"Wo-beck!" thundered the infant at the horses' heads.
Again the cart stopped. Up went the sheaves on the fork, and into place on the piles of others in the cart. Then on again, while Elizabeth and I gathered into drifts on our rakes the corn that had been left over. So, slowly down the row we went under the hot August sun, and so through the gap into the field where the roofed stack stood.
Two other Germans—one the sailor on whom Muriel had smiled—were working on the stack. Close by the empty cart was waiting to start at the top of another row. We set out behind it again; the Welsh schoolboy, who had lingered to try to catch a field-mouse that had bolted out of a sheaf, dashed back to his post. This time Ivor drove, the wounded soldier packed the sheaves, and the Germans took the forks and loaded, working with a concentration!
And so, the men changing jobs with each journey we made, the warm and strenuous morning wore away.
After the midday meal there was another change; Ivor the shepherd and the English soldier went off to the barn, and their places on the cart were filled by Colonel Fielding and Captain Holiday, who turned up from the Lodge in flannels. They worked as hard as the Germans, who were their companions in toil, and as silently. After the first greeting, neither Elizabeth nor I had a glance, nor expected one from her fiancé or his friend. Fellow-workers we were. Any social matters were left out of it as long as we were on the job together.
And yet—— Even while my eyes were fixed upon my rake and upon the stubble whence I meant to take in every good ear of corn that I could gather up, my foolish heart still sought to feed itself with glimpses of the men who worked so near to me; "so near and yet so far!" as Vic would probably have said with her mock-sentimental glance.
How could Elizabeth still think that "all men were so ugly" (all men except her own adored Female Impersonator with his eyelashes and his girlish mouth)? How could she not appreciate the grace of that other man's light, yet masculine, build in action?
Farm-work did suit Dick Holiday, whom I preferred to call in my heart Richard Wynn. Seeming never to look at him, I yet saw and delighted in every movement of his. What a wonderful gesture it was of his when he pitched the heavy sheaf on to the stacked-up cart, high above his head! I loved him; the play of his muscles, the rim of white that just showed past the sunburn mark on his neck, the easy set of his brown head upon his shoulders, to which his shirt now clung! More, I loved the clean, frank mind that I could sense beyond the lithe, "out-of-doorish" body; I loved his joy in the country, his pluck as a soldier, his simplicity. I liked him for being such chums with that other, much more complex and artificial young man of Elizabeth's. I liked his honest indignation over his lady-love's talking to the Germans. I liked everything I'd ever heard him say, everything I'd ever seen him do. In fact, for me he could do nothing wrong; nothing!
What a friend ... what a sweetheart ... what everything that was attractive and sweet and sound at the core...
And none of it was for me.