Harvest, Mrs. Humphry Ward [best pdf reader for ebooks txt] 📗

too, of the three thousand pounds that Uncle Robert had so opportunely left her. She had never realized that money could make so much difference; and she thought gratefully of the elderly bachelor, her mother's brother, who had unexpectedly remembered her. It had enabled her to get her year's training, and to take this farm with a proper margin of capital. She wished she had been able to tell Uncle Robert before he died what it meant to her.

They passed one or two pairs of labourers going home, then a group of girls in overalls, then a spring cart containing four workmen behind a ragged pony, no doubt the builder's men who had been at work on the Great End repairs. They all looked at her curiously, and Rachel Henderson looked back at them--steadily, without shyness. They were evidently aware of who she was and where she was going. Some of them perhaps would soon be in her employ. She would be settling all that in a week or two.

Ah, there was the house. She leant forward and saw it lying under the hill, the woods on the slope coming down to the back of it. Yes, it was certainly a lonely situation. That was why the house, the farm lands, too, had been so long unlet, till old Wellin, the farm's nearest neighbour, having made a good deal of money, had rented the land from Colonel Shepherd, to add to his own. The farm buildings, too, he had made some use of, keeping carts and machines, and certain stores there. But the house he had refused to have any concern with. It had remained empty and locked up for a good many years.

The wagonette turned into the rough road leading through the middle of a fine field of oats to the house. The field was gaily splashed with poppies, which ran, too, along the edges of the crop, swayed by the evening breeze, and flaming in the level sun. Though lonesome and neglected, the farm in July was a pleasant and picturesque object. It stood high and the air about it blew keen and fresh. The chalk hill curved picturesquely round it, and the friendly woods ran down behind to keep it company. Rachel Henderson, in pursuit of that campaign she was always now waging against a natural optimism, tried to make herself imagine it in winter--the leafless trees, the solitary road, the treeless pasture or arable fields, that stretched westward in front of the farm, covered perhaps with snow; and the distant stretches of the plain. There was not another house, not even a cottage, anywhere in sight. The village had disappeared. She herself, in the old wagonette, seemed the only living thing.

No, there was a man emerging from the farm-gate, and coming to meet her--the bailiff, George Hastings. She had only seen him once before, on her first hurried visit, when, after getting a rough estimate from him of the repairs necessary to the house and buildings, she had made up her mind to take the farm, if the landlord would agree to do them.

"Yon's Muster Hastings," said Jonathan Webb, turning on her a benevolent and wrinkled countenance, with two bright red spots in the midst of each weather-beaten cheek. Miss Henderson again noticed the observant curiosity in the old man's eyes. Everybody, indeed, seemed to look at her with the same expression. As a woman farmer she was no doubt just a freak, a sport, in the eyes of the village. Well, she prophesied they would take her seriously before long.

"I'm afraid I haven't as much to show you, miss, as I'd like," said Hastings, as he helped her to alight. "It's cruel work nowadays trying to do anything of this kind. Two of the men that began work last week have been called up, and there's another been just 'ticed away from me this week. The wages that some people about will give are just mad!" He threw up his hands. "Colonel Shepherd says he can't compete."

Miss Henderson replied civilly but decidedly that somehow or other the work would have to be done. If Colonel Shepherd couldn't find the wages, she must pay the difference. Get in some time, during August, she must.

The bailiff looked at her with a little sluggish surprise. He was not used to being hustled, still less to persons who were ready to pay rather than be kept waiting. He murmured that he dared say it would be all right, and she must come and look.

They turned to the right up a stony pitch, through a dilapidated gate, and so into the quadrangle of the farm. To the left was a long row of open cow-sheds, then cow-houses and barns, the stables, a large shed in which stood an old and broken farm cart, and finally the house, fronting the barns.

The house was little more than a large cottage built in the shabbiest way forty years ago, and of far less dignity than the fine old barn on which it looked. It abutted at one end on the cart-shed, and between it and the line of cow-sheds was the gate into the farmyard.

Miss Henderson stepped up to the house and looked at it.

"It is a poor place!" she said discontentedly; "and those men don't seem to have done much to it yet."

Hastings admitted it. But they had done a little, he said, shamefacedly, and he unlocked the door. Miss Henderson lingered outside a moment.

"I never noticed," she said, "that the living room goes right through. What draughts there'll be in the winter!"

For as she stood looking into the curtainless window that fronted the farm-yard, she saw through it a further window at the back of the room, and beyond that a tree. Both windows were large and seemed to take up most of the wall on either side of the small room. The effect was peculiarly comfortless, as though no one living in the room could possibly enjoy any shred of privacy. There were no cosy corners in it anywhere, and Miss Henderson's fancy imagined rows of faces looking in.

