"What art up to, tha fool!" cried Maurice, in a high voice.
"Mind who tha'rt callin' a fool," said Geoffrey, and he prepared to push again. Maurice sprang across, and elbowed his brother aside. On the yielding, swaying bed of hay, Geoffrey lost his foothold, and fell grovelling. Maurice tried the corner.
"It's solid enough," he shouted angrily.
"Aye--all right," came the conciliatory voice of the father; "you do get a bit of rest now there's such a long way to cart it," he added reflectively.
Geoffrey had got to his feet.
"Tha'll mind who tha'rt nudging, I can tell thee," he threatened heavily; adding, as Maurice continued to work, "an' tha non ca's him a fool again, dost hear?"
"Not till next time," sneered Maurice.
As he worked silently round the stack, he neared where his brother stood like a sullen statue, leaning on his fork-handle, looking out over the countryside. Maurice's heart quickened in its beat. He worked forward, until a point of his fork caught in the leather of Geoffrey's boot, and the metal rang sharply.
"Are ter going ta shift thysen?" asked Maurice threateningly. There was no reply from the great block. Maurice lifted his upper lip like a dog. Then he put out his elbow, and tried to push his brother into the stack, clear of his way.
"Who are ter shovin'?" came the deep, dangerous voice.
"Thaïgh," replied Maurice, with a sneer, and straightway the two brothers set themselves against each other, like opposing bulls, Maurice trying his hardest to shift Geoffrey from his footing, Geoffrey leaning all his weight in resistance. Maurice, insecure in his footing, staggered a little, and Geoffrey's weight followed him. He went slithering over the edge of the stack.
Geoffrey turned white to the lips, and remained standing, listening. He heard the fall. Then a flush of darkness came over him, and he remained standing only because he was planted. He had not strength to move. He could hear no sound from below, was only faintly aware of a sharp shriek from a long way off. He listened again. Then he filled with sudden panic.
"Feyther!" he roared, in his tremendous voice: "Feyther! Feyther!"
The valley re-echoed with the sound. Small cattle on the hill-side looked up. Men's figures came running from the bottom field, and much nearer a woman's figure was racing across the upper field. Geoffrey waited in terrible suspense.
"Ah-h!" he heard the strange, wild voice of the girl cry out. "Ah-h!"--and then some foreign wailing speech. Then: "Ah-h! Are you dea-ed!"
He stood sullenly erect on the stack, not daring to go down, longing to hide in the hay, but too sullen to stoop out of sight. He heard his eldest brother come up, panting:
"Whatever's amiss!" and then the labourer, and then his father.
"Whatever have you been doing?" he heard his father ask, while yet he had not come round the corner of the stack. And then, in a low, bitter tone:
"Eh, he's done for! I'd no business to ha' put it all on that stack."
There was a moment or two of silence, then the voice of Henry, the eldest brother, said crisply:
"He's not dead--he's coming round."
Geoffrey heard, but was not glad. He had as lief Maurice were dead. At least that would be final: better than meeting his brother's charges, and of seeing his mother pass to the sick-room. If Maurice was killed, he himself would not explain, no, not a word, and they could hang him if they liked. If Maurice were only hurt, then everybody would know, and Geoffrey could never lift his face again. What added torture, to pass along, everybody knowing. He wanted something that he could stand back to, something definite, if it were only the knowledge that he had killed his brother. He must have something firm to back up to, or he would go mad. He was so lonely, he who above all needed the support of sympathy.
"No, he's commin' to; I tell you he is," said the labourer.
"He's not dea-ed, he's not dea-ed," came the passionate, strange sing-song of the foreign girl. "He's not dead--no-o."
"He wants some brandy--look at the colour of his lips," said the crisp, cold voice of Henry. "Can you fetch some?"
"Wha-at? Fetch?" Fräulein did not understand.
"Brandy," said Henry, very distinct.
"Brrandy!" she re-echoed.
"You go, Bill," groaned the father.
"Aye, I'll go," replied Bill, and he ran across the field.
