The reins fell from her grasp. She leant back in the cart, half fainting.
The horse, finding the reins on his neck, strayed to the gra.s.sy side of the road, and began grazing. A short time pa.s.sed. In another minute or two the left wheel would have gone done into a deep ditch.
"Hallo!" cried a man"s voice. "What the matter?"
Rachel tried to rouse herself, but could only murmur inarticulately. The man jumped off his bicycle, propped it against a tree, and came running to her.
He saw a woman, in a khaki felt hat and khaki dress, sitting hunched up in a fainting state on the seat of a light cart. He was just in time to catch the horse and turn it back to the road. Then in his astonishment John Dempsey altogether forgot himself.
"Don"t be frightened, Mrs. Delane! Why, you"ve had a faint. But never mind. Cheer up! I"ll get you home safe."
And Rachel, reviving, opened her heavy eyes to see stooping over her the face of the lad in the hooded cart whom she had last seen in the night of that November snowstorm, two years before.
"What did you say?" she asked stupidly. Then, raising herself, with an instinctive gesture she smoothed back her hair from her face, and straightened her hat. "Thank you, I"m all right."
Dempsey"s mouth as he retreated from her shaped itself to an involuntary grin.
"I beg your pardon, ma"am--but I think I"ve seen you in Canada. Didn"t I once come to your place, with a parcel from Mr. Grimes--that was my employer--of Redminster? I remember you had a j.a.p servant. And there was another time, I think"--the lad"s eyes fixed her, contracted a little, and sharp with curiosity--"when you and Mr. d.i.c.k Tanner gave me that fizzling hot coffee--don"t you remember?--in that awful blizzard two years ago? And Mr. Tanner gave the horses a feed, too. Awfully good chap, Mr. Tanner. I don"t know what I should have done without that coffee."
Rachel was still deathly white, but she had recovered possession of herself, and her mind was working madly through a score of possibilities.
"You"re quite mistaken," she said coldly, "I never saw you before that I am aware of. Please let go the reins. I can manage now quite well. I don"t know what made me feel ill. I"m all right now."
"You"ve got the reins twisted round the shaft, miss," said Dempsey officiously. "You"d better let me put "em right."
And without waiting for a reply, he began to disentangle them, not without a good deal of fidgeting from the horse, which delayed him. His mouth twitched with laughter as he bent over the shaft. Deny that she was Mrs. Delane! That was a good one. Why, now that he had seen her close, he could swear to her anywhere.
Rachel watched him, her senses sharpening rapidly. Only a few minutes since Roger had been there--and now, this man. Had they met? Was there collusion between them? There must be. How else could Roger know? No one else in the world but this youth could have given him the information.
She recalled the utter solitude of the snow-bound farm--the heavy drifts--no human being but d.i.c.k and herself--till that evening when the new snow was all hard frozen, and they two had sleighed back under the moon to her own door.
What to do? She seemed to see her course.
"What is your name?" she asked him, endeavouring to speak in her ordinary voice, and bending over the front of the cart, she spoke to the horse, "Quiet, Jack, quiet!"
"My name"s John Dempsey, ma"am." He looked up, and then quickly withdrew his eyes. She saw the twitching smile that he now could hardly restrain.
By this time he had straightened the reins, which she gathered up.
"It"s curious," she said, "but you"re not the first person who"s mistaken me for that Mrs. Delane. I knew something about her. I don"t want to be mistaken for her."
"I see," said Dempsey.
"I would rather you didn"t speak about it in the village--or anywhere.
You see, one doesn"t like to be confused with some people. I didn"t like Mrs. Delane."
The lad looked up grinning.
"She got divorced, didn"t she?"
"I dare say. I knew very little about her. But, as I said, I don"t want to be mistaken for her."
Then, tying the reins to the cart, she jumped down and stood beside him.
His hand went instinctively to the horse"s mouth, holding the restive animal still.
"And I should be very much obliged to you if you would keep what you thought about me to yourself. I don"t want you to talk about it in the village or anywhere. Come up and see me--at the farm--and I"ll tell you why I dislike being mixed up with that woman--why, in fact, I should mind it dreadfully. I can"t explain now, but--"
The young man was fairly dazzled by the beauty of the sudden flush on her pale cheeks, of her large pleading eyes, her soft voice. And this--as old Betts had only that afternoon told him--was the lady engaged to his own superior officer, Captain Ellesborough, the Commandant of Ralstone Camp, whom he heartily admired, and stood in considerable awe of! His vanity, of which he possessed so large a share, was much tickled; but, also, his feelings were touched.
