Harvest by Mrs. Humphry Ward (most read books in the world of all time txt) 📕

lasted only a moment. Ellesborough's trained instinct, the wary instinct of the man who had parsed days and nights with nature in her wilder and lonelier places, checked the exclamation on his lips. And before he could move again, the face had disappeared. The old holly bush growing against the farm wall, from which the apparition seemed to have sprung, was still there, some of its glossy leaves visible in the bright light of the paraffin lamp which stood on the table near the window. And there was nothing else.

Ellesborough quietly walked to the window, drew down the blind, and pulled the curtains together. Rachel looked around at the sound.

"Didn't I do that?" she said, half dreamily.

"We forgot!" He smiled at her. "Now it's all cosy. Ah, there they are! Perhaps I'll get Janet to come as far as the road with me." For voices were approaching--Janet talking to the girls. Rachel looked up, assenting. The colour had rushed back to her face. Ellesborough took in the picture of her, sitting unconscious by the fire, while his own pulse was thumping under the excitement of what he had seen.

With a last word to her, he closed the sitting-room door behind him, and went out to meet Janet Leighton in the dark.


IX

It was a foggy October evening, and Berkeley Square, from which the daylight had not yet departed, made a peculiarly dismal impression on the passers-by, under the mingled illumination of its half-blinded lamps, and of a sunset which in the country was clear and golden, and here in west London could only give a lurid coppery tinge to the fog, to the eastern house-fronts, and to the great plane-trees holding the Square garden, like giants encamped. Landsowne House, in its lordly seclusion from the rest of the Square, seemed specially to have gathered the fog to itself, and was almost lost from sight. Not a ray of light escaped the closely-shuttered windows. The events of the _mensis mirabilis_ were rushing on. Bulgaria, Austria, Turkey, had laid down their arms--the German cry for an armistice had rung through Europe. But still London lay dark and muffled. Her peril was not yet over.

In the drawing-room of one of the houses on the eastern side, belonging to a Warwickshire baronet and M.P.--Sir Richard Winton by name--a lady was standing in front of a thrifty fire, which in view of the coal restrictions of the moment, she had been very unwilling to light at all. The restrictions irritated her; so did the inevitable cold of the room; and most of all was she annoyed and harassed by the thought of a visitor who might appear at any moment. She was tall, well-made, and plain. One might have guessed her age at about thirty-five. She had been out in the earlier afternoon, attending a war meeting on behalf of some charities in which she was interested, and she had not yet removed a high and stately hat with two outstanding wings and much jet ornament, which she had worn at the meeting, to the huge indignation of her neighbours. The black of her silk dress was lightened by a rope of pearls, and various diamond trinkets. Her dress fitted her to perfection. Competence and will were written in her small, shrewd eyes and in the play of a decided mouth.

There was a knock at the door. At Lady Winton's "Come in!" a stout, elderly maid appeared. She came up to her mistress, and said in a lowered voice,--

"You'll see Mr. Roger here?"

"Why, I told you so, Nannie!" was the impatient answer. "Is everybody out of the way?"

The maid explained that all was ready. Jones the butler had been sent with a note to the City, and the housemaid was sitting with the kitchen-maid, who was recovering from the flu.

"I told them I'd answer the bell. And I'll keep an eye that no one comes down before he's gone. There he is!"

For the bell had rung, and the maid hastened to the hall door to answer it.

A tall man entered--coughing.

"Beastly night, Nannie!" he said, as soon as the cough would let him. "Don't suit my style. Well?--how are you? Had the flu, like everybody else?"

"Not yet, Mr. Roger--though it's been going through the house. Shall I take your coat?"

"You'd better not. I'm too shabby underneath."

"Sir Richard's in the country, Mr. Roger."

"Oh, so her ladyship's alone? Well, that's how I generally find her, isn't it?"

But Nannie--with her eye on the stairs--was not going to allow him any lingering in the hall. She led him quickly to the drawing-room, opened it, and closed it behind him. Then she herself retreated into a small smoking-den at the farther end of the hall, and sat there, without a light, with the door open--watching.

Roger Delane instinctively straightened himself to his full height as he entered his sister's drawing-room. His overcoat, though much worn, was of an expensive make and cut; he carried the Malacca cane which had been his companion in the Brookshire roads; and the eyeglass that he adjusted as he caught sight of his sister completed the general effect of shabby fashion. His manner was jaunty and defiant.

"Well, Marianne," he said, pausing some yards from her. "You don't seem particularly glad to see me. Hullo!--has Dick been buying some more china?"

And before his sister could say anything, he had walked over to a table covered with various bric-a-brac, where, taking up a fine Nankin vase, he looked closely at the marks on its base.

Lady Winton flushed with anger.