Maurice was not dead, nor going to die. This Geoffrey now realized. He was glad after all that the extreme penalty was revoked. But he hated to think of himself going on. He would always shrink now. He had hoped and hoped for the time when he would be careless, bold as Maurice, when he would not wince and shrink. Now he would always be the same, coiling up in himself like a tortoise with no shell.
"Ah-h! He's getting better!" came the wild voice of the Fräulein, and she began to cry, a strange sound, that startled the men, made the animal bristle within them. Geoffrey shuddered as he heard, between her sobbing, the impatient moaning of his brother as the breath came back.
The labourer returned at a run, followed by the Vicar. After the brandy, Maurice made more moaning, hiccuping noise. Geoffrey listened in torture. He heard the Vicar asking for explanations. All the united, anxious voices replied in brief phrases.
"It was that other," cried the Fräulein. "He knocked him over--Ha!"
She was shrill and vindictive.
"I don't think so," said the father to the Vicar, in a quite audible but private tone, speaking as if the Fräulein did not understand his English.
The Vicar addressed his children's governess in bad German. She replied in a torrent which he would not confess was too much for him. Maurice was making little moaning, sighing noises.
"Where's your pain, boy, eh?" the father asked, pathetically.
"Leave him alone a bit," came the cool voice of Henry. "He's winded, if no more."
"You'd better see that no bones are broken," said the anxious Vicar.
"It wor a blessing as he should a dropped on that heap of hay just there," said the labourer. "If he'd happened to ha' catched hisself on this nog o' wood 'e wouldna ha' stood much chance."
Geoffrey wondered when he would have courage to venture down. He had wild notions of pitching himself head foremost from the stack: if he could only extinguish himself, he would be safe. Quite frantically, he longed not to be. The idea of going through life thus coiled up within himself in morbid self-consciousness, always lonely, surly, and a misery, was enough to make him cry out. What would they all think when they knew he had knocked Maurice off that high stack?
They were talking to Maurice down below. The lad had recovered in great measure, and was able to answer faintly.
"Whatever was you doin'?" the father asked gently. "Was you playing about with our Geoffrey?--Aye, and where is he?"
Geoffrey's heart stood still.
"I dunno," said Henry, in a curious, ironic tone.
"Go an' have a look," pleaded the father, infinitely relieved over one son, anxious now concerning the other. Geoffrey could not bear that his eldest brother should climb up and question him in his high-pitched drawl of curiosity. The culprit doggedly set his feet on the ladder. His nailed boots slipped a rung.
"Mind yourself," shouted the overwrought father.
Geoffrey stood like a criminal at the foot of the ladder, glancing furtively at the group. Maurice was lying, pale and slightly convulsed, upon a heap of hay. The Fräulein was kneeling beside his head. The Vicar had the lad's shirt full open down the breast, and was feeling for broken ribs. The father kneeled on the other side, the labourer and Henry stood aside.
"I can't find anything broken," said the Vicar, and he sounded slightly disappointed.
"There's nowt broken to find," murmured Maurice, smiling.
The father started. "Eh?" he said. "Eh?" and he bent over the invalid.
"I say it's not hurt me," repeated Maurice.
"What were you doing?" asked the cold, ironic voice of Henry. Geoffrey turned his head away: he had not yet raised his face.
/> "Nowt as I know on," he muttered in a surly tone.
"Why!" cried Fräulein in a reproachful tone. "I see him--knock him over!" She made a fierce gesture with her elbow. Henry curled his long moustache sardonically.
"Nay lass, niver," smiled the wan Maurice. "He was fur enough away from me when I slipped."
"Oh, ah!" cried the Fräulein, not understanding.
"Yi," smiled Maurice indulgently.
"I think you're mistaken," said the father, rather pathetically, smiling at the girl as if she were "wanting".
"Oh no," she cried. "I see him."
"Nay, lass," smiled Maurice quietly.
She was a Pole, named Paula Jablonowsky: young, only twenty years old, swift and light as a wild cat, with a strange, wild-cat way of grinning. Her hair was blonde and full of life, all crisped into many tendrils with vitality, shaking round her face. Her fine blue eyes were peculiarly lidded, and she seemed to look piercingly, then languorously, like a wild cat. She had somewhat Slavonic cheekbones, and was very much freckled. It was evident that the Vicar, a pale, rather cold man, hated her.
