Harvest

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

XV

The frost held. A sun of pearl and fire rose over the hill, as the stars finally faded out in the winter morning, and a brilliant rime lay sparkling on all the pastures and on the slopes of the down. The brilliance had partly vanished from the lower grounds when Janet started on her way; but on the high commons, winter was at its gayest and loveliest. The distant woods were a mist of brown and azure, encircling the broad frost-whitened spaces; the great single beeches and oaks under which Spenser or Sidney—the great Will himself—might have walked, shot up, magnificent, into a clear sky, proudly sheltering the gnarled thorns and furze-bushes which marched beside and round them, like dwarfs in a pageant.

Half way up the hill, Janet came across old Betts bringing down a small cart-full of furze for fodder, and she stopped to speak to him. A little later on, nearer to the camp she overtook Dempsey, who rather officiously joined her, and assuming at once that she was in quest of the Camp Commandant, directed her to a short cut leading straight to Ellesborough's quarters. There was a slight something in the manner of both men that jarred on Janet—as though their lips said one thing and their eyes another—furtive in the case of Betts, a trifle insolent in that of Dempsey. She with her tragic knowledge guessed uncomfortably at what it meant. Dempsey—as she had made up her mind after ten minutes' talk with him—was a vain gossip. It had been madness on Rachel's part to give him the smallest hold on her. Very likely he had not yet actually betrayed her—his hope of favours to come might have been sufficient to prevent that. But his self-importance would certainly show itself somehow—in a hint or a laugh. He had probably already roused in the village mind a prying curiosity, a suspicion of something underhand, which might alter Rachel's whole relation to her neighbours. For once give an English country-side reason to suspect a scandal, and it will pluck it bare in time, with a slow and secret persistence.

Well, after all, if the situation became disagreeable, Rachel would only have to choose Ellesborough's country as her own, and begin her new life there.

Supposing that all went well! Janet's mind went through some painful alterations of confidence and fear, as she walked her bicycle along the rough forest-track leading to Ellesborough's hut. She believed him to be deeply in love with Rachel, and the spiritual passion in her seemed to realize in the man's inmost nature, behind all his practical ability, and his short business manner, powers of pity and tenderness like her own. But if she were wrong? If this second revelation put too great a strain upon one brought up in an exceptionally strict school where certain standards of conduct were simply taken for granted?

Mystic, and puritan as she was, there were moments when Janet felt her responsibility almost unbearable. Rachel deserted—Rachel in despair—Rachel turning on the woman who had advised her to her undoing—all these images were beating on Janet's tremulous sense, as the small military hut where Ellesborough and two of his junior officers lived came into view, together with that wide hollow of the forestry camp where he and Rachel had first met. The letter in her pocket seemed a living and sinister thing. She had still power to retain it—to keep it imprisoned.

A lady in the dress of the Women's Forestry Corps appeared on another path leading to Ellesborough's hut. Janet recognized Mrs. Fergusson, and was soon greeted by a shout of welcome.

"Well, so Miss Henderson's engaged to our Captain!" said Mrs. Fergusson,
with a smiling countenance, as they shook hands. "The girls here, and
I, are awfully interested. The camp began it! But do you want the
Captain? I'm afraid he isn't here."

Janet's countenance fell.

"I thought I should be sure to find him in the dinner hour."

"No, he went up to town by the first train this morning on some business with the Ministry. We expect him back about three."

It was not one o'clock. Janet pondered what to do.

"You wanted to see him?" said Mrs. Fergusson, full of sympathy.

"I brought a letter for him. If I leave it, will he be sure to get it directly he returns?"

"His servant's in the hut. Let's talk to him."

Mrs. Fergusson rapped at the door of the hut, and walked in. An elderly batman appeared.

"I have a letter for Captain Ellesborough—an important letter—on business," said Janet. "I was to wait for an answer. But as he isn't here, where shall I leave it, so that he will be certain to get it?"

"On his table, if you please, ma'am," said the soldier, opening the door of the Captain's small sitting-room—"I'll see that he gets it."

"It'll be quite safe?" said Janet anxiously, placing it herself in a prominent place on the writing-table.

"Lor, yes, ma'am. Nobody comes in here but me, when the Captain's away.
I'll tell him of it directly he comes home."

