"To W. Hunting, Esq.,Organizing Secretary of the Farm Labourers' Union. Northern Branch."Dear Sir...."
"To W. Hunting, Esq.,
Organizing Secretary of the Farm Labourers' Union. Northern Branch.
"Dear Sir...."
Two days later David sat in a small but comfortable eating-house in Manchester. He was combining, without marked success, the complicated operations of disintegrating a particularly tough piece of steak and composing the final sentence of his article for next week'sClarion. There was a smudge of ink on his nose, because his fountain pen always leaked, and a similar smudge of gravy on his cuff, but he was happily absorbed and quite annoyed when some one touched his arm and summoned his attention. Looking up, he saw a dark cadaverous person, in an aggressively ready-made suit, who inquired, with a pronounced Manchester accent, whether he was Mr. Rossitur who wrote for theClarion.
"Er—yes, I think I am. At least, I sometimes do." David was not sure whether he ought to be deferential, or affable, or non-committal. He always found it hard work to differentiate between the manners one assumed when dealing with editors, fellow journalists, labour delegates and creditors. Also he was not sure whether there really was a smudge of ink on his nose.
The person went straight to the point.
"My name's Hunting. I am the Secretary of the Northern Branch of the F.L.U. You may have seen a letter I wrote to theClariona fortnight ago, as it appeared immediately below an article of yours."
"Oh, I know. On the possibility of working up the East Riding. I thought it was splendid—at least, I liked the idea of getting a union started there. Please sit down. Have you had lunch?"
"Yes, thank you." Hunting sat.
"Do you mind if I go on with mine? I had a rather sketchy breakfast. It's just as well that you have lunched, because this is a very hard steak. Do you know whether they ever try to unfreeze meat before they put it on the table? I think this a piece of fossilized dynosaurus. However," with a sigh, "it's a good exercise for the digestive organs, I suppose." He resumed his labours.
"I hear you went for a tour round East Yorkshire this spring?"
"Oh, no, not spring. March, if you like, and the beginning of April, but nothing even remotely connected with spring, I do assure you. If you could have seen some of those roads, and felt the wind across the hills——! Not spring, Mr. Hunting."
"You went to observe the conditions among the labourers and to do a certain amount of propaganda on our behalf, I believe?"
"You seem to know a lot about me." David looked sideways at a speck of dust floating on his beer. He was not very favourably impressed by this intimidating person, with his determination to avoid side-issues.
"I rang up your chief this morning. I want some information." He drew from his pocket an envelope, a small black notebook and a fountain pen. "Now then."
David felt uncomfortably reminded of his Oxford days, when, confronted by four insatiable examiners, he had racked his brains to supply them with information that was not forthcoming.
"I received a letter yesterday from the schoolmaster of a village called Anderby in the East Riding of Yorkshire, asking me if I can offer any assistance in the way of forming a branch of the agricultural labourers' union. He says you have visited the village and that the men were interested in your statements."
He looked rather incredulously at David, who was rolling bread balls with inefficient absorption.
"I shouldn't have thought it," murmured David.
Hunting's glance seemed to say "Neither should I," but aloud he continued, "I should like to know something more about that village."
David stopped playing with his bread and turned to Hunting.
"Well?"
"Perhaps you will be good enough to read this letter."
"From Coast?"
He had been attending, then, in spite of the bread balls.
"Yes. That's the fellow's name. Rather intelligent. Got quite a sense of practical issues."
Hunting's praise implied a reproach to David, whose unfinished article was blowing about the floor in scattered leaves and who was evidently without much sense of practical issues.
David read the letter.
"Well, what do you think of it? Eh?"
"I'm not sure," said David thoughtfully, turning over the paper.
"Well, but what do you think? You know the man. Is he to be trusted? What do you think about my going up there for a bit of looking round and seeing what can be done? You've heard of my work in the Midlands?"
David nodded.
He was not sure. There was some bitter taint of egotism in Coast which he distrusted. The men at Anderby had seemed on the whole more prosperous, less prepared for change than in other places. They had on the whole not been very interested in what he said. Only Coast and Waite—neither of them quite disinterested. In a year or two....
"Well, well?" Hunting's sharp voice sounded impatient. "What do you think?"
After all David had sown the seed. What right had he to declare which should be the fruitful ground? The love of humanity must be honest—must not wince at every contact with imperfection. If not he—then some one perhaps less suitable....
"I wish it wasn't Coast," said David.
"Why? Isn't the man all right? What is there against him?"
Hunting's relentless little eyes flashed from David to his notebook.
"I don't like his moustache," said David—which was true, but not the whole truth, because by this time he had decided that Hunting was one of those people to whom one cannot tell the whole truth. He was too relevant.
Hunting shrugged his shoulders.
"Is that all?" he asked with determined patience.
David reached for his hat, and hurriedly collected the fugitive leaves of his article.
"Not quite all," he said, smiling. "But, if you don't mind coming round the corner to my digs, I'll give you all the information I can. I think your work is needed."
THE SHADOW ON THE KINGDOM
The twenty-second of June was Waggon Day and the waggons were timed to start at eight o'clock.
All night Mike and Fred Stephens had kept vigil in the saddle-room at the Wold Farm, polishing brass and leather and fastening rosettes on to the best harness. The crowning triumph of their work, two painted and beribboned paper fans to be attached to the collars of the horses, lay beside the smoking lantern. The saddle-room was littered with green and scarlet papers, brass buckles and bits of harness.