Maurice lay pale and smiling in her lap, whilst she cleaved to him like a mate. One felt instinctively that they were mated. She was ready at any minute to fight with ferocity in his defence, now he was hurt. Her looks at Geoffrey were full of fierceness. She bowed over Maurice and caressed him with her foreign-sounding English.
"You say what you lai-ike," she laughed, giving him lordship over her.
"Hadn't you better be going and looking what has become of Margery?" asked the Vicar in tones of reprimand.
"She is with her mother--I heared her. I will go in a whai-ile," smiled the girl, coolly.
"Do you feel as if you could stand?" asked the father, still anxiously.
"Aye, in a bit," smiled Maurice.
"You want to get up?" caressed the girl, bowing over him, till her face was not far from his.
"I'm in no hurry," he replied, smiling brilliantly.
This accident had given him quite a strange new ease, an authority. He felt extraordinarily glad. New power had come to him all at once.
"You in no hurry," she repeated, gathering his meaning. She smiled tenderly: she was in his service.
"She leaves us in another month--Mrs Inwood could stand no more of her," apologized the Vicar quietly to the father.
"Why, is she--?"
"Like a wild thing--disobedient, and insolent."
"Ha!"
The father sounded abstract.
"No more foreign governesses for me."
Maurice stirred, and looked up at the girl.
"You stand up?" she asked brightly. "You well?"
He laughed again, showing his teeth winsomely. She lifted his head, sprung to her feet, her hands still holding his head, then she took him under the armpits and had him on his feet before anyone could help. He was much taller than she. He grasped her strong shoulders heavily, leaned against her, and, feeling her round, firm breast doubled up against his side, he smiled, catching his breath.
"You see I'm all right," he gasped. "I was only winded."
"You all raïght?" she cried, in great glee.
"Yes, I am."
He walked a few steps after a moment.
"There's nowt ails me, Father," he laughed.
"Quite well, you?" she cried in a pleading tone. He laughed outright, looked down at her, touching her cheek with his fingers.
"That's it--if tha likes."
"If I lai-ike!" she repeated, radiant.
"She's going at the end of three weeks," said the Vicar consolingly to the farmer.
II
While they were talking, they heard the far-off hooting of a pit.
"There goes th' loose a'," said Henry, coldly. "We're not going to get that corner up to-day."
The father looked round anxiously.
"Now, Maurice, are you sure you're all right?" he asked.
"Yes, I'm all right. Haven't I told you?"
"Then you sit down there, and in a bit you can be getting dinner out. Henry, you go on the stack. Wheer's Jim? Oh, he's minding the hosses. Bill, and you, Geoffrey, you can pick while Jim loads."
Maurice sat down under the wych elm to recover. The Fräulein had fled back. He made up his mind to ask her to marry him. He had got fifty pounds of his own, and his mother would help him. For a long time he sat musing, thinking what he would do. Then, from the float he fetched a big basket covered with a cloth, and spread the dinner. There was an immense rabbit pie, a dish of cold potatoes, much bread, a great piece of cheese, and a solid rice pudding.
These two fields were four miles from the home farm. But they had been in the hands of the Wookeys for several generations, therefore the father kept them on, and everyone looked forward to the hay harvest at Greasley: it was a kind of picnic. They brought dinner and tea in the milk-float, which the father drove over in the morning. The lads and the labourers cycled. Off and on, the harvest lasted a fortnight. As the high road from Alfreton to Nottingham ran at the foot of the fields, someone usually slept in the hay under the shed to guard the tools. The sons took it in turns. They did not care for it much, and were for that reason anxious to finish the harvest on this day. But work went slack and disjointed after Maurice's accident.
When the load was teemed, they gathered round the white cloth, which was spread under a tree between the hedge and the stack, and, sitting on the ground, ate their meal. Mrs Wookey sent always a clean cloth, and knives and forks and plates for everybody. Mr Wookey was always rather proud of this spread: everything was so proper.
