"Of the men--or the women?"
"Oh, their work, I mean. They"re doing something for the war. I"ve done my best. But the Bishop won"t hear of it."
And he rather emphatically explained how he had applied in vain for an army chaplaincy. Health and the shortage of clergy had been against him.
"I suppose there must be some left at home," he said with a shrug, "and the doctors seem to have a down on me."
Janet was quite sorry for the young man--he was so eagerly apologetic, so anxious to propitiate what he imagined ought to be their feelings about him. And Rachel all the time sat so silent and unresponsive.
Miss Leighton drew the conversation back to the timber camp; she would like to go and see it, she said. Every one knew the Canadians were wonderful lumbermen.
The Vicar"s eyes had travelled back to Rachel.
"Were you ever in Canada, Miss Henderson?" The question was evidently thrown out nervously at a venture, just to evoke a word or a smile from the new mistress of the farm.
Rachel Henderson frowned slightly before replying.
"Yes, I have been in Canada."
"You have? Oh, then, you know all about it."
"I know nothing about Canadian lumbering."
"You were on the prairies?"
"I lived some time on a prairie farm."
"Everything here must seem very small to you," said the vicar sympathetically. But this amiable tone fell flat. Miss Henderson still sat silent. The vicar began to feel matters awkward and took his hat from the floor.
"I trust you will call upon me for any help I can possibly be to you," he said, turning to Janet Leighton. "I should be delighted to help in the harvest if you want it. I have a pair of hands anyway, as you see!" He held them out.
He expatiated a little more on his disappointment as to the front. Janet threw in a few civil words. Rachel Henderson had moved to the window, and was apparently looking at the farm-girls carrying straw across the yard.
"Good-night, Miss Henderson," said the young man at last, conscious of rebuff, but irrepressibly effusive and friendly all the time. "I hope you will let your Ralstone girl come sometimes to the clubroom my sister and I have in the village? We feel young people ought to be amused, especially when they work hard."
"Thank you, but it"s so far away. We don"t like them to be out late."
"Certainly not. But in the long evenings--don"t you know?" The vicar smiled persuasively. "However, there it is--whenever she comes she will be welcome. And then, as to your seat in church. There is a pew that has always belonged to the farm. It is about half-way up."
"We don"t go to church," said Rachel, facing him. "At least, I don"t."
She looked at her companion.
"And I can"t be counted on," said Janet, smiling.
The vicar flushed a little.
"Then you"re not Church of England?"
"I am," said Rachel indifferently; "at least I"m not anything else. Miss Leighton is a Unitarian." Then her eyes lit up with a touch of fun, and for the first time she smiled. "I"m afraid you"ll think us dreadful heathens, Mr. Shenstone!"
What the vicar did think was that he had never seen a smile transform a face so agreeably. And having begun to smile, Rachel perversely continued it. She walked to the gate with her visitor, talking with irrelevant animation, inviting him to come the following day to help in the "carrying," asking questions about the village and its people, and graciously consenting to fix a day when she and her friend would go to tea with Miss Shenstone at the vicarage. The young man fairly beamed under the unexpected change, and lingered at the gate as though unable to tear himself away; till with a little peremptory nod, though still smiling, Rachel dismissed him.
Janet Leighton meanwhile watched it all. She had seen Rachel treat a new male acquaintance before as she had just treated the vicar. To begin with, the manners of an icicle; then a sudden thaw, just in time to save the situation. She had come with amus.e.m.e.nt to the conclusion that, however really indifferent or capricious, her new friend could not in the long run resign herself to be disliked, even by a woman, and much more in the case of a man. Was it vanity, or s.e.x, or both? Temperament perhaps; the modern word which covers so much. Janet remembered a little niece of her own who in her mother"s absence entertained a gentleman visitor with great success. When asked for his name, she shook her pretty head. "Just a man, mummy," she said, bridling. Janet Leighton suspected that similar tales might have been told of Miss Henderson in her babyhood.
And yet impressions recurred to her of another kind--of a sensitive, almost fierce delicacy--a shrinking from the ugly or merely physical facts of life, as of one who had suffered some torment in connection with them.
Janet"s eyes followed the curly brown head as its possessor came slowly back from the gate. She was thinking of a moment when, one evening, while they were both still at college, they had realized their liking for each other, and had agreed to set up in partnership. Then Rachel, springing to her feet, with her hands behind her, and head thrown back, had said suddenly: "I warn you, I have a story. I don"t want to tell you, to tell anybody. I shan"t tell you. It"s done with. I give you my word that I"m not a bad woman. But if you don"t want to be my partner on these terms, say so!"
And Janet had felt no difficulty whatever in becoming Rachel Henderson"s partner on these terms. Nor had she ever yet regretted it.