Mike knocked the ashes from his pipe and opened the door. A rush of chill fragrant air shook the flames of two candles stuck on the dusty mantelpiece.
Fred extinguished the lantern and followed him to the doorway. It was a morning of pale mists and dewy freshness.
"I think it bound to tak' up," he remarked cheerfully. "What about it, Mike?"
The two men collected harness and decorations and trudged together towards the stable. From the stackyard a belated cock crew, and in the stable it was still dusk—a warm straw-scented twilight astir with the movements of chewing horses and the whispered scamperings of mice along the rafters.
Dolly and Polly, the grey pair, stood sleekly brushed awaiting the master strokes of their toilet. Soon they would lumber up the Church Hill to take their places in a team of competitors for the prize offered by Sir Charles Seton to the best decorated waggon.
"It'll be a fine day for t' bairns," murmured Fred.
"Violet going?"
"Nay. Ah'm holdin' no truck wi' Violet now. She's too stuck up for the likes o' me." But Fred spoke regretfully.
An hour later the waggon was jingling and rumbling through the mist. Fred, no longer over-burdened by the weight of his responsibility for the decorations, turned to Mike.
"Well, Mike, what did ye think to yon fellow on t' bridge last night?"
Mike spat carefully but emphatically over the side of the waggon.
"I thought he had just one fault."
"Eh? Ah thowt you couldn't abide him! What fault was that, then?"
"Just that he was born at all, bad cess to him! Coming down here and rantin' around as though he was a howly Father himself—telling us what we ought and ought not to do. 'Tis in the church we hear enough of being miserable sinners. I'm not wantin' any more preaching from the laity."
"Bain't you going to join t' union then?" asked Fred, deftly turning the horses round the post office corner.
"Union? Union o' fools who get all on end if a boy from the town comes to them with an old wives' tale. What do we want wi' unions at all? Will they put a head on the beer or give Foreman's missus a lighter hand with the pastry? Will they make owd Mare Becky pass theFlying Foxw'out a bit o' the stick? Will they stop mud getting through your leggings in the sheep-fold on a December morning? No, no. 'Mike, me boy,' I says to meself, 'that fellow's a fool and so are them that listens to him.'"
Fred nodded. He had heard all this before.
"He didn't speak so well as Mr. Rossitur," he remarked meditatively.
The great horses strained and jolted up the hill, shouldering through the mist from the low lying road. Up above, the air was clear and tender. Knots of women and children stood about talking volubly.
Mike laughed scornfully. "Rossitur, bedad? Now then, Fred, don't you go thinking that red headed lad was any better than the rest o' them. The gift o' the blarney he may have had, 'Gentlemen,' he says, 'allow me to introduce you to an agricultural labourer without a grievance.' By Holy Mary, if ever I catch him alone there'll be work for Constable Burton if he will stick his nose into the affairs o' we. The thrashing I gave that blathering idiot, Eli Waite, will be like tickling a girl with a feather beside it."
Fred was used to Mike's truculent threats. Irishmen were made like that, and there was an end of it.
"There'll be just one bit of advice, I'll be giving you, me boy," continued Mike. "And one day you'll thank me. You've got the best mistress in the world. You know her and she knows you. Never listen to them who know nothing but the sound of their own tongues."
They reached the brow of the hill. Mrs. Robson stood on a bank by the roadside and waved her hand as Dolly and Polly rattled by. She smiled at them too, but the smile faded when they had passed, and she stood gazing dreamily across the mist veiled valley.
Up on the hill Sir Charles Seton was judging the waggons. Soon she would have to pass along the line of horses and holiday makers bestowing praise and encouragement upon the competitors and wishing good luck to the children about to ride away for one glorious day of adventure by the sea.
It was not quite time yet, and she might have a little respite. She walked slowly away from them down the hill. It was just as well not to stay too long there in the crowd. Coast was there, and she didn't want to see him. They had not met since the whist drive and she felt sure that their next encounter would be unpleasant. Lately she had shrunk from all contact with unpleasantness.
Little bursts of laughter and shouting floated down the road. The mothers were being hoisted into the waggons, with shrill screamings and personal jokes. The children clutched string bags and hoarded pennies in hot excited fingers.
It must be lovely to be going on a holiday like that, thought Mary, with such excitement and good humour, to be engrossed all day by the joys of swing boats and pierrots, to bounce wildly on donkeys up and down the sands. It must be lovely to sit hand in hand with one's sweetheart, sucking Hardrascliffe rock, and listening to the distant music from the band on the esplanade. To feel so young and care free, so much welcomed and beloved, to enjoy warm human kisses and pleasant nonsense—not to walk alone through a village grown strangely unfamiliar, while all the time one thought hurt and hurt and hurt....
"Mrs. Robson! Mrs. Robson!"
Miss Taylor came panting down the hill.
"Aren't you coming to see the waggons? It's nearly time to start. And you'll never guess! Your Fred's got first prize for the greys. Theyarelovely!"
There was no peace then.
Mary retraced her steps and did her duty. She always did when it came to the point. There were so many people to be noticed, so many questions to be answered. Was she going in to see the tea? Wouldn't she drive down later in the day and look at them all on the sands? Would she come now at this very moment to inspect Eva Greenwood's new doll which was also going to the seaside?
But at last it was over and Mr. Slater, standing by the head of the procession, raised his hand for the signal of departure.
The final ceremony followed.
Mary held her breath. This was her moment, when balm might be poured on her troubled spirit. Here in the public recognition of her suzerainty she found all the reward she asked from life.