"I think you had better leave the china alone, Roger. I have only got a very few minutes. What do you want? Money, I suppose--as usual! And yet I warned you in my last letter that you would do this kind of thing once too often, and that we were _not_ going to put up with it!" She struck the table beside her with her glove.

Delane put down the china and surveyed her.

"The vase is Ming all right--better stuff than Dick generally buys. I congratulate him. Well, I'm sorry for you, my dear Marianne--but you _are_ my sister--and you can't help yourself!"

He looked at her, half-smiling, with a quiet bravado which enraged her.

"Don't talk like that, Roger! Tell me directly what it is you want. You seem to think you can force me to see you at any time, whatever I may be doing. But--"

"Your last letter was 'a bit thick'--you see--it provoked me," said Delane calmly. "Of course you can get the police to chuck me out if you like. You would be quite in your rights. But I imagine the effect on the aristocratic nerves of Berkeley Square would be amusing. However--"

He looked round him--

"As Carlyle said to the old Queen, 'I'm getting old, madam, and with your leave I'll take a chair--'"

He pushed an arm-chair forward.

"And let me make up the fire. It's beginning to freeze outside."

Lady Winton moved quickly to the fireplace, holding out a prohibiting hand.

"There is quite enough fire, thank you. I am going out presently."

Delane sat down, and extended a pair of still shapely feet to the slender flame in the grate.

"Dick's boots!" he said, tapping them with his cane, and looking round at his sister. "What a lot of wear I've got out of them since he threw them away! His overcoat, too. And now that it's the thing to be shabby, Dick's clothes are really a godsend. I defraud Jones. But I have no doubt that Jones gets a good deal more than is good for him."

"Look here, Roger!--suppose you stop talking this nonsense and come to business," said Marianne Winton, in pale exasperation. "I've sent Jones out with a note--but he'll be back directly. And I've got an appointment. What are you doing? Have you got any work to do?"

She took a seat not far from her brother, who perceived from her tone that he had perhaps gone as far as was prudent.

"Oh, dear, no, I've got no work to do," he said, smiling. "That's not a commodity that comes my way. But I must somehow manage to keep a roof over Anita and the child. So what can I do but count on your assistance, my dear? My father left you a great deal of money which in equity belonged to me--and I am bound to remind you of it."

"You know very well why he left you so little!" said Lady Winton. "We needn't go into that old story. I ask you again, what do you want?" She took out her watch. "I have just ten minutes."

"What do I want?" He looked at her with a slow, whimsical laugh. "Money, my dear, money! Money means everything that I must have--food, coals, clothes, doctor, chemist, buses--decent houseroom for Anita and myself--"

A shiver of revulsion ran through his sister.

"Have you married that woman?"

He laughed.

"As you seemed to think it desirable, Anita and I did take a trip to a Registry Office about a month ago. It's all lawful now--except for our abominable English law that doesn't legitimize the children. But"--he sprang to his feet with a movement which startled her--"whom do you think I've seen lately?"

His sister stared at him, amazed at the change in him--the animation, the rush of colour in the hollow, emaciated face.

"_Rachel_!--my wife--my former--precious--wife. I thought she was in Canada. No doubt she thought the same of me. But I've stumbled upon her quite by chance--living close to the place where I had taken lodgings for Anita and the babe, in September, in case there were more raids this winter. What do you think of that?"

"It doesn't interest me at all," said Lady Winton coldly.

"Then you have no dramatic sense, my dear. Just think! I stroll out, for want of anything better to do, with Anita, into the market-place of a beastly little country town, to see a silly sort of show--a mixture of a Harvest Festival and a Land Girls' beano--when without a moment's warning--standing up in a decorated wagon--I behold--_Rachel_!--handsomer than ever!--in a kind of khaki dress--tunic, breeches, and leggings--enormously becoming!--and, of course, the observed of all observers. More than that!--I perceive a young man, in an American uniform, dancing attendance upon her--taking her orders--walking her off to church--Oh, a perfectly clear case!--no doubt about it at all. And there I stood--within a few yards of her--and she never saw me!"

He broke off, staring at his sister--a wild, exultant look--which struck her uncomfortably. Her face showed her arrested, against her will.

"Are you sure she didn't see you?"

"Sure. I put the child on my shoulder, and hid behind her. Besides--my dear--even Rachel might find it difficult to recognize her discarded husband--in this individual!"

He tapped his chest lightly. Lady Winton could not withdraw her own eyes from him. Yes, it was quite true. The change in him was shocking--ghastly. He had brought it entirely on himself. But she could not help saying, in a somewhat milder tone,--

"Have you seen that doctor again?"

"To whom you so obligingly sent me? Yes, I saw him yesterday. One lung seems to have finally struck work--_caput_! as the Germans say. The other will last a bit longer yet."

A fit of coughing seized him. His sister instinctively moved farther away from him, looking at him with frightened and hostile eyes.

"Don't be alarmed," he said,