"Dear Mrs. Robson,"I can't imagine what you think of me."
"Dear Mrs. Robson,
"I can't imagine what you think of me."
No, that was obvious. He never would know either.
"I won't ask for your forgiveness, for I know I don't deserve it."
"I won't ask for your forgiveness, for I know I don't deserve it."
Mary smiled bitterly. Quite true again. She never would forgive him, never—for thinking that forgiveness was necessary.
"But I want to say that what happened in the cornfield was my own fault, but not my intention. I can't think what possessed me that I should behave so extraordinarily to you of all people whom I really respect so profoundly. It must have been the scent of the poppies or something. It all happened so suddenly. But please believe me it was quite unpremeditated. Think of it as a kind of momentary madness if you like—anything but an act of deliberate disrespect. I knew as soon as it happened had how appallingly I had behaved, and how angry you must be. Of course I don't expect anything so nice could happen as your writing to say you understand and forgive me."Yours very very sincerely,"David Rossitur."
"But I want to say that what happened in the cornfield was my own fault, but not my intention. I can't think what possessed me that I should behave so extraordinarily to you of all people whom I really respect so profoundly. It must have been the scent of the poppies or something. It all happened so suddenly. But please believe me it was quite unpremeditated. Think of it as a kind of momentary madness if you like—anything but an act of deliberate disrespect. I knew as soon as it happened had how appallingly I had behaved, and how angry you must be. Of course I don't expect anything so nice could happen as your writing to say you understand and forgive me.
"Yours very very sincerely,"David Rossitur."
Poor dears! Men always thought they did it all themselves. If they only knew. Mary smiled again.
Well, she supposed she must answer it—even after a week's delay. There was no reason why he should suffer from something which he showed clearly—so very clearly—was not his fault. She would make the excuse that her husband had been ill. There had been no time to write before.
She fetched paper and envelopes and sat down, passing her tongue thirstily over dry lips. The flowers on the table were untidy. She rose again, and picking up two petals that had fallen dropped them into the waste-paper-basket.
Then she chose a pen from the inkstand, and began:
"Dear Mr. Rossitur." Her writing was large and round with black down strokes. This was the first time that she had written to him. How hot the room was! Perhaps, with the window open.... She tried again.
"Dear Mr. Rossitur,"Thank you for your letter. I quite understand. I expect it was the hot afternoon. It seems to have affected a lot of people. John got a slight touch of sunstroke. Perhaps you had one too—I quite understand you did not mean it. I was angry at the time, but now we will forget all about it. Please don't worry any more."Yours sincerely,"Mary Robson."
"Dear Mr. Rossitur,
"Thank you for your letter. I quite understand. I expect it was the hot afternoon. It seems to have affected a lot of people. John got a slight touch of sunstroke. Perhaps you had one too—I quite understand you did not mean it. I was angry at the time, but now we will forget all about it. Please don't worry any more.
"Yours sincerely,"Mary Robson."
It did not seem a very wonderful production, to have taken nearly two hours to write, but it was what she meant to say, and she could not think of a grander way in which to say it. Besides, she must reassure him some how that she was not angry. He must not suffer even a momentary humiliation for her own deliberate and shameless fault.
She blotted her letter and re-read it, repeating aloud the written words. What, after all, was the use of saying anything when there was one thing alone that she wanted to say, and could not? Quickly she tore the paper in small pieces, and let them drop into the waste-paper-basket. She walked to the window, and thence to the mantelpiece, then up and down the room that had become too small for the tireless thoughts which began to attack her in regular procession.
By the fire-place, she realized again the triumph of that moment in the cornfield, and the two hours afterwards when deliberately she had blinded herself to every consideration but the intensity of her desire for his love—when she had believed only what she wanted to believe, and forgot everything which common sense and propriety and experience recalled. Up the room again, she confronted the disaster of John's illness and the shock of her probable responsibility. Back again by the tables and chairs that she touched in passing with her fingers, she lived again through the hours of fearful expectation, awaiting the return of John's memory and the ensuing scene. Finally, by the door, she received once more that letter from David, when, as the hottest shame of all, she read that she had no cause for shame, that her fruitless waiting after church on Sunday and her flight up the fields had been the truth, and the quivering ecstasy of her stolen delight a sentimental lie.
That was what she was—a sentimental neurotic fool. Cheap, vulgar, sentimental. Those names hurt even more than calling herself disloyal, which she knew she was. Thinking herself starved for romance, and snatching at the first young man who came along, however unwilling he might be, she had known, oh, she had known all right, all along, that he could not care.
She had failed John. She had shamed David. Well, there was still the village. Hunting? There was that interview with him, and the long vista of defeat and deprivation it disclosed. But she had not lost the village. There at least lay a way to regain self-respect.
That was what one must have—self-respect. She couldn't bear life without it. She couldn't bear that fugitive shame that kept her starting at every sound, that burned her at every thought of David.
She looked up in surprise, for a sound of low sobbing filled the room. It could not be she who was crying. Why, she'd just made up her mind that in her work in the village lay the royal road to the only thing in life that really mattered. There was a real battle to be fought against Hunting, that would cure her of hysterical fancies.
But the choking sobs continued, for she did not care. She did not want to regain her self-respect if that meant shutting herself off from all thoughts of him. What did the village matter? What did she matter if it came to that?
"Oh, David, David," she moaned. "And I loved you so."
Footsteps sounded along the passage. Violet called to her from the hall.
"Are you there, m'm?"
She rose and pushed back the fallen hair from her face.
"Yes. What is it?"
"Please, m'm, is Mr. Robson to have toast for his tea, and may I have the key of the dairy, because that there cat's been at the butter again?"
"Yes, you'd better make some toast. I'll get the butter."
As she went up the passage on her way to the kitchen, Mary kicked the cat.
HARVEST AT ANDERBY
"Foreman would like to see you, m'm."
