"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 Ips...o...b... 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 anch.o.r.ed 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 s.e.x 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 G.o.dsend. 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. n.o.body 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 gla.s.s. 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.