Harvest - Mrs. Humphry Ward (free novels .TXT) 📗

I

Two old labourers came out of the lane leading to Great End Farm. Both carried bags slung on sticks over their shoulders. One, the eldest and tallest, was a handsome fellow, with regular features and a delicately humorous mouth. His stoop and his slouching gait, the gray locks also, which straggled from under his broad hat, showed him an old man--probably very near his old-age pension. But he carried still with him a look of youth, and he had been a splendid creature in his time. The other was short of stature and of neck, bent besides by field work. A broadly-built, clumsy man, with something gnome-like about him, and the cheerful look of one whose country nerves had never known the touch of worry or long sickness. The name of the taller man was Peter Halsey, and Joseph Batts was his companion.

It was a fine July evening, with a cold north wind blowing from the plain which lay stretched to their right. Under the unclouded sun, which by its own "sun-time" had only reached half-past four in the afternoon, though the clock in the village church had already struck half-past five, the air was dry and parching, and the fields all round, the road itself, and the dusty hedges showed signs of long drought.

"It du want rain," said Peter Halsey, looking at a crop of oats through an open gate, "it du want rain--_bad_."

"Aye!" said the other, "that it du. Muster Shenstone had better 'a read the prayer for rain lasst Sunday, I'm thinkin', than all them long ones as ee _did_ read."

Halsey was silent a moment, his half-smiling eyes glancing from side to side. At last he said slowly,--

"We du be prayin' a lot about ower sins, and Muster Shenstone is allus preachin' about 'em. But it's the sins o' the _Garmins_ I be thinkin' of. If it hadn't a bin for the sins o' the Garmins my Tom wouldn't ha' lost 'is right hand."

"An' ower Jim wouldn't be goin' into them trenches next November as ever is," put in Batts. "It's the sins o' the Garmins as ha' done _that_, an' nothin' as you or I ha' done, Peter."

Halsey shook his head assentingly.

"Noa--for all that pratin', pacifist chap was sayin' lasst week. I didn't believe a word ee said. 'Yis,' I says, 'if you want this war to stop, I'm o' your mind,' I says, 'but when you tells me as _England_ done it--you'm--'"

The short man burst into a cackling laugh.

"'You'm a liar!' Did you say that, Peter?"

Peter fenced a little.

"There be more ways nor one o' speakin' your mind," he said at last. "But I stood up to un. Did you hear, Batts, as Great End Farm is let?"

The old man turned an animated look on his companion.

"Well, for sure!" said Batts, astonished. "An' who's the man?"

"It's not a man. It's a woman."

"A woman!" repeated Batts, wondering. "Well, these be funny times to live in, when the women go ridin' astride an' hay-balin', an' steam-ploughin', an' the Lord knows what. And now they must be takin' the farms, and turnin' out the men. Well, for sure."

A mild and puzzled laughter crossed the speaker's face.

Halsey nodded.

"An' now they've got the vote. That's the top on't! My old missis, she talks poltiks now to me of a night. I don't mind her, now the childer be all gone. But I'd ha' bid her mind her own business when they was yoong an' wanted seein' to."

"Now, what can a woman knoa about poltiks?" said Batts, still in the same tone of pleasant rumination. "It isn't in natur. _We_ warn't given the producin' o' the babies--we'd ha' cried out if we 'ad been!"

A chuckle passed from one old man to the other.

"Well, onyways the women is all in a flutter about the votin'," said Halsey, lighting his pipe with old hands that shook. "An' there's chaps already coomin' round lookin' out for it."

"You bet there is!" was Batts's amused reply. "But they'll take their toime, will the women. 'Don't you try to hustle-bustle me like you're doin',' say my missus sharp-like to a Labour chap as coom round lasst week, 'cos yo' won't get nothin' by it.' And she worn't no more forthcomin' to the Conservative man when ee called."

"Will she do what _you_ tell her, Batts?" asked Halsey, with an evident interest in the question.

"Oh, Lord, no!" said Batts placidly, "shan't try. But now about this yoong woman an' Great End?--"

"Well, I ain't heared much about her--not yet awhile. But they say as she's nice-lookin', an' Muster Shentsone ee said as she'd been to college somewhere, where they'd larn't her farmin'."

Batts made a sound of contempt.

"College!" he said, with a twitching of the broad nostrils which seemed to spread over half his face. "_They_ can't larn yer farmin'!"

"She's been on a farm too somewhere near Brighton, Muster Shenstone says, since she was at college; and ee told me she do seem to be terr'ble full o' new notions."

"She'd better be full o' money," said the other, cuttingly. "Notions is no good without money to 'em."

