THE SHADOW ON THE WHEAT
It was the last week in July when, late on Saturday evening, John and
Mary drove back together from Hardrascliffe market. As the dog-cart
rounded the corner near the post office in Anderby, they saw a cluster
of men on the bridge that spanned a dry watercourse winding through the
village.
"More agitators," commented John. "That chap, Hunting, I suppose."
It was not "that chap Hunting," though he was there too, leaning
against the low parapet of the bridge with an air of easy patronage.
On the parapet, his vivid hair dulled in the failing light, but every
angle and movement of his slim figure unmistakable, stood David
Rossitur haranguing a lethargic group of labourers.
Mary sat erect, her hands tightly clasped, the colour drained from her
face. The cart rattled up to the bridge. One or two of the men standing
in the road gave way and nodded a sheepish "Good night." Mary looked
across them straight to David, where he stood with his figure darkly
outlined against a transparent evening sky.
For a flashing minute she caught and seemed to hold his eyes. She
thought he stopped speaking, but only for an instant. Then the pony
sped past, trotting cheerfully up the street. Mary sat very still in
the cart.
"Wasn't that the young fellow who was staying with us.--Rossitur?"
asked John. "My eyes aren't so good as they might be. I can't see very
well in this light."
"Yes, I think it was."
"What's he up to here, I wonder? With Hunting too. I don't like that
chap, Mary."
"Who--Rossitur?"
"No. I've got nothing against Rossitur. He's a bit of a clatterbrain,
but he's young. He'll learn sense. I mean that man Hunting. He's civil
spoken all right. And the union's all right, I suppose. They've got 'em
in other places. I expect we've got to put up with it."
"I suppose so."
What was David doing there? thought Mary. Why had he come again? He
was a journalist. Journalists didn't wander round the country-side
preaching in the villages, except, of course, when they needed a rest
or--a wild hope caught and held her spellbound--when a particular
inclination drew them.
"I was talking to Willerby at the market this afternoon. He's not a
bad chap, Mary, though he's no farmer. He says he's used to unions in
the West Riding where he came from. Where the masters and the men get
on all right, they don't seem to give much trouble. I suppose we were
bound to get them here one day."
John, thought Mary irritably, always spoke of trade unions as if they
were a mild though regrettable disease, like mumps or chicken-pox. He
had no eyes at all for their real significance. If he had read the
_Northern Clarion_ which now arrived every week at the Wold Farm with
the library books, he would soon have lost his easy optimism.
But Mary could not bother with John that night. She never knew
afterwards what replies she made to his occasional remarks, throughout
the evening meal. One point in John's favour was that he never wanted
to absorb her attention. It was Saturday, and Violet had cycled in to
Hardrascliffe with the young man of the moment, so Mary washed up the
tea-things alone in the lamplit kitchen.
So David was in Anderby. Why he had come or whence or for how long
mattered little. He was here, quite near to her, and it was an
illusion, then, that strange feeling she sometimes had, that she had
only dreamed of his existence. Those three days when he had stayed in
the house and she had talked to him and argued with him, and watched
the foolish tossing of his fiery head and made him pick up cotton reels
from the floor for her--all that had been real. She might even speak to
him again.
The plates she had washed lay neglected in the sink. The saucepan lay
unscrubbed in the cooling water.
No--she was wrong. It mattered very much why he had come. For there
was one explanation of his coming which would change the whole world.
Why should he not care? Those two meetings, when he had turned away
so queerly and been so embarrassed, was it just possible he had been
upset because she was a married woman and so beyond his grasp?
She was only twenty-eight. She was quite nice-looking. She had been
kind to him. She wasn't quite a fool.
Of course it was nonsense. A dowdy farmer's wife--not even quite a lady.
Yes, but then he was so queer. People weren't like that for nothing.
And then--she cared so....
A moth fluttered in through the window and flapped clumsily along the
ceiling. The last pale line of sunset died beyond the ridge of the
wold. Mary rose and shut the window.
