Harvest Part 10

But the expression pa.s.sed. With a long breath, Roger Delane pulled himself together.

"Hold your noise, Nina," he said roughly to the child. "If you'll be a good girl, I'll put you on my shoulder."

The child stopped crying at once, and Delane, raising her on to his shoulder, pulling his own soft hat over his eyes and placing the child so that her dress concealed his own features. Then he resumed an excited scrutiny of the Great End wagon. At the same moment he saw a man in uniform making his way through the crowd towards Miss Henderson who was waving to him. An officer--an American officer. Delane recognized at once the high collar and the leathern peak to the cap.

The crowd had already begun to cheer him. He reached the Great End wagon, and its mistress, all smiles, bent over to speak to him. She and the vicar seemed to be giving directions, to which the American with a laughing shrug a.s.sented, going off to the front wagon, evidently in obedience to orders. There the girl speaker had just sat down amid a hearty cheer from the crowd; and the chairman of the meeting, a burly farmer, eagerly came to the side of the wagon, and helped the American officer into the cart. Then with a stentorian voice the chairman announced that Captain Ellesborough from Ralstone camp had come "to tell us what America is doing!" A roar from the crowd. Ellesborough saluted gaily, and then his hands in his pockets began to talk to them. His speech, which was a racy summary of all that America was doing to help the Allies, was delivered to a ringing accompaniment of cheers from the thronged market-place, rising to special thunder when the captain dwelt on the wheat and bacon that America was pouring across the Atlantic to feed a hungry Europe.

"We've tightened our own belts already; we can tighten them, I dare say, a few holes more. Everybody in America's growing something, and making something. When a man thinks he's done enough, and wants to rest a bit, the man next him gets behind him with a bradawl. There's no rest for anybody. We've just registered _thirteen million_ men. That sounds like business, doesn't it? No slacking there! Well, we mean business. And you mean business. And the women mean business."

Then a pa.s.sage about the women, which set the land girls grinning at each other, and at the men in the crowd, ending in three cheers for Marshal Foch and Sir Douglas Haig, which came echoing back from the Fourteenth Century church and the old houses which ringed the market-place.

All eyes were on the speaker, no one noticed the tall man with the olive-skinned child on his shoulder. He himself, with thumping pulses, never ceased to watch the figures and movements in the second wagon. He saw Miss Henderson sit down and another woman also in tunic and knickers take her place. He watched her applauding the speaker, or talking with the clergyman behind her, or the lady with the lace parasol. And when the speech was over, amid a hurricane of enthusiasm, when the resolution had been put and carried, and the bells in the old church-tower began to ring out a deafening joy-peal above the dispersing crowd, he saw the American officer jump down from the speaker's wagon and return to Miss Henderson.

Steps were brought, and Captain Ellesborough handed out the ladies. Then he and Rachel Henderson went away side by side, laughing and talking, towards the porch of the church, where Delane lost them from sight.

The market-place emptied rapidly. The decorated wagons moved off to the field where the compet.i.tions had been held in the morning, and some of the crowd with them. Another portion streamed into the church, and soon only a few scattered groups were left.

The tall man put down the child, and was seized with a fit of coughing, which left him more pallid and sunken-eyed than before. When it was over, he noticed a group of elderly labourers. They had come late into the meeting, and were making for the bar of the Cow-roast Inn, but before they entered it Delane went up to one of them.

"I'm a stranger here," he said carelessly. "Can you tell me who all these people were in the wagons?"

The man addressed--who was old Halsey--gave the speaker a reconnoitring look.

"Well, I dunno neither," he said cautiously, "leastways, many of 'em.

There was my old missus, in the first one. She didn't want to go, dressed up in them sunbonnets. But they made such a fuss of her, she had to.

There was Farmer Broughton I seed, an' I don't know n.o.body else."

"Well, but the second wagon?" said Delane impatiently.

"Oh, the second wagon. Why, that was Miss Henderson. Don't ye know 'er? I works for 'er?"

"Is she on the land?"

The old man laughed.

"That she be! She's a farmer, is Miss Henderson, an' she frames pretty fair. She don't know much yet, but what she don't know Hastings tells, her."

"Who's Hastings?"

"Why, her bailiff, to be sure. You do be a stranger, not knowin' Muster Hastings?"

