft winter light.
Rachel went up to her room, and sat down before the bare deal
dressing-table which held her looking-glass, and the very few articles of
personal luxury she possessed; a pair of silver-backed brushes and a
hand-glass that had belonged to an aunt, a small leather case in which
she kept some modest trinkets--a pearl brooch, a bracelet or two, and a
locket that had been her mother's--and, standing on either side of the
glass, two photographs of her father and mother.
There was a clock on the mantelpiece. "Nearly four o'clock--" she
thought--"I'll give it an hour. He'd send--if he couldn't come, and he
wanted to come--but if nothing happens--I shall know what to think."
As this passed through her mind, she opened one of the drawers of the
dressing-table, in which she kept her gloves and handkerchiefs. Suddenly
she perceived at the back of the drawer a small leathern case. The colour
rushed into her face. She took it out and ran quickly down the stairs to
the kitchen. Janet and the girls were busy milking. The coast was clear.
A bright fire which Janet had just made up was burning in the kitchen.
Rachel went up to it and thrust the leathern case into the red core of
it. Some crackling--a disagreeable smell--and the little thing had soon
vanished. Rachel went slowly upstairs again, and locked the door of her
room behind her. The drawer of the dressing-table was still open, and
there was visible in it the object she was really in search of, when the
little leathern case caught her eye--a small cloth-bound book marked
"Diary."
She took it out, and sat with it in her hand, thinking. How was it she
had never yet destroyed that case? The Greek cameo brooch it held--Dick
Tanner's gift to her--how vividly she recalled her first evening alone at
the farm, when she had dropped it into the old well, and had listened to
the splash of it in the summer silence. She remembered thinking vaguely,
and no doubt foolishly, that the cameo would drop more heavily and more
certainly without the case, which was wood, though covered with leather,
and she had therefore taken the brooch out, and had probably put back the
case absently into her pocket. And thence it had found its way back among
her things, how she did not know.
The little adventure had excited and unnerved her. It seemed somehow of
evil omen that she should have come across that particular thing at this
moment. Opening the diary with a rather trembling hand, she looked
through it. She was not orderly or systematic enough to keep a diary
regularly, and it only contained a few entries, at long intervals,
relating mostly to her married life--and to the death of her child. She
glanced through them with that strange sense of unreality--of standing
already outside her life, of which she had spoken to Janet. There were
some blank pages at the end of the book; and, in her restlessness, just
to pass the time and to find some outlet for the storm of feeling within,
she began to write, at first slowly, and then very rapidly.
"He must have got my letter by now. I sent it by Janet this morning. He
wasn't there--but by now he must have got home--he is probably reading
it at this moment. Whatever happens to me--I want just to say this--to
write it down now, while I can--I shall never blame George, and I shall
always love him--with all my heart, with all my soul. He has the right to
say he can't trust me--I told him so in my letter this morning--that I am
not fit to be his wife. He has the right--and very likely he will say it.
The terrible thing is that I don't trust myself. If I look forward and
ask myself--shall I always feel as I do now?--I can't honestly be sure.
There is something in me that wants change--always something new--some
fresh experience. I can't even imagine the time when I shouldn't love
George. The mere thought of losing him is awful--unspeakable. But yet--I
will write it down frankly!--nothing has ever lasted with me very long.
It is like the farm. I used to love every minute of the day, every bit of
the work, however dull and dirty it was; and now--I love it still--but I
seem already--sometimes--to be looking forward to the day when I shall be
tired of it.
"Why am I made like that? I don't know. But I can't feel that I am
responsible.
"Perhaps if George forgives me, I shall be so happy that everything will
change--my own character first of all. That is my hope. For though I
suppose I am vain--though I like people to admire me and make much of
me--I am not really in love with myself at all. If I were, I couldn't be
in love with George--we are so different.
"I don't feel yet that I know him. Perhaps now I never shall. I often
find myself wishing that he had something to confess to me. I would
hardly let him--he should never humble himself to me. But to feel that I
_could_ forgive him something, and that he would owe me something--would
be very sweet, very heavenly. I would make it so easy for him. Is he
feeling like that towards me? 'Poor child--she was very young--and so
miserable!'
"I mustn't write like this--it makes me cry. There is a beautiful yellow
sunset outside, and the world seems very still. He must be here soon--or
a messenger. Janet asked him not to wait.
"After all, I don't think I am so changeable. I have just been running
myself down--but I don't really believe I could ever change--towards him.
Oh, George!--George!--my George!--come to me!--don't give me up. George,
darling, you could do anything with me you liked--don't despair of me!
In the Gospel, it was the bad women who were forgiven because they loved
'much.' Now I understand why. Because love makes new. It is so terribly
_strong_. It is either a poison--or life--immortal life. I have never
been able to believe in the things Janet believes in. But I think I do
now believe in immortality--in something within you that can't die--when
once it has begun to live."
* * * * *
And then she laid her pencil down--and sat with the book on her
knee--looking towards the gold and grey of the sky--the tears running
quietly down her cheeks.
