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

engagement. He had foreseen it, of course, since the day of the Millsborough "rally." A fine fellow, no doubt--with the great advantage of khaki. But it was to be hoped we were not going to be altogether overrun with Americans--carrying off English women.

At the gate of the farm stood a cart into which two young calves had just been packed. Hastings was driving it, and Rachel Henderson, who had just adjusted the net over the fidgety frightened creatures, was talking to him.

She greeted Shenstone rather shyly. It was quite true that in the early stages of her acquaintance with Ellesborough she had amused herself a good deal with the vicar. And in his note of congratulation to her on her engagement, she had detected just the slightest touch of reproach.

"I wish I had guessed it sooner." That meant, perhaps--"Why did you make a fool of me?"

Meanwhile Miss Shenstone's note was duly delivered, and Rachel, holding it in her hand, opened the wicket gate.

"Won't you come in?"

"Oh, no, I mustn't waste your time," said the vicar, with dignity. "Perhaps you'll give me a verbal answer."

Rachel opened the note, and the vicar was puzzled by the look which crossed her face as she read it. It was a look of relief--as though something fitted in.

"Very kind of Lady Alicia. Of course the girls shall come. They will be delighted. You really won't come in? Then I'll walk to the road with you."

What was the change in her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement of falling in love?--combined perhaps with the worry of leaving her work and the career just begun?

He asked a few questions about her plans. She answered him very gently, with a subtle note of apology in her voice; but yet, as it seemed to him, from rather far away. And when they parted, he realized that he had never known more of her than an outer self, which offered but little clue to the self within.

Rachel walked back to the farm with Miss Shenstone's note in her pocket. She had told the vicar that her land-girls should certainly come to the Shepherds' servants' party--but she said nothing about it to them--till Janet Leighton had safely bicycled away in the early afternoon. The invitation, however, was a godsend. For Rachel had begun to realize that there was a good deal of watching going on--watching of the farm, and watching over herself. She understood that Halsey had been scared by some tramp or other whom he took for the ghost; and she saw that Janet was unwilling that any one should be alone after dark in the farm. Nobody had talked to her--Rachel--about it--no doubt by Ellesborough's wish--because she was supposed to be out of sorts--run down. She had accepted the little conspiracy of silence as a proof of his tenderness, and had obediently asked no questions.

And it had not yet occurred to her to connect the stories floating about the farm with Delane's reappearance. The stunning fact of the reappearance, with all that it might mean to her, absorbed her mind--for a few hours yet.

But as soon as Janet was safely off the premises, she hurried across to the shippen, where Betty and Jenny were milking.

"Girls!--would you like to go to the Shepherds' dance to-night? I've got an invitation for you?"

Stupefaction--and delight! The invitations had been very sparing and select, and the two little maidens had felt themselves Cinderellas indeed, all the sorer in their minds seeing that Dempsey and Betty's young man were both going.

But _frocks_! Jenny at least had nothing suitable. Rachel at once offered a white frock. The milking and dairy work were hurried through, and then came the dressing, as the dance began at seven. Betty, knowing herself to be a beauty, except for her teeth, had soon finished. A white blouse, a blue cotton skirt, a blue ribbon in her mop of brown hair--and she looked at herself exultantly in Miss Henderson's glass. Jenny was much more difficult to please. She was crimson with excitement, and the tip of her little red tongue kept slipping in and out. But Rachel patted and pinned--in a kind of dream. Jenny's red hair, generally worn in the tightest wisps and plaits, was brushed out till it stood like a halo round her face and neck, and she was secretly afraid that Dempsey wouldn't know her.

Then Rachel wrapped them up in their land-army waterproofs, and saw them off, carrying an electric torch to guide them safely through the bit of lane under the trees. But there was a moon rising, and the fog was less.

"Ain't she just kind?--don't you just love her?" said Jenny ecstatically to Betty, as they turned back to wave their farewells again to the figure standing in the doorway.

Betty assented. But they were both greatly astonished. For Rachel did not in general take much personal notice of them.

They were no sooner out of sight than Rachel went to look at the clock in the kitchen. Ten minutes to seven. Two hours to wait. How were they going to be got through?

She went out aimlessly into the farm-yard, where the farm buildings stood in a faintly luminous mist, the hill-side behind them, and the climbing woods. To her left, across the fields ran the road climbing to the miniature pass, whence it descended steeply to the plain beyond. And on the further side of the road lay her own fields, with alternating bands of plough-land and stubble, and the hedge-row trees standing ghostly and separate in the light haze.