"Three cheers for Sir Charles Seton!" called Coast from the leading waggon.
They were given heartily, but this was merely a prelude—a preliminary trial of vocal power before the real event of the morning.
The holiday makers paused, awaiting the next command. Small boys drew in their breath ready for the next outburst of sound. Everyone looked at the schoolmaster.
"Drive on," called Coast.
With a cracking of whips and rattling of harness the waggons moved forward.
For the first time in ten years no cheers had been given for Mr. and Mrs. Robson of Anderby Wold.
Mary stood and watched them pass. They looked at her curiously with vague bewilderment. She stared in front of her, smiling mechanically. Only when the last waggon had rounded the bend in the road the tension of her attitude relaxed. She walked quickly down the hill.
On her way through the village she encountered a dark figure hurrying up the street. She knew who it was. She had heard from several people that for a week or more a towns-fellow called Hunting had been organizing t' union, that theFlying Foxhad become the centre of a strange new business in Anderby, and that Coast was the chief lieutenant of the leader of industry.
Six months ago she would have laughed at it all, declaring that such a scheme was unpractical. Or that a union was very nice and would do no one any harm, and she was sure the men might join if they liked, for it wouldn't lead to anything.
Now she regarded with sick apprehension the self-confident tilt of Hunting's hat and the purposeful energy of his stride.
She raised her head defiantly.
"Good morning, Mr. Hunting," she said.
The man bent his head curtly and passed on.
He had heard from Coast and Waite and others how this woman had tried to get round young Rossitur. He would make it quite clear there was to be none of that little game with him.
Mary continued her journey.
"This is ridiculous," she told herself. "I'm letting things get on my nerves. There's nothing wrong really."
She decided to go and call on Mrs. Watts. The old lady would be pleased to hear about the waggons. Besides, she was a cheery old soul.
But the old soul refused to be cheery. Mrs. Watts was full of fears and fancies. She sat gazing through the windows across the sunlit orchard, seeing nothing but shadows that were not there.
"I'm sure I don't know what we're coming to," she sighed, shaking her head. "What with such goings on at theFlying Foxand preachin's on the bridge at evenings. Anderby isn't what it was, Mrs. Robson."
Mary agreed that it was not. But that did not necessarily imply the changes were undesirable.
"You can't expect to keep things always the same, you know," she remarked brightly.
"You don't allus like things any better because they're what you expect," said Mrs. Watts.
"What 'goings on' do you mean at theFlying Fox?" asked Mary, looking for a change of subject but thinking the time had not yet come to talk about the waggons.
"Do you mean to say ye've never heard tell o' Mike O'Flynn and Eli Waite fighting up at t'Flying Fox? Where ever have you been?"
"Busy lately. I've been staying at Market Burton a few days. Mr. Robson's uncle—Dickie Robson—died you know, and I went to help them with the funeral."
"O—Ay, Violet said as much. I forgot. Well, as I was saying"—Mrs. Watts brightened perceptively at the prospect of relating an unspoilt bit of gossip—"Mike an' Eli was up atFlying Foxa week come Tuesday it would be, and both a bit t' worse for drink, though Eli, 'e were worse nor' Mike. Irishmen can stand a lot o' drink, not but what Mike isn't a good 'un with his fists once he gets well liquored up. Well, Eli was cracking up yon Mr. Rossitur what was here, and saying what a good speaker 'e was an' all. And how this here Mr. Hunting was going to put what 'e'd said into practice like, and Mike, 'e flies up all at once like 'e do at times, an' says what Mr. Rossitur and Hunting an' all was a pack o' fond fools and ought to be shuved in tid' pond. And Eli said som'at—I don't know—about young Rossitur and a lass—they didn't tell me who—and then—I don't know—but Eli struck t' fust blow they said—or mebbe Mike—but anyway there they were at it hand an' fist when Constable Burton came up an' stopped it all. Ee but it must 'a been a rare fight! Ye don't get many such now." She shook a regretful head.
Mary frowned anxiously.
"Oh, dear, I wish I'd known. Mike mustn't go fighting like that. I'll have to stop him. He's very excitable and when he was ill the doctor said a little too much excitement on the top of drink might send him off his head."
"Ay. 'E's a rare fighter, is Mike O'Flynn."
"I know. But it isn't safe. All these agitators and people are very bad for him. Old soldiers need discipline, I think. It's very difficult."
"Ay. There's queer goings on at Anderby."
Mary rose to go. She was worried. "Queer goings on." That was just it. Nothing tangible, nothing that one could fight in the open.
She bade farewell to Mrs. Watts and walked home along the sunlit road.
It would be a fine day for the children. That was something. After all, there was nothing very wrong. Things had gone on the same in the past. They would be the same again. Ardently she tried to assure herself of this. For it meant nothing to any but a feverish and over-sensitive imagination that Mike should fight with Eli Waite, that old Deane should have omitted his customary greeting to her in the street, that Coast should refuse to cheer her and John when the waggons drove away.
Waite naturally was a cross-grained man. Mike was temperamentally unable to keep the peace. Coast and she were old enemies.
It was nothing, this shadow on the kingdom, only the ghost of her own brooding thoughts and frustrated longings.
She closed the gate behind her and paused in the blossoming garden. She needed new flowers for the dining-room table and there were roses on the prim standard bushes up the path to the house. She bent above their vivid fragrance, her fingers hovering, like the heavy-laden bees, from flower to flower.
Here at least she found tranquillity and assured possession. The anxiety died from her eyes, the strained lines from the corners of her mouth. She moved slowly about the garden.
