Chapter 14

"You seem to have saved me and my horse from a tumble into that ditch last night," she said, with a laugh, as she greeted him. "Why I turned faint like that I can't imagine. I do sometimes when I'm tired. Well, now then--let us walk up the road a little."

With her hands in her pockets she led the way. In her neat serge suit and cap, she was the woman-farmer--prosperous and competent--all over. Dempsey's thoughts threw back in bewilderment to the fainting figure of the night before. He walked on beside her in silence.

"I wanted to tell you," said Miss Henderson calmly--"because I'm sure you're a nice fellow, and don't want to hurt anybody's feelings--why I asked you to hold your tongue about Mrs. Delane. In the first place, you're quite mistaken about myself. I was never at Mr. Tanner's farm--never in that part of Canada; and the person you saw there--Mrs. Delane--was a very favourite cousin of mine, and extraordinarily like me. When we were children everybody talked of the likeness. She had a very sad story, and now--she's dead." The speaker's voice dropped. "I've been confused with her before--and it's a great trouble to me. The confusion has done me harm, more than once, and I'm very sensitive about it. So, as I said last night, I should be greatly obliged if you would not only not spread the story, but deny it, whenever you can."

She looked at him sharply, and he coloured crimson.

"Of course," he stammered, "I should like to do anything you wish."

"I do wish it, and--" she paused a moment, as though to think--"and Captain Ellesborough wishes it. I would not advise you, however, to say anything at all about it to him. But if you do what we ask you, you may be sure we shall find some way--some substantial way--of showing that we appreciate it."

They walked on, she with her eyes on the ground as though she were thinking out some plan for his benefit--he puzzled and speechless.

"What do you want to do, now the war's over?" she said at last, with a smile, looking up.

"I suppose I want to settle down--somewhere--on land, if I had the money."

"Here?--or in Canada?"

"Oh, at home."

"I thought so. Well, Mr. Dempsey, Captain Ellesborough and I shall be quite ready to help you in any scheme you take up. You understand?"

"That's awfully kind of you--but--"

"Quite ready," she repeated. "Let me know what your plans are when you've worked them out--and I'll see what can be done." Then she stopped. There was a gate near into one of her own fields. Their eyes met--hers absolutely cool and smiling--his wavering and excited.

"You understand?" she repeated.

"Oh, yes--I understand."

"And you agree?" she added, emphasizing the words.

"Oh, yes, I--I--agree."

"Well, then, that's all right--that's understood. A letter will always find me here. And now I must get back to my work. Good-morning."

And with a nod, she slipped through the gate, and was half way across the fallow on the other side of it before he had realized that their strange conversation was at an end.

XII

The vicar and his sister Eleanor were sitting at breakfast in the small Georgian house, which, as the vicarage, played a still important part in the village of Ipscombe. The Church may be in a bad way, as her own children declare; revolution may be in sight, as our English Bolshevists love to believe--not too seriously; but meanwhile, if a stranger in any normal English village wants to lay his finger on the central ganglion of its various activities, he will still look for the church and the vicarage--or rectory, as the case may be. If the parson is bad or feeble, the pulse of the village life will show it; and if he is energetic and self-devoted, his position will give him a power in the community--power, tempered of course by the necessary revolts and reactions which keep the currents of life flowing--not to be easily attained by other energetic and self-devoted persons. The parson may still easily make himself a tyrant, but only to find, in the language of the Greek poet, that it was "folly even to wish" to tyrannize.

The vicar had come downstairs that morning in a mood of depression, irritable--almost snappish depression. His sister Eleanor had seldom seen him so unlike himself. Being an affectionate sister, she was sorry for him; though, as she rightly guessed, it was that very news which had brought such great relief of mind to herself which was almost certainly responsible for her brother's gloom. Miss Henderson was engaged to Captain Ellesborough. There was therefore no question of her becoming Mrs. Shenstone, and a weight was lifted from the spirits of the vicar's sister. Towards Rachel, Eleanor Shenstone felt one of those instinctive antipathies of life which are far more decisive than any of the ordinary causes of quarrel. Miss Shenstone was thin, methodical, devoted; of small speech and great virtue. Such persons so securely anchored and self-determined can have but small sympathy for the drifters of this world. And that Rachel Henderson was--at least as compared with herself and her few cherished friends--morally and religiously adrift, Miss Shenstone had decided after half an hour's conversation.

