"I love you!" said Ishmael over the dancing oats as Blanche"s eyes met his.
"And I you!..." she replied, slipping her fingers through the yielding straws for his to find and press, while he drew her as near him as she could come for the sheaf between.
She had, indeed, never been so sure she loved him, not even the night before when pa.s.sion had called to her. He looked so splendid with his brown throat laid bare by his open shirt; his dark hair, wet with sweat, pushed off his brow; his dark eyes at once younger and more the eyes of a man than they had ever showed. Blanche felt an odd and delicious thrill as she met his dominant glance; she exulted in the swing of his lithe body, in the ease with which he tossed the heavy sheaves, even in the sweat that stood out over his face and chest, and which made him the more male, the more primitive. She herself had never seemed so fascinating and so sure; Va.s.sie was swept away by her for the first time; Phoebe lost a certain sense of grudge in awed admiration; Judy, in speech and action, contrived to lead up to her friend, whole-heartedly exploiting the wonder of her. John-James and Killigrew were probably the only two there who did not acknowledge the sway.
Killigrew declined to labour with the rest; he set up his easel and did several little sketches, nearly all of Judy, whose dark head showed against the grey-gold background of the field with a greater distinction than the pale chignons of Blanche and Va.s.sie or the indeterminate locks of Phoebe.
"You don"t repent?" asked Ishmael, sure of his answer, as he and Blanche each poised a sheaf against the other"s.
"No, no, and no," she told him, bending round the stack to see his face, her hands still holding it at either side as children stand and dodge when they are playing hide-and-seek. He shot out a hand to her, but she evaded it and was off to where more bundles lay upon the stubble, and not for some time did he get another chance to speak to her. Without a word said they tacitly agreed to play this game of only meeting, hands and eyes, now and again as though by chance, she sheltering behind the oats, feeling his pa.s.sion of worship, even so, as much as she could face under watching eyes. Like children they played at this game which had grown up without a word, both recognising it, and both the happier for the frail barriers and the secret exchanged by stealth before the others. At lunch, eaten on the gra.s.sy slope of the next field, he did not even sit next her, but both had to watch over themselves that they did not yield too often to the temptation of a glance that would have told as much to an onlooker as to each other.
The afternoon somehow lacked the first ecstasy of the morning, the labour suddenly became harder to unaccustomed muscles, and the girls lay in the shadows of the stooks and idled. They had time to talk among themselves while Ishmael and John-James worked on at the far end of the field. Blanche thought it rather silly and tiresome of Ishmael to keep on at it; surely he could leave that clumsy brother of his--for the first time the realisation that John-James actually was whole brother to Ishmael flashed into her mind--and wander away somewhere with her! What was the good of being the owner and master if he could not get some one else to do the work when it became a bore? So Blanche inwardly; and Ishmael, to whom it would never have occurred to begin work on a field and leave it half-done, went on steadily--stooping, gathering, binding; she could see the perpetual crouch of his figure, hardly ever straightening itself, down there against a background of green hedge and sullen grey sea.
Blanche leant up alongside her stook and Va.s.sie sat watching her, while Judy, who had seen a wistful look on Phoebe"s baby face, drew her into such superficial personal talk as she could best compa.s.s.
"When do you go back to London?" was Va.s.sie"s abrupt and not very happy opening.
"Why, I don"t know ... it all depends," answered Blanche, her beautiful low voice sounding very rich after Va.s.sie"s hard tones. "You"ve never been to London, have you, Va.s.sie? I may call you Va.s.sie, mayn"t I?"
"I"ve never been further than Plymouth."
"You must come to London some day with me," said Blanche. She had no intention of spending all her days at Cloom, and she wished to win over this sulky beauty to her side. Va.s.sie looked doubtfully at her, but began to thaw. London ... it meant all of hope and the future to Va.s.sie.
"I would dearly love to," she said. "I suppose you know it very well, like I know Penzance. I don"t go even to Plymouth very often, and of course it"s not London. The people are rather common. I daresay there"s all sorts in London, but I suppose you know a lot of families up there?"
"A good many," said Blanche casually. She was pleased at the signs of a thaw; she was one of those women who are as eager to stand well with their own s.e.x as with men and take as much care to ensure it.
"You would do well in London, Va.s.sie," she went on, fixing her eyes on the girl after a habit she had, and which always gave the impression that she was talking to the only person on earth who really interested her; "you are very beautiful, you know."
