Harvest

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

IV

Ellesborough allowed a week to pass before making the call at Great End he had arranged with Rachel. But at last, when he thought that her harvesting would be really over, he set out on his motor bicycle, one fine evening, as soon as work at the camp was over. According to summer time it was about seven o'clock, and the sun was still sailing clear above the western woods.

Part of his way lay over a broad common chequered with fine trees and groups of trees, some of them of great age; for the rest he ran through a world where harvest in its latest stages was still the governing fact. In some fields the corn was being threshed on the spot, without waiting for the stacks; in others, the last loads were being led; and everywhere in the cleared fields there were scattered figures of gleaners, casting long shadows on the gold and purple carpet of the stubble. For Ellesborough the novelty of this garden England, so elaborately combed and finished in comparison with his own country, was by no means exhausted. There were times when the cottage gardens, the endless hedge-rows, and miniature plantations pleased him like the detail in those early Florentine pictures in the Metropolitan Museum, for which, business man as he was, and accustomed to the wilds, he had once or twice, on visits to New York, discovered in himself a considerable taste. He was a man, indeed, of many aptitudes, and of a loyal and affectionate temper. His father, a country doctor, now growing old, his mother, still pretty at sixty, and his two unmarried sisters were all very dear to him. He wrote to them constantly, and received many letters from them. They belonged to one of the old Unitarian stocks still common in New England; and such stocks are generally conspicuous for high standards and clean living. "Discipline" was among the chief marks of the older generation. A father or mother dreaded an "undisciplined" child, and the word was often on their lips, though in no Pharisaical way; while the fact was evident in their lives, and in those private diaries which they were apt to keep, wherein, up to old age, they jealously watched their own daily thoughts and actions from the same point of view.

And though the younger generation, like the younger generation of Quakers, shows change and some disintegration, the old Puritan traditions and standards are still, as we all know, of great effect among them. Especially with regard to women, and all that concerns them. Among the Ellesborough clan, which was a large one, there prevailed, along with the traditional American consideration for women, and especially among the women of the family themselves—a strict and even severe standard of sexual morals. There was no hypocrisy in it; they talked of it but little, but they lived by it; and their men were brought up in the atmosphere created by it. And as affection and tenderness and self-sacrifice were freely mixed with the asceticism, there was no rebellion—at any rate no open rebellion—among their men folk. The atmosphere created led, no doubt, to certain evasions of the hard problems of life; and to some quiet revaluations of things and persons when the sons of the family came to men's estate. But in general the "ape and tiger," still surviving in the normal human being, had been really and effectively tamed in the Ellesborough race. There was also a sensitive delicacy both of thought and speech among them; answering to more important and tested realities. Their marriages were a success; their children were well brought up, under light but effective control; and, if it be true, as Americans are ready to say, that the old conception of marriage is being slowly but profoundly modified over large sections of their great Commonwealth, towards a laxity undreamt of half a century ago, the Ellesboroughs could neither be taxed nor applauded in the matter. They stood by the old ways, and they stood by them whole-heartedly.

Ellesborough himself, no doubt, had knocked about the world more than most of his kindred, and had learnt to look at many things differently. But essentially, he was the son of his race. His attitude towards women was at once reverential and protective. He believed women were better than men, because practically he had found it so in his own circle; but he held also very strong beliefs, seldom expressed, as to their social disadvantages and their physical weakness. The record of the Germans towards women in France and Flanders, a record he had verified for himself, had perhaps done more than anything else to feed the stern flame of war in his own soul. At thirty-two, he would probably have already been a married man, but for the war. He rather fiercely held that it was a man's duty to marry and have children. But beyond a few passing fancies he had never been in love; and since the American declaration of war, he had been, like his President, out to "make the world safe for democracy"; and the ardour of the struggle had swept his private interests out of sight.

All the same here he was, walking his motor cycle up the field road leading to Great End Farm, and looking eagerly about him. A lonely position, but beautiful! On the woods behind the house he turned a professional eye. Fine timber! The man who was to succeed him at Ralstone would no doubt have the cutting of it. The farm quadrangle, with its sixteenth century barn, out of which the corn seemed to be actually bursting from various open doors and windows, appeared to him through that glamour which, for the intelligent American, belongs to everything that medieval and Elizabethan England has bequeathed to the England of the present. He will back himself, he thinks, to plan and build a modern town better than the Britisher—in any case quicker. But the mosses and tiles of an old Brookshire barn beat him.

