Chapter 22

Peter in the morning was early awake. He had asked the day before, as a fledged labourer, to take his breakfast with the farmer that they might begin early with the hay. He felt shy of the girl whose appearance had so disconcerted him the night before. But there was no one in the kitchen except the old man and his wife.

"You heard us in the night, I reckon?" said the old man over his mug of tea.

"You had a visitor?"

"My son's first daughter. Come to lend a hand with the work. She's strong in the field—strong as a good man. You'll make a good pair," chuckled the old man. "We'll finish the ten acre to-day."

"I'll have the start, anyway," said Peter, affectedly covering his tremors. He did not relish the idea of being second labourer to a girl who already had made him nervous.

The old man laughed in the unending way of people who enjoy one joke a day, but enjoy it well.

"You'll not get the start o' Bess," he said at last. "She's milked this half-hour, and she'll a' dug taters for a week 'fore we're sweated."

They left the house and worked silently through the first half of the morning. Peter was silent,[Pg 154] preoccupied with his strange terror of meeting the farmer's granddaughter. Yet, as they rested at noon, he was disappointed that she had not come. He had not found content in his labour.

Then, suddenly, he saw her coming over the field with a tray. At once he felt a panic to run or to disappear. He could feel his flesh burning beneath the sweat of his morning's work. He could not look directly at the girl, but in swift glances he embraced the swing and poise of her advance.

For a miserable moment Peter stood between his terror of the girl and his instinct to run and relieve her of the heavy tray. He felt himself—it seemed after hours of indecision that he did so—spring to his feet. He met her ten yards from the spot where they had sheltered under the hedge.

"Let me," he said, taking the tray into his hands. He did not look at her, but knew she was smiling at his strange, polite way.

"The young gentleman's in a mighty hurry to know you, Bess," said the farmer, amused at Peter's incredibly gallant behaviour.

"He's a young gentleman, to be sure," said the girl in the low, even note which again stirred Peter to the bone. He felt her eyes surveying him, and in an agony of resolution looked her in the face.

He could only endure for a moment her steady, impudent gaze. Her lazy smile accented the challenge of her eyes. Peter was conscious only of her sex, and she knew it at their first meeting. In[Pg 155] every look and motion of her face and body was provocation. Her appeal was not always conscious, but it was never silent. Peter saw now what had moved him as she stood in the light of the window the evening before with mischief in her eyes. Even then, though she had no thought of a lover, it was woman's mischief. He saw it now fronting him in the sun. He could hardly endure to meet it, yet it was vital and sweet.

They sat and talked of the work before them.

"You've come in good time, Bess. 'Twill be a storm before the week ends, and we must get the ten acre carried."

She sat calmly munching bread and cheese, waiting to catch Peter in one of his stealthy glances.

"Yes, grandpa, I've come in good time. Perhaps I knew you had a handsome young labourer."

How could she play among the messages that quickened in their eyes?

Peter angrily flushed, and she laughed. The old man chuckled, seeing nothing at all. He was not a part of their quick life.

The old man scythed steadily through the afternoon. Peter and the girl tossed the long ranks of hay, working alternate rows. He was never for a moment unaware of her presence. Starting from the extreme ends of the field, they regularly met in the centre. As the distance between them vanished, Peter became painfully excited, almost terrified. Though he seldom looked towards the[Pg 156] girl, he somehow followed every swing of her brown arms. She invariably stopped her work as he approached, and Peter felt like a young animal whose points are numbered in the ring. He passed her three times, doggedly refusing to notice her. At the fourth encounter he shot at her a shyly resentful—almost sullen—protest. But the eyes he encountered were fixed on the strong muscles of his neck with a look—almost of greed—which staggered him. She knew he had read her, and she laughed as, in a tumult of pleasure, stung with shame, he turned swiftly away.

"Good boy," she murmured under her breath. Peter angrily turned towards her, and found her eyes, lit with mockery, openly seducing him.

"What do you mean?" said Peter foolishly.

"You're working fine, but you're not used to it."

"I'm all right."

"You're dripping with heat." She dropped her fork, and caught at her apron. It was a pretty apron, decorated with cherry-coloured ribbons.

"Come here," she said.

Peter stared at her like a fascinated rabbit. She stepped towards him, and wiped the running sweat from his face and neck. He pettishly shook himself free. Laughing, she stood back and admired him. Then, with a little shrug, she turned away and went slowly down the field. Peter watched her for a moment, troubled but hopelessly caught in the ease and grace of her swinging arms.[Pg 157] Her face, as she came to him, had seemed as delicately cool as when first she appeared from the house, though a fine dew had glistened in the curves of her throat. She was lovely and strong; yet Peter had for her a faint, persistent horror.

