Believing that she had ensured his peaceable behaviour during the next few days, she let him go.
On Saturday night Hunting came to tell them that the men were going to strike.
Sunday passed in a waiting dream of small comings and goings, the Willerbys driving over to discuss the future campaign in voices sunk to an awful whisper, as though they were in church—Foreman hammering at the door with anxious persistency, quite unbalanced by the necessity for changing the usual harvest routine, Shepherd, grimly humorous, assuring Mary he was ready to run a reaper over the whole farm if need be, John in a state of sulky restlessness like a sick cat.
After tea she fled from the house and went to the gate in the stable-yard.
Westward before her rose fold upon fold of the encircling hills, piled rich and golden beneath a tranquil sky. There was no sound but the crunch, crunch of horses feeding in the pasture.
She locked her hands on the highest bar of the gate and rested her chin upon them. The sunset colours before her paled from golden fields and crimson sky to grey and ghostly corn below faint clouds of primrose.
She closed her eyes and let the cool air blow across her forehead. She must have dozed for a minute, for when she looked up the wolds seemed full of life and movement. From the upland acres came heavy waggons behind great horses that strained and sweated with their golden load. In the harvest field moved the figures of men piling stooks and leading horses and forking sheaves into the lumbering waggons—stooping and lifting, lifting and stooping with a rhythm that swayed atune to the wind across the wheat.
Voices rang out, and laughter from the shadowy hills, as girls passed up the road to greet their homing sweethearts. Empty waggons bound for the hills again rattled merrily past with a load of singing children. The men wore dark loose clothes, quaintly fashioned, exposing their brown throats and sinewy arms. Among them rode the master on a grey cob, laughing with them and they with him as he paused to encourage a worker, and soothe a restive horse.
The light faded. Down the winding road came the last load home, while following in its rumbling shadow the women gleaned fallen straws and ears of corn.
The harvesters passed her, their forks across their shoulders, and as they passed they smiled and saluted her with friendly eyes. The children passed her, carrying garlands of pimpernel and poppies. They waved their flowers towards her, and sang with tired, merry voices. The girls passed, bearing thick brown jars emptied of ale, and baskets brimming with half-ripe blackberries from the hedgerow. The master passed her.