The vicar knew perfectly well that his sister was relieved. It was that which had secretly affected a naturally sweet temper. He was suffering besides from a haunting sense of contrast between these rainy November days, and the glowing harvest weeks in which he had worked like a navvy for and with Rachel Henderson. It was over, of course. None of the nice things of life ever came his way for long. But he did feel rather sorely that during his short spell of favour with her, Miss Henderson had encouraged him a good deal. She had raised him up--only to cast him down. He thought of her smiles, and her sudden softness, of the warm grip of her hand, and the half mocking, half inviting look in her eyes, with the feeling of a child shut out from a garden where he well knows the ripe apples are hanging; only not for him. The atmosphere of sex which environed her--was it not that which had beguiled the vicar, while it had repelled his sister? And yet Eleanor Shenstone did most honestly wish her brother to marry--only not--not anything so tempting, troubling, and absorbing as Rachel Henderson.

"Haven't we a tiresome meeting to-night?" said the vicar with an impatient sigh, as he sat languidly down to the couple of sardines which were all his sister had allowed him for breakfast.

"Yes--Miss Hall is coming to speak."

Miss Hall was a lady who spoke prodigiously on infant welfare, and had a way of producing a great, but merely temporary effect on the mothers of the village. They would listen in a frightened silence while she showed them on a blackboard the terrifying creatures that had their dwelling in milk, and what a fly looks like when it is hideously--and in the mothers' opinion most unnecessarily--magnified. But when she was gone came reaction. "How can she know aught about it--havin' none of her own?" said the village contemptuously. None the less the village ways were yielding, insensibly, little by little; and the Miss Halls were after all building better than they knew.

The vicar, however, always had to take the chair at Miss Hall's meetings, and he was secretly sick and tired of babies, their weights, their foods, their feeding-bottles, and everything concerned with them. His sister considered him and like a wise woman, offered him something sweet to make up for the bitter.

"Do you think you could possibly take a note for me to Miss Leighton this morning--when you go to see old Frant?"

"Old Frant" was a labourer on the point of death to whom the vicar was ministering.

He pricked up his ears.

"Great End's hardly in old Frant's direction."

_Camouflage_, of course. Miss Shenstone understood perfectly.

"It won't take you far out of your way. I want Miss Leighton to send those two girls to the Armistice dance to-night if they'd like to come. Lady Alicia writes that several of her maids are down with the flu, and she asks me to give away two or three more tickets."

"Why doesn't Lady Alicia let the servants manage the thing themselves when she gives them a party? _They_ ought to invite. I wouldn't be bossed if I were they," said the vicar, with vivacity.

"She's so particular about character, dear."

"So would they be. She hasn't been so very successful in her own case."

For the Shepherds' eldest daughter had just been figuring in a divorce case to the distress of the Shepherds' neighbours.

Miss Shenstone showed patience.

"I'll have the note ready directly."

And when it was ready, the vicar took it like a lamb. He walked first to Great End, meditating as he went on Miss Henderson's engagement. He had foreseen it, of course, since the day of the Millsborough "rally." A fine fellow, no doubt--with the great advantage of khaki. But it was to be hoped we were not going to be altogether overrun with Americans--carrying off English women.

At the gate of the farm stood a cart into which two young calves had just been packed. Hastings was driving it, and Rachel Henderson, who had just adjusted the net over the fidgety frightened creatures, was talking to him.

She greeted Shenstone rather shyly. It was quite true that in the early stages of her acquaintance with Ellesborough she had amused herself a good deal with the vicar. And in his note of congratulation to her on her engagement, she had detected just the slightest touch of reproach.