Violet entered the dining-room and looked hesitatingly from John to Mary. Foreman's real request was for the master, but since his illness Mary had given her orders that all such messages should be brought to her. Violet's upbringing had been on strictly evangelical lines, in the fear of a God who loveth righteousness and hateth a lie. She found it difficult to accept Mary's creed that small fibs are a very present help in trouble.
She looked so unhappy about it that John noticed her perturbation.
"What does foreman want, d'you know?"
Violet did know. She had been talking to Fred Stephens, leaning across the kitchen window sill, and discussing in hushed tones the probability of a strike on Monday. No one talked about anything else just now in Anderby. But again she perjured her soul.
"I don't know, sir."
John's attention drifted again to his fried bacon, and Mary followed Violet from the room.
"That was right, Violet. Remember that Mr. Robson's not to be worried about these sort of things. I'm the farmer these days till the doctor says he's all right again."
Violet sighed. There would be many confessions of falsehood to be muttered that night into her pillow before she went to bed. Life was very hard in Anderby—to say nothing about Fred Stephens who must be persuaded not to strike even if she had to throw over Percy to do it.
Mary hurried along the passage. She, too, found life rather difficult in Anderby just then—difficult, but exciting, and because exciting, then tolerable. The strike really was coming. Neither native caution nor the foreman's contempt nor the force of habit had availed against the rhetoric of Hunting. Anderby intellect had yielded to his eloquence as it would never have yielded to argument. TheFlying Foxbecame the head-quarters of an active organization for industrial enlightenment. Coast as an unofficial friend of progress at last found himself a person of importance in an appreciative world. Waite was enabled to turn his ill-fortune to good account. The labourers from various farms awoke to the fact that they were victims of an unbearable tyranny—when they had time to think about it. Mrs. Robson was going to have her hoped-for fight with something real.
It was all very satisfactory.
"Well, foreman, what is it now?" asked Mary.
He removed his cap and scratched his head.
"It's a bad job this, missus."
"It's a bad job for us, but it's worse for the men. Have they any strike pay put by, foreman? They can't have. It hasn't gone on long enough."
"Why m'm, it's like this, you see. Mr. Rossitur comes down and says 'You're all beasts. You've got to be men,' an' rates 'em worse nor Parson on Advent Sunday. And he makes 'em all uncomfortable like a pup wi' a kettle tied t' his tail. Then comes Mr. Hunting an' gets up t' union. An' when they've got a union they mun hev a strike. For what's t' use o' unions unless you strike, they say? And what's t' use of striking unless you do it when it makes most row? And when's that? Harvest time o' course. So they'll strike."
"I know," said Mary. "That's just it. You put it very well. Why, we're all speakers now in Anderby! I've never heard so much talk in all my life as there's been in the last three weeks. I talk too. You should have heard me on at poor Bert Armstrong! He hardly knew whether he was on his head or his heels by the time I'd done with him."
Foreman grinned. "Ay. I heard tell o' that."
"Well, if the worst comes to the worst, I suppose we can rely on you and Shepherd and Mike. What about those Irish men, foreman?"
"Well, them as is friends o' Mike's will do as 'e says. I don't like t' looks o' Mike these days, Mrs. Robson, I tell you straight. It isn't that 'e's drinking worse nor usual. He allus was a good 'un for that. It's way 'e acts when 'e is drunk."
"What sort of way?" asked Mary, frowning.
How tiresome of Mike to add to her troubles when she had so many things to think about!
"Oh, swearing an' taking on' an' offering to fight anyone what says a word agin you. And talking about that there Mr. Rossitur—saying he was at t' bottom of strike an' all, an' if he hadn't come there wouldn't have been no trouble."
"Well, that's true in a way, I suppose."
"Ay, mebbe. But's it's doing no good down i' t' village and it's doing no good to Mike. Waite's like a great mule since 'is row wi' Mike, and Mike's fair crazed over any o' t' union men. I wish ye'd speak to 'em, m'm. There'll be trouble in Anderby one of these days."
"Oh, there'll be trouble all right. But I don't see what I can do. I'll try and speak to Mike. Is there anything else?"
She returned to finish her tea with John. Poor John! She knew he suffered no less from the changed conditions because he was inarticulate. Sometimes she wondered whether it hurt more to move as he moved, half understanding, among the hostility of a once friendly wold, or to live as she lived, continually estimating and expressing the measure of her own emotions. Perhaps, with her, one pain dimmed the consciousness of another, while John clung steadily to the thought of coming trouble at Anderby.
His mute misery appealed to her desire for action. Besides, it was all part of her plan of life by which she must speak to foreman, she must pacify Mike, she must in short be Mrs. Robson of Anderby Wold.
She invented trivial pretexts for working in the kitchen that she might be the first to hear an ominous knock at the door. With her sleeves rolled above her elbows she stood for hours, her hands deep in flour, a self constituted vanguard to repel the attacks of John's enemies.
"You're very busy these days, honey," he remarked with his slow smile as Mary rose from the table and began to replace her large white apron.
She was busy with the buttons and for a moment did not answer.
"There's a lot of fruit to bottle," she said at last. "Sarah Bannister has sent me some more damsons from the low orchard."
"Must you do it to-night? You look a bit fagged out."
He rarely commented on her appearance. She wondered if it had altered lately. That would not be surprising.
"Oh, I'm all right, and you see the fruit was picked in the wet, and will go bad if I don't bottle it at once. Sarah said I should."
"Didn't you say we were going over there?"
"Yes, Sarah's letter is on the mantelpiece if you want to see it. She asked us to go on Wednesday and stay for tea."
"She knows I can't get away in harvest."
"Oh, yes, we can, for the evenings, while we're only reaping."
He looked up at her drearily.
"Are we going to have any harvest this year, honey?"
"Why, of course. Even if the men do come out for a bit—more fools they—it's only what has happened in lots of places. They'll have to come in again when their savings are gone—which won't be long. And anyway we can carry on with the few who'll stay."
"Ay. I suppose we'll manage somehow. But do you think we're right to hold out? Willerbys would give in if we would."