"May I just write a little note myself? I expected to find Captain
Ellesborough in."

The servant handed her a sheet of paper. She wrote—"I brought Rachel's letter, and am very disappointed not to see you. Come at once. Don't delay. Janet Leighton."

She slipped it into an envelope, which she addressed and left beside the other. Then she reluctantly left the hut with Mrs. Fergusson.

"I am so sorry you didn't find him," said that lady. "Was it something about the wedding?" she added, smiling, her feminine curiosity getting the better of her.

"Oh, no—not yet," said Janet, startled.

"Well, I suppose it won't be long," laughed Mrs. Fergusson. "He's desperately in love, you know!"

Janet smiled in return, and Mrs. Fergusson, delighted to have the chance, broke out into praises of her Commandant.

"You see, we women who are doing all this new work with men, we know a jolly deal more about them than we ever did before. I can tell you, it searches us out, this joint life—both women and men. In this camp you can't hide what you are—the sort of man—or the sort of woman. And there isn't a woman in this camp, if she's been here any time, who wouldn't trust the Captain for all she's worth—who wouldn't tell him her love-affairs, or her debts—or march up to a machine-gun, if he told her. In a sense, they're in love with him, because—as you've no doubt found out, he has a way with him! But they all know that he's never been anything to them but the best of Commandants, and a good friend. Oh, I could never have run this camp but for him. He and I'll go together! Of course we're shutting up very soon."

So the pleasant Irishwoman ran on, as she walked beside Janet and her bicycle to the top of the hill. Janet listened and smiled. Her own mind said ditto to it all. But nevertheless, the more Ellesborough was set on a pinnacle by this enthusiastic friend and spectator of his daily life, the more Rachel's friend trembled for Rachel. A lover "not too bright and good" to understand—and forgive—that was what was wanted.

She reached the farm-gate about two o'clock, and Rachel was there, waiting for her. But before they met, Rachel watching her approach, saw that there was no news for her.

"He wasn't there?" she said, drearily, as Janet reached her.

Janet explained, and they walked up the farm lane together.

"I would have waited if I could," she said in distress. "But it would have looked strange. Mrs. Fergusson would have suspected something wrong."

"Oh no, you couldn't have waited," said Rachel, decidedly. "Well!"—she threw her arms out in a great stretch—"it's done. In half an hour he'll be reading the letter. It's like waiting for one's execution, isn't it? Nothing can stop it; I may be dead before tea!" She gave a wild laugh.

"Rachel!"

"Well, that's how I feel. If he gives me up, it will be death—though I dare say I shall go on fussing round the farm, and people will still talk to me as if I were alive. But!"—she shrugged her shoulders.

"He won't give you up—" said Janet, much troubled—"because—because he's a good man."

"All the more reason. If I were he, I should give me up. Shall I tell you a queer thing, Janet? I hate Roger, as much as I can hate anybody. It would be a great relief to me if I heard he were dead. And yet at the same time I see—oh yes, I see quite plainly—that I treated him badly. He told me so the other night—and it is so—it's true. I never had the least patience with him. And now he's dying—at least he says so—and though I hate him—though I pray I may never, never see him again, yet I'm sorry for him. Isn't that strange?"

She looked at Janet with a queer flickering defiance, which was also a kind of remorse, in her eyes.

"No, it isn't strange."

"Why not?—when I hate him?"

"One can be sorry even for those one hates. I suppose God is," Janet added, after a pause.

Rachel made a little face of scorn.

"Why should God hate any one? He made us. He's responsible. He must have known what He was doing. If He really pitied us, would He have made us at all?"

Janet made a little protesting sound—a sound of pain.

"Does it give you the shivers, old woman, when I talk like that?" Rachel slipped her hand affectionately through Janet's arm. "Well, I won't, then. But if—" she caught her breath a little—"if George casts me off, don't expect me to sing psalms and take it piously. I don't know myself just lately—I seem quite strange to myself."

And Janet, glancing at her sideways, wondered indeed where all that rosy-cheeked, ripe bloom had gone, which so far had made the constant charm of Rachel Henderson. Instead a bloodless face, with pinched lines, and heavy-lidded eyes! What a formidable thing was this "love," that she herself had never known, though she had had her quiet dreams of husband and children, like her fellows.

