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

an essay on Dizzy and Cobden he had written for a Cambridge club--or Gladstone's funeral, which he had seen as a boy of seventeen. He had sat almost in this very place, with his mother, who had taken pains to bring him to see it as an historic spectacle which he might wish to remember. A quiet, dull woman, his mother--taciturn, and something of a bookworm. She had never understood him, nor he her. But she had occasionally shown moments of expansion and emotion, when the soul within glowed a little through its coverings; and he remembered the look in her eyes as the coffin disappeared into the earth, amid the black-coated throng of Lords and Commons. She had been for years a great though silent worshipper of Mr. Gladstone, to the constant amusement of her Tory husband and sons.

Then, suddenly, a face, a woman's pretty face, in the benches of the north transept, caught his eye, and with a leap, as of something unchained, the beast within him awoke. It had reminded him of Rachel; and therewith the decent memories of the distant past disappeared, engulfed by the seething, ugly, mud-stained present. He was again crouching on the hill-side, in the shelter of the holly, watching the scene within: Rachel in that man's arms! Had the American seen him? He remembered his own backward start of alarm, as Ellesborough suddenly turned and walked towards the window. He had allowed himself, in his eagerness to see, to press too near. He had exposed himself? He did not really believe that he had been discovered--unless the American was an uncommonly cool hand! Any way, his retreat to the wooded cover of the hill had been prompt. Once arrived in the thick plantation on the crest, he had thrown himself down exhausted. But as he sat panting there, on the fringe of the wood, he had fancied voices and the flash of a light in the hollow beneath him. These slight signs of movement, however, had quickly disappeared. Darkness and silence resumed possession of the farm, and he had had no difficulty in finding his way unmolested through the trees to the main road, and to the little town, five miles nearer to London than Millsborough, at which he had taken a room, under his present name of Wilson.

The wooded common, indeed, with its high, withered bracken, together with the hills encircling the farm, had been the cover from which he had carried out his prying campaign upon his former wife. As he sat or knelt, mechanically, under the high and shadowy spaces of the Abbey, his mind filled with excited recollections of that other evening when, after tearing his hand badly on some barbed wire surrounding one of Colonel Shepherd's game preserves, so that it bled profusely, and he had nothing to bandage it with, he had suddenly become aware of voices behind him, and of a large party of men in khaki--Canadian foresters, by the look of them, from the Ralstone timber camp, advancing, at some distance, in a long extended line through the trees; so that they were bound to come upon him if he remained in the wood. He turned back at once, faced the barbed wire again, with renewed damage both to clothes and hands, and ran, crouching, down the green road leading to the farm, his wound bleeding as he ran. Then he had perceived an old labourer making for him with shouts. But under the shelter of the cart-shed, he had first succeeded in tying his handkerchief so tightly round his wrist, with his teeth and one hand, as to check the bleeding, which was beginning to make him feel faint. Then, creeping round the back of the farm, he saw that the upper half of the stable door was open, and leaping over it, he had hidden among the horses, just as Halsey came past in pursuit. The old man--confound him!--had made the circuit of the farm, and had then gone up the grass road to the hill. Delane, looking out from the dark stable, had been able to watch him through the dusk, keeping an eye the while to the opposite door opening on the farm-yard. But the labourer disappeared, and in the dark roomy stable, with its beamed roof, nothing could be heard but the champing and slow tramping movements of the splendid cart-horses. Rachel's horses! Delane passed his free hand over two of them, and they turned their stately heads and nosed him in a quiet way. Then he vaulted again over the half door, and hurried up the hill, in the gathering darkness.

He was aware of the ghost-story. He had heard it and the story of the murder from a man cutting bracken on the common; and he had already formed some vague notions of making use of it for the blackmailing of Rachel. It amused him to think that perhaps his sudden disappearance would lead to a new chapter of the old tale.

Then at the recollection of Rachel's prosperity and peace, of her sleek horses and cows, her huge hay and corn stacks, her comfortable home, and her new lover, a fresh shudder of rage and hatred gripped him. She had once been his thing--his chattel; he seemed to see her white neck and breast, her unbound hair on the pillow beside him--and she had escaped him, and danced on him.

Of course she had betrayed him--of course she had had a lover! What other explanation was there of her turning against him?--of her flight from his house? But she had been clever enough to hide all the traces of it. He recalled his own lame and baffled attempts to get hold of some evidence against her, with gnashing of teeth....