* * * * *
Meanwhile, Hastings had come hurriedly into the shippen, where Janet and
the two girls were milking. He came to stand beside her, silent, but
fidgeting so, that she presently looked up in astonishment.
"Did you want me?"
"I wanted to tell you something," he said in a low voice, stooping over
her--"Don't let the girls hear. But that man's been seen again. The
tramp."
Janet started. She jumped up, asked Betty, who had finished, to take her
place, and went with Hastings out of the barn.
"There are two or three people think they've seen him lately," he said
hurriedly. "A man from Dobson's farm"--(the farm which lay between
Great End and the village)--"who was on the hill yesterday evening, just
before dark, was certain he saw somebody hanging about the back of the
farm in a queer way--"
"Last night?" echoed Janet.
"Yes. And there are two people who remember meeting a man on the X--road
who said he was going to Walton End. And the police have been inquiring,
but nobody at Walton End knows anything about such a man. However, they
have a description of him at last. A tall, dark fellow--gentlemanly
manners--seems delicate. I don't like the look of it, Miss Janet. Seems
to me as though it weren't just a tramp, hanging about for what he can
steal. Do you know of anybody who has a down on Miss Henderson--who'd
like to frighten her, or put blackmail on her?"
Janet considered. She was tempted to take the faithful fellow to some
extent into her confidence, but she rapidly decided against it. She
suggested that he should himself sleep for a few nights at the
farm, and carefully examine the neighbourhood of it, last thing; and that
she should bicycle over to Millsborough at once, and have some further
talk with the Superintendent of Police there.
"Besides--I'd like to be out of the way," she thought. "They won't want
anybody hanging round!"
For there was steadily growing up in her a blissful confidence that all
would be once more settled and settled for good, before the night fell.
Spectators were entirely out of place! Nor would she disturb Rachel's
mind by any talk just then of what seemed to be a fresh attempt at
terrorism on the part of her wretched husband. Hastings would be in
charge for the moment, and Ellesborough would be on the spot for
consultation before darkness had really set in.
So as before, she told Hastings not to alarm Miss Henderson. But he was
not to leave the farm-buildings, and possibly the Superintendent of
Police would return with her. "And then--either Rachel or the Captain
will have to tell the police the truth!" Just as she was starting, Rachel
came downstairs in some surprise.
"Where are you off to?"
"I have forgotten something I wanted from Millsborough. I shall be back
in an hour or so."
Rachel abstractedly nodded assent. The golden light from the west
transfigured her, as she stood in the doorway. She was pale, but it
seemed to Janet that she was no longer excited--that there was in her
too something of the confidence which had sprung up in the heart of her
friend. She had the look of one for whom the Valley of the Shadow is
past, and her beauty had never struck Janet as it struck her at that
moment. Its grosser elements seemed all refined away. The girlish look
was quite gone; she seemed older and graver; but there breathed about
her "a diviner air."
Janet, who was much the shorter, mounted on the step to kiss her.
Caresses were not at all common between them, but Rachel returned it, and
their eyes met in a quiet look which said what her lips forbore. Then
Janet departed, and Rachel waved to her as she passed through the gate.
Hastings crossed the yard, and Rachel called to him.
"Are you off soon?"
"No, Miss. I shall sleep over the stable. That horse wants looking
after."
Rachel acquiesced, with a vague feeling of satisfaction, and Hastings
disappeared within the stable opposite.
She went back into the sitting-room, which was still flooded with the
last reflections from the western sky beyond the fields, though the light
was fading rapidly, and the stars were coming out. What a strange effect
it was--she suddenly noticed it afresh--that of the two large windows
exactly facing each other in so small a room! One had an odd sense of
being indoors and out, at the same time; the down on one side, the
farm-yard on the other, and in the midst, the fire, the table and chairs,
the pictures, and the red carpet, seemed all parts of the same scene.
She made up the fire. She brought in a few Xmas roses, from a border
under the kitchen window, and arranged them in a glass on the table. It
was then time to draw the blinds. But she could not make up her mind to
shut out the saffron sky, or the view of the road.
Something in the distance!--an approaching figure, and the noise of a
motor-bicycle. She caught at a chair a moment, as though to steady
herself; and then she went to the window, and stood there watching. He
saw her quite plainly in the level light, and leaving his bicycle at the
gate, he came towards her. There was no one in the yard, and before he
entered he stood a moment, bare-headed, gazing at her, as she stood
framed in the window. Everything that she wished to know was written in
his face. A little sob broke the silence of the sitting-room.
Then he opened the doors and closed them behind him. Without a word she
seemed to glide over the room towards him; and now, she was on his
breast, gathered close against the man's passionately beating heart.
Neither spoke--neither was able to speak.
Then--suddenly--a crash of breaking glass--a shot. The woman he was
holding fell from Ellesborough's arms; he only just caught her. Another
shot--which grazed his own coat.
"Rachel!"
It was a cry of horror. Her eyes were closing. But she still smiled at
him, as he laid her on the floor, imploring her to speak. There was a
stain of blood on the lips, and through them came a few shuddering
gasps.