She bent across the table towards him, leaning with her hands outspread on the linen cloth, her strong arms bared to the elbow. The concentrated energy of her quiet voice had gathered to itself all other force and light from the room.
"Are you afraid, John?" she asked.
He shifted in his chair and spoke irritably. "No, not exactly. But all this tomfoolery and speechifying is a bit too much for me. I'm not a boy to begin all over again getting used to new ideas."
"A boy! Why, anyone would think you were an old man from the way you talk, instead of being only just over fifty. This is nothing but what's going on all over the country, good gracious! It will be all over and done with in a week or two, and the men will realize how they've been fooled and come back to work and feed out of your hand."
John produced his pipe and began to fill it with trembling fingers. "It's all very well for you," he said at last. "I suppose you're right. You always are. But I'm sure I don't know how we're to manage."
She came to his chair and bent over him with a light across. His helplessness and her increasing care for it engendered in her a new tenderness towards him.
"Why John, be a man! We'll be all right. It'll pass. We've only got to have a firm hand. They may not strike at all when it comes to the point. Don't you worry."
She left him and went to the kitchen where her pots and baskets of fruit awaited her.
She was glad that John would be content to stand back in the ensuing crisis. She wanted to face the strikers herself, to hit hard and be hit back again, to have people say worse things to her than she said to herself. Somehow she must end this conspiracy of adulation which led every one about her household to tell her what a wonder she was, when all the time she shrank from the thought of herself in loathing, and would have welcomed chastisement with scorpions.
And yet, if it did stop, if she could not hold her position in the village, how was she to live? What was there to live for?
She banged the great stewing-pan on the stove with unnecessary violence.
The carrier's cart drove up to the door and Violet entered with several parcels and a green baize bag.
"Put the groceries away please, Violet, and get me a towel to wipe my hands. Are those the things from the library?" Mary opened the bag and drew forth two novels and a sheaf of newspapers.
"I can't think why we get these things," she fretted, turning over the pages of the books. "I'm sure I never have any time to read them nowadays. Take them to Mr. Robson."
"And the papers, m'm?"
"No, no. Give me the papers or leave them there on the table."
Violet took the books. The newspapers lay among the jars and baskets. Mary resolutely continued her bottling. She did not want to see what David had to say in theNorthern Clarion. She did not care what he said, not she! She had other things to think about than a mid-summer madness.
Recklessly she splashed the juice of damsons on the table. A crimson spot flared across the news paper.
Within that wrapper were words he had written. Perhaps as he wrote some recollection of Anderby and his visit there and her might have stirred him. She had not read one word from him since the letter he had written to her.
It was a pity to stain the paper, though. It would do so nicely for lining cupboards. Carefully she wiped off the juice with her apron. She was holding it so when Mike knocked at the door.
She let him in.
"Foreman said you was wishing to see me, missus."
"Oh, did he?"
Foreman was an old villain. Still, she had better say something to the man now he was here. She could not quite remember, though, what she was expected to say. It would not do for her to be at a loss—she who was accustomed to kitchen confidences ranging from Sunday collections to illegitimate babies.
"Now, look here, Mike," she began, "I want to ask your help."
Mike grinned.
"If there's anything in heaven or earth I can be doing for you, missus——"
"There is. We've got a trying time ahead of us, both we who are standing together and the men who are standing against us. I know that we can manage here, though, because you and your Irish friends will help us."
"Yess, indade. There's a few of us won't let any thing happen to you, Mrs. Robson. Just you trust Mike. It wasn't for nothing you brought him back to life. No, begorrah! There's many another will wish he had the chance."
"Yes, Mike, but it's not only working for me. There are other things too. It won't be easy in the village. Now I count on you to help with the other farms as well, will you?"
"Anything you ask Mike, Missus Robson, he'll do."
"And—and Foreman says you're being very silly about the men who've joined the union. Now, Mike, we mustn't have any fighting. Remember they can't help it. They're ignorant, foolish, driven to do foolish things by men who can talk cleverly but who are really just as ignorant as themselves. They can't help it. They've been fooled by others. Do you understand?"
"Yes, missus, I understand."
"That's all right, then."
Believing that she had ensured his peaceable behaviour during the next few days, she let him go.
On Saturday night Hunting came to tell them that the men were going to strike.
Sunday passed in a waiting dream of small comings and goings, the Willerbys driving over to discuss the future campaign in voices sunk to an awful whisper, as though they were in church—Foreman hammering at the door with anxious persistency, quite unbalanced by the necessity for changing the usual harvest routine, Shepherd, grimly humorous, assuring Mary he was ready to run a reaper over the whole farm if need be, John in a state of sulky restlessness like a sick cat.
After tea she fled from the house and went to the gate in the stable-yard.
Westward before her rose fold upon fold of the encircling hills, piled rich and golden beneath a tranquil sky. There was no sound but the crunch, crunch of horses feeding in the pasture.
She locked her hands on the highest bar of the gate and rested her chin upon them. The sunset colours before her paled from golden fields and crimson sky to grey and ghostly corn below faint clouds of primrose.
She closed her eyes and let the cool air blow across her forehead. She must have dozed for a minute, for when she looked up the wolds seemed full of life and movement. From the upland acres came heavy waggons behind great horses that strained and sweated with their golden load. In the harvest field moved the figures of men piling stooks and leading horses and forking sheaves into the lumbering waggons—stooping and lifting, lifting and stooping with a rhythm that swayed atune to the wind across the wheat.
Voices rang out, and laughter from the shadowy hills, as girls passed up the road to greet their homing sweethearts. Empty waggons bound for the hills again rattled merrily past with a load of singing children. The men wore dark loose clothes, quaintly fashioned, exposing their brown throats and sinewy arms. Among them rode the master on a grey cob, laughing with them and they with him as he paused to encourage a worker, and soothe a restive horse.
The light faded. Down the winding road came the last load home, while following in its rumbling shadow the women gleaned fallen straws and ears of corn.