* * * * *

"_For the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal!_"

He caught the words staring at him from the page of the open prayer book beside him, and automatically the Greek equivalent suggested itself. He had always done well in "divinners"! Then he became aware that the blessing had been given, that the organ was playing, and the congregation was breaking up.

* * * * *

Twenty-four hours later, Delane found himself on a road leading up from the town where he was lodging to the summit of the wide stretch of common land on the western side of which lay Great End Farm. Half way up a long hill, he came upon a young man in uniform, disconsolately kneeling beside a bicycle which he seemed to be vainly trying to mend. As Delane came up with him, he looked up and asked for a light. Delane produced a match, and the young man, by the help of it, inspected his broken machine.

"No go!" he said with a shrug, "I shall have to walk."

He rose from the ground, put up the tool he had been using, and buttoned up his coat. Then he asked Delane where he was going. Delane named a little village on the farther edge of the common.

"Oh, well, that's straight ahead. I turn off to the right," said the young soldier, "at the cross road."

They walked on together, Delane rather unwillingly submitting to the companionship thus sprung upon him. He saw from the badge on the man's shoulder that he belonged to one of the Canadian Forestry Corps in the district, and was at once on his guard. They started in silence, till Delane, pulling his mind back with a jerk, asked his companion if he was going to Ipscombe.

"No--only to Great End Farm."

Darkness hid the sudden change in Delane's countenance.

"You know some one there?"

"No, but I want to see one of the ladies about something. There's two of them running the farm. But Miss Henderson's the boss."

Cautiously, with assumed indifference, Delane began to ask questions.

He discovered that his companion's name was Dempsey; and before many minutes had passed the murderer's grandson was in the full swing of his story. Delane, despising the young man for a chattering fool, listened, nevertheless, with absorbed attention to every item of his tale. Presently Dempsey said with a laugh,--

"There's been people in Ipscombe all these years as always would have it old Watson walked. I know the names of three people at least as have sworn to seein' 'im. And there's an old fellow in Ipscombe now that declares he's seen him, only t'ther day."

Delane lit his pipe, and nonchalantly inquired particulars.

Dempsey gave a mocking account of Halsey's story.

"He's an old fool! Did you ever hear of a ghost bleedin' before!" The speaker threw back his head and laughed. "That's all rot! Besides, I don't believe in ghosts--never did. But as Miss Henderson's farmin' the very land where old Watson was done in, I thought she'd like to have the true story and first hand. And there's no one but me knows it--not first hand. So I wrote to her, and said as I would call at six o'clock this evening."

"You know her?"

"No--o," said the young man, hesitating. "But I somehow fancy as I may have seen her before."

"Where?"

"Why, in Canada. I was living on a farm, not far from Winnipeg"--he named the place. Delane suddenly dropped his pipe, and stooped to pick it up.

"All right," he said, "go on."

"And there was a man--a sort of gentleman--his name was Delane--on another farm about ten miles from where I was working. People talked of him no end--he was a precious bad lot! I never saw him that I know of--but I saw his wife twice. They say he was a brute to her. And she was awfully handsome. You couldn't forget her when you'd once come across her. And when I saw Miss Henderson drivin' one of the wagons in the Millsborough Harvest Festival, a fortnight ago, I could have sworn it was Mrs. Delane. But, of course, it was my mistake."

"Where did you see Mrs. Delane?"

"Once at her own place. I was delivering some poultry food that Delane had bought of my employer--and once at a place belongin' to a man called Tanner."

"Tanner?"

"Tanner. He was somethin' the same sort as Delane. We've a lot of them in Canada--remittance men, we call them--men as can't get on in the old country--and their relations pay 'em to go--and pay 'em to keep away. But Tanner was a nice sort of fellow--quite different from Delane. He painted pictures. I remember his showin' some o' them in Winnipeg. But he was always down on his luck. He couldn't make any money, and he couldn't keep it."

"You saw Miss Henderson there?"

Dempsey gave a guffaw.

"Oh, Lor, no! I don't say that. Why, I'd get into trouble--shouldn't I? But I saw Mrs. Delane. I was driving past Tanner's place, with two horses, and a heavy load, November two years ago--just before we passed our Military Service Act, and I joined up. And an awful storm came on--a regular blizzard. Before I got to Tanner's I was nearly wore out, an' the horses, too. So I stopped to ask for a hot drink or somethin'. You couldn't see the horses' heads for the snow. And Tanner brought me out some hot coffee--I'm