Rachel, however, would not let herself be talked with or pitied. She walked resolutely to the house, and went off to the fields to watch Halsey cutting and trimming a hedge.

"If he doesn't come before dark," she said, under her breath, to Janet, before setting off—"it will be finished. If he does—"

She hurried away without finishing the sentence, and was presently taking a lesson from old Halsey, in what is fast becoming one of the rarest of the rural arts. But in little more than half an hour, Janet bringing in the cows, saw her return and go into the house. The afternoon was still lovely—the sky, a pale gold, with thin bars of grey cloud lying across it, and the woods, all delicate shades of brown and purple, with their topmost branches clear against the gold. The old red walls and tiled roofs of the farm, the fields, the great hay and straw stacks, were all drenched in the soft winter light.

Rachel went up to her room, and sat down before the bare deal dressing-table which held her looking-glass, and the very few articles of personal luxury she possessed; a pair of silver-backed brushes and a hand-glass that had belonged to an aunt, a small leather case in which she kept some modest trinkets—a pearl brooch, a bracelet or two, and a locket that had been her mother's—and, standing on either side of the glass, two photographs of her father and mother.

There was a clock on the mantelpiece. "Nearly four o'clock—" she thought—"I'll give it an hour. He'd send—if he couldn't come, and he wanted to come—but if nothing happens—I shall know what to think."

As this passed through her mind, she opened one of the drawers of the dressing-table, in which she kept her gloves and handkerchiefs. Suddenly she perceived at the back of the drawer a small leathern case. The colour rushed into her face. She took it out and ran quickly down the stairs to the kitchen. Janet and the girls were busy milking. The coast was clear.

A bright fire which Janet had just made up was burning in the kitchen. Rachel went up to it and thrust the leathern case into the red core of it. Some crackling—a disagreeable smell—and the little thing had soon vanished. Rachel went slowly upstairs again, and locked the door of her room behind her. The drawer of the dressing-table was still open, and there was visible in it the object she was really in search of, when the little leathern case caught her eye—a small cloth-bound book marked "Diary."

She took it out, and sat with it in her hand, thinking. How was it she had never yet destroyed that case? The Greek cameo brooch it held—Dick Tanner's gift to her—how vividly she recalled her first evening alone at the farm, when she had dropped it into the old well, and had listened to the splash of it in the summer silence. She remembered thinking vaguely, and no doubt foolishly, that the cameo would drop more heavily and more certainly without the case, which was wood, though covered with leather, and she had therefore taken the brooch out, and had probably put back the case absently into her pocket. And thence it had found its way back among her things, how she did not know.

The little adventure had excited and unnerved her. It seemed somehow of evil omen that she should have come across that particular thing at this moment. Opening the diary with a rather trembling hand, she looked through it. She was not orderly or systematic enough to keep a diary regularly, and it only contained a few entries, at long intervals, relating mostly to her married life—and to the death of her child. She glanced through them with that strange sense of unreality—of standing already outside her life, of which she had spoken to Janet. There were some blank pages at the end of the book; and, in her restlessness, just to pass the time and to find some outlet for the storm of feeling within, she began to write, at first slowly, and then very rapidly.

"He must have got my letter by now. I sent it by Janet this morning. He wasn't there—but by now he must have got home—he is probably reading it at this moment. Whatever happens to me—I want just to say this—to write it down now, while I can—I shall never blame George, and I shall always love him—with all my heart, with all my soul. He has the right to say he can't trust me—I told him so in my letter this morning—that I am not fit to be his wife. He has the right—and very likely he will say it. The terrible thing is that I don't trust myself. If I look forward and ask myself—shall I always feel as I do now?—I can't honestly be sure. There is something in me that wants change—always something new—some fresh experience. I can't even imagine the time when I shouldn't love George. The mere thought of losing him is awful—unspeakable. But yet—I will write it down frankly!—nothing has ever lasted with me very long. It is like the farm. I used to love every minute of the day, every bit of the work, however dull and dirty it was; and now—I love it still—but I seem already—sometimes—to be looking forward to the day when I shall be tired of it.

"Why am I made like that? I don't know. But I can't feel that I am responsible.