The harvesters passed her, their forks across their shoulders, and as they passed they smiled and saluted her with friendly eyes. The children passed her, carrying garlands of pimpernel and poppies. They waved their flowers towards her, and sang with tired, merry voices. The girls passed, bearing thick brown jars emptied of ale, and baskets brimming with half-ripe blackberries from the hedgerow. The master passed her.
Thus they had harvested at Anderby since those far-off years when the Danes broke in across the headland and dyed with blood the trampled barley. Thus and thus had the workers passed, and the children waved their garlands following the last load home. Thus had Mary and other Mary Robsons before her welcomed back the master of the harvest.
She held out her hands to him with a cry of greeting.
The girls vanished along the road, their dresses fading like pale flowers into the twilight.
The master raised his head to her and for the first time she saw his face. It was not John who rode behind as master of the harvest at Anderby, but David—David with his eager face and smiling lips, riding in triumph behind the singing harvesters.
She called to him. Her voice rang strangely through the quiet air. She opened her eyes suddenly and stared across the empty field to find he was not there. She turned and ran, not looking back till she was in the house.
Outside across the waiting fields moved a quiet wind stirring the grey seas of wheat and barley to plaintive whisperings of sound. Bats flitted below the trees around the garden. In the pasture the horses tore at the dewy grass. One by one the lights vanished from the windows of the house.
The harvest moon rose.
Before six next morning Violet appeared at the door of the room where John and Mary lay waiting for the morning.
"Some men are in the yard. They want to see you," she said, her small face quivering with distress.
"All right," answered Mary. "I'll go. John, you stay in bed. Who is it, Violet?"
"Parker and Deane and Waite and—and Fred Stephens. Oh, m'm, he promised he wouldn't join. On Saturday he promised he wouldn't whatever they did to him."
"Never mind, Violet. I expect it's all right. We all have to do what the others do these days, it seems. You run along and get your clothes on. We may want breakfast earlier."
She dressed with deliberate care. It had come, then. She doubted no longer, and the certainty, after days' suspense, elated her.
John shook off the bed-clothes and thrust his legs out of bed.
"You'd better not come," she said, braiding up her long hair. "I'll see the men. The doctor wouldn't like you to get up so early in the morning."
The dogged look she knew well settled on his face. "I'm coming down," he said.
Together they went to the yard door. Mary kept in the background, standing on the kitchen threshold, her hands behind her clasping at the side post of the door. She watched, in the early sunlight beyond John's dark figure, the ring of hostile faces in the yard.
John spoke first.
"Well, men, what is it?"
Parker shuffled forward and spat on the flags by way of prelude.
He was evidently the head of the deputation, a Hardrascliffe man only hired last year and less bound by a tradition of service to his master than were the others. Mary smiled as she realized how the older men made a virtue of necessity by shifting the odium as well as the difficulty of speech on to a comparative stranger. She saw old Deane, who once worked for her father, twisting a greasy cap in embarrassed fingers. They were all there but Mike, Shepherd and Foreman. Waite, who had nothing to do with the farm any longer—even he had come and hovered in the background, manifestly enjoying the situation. Champions of liberty and progress! This was the outcome of David's fine talking. Mary wondered what he would think of them.
It was Parker who finally spoke.
"We ain't going to work to-day, maister."
"Oh, I gave orders to Foreman on Saturday night that the sixty-acre had to be opened up."
"Ay, you did."
"Well, then, why aren't you going to do it?"
"We can't make money at this job."
"Money? What's wrong with your money? Haven't you high enough wages? I've offered ten shillings more than last year."
Mary, locking and unlocking her fingers, endeavoured to curb her growing desire to push John's lumbering ineffectiveness aside, and herself deal with the envoys of the union. While she fretted Parker found his word, a drifting echo of Hunting's Saturday night oration.
"We want a living wage," he said.
"Living wage?" repeated John dully. This was an entirely unfamiliar situation, and he was equipped neither by temperament nor training to deal with unfamiliar situations. Mary realized the misery of his hesitation. "How much do you want?' he asked.
"Three pound," began Parker.
Waite elbowed him roughly.
"Three pund ten, you fool!" he prompted.
"Three pund ten, maister," repeated Parker. The "maister" came scornfully.
John's eyes glanced from one to the other to find a single light of friendliness. One by one the men turned away except Parker and Waite, who looked straight at him, one with surly defiance the other with barely concealed contempt.
"Look here, haven't I always treated you decently?"
John's voice sounded strained and feeble. He ran his hand round the collar of his shirt. Beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead.
Mary could bear it no longer. She came forward and stood by her husband.
"Well, Parker, what have you got to say to that? Well, Deane, you know us better. Haven't we always treated you decently?" she asked sharply.
"Oh, ay." Old Deane shuffled clumsy boots on the stone pavement.
One of the boys at the back of the little crowd sniggered nervously. Deane glared round for a minute then replied, "Oh, ay. I haven't nowt to say agin you."
"You can't, you see. Have either of us done you a single bad turn since you decided to stay on ten years ago?"
"Nay, but——"
"Did my father ever hurt you?"
"Nay, but——"
"And are you treating us decently now?"
Deane looked up with a suspicion of the old twinkle in his eye.
"Nay, missus. We're treating you about as badly as we can. But a man must live. We've got oursens to look to."
"Oh. And aren't you living now! Which of you has been hungry in Anderby or ill-clothed or ill-fed?" Mary had quite taken her husband's place now, and John, glad to relinquish it, stood back among the shadows of the passage. "Hearing you weren't satisfied with what we offered we—all the farmers—talked together and are giving you what we can afford."
"Ay," broke in Parker. "An' if ye can't afford more than that we'll go to others who can. Farmers is tyrants, an' you as much as any on 'ere, and we'll have our rights in spite of you."
"Tyrants, are we?"
The men hung back a little ill at ease. Parker was going too far. What passed for sporting candour in theFlying Foxwas little to their taste when confronting Mrs. Robson at six o'clock on a Monday morning.