Inside a little papering and whitewashing had been done, but certainly the place looked remarkably unviting. A narrow passage ran from front to back, on one side of which was the living room with the two windows, while on the other were the kitchen and scullery. Upstairs there were two good-sized bedrooms with a small third room in a lean-to at the back, the lower part of which was occupied by a wash-house. Through the windows could be seen a neglected bit of garden, and an untidy orchard.

But when she had wandered about the rooms a little, Rachel Henderson's naturally buoyant temperament reasserted itself. She had brought some bright patterns of distemper with her which she gave to Hastings with precise instructions. She had visions of casement curtains to hide the nakedness of the big windows with warm serge curtains to draw over them in the winter. The floors must be stained. There should be a deep Indian-red drugget in the sitting-room, with pigeon-blue walls, and she thought complacently of the bits of old furniture she had been collecting, which were stored in a friend's flat in town. An old dresser, a grandfather's clock, some bits of brass, two arm-chairs, an old oak table--it would all look very nice when it was done, and would cost little. Then the bedrooms. She had brought with her some rolls of flowery paper. She ran to fetch them from the wagonette, and pinned some pieces against the wall. The larger room with the south aspect should be Janet's. She would take the north room for herself. She saw them both in her mind's eye already comfortably furnished; above all fresh and bright. There should be no dirt or dinginess in the house, if she could help it. In the country whitewash and distemper are cheap.

Then Hastings followed her about through the farm buildings, where her quick eye, trained in modern ways, perceived a number of small improvements to be made that he would never have noticed. She was always ready, he saw, to spend money on things that would save labour or lessen dirt. But she was not extravagant, and looking through the list of her directions and commissions, as he hastily jotted them down, he admitted to himself that she seemed to know what she was about. And being an honest man himself, and good-tempered, though rather shy and dull, he presently recognized the same qualities of honesty and good temper in her; and took to her. Insensibly their tone to each other grew friendly. Though he was temporarily in the landlord's employ, he had been for some years in the service of the Wellin family. Half-consciously he contrasted Miss Henderson's manner to him with theirs. In his own view he had been worse treated than an ordinary farm labourer throughout his farming life, though he had more education, and was expected naturally to have more brains and foresight than the labourer. He was a little better paid; but his work and that of his wife was never done. He had got little credit for success and all the blame for failure. And the Wellin women-folk had looked down on his wife and himself. A little patronage sometimes, and worthless gifts, that burnt in the taking; but no common feeling, no real respect. But Miss Henderson was different. His rather downtrodden personality felt a stimulus. He began to hope that when she came into possession she would take him on. A woman could not possibly make anything of Great End without a bailiff!

Her "nice" looks, no doubt, counted for something. Her face was, perhaps, a little too full for beauty--the delicately coloured cheeks and the large smiling mouth. But her brown eyes were very fine, with very dark pupils, and marked eyebrows; and her nose and chin, with their soft, blunted lines, seemed to promise laughter and easy ways. She was very lightly and roundly made; and everything about her, her step, her sunburn, her freckles, her evident muscular strength, spoke of open-air life and physical exercise. Yet, for all this general aspect of a comely country-woman, there was much that was sharply sensitive and individual in the face. Even a stranger might well feel that its tragic, as well as its humorous or tender possibilities, would have to be reckoned with.

"All right!" said Miss Henderson at last, closing her little notebook with a snap, "now I think we've been through everything. I'll take over one cart, and Mrs. Wellin must remove the other. I'll buy the chaff-cutter and the dairy things, but not the reaping machine--"

"I'm afraid that'll put Mrs. Wellin out considerably!" threw in Hastings.

"Can't help it. I can't have the place cluttered up with old iron like that. It's worth nothing. I'm sure _you_ wouldn't advise me to buy it!"

She looked with bright decision at her companion, who smiled a little awkwardly, and said nothing. The old long habit of considering the Wellin interest first, before any other in the world, held him still, though he was no longer their servant.

Miss Henderson moved back towards the house.

"And you'll hurry these men up?--as much as you can? They _are_ slow-coaches! I must get in the week after next. Miss Leighton and I intend to come, whatever happens."

Hastings understood that "Miss Leighton" was to be Miss Henderson's partner in the farm, specially to look after the dairy work. Miss Henderson seemed to think a lot of her.

"And you must please engage those two men you spoke of. Neither of them, you say, under sixty! Well, there's no picking and