Va.s.sie flushed with pleasure and did not trouble to deny the obvious truth of the statement. She knew she was the only girl there with undoubted beauty; what she did not know was that she was also the only one who would never be very attractive to men. She looked at Phoebe"s retreating chin, at Judith"s prominent cheek-bones and deep-set, melancholy eyes with the bistre stains below them, at Blanche"s subtly-broad face with its too-small lips, and unconsciously she put up her hand to feel her own lovely contours and smooth skin.
Blanche slipped a firm, cool hand into hers. "Don"t worry, Va.s.sie," she said in a low voice; "I foresee great things for you. You"re a wonderful girl, my dear. Now, I suppose we ought to be helping those two poor, dear men again." She rose to her feet with one of the lithe movements that always seemed rather surprising in a girl of her firmly-knit build, which would have been heavy had it not been for its grace. Va.s.sie, with a fulness that was so much more supple to a casual glance, yet followed her less beautifully.
"Still, a lot can be done with her," thought Blanche, watching. She motioned to her to come and help her with a row that had not yet been gathered into a bundle, and Va.s.sie stooped over it with her.
"Why, what"s that?" exclaimed Blanche, catching sight of something grey that went rustling swiftly downwards between the straws. She thrust her hand down, thinking it was a field-mouse, and caught the thing. A speckled toad wriggled in her fingers, l.u.s.tily enough, but it was a toad that had seen tragedy. The keen edge of a scythe must have caught it, for one side of its head was shorn away; the eye had just been missed, but the inside of the poor little animal"s mouth and throat lay exposed, pulsating and brilliantly red--a purer hue of blood was never seen than in that grey creature.
Blanche cried out in pity, while Va.s.sie calmly advised death, seconded by Phoebe, and Judith looked away, sorry and sick, Blanche called to Ishmael, using his Christian name for the first time publicly, and aware of it herself and of its effect on Va.s.sie through all her real pity.
Ishmael came running, and, taking the little beast tenderly, offered to knock it on the head with a stone before it knew what was happening; but Blanche forbade him. She took it back, her fingers slipping in between it and his palm, and stood bending over it.
"Poor little thing!" she said; "at least it"s not bleeding now, and I believe it may live. It doesn"t seem to be suffering, so let"s give it its chance. Put it over the wall onto the gra.s.s, Ishmael."
He vaulted over and, taking the toad from her, laid it down on the dewy gra.s.s. It sat trembling for a few moments, and then began to hop away and was lost in the tall blades that met above its mutilated head--one of the many tragedies of harvest.
Dusk had fallen while the toad"s fate hung in the balance; a pastel dusk that, even as the girls still stood watching, was made tremulous by the first faint breath of the moon. From the sea came the red glare of the Wolf and the cold pure beam of the Bishop; in the north Charles" Wain gave the first twinkle of its lights; while from the roads came the creak of the terrestrial waggons beginning to lumber slowly home. It was time for supper, for lamps, for that meeting within walls which enforces a sudden intimacy after a day spent in the open, for beginning real life, as it would have to be lived, once more. The three men stayed behind to gather the remnants of the picnic, but the girls lifted their pale skirts about them and were gone over the high stone stile like moths.
CHAPTER XIII
THE STILE
That evening as supper was being eaten in the new dining-room at Cloom--a merry supper enough, for all Annie"s skeleton presence at one end of the table--Archelaus walked in. It was the first time he had been over to Cloom since the night of the bush-beating, and it was the first time Ishmael had seen him since that glimpse in the light of a lantern in the wood.
Ishmael looked at his brother, and all that affair seemed very long ago, in a life when he had not been to London, mixed with men, or met Blanche. He held out a hand to Archelaus, who for a stupid moment stood staring at it; then he saw the stranger girl from London, Ishmael"s girl, of whom he had heard, watching him. Beyond her sat Phoebe. Some train of thought was lit in Archelaus"s mind, and burned there; the second of hesitation during which his survey and the thought took place within his mind was imperceptible as he awkwardly struck his big fist into Ishmael"s palm. Everyone present was aware, in greater or less degree, according to the amount of his knowledge, of relief.
Archelaus drew out a chair and partook of supper, talking little; but that little was good, racy, at times too much so, full of shrewd observations and little flashing gleams of knowledge of men and things.