Here, as though she were really a queen, the courtier yews cast cloaks of shade before her on the golden grass. Roses, peonies, starlike daisies against the night dark hedge of yew, delphiniums catching the blue of the sky on their delicate spears, these were gentler subjects than the men and women of Anderby.
If it were only in the village that she found her trouble, she might have sought comfort here. But she turned restlessly to the house and went to a desk in the drawing-room. Laying the roses on a table, she opened a drawer and took out a sheaf of newspaper cuttings, neatly dated and pinned together. Again she read them, though she knew their phrases by heart. "Organization of agriculture." "The beginning of a great campaign." "Yorkshire caution and progress."
"Progress." He was always talking of progress. Mary laid the papers down and looked through her window across the gold and green of the garden, but saw neither sunlight nor shadow.
She was drawing towards her the image of a red head, gallantly poised, thin hands that swept away the difficulties of the world, and laughing youthful eyes.
The butcher's cart rattled up the drive to the back door. They needed a leg of mutton. She must tell Violet.
She rose and locked away the papers.
"At least," she thought, "we know what he thinks of us all."
THE SHADOW ON THE WHEAT
It was the last week in July when, late on Saturday evening, John and Mary drove back together from Hardrascliffe market. As the dog-cart rounded the corner near the post office in Anderby, they saw a cluster of men on the bridge that spanned a dry watercourse winding through the village.
"More agitators," commented John. "That chap, Hunting, I suppose."
It was not "that chap Hunting," though he was there too, leaning against the low parapet of the bridge with an air of easy patronage. On the parapet, his vivid hair dulled in the failing light, but every angle and movement of his slim figure unmistakable, stood David Rossitur haranguing a lethargic group of labourers.
Mary sat erect, her hands tightly clasped, the colour drained from her face. The cart rattled up to the bridge. One or two of the men standing in the road gave way and nodded a sheepish "Good night." Mary looked across them straight to David, where he stood with his figure darkly outlined against a transparent evening sky.
For a flashing minute she caught and seemed to hold his eyes. She thought he stopped speaking, but only for an instant. Then the pony sped past, trotting cheerfully up the street. Mary sat very still in the cart.
"Wasn't that the young fellow who was staying with us.—Rossitur?" asked John. "My eyes aren't so good as they might be. I can't see very well in this light."
"Yes, I think it was."
"What's he up to here, I wonder? With Hunting too. I don't like that chap, Mary."
"Who—Rossitur?"
"No. I've got nothing against Rossitur. He's a bit of a clatterbrain, but he's young. He'll learn sense. I mean that man Hunting. He's civil spoken all right. And the union's all right, I suppose. They've got 'em in other places. I expect we've got to put up with it."
"I suppose so."
What was David doing there? thought Mary. Why had he come again? He was a journalist. Journalists didn't wander round the country-side preaching in the villages, except, of course, when they needed a rest or—a wild hope caught and held her spellbound—when a particular inclination drew them.
"I was talking to Willerby at the market this afternoon. He's not a bad chap, Mary, though he's no farmer. He says he's used to unions in the West Riding where he came from. Where the masters and the men get on all right, they don't seem to give much trouble. I suppose we were bound to get them here one day."
John, thought Mary irritably, always spoke of trade unions as if they were a mild though regrettable disease, like mumps or chicken-pox. He had no eyes at all for their real significance. If he had read theNorthern Clarionwhich now arrived every week at the Wold Farm with the library books, he would soon have lost his easy optimism.
But Mary could not bother with John that night. She never knew afterwards what replies she made to his occasional remarks, throughout the evening meal. One point in John's favour was that he never wanted to absorb her attention. It was Saturday, and Violet had cycled in to Hardrascliffe with the young man of the moment, so Mary washed up the tea-things alone in the lamplit kitchen.
So David was in Anderby. Why he had come or whence or for how long mattered little. He was here, quite near to her, and it was an illusion, then, that strange feeling she sometimes had, that she had only dreamed of his existence. Those three days when he had stayed in the house and she had talked to him and argued with him, and watched the foolish tossing of his fiery head and made him pick up cotton reels from the floor for her—all that had been real. She might even speak to him again.
The plates she had washed lay neglected in the sink. The saucepan lay unscrubbed in the cooling water.
No—she was wrong. It mattered very much why he had come. For there was one explanation of his coming which would change the whole world. Why should he not care? Those two meetings, when he had turned away so queerly and been so embarrassed, was it just possible he had been upset because she was a married woman and so beyond his grasp?
She was only twenty-eight. She was quite nice-looking. She had been kind to him. She wasn't quite a fool.
Of course it was nonsense. A dowdy farmer's wife—not even quite a lady.
Yes, but then he was so queer. People weren't like that for nothing. And then—she cared so....
A moth fluttered in through the window and flapped clumsily along the ceiling. The last pale line of sunset died beyond the ridge of the wold. Mary rose and shut the window.
Somewhere in the village was David.
Backwards and forwards in her mind that ceaseless questioning tossed her from hope to despair.
"Why has he come? To see me?"
"Who are you that he should want to see you?"
Up the passage she heard John kicking off his boots. He called to her from the foot of the stairs.
"You're a long time, honey. Ain't you finished yet?"
"Coming in a minute," she replied.
The water in the basin was cold. Yellow islands of congealing grease floated on its unlovely surface. She emptied it away and turned to the kettle for more.
