The Shadow (27 page)

“Do you think he would have misunderstood me?” asked Nan with a mixture of regret and wonder. “He's a nice boy. His skin is golden with the sun.”

“You leave his skin alone,” said Aunt Phemie, turning to her work.

“Aunt Phemie … ! But I suppose I must,” added Nan, sadly. “It seems an awful waste. What a gorgeous day it's been! I'm drenched with it.” She lay back in her chair and stuck her legs out. “Do you know, a moment comes now and then when I know life is divine. It's like a stolen moment—or is it a lost one, lost from somewhere? To-morrow I'm going to have a wee vamp at the grieve.”

“You're not ettling to kiss
him,
are you?”

“No…. But it's an idea!” Nan shook with laughter.

She found, however, that she had to do very little vamping of the grieve the following afternoon. They were working a top field whose boundary fence on the east side ran right up to the western tip of the Dark Wood. The field heaved and rolled in great smooth billows and the wind had flattened the grain badly in one part and it was impossible for the mower to cut it unless it were first struck up or straightened with a fork. This was exacting and tiresome work and the grieve needed all the assistance he could get if the tractor were not to be delayed in its continuous and ever-narrowing round of the twenty-acre field. So for the evening spell Nan was given her chance on the tractor, with Will mounted on the binder behind. Nan let the clutch in and, as she moved off, the grieve, standing some distance in front, watched her coming as he leaned on his fork, put out a hand and waved her a few inches in towards the standing corn, checked her, watched, and nodded. She had it! He stood aside and gave her a smile as she roared magnificently past with a smart salute for him as her commanding officer. I have got the exact distance of the off wheel from the grain, she thought; I can hold that till all the cows come home! A hoarse yell above the roar of the exhaust, a backward glimpse of a wildly gesticulating Will, and she stood on the neutral lever with her heart in her mouth and the engine vibration quivering to her thigh. As Will climbed down she leashed the lever and joined him. “An ould domned bit o' wire,” Will was muttering as he tugged it clear, but no actual damage had been done to the cutting teeth. “I'm thinking you're a lucky one,” he said with a slow smile as he threw the rusty loop of fencing wire from him. (Afterwards she told Aunt Phemie that she also could have kissed him.) Mounted again, she now realised why George seemed to be looking back most of the time he was pulling the binder. Plainly one had to stop pretty smartly if things went wrong and it was difficult to hear an ordinary cry above the roar of the engine. At the off bottom corner she did a loop into the open field, bumping over a couple of sheaves—bad! bad! she cried to herself, ashamed to look round at Will—and then swung in for the up gradient. Now she wanted to help the engine, to give it more juice, but the throttle was open, and for a few moments she waited with a curiously helpless feeling. What happened gave her a profound thrill, for it was exactly as if the engine came alive on its own. Its growl deepened, its power increased, all its internal horses put their heads down, took the full weight on their collars and walked into and up that gradient with their song of unconquerable strength. The great spiked wheels dipped into an old rabbit burrow, rode a grey stone, lurched and steadied, went remorselessly on. She turned to Will. He nodded but upward, with a tilt of his head that threw the humour into the air. You're doing fine! His face was weathered and antique, the ginger moustache might have been growing in more than one place, but his eyes were living and looking at her and laughing. Round came the wooden arms, the flyers, swishing the standing grain over the cutting teeth, and the teeth cut it, and up flowed the cut grain, and the inner hands of the machine gathered and tied it, and round came a fork and shot the bound sheaf clean into the open field. Oh it was wonderful! wonderful! The grain went down and was reaped in a continuous golden wave, like the wave a great ship sends from her bow. You could grow dizzy looking at it. It was marvellous! Oh, it was splendid, splendid, and she patted the driving wheel and gripped it hard and looked back, and beheld the golden wave going down and Will like some old earth god aloft on his chariot. Inside her a song sang to the earth, and to the sky as she went riding into it over the last crest.

