CHAPTER XXXIV

HARVEST, NINETEEN-EIGHTEEN

"She stood breast-high amid the corn Clasped by the golden light of morn, Like the sweetheart of the sun Who many a glowing kiss had won.

"In her cheek an autumn flush Deeply ripened, such a blush In the midst of brown was born Like red poppies grown with corn.

"And her hat with shady brim Made her tressy forehead dim; Thus she stood amid the stooks, Praising God with sweetest looks." --WORDSWORTH.

All this, you must remember, was in harvest time.

Harvest! It spread like a golden smile over the land on which we had been working all that summer. All the country about our farm seemed to be tinted in three broad colours--light green of the carried hay-fields, dark green of the late summer woods, blonde-yellow of the corn. And I wish I could show you who read a picture of the biggest cornfield at the Prices' as it looked on a certain memorable day!

This field sloped steeply up to an elm-bordered hedge, and in steeply-sloping rows the sheaves were set up in fives; some still standing to catch every warming ray of sun, others laid down flat, ready for the forking. This laying down of the sheaves was the job given over to Vic, who had been here on the harvest last year; to no mere 'prentice-hand would Mr. Price allow it, for fear of waste.

She made rather a wonderful little picture, the Cockney girl, dark and glowing against the sheaves, laying one down after the other, steadily, carefully, now, so as not to shake and scatter the grain that was to mean England's bread. The movement of Vic's brown arm, lowering that sheaf, reminded me of the gesture with which a woman "eases" her baby's sleeping head down on to a pillow.

"How sweet Vic would have been with a little child," I thought. "What a black shame that the man she should have married was done to death in that German prison camp!"

But Vic nodded gaily at me as I crossed the field, drew the sleeve of her smock across her brown forehead and called, "Getting on fine, aren't we? This is the way we're going to do in those dirty----" Here she made a London street-boy's grimace towards the big, red-painted cart that was coming round by the barn towards the top of the field, driven by one of the German prisoners.

That long cart, which started at the top of the hill, took seven people to work it. An odd seven it was, too--a truly 1918 septette of workers!

Two Germans in the cart, one driving, one settling the sheaves as they came. Two British, the Welsh shepherd Ivor, and the English wounded soldier (substitute) with forks, loading--a strenuous job!

Two Land Girls--Elizabeth and myself--following the cart with the long "heel-ropes" to catch up any loose corn left lying in the stubble. Last, but not least, let me mention the seventh worker--a small but intelligent-looking schoolboy of fourteen, who was giving the last weeks of his holidays from Ellesmere School to helping bring the harvest home. This young Briton walked at the heads of the two enormous horses, leading them, starting them, or calling to them "Wobeck!" in a voice three times as big as himself.

"Yes! A mixed crew, isn't it?" I heard Mr. Price remark to his wife as the pair of them came to have a look at the workers on the carts before they passed on to the barn. "Welsh, English, Germans! All perfectly friendly, too! All of them with just one object, to get in this big harvest as quick as it can be done. They will; you needn't be afraid!"

"If only that horse doesn't get his great hoof on the little boy's foot, now," murmured Mrs. Price, anxiously. "That's all I'm afraid of!"

"Wo-beck!" thundered the infant at the horses' heads.

Again the cart stopped. Up went the sheaves on the fork, and into place on the piles of others in the cart. Then on again, while Elizabeth and I gathered into drifts on our rakes the corn that had been left over. So, slowly down the row we went under the hot August sun, and so through the gap into the field where the roofed stack stood.

Two other Germans--one the sailor on whom Muriel had smiled--were working on the stack. Close by the empty cart was waiting to start at the top of another row. We set out behind it again; the Welsh schoolboy, who had lingered to try to catch a field-mouse that had bolted out of a sheaf, dashed back to his post. This time Ivor drove, the wounded soldier packed the sheaves, and the Germans took the forks and loaded, working with a concentration!

And so, the men changing jobs with each journey we made, the warm and strenuous morning wore away.

After the midday meal there was another change; Ivor the shepherd and the English soldier went off to the barn, and their places on the cart were filled by Colonel Fielding and Captain Holiday, who turned up from the Lodge in flannels. They worked as hard as the Germans, who were their companions in toil, and as silently. After the first greeting, neither Elizabeth nor I had a glance, nor expected one from her _fiancé_ or his friend. Fellow-workers we were. Any social matters were left out of it as long as we were on the job together.