Somewhere in the village was David.
Backwards and forwards in her mind that ceaseless questioning tossed
her from hope to despair.
"Why has he come? To see me?"
"Who are you that he should want to see you?"
Up the passage she heard John kicking off his boots. He called to her
from the foot of the stairs.
"You're a long time, honey. Ain't you finished yet?"
"Coming in a minute," she replied.
The water in the basin was cold. Yellow islands of congealing grease
floated on its unlovely surface. She emptied it away and turned to the
kettle for more.
It was a nuisance, this thing which took possession of her thoughts and
made her forget the water in the basin. No one had a right to claim so
much of her time, she on whose personality rested the well-being of a
whole village.
Angrily she wrung out the dish-cloth and hung it on a nail, yet, as
she walked up the passage with a queer revulsion of feeling she found
herself humming a tune, gay and elated as she had not been for weeks.
For he was in the village. She might see him to-morrow. To-morrow
anything might happen.
But afterwards in the dining-room sitting over her sewing and listening
to the ticking clock and the regular breathing of John who had fallen
asleep over his paper, her mood changed again. What was the use of
thinking about to-morrow, when she wanted him so much to-night?
Next day after morning service she loitered outside the church on the
brow of the hill talking, now to Mrs. Coast, now to Mrs. Armstrong.
When the Willerbys asked her to drive over with John to Highwold for
tea, she declined their invitation.
Miss Taylor approached her, blushing furiously and stammering that a
young man from the training college had at last come up to the scratch,
and would Mrs. Robson care to come and see his photograph?
Mrs. Robson considered. The way to Miss Taylor's lodging lay down the
village street. If one wanted to meet some one staying in Anderby the
likeliest place of encounter would be the street after morning service.
Mrs. Robson accepted the invitation.
The village street was full of shadows and strange unexpected
presences. Figures emerged from garden or cottage, to set her pulses
beating wildly, before she dropped to a flat level of disappointment as
Jack Greenwood or old Deane appeared. Footsteps on the path behind her,
that might herald his approach, died away drearily when the shepherd
or Bert Armstrong overtook her hesitating progress.
The grudging ten minutes she granted to the inspection of Miss Taylor's
young man were torture to her. While she was there, he might pass
unseen.
When one o'clock struck sleepily from the church tower she hastened
home to dinner, sick and exhausted, and closed behind her the gate that
shut the garden away from the village street.
"You expecting anyone this afternoon, honey?" asked John across the
cold beef.
"No. I don't think so."
"But you said to Mrs. Willerby when she asked us to go over----"
"Oh, I know. I thought then that Ursula and Foster said they were
motoring over this afternoon. I remembered afterwards it was next week."
"Decent chap, Willerby," murmured John wistfully, but he did not
suggest that they should go.
They stayed in the house and garden all the remaining hours of the
long, hot day. But nobody called.
Monday morning dragged on through a cloud of steam and scolding and the
scent of soap and wet linen. Mary had spent two sleepless nights. After
dinner she found the stifling atmosphere of the wash-house unendurable.
John had ridden over to Littledale. The clothes drooped lazily from
long lines in the sunlit paddock. Mary escaped to her room and changed
her dress.
Half an hour later she hurried through the stackyard and passed up the
chalk road that shimmered, dazzlingly white, between its borders of
sun-dried grass and ripening corn. There was no shade, but Mary never
noticed the sun beating down on her head and shoulders from a cloudless
sky. She hurried forward and upward, away from the village and mocking
street and the garden path up which nobody came. Once she paused in her
flight and pressed hot, dry fingers across her throbbing temples.
There were footsteps behind her, hurrying footsteps that stumbled along
the deep ruts of the uneven road.
She was sick of footsteps and voices and torturing shadows. Again she
resumed her rapid climb, shutting her ears to the sound behind her,
resolutely refusing to turn her head.