It was a nuisance, this thing which took possession of her thoughts and made her forget the water in the basin. No one had a right to claim so much of her time, she on whose personality rested the well-being of a whole village.
Angrily she wrung out the dish-cloth and hung it on a nail, yet, as she walked up the passage with a queer revulsion of feeling she found herself humming a tune, gay and elated as she had not been for weeks. For he was in the village. She might see him to-morrow. To-morrow anything might happen.
But afterwards in the dining-room sitting over her sewing and listening to the ticking clock and the regular breathing of John who had fallen asleep over his paper, her mood changed again. What was the use of thinking about to-morrow, when she wanted him so much to-night?
Next day after morning service she loitered outside the church on the brow of the hill talking, now to Mrs. Coast, now to Mrs. Armstrong. When the Willerbys asked her to drive over with John to Highwold for tea, she declined their invitation.
Miss Taylor approached her, blushing furiously and stammering that a young man from the training college had at last come up to the scratch, and would Mrs. Robson care to come and see his photograph?
Mrs. Robson considered. The way to Miss Taylor's lodging lay down the village street. If one wanted to meet some one staying in Anderby the likeliest place of encounter would be the street after morning service. Mrs. Robson accepted the invitation.
The village street was full of shadows and strange unexpected presences. Figures emerged from garden or cottage, to set her pulses beating wildly, before she dropped to a flat level of disappointment as Jack Greenwood or old Deane appeared. Footsteps on the path behind her, that might herald his approach, died away drearily when the shepherd or Bert Armstrong overtook her hesitating progress.
The grudging ten minutes she granted to the inspection of Miss Taylor's young man were torture to her. While she was there, he might pass unseen.
When one o'clock struck sleepily from the church tower she hastened home to dinner, sick and exhausted, and closed behind her the gate that shut the garden away from the village street.
"You expecting anyone this afternoon, honey?" asked John across the cold beef.
"No. I don't think so."
"But you said to Mrs. Willerby when she asked us to go over——"
"Oh, I know. I thought then that Ursula and Foster said they were motoring over this afternoon. I remembered afterwards it was next week."
"Decent chap, Willerby," murmured John wistfully, but he did not suggest that they should go.
They stayed in the house and garden all the remaining hours of the long, hot day. But nobody called.
Monday morning dragged on through a cloud of steam and scolding and the scent of soap and wet linen. Mary had spent two sleepless nights. After dinner she found the stifling atmosphere of the wash-house unendurable. John had ridden over to Littledale. The clothes drooped lazily from long lines in the sunlit paddock. Mary escaped to her room and changed her dress.
Half an hour later she hurried through the stackyard and passed up the chalk road that shimmered, dazzlingly white, between its borders of sun-dried grass and ripening corn. There was no shade, but Mary never noticed the sun beating down on her head and shoulders from a cloudless sky. She hurried forward and upward, away from the village and mocking street and the garden path up which nobody came. Once she paused in her flight and pressed hot, dry fingers across her throbbing temples.
There were footsteps behind her, hurrying footsteps that stumbled along the deep ruts of the uneven road.
She was sick of footsteps and voices and torturing shadows. Again she resumed her rapid climb, shutting her ears to the sound behind her, resolutely refusing to turn her head.
A low branch of hawthorn from the hedge reached out and caught at her skirt. She wore an old-fashioned dress of green muslin with a skirt that flowed about her like a cool, soft sea. It was not made for scrambling walks across the fields. She bent to disentangle it with trembling fingers. Again the footsteps sounded behind her, drawing nearer up the road.
Impatiently she jerked her skirt free from the thorns, only to find that in her reckless movement she had caught herself again by the sleeve. She pricked her fingers, but the muslin remained twisted with devilish ingenuity among the thorns. Tears of impotent anger trembled in her eyes.
"Can I help, Mrs. Robson?" asked David.
For a little while she neither spoke nor turned, but stood quite still staring at her torn sleeve and the dusty hawthorn.
"Youwerein a hurry," panted David. "I called at the Wold Farm about a quarter of an hour ago, and Violet said you had just gone out in your best frock—she didn't know where. Then I met Shepherd and he said you had gone along the field road towards Littledale. I've nearly had a heart attack negotiating these young mountains of chalk. What does happen to your roads in summer? I've never seen such ruts."
Still she did not speak, but stood quietly, wrapping her handkerchief round her pricked finger, while golden hills and blue sky and green hedge danced giddily about her.
"You're not angry with me, are you?" he asked anxiously. "You see I've really come to apologize because I'm afraid you think I've behaved rather badly. I don't know what you think about Hunting. I know you always resented anyone else interfering in your village, though why, Heaven knows, for it's really no more yours than anyone else's. He's not a bad chap really—Hunting I mean—though his clothes are appalling. And I did warn you, didn't I?"
She turned now.
"I'm not angry at all. How do you do, Mr. Rossitur?" she said primly, holding out her hand.
"I'm all right, especially now I know you're not angry, or rather I shall be all right when I've recovered from this obstacle race. But you—I say, Mrs. Robson, you don't look a bit well."
"It's this heat," said Mary unsteadily. "I was helping with the washing all the morning. It's very hot here."
"It must be. Look here, won't you sit down a minute? Unless of course you are in a great hurry to go wherever you were going so quickly. You do look tired."
He looked round for some shade. The sun was scorching the dusty grasses at their feet. On the other side of the road the ripening oats rose hardly waist-high above the shadowless ground.
"I was going to Littledale, but I don't think I'm in any particular hurry. It is so hot. There's some shade on the other side of the hedge."