"We've got to live," growled Parker, unable for the moment to think of a more biting retort.
"Oh, you've got to live, have you? Iamsurprised and you prefer to live on strike pay that doesn't amount to more than two or three week's subscription rather than work for your wages, do you? What's come over you all? I've lived at Anderby for twenty-eight years and my father lived here before me, and there's hardly been a wrong word between us and one of you. But now because a glib tongued townsman comes down from Manchester, we're tyrants, are we? Why didn't you speak before, eh? You needn't have come back at Martinmas unless you liked. There were plenty of other places where you could go. Well, if you want to work for us, you can work on our terms or not at all. We'll be masters of our own land, my husband and I, or we'll go somewhere else."
From the passage came John's beseeching whisper:
"Stop now, honey. Quiet them down a bit and they'll cave in."
Mary never turned her head. For the first time for several weeks she was thoroughly enjoying herself. A fine glow of righteous indignation replaced the humiliation and uncertainty that had lately assailed her. She felt mistress of the situation at last. Having found an outlet for the pent-up emotions of the summer, she determined to utilize it to the uttermost extent.
"Mr. Hunting says we're being crushed by capitalist tyranny." Parker triumphantly remembered more of his lesson. "And, by God, we'll have our rights!"
"Quiet 'em down now," begged John. Even his limited perspicacity had seen that the other men thought Parker had gone too far.
If Mary realized it, she made no sign of conciliation.
"Mr. Hunting," she sneered dramatically. "And who is this Mr. Hunting?"
"Our secretary—man from Manchester."
"Yes, your secretary, the organizer of the Northern Branch of the Farm Labourers' Union. A man you've seen for two or three weeks and about whom you know nothing. And you've known me for eight and twenty years, and you say I've never done you any harm. I tell you that you're being offered a fair wage. He apparently says you're not. Which are you going to believe?"
She stood in the centre of the doorway, her hands clasping both the side posts, her eyes bright with excitement. She only knew that this was really thrilling and dramatic. Unfortunately, she had omitted to ask herself whether it was necessary.
"We mun do what our secretary says. We mun have our rights." The old parrot cry echoed monotonously. Having exhausted their carefully learnt phrases, the men had nothing more to say. Deane whispered to Parker. Fred Stephens shuffled and blushed scarlet with perplexity and detestation of anything approaching a scene.
"You stop now, honey. Better offer 'em another ten shillings," urged John in a hoarse whisper.
But Mary would not stop.
"Yes, you'll have your rights though you don't know what they are. And you'll follow a hot-brained tub-thumper from Manchester, whose business it is to fool you left and right. Don't you know that he's being paid to fool you? Oh, dear, no, not you! You think you're all so clever and modern and you'll be as independent as the miners and have a strike on your own. Very well then, you can have it. We'll do without you. The weather's fine. There are some who have more sense than to be driven off their heads by a red-tied radical. You needn't think you are indispensable. We can manage without you far better than you can manage without us."
She paused. The men stared at her open-mouthed. This was certainly a new Mrs. Robson.
"Well," she cried. "Well? What are you going to do? Have you asked your precious union what sort of pay it's going to give you while other men get the harvest in? Why didn't you wait a bit before you started this game?"
There was no answer. The silence infuriated her. She had by this time lost her last vestige of self-control. A shrill note of hysteria rose in her voice.
"You'll be back here soon," she stormed, "whining for us to let you in again, and you'll find it too late. Then you'll know who's master. Now you can go. Strike if you like, but don't expect any sympathy from us if it isn't as nice as you think. Go on. Get out of here! Get out, you fools, and never let me see you hanging round the door again. Go to your precious Hunting—and if he can't feed you, then starve! I don't care. Get out of here!"
Not quite sure whether Mrs. Robson was mad or angry or merely making a fool of herself, and finding any of these possibilities equally embarrassing, the men began to turn away. Only Waite looked back.
"All right, missus," he said. "But you bain't shut on us yet."
One by one they filed out of the yard. Their footsteps died away along the road.
John faced Mary. For the first time in his life he was really angry with her.
"Well, youhavedone it," he said. "What on earth did you want to fly out like that for? I thought you had more sense."
Mary closed the door.
"And I thought you had more spirit," she stormed. "This has got to be fought out or we'll never be masters in Anderby again."
Her voice was still high-pitched. Her cheeks were flushed. Her breath came in sharp sobs. John looked her up and down, more bewildered than annoyed.
"I think you'd better go and lie down again, honey," he suggested mildly.
Mary turned on him with fury. Then suddenly as it had come her rage departed. Without a word she turned and fled up the passage her hands pressed to her mouth to check the sobs that seemed to choke her.
John looked slowly after her retreating figure and saw Violet's white face emerging from the pantry door.
"Is this the strike, sir?" she asked tremulously.
"Yes, this is the strike all right," said John.
LADIES AT MARKET BURTON
"What I cannot understand," said Mrs. Holmes, "is why John ever allowed the man to come near the village at all."
"Oh, but as far as I can see, he didn't let them come in. That was all Mary's doing." Ursula pulled a cushion down more comfortably between her shoulders and smiled at the circle of interested faces.
"Mary? Why Mary?" asked Anne, whose round little mouth perpetually opened in search of information, as though she were a bird awaiting a gift of worms.
Sarah Bannister also looked up from her knitting. "Yes, Ursula, why Mary?"
"Oh, that socialist creature you know—your friend, Sarah. He began it all. Mary brought him to Anderby and rubbed his chest with Elliman's Embrocation because he had a cold, and he started agitating among the labourers—and then the band played. Of course we all know that Mary's awfully well-meaning, and all that, but, really, one would have thought she'd have had a little more sense."
Since her return from the Hardrascliffe nursing-home, Ursula had become an increasingly intimate member of the circle of Robson women. Their "quaintness" amused her, when the activities of a smarter set of sporting friends proved too strenuous, and her position as the mother of the only male Robson of the rising generation was agreeably important.
