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

Dempsey's visit. Of course he came to see you. He thought when he saw you at Millsborough that you were a Mrs. Delane he had seen in Canada. Were you perhaps a relation of hers? I said I would ask you. Then I inquired how often he had seen Mrs. Delane. He said twice--perhaps three times--at her home--at a railway station--and at a farm belonging to a man called Tanner."

"Yes," said Rachel, indifferently. "I knew Lucy Tanner, his sister. She was an artist like him. I liked them both."

There was silence. In Rachel's breast there was beating a painful tide of speech that longed to find its way to freedom--but it was gripped and thrust back by her will. There was something in Janet as in Ellesborough that wooed her heart, that seemed to promise help.

But nothing more passed, of importance. Janet, possessed by vague, yet, as they seemed to herself, quite unreasonable anxieties, gave some further scornful account of Dempsey's murder talk, to which Rachel scarcely listened; then she said, as she turned to take up her knitting,--

"I'm going over to-morrow to a little service--a Thanksgiving service--at Millsborough. I took the girls to church to-day--but I love my own people!" Her face glowed a little.

"Unitarian service, you mean?"

"Yes--we've got a little 'cause' there, and a minister. The service will be about six, I think. The girls will manage. The minister and his wife want me to stay to supper--but I shall be back in good time."

"About ten?"

"Oh, yes--quite by then. I shall bicycle."

Through Rachel's mind there passed a thrill of relief. So Janet would be out of the way. One difficulty removed. Now, to get rid of the girls?

* * * * *

Rachel scarcely slept, and the November day broke grey and misty as before. After breakfast she went out into the fields. Old Halsey was mole-catching in one of them. But instead of going to inspect him and his results, she slipped through a tall hedge, and paced the road under its shelter, looking for Dempsey.

On the stroke of eleven she saw him in the distance. He came up with the same look, half embarrassed, half inclining to laugh, that he had worn the day before. Rachel, on the other hand, was entirely at her ease, and the young man felt her at once his intellectual and social superior.

"You seem to have saved me and my horse from a tumble into that ditch last night," she said, with a laugh, as she greeted him. "Why I turned faint like that I can't imagine. I do sometimes when I'm tired. Well, now then--let us walk up the road a little."

With her hands in her pockets she led the way. In her neat serge suit and cap, she was the woman-farmer--prosperous and competent--all over. Dempsey's thoughts threw back in bewilderment to the fainting figure of the night before. He walked on beside her in silence.

"I wanted to tell you," said Miss Henderson calmly--"because I'm sure you're a nice fellow, and don't want to hurt anybody's feelings--why I asked you to hold your tongue about Mrs. Delane. In the first place, you're quite mistaken about myself. I was never at Mr. Tanner's farm--never in that part of Canada; and the person you saw there--Mrs. Delane--was a very favourite cousin of mine, and extraordinarily like me. When we were children everybody talked of the likeness. She had a very sad story, and now--she's dead." The speaker's voice dropped. "I've been confused with her before--and it's a great trouble to me. The confusion has done me harm, more than once, and I'm very sensitive about it. So, as I said last night, I should be greatly obliged if you would not only not spread the story, but deny it, whenever you can."

She looked at him sharply, and he coloured crimson.

"Of course," he stammered, "I should like to do anything you wish."

"I do wish it, and--" she paused a moment, as though to think--"and Captain Ellesborough wishes it. I would not advise you, however, to say anything at all about it to him. But if you do what we ask you, you may be sure we shall find some way--some substantial way--of showing that we appreciate it."

They walked on, she with her eyes on the ground as though she were thinking out some plan for his benefit--he puzzled and speechless.

"What do you want to do, now the war's over?" she said at last, with a smile, looking up.

"I suppose I want to settle down--somewhere--on land, if I had the money."

"Here?--or in Canada?"

"Oh, at home."

"I thought so. Well, Mr. Dempsey, Captain Ellesborough and I shall be quite ready to help you in any scheme you take up. You understand?"

"That's awfully kind of you--but--"

"Quite ready," she repeated. "Let me know what your plans are when you've worked them out--and I'll see what can be done." Then she stopped. There was a gate near into one of her own fields. Their eyes met--hers absolutely cool and smiling--his wavering and excited.

"You understand?" she repeated.

"Oh, yes--I understand."

"And you agree?" she added, emphasizing the words.

"Oh, yes, I--I--agree."

"Well, then, that's all right--that's understood. A letter will always find me here. And now I must get back to my work. Good-morning."

And with a nod, she slipped through the gate, and was half way across the fallow on the other side of it before he had realized that their strange conversation was at an end.