She led the way to a gate in the hedge. Beyond, the bank dropped abruptly two or three feet to a tangle of tall sweet grasses, between the dark hedge and solid golden wall of wheat. They closed the gate and passed up the alley of grass till they came to the shelter of Mary's hawthorn tree. There they sank down, shut away from the glaring heat in a cool green world of scent and shadow.
"Oh, it's lovely here!" David laid aside his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. "Days like this were meant for idleness. You've no idea what bliss this is after Manchester."
"Is it? Is Manchester very bad?"
"Oh, it's not so bad really, I suppose, only rather stuffy, and I don't much like any city except London. They're all such cheap imitations."
He lay back luxuriously and, plucking a tall scabious flower, pressed its perfumed softness to his cheek.
"Is that why you came back?"
She had to say it.
"That and because Hunting wrote such glowing accounts of his work here. I had to come down and see whether he was as good a liar as I thought him."
"I suppose you're staying at theFlying Foxagain?"
She did not dare to ask, "How long are you staying?"
She sat very still, her arms clasped round her knees, her eyes staring into the tremulous life and movement of the field of wheat before her.
"No. As a matter of fact your schoolmaster, Coast, offered to put me up. I only stayed here Saturday night. You passed me, you know, on the bridge when I was talking to some men in the evening. They're not really easy to talk to—can't see beyond the immediate future. That's the worst of working among men without education. You can't have progress without imagination and you can't have imagination without a basis of knowledge. We ought to begin by reforming the schools."
She held her glance tightly on the delicate tendrils of convolvulus encircling the stalks of wheat, on the scarlet pimpernel among the haze of gold and green, on anything but David—David lying among the fragrant grasses, as much at ease as his strenuous vitality would ever let him be.
"Oh, we'll just have to go on doing the best we can—organizing first, educating after. It's the wrong way round of course, but it seems the only way at present. When I was in Cattlesby yesterday——"
"Oh, you were in Cattlesby yesterday?"
So that was why he had not come.
"Yes, I went there directly after breakfast and did not come back till to-day. I'm leaving to-night by the six o'clock train from Hardrascliffe."
"I suppose you had business here to do before you left, otherwise it's surely rather out of your way."
"It is. Horribly." He laughed, at her or at himself. She could not tell. "Six miles out of my way along a dusty disagreeable road, with the Hardrascliffe hills, and the springs broken in the saddle of my bicycle. What do you think of that?"
"That it must have been very important business."
"It was. Look here, Mrs. Robson, I've been thinking an awful lot about you lately."
One quick little indrawing of breath and she sat still as a statue.
"I know I behaved rather badly last time I was at Anderby. You were splendid to me. I shall never forget it. Then I put my foot in it so badly with Mrs. Bannister and I'm afraid you may have thought I was rude, hurrying away like that to the inn. But you know, I couldn't stay. It wouldn't have been right. It wouldn't really.... Of course you've got to oppose me, I suppose, and I've got to oppose you, and unless you give up all this"—he waved his hands at the fields around him—"I don't see how we can be anything but enemies. I'm doing my best to knock down the things you think are fine but I think are an abomination——"
"An abomination?"
"Oh, you know what I mean. Please don't misunderstand me. I don't think any the less of you because I hate the things you stand for—patronage and capitalism and the old Tory school and all that sort of thing. I think you're splendid." With his irrepressible tendency to gesture he sprang up and confronted her. "Of course I think you're splendid. Why, I——"
Mary rose too and they stood face to face between the wheat and the hedgerow. Hot waves of perfume blew from the ripening corn across their flaming cheeks. In the hawthorn tree a thrush was singing.
"Do you really mean that?" asked Mary.
"Why, of course I do!"
"Splendid, David? How splendid? What does that mean?"
The glimmering bowl of sky closed in upon them. The golden hills crouched waiting.
"Why it means——"
Earnest, excited, longing to clear himself from the last taint of ungraciousness, David flung out his arms with an impulsive movement. One moment Mary stood waiting, wild hope and joy questioning in her eyes. Then she bent forward.
"Oh, David, David!" she whispered. "Do you mean that?"
Somehow, she lay in his arms. Somehow, their lips met. For Mary, time stood still. Her life hung poised on one consummate happiness, that knew neither past nor future.
A slight noise in the road above her broke the spell. She moved away. They stood facing one another, David flushed and panting, Mary, white and still, while a shadow fell across the wheat, and slowly moved above them. David's eyes were on Mary's frozen face, but Mary, looking past him, saw the back of John's head and shoulders as he rode along the grass at the other side of the hedge that bordered the road from Littledale. Whether John had seen them as he approached, she did not know.
They stood motionless, until John's horse had rounded a bend in the road. Then Mary spoke:
"I think you had better go," she whispered. "You may miss your train."
Silently he stooped for his hat, then stood there, hesitating, as though there was something he would say.
"Please, go," she whispered again. "I would rather."
He turned and left her. The last she heard of him was the sound of his uneven footsteps on the broken road. Once, they stopped and her heart stood still as she awaited his return. Then they passed on again, and died away down the hill.
Two hours later, Mary opened again the door of the Wold Farm. The house was in confusion. Violet came to greet her with quivering lips.
"Oh, m'm," she cried, "do come, Mr. Robson's had a stroke."
BEFORE THE HARVEST
"Good evening, Bert. What is it you've come to see me about?"
Mary stood in the dining-room smiling at the embarrassed figure of Bert Armstrong, who waited, shuffling his feet along the carpet.