Ellesborough paused at the gate to watch two land lassies carrying pails of milk across the yard towards a prolongation of the farm-house, which he supposed was the dairy. Just beyond the farm-yard, two great wheat-stacks were visible; while in the hayfields running up to the woods, large hay-stacks, already nearly thatched, showed dimly in the evening light. And all this was run by women, worked by Women! Well, American women, so he heard from home, were doing the same in the fields and farms of the States. It was all part, he supposed, of a world movement, by which, no less than by the war itself, these great years would be for ever remembered.

The farm-house itself, however, seemed to him from the outside a poor, flimsy thing, unworthy of the old farm buildings. He could see that the walls of it were only a brick thick, and in spite of the pretty curtains, he was struck by the odd feature of the two large windows exactly opposite each other, so that a spectator on either side of the house might look right through it.

"Seems like being in the street. However, if there's nobody to look at you, I suppose it don't matter."

Then he laughed, for just as he led his motor cycle into the yard, and passed the sitting-room window, he was struck by the appearance of two large sheep, who seemed to be actually in the sitting-room, at its farther end. They were standing, he presently perceived, upon the steep down beyond the house, on the slope of which the farm was built; which on the southern side of the farm quadrangle came right up to the house wall. At the same moment he saw a woman inside get up and shoo them from the open window, so that they ran away.

But when Jenny Harberton had admitted him, and he was waiting in the sitting-room, from which the woman he had seen had disappeared, he was in the mood to admire everything. How nice the two women had made it! His own rough life, both before and since the war, had only increased a natural instinct for order and seemliness. The pretty blue paper, the fresh drugget, the photographs on the wall, the flowers, and the delicate neatness of everything delighted him. He went round looking at the pictures and the few books, perfectly conscious that everything which he saw had a more than common interest for him. The room seemed to be telling a story—opening points of view.

"Ah!"

He paused, a broad smile overspreading his bronzed face.

For he had perceived a popular History of the War lying open and face downwards on the table, one that he had recommended to the mistress of the farm. So she had followed his advice. It pleased him particularly! He had gathered that she was never a great reader; still, she was an educated woman, she ought to know something of what her country had done.

And there was actually a piano! He wondered whether she played, or her friend.

Meanwhile Rachel was changing her dress upstairs—rather deliberately. She did not want to look too glad to see her visitor, to flatter him by too much hurry. When he arrived she had just come in from the fields where she had been at the threshing machine all day. It had covered her with dirt and chaff; and the process of changing was only half through when she heard the rattle of Ellesborough's cycle outside. She stood now before the glass, a radiant daughter of air and earth; her veins, as it were, still full of the sheer pleasure of her long day among the stubbles and the young stock. She was tired, of course; and she knew very well that the winter, when it came, would make a great difference, and that much of the work before her would be hard and disagreeable. But for the moment, her deep satisfaction with the life she had chosen, the congruity between it and her, gave her a peculiar charm. She breathed content, and there is no more beautifying thing.

She had thought a good deal about Ellesborough since their meeting; yet not absorbingly, for she had her work to do. She was rather inclined to quarrel with him for having been so long in making his call; and this feeling, perhaps, induced her to dawdle a little over the last touches of her toilet. She had put on a thin, black dress, which tamed the exuberance of her face and hair, and set off the brilliance and fineness of her skin where the open blouse displayed it. The beautiful throat was sunburnt, indeed, but not unbecomingly so; and she was about to fasten round it a slender gold chain, when she suddenly dropped the chain. Some association had passed through her mind which made her shrink from it.

She chose instead a necklace of bluish-green beads, long, and curiously interwoven, which gave a touch of dignity to the plain dress. Then she paused to consider the whole effect, in a spirit of meditation rather than mere vanity. "I wish he knew!" she thought, and the glass reflected a frown of perplexity. Had she been wise, after all, to make such a complete mystery of the past? People in and about Ipscombe would probably know some time—what all her Canadian friends knew. And then, the thought of the endless explanations and gossip, of the horrid humiliation involved in any renewed contact whatever with the ugly things she had put behind her, roused a sudden, surging disgust.