And yet---- Even while my eyes were fixed upon my rake and upon the stubble whence I meant to take in every good ear of corn that I could gather up, my foolish heart still sought to feed itself with glimpses of the men who worked so near to me; "so near and yet so far!" as Vic would probably have said with her mock-sentimental glance.

How could Elizabeth still think that "all men were so ugly" (all men except her own adored Female Impersonator with his eyelashes and his girlish mouth)? How could she not appreciate the grace of that other man's light, yet masculine, build in action?

Farm-work did suit Dick Holiday, whom I preferred to call in my heart Richard Wynn. Seeming never to look at him, I yet saw and delighted in every movement of his. What a wonderful gesture it was of his when he pitched the heavy sheaf on to the stacked-up cart, high above his head! I loved him; the play of his muscles, the rim of white that just showed past the sunburn mark on his neck, the easy set of his brown head upon his shoulders, to which his shirt now clung! More, I loved the clean, frank mind that I could sense beyond the lithe, "out-of-doorish" body; I loved his joy in the country, his pluck as a soldier, his simplicity. I liked him for being such chums with that other, much more complex and artificial young man of Elizabeth's. I liked his honest indignation over his lady-love's talking to the Germans. I liked everything I'd ever heard him say, everything I'd ever seen him do. In fact, for me he could do nothing wrong; nothing!

What a friend ... what a sweetheart ... what everything that was attractive and sweet and sound at the core...

And none of it was for me.

That could not alter the doom that I was his, as completely as was the golden-and-white collie that lay there in the field guarding his coat beside the hedge, her nose between her paws and her eyes of love upon her master.

Fate was settled for me. Life without him meant life without love and marriage--in these things I did not wish for any second-best. But he himself had shown me other things in life.

The land! I would stay on the land that had healed me and made a woman of me. It should remain my interest and my delight to make a proper landswoman of myself. The land should be my sweetheart when Dick (who might have been mine) was married to another girl.

Held up, as it were, by this thought, I worked on steadily through the afternoon.

At the break for tea I was so thirsty that I made my way to the little drinking-fountain in the well behind the barn. Into a mossy stone bowl there fell a thread of spring-water cold as ice and clear as diamonds. A bright tin cup was always placed on a slab amidst the ferns of the well.

But when I reached the place I found the German sailor, who had been at the barn, with that cup to his lips. With a little flourish of politeness he put it down, filled it again, rinsed it out, handed it to me.

"No, thank you," I said.

I turned and went back to the harvest-field.

Afterwards I was glad to think that I would not drink after that German, not even from the crystal Welsh spring. I was glad that I had not had a glance for that man who, treated with every kindness by a too-confiding Briton, was at that moment planning to do his worst by his benefactor.

That evening, when Elizabeth and I got into camp, walking rather slowly after an arduous day, we found the news there before us.

It had been brought in by little Peggy, the timber girl. On the road down from the woods, where they were working, the timber gang had been passed by Mr. Price's wagoner's boy, who was scorching into "the town" by the shortest way, and as fast as an out-of-date old bicycle could take him.

"Heard the news?" he had shrieked out to the gang. "Fire at Mr. Price's farm!"

Immediately the songs of the timber girls (who always, on their return from work, made the welkin ring with selections from Revue) had stopped upon a staccato note.

"Fire?" they'd all shrilled together. "Is it a bad one?"

"Yes, I think!" the wagoner's son had retorted with that enthusiastic glee over ill-tidings which marks the small boy. "All the barns is in a blaaaze! Burn up the harvest it will!"

He had whooped and sped on.

This was the story Peggy brought back. Horrified beyond words, Elizabeth and I stared at one another.

It must have happened only just after we had left off work! But what had happened?

"Let's go and see. We must go back and see!" I exclaimed to my chum. "Perhaps we shall be able to help. Anyhow, let's get back to the farm at once! Come along, quick!"

Together Elizabeth and I bolted like rabbits out of the porch of the hut, leaving a chattering group of girls to look after us. Two or three of them broke away to join us. Peggy, with a large hunk of bread and rhubarb jam in her hand, overtook us first.

"Now I bet you it's those Boches!" she cried as she came up. "Setting fire to the corn they've just got in! Well, I s'pose nobody _can_ be astonished at _them_? Come on, girls, let's see what it is they have done--come on! _At_ the double----"

With a clatter of Land boots on the hard road we took to our heels together and ran!