"You need not call him my friend, Ursula," snapped Sarah, who alone was not overcome by the charm of her cousin-in-law's society. "The young man would have had impertinence enough to argue with Mr. Asquith himself, but he hadn't brains to upset a single creature in the village, I know—not alone, anyway."
Mrs. Holmes shook a doleful head. "Well, I don't know what we're all coming to, I'm sure. What do you think Emily said to me this morning?"
"Is Emily the cook or the parlourmaid?" asked Anne.
"Emily is the parlourmaid of course—that girl who Mrs. Thomson recommended to me and thought was so nice, only she would breathe on the silver before she polished it, which I always think is such an infectious habit, don't you, with all this influenza and germs about? Though, since the doctor at Harrogate told me I ought to spend my winters abroad, I'm sure I hardly dare to think of a germ without swallowing a formamint, nasty though they are. But Emily came to me just when I was having a little dry toast with my tea in bed—all the doctor will allow me during this new treatment—and said to me 'Please, m'm, may I go to a dance to-night in the village?' And I said, 'Emily,' I said, 'you can never complain of the way I have treated you, always having the same as we have in the dining-room, and there's no more beautiful food within twenty miles of Market Burton I'm sure. And if it was a question of a night out to go and see your young man's people, it would be a different matter. But a dance!' I said, 'This is too much. I will not have any maids learning the same steps as my nieces dance in the Town Hall at Leeds.'"
"I don't see that that has anything much to do with it, Janet." Sarah rose, and began to clear the parish magazines and bound volumes ofPunch, and baskets of sewing that were piled upon her corner table.
"I can't see why there should be a strike just round about Anderby. It all seems very strange. I'm sure I'm sorry for Mary." Anne sighed a little, folding up her work.
"As far as I can see, she only has herself to blame," said Ursula. "She jolly well asked for trouble, rubbing up the backs of half the men in the village in the way she did. Why, when I was staying there, she had a frightful quarrel with the schoolmaster about some boy or other, and it appears from what Foster says that this man is behind most of the trouble."
"Foster was down there yesterday, wasn't he?"
"Yes." Ursula smiled with satisfaction. "I sent him down to see if there was anything we could do. Of course we aremostsorry for them both, especially John. For I'm sure, after the way he's worked like a negro, getting the mortgage paid off Mary's farm, the least she could have done was to have made things as easy for him as possible."
"Did Foster say if John was keeping well?" Sarah would have given much to go herself to Anderby. The consciousness that in John's hour of difficulty no one but Mary was with him, and that she apparently had only increased his troubles, was gall and wormwood to Sarah.
"Oh, he was going on all right so far, I believe. Though of course all this sort of thing must be fearfully bad for him. I really can't imagine what Mary was doing to let it happen. If she had any of the influence you all used to boast she had over the village, I'm sure she could have stopped it. From what Foster gathered, she just was as tactless as she possibly could have been—slanged the men fearfully when they might have come in, and lost her temper absolutely at the end. Really, you know, one sometimes wonders what she'll do next. She either has extraordinary notions of behaviour or very little self-control—though, of course, I always feel inclined to excuse her a great deal, because she hasn't any children."
"Well, I'm sure if Mary was wise, she would take John away from Anderby," commented Louisa. She was now helping Sarah, who arranged plates of queen cakes and jam tarts on the corner table as grimly as though she were laying out a corpse. "After a stroke he ought not to have to face all these new conditions."
"No, I'm sure." Janet Holmes sighed sympathetically. "I know so well what it is for an invalid with shattered nerves to have to face all sorts of changes. When I came back from Harrogate, absolutely exhausted by the treatment there, and found that Lily had given notice, and I had to engage a new cook——"
"Pass me the kettle, please, Anne. Janet, I suppose you are allowed to have a cup of tea?" interrupted Sarah.
"No milk, please—I'm not allowed a drop of lactic matter just yet."
"You know, what I think is so queer about Mary," continued Ursula from the sofa, "is that she always seems so awfully pleased with herself. Of course I'mveryfond of Mary, mind you, and I wouldn't say a word against her; but you know she really did sometimes seem to think she was God Almighty in that village, and I'm sure she was never quite as considerate to John as she might have been. Though there are some people, of course, who just aren't capable of deep feeling."
"Well, this must be rather a shock to her," murmured Anne timidly. "I'm sure she must be very fond of Anderby. It's such a pretty home."
"Oh, I don't know. Women with that rather domineering temperament love a fight, don't they? And then it won't do her any harm really, just seeing that every one isn't ready to lick her boots. It's poor John I'm so sorry for."
The teapot arrived on a silver tray carried by a starched maid, and the ladies put aside their work, and turned their attention to tarts and bread and butter.
"Well, I don't think it would do Mary any harm to hear a little advice——" began Ursula, when the door opened again and Mary walked in.
There was a sudden silence.
"I saw when I passed the window that Millie was helping in the room, so I just came straight in," she said, drawing off her gloves and coming forward to Sarah. "John's up the garden with Tom, Sarah. They'll probably like a bit of talk together. I'm glad I've just come in time for tea."
She took her cup and sat down beside Louisa in the big arm-chair left vacant for Sarah. She did not know that it was Sarah's chair. She did not know anything except that it was a relief to sit in this comfortable room where life was shaken by such small emotions and crises passed like the ripples made by a draught across the tea-cups.
She stirred the hot fragrant tea and selected with pleasure an iced cake from the dish Louisa passed her. Every one seemed very silent. That was nice. She had talked so much lately. There was too much talking down at Anderby.
"Those were lovely damsons you sent me," she remarked pleasantly to Sarah. "I bottled them at once and they were a splendid colour."
What a blessed comfort to talk of something beside the strike! She took a bite of sugar cake and stretched her long limbs in the cushioned chair. Still nobody spoke.
"It was dusty driving along," she said.
There was a pause.
"I'm glad you were able to get away," Louisa ventured at last. "We were afraid you wouldn't be able to come."