"Aye, they're wunnerfull costly things is notions. Yo'd better by a long way go by the folk as know. But they do say she'll be payin' good wages."

"I dessay she will! She'll be obleeged. It's Hobson's choice, as you might say!" said Batts, chuckling again.

Halsey was silent, and the two old men trudged on with cheerful countenances. Through the minds of both there ran pleasant thoughts of the contrast between the days before the war and the days now prevailing. Both of them could remember a wage of fifteen and sixteen shillings a week. Then just before the war, it had risen to eighteen shillings and a pound. And now--why the Wages Board for Brookshire had fixed thirty-three shillings as a weekly minimum, and a nine-hours' day! Prices were high, but they would go down some day; and wages would not go down. The old men could not have told exactly why this confidence lay so deep in them; but there it was, and it seemed to give a strange new stability and even dignity to life. Their sons were fighting; and they had the normal human affection for their sons. They wished the war to end. But, after all, there was something to be said for the war. They--old Peter Halsey and old Joe Batts--were more considered and more comfortable than they would have been before the war. And it was the consideration more even than the comfort that warmed their hearts.

The evening grew hotter, and the way to the village seemed long. The old men were now too tired to talk; till just as they came in sight of the first houses, they perceived the village wagonette coming towards them.

"There she be! I did hear as Webb wor to meet her at the station. He's took her over once before," said old Halsey, raising his eyes for a moment and then dropping them again. Batts did the same. The glance was momentary. But both men had the same impression of a pleasant-faced young woman sitting erect behind Jonathan Webb, the decrepit driver of the wagonette, and looking straight at them as they passed her. There was a general effect of youth and bright colour; of pale brown hair, too, over very dark eyes.

"Aye, she be quite nice-lookin'," said Batts, with unction, "rayther uncommon. She minds me summat o' my missis when she wor a young 'un." Halsey's mouth twitched a little, but though his thoughts were ironical, he said nothing. It was generally admitted by the older people that Mrs. Batts had been through many years the village beauty, but her fall from that high place was now of such ancient date that it seemed foolish of Batts to be so fond of referring to it.

The wagonette passed on. The woman sitting in it carefully took note of the scene around her, in a mood of mingled hope and curiosity. She was to live in this valley without a stream, under these high chalk downs with their hanging woods, and within a mile or so of the straggling village she had just driven through. At last, after much wandering, she was to find a home--a real home of her own. The word "home" had not meant much--or much at least that was agreeable--to her, till now. Her large but handsome mouth took a bitter fold as she thought over various past events.

Now they had left the village behind, and were passing through fields that were soon to be her fields. Her keen eyes appraised the crops standing in them. She had paid the family of her predecessor a good price for them, but they were worth it. And just ahead, on her left, was a wide stretch of newly-ploughed land rising towards a bluff of grassy down-land on the horizon. The ploughed land itself had been down up to a few months before this date; thin pasture for a few sheep, through many generations. She thought with eagerness of the crops she was going to make it bear, in the coming year. Wheat, or course. The wheat crops all round the village were really magnificent. This was going to be the resurrection year for English farming, after fifty years of "death and damnation"--comparatively. And there would be many good years to come after.

Yes, Mr. Thomas Wellin, whose death had thrown the farm which she had now taken on the market, had done well for the land. And it was not his fault but the landlord's that the farmhouse and buildings had been allowed to fall into such a state. Mr. Wellin had not wanted the house, since he was only working the land temporarily in addition to his own farm half a mile away. But the owner, Colonel Shepherd, ought to have looked after the farmhouse and buildings better. Still, they were making her a fair allowance for repairs.

She was longing to know how the workmen from Millsboro had been getting on. Hastings, the Wellins' former bailiff, now temporarily hers, had promised to stay behind that evening to meet her at the farm. She only meant to insist on what was absolutely necessary. Even if she had wished for anything more, the lack of labour would have prevented it.

The old horse jogged on, and presently from a row of limes beside the road, a wave of fragrance, evanescent and delicious, passed over the carriage. Miss Henderson sniffed it with delight. "But one has never _enough_ of it!" she thought discontentedly. And then she remembered how as a child--in far-away Sussex--she used to press her face into the lime-blossom in her uncle's garden--passionately, greedily, trying to get from it a greater pleasure than it would ever yield. For the more she tried to compel it, by a kind of violence, the more it escaped her. She used to envy the bees lying drunk among the blooms. They at least were surfeited and satisfied.

It struck her that there was a kind of parable in it of her whole life--so far.

But now there was a new world opening. The past was behind her. She drew herself stiffly erect, conscious through every limb of youth and strength, and filled with a multitude of vague hopes. Conscious,