"Perhaps if George forgives me, I shall be so happy that everything will change—my own character first of all. That is my hope. For though I suppose I am vain—though I like people to admire me and make much of me—I am not really in love with myself at all. If I were, I couldn't be in love with George—we are so different.

"I don't feel yet that I know him. Perhaps now I never shall. I often find myself wishing that he had something to confess to me. I would hardly let him—he should never humble himself to me. But to feel that I could forgive him something, and that he would owe me something—would be very sweet, very heavenly. I would make it so easy for him. Is he feeling like that towards me? 'Poor child—she was very young—and so miserable!'

"I mustn't write like this—it makes me cry. There is a beautiful yellow sunset outside, and the world seems very still. He must be here soon—or a messenger. Janet asked him not to wait.

"After all, I don't think I am so changeable. I have just been running myself down—but I don't really believe I could ever change—towards him. Oh, George!—George!—my George!—come to me!—don't give me up. George, darling, you could do anything with me you liked—don't despair of me! In the Gospel, it was the bad women who were forgiven because they loved 'much.' Now I understand why. Because love makes new. It is so terribly strong. It is either a poison—or life—immortal life. I have never been able to believe in the things Janet believes in. But I think I do now believe in immortality—in something within you that can't die—when once it has begun to live."

* * * * *

And then she laid her pencil down—and sat with the book on her knee—looking towards the gold and grey of the sky—the tears running quietly down her cheeks.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Hastings had come hurriedly into the shippen, where Janet and the two girls were milking. He came to stand beside her, silent, but fidgeting so, that she presently looked up in astonishment.

"Did you want me?"

"I wanted to tell you something," he said in a low voice, stooping over her—"Don't let the girls hear. But that man's been seen again. The tramp."

Janet started. She jumped up, asked Betty, who had finished, to take her place, and went with Hastings out of the barn.

"There are two or three people think they've seen him lately," he said hurriedly. "A man from Dobson's farm"—(the farm which lay between Great End and the village)—"who was on the hill yesterday evening, just before dark, was certain he saw somebody hanging about the back of the farm in a queer way—"

"Last night?" echoed Janet.

"Yes. And there are two people who remember meeting a man on the X—road who said he was going to Walton End. And the police have been inquiring, but nobody at Walton End knows anything about such a man. However, they have a description of him at last. A tall, dark fellow—gentlemanly manners—seems delicate. I don't like the look of it, Miss Janet. Seems to me as though it weren't just a tramp, hanging about for what he can steal. Do you know of anybody who has a down on Miss Henderson—who'd like to frighten her, or put blackmail on her?"

Janet considered. She was tempted to take the faithful fellow to some extent into her confidence, but she rapidly decided against it. She suggested that he should himself sleep for a few nights at the farm, and carefully examine the neighbourhood of it, last thing; and that she should bicycle over to Millsborough at once, and have some further talk with the Superintendent of Police there.

"Besides—I'd like to be out of the way," she thought. "They won't want anybody hanging round!"

For there was steadily growing up in her a blissful confidence that all would be once more settled and settled for good, before the night fell. Spectators were entirely out of place! Nor would she disturb Rachel's mind by any talk just then of what seemed to be a fresh attempt at terrorism on the part of her wretched husband. Hastings would be in charge for the moment, and Ellesborough would be on the spot for consultation before darkness had really set in.

So as before, she told Hastings not to alarm Miss Henderson. But he was not to leave the farm-buildings, and possibly the Superintendent of Police would return with her. "And then—either Rachel or the Captain will have to tell the police the truth!" Just as she was starting, Rachel came downstairs in some surprise.

"Where are you off to?"

"I have forgotten something I wanted from Millsborough. I shall be back in an hour or so."

Rachel abstractedly nodded assent. The golden light from the west transfigured her, as she stood in the doorway. She was pale, but it seemed to Janet that she was no longer excited—that there was in her too something of the confidence which had sprung up in the heart of her friend. She had the look of one for whom the Valley of the Shadow is past, and her beauty had never struck Janet as it struck her at that moment. Its grosser elements seemed all refined away. The girlish look was quite gone; she seemed older and graver; but there breathed about her "a diviner air."