And now here she was, throttled back, bearing down on George, glad to have remembered his instruction that you could shove the throttle home going downhill. She gave him a wave, shaking her lifted hand in a hurrah! and George, smiling, gave her a sideways nod. There was something shy in his frankness that touched her heart, for she had feared lest deep in him he might resent her taking his place on the seat of mystery. But there was nothing of that, and with a warm stirring of gratitude she respected these men for it, and would do what she could for them, until the last mortal sheaf was reaped. And now here was the grieve, the undemonstrative man, watching her as she came. He stood aside as she passed and gave her a nod of approval. She had completed her first circuit. She looked round at Will. He tilted his head. You're doing fine!

They struck a bad patch and Nan was glad when the grieve decided to shove in a new set of cutting teeth, for she had been getting a crick in her neck and a certain soreness in other muscles. She watched the grieve hammering away, then strolled up to where George was working on a tangled whorl like the unruly hair on the crown of a boy's head. The second and third horsemen—Davie and Alan, douce married men—were also busy hitting up the tumbled stalks. She chatted away gaily to George about his engine and the crick in her neck, stretching her blue-trousered legs, rubbing her neck and laughing. “You'll know more about it in the morning!” promised Alan, who had a compact bony face and an elemental humour in his eyes. She brought Davie into the talk also, and when George said “They're waving on you,” she turned away like a truant schoolgirl and went hurriedly down the field.

Two pictures of that evening were to remain with her. As the shadows had lengthened the wind had dropped, and now with the sun gone and the first smother of darkening come upon the land, the full harvest moon rose over a low ridge of hill. It was golden and immense, august and slow; it was the ancient harvest moon of many rites; it came up like the fire-warmed face of an old sky god, and looked upon the earth. It's incredible! Nan whispered to herself. But she knew it was not incredible. As she took the steep incline, she turned to watch the binder and caught the tilt of Will's head as it drew her attention to the moon. She nodded back and smiled. Plainly he thought the sight of the moon would please her! Conversation on the high seas! She felt a melting in her breast. The engine roared. She rode right over the crest, the moon far on her right, with already its glisten on the Dark Wood. “Dear God!” she cried, for no other words would come of themselves to carry her emotion. She cried them aloud, and the engine drowned them, and she was grateful to the engine for its conspiracy. For nothing like this was ever drowned; and always the harvest moon rose in its season.

The second picture seemed as old as the moon. The amount of standing grain was rapidly dwindling and most of the flattened patches had been cut, so there was little to do for the four men with the forks. As she swung in for the top stretch in the deep twilight, already irradiated with the moon's green light, she saw George leaning in over the grain listening, poised like a primitive hunter, still as a heron. Davie and Alan were waiting, their forks in their hands. As she came roaring along a rabbit bolted from the standing grain. Two forks clashed, then George was in hot pursuit. The rabbit doubled, for it could not run fast over the strong sharp stubble. George struck twice and missed. Davie and Alan swayed in their mirth. She heard Will's shout and brought the tractor back into proper line. She did not see George kill the rabbit, but she felt the killing in her heart.

She felt it as a sharp pain, but somehow it did not touch the picture of the men themselves, eager, full of friendliness and laughter, hunting in the deep twilight. And this twilight under that great moon darkened their figures so that they were here and now, as sharp as the pain in her heart, and yet distant in time's landscape, far back and bewitched, and known to her. It was at once the gloaming of her childhood and of herself as a woman in remote times. Looking back at the binder, she glimpsed Will's face and it seemed more than ever like an earth god's; the flyers came round and the golden grain went down in a wave; the iron fork like a great serpent's tongue shot the bound sheaf clear; and she fancied that in the antique face on its chariot there dwelt a smile of understanding and beneficence.

Suddenly she saw Aunt Phemie standing talking to the grieve, who waved her from the grain in a comprehensive gesture. She saluted as she passed, finished her line, and swung round and down to the flat space to which the grieve had pointed. George appeared, ran the engine for a little, and fixed it for the night.

As the engine stopped, the silence of the evening came full upon her. Aunt Phemie's voice had a note in it that was somehow of her familiar essence, found again after a long time.

