Harvest Part 25

Yes, but it would change everything! Their love--his feeling towards her--could never be the same again. After Roger Delane--d.i.c.k Tanner. Why not another--and another? Would he not always be watching her, dreading some new discovery! Suspecting her, even while he loved her?

No. She must choke off Delane--with money--the only way. And invent some story--some bribe, too--for that odious young man who had caught her unawares.

So again she hardened herself, despairingly. It could not be allowed her--the balm and luxury of confession! It was too dangerous. Her all was in it.

Meanwhile, the singing continued below. Janet had struck up "Tipperary,"

and the small flute-like voices of the girls, supported by her harsher one, mounted joyously through every crevice of the slightly-built house.

"It's a long, long way to Tipperary, And my heart's right there."

The beautiful tune, interwoven for our generation with all that is most poignant in its life, beat on Rachel's nerves. It was being sung all over England that Armistice Day, as it had been sung in the first days of the war, joyously, exultingly, yet with catching breath. There was in it more than thousands of men and women dared to probe, whether of joy or sorrow.

They sang it, with a sob in the throat. To Rachel, also, sunk in her own terrors, it was almost unbearable. The pure unspoilt pa.s.sion of it--the careless, confident joy--seemed to make an outcast of her, as she sat there in the dark, dragged back by the shock and horror of Delane's appearance into the slime and slough of old memories, and struggling with them in vain. Yes, she was "damaged goods"--she was unfit to marry George Ellesborough. But she would marry him! She set her teeth--clinging to him with all the energy of a woman's deepening and maturing consciousness.

She had been a weak and self-willed child when she married Delane--when she spent those half miserable, half wild days and nights with d.i.c.k Tanner. Now she trusted a good man--now she looked up and adored. Her weakness was safe in the care of George Ellesborough's strength. Well, then, let her fight for her love.

Presently Janet knocked at the door. The singing downstairs had ceased.

"Are you tired, Rachel? Can't I help you?"

"Just a bit tired. I'm resting. I'll be down directly."

But the interruption had started fresh anxieties in her mind. She had paid the most perfunctory attention to the few words Janet had said about Dempsey's call at the farm, two nights before. She understood at the time that he had come to chatter about the murder, and was very glad that she had been out of the way.

But now--what was it that he had said to Janet--and why had Janet said so little about his visit?

Instead of resting she walked incessantly up and down. This uncertainty about Janet teased her; but after all it was nothing to that other mystery--how did Roger know?--and to the strange and bewildering effect of the juxtaposition of the two men--their successive appearance in the darkness within--what?--ten minutes?--a quarter of an hour?--while the cloud was on her own brain--without apparently any connection between them--and relevance to each other. There must have been some connection!

And yet there had been no sign of any personal knowledge of Roger Delane in Dempsey's talk; and no reference whatever to Dempsey in Delane's.

She went down to supper, very flushed and on edge. Little Jenny eyed her surrept.i.tiously. For the first time the child's raw innocence was disturbed or jealous. What did John Dempsey want with calling on Miss Henderson--and why had he made a rather teasing mystery of it to her, Jenny? "Wouldn't you like to know, Miss Inquisitive?" Yes, Jenny would like to know. Of course Miss Henderson was engaged to Captain Ellesborough, and all that. But that was no reason why she should carry off Jenny's "friend," as well as her own. Jenny's heart swelled within her as she watched Miss Henderson from the other end of the table. Yes, of course, she was nice-looking, and her clothes were nice. Jenny thought that she would get a new best dress soon, now that peace was come; and a new hat with a high silk crown to match the dress. Dempsey had admired a hat like that on a girl in the village. He had said it was "real smart."

And to be "smart" Jenny thought was to be happy.

After supper, Janet and the girls washed up and put all tidy for the night. Rachel worked at accounts in the sitting-room. She had sold the last hay she had to spare wonderfully well, and potatoes showed a good profit. Thres.h.i.+ng charges were very high, and wages--appalling! But on the whole, they were doing very well. Janet's Jersey cow had been expensive, but they could afford her.

They had never yet drawn out so good an interim balance sheet without delight, and rosy dreams for the future. Now her mood was leaden, and she pushed the papers aside impatiently. As she was sitting with her hands round her knees, staring into the fire, or at the chair where Ellesborough had sat while she told her story, Janet came into the room.

She paused at the door, and Rachel did not see her look of sudden alarm as she perceived Rachel's att.i.tude of depression. Then she came up to the fire. The two girls could be heard laughing overhead.