"Yes, I was quite right," she thought vehemently. "I was quite right!"

Voices in the room downstairs! That meant that Janet had gone in to greet the visitor. Should they ask him to stay for supper? The vicar was coming, and his pious little sister. There would be quite enough to eat. Cold ham, potatoes and salad, with their own butter and bread—Janet made beautiful bread—was enough for anybody in war time. Rachel was in the mood to feel a certain childish exultation in the plenty of the farm, amid the general rationing. The possession of her seven milch cows, the daily pleasure of the milk, morning and evening, the sight of the rich separated cream, and of the butter as it came fresh from the churn, the growing weight and sleekness of the calves; all these things gave her a warm sense of protection against the difficulties and restrictions of the war. She and Janet were "self-suppliers." No need to bother about ounces of butter, or spoonfuls of cream. Of course they sold all they could, but they could still feed their few guests well—better, perhaps, than any of the folk in the villa houses round Millsborough.

"Yes! and no one's leave to ask!"

She threw out her arms in a vehement gesture as she turned away from the glass. It was the gesture of a wild bird taking flight.

By which, however, she was not hurling defiance at the gentle but most efficient little lady who represented the Food Control of the neighbourhood, and the mere sight of whom was enough to jog uneasy consciences in the matter of rations. Rachel was long since on the best of terms with her.

* * * * *

Captain Ellesborough was asked to stay to supper, and gladly accepted. The vicar and his young sister arrived and were introduced to the American. Betty and Jenny, alarmed at so much company and the quality of it, hurriedly asked to be allowed to take their meal in the tiny scullery behind the living room. But the democratic and dissenting Janet would not hear of it. There was room for everybody, she said, and while she lived in it there should only be one table for all who worked on the farm. If the vicar and Miss Shenstone objected, she was sorry for them. But they wouldn't object.

So the small living room of the farm was soon full of a merry company: the two mistresses, in their Sunday frocks, the land girls in their uniforms, the young vicar in a short coat and round collar, his little sister of nineteen, who was training to be a missionary, and carried about with her already the sweet and dedicated look of her calling; and Ellesborough, a striking and manly figure in full khaki. Ellesborough was on Rachel's right, the vicar on Janet's; Miss Shenstone sat between the two girls, and was so far from objecting to their company that she no sooner found she was to sit next the daughter of her brother's handy-man than her childish face flushed with pleasure. She had seen Jenny already at her brother's Bible-class, and she had been drawn to her. Something in the character of the labourer's daughter seemed to make a special appeal to the delicate and mystical temper of the vicar's sister, in whom the ardour of the "watcher for souls" was a natural gift. Jenny seemed to be aware of it. She was flushed and a little excited, alternately shy and communicative—like the bird under fascination, already alive to the signal of its captor. At any rate, Margaret Shenstone kept both her companions happy through the meal.

The vicar employed himself in vigorously making friends with Janet Leighton, keenly alive all the time to that vivid and flower-like vision of Miss Henderson at the farther end of the table. But some instinct warned him that beside the splendid fellow in khaki his own claim on her could be but a modest one. He must watch his opportunity. It was natural that certain misgivings had already begun to rise in the mind of his elder sister, Eleanor, who was his permanent companion and housekeeper at the vicarage. For why should her brother be so specially assiduous in the harvest operations at Great End? She was well aware that it was the right and popular thing for the young clergy who were refused service at the front to be seen in their shirt sleeves as agricultural volunteers, or in some form of war work. A neighbouring curate in whom she was greatly interested spent the greater part of his week, for instance, on munition work at a national factory. She thought him a hero. But if it was to be harvesting, then it seemed to her that her brother should have divided his help more evenly among the farms of the village. She was afraid of "talk." And it troubled her greatly that neither Miss Henderson nor Miss Leighton came to church.