"I wish I had guessed it sooner." That meant, perhaps--"Why did you make a fool of me?"

Meanwhile Miss Shenstone's note was duly delivered, and Rachel, holding it in her hand, opened the wicket gate.

"Won't you come in?"

"Oh, no, I mustn't waste your time," said the vicar, with dignity. "Perhaps you'll give me a verbal answer."

Rachel opened the note, and the vicar was puzzled by the look which crossed her face as she read it. It was a look of relief--as though something fitted in.

"Very kind of Lady Alicia. Of course the girls shall come. They will be delighted. You really won't come in? Then I'll walk to the road with you."

What was the change in her? The vicar perceived something indefinable; and before they had walked half the distance to the road he had forgotten his own grievance. She looked ill. Janet Leighton, meeting him in the village a few days before, had talked of her partner as "done up." Was it the excitement of falling in love?--combined perhaps with the worry of leaving her work and the career just begun?

He asked a few questions about her plans. She answered him very gently, with a subtle note of apology in her voice; but yet, as it seemed to him, from rather far away. And when they parted, he realized that he had never known more of her than an outer self, which offered but little clue to the self within.

Rachel walked back to the farm with Miss Shenstone's note in her pocket. She had told the vicar that her land-girls should certainly come to the Shepherds' servants' party--but she said nothing about it to them--till Janet Leighton had safely bicycled away in the early afternoon. The invitation, however, was a godsend. For Rachel had begun to realize that there was a good deal of watching going on--watching of the farm, and watching over herself. She understood that Halsey had been scared by some tramp or other whom he took for the ghost; and she saw that Janet was unwilling that any one should be alone after dark in the farm. Nobody had talked to her--Rachel--about it--no doubt by Ellesborough's wish--because she was supposed to be out of sorts--run down. She had accepted the little conspiracy of silence as a proof of his tenderness, and had obediently asked no questions.

And it had not yet occurred to her to connect the stories floating about the farm with Delane's reappearance. The stunning fact of the reappearance, with all that it might mean to her, absorbed her mind--for a few hours yet.

But as soon as Janet was safely off the premises, she hurried across to the shippen, where Betty and Jenny were milking.

"Girls!--would you like to go to the Shepherds' dance to-night? I've got an invitation for you?"

Stupefaction--and delight! The invitations had been very sparing and select, and the two little maidens had felt themselves Cinderellas indeed, all the sorer in their minds seeing that Dempsey and Betty's young man were both going.

But _frocks_! Jenny at least had nothing suitable. Rachel at once offered a white frock. The milking and dairy work were hurried through, and then came the dressing, as the dance began at seven. Betty, knowing herself to be a beauty, except for her teeth, had soon finished. A white blouse, a blue cotton skirt, a blue ribbon in her mop of brown hair--and she looked at herself exultantly in Miss Henderson's glass. Jenny was much more difficult to please. She was crimson with excitement, and the tip of her little red tongue kept slipping in and out. But Rachel patted and pinned--in a kind of dream. Jenny's red hair, generally worn in the tightest wisps and plaits, was brushed out till it stood like a halo round her face and neck, and she was secretly afraid that Dempsey wouldn't know her.

Then Rachel wrapped them up in their land-army waterproofs, and saw them off, carrying an electric torch to guide them safely through the bit of lane under the trees. But there was a moon rising, and the fog was less.

"Ain't she just kind?--don't you just love her?" said Jenny ecstatically to Betty, as they turned back to wave their farewells again to the figure standing in the doorway.

Betty assented. But they were both greatly astonished. For Rachel did not in general take much personal notice of them.

They were no sooner out of sight than Rachel went to look at the clock in the kitchen. Ten minutes to seven. Two hours to wait. How were they going to be got through?

She went out aimlessly into the farm-yard, where the farm buildings stood in a faintly luminous mist, the hill-side behind them, and the climbing woods. To her left, across the fields ran the road climbing to the miniature pass, whence it descended steeply to the plain beyond. And on the further side of the road lay her own fields, with alternating bands of plough-land and stubble, and the hedge-row trees standing ghostly and separate in the light haze.

