Harvest Part 5

Another exclamation from Rachel, as, on their left, another great tree started for the bottom of the hollow.

"But haven't you seen all this before?" asked Janet.

"No, I never saw anything of lumbering."

The tone showed the sudden cooling and reserve that were always apparent in Rachel's manner when any subject connected with Canada came into conversation. Yet Janet had noticed with surprise that it was Rachel herself who, when the harvest was nearly over, had revived the subject of the camp, and planned the drive for this Sat.u.r.day afternoon. It had seemed to Janet once or twice that she was forcing herself to do it, as though braving some nervousness of which she was ashamed.

The rough road on which they were driving wound gradually downward through the felled timber. Soon they could hear the clatter of the engine, and the hissing of the saws which seized the trees on their landing, and cut and stripped them in a trice, ready for loading. Round the engine and at the starting-place of the trolleys was a busy crowd: lean and bronzed Canadians; women in leather breeches and coats, busily measuring and marking; a team of horses showing silvery white against the purple of the hill; and everywhere the German prisoner lads, mostly quite young and of short stature. The pony carriage pa.s.sed a group of them, and they stared with cheerful, furtive looks at the two women.

Then the group of timber girls below perceived the approaching visitors, and a figure, detaching itself from the rest, came to meet the carriage.

A stately woman, black-haired, in coat and breeches like the rest, with a felt hat, and a badge of authority, touches of green besides on the khaki uniform. Janet recognized her at once as Mrs. Fergusson, their comrade for a time at college, and much liked both by her and Rachel.

She came laughing, with hands outstretched.

"Well, here we meet again! Jolly to see you! A new scene, isn't it? Life doesn't stand still nowadays! One of my girls will take the carriage for you."

A stalwart maiden unharnessed the pony and let him graze.

Mrs. Fergusson took possession of her visitors, and walked on beside them, describing the different stages of the work, and sections of the workers.

"You see those tall fellows farthest off? Those work the saws and cut up the trees as they come down. Then the horses bring them to the rollers, and the Canadians guide them with those hooks till the crane seizes hold of them and lifts them on to the trolley. But before the hooks get them--you see the girls there?--they do all the measuring; they note everything in their books and they mark every log. All the payments of the camp, the wages paid, the sums earned by the trolley contractor who takes them to the station, the whole finance in fact, depends on the _women_. I've trained scores besides and sent them out to other camps!

But now come, I must introduce you to the commandant of the camp."

"A Canadian?" asked Janet.

"No, an American! He comes from Maine, but he had been lumbering in Canada, with several mills and, camps under him. So he volunteered a year ago to bring over a large Forestry battalion--mostly the men he had been working with in Quebec. Splendid fellows! But he's the king!"

Then she raised her voice,--

"Captain Ellesborough!"

A young man in uniform, with a slouch hat, came forward, leaping over the logs in his path. He gave a military salute to the two visitors, and a swift scrutinizing look to each of them. Rachel was aware of a thin, handsome face bronzed by exposure, a pair of blue eyes, rather pale in colour, to which the sunburn of brow and cheek gave a singular brilliance, and a well-cut, determined mouth. The shoulders were those of an athlete, but on the whole the figure was lightly and slenderly built, making an impression rather of grace and elasticity than of exceptional strength.

"You would like to see the camp?" he said, looking at Rachel.

"Aren't you too busy to show it?"

"Not at all. I am not wanted just now. Let me help you over those logs."

He held out his hand.

"Oh, thank you, I don't want any help," said Rachel a little scornfully.

He smiled in approving silence, and she followed his lead, leaping and scrambling over the piles of wood, with a deer's sureness of foot, till he invited her to stop and watch the timber girls at their measuring. As the two visitors approached, land-women and forest-women eyed each other with friendly looks, but without speech. For talk, indeed, the business in hand was far too strenuous. The logs were coming in fast; there must be no slip in measurement or note. The work was hard, and the women doing it had been at it all day. But on the whole, what a comely and energetic group, with the bright eyes, the clear skins, the animation born of open air and exercise.

"They can't talk to you now!" said Mrs. Fergusson in Janet's ear, amid the din of the engines, "but they'll talk at tea. And there's a dance to-night."

Janet looked round the wild glen in wonder.

"Who come?"

"Oh, there's an Air Force camp half a mile away--an Army Service camp on the other side. The officers come--some of them--every Sat.u.r.day. We take down the part.i.tions in our huts. You can't think what pretty frocks the girls put on! And we dance till midnight."