A low branch of hawthorn from the hedge reached out and caught at her
skirt. She wore an old-fashioned dress of green muslin with a skirt
that flowed about her like a cool, soft sea. It was not made for
scrambling walks across the fields. She bent to disentangle it with
trembling fingers. Again the footsteps sounded behind her, drawing
nearer up the road.
Impatiently she jerked her skirt free from the thorns, only to find
that in her reckless movement she had caught herself again by the
sleeve. She pricked her fingers, but the muslin remained twisted with
devilish ingenuity among the thorns. Tears of impotent anger trembled
in her eyes.
"Can I help, Mrs. Robson?" asked David.
For a little while she neither spoke nor turned, but stood quite still
staring at her torn sleeve and the dusty hawthorn.
"You _were_ in a hurry," panted David. "I called at the Wold Farm about
a quarter of an hour ago, and Violet said you had just gone out in your
best frock--she didn't know where. Then I met Shepherd and he said
you had gone along the field road towards Littledale. I've nearly had
a heart attack negotiating these young mountains of chalk. What does
happen to your roads in summer? I've never seen such ruts."
Still she did not speak, but stood quietly, wrapping her handkerchief
round her pricked finger, while golden hills and blue sky and green
hedge danced giddily about her.
"You're not angry with me, are you?" he asked anxiously. "You see I've
really come to apologize because I'm afraid you think I've behaved
rather badly. I don't know what you think about Hunting. I know you
always resented anyone else interfering in your village, though why,
Heaven knows, for it's really no more yours than anyone else's.
He's not a bad chap really--Hunting I mean--though his clothes are
appalling. And I did warn you, didn't I?"
She turned now.
"I'm not angry at all. How do you do, Mr. Rossitur?" she said primly,
holding out her hand.
"I'm all right, especially now I know you're not angry, or rather I
shall be all right when I've recovered from this obstacle race. But
you--I say, Mrs. Robson, you don't look a bit well."
"It's this heat," said Mary unsteadily. "I was helping with the washing
all the morning. It's very hot here."
"It must be. Look here, won't you sit down a minute? Unless of course
you are in a great hurry to go wherever you were going so quickly. You
do look tired."
He looked round for some shade. The sun was scorching the dusty grasses
at their feet. On the other side of the road the ripening oats rose
hardly waist-high above the shadowless ground.
"I was going to Littledale, but I don't think I'm in any particular
hurry. It is so hot. There's some shade on the other side of the hedge."
She led the way to a gate in the hedge. Beyond, the bank dropped
abruptly two or three feet to a tangle of tall sweet grasses, between
the dark hedge and solid golden wall of wheat. They closed the gate and
passed up the alley of grass till they came to the shelter of Mary's
hawthorn tree. There they sank down, shut away from the glaring heat in
a cool green world of scent and shadow.
"Oh, it's lovely here!" David laid aside his hat and ran his fingers
through his hair. "Days like this were meant for idleness. You've no
idea what bliss this is after Manchester."
"Is it? Is Manchester very bad?"
"Oh, it's not so bad really, I suppose, only rather stuffy, and I don't
much like any city except London. They're all such cheap imitations."
He lay back luxuriously and, plucking a tall scabious flower, pressed
its perfumed softness to his cheek.
"Is that why you came back?"
She had to say it.
"That and because Hunting wrote such glowing accounts of his work
here. I had to come down and see whether he was as good a liar as I
thought him."
"I suppose you're staying at the _Flying Fox_ again?"
She did not dare to ask, "How long are you staying?"
She sat very still, her arms clasped round her knees, her eyes staring
into the tremulous life and movement of the field of wheat before her.
"No. As a matter of fact your schoolmaster, Coast, offered to put me
up. I only stayed here Saturday night. You passed me, you know, on
the bridge when I was talking to some men in the evening. They're not
really easy to talk to--can't see beyond the immediate future. That's
the worst of working among men without education. You can't have
progress without imagination and you can't have imagination without a
basis of knowledge. We ought to begin by reforming the schools."