Janet, who was much the shorter, mounted on the step to kiss her.
Caresses were not at all common between them, but Rachel returned it, and
their eyes met in a quiet look which said what her lips forbore. Then
Janet departed, and Rachel waved to her as she passed through the gate.

Hastings crossed the yard, and Rachel called to him.

"Are you off soon?"

"No, Miss. I shall sleep over the stable. That horse wants looking after."

Rachel acquiesced, with a vague feeling of satisfaction, and Hastings disappeared within the stable opposite.

She went back into the sitting-room, which was still flooded with the last reflections from the western sky beyond the fields, though the light was fading rapidly, and the stars were coming out. What a strange effect it was—she suddenly noticed it afresh—that of the two large windows exactly facing each other in so small a room! One had an odd sense of being indoors and out, at the same time; the down on one side, the farm-yard on the other, and in the midst, the fire, the table and chairs, the pictures, and the red carpet, seemed all parts of the same scene.

She made up the fire. She brought in a few Xmas roses, from a border under the kitchen window, and arranged them in a glass on the table. It was then time to draw the blinds. But she could not make up her mind to shut out the saffron sky, or the view of the road.

Something in the distance!—an approaching figure, and the noise of a motor-bicycle. She caught at a chair a moment, as though to steady herself; and then she went to the window, and stood there watching. He saw her quite plainly in the level light, and leaving his bicycle at the gate, he came towards her. There was no one in the yard, and before he entered he stood a moment, bare-headed, gazing at her, as she stood framed in the window. Everything that she wished to know was written in his face. A little sob broke the silence of the sitting-room.

Then he opened the doors and closed them behind him. Without a word she seemed to glide over the room towards him; and now, she was on his breast, gathered close against the man's passionately beating heart. Neither spoke—neither was able to speak.

Then—suddenly—a crash of breaking glass—a shot. The woman he was holding fell from Ellesborough's arms; he only just caught her. Another shot—which grazed his own coat.

"Rachel!"

It was a cry of horror. Her eyes were closing. But she still smiled at him, as he laid her on the floor, imploring her to speak. There was a stain of blood on the lips, and through them came a few shuddering gasps.

Hastings rushed into the room—

"Good God, Sir!"

"A doctor!—Go for a doctor!" said Ellesborough hoarsely—"No—she's gone!"

He sank down beside her, putting his ear to her lips. In vain. No sound was there. The smiling mouth had settled and shut. Without a murmur or a sigh, Rachel had passed for ever from this warm world and the arms of her lover, at the bidding of the "fierce workman Death."

When Janet, a doctor, and the Superintendent of Police arrived, it was to find Ellesborough sitting motionless beside the body, while the two girls, a blanched and shivering pair, watched for Janet at the door.

"Can you throw any light upon it, Sir?" said the Superintendent, respectfully, at last, when the Doctor had finished his examination, and still Ellesborough did not speak.

The Captain looked up.

"Her husband did it"—he said, quietly—"the man who was her husband."

A shudder of surprise ran through the room.

"Did I hear you right, Sir?" said the Superintendent. "Miss Henderson passed for unmarried."

"She married a man called Roger Delane in Canada," said Ellesborough, in the same monotonous voice. "She divorced him—for cruelty and adultery—two years ago. A few days since he waylaid her in the dark, and threatened her. I didn't know this till she wrote to me to-day. She said that she was afraid of him—that she thought he was mad—and I came over at once to see how I could protect her. We were engaged to be married."

The Superintendent drew a furtive hand across his eyes. Then he produced his note-book, and took the evidence in order. Hastings came in from a lantern search of the farm-buildings, the hill-side, and the nearest fringes of wood, to report that he had found no trace of the murderer. The news, however, had by this time spread through the village, and the kitchen was full of persons who had hurried to the farm—Old Halsey and John Dempsey among them—to tell what they knew, and had seen. Ellesborough roused himself from his stupor, and came to assist the police in the preliminary examination of witnesses and inspection of the farm. Once he and Janet passed each other, but they did not attempt to speak. Each indeed shrank from the other. A word of pity would have been merely a deepened agony.

