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

her eyes fixed on Janet. She was still in the graceful tunic and knee-breeches, in which her young and splendid youth seemed always most at home. But she had taken off her cap, and her brown hair was falling round a pale face.

"Janet--you know Captain Ellesborough and I had a long talk last night?"

Janet smiled.

"Of course I do. And of course I have my own thoughts about it!"

"I don't know what they are," said Rachel slowly. "But--I'd better tell you--Captain Ellesborough asked me to marry him."

She paused.

"Did you think that would be news to any of us?" said Janet, laughing, and then stopped. The sudden contraction of pain in Rachel's face, and something like a sob startled her.

"Don't, Janet, please. I told him something--which made him wonder--whether he did want to marry me after all."

Janet's heart gave an uncomfortable jump. A score of past conjectures and misgivings rushed back upon her.

"What did you tell him?"

"What I see now I ought to have told you--as well as him--long ago. Henderson is my maiden name. I was a married woman for three years. I had a child which died. I divorced my husband, and he's still alive."

The colour had flamed back into her cheeks. Janet sat silent, her eyes fixed on Rachel's.

"I did tell you I had a story, didn't I?" said Rachel insistently.

"You did. I took my chance. It was you who--who brought the action?"

"I brought the action. There was no defence. And the judge said--I'd been awfully badly treated--it was no wonder I wanted--to get free. Well, there it is. I'm sorry I deceived you. I'm sorry I deceived him."

"You didn't deceive me," said Janet. "I had practically guessed it." She rose slowly, and going up to Rachel, she put her hands on her shoulders,--

"Why didn't you tell me, you poor thing!" Her voice and eyes were full of emotion--full of pity. But Rachel shrank away a little from her touch, murmuring under her breath, "Because I wanted never to hear of it--or think of it again." Then, after a pause, she added, "But if you want to know more, I'll tell you. It's your right. My married name was Delane."

"Don't tell me any more!" said Janet peremptorily. "I don't want to hear it. But you ought to be--quite frank--with _him_."

"I know that. Naturally--it was a great shock to him."

There was something very touching in her attitude. She stood there like a shamefaced boy, in her quasi-male dress; and the contrast between her strong young beauty, and the humility and depression of her manner appealed with singular force to Janet's mind, so constantly and secretly preoccupied with spiritual things. Rachel seemed to her so much cleverer and more vigorous than herself in all matters of ordinary life. Only in the region of religious experience did Janet know herself the superior. But Rachel had never made any outward sign that she cared in the least to know more of that region, whether in Janet or other people. She had held entirely aloof from it. But self-reproach--moral suffering--are two of the keys that lead to it. And both were evident here. Janet's heart went out to her friend.

"When is he coming?"

"To-morrow evening. I dare say he'll give me up."

Janet marvelled at the absence of self-assertion--the touch of despair--in words and tone. So it had gone as deep as this! She blamed herself for lack of perception. An ordinary love-affair, about to end in an ordinary way--that was how it had appeared to her. And suddenly it seemed to her she had stumbled upon what might be tragedy.

No, no--there should be no tragedy! She put her arms round Rachel.

"My dear, he won't give you up! As if I hadn't seen! He worships the ground you tread upon!"

Rachel said nothing. She let her face rest on Janet's shoulder. When she raised it, it was wet. But she kissed Janet quietly, and went away without another word.


VIII

Four grown-ups and a child were gathered in the living-room of Halsey's cottage. The cottage was old like its tenant and had all the inconveniences of age; but it was more spacious than the modern cottage often is, since it and its neighbours represented a surviving fragment from an old Jacobean house--a house of gentlefolks--which had once stood on the site. Most of the house had been pulled down, but Colonel Shepherd's grandfather had retained part of it, and turned it into two cottages--known as 1 and 2 Ipscombe Place--which for all their drawbacks were much in demand in the village, and conferred a certain distinction on their occupants. Mrs. Halsey's living room possessed a Tudor mantelpiece in moulded brick, into which a small modern kitchener had been barbarously fitted; and three fine beams with a little incised ornament ran across the ceiling.

Mrs. Halsey had not long cleared away the tea, and brought in a paraffin lamp, small but cheerful. She was a middle-aged woman, much younger than her husband--with an ironic half-dreamy eye, and a native intelligence much superior to her surroundings. She was suffering from a chronic abscess in the neck, which had strange periodic swellings and subsidences, all of which were endlessly interesting to its possessor. Mrs. Halsey, indeed, called the abscess "she," wrapped it lovingly in red flannel, describing the evening dressing of it as "putting her to bed," and talked of "her" qualities and oddities as though, in the phrase of her next-door neighbour, "it'd a been a christened child." She had decided views on politics, and was a match for any political agent who might approach her with an eye to her vote, a commodity which she kept, so to speak, like a new shilling in her pocket, turning it from time to time to make sure it was there.