"Why not? We were busy this morning, but one can generally get away in the afternoons before leading time, and a change is rather nice. Besides, it's a long time since we were here—not since John was ill."
"But—when things are rather difficult just now?" suggested Ursula.
"Difficult? What do you mean by difficult?" asked Mary irritably. Of course, if they were going to spoil her respite by hinting and fidgeting, she might as well have stayed at home.
"Well, I didn't know if you would be able to leave, now that you are having trouble on the farm." Ursula stirred her tea meditatively.
"Trouble? Oh, you mean the strike?"
Then the chorus burst forth. "Yes, of course, Mary." "How are you managing, Mary?" "What is John doing about it?" "How are you getting the harvest in?" "How is John?" In a babble of curious voices.
Mary put down her tea-cup, and looked at them all. She seemed about to say something. Then she changed her mind and helped herself to another pink cake.
"Oh, we're getting on quite all right, thank you. How's the great child, Ursula?"
"Thomas is all right, thank you, Mary. But how is John? We've all been so anxious about him?"
"John is quite well again, thanks. How are you, Janet? Did Harrogate do you any good?"
The inquiries had to cease for a little while, until Janet Holmes had given a detailed account of her doctor, her ailments, her domestic problems and her cure. Mary did not think it necessary to listen. She ate and drank with drowsy contentment, the headache that had pursued her during the last fortnight slowly fading under the influence of tea and physical relaxation.
It was restful here, while Janet talked of waters and Turkish baths, and Sarah handed cheese-cakes on fluted dishes, and Anne nervously flicked at her tatting in the corner. Still, one would not like to stay here always—only for a little, until the harvest was in, and the house at Anderby quiet again, and it was no longer necessary to listen every minute for a knock on the back door.... Here it was too quiet though ... too quiet ... a valley ... trees in a valley.... Her thoughts trailed off to drowsy incoherence. "... And so I said 'Dr. Merriman, don't dream of it!' And he said 'My dear lady, that's just what I should do if I allowed you to continue a minute longer in this dreadful climate.'"
Like most of Janet's tales, there seemed no more reason why this should stop than why it had begun. Ursula decided it had continued long enough. She resumed the attack.
"Is it true that you and John are going to retire after this year?" she asked sweetly.
Mary looked up in genuine astonishment. "Good gracious, no!"
"Well, we thought perhaps that, as John wasn't well and as after a stroke worry and excitement are so bad for people, you wouldn't think it wise to go on farming in Anderby."
"You see, Mary, he has always been so sensitive from a boy, to any adverse feeling. This must have troubled him terribly," added Louisa.
Sarah, for the moment, said nothing.
Mary looked round the room upon her relatives.
"Oh!" she whispered softly.
"Of course we quite realize you're not to blame, Mary." Ursula took up the tale. "Naturally it was awfully amusing having that young fellow to stay and all that, and hearing his views, so different from anything one gets about here, and, personally, I adore socialists. I've met lots of them in the different places where I've stayed golfing, but in a small village it's hardly wise, is it, to encourage that sort of people?"
"It must have made a difference, John being only just better. You must be very worried about him," insisted Louisa quietly.
"And, really, there is no need even to sell Anderby unless you liked. You could always rent it to some one. My young cousin, Eustace Darnell, has just left Cirencester Agricultural College and wants a farm. You could get a good rent for it."
"And there's always Littledale, if John wanted to potter about a bit. I'm sure it would be nice to retire. It's very pleasant here." Louisa took the tea-cup Mary had emptied, and carried it back to Sarah at the table.
"Of course John's only fifty-two," continued Ursula, "and that's early to retire, but he's always been rather old for his age, hasn't he? And now he's had a stroke, I suppose you'll have to be very careful of him. It's really awfully risky, isn't it, keeping him at Anderby at all now the strike's on? It must be rather trying for him."
Mary looked from one woman to another, in mute amazement.
"Well, really," she said, "anyone would think that John had to do all the work himself from the way you talk! Why, at present things are going on as much as usual. We have Shepherd and Foreman and Mike O'Flynn and one or two Irish harvesters who have been with us for several years. The only difficulty will be the leading, and then we've planned to join up with the Willerbys and Glebe Farm people, and get each other's corn in by turns."
Instinctively she turned a little in her chair and looked back towards Sarah. Sarah was evidently engrossed in the delicate operation of pouring out a second cup of tea for Louisa and paid Mary no attention.
Mary tried to finish her cake. The icing broke off into hard, jagged pieces in her mouth. It was difficult to swallow. Oh, but this was a dreadful place, she thought. What business was it of these women to torment her? Of course they wanted her and John to come and live in Market Burton. They were probably jealous, because she was still young enough to appreciate life at Anderby.... Trees of the valley, they were jealous of those who stood out upon the hill-tops and battled with the storm. They would try to draw her down, woo her with warmth and ease, and whisper that the fight was too hard, the uplands too bleak—hold out as a threat the danger to John.... Knowing perhaps, that her conscience was already over-burdened, and that when she thought of her possible complicity in John's illness she lost all sense of reason and proportion.
"Oh, we know of course you'd never let him dothatsort of work," smiled Ursula ingratiatingly. "It's just the strain of working with unfriendly people, and knowing that at any moment there may be more trouble. Of course, when you're down amongst it all, I don't suppose you have quite the same chance of realizing what it all means as we have here. You're very busy, I know—always such a good manager. Naturally you haven't much time for fussing about other things—but we really have been wondering a little how John will stand the strain."
Mary rose. To herself she said, "I can't stand this much longer." Aloud, she laughed lightly.
"Well, you must all remember we've got to get the harvest in somehow—and, after all, Ursula, I have the best opportunity of knowing what's right for John. Sarah, I wonder if you'd let me take one or two tomatoes from your greenhouse. John does like them, and we have none at Anderby.... No, don't bother to come, please."
She had to escape from the room somehow. It was intolerable, full of jagged glass ornaments, and crude woolwork and tongues that cut like glass. These women would drive her mad. As though she had never contemplated the possibility of retiring!