She held her glance tightly on the delicate tendrils of convolvulus
encircling the stalks of wheat, on the scarlet pimpernel among the
haze of gold and green, on anything but David--David lying among the
fragrant grasses, as much at ease as his strenuous vitality would ever
let him be.
"Oh, we'll just have to go on doing the best we can--organizing first,
educating after. It's the wrong way round of course, but it seems the
only way at present. When I was in Cattlesby yesterday----"
"Oh, you were in Cattlesby yesterday?"
So that was why he had not come.
"Yes, I went there directly after breakfast and did not come back
till to-day. I'm leaving to-night by the six o'clock train from
Hardrascliffe."
"I suppose you had business here to do before you left, otherwise it's
surely rather out of your way."
"It is. Horribly." He laughed, at her or at himself. She could not
tell. "Six miles out of my way along a dusty disagreeable road, with
the Hardrascliffe hills, and the springs broken in the saddle of my
bicycle. What do you think of that?"
"That it must have been very important business."
"It was. Look here, Mrs. Robson, I've been thinking an awful lot about
you lately."
One quick little indrawing of breath and she sat still as a statue.
"I know I behaved rather badly last time I was at Anderby. You were
splendid to me. I shall never forget it. Then I put my foot in it so
badly with Mrs. Bannister and I'm afraid you may have thought I was
rude, hurrying away like that to the inn. But you know, I couldn't
stay. It wouldn't have been right. It wouldn't really.... Of course
you've got to oppose me, I suppose, and I've got to oppose you, and
unless you give up all this"--he waved his hands at the fields around
him--"I don't see how we can be anything but enemies. I'm doing my
best to knock down the things you think are fine but I think are an
abomination----"
"An abomination?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't think
any the less of you because I hate the things you stand for--patronage
and capitalism and the old Tory school and all that sort of thing. I
think you're splendid." With his irrepressible tendency to gesture he
sprang up and confronted her. "Of course I think you're splendid. Why,
I----"
Mary rose too and they stood face to face between the wheat and the
hedgerow. Hot waves of perfume blew from the ripening corn across their
flaming cheeks. In the hawthorn tree a thrush was singing.
"Do you really mean that?" asked Mary.
"Why, of course I do!"
"Splendid, David? How splendid? What does that mean?"
The glimmering bowl of sky closed in upon them. The golden hills
crouched waiting.
"Why it means----"
Earnest, excited, longing to clear himself from the last taint of
ungraciousness, David flung out his arms with an impulsive movement.
One moment Mary stood waiting, wild hope and joy questioning in her
eyes. Then she bent forward.
"Oh, David, David!" she whispered. "Do you mean that?"
Somehow, she lay in his arms. Somehow, their lips met. For Mary, time
stood still. Her life hung poised on one consummate happiness, that
knew neither past nor future.
A slight noise in the road above her broke the spell. She moved away.
They stood facing one another, David flushed and panting, Mary, white
and still, while a shadow fell across the wheat, and slowly moved above
them. David's eyes were on Mary's frozen face, but Mary, looking
past him, saw the back of John's head and shoulders as he rode along
the grass at the other side of the hedge that bordered the road from
Littledale. Whether John had seen them as he approached, she did not
know.
They stood motionless, until John's horse had rounded a bend in the
road. Then Mary spoke:
"I think you had better go," she whispered. "You may miss your train."
Silently he stooped for his hat, then stood there, hesitating, as
though there was something he would say.
"Please, go," she whispered again. "I would rather."
He turned and left her. The last she heard of him was the sound of his
uneven footsteps on the broken road. Once, they stopped and her heart
stood still as she awaited his return. Then they passed on again, and
died away down the hill.
Two hours later, Mary opened again the door of the Wold Farm. The house
was in confusion. Violet came to greet her with quivering lips.
"Oh, m'm," she cried, "do come, Mr. Robson's had a stroke."