"And you've no difficulty with the men working in the camp?"

"You mean--how do they treat the girls?" laughed Mrs. Fergusson. "They're _charming_ to the girls! Chivalrous, kind, everything they should be. But then," she added proudly, "my girls are the pick--educated women all of them. I could trust them anywhere. And Captain Ellesborough--you won't get any mischief going on where he is."

Meanwhile the captain, well out of earshot of Mrs. Fergusson's praise, was explaining the organization of the camp to Rachel as they slowly climbed the hill, on the opposite side from that by which she and Janet had descended.

"Which works hardest, I wonder?" she said at last, as they paused to look down on the scene below. "We on our farm, or you here? I've never had more than five hours' sleep through the harvest? But now things are slacker."

He threw his head back with a laugh.

"Why, this seems to me like playing at lumbering! It's all so tiny--so babyish. Oh, yes, there's plenty of work--for the moment. But it'll be all done, in one more season; not a stick left. England can't grow a real forest."

"Compared to America?"

"Well, I was thinking of Canada. Do you know Canada?"

"A little." Then she added hastily: "But I never saw any lumbering."

"What a pity! It's a gorgeous life. Oh, not for women. These women here--awfully nice girls, and awfully clever too--couldn't make anything of it in Canada. I had a couple of square miles of forest to look after--magnificent stuff!--Douglas fir most of it--and two pulping mills, and about two hundred men--a rough lot."

"But you're not Canadian?"

"Oh, Lord, no! My people live in Maine. I was at Yale. I got trained at the forest school there, and after a bit went over the Canadian frontier with my brother to work a big concession in Quebec. We did very well--made a lot of money. Then came the war. My brother joined up with the Canadian army. I stayed behind to try and settle up the business, till the States went in, too. Then they set me and some other fellows to raise a Forestry battalion--picked men. We went to France first, and last winter I was sent here--to boss this little show! But I shan't stay here long! It isn't good enough. Besides, I want to fight! They've promised me a commission in our own army."

He looked at her with sparkling eyes, and her face involuntarily answered the challenge of his; so much so that his look prolonged itself. She was wonderfully pleasant to look upon, this friend of Mrs. Fergusson's. And she was farming on her own? A jolly plucky thing to do! He decided that he liked her; and his talk flowed on. He was frank about himself, and full of self-confidence; but there was a winning human note in it, and Rachel listened eagerly, talking readily, too, whenever there was an opening. They climbed to the top of the hill where they stood on the northern edge of the forest, looking across the basin and the busy throng below. He pointed out to her a timber-slide to their right, and they watched the trees rushing down it, dragged, as he now saw plainly, by the wire cable which was worked by the engine in the hollow. A group of German prisoners, half-way down, were on the edge of the slide, guiding the logs.

"We don't have any trouble with them," said the captain carelessly.

"They're only too thankful to be here. They've two corporals of their own who keep order. Oh, of course we have our eyes open. There are some sly beggars among them. Our men have no truck with them. I shouldn't advise you to employ them. It wouldn't do for women alone."

His smile was friendly, and Rachel found it pleasant to be advised by him. As to employing prisoners, she said, even were it allowed, nothing would induce her to risk it. There were a good many on Colonel Shepherd's estate, and she sometimes met them, bicycling to and from their billets in the village, in the evening after work. "Once or twice they've jeered at me," she said, flushing.

"Jeered at you!" he repeated in surprise.

"At my dress, I mean. It seems to amuse them."

"I see. You wear the land army dress like these girls?"

"When I'm at work."

"Well, I'm glad you don't wear it always," he said candidly. "These girls here look awfully nice of an evening. They always change."

He glanced at her curiously. Her dress of dark blue linen, her pretty hat to match, with its bunch of flowers, not to speak of the slender ankles and feet in their blue stockings and khaki shoes, seemed to him extraordinarily becoming. But she puzzled him. There was something about her quite different from the girls of the hostel. She appeared to be older and riper than they; yet he did not believe she was a day more than five-and-twenty, and some of them were older than that. Unmarried, he supposed. "Miss Henderson?" Yes, he was sure that was the name Mrs.

Fergusson had mentioned. His eyes travelled discreetly to her bare, left hand. That settled it.

"Well, if I came across these fellows jeering at an Englishwoman, I'd know the reason why!" he resumed hotly. "You should have complained."

She shook her head, smiling. "One doesn't want to be a nuisance in war time. One can always protect oneself."