"I'll come with you." Sarah spoke to her for the first time that evening.
"No, please don't bother," begged Mary desperately. "I really know where they are, and I only want a few."
Sarah picked up a shawl and followed her from the room without further comment.
The garden was full of slanting amber light and mellow tranquillity. Across the hedge, they could hear the click of mallets on croquet balls, and the intermittent calling of tennis scores from the neighbouring club.
Sarah and Mary walked down the gravel path, between an autumn riot of herbaceous borders and laden apple-trees. For a little while both were silent, and Mary hoped, against all knowledge of Sarah's character, that no further reference would be made to the conversation in the drawing-room. She bent over a tall cluster of Japanese anemones.
"How fine these are this year," she remarked, "I never knew such a lot of blossoms. They're so useful for vases too."
Sarah disregarded her attempted evasion.
"Mary," she announced abruptly, "John will have to give up farming."
Mary began to defend herself with unnecessary vigour.
"Oh, what nonsense you are all talking! John's all right. He is really. Why, think how young he is! You're always saying that your father didn't retire and was killed by an accident, when he was ninety-two. John's better. Really he is."
"You know he isn't, Mary."
"Yes, he is. He is really. The doctor said that if he was kept quiet there's no reason why——"
"Exactly.Ifhe was kept quiet. Now John has had a stroke, Mary. He's a big heavy man and easily upset. He isn't clever like you." Mary started at the compliment. "He'll find it very hard to get used to the new ways."
"But this won't last long. We're getting along very nicely and the men are bound to come in sooner or later. Things will be just the same again."
"You know that isn't true," said Sarah quietly. "Things will never be the same again. You're deceiving yourself, Mary. You don't like the idea of giving up farming because you're still young and have had a hard time, I know, to set things right at Anderby. But if you keep on, this will kill John."
"Why, what nonsense! John's quite a young man. What's fifty-two? What should we do, retiring at our age? Settle down here in Market Burton? That would kill him far more likely. Why, the strike will be over before harvest is in. I never heard such a lot of fuss about nothing in my life!"
"And if the strike is over, what then, Mary?" Sarah smiled down at her strangely. "What about John in the months to come, when every little hitch will seem to mean another strike, and there are new rules and regulations to deal with, and union officials and all that?"
"Yes, but there's me. I can deal with them. John's had hardly anything to do with all this business."
What right had Sarah to raise all the tormenting doubts and suggestions of the last few days, just when Mary had buried them so carefully deep down in her mind? It was insufferable interference!
"While John is at Anderby, he will always be among it all. You can't alter that, Mary."
"Oh, of course I know you want to get him back here! You'd like him under your thumb again, as he was at Littledale. You've always been jealous of me, and thought I shouldn't appreciate him properly!"
"Well, Mary, and if I have? Do you appreciate him properly?"
The old brick wall beyond the fruit trees shone darkly red. David's hair was red.... The scent of the flowers was heavy on Mary's nostrils, as their scent had been that afternoon in the cornfield, when the shadow of John's horse had fallen across the wheat....
"What do you mean?" gasped Mary. "What do you mean?"
"I don't think you always bear in mind that John gave up his farm at Littledale, and took over Anderby and your father's debts and has worked as though he was your servant instead of your husband ever since he married you. If he hadn't had your mortgage to pay, he'd be a rich man now. If he hadn't worked so hard, he mightn't have had a stroke. If you don't care enough for him to give up your own will on his account, at least you owe it to him after all he's done for you."
Mary was silent at last. The flush had faded from her cheeks. She stood, white and motionless, the bruised anemones between her hands.
"Mind you. I know this isn't easy. You haven't had such an easy time at Anderby that you can give way now without minding. It's always the things that have been most a burden that are hard to give up; but, if you don't, it'll kill John."
"I can't do it." Mary's voice was devoid of all expression now. The hands that held the flowers twisted a little as though in pain. "You don't know what I've given up to Anderby. You can't."
Sarah looked at her for a little while in silence. Then she spoke, and Mary had never before heard her voice so gentle.
"Mary, you don't think I've loved my brother all his life, and watched him and you these ten years, without knowing a little about you both, do you? I'm a cross old woman, and not very happy, but that doesn't prevent me from having eyes in my head. You're young and vigorous, and you want to use your youth. It seems dull to you to come and live among a lot of old maids and worn out men and women in Market Burton. Well, it is dull. But it's what we've all got to face sooner or later."
"But they can't do without me in the village."
"Can't they? Do you really think that, Mary? How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"And you think that at twenty-eight—or indeed at any age—you've got enough wisdom to make yourself necessary to a whole village? My dear child, no one's ever necessary to anybody else's welfare really."
"But it's so cowardly to give up at the first difficulty."
Sarah smiled again, and plucked an anemone before she answered.
"There are more sorts of courage than one, Mary, and perhaps the rarest kind of all is the courage that can give way graciously when it's too late to fight any more. I couldn't do it myself, but I know."
"But I've paid for my right to Anderby!"
"And you think because you've paid you can expect your money's worth? Why, I thought you were less of a child than that."
From the tennis court across the hedge came a girl's clear voice. "Look out! That'll be a love set if you're not careful, David!"
Mary turned upon Sarah with sudden anger.
"Did you? Well, then, you were mistaken. This is all just a conspiracy. You're all against me because you're jealous. You're out of things yourselves and don't want anyone else to be in them. Well, you'll see. I'll keep Anderby and I'll fight it out and I'll take care of John so that he'll be all right and you'll all see what fools you've made of yourselves. I'm sorry to sound rude, Sarah, but I've made up my mind."
"Oh, very well." There was pity as well as bitterness in Sarah's voice. "But you'll have to change in the end. If you won't give way on your own, things will make you. And that's much worse really."
"Don't you think," asked Mary slowly, "that it's time we got those tomatoes?"
GENTLEMEN AT ANDERBY