The light farm cart which had been sent to the station for stores drove up to the yard gate as Rachel left it. She turned back to receive some parcels handed out by the "exempted" man who drove it, together with some letters which had been found lying at the village post office. Two of the letters were for Janet. She sent them up to the house, and went herself towards the harvest field.
There they stood--the rows of golden "shocks" or stooks. The "shockers"
had just finished their day"s work. She could hear the footsteps of the last batch, a cheerful chatter, while talk and laughter came softened through the evening air. The man who had been driving the reaping machine was doing some rough repairs to it in a far corner of the field, with a view to the morrow, and she caught sight of her new bailiff, Hastings, who had waited to see everybody off, disappearing towards his own cottage, which stood on a lonely spur of the down. The light was fast going, but the deep glow of the western sky answered the paler gold of the new-made stubble and the ranged stooks, while between rose the dark and splendid ma.s.ses of the woods.
Rachel stood looking at the scene, possessed by a pleasure which in her was always an ardour. She felt nothing by halves. The pulse of life beat in her still with an energy, a pa.s.sion, that astonished herself. She was full of eagerness for her new work and for success in it, full of desires, too, for vague, half-seen things, things she had missed so Far--her own fault. But somewhere in the long, hidden years, they must, they should be waiting for her.
The harvest was magnificent. She had paid the Wellins a high price for the standing crops, but there was going to be a profit on her bargain.
Her mind was full of schemes, if only she could get the labour to carry them out. Farming was now on the up-grade. She had come into it at the very best moment, and England would never let farming go down again, after the war, for her own safety"s sake.
_The War_! She felt towards it as to some distant force, which, so far as she personally was concerned, was a force for good. Owing to the war, farming was booming all over England, and she was in the boom, taking advantage of it. Yet she was ashamed to think of the war only in that way. She tried to tame the strange ferment in her blood, and could only do it by reminding herself of Hastings"s wounded son, whose letter he had showed her. And then--in imagination--she began to see thousands of others like him, in hospital beds, or lying dead in trampled fields. Her mood softened, the tears came into her eyes.
Suddenly--a slight whimper--a child"s whimper--close beside her. She paused in amazement, looking round her, till the whimper was renewed; and there, almost at her feet, cradled in the fragrant hollow of a wheat stook, she saw a tiny child--a baby about a year old, a fair, plump thing, just waking from sleep.
At sight of the face bending over her, the child set up a louder cry, which was not angry, however, only forlorn. The tears welled fast into her blue eyes. She looked piteously at Rachel.
"Mummy, mummy!"
"You poor little thing!" said Rachel. "Whose are you?"
One of the village women who had been helping in the "shocking," she supposed, had brought the child. She had noticed a little girl playing about the reapers in the afternoon--no doubt an elder sister brought to look after the baby. Between the mother and the sister there must have been some confusion, and one or other would come running back directly.
But meanwhile she took up the child, who at first resisted pa.s.sionately, fighting with all its chubby strength against the strange arms. But Rachel seemed to have a way with her--a spell, which worked. She bent over the little thing, soothing and cooing to her, and then finding a few crumbs of cake in the pocket of her overall, the remains of her own lunch in the field, she daintily fed the rosy mouth, till the sobs ceased and the child stared upwards in a sleep wonder, her blue eyes held by the brown ones above her.
"Mummy!" she repeated, still whimpering slightly.
"Mummy"s coming," said Rachel tenderly. "What a duck it is!"
And bending, she kissed the soft, downy cheek greedily, with the same ardour she had just been throwing into her own dreams of success.
She carried the child, now quiet and comforted, towards the house. The warm weight upon her arms was delicious to her. Only as she neared the gate in the now moonlit dusk, her lips quivered suddenly, and two tears rolled down her cheeks.
"I haven"t carried a child," she thought, "since--"
Suddenly there was a shout from the farther gate of the harvest field, and a girl came running at top speed. It was the little one"s elder sister, and with a proper scolding, Rachel gave up her prize.
The two land-girls had finished giving food and water to the cattle and a special mush to new-born calves. Everything was now in order for the night, and Janet, standing on the steps of the farm-house, rang a bell, which meant that supper would be ready in a few minutes. The two partners and their employees were soon gathered round the table in the kitchen, which was also the dining-room. It was a cold meal of bacon, with lettuce, bread and jam, some tea made on a "Tommy"s cooker," and potatoes which Janet, who was for the present housekeeper and cook, produced hot and steaming from the hay-box to which she had consigned them after the midday dinner. A small oil-lamp had been lit, and through the open windows afterglow and moonrise streamed in to mingle with its light.
There was a pot of flowers on the table--purple scabious, and tall cow-parsley, gathered from the orchard, where no one had yet had time to cut the ragged hay beneath the trees.