She was alone in the farm, in all that landscape the only living thing at the moment, except for the animals. A tense energy of will seemed to possess her. She was defending herself--defending Ellesborough--and their joint lives. How was she going to do it? She didn't know. But the passion in her blood would give her strength--would see her through.

In the old barn, the cows were munching peacefully. The air was sweet with their breath, and with the hay piled in their cribs. Rachel wandered noiselessly amongst them, and they turned their large eyes slowly to look at her, and the small lantern she carried. In the stables, too, not a sound, but an occasional swishing and champing. Rachel hung up the lantern, and sat down on a truss of hay, idly watching the rays of light striking up into the cross-beams of the roof, and on the shining flanks of the horses. Her mind was going at a great speed. And all in a moment--without any clear consciousness of the strange thoughts that had been running through her brain--an intuition struck through her.

_Roger_!--it was he who had been playing the ghost--he who had been seen haunting the farm--who had scared Halsey--_Roger_! come to spy upon her and her lover! Once the idea suggested itself, she was certain of it--it must be true.

The appearance in the lane had been cleverly premeditated. She had been watched for days, perhaps for weeks.

Ellesborough had been watched, too, no doubt.

She drew a shuddering breath. She was afraid of Roger Delane. From the early days of her marriage she had been afraid of him. There was about him the incalculable something which means moral insanity--abnormal processes of mind working through uncontrolled will. You could never reason with or influence him, where his appetites or his passions were concerned. A mocking spirit looked out upon you, just before his blow fell. He was a mere force--inhuman and sinister.

Well, she had got to fight it and tame it! She shut up the cow-house and stable, and stood out awhile in the farm-yard, letting the mild wind play on her bare head and hot cheeks. The moon was riding overhead. The night seemed to her very silent and mysterious--yet penetrated by something divine to which she lifted her heart. What would Ellesborough say over there--in his forester's hut, five miles beyond the hills, if he knew what she was doing--whom she was expecting? She shut her eyes, and saw his lean, strong face, his look--

The church clock was striking, and surely--in the distance, the sound of an opening gate? She hurried back to the house, and the sitting-room. The lamp was low. She revived it. She made up the fire. She felt herself shivering with excitement, and she stooped over the fire, warming her hands.

She had purposely left the front door unlocked. A hand tried the handle, turned it--a slow step entered.

She went to the sitting-room door and threw it open--

"Come in here."

Roger Delane came in and shut the door behind him. They confronted each other.

"You've managed it uncommonly well," he said, at last. "You've dared it. Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Not the least. What do you want?"

They surveyed each other--with hatred, yet not without a certain passionate curiosity on both sides. When Delane had last seen Rachel she was a pale and care-worn creature, her youth darkened by suffering and struggle, her eyes still heavy with the tears she had shed for her lost baby. He beheld her now rounded and full-blown, at the zenith of her beauty, and breathing an energy, physical and mental, he had never yet seen in her. She had escaped him, and her life had put out a new flower. He was suddenly possessed as he looked at her, both by the poisonous memory of old desire, and by an intolerable sense of his impotence, and her triumph. And the physical fever in his veins made self-control difficult.

On her side, she saw the ruin of a man. When she married him he had been a moral wreck. But the physical envelope was still intact, still splendid. Now his clothes seemed to hang upon a skeleton; the hollows in the temples and cheeks, the emaciation of the face and neck, the scanty grey hair, struck horror, but it was a horror in which there was not a trace of sympathy or pity. He had destroyed himself, and he would, if he could, destroy her. She read in him the thirst for revenge. She had to baffle it, if she could.

As she defied him, indeed, she saw his hand steal to his coat-pocket, and it occurred to her that the pocket might contain a revolver. But the thought only nerved her--gave her an almost exultant courage.

"What do I want?" he repeated, at last with-drawing his eyes. "I'll tell you. I've come--like Foch--to dictate to you certain terms, which you have only to accept. We had better sit down. It will take time."