"Have you seen that chap Hunting, Mrs. Robson?" he asked. He hated having to come to her like this—and her having such trouble with her husband an' all.
"Yes, I have, and I'm glad you came to see me about that. Won't you sit down, and smoke if you like. I wanted a talk with you."
Bert looked round, seeking the least committal seat in the room. They all looked too large or too small. Finally he chose John's arm-chair and crouched there miserably, trying to find somewhere to put his hands and his knees.
Mrs. Robson, for all her kindness, had always been an alarming sort of person, and lately people said that she had been acting very queerly. She certainly looked queer, with her dull expressionless eyes and the lines running from her nostrils to the corners of her smiling mouth. And there was a sort of restlessness about her, as though all the time she was expecting something unpleasant to happen and yet didn't care very much if it did.
"Did 'e say that if we don't give three pund ten this harvest the men are all coming out on strike?"
"Yes, he did."
"Does 'e mean it, Mrs. Robson?" the young man asked anxiously.
"I'm afraid so. These people generally mean what they say, and he has got the men pretty well in hand."
Bert leaned forward, his clasped hands between his knees. "It means ruination for us, Mrs. Robson. There was me just getting on like. The farm well stocked up, and going to begin to put a bit on one side. If these goings on don't stop, I'll have to give up."
"I see."
"'Taint as if I was the only one, Mrs. Robson. There's others, like Andersons of Stowall, and Baines on the Glebe Farm. It's all very well for yon big farmers, like you and Willerbys at High Wold. But what shall we do? We can't pay high wages."
"What do you want me to do?" Mary raised unsmiling eyes to Bert's crimson face.
He moved uneasily in the arm-chair, summoning his courage.
"Why, they say down in the village that you're going to give in—because of Mr. Robson. Rare bad luck it is having a stroke like that just now, and they say he mustn't be excited, but if you pay what they ask, we'll have to give t' same and we can't do it—we can't. We'll have to give up. Just when we're starting."
"Who said that I was going to give in?"
Bert blushed and looked at the floor. "Oh, they say in t' village—of course, we know you've had a bad time—Mr. Robson ill and all. And then you knew that young fellow, Mr. Rossitur. And they say he was all in t' favour of unions like, and perhaps you, being clever, and seeing you understand all these new ideas——" He paused, stumbling and intimidated, the words with which he had been carefully primed before the interview oozing out of his mind like water from a sponge.
"Oh, I see," said Mary slowly. "They say in the village that because I am supposed to be rather better off than the rest of you, having a larger farm, I can afford to play with socialistic ideas and pose as a kind of enlightened high-brow introducing new methods into Anderby. Is that it? And that I choose my friends from among the class that spreads discontent among the labourers because it amuses me. And that I shall make the excuse that my husband isn't well to give way to the first difficulty, no matter what it may cost the rest of you. Is that it, Bert?"
"Why"—he hung his head—"I wouldn't go so far as t' say that."
"That's what you mean, though, isn't it? I've been busy the last ten days. I haven't been much in the village, but Hunting came to see me, here. Would you like to know what I said to him?"
She rose and went to the window and Bert saw her strong profile and tall figure outlined against the sunlit lawn and shrubbery. Very straight and confident she looked—queer, though. Bert felt he was in for it now. You never knew what Mrs. Robson would do next.
She was not looking at Bert but at the roses and hollyhocks along the garden border, as her even voice continued:
"I told him that he was mistaken in thinking that co-operation and public spirit lay among the labourers alone. I told him that up till now the men had had good wages, and that until he came into the village there had been no complaints. I told him that whatever might happen in the towns, here we were friends together, masters and men, that many of the masters had been labourers themselves once, like your father, Bert, and had risen to be foremen and then bought a bit of land on their own. I told him that except on one or two of the larger farms, there was a continual struggle between the smaller men and the land they held, that every extra penny of capital was needed for manure and stock and that to increase the labourers' wages meant to starve the land, and in the end the labourers as well as the farmers lived on what the land produced. Do you understand that far?"
Bert nodded, though he felt that Mrs. Robson was getting rather out of his depth. Still, she seemed to know what she meant and women—even such superior ones as Mrs. Robson—will talk.
"I told him also that I was not a rich woman. Until last year my farm was mortgaged and though I might this year be able to pay the wages he asked, it would mean that I should have to spend my savings and that in the end would have to be made up from the land. But I said that even if I were as rich as the Setons of Edenthorpe my answer to him would be the same. If there was any real need to increase my labourers' wages I would do it, for we Robsons haven't farmed at Anderby for nearly four hundred years without knowing that the first condition of success is good feeling between fellow-workers. But when I saw discontent spread among ignorant villagers by men whose profession it was to spread such unrest——"
Her quiet voice hesitated a moment. Bert saw her hand make a slight involuntary movement as though she were in pain.
"When I saw demands being made simply because journalists and union organizers and paid agitators—men from Manchester—were interfering where they had no experience, when I saw that one demand would lead to another, one interference from outside grow into an enforced separation of master from man, then I said I would fight that movement until my last penny was spent and the last sheaf of corn had gone from Anderby. Will you tell them that in the village?"
Again Bert nodded, because Mrs. Robson seemed to have got well away and there was no stopping her anyhow.
"Do you think you understand? Because I'm busy with my husband and can't speak for myself. Will you tell them that if the men will strike we must let them? We can all join together and get the harvest in somehow. Dawson and Foreman and Mike O'Flynn and a few others at the Wold Farm here won't go out I know—mind you, there mayn't be a strike."