But independent as she was, she rarely interfered with the talk of Halsey and his male friends. And on this occasion when the three men--Halsey, Peter Betts, and young Dempsey--had gathered smoking round the fire, she settled herself with her knitting by the table and the lamp, throwing in every now and then a muttered and generally sarcastic comment, of which her husband took no notice--especially as he knew very well that the sarcasms were never aimed at him, and that she was as proud of him as she was generally contemptuous of the rest of the world.

Halsey had just finished a rather grudging description of his experiences two days before for John Dempsey's benefit. He was conscious that each time he repeated them, they sounded more incredible. He didn't want to repeat them; he didn't mean to repeat them; after this, nobody should get any more out of him at all.

Young Dempsey's attitude was certainly not encouraging. Attentive at first, he allowed himself, as Halsey's talk developed, a mild, progressive grin, which spread gradually over his ugly but honest face, and remained there. In face of it, Halsey's speech became more and more laconic, till at last he shut his mouth with a snap, and drawing himself up in his chair, re-lit his pipe with the expression that meant, "All right--I've done--you may take it or leave it."

"Well, I don't see that what you saw, Mr. Halsey, was so very uncommon!" Dempsey began, still smiling, in spite of a warning look from Betts. "You saw a man come down that road? Well, in the first place, why shouldn't a man come down that road--it's a reg'lar right of way--"

"It's the way, mind ye, as the ghost of old Watson has allus come!" put in Peter Betts, chivalrously anxious to support his friend Halsey, as far as he could, against a sceptical stranger. "An' it's been seen twice on that road already, as I can remember: once when I was a little boy, by old Dan Holt, the postmaster, and once about ten years ago."

Dempsey looked at the speaker indulgently. To his sharpened transatlantic sense, these old men, in this funny old village, seemed to him a curiously dim and feeble folk. He could hardly prevent himself from talking to them as though they were children. He supposed his grandfather would have been like that if he'd stayed on at Ipscombe. He thanked the stars he hadn't!

But since he had been summoned to consult, as a person who had a vested interest, of a rather blood-curdling sort, in the Great End ghost, he had to give his opinion; and he gave it, while Halsey listened and smoked in a rather sulky silence. For it was soon evident that the murderer's grandson had no use at all for the supposed ghost-story. He tore it ruthlessly to pieces. In the first place, Halsey described the man seen on the grass-road as tall and lanky. But according to his grandfather's account, the murdered gamekeeper, on the contrary, was a broadly-built, stumpy man. In the next place--the coughing and the bleeding!--he laughed so long and loudly at these points in the story that Halsey's still black bushy eyebrows met frowningly over a pair of angry eyes, and Betts tried hurriedly to tame the young man's mirth.

"Well, if yer don't think that man as Halsey saw _was_ the ghost, what do you s'pose 'ee was doin' there?" asked Betts, "and where did he go? Halsey went right round the farm. The hill just there is as bare as my hand. He must ha' seen the man--if it _wor_ a man--an' he saw nothin'. There isn't a tree or a bush where that man could ha' hid hisself--if he _wor_ a man."

Dempsey declared he should have to go and examine the ground himself before he could answer the question. But of course there was an answer to it--there must be. As to the man--why Millsborough, and Ipscombe too, had been full of outlandish East Enders, flying from the raids, Poles and Russians, and such like--thievin' fellows by all accounts. Why couldn't it be one of them--prowling round the farm for anything he could pick up--and frightened off, when he saw Halsey?

Betts, smoking with prodigious energy, inquired what he made of the _blood_. Didn't he know the old story of how Watson was tracked down to the cart-shed? Dempsey laughed again.

"Well, it's curious, grant ye. It's real funny! But where are you going to get blood without a body? And if a thing's a body, it isn't a ghost!"

The two old men were silent. Halsey was lost in a hopeless confusion of ideas, and Betts was determined not to give his pal away.

But here--say what you like!--was a strange man, seen, on the road, which had been used, according to village tradition, on several previous occasions, by the authentic ghost of Watson; his course was marked by traces of blood, just as Watson's path of pain had been marked on the night of the murder; and on reaching the spot where Watson had breathed his last, the apparition, whatever it was, had vanished. Perplexity, superstition, and common sense fought each other. Halsey who knew much of his Bible by heart was inwardly comparing texts. "A spirit hath not flesh and blood"--True--but on the other hand what about the "bodies of the saints"--that "arose"? While, perhaps, the strongest motive of all in the old man's mind was the obstinate desire to prove himself right, and so to confound young scoffers like Dempsey.

Dempsey, however, having as he thought disposed of Halsey's foolish tale was determined to tell his own, which had already made a great impression in certain quarters of the village, and ranked indeed as