But the farm emptied at last. A body of police had been sent out to scout the woods, to watch the roads and the railway stations. Ellesborough and Hastings had lifted the dead woman upon a temporary bier which had been raised in the sitting-room. Then Hastings had drawn Ellesborough away, and Janet, with a village mother, had rendered the last offices.

When Ellesborough re-entered, he found a white vision, lying in a bare room, from which all traces of ordinary living had been as far as possible cleared away. Only the Christmas roses which Rachel had gathered that afternoon were now on her breast. Her hands were folded over them. Her beautiful hair lay unbound on the pillow—Janet's trembling hands had refused to cut it.

At sight of Ellesborough, Janet rose from her kneeling posture beside the dead, as white and frozen almost as Rachel herself—with something in her hand—a small book. She held it out to Ellesborough.

"The Superintendent asked my leave to go into her room—in case there was anything which could help them. He brought me this. She had been writing in it—He asked me to look at it. I did—just enough to see—that no one had any right to it—but you. She wrote it I think about an hour before you came. It was her last word."

"I have her letters also"—said Ellesborough, almost inaudibly, as he took the book—"You brought it—you kind woman! You were her good angel—God reward you!"

Then at last a convulsion of weeping showed in Janet's face. She laid her hand in his, and went noiselessly away.

Ellesborough sat beside his dead love all night. The farm was peaceful again after that rush of the Furies through it, which had left this wreck behind. Rachel's diary and letter lay before him. They were as her still living voice in his ears, and as the words sank into memory they pierced through all the rigidities of a noble nature, rending and kneading as they went. He recalled his own solitary hour of bitterness after her letter reached him. The story it contained had gone very hard with him, though never for one moment had he even in thought forsaken her. There was some comfort in that. But the memory which upheld him, which alone kept him from despair, was the memory of her face at the window, the sense still lingering in his own physical pulses of her young clinging life in his arms, of the fluttering of her poor heart against his breast, the exquisite happiness of her kiss—the kiss which death cut short.

No—he had not failed her. That was all he had to live by. And without it, it seemed to him, he could not have endured to live.

* * * * *

The two girls had sobbed themselves to sleep at last. But Janet did not sleep. Tears came naturally as the hours went by—tears and the agonized relief of prayer to one for whom prayer was a daily need of the soul. And in the early morning there flooded in upon her a strange consciousness of Rachel's spirit in hers—a strange suspicion that after all the gods had not wrought so hardly with Rachel. A few days before she had attended the funeral in the village church, of a young wife just happily married, who had died in three days, of virulent influenza. Never had the words of the Anglican service pleased her so little. What mockery—what fulsome mockery—to thank God because "it hath pleased Thee to deliver this our sister, out of the miseries of this troublesome world." But the words recurred to her now—mysteriously—with healing power. Had it been after all "deliverance" for Rachel, from this "troublesome world," and the temptations that surround those who are not strong enough for the wrestle that Fate sets them—that a God appoints them? She had met her lover—after fear and anguish; and had known him hers, utterly and wholly hers, for one supreme moment. And from that height—that perfection—God had called her. No lesser thing could ever touch her now.

Such are the moments of religious exaltation which cheat even the sharpest griefs of men and women. Janet would decline from her Pisgah height only too soon; but, for the time, thoughts like these gave her the strength to bear.

When the house began to move again, she went down to Ellesborough. She drew him into the kitchen—made a fire, and brought him food. Presently she found calm enough to tell him many details of the previous days. And the man's sound nature responded. Once he grasped her hand, and kissed it—as though he thanked her dumbly again, for himself and Rachel. It seemed to Janet indeed, as she sat by him, that Rachel had left her a trust. She took it up instinctively—from this first desolate morning. For there are women set apart for friendship—Janet was one of them—as others are set apart for love.

* * * * *

And with the first break of light on the new November day, the search parties in the hills came upon what they sought. Some one remembered the deserted hut—and from that moment the hunt was easy. Finally in the dripping heart of the wood the pursuers found the murderer lying face downwards in front of the dead fire, with the revolver beside him with which he had taken first Rachel's life, and then his own. Some sheets of paper were scattered near him, on which he had written an incoherent and grandiloquent confession. But of such acts there is no real explanation. They are the product of that black seed in human nature which is born with a man, and flowers in due time, through devious stages, into such a deed as that which destroyed Rachel Henderson.