The men took their own short cut to the cottages and the women cried good night to them, Nan waving her hand aloft. Will lifted an arm like an old flail in special salute to his partner.

Nan took Aunt Phemie's arm and chatted away about the work, but there was a quietness in her voice and a wonder. As they came down through the thistledown field, she paused and looked abroad upon the valley.

“Oh, Aunt Phemie,” she said, “how lovely is the world!”

Three nights later, with the reaping finished and a blatter of rain about the stooks, Nan came into the lamplit kitchen with a letter and a periodical in her hand. She had bathed and now moved in a leisurely way, the field labour still sluggish in her body. Aunt Phemie had found at last the leaflet of instructions for her petrol iron which had been giving her some trouble.

“They're wanting me back,” said Nan, stretching herself in her chair and dropping the magazine and letter on the floor.

Aunt Phemie looked up. “Are they?”

Nan nodded. “Uhm. Marion says the arty maiden they have isn't worth her feed. Besides, she says, she giggles. Marion is really very nice about it. They can't keep my job for me indefinitely. Could I give a date—and so on.”

“And what do you think?”

“I'll go, of course. It's my job. I thought of saying in ten days or so. You'll need all the help you can for the leading.”

“You know you haven't to think of that?”

“Haven't I? You would almost think by the way you speak that it wasn't my harvest.”

“I don't, my dear. The oftener you're in this home the happier it will be for me. Never forget that—and then I won't have to say it again.”

“Please, Aunt Phemie, don't make me soft. Oh, dash it!” she said and swiftly wiped her eyes and smiled. “I had a letter from Ranald. It's—a nice letter.”

“So well it might!”

Nan jumped up, put her hand to the small of her back, said “I do believe it's lumbago!” thrust both arms round Aunt Phemie, kissed the top of her head, and walked round the kitchen looking at things. “I'll come back here. I'll double back like a hare if they're after me.”

“That's the ticket!” said Aunt Phemie. “There's nothing like having a good bolt-hole. And when you desert me entirely I'll know you're happy.”

“You know I'll never desert you till the last going down of the sun.”

“That's sweet of you.”

“A trifle grandiloquent mayhap,” Nan admitted judiciously, “but terribly exact. Just terribly.” She sat down abruptly. “So I'll make it a week Monday, shall I?”

“Very well. If you feel you must go so soon?”

“You know I must.”

“Yes, I know, my dear. You have your own way to make. I understand.”

“About Ranald—I feel I haven't been very helpful to him. I lost my head a bit. I feel I know better now.” She was a trifle awkward and shy. She did not look at Aunt Phemie, who said nothing.

“Aunt Phemie?”

“Yes?” said Aunt Phemie.

“You don't think a great deal of Ranald, do you?”

Aunt Phemie thoughtfully regarded the leaflet in her hand and placed it on her knee. She smiled, “I'm not the one principally concerned, am I?”

“I'll tell you what you think,” said Nan quietly without answering her smile. “You think he's hard and unfeeling and matter-of-fact. Not like a lover.”

“I see you understand how old-fashioned I am, pure early-Victorian.”

Nan shook her head. “I know you see … It's really a terrible thing that's happening, Aunt Phemie. A person like Ranald could talk to the men there, to the farm workers, and find out about everything, and have a scheme for putting things right, but he does not somehow care for the men themselves. I'm not putting it well——”

“You are, my dear. Ranald would be bored here, with our folk. He would have no-one to talk to. Yet he could spend his whole life applying the political theory in his head to us folk and our farms.”

“He would mean it for your good.”

“And for the good of all the world. I know.”

“And it
would
be for the good of all the world.”

“Yes. And therefore those who are against that good—must be removed.”

“I see you know,” said Nan, calmly. “But what other way is there?”

“I doubt if that's what's worrying you,” said Aunt Phemie.

Nan looked at her in a calm objective way, and Aunt Phemie saw that she could be unyielding and tough. “What is?”

“It's the something that's missing,” replied Aunt Phemie.

“You mean an emotion like kindness or love?”

“Well?”