Meanwhile, the vicar, like a wise man, was securing the position with Janet. What he wished, what he was really driving at, he would not let himself inquire. What he knew was that no woman had ever fluttered his quiet mind as Miss Henderson had fluttered it during these summer weeks. To watch her, erect and graceful, "pitching" the sheaves on to the harvest cart, where he and a labourer received and packed them; to be privileged to lead the full cart home, with her smile and thanks at the barn door for reward, or to stand with her while she proudly watched her new reaping machine, with the three fine horses abreast, sweeping round her biggest field, while the ripe sheaves fell beside it, as of old they fell beside the reapers that Hoephoestus wrought in gleaming gold on the shield of Achilles; and then perhaps to pay a last visit with her to the farm buildings in the warm dusk and watch the cattle coming in from the fields and the evening feed, and all the shutting up for the night after the long, hot, busy day: these things had lately made a veritable idyll of the vicar's life. He felt as though a hundred primitive sensations and emotions, that he had only talked of or read about before, had at last become real to him. Oxford memories revived. He actually felt a wish to look at his Virgil or Theocritus again, such as had never stirred in him since he had packed his Oxford books to send home, after the sobering announcement of his third class. After all, it seemed these old fellows knew something about the earth and its joys!

So that a golden light lay over these past weeks. And in the midst of it stood the figure of a silent and—as far as he was concerned—rather difficult woman, without which there would have been no transfiguring light at all. He confessed to himself that she had never had much to say to him. But wherever she was she drew the male creature after her. There was no doubt as to that. She was a good employer—fair, considerate, intelligent; but it was the woman—so the vicar believed—who got her way.

From which it will be seen that Miss Eleanor Shenstone had some reason for misgiving, and that the vicar's own peace of mind was in danger. His standards also were no longer what they were. He had really ceased to care that Miss Leighton was a Unitarian!

"I suppose you have been horribly busy?" said Rachel to Ellesborough, when, thanks to the exertions of Janet and the two girls, everybody had been provided with a first course.

"Not more than usual. Do you mean—" He looked at her, smiling, and Rachel's eyebrows went up slightly. "Ah, I see—you thought I had forgotten?"

"Oh, no," she said indifferently. "It is a long way to come."

He flushed a little.

"That never occurred to me for a moment!" he said with emphasis. "But you said you would have finished with the harvest in a week. So I waited. I didn't want to be a nuisance."

At which she smiled, a smile that overflowed eyes and lips, and stirred the senses of the man beside her.

"How is the prisoner?"

"Poor boy! He died the day before yesterday. We did everything we could, but he had no chance from the first. Hard lines!"

"Why, he might have been home next year!"

"He might, indeed. Yes, Miss Henderson, it'll be peace next year—perhaps this year! Who knows! But I hope I'll have a look in first. I've got my orders. As soon as they've appointed my successor here, I'm off. About a month, I suppose. They've accepted me for the Air Force."

His eyes glowed. Rachel said nothing. She felt hurt that he expressed no regret at going. Then the vicar struck into the conversation with some enthusiastic remarks about the steady flowing in of the American army. That, indeed, was the great, the overpowering fact of these August days. Ellesborough responded eagerly, describing the huge convoy with which he himself had come over; and that amazing, that incredible march across three thousand miles of sea and land, which every day was pouring into the British Isles, and so into France, some 15,000 men—the flower of American manhood, come to the rescue of the world. He told the great story well, with the graphic phrases of a quick mind, well fed on facts, yet not choked by them. The table hung on him. Even little Jenny, with parted lips, would not have missed a word.

He meanwhile was led on—for he was not a man of facile or boastful speech—by the eyes of Rachel Henderson, and those slight gestures or movements by which from time to time when the talk flagged she would set it going again.

Margaret Shenstone was particularly stirred.

"What friends we shall be!" she said presently, with a long, quivering breath—"I mean America and England. Friends for ever! And we quarrelled once. That's so wonderful. That shows good does come out of evil!"

"I should jolly well think so," said Ellesborough, looking kindly at the young girl. "Why, if it hadn't been for this war, millions of these boys who are coming over now would never have seen England or Europe at all. It'll change the face of everything!"

"Only we must play up," said the vicar anxiously. "We must get rid of our abominable shyness, and let your people really see how we really welcome them."

Rachel gave a little defiant shake of the head.

"America's got to thank us, too!" she said, with a challenging look at
Ellesborough. "We've borne it for four years. Now it's your turn!"