"There now," he said, sitting down jovially. "Doesn't this look nice now--eh?"
They all sat round the white spread, in the shadow of the tree and the stack, and looked out up the fields as they ate. From their shady coolness, the gold sward seemed liquid, molten with heat. The horse with the empty wagon wandered a few yards, then stood feeding. Everything was still as a trance. Now and again, the horse between the shafts of the load that stood propped beside the stack, jingled his loose bit as he ate. The men ate and drank in silence, the father reading the newspaper, Maurice leaning back on a saddle, Henry reading the Nation, the others eating busily.
Presently "Helloa! 'Er's 'ere again!" exclaimed Bill. All looked up. Paula was coming across the field carrying a plate.
"She's bringing something to tempt your appetite, Maurice," said the eldest brother ironically. Maurice was midway through a large wedge of rabbit pie, and some cold potatoes.
"Aye, bless me if she's not," laughed the father. "Put that away, Maurice, it's a shame to disappoint her."
Maurice looked round very shamefaced, not knowing what to do with his plate.
"Give it over here," said Bill. "I'll polish him off."
"Bringing something for the invalid?" laughed the father to the Fräulein. "He's looking up nicely."
"I bring him some chicken, him!" She nodded her head at Maurice childishly. He flushed and smiled.
"Tha doesna mean ter bust 'im," said Bill.
Everybody laughed aloud. The girl did not understand, so she laughed also. Maurice ate his portion very sheepishly.
The father pitied his son's shyness.
"Come here and sit by me," he said. "Eh, Fräulein! Is that what they call you?"
"I sit by you, Father," she said innocently.
Henry threw his head back and laughed long and noiselessly.
She settled near to the big, handsome man.
"My name," she said, "is Paula Jablonowsky."
"Is what?" said the father, and the other men went into roars of laughter.
"Tell me again," said the father. "Your name--?"
"Paula."
"Paula? Oh--well, it's a rum sort of name, eh? His name--" he nodded at his son.
"Maurice--I know." She pronounced it sweetly, then laughed into the father's eyes. Maurice blushed to the roots of his hair.
They questioned her concerning her history, and made out that she came
from Hanover, that her father was a shop-keeper, and that she had run away from home because she did not like her father. She had gone to Paris.
"Oh," said the father, now dubious. "And what did you do there?"
"In school--in a young ladies' school."
"Did you like it?"
"Oh no--no laïfe--no life!"
"What?"
"When we go out--two and two--all together--no more. Ah, no life, no life."
"Well, that's a winder!" exclaimed the father. "No life in Paris! And have you found much life in England?"
"No--ah no. I don't like it." She made a grimace at the Vicarage.
"How long have you been in England?"
"Chreestmas--so."
"And what will you do?"
"I will go to London, or to Paris. Ah, Paris!--Or get married!" She laughed into the father's eyes.
The father laughed heartily.
"Get married, eh? And who to?"
"I don't know. I am going away."
"The country's too quiet for you?" asked the father.
"Too quiet--hm!" she nodded in assent.
"You wouldn't care for making butter and cheese?"
"Making butter--hm!" She turned to him with a glad, bright gesture. "I like it."
"Oh," laughed the father. "You would, would you?"
She nodded vehemently, with glowing eyes.
"She'd like anything in the shape of a change," said Henry judicially.
"I think she would," agreed the father. It did not occur to them that she fully understood what they said. She looked at them closely, then thought with bowed head.
"Hullo!" exclaimed Henry, the alert. A tramp was slouching towards them through the gap. He was a very seedy, slinking fellow, with a tang of horsey braggadocio about him. Small, thin, and ferrety, with a week's red beard bristling on his pointed chin, he came slouching forward.
"Have yer got a bit of a job goin'?" he asked.
"A bit of a job," repeated the father. "Why, can't you see as we've a'most done?"
"Aye--but I noticed you was a hand short, an' I thowt as 'appen you'd gie me half a day."
"What, are you any good in a hay close?" asked Henry, with a sneer.
The man stood slouching against the haystack. All the others were seated on the floor. He had an advantage.