Harvest | Page 7

that had been left there, and
whistling round the corners of the house. Outside, Rachel could hear
the horse fidgeting, and old Jonathan coughing--no doubt as a signal to
her that she had kept him long enough.
Still, she sat bent together on the margin of the well. Then she drew off
her glove, and felt for something in the leather bag she carried on her
wrist. She took it out, and the small object sparkled a little as she held it
poised for a moment--as though considering. Then with a rapid
movement, she bent over the well, and dropped it into the water. There
was a slight splash.
Rachel Henderson raised herself and stood up.
"That's done with!" she said to herself, with a straightening of all her
young frame.
Yet all the way back to London she was tormented by thoughts of what
she had declared was "done with"; of scenes and persons, that is, which
she was determined to forget, and had just formally renounced for ever
by her symbolic action at the well.

II
"You do seem to have hit on a rather nice spot, Rachel, though
lonesome," said Miss Henderson's friend and partner, Janet Leighton,
as they stood on the front steps of Great End Farm, surveying the scene
outside, on an August evening, about a week after she and Rachel had
arrived with their furniture and personal belongings to take possession
of the farm.
During that week they had both worked hard--from dawn till dark, both
outside and in. The harvest was in full swing, and as the dusk was

filling, Janet Leighton, who had just returned herself from the fields,
could watch the scene going on in the wheat-field beyond the farm-yard,
where, as the reaping machine steadily pared away the remaining
square of wheat, two or three men and boys with guns lay in wait
outside the square for the rabbits as they bolted from their fast
lessening shelter. The gold and glow of harvest was on the fields and in
the air. At last the sun had come back to a sodden land, after weeks of
cold and drenching showers which, welcomed in June, had by the
middle of August made all England tremble for the final fate of the
gorgeous crops then filling the largest area ever tilled on British soil
with their fat promise. Wheat, oats, and barley stood once more erect,
roots were saved, and the young vicar of Ipscombe was reflecting as he
walked towards Great End Farm that his harvest festival sermon might
now after all be rather easier to write than had seemed probable during
the foregoing anxious weeks of chill and storm.
Rachel Henderson, who had thrown herself--tired out--into a chair in
the sitting-room window, which was wide open, nodded as she caught
her friend's remark and smiled. But she did not want to talk. She was in
that state of physical fatigue when mere rest is a positive delight. The
sun, the warm air, the busy harvest scene, and all the long hours of hard
but pleasant work seemed to be still somehow in her pulses, thrilling
through her blood. It was long since she had known the acute physical
pleasure of such a day; but her sense of it had conjured up involuntarily
recollections of many similar days in a distant scene--great golden
spaces, blinding sun, and huge reaping machines, twice the size of that
at work in the field yonder. The recollections were unwelcome.
Thought was unwelcome. She wanted only food and sleep--deep
sleep--renewing her tired muscles, till the delicious early morning came
round again, and she was once more in the fields directing her team of
workers.
"Why, there's the vicar!" said Janet Leighton, perceiving the tall and
willowy figure of Mr. Shenstone, as its owner stopped to speak to one
of the boys with the guns who were watching the game.
Rachel looked round with a look of annoyance.
"Oh, dear, what a bore," she said wearily. "I suppose I must go and tidy
up. Nobody ought to be allowed to pay visits after five o'clock."
"You asked him something about a village woman to help, didn't you?"

"I did, worse luck!" sighed Rachel, gathering up her sunbonnet and
disappearing from the window. Janet heard her go upstairs, and a hasty
opening of cupboards overhead. She herself had come back an hour
earlier from the fields than Rachel in order to get supper ready, and had
slipped a skirt over the khaki tunic and knickerbockers which were her
dress--and her partner's--when at work on the farm. She wondered
mischievously what Rachel would put on. That her character included
an average dose of vanity, the natural vanity of a handsome woman,
Rachel's new friend was well aware. But Janet, Rachel's elder