Ishmael was not abashed and silenced by it as he had been on the night of his birthday; he too, as he sat there with his "girl" and his wider experiences, felt that the ground over which Archelaus roamed was not altogether untrodden by himself. Annie, by the incursion of her eldest born, was changed, as always, from an acrid acquiescence to definite enmity towards Ishmael and his concerns. She became so rude to Blanche that it seemed the temper of a veritable angel still to be able to smile and answer with politeness. For her sake Ishmael also kept his temper, though inwardly he was ragingly angry--not so much with Annie for being rude as with Archelaus for behaving so unwontedly well through it all--hushing his mother up instead of encouraging her, and speaking respectfully to Blanche himself.
After supper the young people drifted out of doors, and before the girls, wrapping themselves against the dew, joined them, Archelaus drifted in his cat-like way--odd for so big a man--to Ishmael"s side.
"Will I wish "ee joy, Ishmael?" he asked. ""Tes easy to see where your heart be set. Does the maid feel she can love "ee and Cloom Manor?"
The last words and some indefinable quality in the tone jarred on Ishmael, disturbing the satisfaction he had felt glowing over him at the supper-table.
"If you mean have I proposed to Miss Grey?" he said a little pompously as youth will speak, "I have."
"And will she have "ee, or has she given "ee a clout in th" ear?"
Ishmael hated having to tell this barbarian anything about his lovely Blanche; he turned sick when he thought that this would be Blanche"s brother ... free to call her by her name, to take her hand.... All he could bring himself to say was that he believed Miss Grey was going to become his wife, but that he would thank Archelaus not to go talking about it, as nothing was to be made public as yet.
"There are other people to consider," he said: "her relations whom I shall have to see, and a lot of things like that. It is not like marrying a girl from the nearest village," he added tactlessly, but without, in his self-absorption, meaning to wound.
Archelaus drew away through the night. He laughed a little.
"Not as if you was wedding Phoebe, who"s only a miller"s girl?" he asked. Ishmael laughed too, though a little doubtfully, not sure of the cordiality of Archelaus"s chuckle.
"Of course it"s not like. Phoebe"s a dear little thing, but Miss Grey is different, naturally."
In the pa.s.sage Archelaus ran into Phoebe, emerging with the other girls, and took from her with an air of gallantry the wrap she had upon her arm.
"I"ll put "ee home," he told her: "best have this on; "tes a bit cool on cliff."
"Oh, but--" began Phoebe. She had no hopes, such as she had cherished, against all reason, upon getting Ishmael"s note that morning, of a moonlit walk home with him, but something in her shrank from the walk undertaken with Archelaus. He wrapped the shawl about her as she spoke.
Phoebe could no more have resisted a man who had his mind made up than a frog can get away from a viper which has once sighted it, and she let herself be swathed without further protest. Good-byes were said, with careless affection on the part of Va.s.sie, and kindliness from Judith and a pressure of the hand and a deep look from Blanche.
"Good-night, little girl! You"re going to be very happy, too, you know,"
said Blanche, who knew nothing about it, but felt it was a good thing to say. Phoebe and Archelaus, both tongue-tied now they were alone, set off through the moonlight and the soft air to the cliff path.
It was a long time now since she had met Archelaus out of doors, as he had several times half-coaxed, half-bullied her into doing. Now she felt a constraint with him she had not previously, as though there were some portent in the simple act of seeing her home there had never been before. She had, of course, flirted with him in a very innocent way, if her methods had been a little cruder than Blanche"s would have under the same circ.u.mstances. The repartee had been simple and the caresses nothing more than a slight touch on waist or arm, repulsed by her with more alarm than prudery. Phoebe was fonder far of Ishmael than of Archelaus; she told herself that she admired Ishmael more--he was so much the gentleman.... What she did not know was that a rebel thing in her, the thing for which poor facile, soft little Phoebe had been as much created as though she had been a field-mouse, responded to Archelaus because it felt he was so much the male. Phoebe had been safeguarded all her short life by her notions of gentility and by her fear, the fear, not of consequences, but, less base than that, the fear of actual pa.s.sion, which is often implanted in very pa.s.sionate girls as though to guard them till the time comes.
When they reached the first stile Phoebe lifted her skirts and pattered up to it, stood poised upon its crest, and then, with a little gasp, yielded to Archelaus"s strong arms as he seized her and swung her down bodily.
"Such a lil" bit of a thing as you be," said Archelaus; "like a lil" cat in my arms, so soft and all."
They went on, he leading and brushing away the tendrils of bramble and the tougher branches of furze across the narrow cliff-path. At each stile he lifted her, only now he picked her up as they approached and carried her right over them. At the last stile he held her instead of putting her down when they reached the further side.