CHAPTER VI
WAITING FOR THE BLOW TO FALL
David Penlogan was not the man to cry out when he was hurt. He went about his work in dumb resignation. The calamity was too great to be talked about, too overwhelming to be shaped into words. He could only shut his teeth and endure. To discuss the matter, even with his wife, would be like probing a wound with a red-hot needle. Better let it be. There are times when words are like a blister on a burn.
What the future had in store for him he did not know, and he had not the courage to inquire. One text of Scripture he repeated to himself morning, noon, and night, "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof," and to that he held. It was his one anchor. The rope was frayed, and the anchor out of sight—whether hooked to a rock or simply embedded in the sand he did not know—but it steadied him while the storm was at its worst. It helped him to endure.
Harvest was beginning, and the crop had to be gathered in—gathered in from fields that were no longer his, and that possibly he would never plant again. It was all very pathetic. He seemed sometimes like a man preparing for his own funeral.
"When next year comes——" he would say to himself, and then he would stop short. He had not courage enough yet to think of next year; his business was with the present. His first, and, as far as he could see, his only duty was to gather in the crops. Sir John had not spoken to him yet. He was too concerned about his daughter to think of so small a matter as the falling-in of a lease. Strange that what was a mere trifle to one man should be a matter of life and death to another.
It was a sad and silent harvest-tide for the occupants of Hillside Farm. The impending calamity, instead of drawing them more closely together, seemed to separate them. Each was afraid of betraying emotion before the rest. So they avoided each other. Even at meal-times they all pretended to be so busy that there was no time to talk. The weather was magnificent, and all the cornfields were growing ripe together. This was true of nearly every other farm in the parish. Hence hired labour could not be had for love or money. The big farmers had picked up all the casual harvesters beforehand. The small farmers would have to employ their womenfolk and children.
Ralph and his father got up each morning at sunrise, and, armed with reaping-hooks, went their ways in different directions. Ralph undertook to cut down the barley-field, David negotiated a large field of oats. They could not talk while they were in different fields. Moreover, neither was in the mood for company. Later on they might be able to talk calmly and without emotion, but at present it would be foolish to make the attempt.
Every day they expected that Sir John Hamblyn or his steward would put in an appearance; that would bring things to a head, and put an end to the little conspiracy of silence that had now lasted nearly a week. But day after day passed away, and the solemn gloom of the farm remained unbroken.
Ralph kept doggedly to his work. Work was the best antidote against painful thoughts. Since the morning he walked across to Hamblyn Manor, in order to ease his conscience by making a clean breast of it, he had never ventured beyond his own homestead. He tried to persuade himself it was no concern of his what happened, and that if Dorothy Hamblyn died it would be a just judgment on Sir John for his grasping and oppressive ways.