Harvest | Page 3

them, but they were worth it. And just ahead, on her left, was
a wide stretch of newly-ploughed land rising towards a bluff of grassy
down-land on the horizon. The ploughed land itself had been down up
to a few months before this date; thin pasture for a few sheep, through
many generations. She thought with eagerness of the crops she was
going to make it bear, in the coming year. Wheat, or course. The wheat
crops all round the village were really magnificent. This was going to
be the resurrection year for English farming, after fifty years of "death
and damnation"--comparatively. And there would be many good years
to come after.
Yes, Mr. Thomas Wellin, whose death had thrown the farm which she
had now taken on the market, had done well for the land. And it was
not his fault but the landlord's that the farmhouse and buildings had
been allowed to fall into such a state. Mr. Wellin had not wanted the
house, since he was only working the land temporarily in addition to
his own farm half a mile away. But the owner, Colonel Shepherd,
ought to have looked after the farmhouse and buildings better. Still,
they were making her a fair allowance for repairs.
She was longing to know how the workmen from Millsboro had been

getting on. Hastings, the Wellins' former bailiff, now temporarily hers,
had promised to stay behind that evening to meet her at the farm. She
only meant to insist on what was absolutely necessary. Even if she had
wished for anything more, the lack of labour would have prevented it.
The old horse jogged on, and presently from a row of limes beside the
road, a wave of fragrance, evanescent and delicious, passed over the
carriage. Miss Henderson sniffed it with delight. "But one has never
enough of it!" she thought discontentedly. And then she remembered
how as a child--in far-away Sussex--she used to press her face into the
lime-blossom in her uncle's garden--passionately, greedily, trying to get
from it a greater pleasure than it would ever yield. For the more she
tried to compel it, by a kind of violence, the more it escaped her. She
used to envy the bees lying drunk among the blooms. They at least
were surfeited and satisfied.
It struck her that there was a kind of parable in it of her whole life--so
far.
But now there was a new world opening. The past was behind her. She
drew herself stiffly erect, conscious through every limb of youth and
strength, and filled with a multitude of vague hopes. Conscious, too, of
the three thousand pounds that Uncle Robert had so opportunely left
her. She had never realized that money could make so much difference;
and she thought gratefully of the elderly bachelor, her mother's brother,
who had unexpectedly remembered her. It had enabled her to get her
year's training, and to take this farm with a proper margin of capital.
She wished she had been able to tell Uncle Robert before he died what
it meant to her.
They passed one or two pairs of labourers going home, then a group of
girls in overalls, then a spring cart containing four workmen behind a
ragged pony, no doubt the builder's men who had been at work on the
Great End repairs. They all looked at her curiously, and Rachel
Henderson looked back at them--steadily, without shyness. They were
evidently aware of who she was and where she was going. Some of
them perhaps would soon be in her employ. She would be settling all
that in a week or two.
Ah, there was the house. She leant forward and saw it lying under the
hill, the woods on the slope coming down to the back of it. Yes, it was
certainly a lonely situation. That was why the house, the farm lands,

too, had been so long unlet, till old Wellin, the farm's nearest neighbour,
having made a good deal of money, had rented the land from Colonel
Shepherd, to add to his own. The farm buildings, too, he had made
some use of, keeping carts and machines, and certain stores there. But
the house he had refused to have any concern with. It had remained
empty and locked up for a good many years.
The wagonette turned into the rough road leading through the middle of
a fine field of oats to the house. The field was gaily splashed with
poppies, which ran, too, along the edges of the crop, swayed by the
evening breeze, and flaming in the level sun. Though lonesome and
neglected, the farm in July was a pleasant and picturesque object. It
stood high and the air about it blew keen and fresh. The chalk hill
curved picturesquely round it,