"Why, of course, ma"am, won"t say anything. I didn"t mean any harm."
"All right," said Rachel, scrambling back to her seat. "If you like to come up to-morrow morning, I shall be pleased to see you. It"s a bargain, mind!"
He saluted, smiling. She nodded to him, and drove off.
"Well, that"s the rummiest go!" said the bewildered Dempsey to himself, as he walked towards his bicycle. "Mistake be d.a.m.ned! She _was_ Mrs.
Delane, and what"s she up to now with my captain? And what the deuce was she doing at Tanner"s?"
Never did a person feel himself more vastly important than Dempsey as he bicycled back to the Ralstone camp, whence he had started in the morning, after the peace news, to go and see a cousin living some distance beyond Great End Farm. To be his grandfather"s grandson was much--but _this_!
Rachel drove, with hands unconscious of the reins, along the road and up the farm lane leading through her own fields. The world swam around her in the mist, but there, still in front of her, lay the illuminated farm, a house of light standing in air. As she neared it, the front door opened and sounds of singing and laughter came out.
The "Ma.r.s.eillaise"! _Allons, enfants de la patrie!_--Janet was playing it, singing vigorously herself, and trying to teach the two girls the French words, a performance which broke down every other minute in helpless laughter from all three. Meanwhile, Hastings, who had been standing behind the singers, his hands in his pockets, a rare and shamefaced pleasure shining from his care-worn face, thought he heard the cart, and looked out. Yes, it was the Missis, as he liked to call Miss Henderson, and he ran down to meet her.
"Well, I suppose there were fine doings at Millsborough, Miss," he said, as he held the horse for her to get down.
"Yes--there were a lot of people. It was very noisy."
"We thought you"d hear our noise, Miss, as far as the road! Miss Leighton, she"s been keeping us all alive. She took the girls to church--to the Thanksgiving Service, while I looked after things."
"All right, Hastings," said Miss Henderson, in a voice that struck his ear strangely. "Thank you. Will you take the cart?"
He thought as he led the horse away, "She"s been overdoin" it again. The Cap"n will tell her so."
Rachel climbed the little slope to the front door. It seemed an Alp.
Presently she stood on the threshold of the sitting-room, in her thick fur coat, looking at the group round the piano. Janet glanced round, laughing. "Come and join in!" And they all struck up "G.o.d Save the King"--a comely group in the lamplight, Jenny and Betty lifting their voices l.u.s.tily. But they seemed to Rachel to be playing some silly game which she did not understand. She closed the door and went upstairs to her own room. It was cold and dark. She lit a candle, and her own face, transformed, looked at her from the gla.s.s on the dressing-table. She gave a weary, half-reflective sigh. "Shall I be like that when I"m old?"
She took off her things, and changed mechanically into an afternoon dress, her mind, like a hunted thing, running hither and thither all the time.
Presently she got up and locked the door. She must think--_think_--by herself.
It would be quite easy to defy Roger--quite easy to lie, and lie successfully, if only she was sure of herself, and her own will to carry things through. Roger could prove nothing--or that vulgar boy--or anybody. She had only to say, "I went to find Lucy Tanner, who was my friend--she wasn"t there--I was overtaken by the storm--and d.i.c.k Tanner looked after me till I could get home."
It was the most natural--the most plausible story. If Delane forced himself on George with any vile tale, Ellesborough would probably give him in charge for molesting his former wife. There was absolutely nothing to fear, if she handled the thing in a bold, common-sense way, and told a consistent and clever lie.
And yet, she had weakly made appointments with both her tormentors!--made it plain to them that she was afraid! She called herself a coward, and a fool--and then as she leant her head against the side of her bed, the tears ran down her face, and her heart cried out for Ellesborough.
"How _can_ I go on lying to him--now--and all my life?" It was the same cry as before, but more intense, more pa.s.sionate with every day"s living.
The need for lying had now doubled; yet her will could less and less steel itself to it, because of sheer love and remorse towards the man who loved her.
"He would forgive me. I know he would--I know he would!" she kept on murmuring to herself, while her eyes rained in the semi-darkness.