XII

The vicar and his sister Eleanor were sitting at breakfast in the small Georgian house, which, as the vicarage, played a still important part in the village of Ipscombe. The Church may be in a bad way, as her own children declare; revolution may be in sight, as our English Bolshevists love to believe--not too seriously; but meanwhile, if a stranger in any normal English village wants to lay his finger on the central ganglion of its various activities, he will still look for the church and the vicarage--or rectory, as the case may be. If the parson is bad or feeble, the pulse of the village life will show it; and if he is energetic and self-devoted, his position will give him a power in the community--power, tempered of course by the necessary revolts and reactions which keep the currents of life flowing--not to be easily attained by other energetic and self-devoted persons. The parson may still easily make himself a tyrant, but only to find, in the language of the Greek poet, that it was "folly even to wish" to tyrannize.

The vicar had come downstairs that morning in a mood of depression, irritable--almost snappish depression. His sister Eleanor had seldom seen him so unlike himself. Being an affectionate sister, she was sorry for him; though, as she rightly guessed, it was that very news which had brought such great relief of mind to herself which was almost certainly responsible for her brother's gloom. Miss Henderson was engaged to Captain Ellesborough. There was therefore no question of her becoming Mrs. Shenstone, and a weight was lifted from the spirits of the vicar's sister. Towards Rachel, Eleanor Shenstone felt one of those instinctive antipathies of life which are far more decisive than any of the ordinary causes of quarrel. Miss Shenstone was thin, methodical, devoted; of small speech and great virtue. Such persons so securely anchored and self-determined can have but small sympathy for the drifters of this world. And that Rachel Henderson was--at least as compared with herself and her few cherished friends--morally and religiously adrift, Miss Shenstone had decided after half an hour's conversation.

The vicar knew perfectly well that his sister was relieved. It was that which had secretly affected a naturally sweet temper. He was suffering besides from a haunting sense of contrast between these rainy November days, and the glowing harvest weeks in which he had worked like a navvy for and with Rachel Henderson. It was over, of course. None of the nice things of life ever came his way for long. But he did feel rather sorely that during his short spell of favour with her, Miss Henderson had encouraged him a good deal. She had raised him up--only to cast him down. He thought of her smiles, and her sudden softness, of the warm grip of her hand, and the half mocking, half inviting look in her eyes, with the feeling of a child shut out from a garden where he well knows the ripe apples are hanging; only not for him. The atmosphere of sex which environed her--was it not that which had beguiled the vicar, while it had repelled his sister? And yet Eleanor Shenstone did most honestly wish her brother to marry--only not--not anything so tempting, troubling, and absorbing as Rachel Henderson.

"Haven't we a tiresome meeting to-night?" said the vicar with an impatient sigh, as he sat languidly down to the couple of sardines which were all his sister had allowed him for breakfast.

"Yes--Miss Hall is coming to speak."

Miss Hall was a lady who spoke prodigiously on infant welfare, and had a way of producing a great, but merely temporary effect on the mothers of the village. They would listen in a frightened silence while she showed them on a blackboard the terrifying creatures that had their dwelling in milk, and what a fly looks like when it is hideously--and in the mothers' opinion most unnecessarily--magnified. But when she was gone came reaction. "How can she know aught about it--havin' none of her own?" said the village contemptuously. None the less the village ways were yielding, insensibly, little by little; and the Miss Halls were after all building better than they knew.

The vicar, however, always had to take the chair at Miss Hall's meetings, and he was secretly sick and tired of babies, their weights, their foods, their feeding-bottles, and everything concerned with them. His sister considered him and like a wise woman, offered him something sweet to make up for the bitter.

"Do you think you could possibly take a note for me to Miss Leighton this morning--when you go to see old Frant?"

"Old Frant" was a labourer on the point of death to whom the vicar was ministering.

He pricked up his ears.

"Great End's hardly in old Frant's direction."

_Camouflage_, of course. Miss Shenstone understood perfectly.

"It won't take you far out of your way. I want Miss Leighton to send those two girls to the Armistice dance to-night if they'd like to come. Lady Alicia writes that several of her maids are down with the flu, and she asks me to give away two or three more tickets."

"Why doesn't Lady Alicia let the servants manage the thing themselves when she gives them a party? _They_ ought to invite. I wouldn't be bossed if I were they," said the vicar, with vivacity.

"She's so particular about character, dear."

"So would they be. She hasn't been so very successful in her own case."

For the Shepherds' eldest daughter had just been figuring in a divorce case to the distress of the Shepherds' neighbours.

Miss Shenstone showed patience.

"I'll have the note ready directly."

And when it was ready, the vicar took it like a lamb. He walked first to Great End, meditating as he went on Miss Henderson's