"Well, here we are," said Ellesborough quietly, "up to the neck. But—of course—don't thank us. It's our business just as much as yours."

The talk dropped a moment, and Janet took advantage of it to bring in coffee as a finish to the meal. Under cover of the slight bustle, Ellesborough said to Rachel, in a voice no longer meant for the table,—

"Could you spare me a letter sometimes, Miss Henderson—at the front?"

He had both elbows on the table, and was playing with a cigarette. There was nothing the least patronizing or arrogant in his manner. But there was a male note in it—perhaps a touch of self-confidence—which ruffled her.

"Oh, I am a bad letter-writer," she said, as she got up from the table.
"Shall we go and look at the cows?"

They all went out into the warm September night. Ellesborough followed Rachel, cigarette in hand, his strong mouth twisting a little. The night was almost cloudless. The pale encircling down, patched at intervals with dark hanging woods, lay quiet under a sky full of faint stars. The scent of the stubblefields, of the great corn-stack just beyond the farmyard, of the big barn so full that the wide wooden doors could not be closed, was mingled with the strong ammonia smells of the farm-yard, and here and there with the sweetness left in the evening air by the chewing cows on their passage to the cow-house on the farther side of the yard.

Rachel led the way to the cow-house—a vast fifteenth-century barn, with an interlacing forest of timber in its roof, where the six cows stood ranged, while Janet and the two land lassies, with Hastings the bailiff to help them, were changing the litter and filling up the racks with hay. Rachel went along the line pointing out the beauties of each separate beast to Ellesborough, and caressing two little calves whom Jenny was feeding by hand. Ellesborough was amused by her technical talk and her proprietor's airs. It seemed to him a kind of play-acting, but it fascinated him. Janet had brought in a lantern, and the light and shade of it seemed to have been specially devised to bring into relief Rachel's round and tempting beauty, the bright brown of her hair where it curled on the temples, and the lovely oval of the cheeks. Ellesborough watched her, now passing into deep shadow, and now brilliantly lit up, as the light of the lantern caught her; overhead, the criss-cross of the arching beams as of some primitive cathedral, centuries old; and on either side the dim forms of the munching cattle, and the pretty movements of the girls busy with their work.

"Take care," laughed Rachel as she passed him. "There are horrid holes in this floor. I haven't had time to mend them."

As she spoke, she slipped and almost fell. Ellesborough threw out a quick hand and caught her by the arm. She smiled into his face.

"Neatly done!" she said composedly, submitting to be led by him over a very broken bit of pavement near the door. His hand held her firmly. Nor did she make any effort to release herself till they were outside. Here were the vicar and his sister waiting to say good-night—the vicar much chagrined that he had seen so little of his chief hostess, and inclined to feel that his self-sacrificing attention to Miss Leighton at supper had been but poorly rewarded. Rachel, however, saw that he was out of humour, and at once set herself to appease him. And in the few minutes which elapsed before she parted with him at the gate she had quite succeeded.

Then she turned to Ellesborough.

"Shall we go up the hill a little?"

They slipped through a side gate of the farmyard, crossed a field, and found themselves on an old grass road leading gently upward along the side of the down into the shadow of the woods. The still, warm night held them enwrapped. Rachel had thrown a white scarf over her head and throat, which gave a mysterious charm to the face within it. As she strolled beside her hew friend she played him with all the arts of a woman resolved to please. And he allowed himself to be handled at her will. He told her about his people, and his friends, about the ideas and ambitions, also, with which he had come to Europe, which were now in abeyance, but were to spring to active life after the war. Forestry on a great scale; a part to be played in the preservation and development of the vast forest areas of America which had been so wilfully wasted; business and patriotism combined; fortune possible; but in any case the public interest served. He talked shrewdly, but also with ardour and imagination; she was stirred, excited even; and all the time she liked the foreignness of his voice, the outline of his profile against the sky, and all the other elements of his physical presence.

But in the midst of his castle-building he broke off.

"However, I'm a silly fool to talk like this. I'm going out to the front directly. Perhaps my bullet's waiting for me."

"Oh, no!" she said involuntarily—"no!"

"I hope not. I don't want to die just yet. I want to get married, for one thing."

He spoke lightly, and she laughed.

"Well, that's easy enough."