"So my cow's a good one?" she said, with her pleasant voice and smile.

"A beauty," said Rachel, looking up, and recapitulating the points and yield of the Jersey.

Janet gave a shrug--implying a proper scepticism.

"It doesn't seem to be quite as easy to tell lies about cows as about horses," she said, laughing; "that's about all one can say. We'll hope for the best." Then--after a moment,--

"I never told you much about that man Dempsey's visit. Of course he came to see you. He thought when he saw you at Millsborough that you were a Mrs. Delane he had seen in Canada. Were you perhaps a relation of hers? I said I would ask you. Then I inquired how often he had seen Mrs. Delane.

He said twice--perhaps three times--at her home--at a railway station--and at a farm belonging to a man called Tanner."

"Yes," said Rachel, indifferently. "I knew Lucy Tanner, his sister. She was an artist like him. I liked them both."

There was silence. In Rachel's breast there was beating a painful tide of speech that longed to find its way to freedom--but it was gripped and thrust back by her will. There was something in Janet as in Ellesborough that wooed her heart, that seemed to promise help.

But nothing more pa.s.sed, of importance. Janet, possessed by vague, yet, as they seemed to herself, quite unreasonable anxieties, gave some further scornful account of Dempsey's murder talk, to which Rachel scarcely listened; then she said, as she turned to take up her knitting,--

"I'm going over to-morrow to a little service--a Thanksgiving service--at Millsborough. I took the girls to church to-day--but I love my own people!" Her face glowed a little.

"Unitarian service, you mean?"

"Yes--we've got a little 'cause' there, and a minister. The service will be about six, I think. The girls will manage. The minister and his wife want me to stay to supper--but I shall be back in good time."

"About ten?"

"Oh, yes--quite by then. I shall bicycle."

Through Rachel's mind there pa.s.sed a thrill of relief. So Janet would be out of the way. One difficulty removed. Now, to get rid of the girls?

Rachel scarcely slept, and the November day broke grey and misty as before. After breakfast she went out into the fields. Old Halsey was mole-catching in one of them. But instead of going to inspect him and his results, she slipped through a tall hedge, and paced the road under its shelter, looking for Dempsey.

On the stroke of eleven she saw him in the distance. He came up with the same look, half embarra.s.sed, half inclining to laugh, that he had worn the day before. Rachel, on the other hand, was entirely at her ease, and the young man felt her at once his intellectual and social superior.

"You seem to have saved me and my horse from a tumble into that ditch last night," she said, with a laugh, as she greeted him. "Why I turned faint like that I can't imagine. I do sometimes when I'm tired. Well, now then--let us walk up the road a little."

With her hands in her pockets she led the way. In her neat serge suit and cap, she was the woman-farmer--prosperous and competent--all over.

Dempsey's thoughts threw back in bewilderment to the fainting figure of the night before. He walked on beside her in silence.

"I wanted to tell you," said Miss Henderson calmly--"because I'm sure you're a nice fellow, and don't want to hurt anybody's feelings--why I asked you to hold your tongue about Mrs. Delane. In the first place, you're quite mistaken about myself. I was never at Mr. Tanner's farm--never in that part of Canada; and the person you saw there--Mrs.

Delane--was a very favourite cousin of mine, and extraordinarily like me.

When we were children everybody talked of the likeness. She had a very sad story, and now--she's dead." The speaker's voice dropped. "I've been confused with her before--and it's a great trouble to me. The confusion has done me harm, more than once, and I'm very sensitive about it. So, as I said last night, I should be greatly obliged if you would not only not spread the story, but deny it, whenever you can."

She looked at him sharply, and he coloured crimson.

"Of course," he stammered, "I should like to do anything you wish."

"I do wish it, and--" she paused a moment, as though to think--"and Captain Ellesborough wishes it. I would not advise you, however, to say anything at all about it to him. But if you do what we ask you, you may be sure we shall find some way--some substantial way--of showing that we appreciate it."

They walked on, she with her eyes on the ground as though she were thinking out some plan for his benefit--he puzzled and speechless.

"What do you want to do, now the war's over?" she said at last, with a smile, looking up.

"I suppose I want to settle down--somewhere--on land, if I had the money."

"Here?--or in Canada?"

"Oh, at home."

"I thought so. Well, Mr. Dempsey, Captain Ellesborough and I shall be quite ready to help you in any scheme you take up. You understand?"