would give him pointers about the impenetrability of mist to the eye.
Her otter skin cap had beads of dew; beads of dew were on her hair beneath; she scrambled up, a little awkwardly, her eyes sparkled with fun; panting a little; her cheeks bright. Her hair was darkened by the wetness of the mist, but she appeared golden in the sudden moonlight.
Before she was quite up, Tietjens almost kissed her. Almost. An all but irresistible impulse! He exclaimed:
“Steady, the Buffs!” in his surprise.
She said:
“Well, you might as well have given me a hand.” “I found,” she went on, “a stone that had I.R.D.C. on it, and then the lamp went out. We’re not on the marsh because we’re between quick hedges. That’s all I’ve found…. But I’ve worked out what makes me so tart with you….”
He couldn’t believe she could be so absolutely calm: the after-wash of that impulse had been so strong in him that it was as if he had tried to catch her to him and had been foiled by her. She ought to be indignant, amused, even pleased…. She ought to show some emotion….
She said:
“It was your silencing me with that absurd non-sequitur about the Pimlico clothing factory. It was an insult to my intelligence.”
“You recognised that it was a fallacy!” Tietjens said. He was looking hard at her. He didn’t know what had happened to him. She took a long look at him, cool, but with immense eyes. It was as if for a moment destiny, which usually let him creep past somehow, had looked at him. “Can’t,” he argued with destiny, “a man want to kiss a schoolgirl in a scuffle….” His own voice, a caricature of his own voice, seemed to come to him: “Gentlemen don’t…” He exclaimed:
“Don’t gentlemen?…” and then stopped because he realised that he had spoken aloud.
She said:
“Oh,
Tietjens said:
“I don’t now!” He added: “Heaven knows I don’t now!”
She said: “No; you don’t now!”
He said:
“It didn’t need your putting up all that blue stocking erudition to convince me…”
“Blue stocking!” she exclaimed contemptuously. “There’s nothing of the blue stocking about me. I know Latin because father spoke it with us. It was your pompous blue socks I was pulling.”
Suddenly she began to laugh. Tietjens was feeling sick, physically sick. She went on laughing. He stuttered:
“What is it?”
“The sun!” she said, pointing. Above the silver horizon was the sun; not a red sun: shining, burnished.
“I don’t see…” Tietjens said.
“What there is to laugh at?” she asked. “It’s the day!… The longest day’s begun… and tomorrow’s as long…. The summer solstice, you know. After to-morrow the days shorten towards winter. But tomorrow’s as long…. I’m so glad…”
“That we’ve got through the night?…” Tietjens asked.
She looked at him for a long time. “You’re not so dreadfully ugly, really,” she said.
Tietjens said:
“What’s that church?”
Rising out of the mist on a fantastically green knoll, a quarter of a mile away, was an unnoticeable place of worship; an oak shingle tower roof that shone grey like lead; an impossibly bright weathercock, brighter than the sun. Dark elms all round it, holding wetnesses of mist.
“Icklesham!” she cried softly. “Oh, we’re nearly home. Just above Mountby…. That’s the Mountby drive….”
Trees existed, black and hoary with the dripping mist. Trees in the hedgerow and the avenue that led to Mountby; it made a right-angle just before coming into the road and the road went away at right-angles across the gate.
“You’ll have to pull to the left before you reach the avenue,” the girl said. “Or as like as not the horse will walk right up to the house. The higgler who had him used to buy Lady Claudine’s eggs.”
Tietjens exclaimed barbarously:
“Damn Mountby. I wish we’d never come near it,” and he whipped the horse into a sudden trot. The hoofs sounded suddenly loud. She placed her hand on his gloved driving hand. Had it been his flesh she wouldn’t have done it.
She said:
“My dear, it couldn’t have lasted for ever… But you’re a good man. And very clever…. You will get through….”
Not ten yards ahead Tietjen saw a tea-tray, the underneath of a black-lacquered tea-tray, gliding towards them, mathematically straight, just rising from the mist. He shouted, mad, the blood in his head. His shout was drowned by the scream of the horse; he had swung it to the left. The cart turned up, the horse emerged from the mist, head and shoulders, pawing. A stone sea-horse from the fountain of Versailles! Exactly that! Hanging in air for an eternity; the girl looking at it, leaning slightly forward.
The horse didn’t come over backwards: he had loosened the reins. It wasn’t there any more. The damndest thing that could happen! He had known it would happen. He said:
“We’re all right now!” There was a crash and scraping like twenty tea-trays, a prolonged sound. They must be scraping along the mudguard of the invisible car. He had the pressure of the horse’s mouth; the horse was away, going hell for leather. He increased the pressure. The girl said:
“I know I’m all right with you.”
They were suddenly in bright sunlight: cart, horse, commonplace hedgerows. They were going uphill: a steep brae. He wasn’t certain she hadn’t said: “Dear!” or “My dear!” Was it possible after so short…? But it had been a long night. He was, no doubt, saving her life too. He increased his pressure on the horse’s mouth gently, up to all his twelve stone, all his strength. The hill told too. Steep, white road between shaven grass banks!
Stop, damn you! Poor beast… The girl fell out of the cart. No! jumped clear! Out to the animal’s head. It threw its head up. Nearly off her feet: she was holding the bit…. She couldn’t! Tender mouth… afraid of horses…. He said:
“Horse cut!” Her face like a little white blanc-mange!
“Come quick,” she said.
“I must hold a minute,” he said, “might go off if I let go to get down. Badly cut?”
“Blood running down solid! Like an apron,” she said.
He was at last at her side. It was true. But not so much like an apron. More like a red, varnished stocking. He said:
“You’ve a white petticoat on. Get over the hedge; jump it, and take it off…”
“Tear it into strips?” she asked. “Yes!”
He called to her; she was suspended halfway up the bank:
“Tear one half off first. The rest into strips.”
She said: “All right!” She didn’t go over the quickset as neatly as he had expected. No take off. But she was over….
The horse, trembling, was looking down, its nostrils distended, at the blood pooling from its near foot. The cut was just on the shoulder. He put his left arm right over the horse’s eyes. The horse stood it, almost with a sigh of relief…. A wonderful magnetism with horses. Perhaps with women too? God knew. He was almost certain she had said “Dear.”
She said: “Here.” He caught a round ball of whitish stuff. He undid it. Thank God: what sense! A long, strong, white band. What the devil was the hissing? A small, closed car with crumpled mudguards, noiseless nearly,