He felt when evening came, and the field was mown, a glad release, curiously dashed with regret. His room had about it the atmosphere of a sanctuary. He was grateful for the peace it held, yet it was also desolate. After supper he sat at the window, watching the hills fade into a violet sky. As the light softened he heard once again a low song from the orchard. Peter's heart started like a spurred horse. The song continued—the faint crooning, as it were, of a thoughtful bird—and at last it became intolerable. Peter shut down his window and opened a book upon the table near him. It was a volume of Burton left from last evening. It fell open easily at a page; and, as Peter lifted it in the dim light, he read the title of a frank and merry tale concerning the way of a woman with a boy less willing than she. Peter suddenly dashed down the book as though he had been stung. Flouting his eyes between the leaves of this tale was a fragment of cherry-coloured ribbon.

He went from the house into the warm air, and flung himself down on the cut grass. He felt as if he were being hunted. In vain he avoided the image of the girl who had challenged him. He shut his eyes, and she again stood clearly[Pg 158] before him in the hot sun. He buried his ears in the cool grass, and he heard her low singing. Then, in a sudden surrender, he suppressed his shy terror, and in fancy looked at her as in the flesh he had not dared to look, tracing between himself and the sky the outline of her lips and throat.

How sultry it was, and still! The air was waiting oppressively for a storm. Peter felt himself in tune with the hanging thunder. He felt he would like to hear the running water of the brook. The pearly wreck of a sunset lighted him down the hill, and soon he was sitting in a chosen nook of the river, his ears refreshed by small noises of the stream.

The silence was deep, for there was not a breath in the valley. The trees seemed to be mildly brooding—sentient sad creatures waiting for the air. Once Peter heard the bracken stir; but the silence closed again over the faint sound, leaving the world waiting as for a signal.

It seemed as if Nature was standing there bidding the earth be still till the creature she had vowed to subdue was beaten down. Peter flung his thoughts to the blank silence of the place, and they returned, reverberating and enforced.

Suddenly a shot shivered the silence into quick echoes. Peter guessed the farmer was in the warren after rabbits. Thinking to meet him and get away from the intolerable obsession of the day, he started to climb the hill. The second shot rang out surprisingly near, and almost immediately a[Pg 159] figure rose from a bush among the bracken. It was the farmer's granddaughter. He cried out in surprise, and the figure turned.

She greeted him with an inquiring lilt of the voice. Peter came awkwardly forward.

"Did you hit?" he asked, for talking's sake.

"Two."

She leaned on the gate, hatefully smiling at him. Peter felt he must turn and run from her eyes, or that he must answer them.

He moved quickly towards her, but she did not stir. He gripped her by the arm, looked deliberately into her face, then bent and kissed her. She remained quite still, seeming merely to wait and to suffer. She neither retreated nor responded. Passion died utterly in Peter at the touch of her smiling lips. He stood away from her, brutal and chill.

"You asked me to do that," he said.

Still she smiled, betraying no sign that anything had occurred.

"You must help me to find the rabbits," she said, looking away at last towards the warren. "We're losing the light."

There was a suspicion of the fine lady in her manner, assumed to deride him. They hunted among the bracken. Peter found the dead rabbits, and they moved silently up the hill. At the garden gate they paused while he handed over his burden. Her face still kept the maddening expression of the moment when he had kissed her. But Peter's[Pg 160] eyes now blazed back at her in wrath, and her look changed to one of slyly affected terror.

"Are you going to kiss me again?" she asked.

"Not here," Peter roughly answered. "This is where you sing. I saw you here yesterday evening."

A look of angry suspicion flashed into her eyes and passed.

"Men are very rude and sudden," she said.

"Why do you sing in the dark?"

"I sing for company," she answered.

She passed through the gate; then turned, for a moment, hesitating:

"You don't tell tales?" she abruptly asked.

"No."

"The man you saw last night," she suggested.

"I did not see him."

"He will not come again. Not yet."

"It is nothing to me," said Peter indifferently.

"Indeed?" she retorted. "I thought you asked why I sing in the dark."

Peter kept his eyes sullenly fixed on the ground, making no answer.

She shut the gate.

"Do you really want to know why I sing in the dark?"

Peter's silence covered a wish to kill this creature. There was a long silence; and when at last he looked up, her eyes were again mischievously playing him. On meeting his look of resentment and dislike, she inconsequently asked:

[Pg 161]

"Have you found a piece of cherry-coloured ribbon?"

Peter flung up his hands, and turned away into the garden. She had no need to see that he was cursing her in the shelter of the trees. She went towards the house crooning the song which was now intolerable to Peter.