"I doubt it."
"I doubt it too. The men know well enough which side their bread is buttered. The agitators'll go away and forget all about it and stir up trouble somewhere else where they'll be better paid and everything will be settled down just like it was before—oh, and I've spoken to the Willerbys too, and they'll do whatever Mr. Robson and I think best and I think the same thing applies to the other farmers. Now do you know what to say in the village?"
"Ay. Thank you, Mrs. Robson. I'm sure I always said——"
Mary smiled again. Her intensity relaxed, and Bert sighed with relief as she suddenly became again an ordinary farmer's wife entertaining a visitor.
"Oh, that's all right then. You'll have a glass of wine and a piece of cake before you go, won't you?"
Later in consultation at the market with a group of other young farmers, Bert delivered his message.
"Nay, she'll not give way, she says. Ay, but she do talk! She's a rare woman, is Mrs. Robson, but not the sort I'd like to have about t' house days and nights out. She's a bit unchancy like."
He would have thought her yet more "unchancy" could he have seen her outside John's bedroom, hesitating on the dark landing, clasping and unclasping her hands while her breath came in quick, gasping sobs.
During the last ten days her life had become a jagged patch work of moments when, composed and self-confident in the presence of others, she met the increasing difficulties of the labour question, and the moments when alone she wrestled sobbing and abandoned with her doubts and fears and shames.
There were three things to be remembered directly she opened John's door. First, she must give him the doctor's message about getting up. Secondly, she must satisfy his querulous curiosity about Bert. Thirdly, she must avoid if possible all topics which might recall to his mind the scene in the wheat-field.
She pulled herself together and entered the room.
John lay still and sullen on the great bed. His beard had grown thick and straggling and his rumpled hair and restless eyes did not increase his comeliness. But he was better. It had been a slight stroke.
"The doctor says you can get up next Saturday."
"About time too. I never saw such tomfoolery, keeping me here just before harvest for a touch of sunstroke. Who's been up to the house, honey?"
"Bert Armstrong came for a bit of advice about harvesters. He's not a bad sort of boy, John, but I think he finds the responsibility of farming a bit too much for him after his father's death."
"Ay. It's not in the blood, you see. Old Armstrong was a good hedger and thatcher, but his son's not bred to be a farmer."
"No. I suppose not."
Mary moved about the room, setting straight the cushions and bottles and a vase of crimson roses. If only she knew! If only John would show whether he had seen her that afternoon—her and David. The doctor said it was a slight stroke brought about by riding in the hot fields after a heavy meal. But a shock might cause the same sort of thing. And she did not know what he had seen.
"Sarah Bannister sent you some peaches. Would you like one for lunch?"
"I might as well. Any more about that chap Hunting lately?"
"No. I don't think so. Things seem fairly quiet."
"Rossitur still here?"
Mary clutched at the mantelpiece, where she had been replacing a fallen rose in the vase.
"Mr. Rossitur? No. Why should he be? He only came for that night we saw him on the bridge, and left again on the Monday."
"Did you ever see him to speak to?"
Was he tricking her? Trying to force her to a confession? She bent above the roses. This was too absurd. Like a scene out of a novel. And it was happening to her—Mary.
She spoke very quietly.
"Yes. He came to call on Monday afternoon."
"Oh, the day I was taken ill. I thought you were out then."
"I must go quietly here," she thought. "Then it will be all right. He may not have seen. He may never remember."
"I was out," she said. "So he came up the fields to find me and apologize. He thought quite rightly that he had behaved rather badly, coming to stay with us and making an upset in the village."
There was a sound from the bed. Mary dared not turn round. She awaited the sharp exclamation of surprise and recollections, the ensuing scene—which must be avoided at all costs because John had to be kept quiet.
The sound swelled and died.
John had yawned.
His drowsy voice came again from the bed.
"Well, I'm glad he had the decency to realize he'd behaved shabbily. But of course, whatever sort of fool he may be, he is a gentleman, Mary; I always said so." John yawned again. "I think I'm going to have a nap now."
"All right. I'll bring you some tea about four."
She left the room.
Then he did not know. Or, if he had seen, his temporary seizure had driven all recollection from his mind. And she must go on, hourly expecting the possible return of his memory.
Of course it was absurd to make a fuss. It really was nothing—a kiss in a cornfield on a hot day. Lots of farmers' wives might have done it—only Mary was not lots of farmers' wives. She was Mary Robson of Anderby Wold and her conduct must be without blemish. And then John was not like lots of farmers. His trust in her was as absolute as his loyalty to her was unquestionable. Any small lapse from propriety became doubly a breach of confidence. And then—and then, it was not so much what she had done as what she was ready to do....
She passed through the quiet house. In the kitchen Violet was singing as she cleaned up after a day's baking.
Mary returned to the dining-room and closed the door. As she turned the handle she felt she was shutting herself up with a swarm of pitiless thoughts that danced round her like gnats on a summer day, leaving no respite.
David had written. Oh, yes, he had written all right. She had his letter now in her desk in the drawing-room—a most proper letter that would fully clear her character should her husband accuse her and she wished to prove her innocence. Of course he hadn't meant it for that. David had written just because he was David and couldn't leave well alone—must all the time be spoiling things by trying to make them better....
She knew it by heart. She knew the characteristic writing with its finely formed letters, impetuously looped, the upward sweep of the lines—even the smudge at the end where he had blotted it too hastily. He never could do anything quite perfectly.