Rachel pointed to a chair. He took it, crossed one knee over the other, rested his arm on the table near, and watched her with a sneering smile, while she seated herself.

He broke the silence.

"I confess you were very clever about Dick Tanner--and I was a precious fool! I never suspected."

"I have not the least idea what you mean."

"A lie!" he said, impetuously. "You were in Dick Tanner's house--staying with him alone--at night--after I left you. You were seen there--by a man--a Canadian--from whom I had the story--only two days ago. He doesn't know my name, nor I his. We met on the common, two nights ago, after dark. And by the merest chance he was coming to the farm, and he began to talk of you. Then this came out. But of course I always knew that it--or something like it--would come out. Your puritanical airs never deceived me--for a moment."

"I suppose you are talking of John Dempsey?" The scorn in her voice enraged him.

"I know nothing about John Dempsey. Of course I can track the man who told me, if I want to--with the greatest ease. He was coming here to call. He saw either you or your partner. And I shall track him--if you force me."

She was silent--and he smiled.

"Assume, please, that I have my witness at hand. Well, then, he saw you alone--at night--in Dick Tanner's charge, a few days apparently, after you and I quarrelled. What were you doing there?"

"It was during that great snowstorm, I suppose," she said, in her most ordinary voice, taking up her knitting. "I remember going over to the Tanners' to ask for something--and being snow-bound. Lucy Tanner was always ready to help me--and be sorry for me."

At this he laughed out, and the note of the laugh dismayed her.

"Lucy Tanner? Yes, that's good. I thought you'd play her! Now, I'll tell you something. The day after I left you, I was on the train going to Regina. We stopped a long time. I don't remember why--at Medicine Hat--and walking up and down the platform was--_Lucy Tanner_! Does that surprise you? She told me she couldn't stand the Manitoba climate, and was going to a friend at Kamloops for the winter. Is that news to you?"

Rachel had turned white, but he saw no other sign of discomposure.

"Not at all. Naturally, I went over expecting to find her. But as you say, she was gone, and Mr. Tanner drove me back, when the storm went down."

Then she threw down her knitting and faced him.

"What's the use of talking like this, Roger? You won't make anything out of this story you're so proud of. Hadn't you better come to business? Why have you been spying on me, and dogging me like this? You know, of course, I could give you in charge to-morrow, or I could get Captain Ellesborough to do it. And I will--unless you give me your solemn promise to leave this place, to go out of my life altogether, and stop molesting me in this scandalous way. Now, of course, I understand who it is that has been prowling about the farm all these weeks. And I warn you the police too know all about it, and are on the watch. They may have tracked you here to-night for all I know."

"Not they! I passed one bobby fellow on the hill, going safely away north, as I came down. I was scarcely three yards from him, and he never twigged. And the other's gone to Millsborough. You could hardly be more alone, more entirely at my mercy--than you are at this moment, Miss Henderson!" He laid an ironic emphasis on the name.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"All the same the people who live with me in this house will soon be back. I recommend you to make haste. I ask you again--what is it you want?"

She had stood up pluckily--he admitted it. But, as he observed her closely it seemed to him that the strain on her nerves was telling. She was beginning to look pinched, and her hand as it lay beside her knitting shook.

"Well, I'll tell you," he said coolly. He took a half sheet of note-paper out of the breast-pocket of his coat, drew the lamp on the table towards him, and looked at certain figures and notes written on the paper.

"I went this morning in town to look up your uncle's will. Of course I remember all about that old chap at Manchester. I often speculated on what he was going to leave you. Unfortunately for me he lived just a little too long. But I find from the copy of the will that he left you--three--thousand--pounds. Not bad, considering that you were never at all civil to him. But three thousand pounds is more than you require to run this small farm on. You owe me damages for the injury you inflicted on me by the loss of--first, your society; second, your financial prospects. I assess it at five hundred pounds. Pay me that small sum, and--well, I engage to leave you henceforth to the Captain,--and your conscience."