"I'm just here for a few weeks. It's a rum business, isn't it, this of women taking farms?"

Halsey nodded reflectively.

"Aye, it's a queer business. But they do be cleverer at it than ye'd think. Miss Henderson's a good head-piece of her own."

"And some money, I suppose?"

"Well, that's not my look out, is it, so long as I gits my wages? I dessay Colonel Shepherd, ee sees to that. Well, good-day to you. I'm goin' in to get summat to drink. It's a dryin' wind to-day, and a good bit walk from Ips...o...b..."

"Is that where you live?"

"Aye--an' Miss Henderson's place is just t'other side. A good mile to Ips...o...b.., and near a mile beyont. I didn't want to come, but my old woman she nagged me to come an' see her 'ome."

And with another nod, the old man turned into the public, where his mates were already enjoying the small beer of the moment.

For a few minutes, Delane strolled down the main road in silence, the child playing at his heels. Then he turned abruptly, called the child, and went up the side street from which he had appeared when the meeting began.

A quarter of an hour later he returned to the market-place alone. The service in the church was still going on. He could hear them singing, the harvest hymn: "We plough the fields and scatter--The good seed on the land." But he did not stop to listen. He walked on rapidly in the direction of Ips...o...b...

Delane found the main line from Millsborough to Ips...o...b.. dotted at intervals with groups of persons returning from the harvest festival--elderly women with children, a few old labourers, a few soldiers on leave, with a lively fringe of noisy boys and girls skirmishing round and about their elders, like so many young animals on the loose. The evening light was failing. The pools left by a pa.s.sing shower, gleamed along the road, and the black elms and oaks, scarcely touched as yet by autumn gold, stood straight and sharp against a rainy sky.

The tall, slouching man scrutinized the various groups as he pa.s.sed them, as though making up his mind whether to address them or not. He wore a shabby greatcoat, warmer than the day demanded, and closely b.u.t.toned across the chest. The rest of his dress, felt hat, dark trousers, and tan boots, had all of it come originally from expensive shops, but was now only just presentable. The one thing in good condition about him was the Malacca cane he carried, which had a carved jade handle, and was altogether out of keeping with his general appearance.

All the same there was something striking in that appearance. Face, figure and dress represented the wreck of more than one kind of distinction. The face must once have been exceptionally handsome, before an underlying commonness and coa.r.s.eness had been brought out or emphasized by developments of character and circ.u.mstance. The mouth was now loose and heavy. The hazel eyes had lost their youth, and were disfigured by the premature wrinkles of either ill-health or dissipation.

None the less, a certain carriage of the head and shoulders, a certain magnificence in the whole general outline of the man, especially in the defiant eyes and brow, marked him out from the crowd, and drew attention of strangers.

Many persons looked at him, as he at them, while he swung slowly along the road. At last he crossed over towards an elderly man in company with a young soldier, who was walking lamely with a stick.

"Excuse me," he said, formally, addressing the elder man, "but am I right for Ips...o...b..?"

"That you are, muster. The next turnin' to the right'll bring yer to it."

Peter Betts looked the stranger over as he spoke, with an inquisitive eye.

"You've come from the meeting, I suppose?"

"Ay. We didn't go to the service. That worn't in our line. But we heerd the speeches out o' doors."

"The carts were fine!--especially the second one."

"Ay--that's our missis. She and the two girls done the dressin' o' the cart."

"What's her name?"

"Well, her name's Henderson," said the old man, speaking with an amiable, half careless detachment, the manner rather of a philosopher than a gossip.

"She's the farmer's wife?"

"Noa, she ain't. She's the farmer herself--'at's what she is. She's took the farm from Colonel Shepherd--she did--all on her own. To be sure there's Miss Leighton as lives with her. But it do seem to me as Miss Henderson's--as you might say--the top 'un. And me an' James Halsey works for her."

"_Miss_ Henderson? She's not married?"

"Not she!" said old Betts emphatically. "She's like a lot o' women nowadays, I guess. They doan't want to be married."

"Perhaps n.o.body 'as wanted to marry 'em, dad!" said his elder son, grinning at his own stale jest.

Betts shook a meditative head.

"Noa--yo'll not explain it that way," he said mildly. "Some of 'em's good-looking--Miss Henderson 'ersel', by token. A very 'andsome up-standin' young woman is Miss Henderson."