She was alone in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to possess her. She was defending herself--defending Ellesborough--and their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the passion in her blood would give her strength--would see her through.

In the old barn, the cows were munching peacefully. The air was sweet with their breath, and with the hay piled in their cribs. Rachel wandered noiselessly amongst them, and they turned their large eyes slowly to look at her, and the small lantern she carried. In the stables, too, not a sound, but an occasional swishing and champing. Rachel hung up the lantern, and sat down on a truss of hay, idly watching the rays of light striking up into the cross-beams of the roof, and on the shining flanks of the horses. Her mind was going at a great speed. And all in a moment--without any clear consciousness of the strange thoughts that had been running through her brain--an intuition struck through her.

_Roger_!--it was he who had been playing the ghost--he who had been seen haunting the farm--who had scared Halsey--_Roger_! come to spy upon her and her lover! Once the idea suggested itself, she was certain of it--it must be true.

The appearance in the lane had been cleverly premeditated. She had been watched for days, perhaps for weeks.

Ellesborough had been watched, too, no doubt.

She drew a shuddering breath. She was afraid of Roger Delane. From the early days of her marriage she had been afraid of him. There was about him the incalculable something which means moral insanity--abnormal processes of mind working through uncontrolled will. You could never reason with or influence him, where his appetites or his passions were concerned. A mocking spirit looked out upon you, just before his blow fell. He was a mere force--inhuman and sinister.

Well, she had got to fight it and tame it! She shut up the cow-house and stable, and stood out awhile in the farm-yard, letting the mild wind play on her bare head and hot cheeks. The moon was riding overhead. The night seemed to her very silent and mysterious--yet penetrated by something divine to which she lifted her heart. What would Ellesborough say over there--in his forester's hut, five miles beyond the hills, if he knew what she was doing--whom she was expecting? She shut her eyes, and saw his lean, strong face, his look--

The church clock was striking, and surely--in the distance, the sound of an opening gate? She hurried back to the house, and the sitting-room. The lamp was low. She revived it. She made up the fire. She felt herself shivering with excitement, and she stooped over the fire, warming her hands.

She had purposely left the front door unlocked. A hand tried the handle, turned it--a slow step entered.

She went to the sitting-room door and threw it open--

"Come in here."

Roger Delane came in and shut the door behind him. They confronted each other.

"You've managed it uncommonly well," he said, at last. "You've dared it. Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Not the least. What do you want?"

They surveyed each other--with hatred, yet not without a certain passionate curiosity on both sides. When Delane had last seen Rachel she was a pale and care-worn creature, her youth darkened by suffering and struggle, her eyes still heavy with the tears she had shed for her lost baby. He beheld her now rounded and full-blown, at the zenith of her beauty, and breathing an energy, physical and mental, he had never yet seen in her. She had escaped him, and her life had put out a new flower. He was suddenly possessed as he looked at her, both by the poisonous memory of old desire, and by an intolerable sense of his impotence, and her triumph. And the physical fever in his veins made self-control difficult.

On her side, she saw the ruin of a man. When she married him he had been a moral wreck. But the physical envelope was still intact, still splendid. Now his clothes seemed to hang upon a skeleton; the hollows in the temples and cheeks, the emaciation of the face and neck, the scanty grey hair, struck horror, but it was a horror in which there was not a trace of sympathy or pity. He had destroyed himself, and he would, if he could, destroy her. She read in him the thirst for revenge. She had to baffle it, if she could.

As she defied him, indeed, she saw his hand steal to his coat-pocket, and it occurred to her that the pocket might contain a revolver. But the thought only nerved her--gave her an almost exultant courage.

"What do I want?" he repeated, at last with-drawing his eyes. "I'll tell you. I've come--like Foch--to dictate to you certain terms, which you have only to accept. We had better sit down. It will take time."

Rachel pointed to a chair. He took it, crossed one knee over the other, rested his arm on the table near, and watched her with a sneering smile, while she seated herself.

He broke the silence.

"I confess you were very clever about Dick Tanner--and I was a precious fool! I never suspected."

"I have not the least idea what you mean."

"A lie!" he said, impetuously. "You were in Dick Tanner's house--staying with him alone--at night--after I left you. You were seen there--by a man--a Canadian--from whom I had the story--only two days ago. He doesn't know my name, nor I his. We met on the common, two nights ago, after dark. And by the merest chance he was coming to the farm,