He smiled at me, half proud of his speech. Then he swung into the seat of the machine, having attended to the horses’ heads. He lifted the knife.
“Good-bye,” he said, smiling whimsically back at me. The machine started. The bed of the knife fell, and the grass shivered and dropped over. I watched the heads of the daisies and the splendid lines of the cocksfoot grass quiver, shake against the crimson burnet, and drop over. The machine went singing down the field, leaving a track of smooth, velvet green in the way of the swath-board. The flowers in the wall of uncut grass waited unmoved, as the days wait for us. The sun caught in the up-licking scarlet sorrel flames, the butterflies woke, and I could hear the fine ring of his “Whoa!” from the far corner. Then he turned, and I could see only the tossing ears of the horses, and the white of his shoulder as they moved along the wall of high grass on the hill slope. I sat down under the elm to file the sections of the knife. Always as he rode he watched the falling swath, only occasionally calling the horses into line. It was his voice which rang the morning awake. When we were at work we hardly noticed one another. Yet his mother had said:
“George is so glad when you’re in the field — he doesn’t care how long the day is.”
Later, when the morning was hot, and the honeysuckle had ceased to breathe, and all the other scents were moving in the air about us, when all the field was down, when I had seen the last trembling ecstasy of the harebells, trembling to fall; when the thick clump of purple vetch had sunk; when the green swaths were settling, and the silver swaths were glistening and glittering as the sun came along them, in the hot ripe morning we worked together turning the hay, tipping over the yesterday’s swaths with our forks, and bringing yesterday’s fresh, hidden flowers into the death of sunlight.
It was then that we talked of the past, and speculated on the future. As the day grew older and less wistful, we forgot everything, and worked on, singing, and sometimes I would recite him verses as we went, and sometimes I would tell him about books. Life was full of glamour for us both.
Chapter 9
Pastorals and Peonies
At dinner-time the father announced to us the exciting fact that Leslie had asked if a few of his guests might picnic that afternoon in the Strelley hayfields. The closes were so beautiful, with the brook under all its sheltering trees, running into the pond that was set with two green islets. Moreover, the squire’s lady had written a book filling these meadows and the mill precincts with pot-pourri romance. The wedding guests at Highclose were anxious to picnic in so choice a spot.
The father, who delighted in a gay throng, beamed at us from over the table. George asked who were coming.
“Oh, not many — about half a dozen — mostly ladies down for the wedding.”
George at first swore warmly; then he began to appreciate the affair as a joke.
Mrs Saxton hoped they wouldn’t want her to provide them pots, for she hadn’t two cups that matched, nor had any of her spoons the least pretence to silver. The children were hugely excited, and wanted a holiday from school, which Emily at once vetoed firmly, thereby causing family dissension.
As we went round the field in the afternoon turning the hay, we were thinking apart, and did not talk. Every now and then — and at every corner — we stopped to look down towards the wood, to see if they were coming.
“Here they are!” George exclaimed suddenly, having spied the movement of white in the dark wood. We stood still and watched. Two girls, heliotrope and white, a man with two girls, pale green and white, and a man with a girl last.
“Can you tell who they are?” I asked.
“That’s Marie Tempest, that first girl in white, and that’s him and Lettie at the back, I don’t know any more.”
He stood perfectly still until they had gone out of sight behind the banks down by the brooks, then he stuck his fork in the ground, saying:
“You can easily finish — if you like. I’ll go and mow out that bottom corner.”
He glanced at me to see what I was thinking of him. I was thinking that he was afraid to meet her, and I was smiling to myself. Perhaps he felt ashamed, for he went silently away to the machine, where he belted his riding breeches tightly round his waist, and slung the scythe-strap on his hip. I heard the clanging slur of the scythe stone as he whetted the blade. Then he strode off to mow the far bottom corner, where the ground was marshy, and the machine might not go, to bring down the lush green grass and the tall meadow-sweet.
I went to the pond to meet the newcomers. I bowed to Louie Denys, a tall, graceful girl of the drooping type, elaborately gowned in heliotrope linen; I bowed to Agnes D’Arcy, an erect, intelligent girl with magnificent auburn hair — she wore no hat and carried a sunshade; I bowed to Hilda Seconde, a svelte, petite girl, exquisitely and delicately pretty; I bowed to Maria and to Lettie, and I shook hands with Leslie and with his friend, Freddy Cresswell. The latter was to be best man, a broad-shouldered, pale-faced fellow, with beautiful soft hair like red wheat, and laughing eyes, and a whimsical, drawling manner of speech, like a man who has suffered enough to bring him to manhood and maturity, but who in spite of all remains a boy, irresponsible, lovable — a trifle pathetic. As the day was very hot, both men were in flannels, and wore flannel collars, yet it was evident that they had dressed with scrupulous care. Instinctively I tried to pull my trousers into shape within my belt, and I felt the inferiority cast upon the father, big and fine as he was in his way, for his shoulders were rounded with work, and his trousers were much distorted.
“What can we do?” said Marie; “you know we don’t want to hinder, we want to help you. It was so good of you to let us come.”
The father laughed his fine indulgence, saying to them — they loved him for the mellow, laughing modulation of his voice:
“Come on, then — I see there’s a bit of turning-over to do, as Cyril’s left. Come and pick your forks.”
From among a sheaf of hay-forks he chose the lightest for them, and they began anywhere, just tipping at the swaths. He showed them carefully — Marie and the charming little Hilda — just how to do it, but they found the right way the hardest way, so they worked in their own fashion, and laughed heartily with him when he made playful jokes at them. He was a great lover of girls, and they blossomed from timidity under his hearty influence.
“Ain’ it flippin’ ‘ot?” drawled Cresswell, who had just taken his M.A. degree in classics: “This bloomin’ stuff’s dry enough — come an’ flop on it.”
He gathered a cushion of hay, which Louie Denys carefully appropriated, arranging first her beautiful dress, that fitted close to her shape, without any belt or interruption, and then laying her arms, that were netted to the shoulder in open lace, gracefully at rest. Lettie, who was also in a close-fitting white dress which showed her shape down to the hips, sat where Leslie had prepared for her, and Miss D’Arcy reluctantly accepted my pile.
Cresswell twisted his clean-cut mouth in a little smile, saying:
“Lord, a giddy little pastoral — fit for old Theocritus, ain’t it, Miss Denys?”
“Why do you talk to me about those classic people — I daren’t even say their names. What would he say about us?” He laughed, winking his blue eyes:
“He’d make old Daphnis there”— pointing to Leslie —“sing a match with me, Damoetas — contesting the merits of our various shepherdesses — begin Daphnis, sing up for Amaryllis, I mean Nais, damn ’em, they were for ever getting mixed up with their nymphs.”
“I