He shook his head, but said nothing. They walked on till they reached the edge of the hill, when Rachel, out of breath, sat down on a fallen log to rest a little. Below them stretched the hollow upland, with its encircling woods and its white stubble fields. Far below lay the dark square of the farm, with a light in one of its windows.

Rachel pointed to the grass road by which they had come.

"We haven't seen the ghost!"

He asked her for the story, and she told it. By now she had pieced it all together; and it seemed to Ellesborough that it had a morbid fascination for her.

"He dragged himself down this very path," she said. "They tracked him by the blood stains; his wounds dripped all along it. And then he fell, just under my cart-shed. It was a horrible, bitter night. Of course the silly people here say they hear groans and dragging steps: That's all nonsense, but I sometimes wish it hadn't happened at my farm."

He couldn't help laughing gently at her foolishness.

"Why, it's a great distinction to have a ghost!"

She disagreed—decidedly.

"Any one can have my ghost that wants. I'm awfully easily scared."

"Are you?" There was a deep note in his voice. "No, I don't believe that.
I'm sure you're a plucky woman. I know you are!"

She laughed out.

"How do you know?"

"Why, no one but a plucky woman could have taken this farm and be working it as you're doing."

"That's not pluck," she said, half scornfully. "But if it is—well, I've got plenty of pluck of that kind. But I am often scared, downright scared, about nothing. It's just fear, that's what it is."

"Fear of what?"

"I don't know."

She spoke in a sombre, shrinking tone, which struck him uncomfortably. But when he tried further to discover what she meant, she would say nothing more. He noticed, indeed, that she would often seem to turn the talk upon herself, only to cut it short again immediately. She offered him openings, and then he could make nothing of them; so that when they reached the outskirts of the farm on their return, he had given her all the main outlines of his own history, and she had said almost nothing of hers.

But all the same the walk had drawn them much nearer.

He stopped her at the little gate to say,—

"I'm going to ask you again—I want you to write to me when I'm in
France."

And this time she said almost eagerly,—

"Yes, I'll write; indeed I'll write! But you'll come over again before you go?"

"Rather," he said joyously; "rather! Why, there's a month. You'll be tired of me before you've done."

A few minutes later she was standing in her own little room, listening to the retreating rush of his motor-cycle down the road. There was a great tumult in her mind.

"Am I falling in love with him? Am I—am I?"

But in the dark, when she had put out her light, the cry that shaped itself in her mind was identical with that sudden misgiving of the afternoon, when on Ellesborough's arrival she had first heard his voice downstairs talking to Janet.

"I wish he knew!" But this time it was no mere passing qualm. It had grown into something intense and haunting.

* * * * *

On this same September afternoon, a dark-eyed, shabby woman, with a little girl, alighted at Millsborough Station. They were met by a man who had been lounging about the station for some time and whose appearance had attracted some attention. "See him at a distance, and you might take him for a lord; but get him close, my word!—" said the station-master to the booking-clerk, with a shrug, implying many things.

"Wouldn't give a bob for his whole blessed turn-out," said the booking-clerk. "But right you are, when you sort of get the hang of him, far enough away on the other platform, might be a dook!"

Meanwhile, the man had shouldered some of the bags and parcels brought by the woman and the child, though hardly his fair share of them; and they finally reached the exit from the station.

"If you're going into the town, the bus will be here in a few minutes," said a porter civilly to the woman. "It'll help you with all those things."

The man gruffly answered for her that they preferred to walk, and they started, the woman and the child dragging wearily beside him.

"Now, you've got to be content with what I've found for you," he said to her roughly as they reached the first houses of the town. "There isn't scarcely a lodging or a cottage to be had. Partly it's the holidays still, and partly it's silly folk like you—scared of raids."

"I couldn't go through another winter like last, for Nina's sake," said the woman plaintively.

"Why, you silly goose, there won't be any raids this winter. I've told you so scores of times. We've got the upper hand now, and the Boche will keep his planes at home. But as you won't listen to me, you've got to have your way, I suppose. Well, I've got you rooms of a sort. They'll have to do. I haven't got money enough for anything decent."

The woman made no reply, and to the porter idly looking after them they were soon lost from sight in the gathering dusk of the road.