The day was misty and still. October, the marvellous October of this year, was marching on. Every day, Foch on the battlefield of France and Belgium was bringing down the old Europe, and clearing the ground for the new. In English villages and English farms, no less than in the big towns, there was ferment and excitement, though it showed but little. Would the boys be home by Christmas—the sons, the brothers, the husbands? What would the change be like—the life after the war? If there were those who yearned and prayed for it—there were those who feared it. The war had done well for some, and hideously for others. And all through the play of individual interests and desires, and even in the dullest minds there ran the intoxicating sense of Victory, of an England greater and more powerful than even her own sons and daughters had dared to dream—an England which knew herself now, by the stern test of the four years' struggle, to be possessed of powers and resources, spiritual, mental, physical, which amazed herself. In all conscious minds, brooding on the approaching time, there rose the question: "What are we going to do with it?" and even in the unconscious, the same thought was present, as a vague disturbing impulse.
Janet had just read the war telegrams to Rachel, who had come down late, complaining of a headache; but when Janet—the reserved and equable Janet—after going through the news of the recapture of Ostend, Zeebrugge, and Bruges, broke into the passionate, low-spoken comment: "The Lord is King—be the people never so unquiet!" or could not, for tears, finish the account of the entry into recaptured Lille, and the joy of its inhabitants, Rachel sat irresponsive—or apparently so.
How would it affect Ellesborough—this astounding news? Would it take him from her the sooner, or delay his going? That was all she seemed capable of feeling.
Janet was troubled by her look and attitude, and being well aware that the two had had a long tête-à-tête the day before, wondered how things were going. But she said nothing; and after breakfast Rachel joined the two girls in the potato-field, and worked as hard as they, hour after hour. But her usual gaiety was gone, and the girls noticed at once the dark rims under her eyes. They wondered secretly what Miss Henderson's "friend" had been doing. For that the "Cap'n" was courting their employer had long been plain to them. Betty, of course, had a "friend," the young soldier whose sick leave was nearly up, and the child's deep velvety eyes were looking nearly as tired as Miss Henderson's. While Jenny, too, the timid, undeveloped Jenny had lately begun to take an interest in a "friend," a young fellow belonging to Ellesborough's forestry camp whom she had met in Millsborough the day of the Harvest Festival. They had hardly exchanged half an hour's real conversation. But he had bought her some sweets at Millsborough, and walked a bit of the way home with her. Then she had seen him in the village once or twice. He had some relations there—there was some talk of him, and that old murder at the farm—she didn't know rightly what it was. But she felt somehow that Miss Henderson wouldn't want to have him about—Miss Henderson didn't like talk of the murder—so Jenny had never asked him to look her up. But her raw, childish mind was full of him, and the ferments of sex were stirring. In the secret opinion of both girls, "friends" were quite as much pain as pleasure. No girl could do without them; but they were pretty certain to cause heart-aches, to make a girl wish at some time or other that she had never been born. A London factory-girl would have expressed it in the Cockney way: "Blokes are no good—but you must have a bloke!"
The two girls then concluded that Captain Ellesborough had been causing trouble, as all men did, at some point; and being sympathetic little souls, they worked especially hard in the potato-field, and would not allow Rachel to carry the heavier baskets to the "clamp."
Meanwhile Janet had been wrestling with old Halsey, till he had very reluctantly yielded to her persuasion, and returned to work.
"I'm not the man I wor," he confided to Peter Betts, as they were eating their dinner under a hedge in the damp October sunshine. "When I wor a young man, I wouldn't ha' minded them things, not if it was iver so. But now they do give me the shivers in my inside."
"What do?" said Peter Betts, with a mouthful of cold bacon. He was still greatly in the dark as to why Halsey had left work so early in the afternoon the day before, and why he was now in such a gruff and gloomy mood. There was indeed a rumour in the village that old Halsey had seen "summat," but as Halsey had gone to bed immediately after Miss Leighton had had her say with him, and had refused to be "interviewed" even by his wife, there was a good deal of uncertainty even in the mind of his oldest pal, Peter Betts.
"Why—ghostisses!" said Halsey, with a frown, removing his pipe for a moment to give emphasis to the word. "I don't see as a man can be expected to deal with ghostisses. Anythin' else yer like in a small way—mad dogs, or bulls, or snakes, where they keep 'em, which, thank the Lord, they don't in these parts—but not them."
"What did yer see?" said Betts, after a few ruminating pulls.