But apparently it was going to mangle the de Bray Papes to the tune of a pretty penny, and apparently Mr. Pape might be expected to give his wife no end of a time. … Well, you can’t expect to be God’s Vicegerent of England without barking your shins on old, hard things.
No doubt Mark knew all about it by now. Perhaps it had killed him. She hoped it hadn’t, because she still hoped to play him some tidy little tricks before she had done with him. … If he were dead or dying beneath that parallelogram of thatch down among the apple boughs all sorts of things might be going to happen. Quite inconvenient things.
There would be the title. She quite definitely did not want the title, and it would become more difficult to injure Christopher. People with titles and great possessions are vastly more difficult to discredit than impoverished commoners, because the scale of morality changes. Titles and great possessions expose you to great temptations: it is scandalous, on the other hand, that the indigent should have any fun!
So that, sitting rather restfully in the sunlight on her horse, Sylvia felt like a general who is losing the fruits of victory. She did not much care. She had got down Groby Great Tree: that was as nasty a blow as the Tietjenses had had in ten generations.
But then a queer, disagreeable thought went through her mind, just as Gunning at last made again a semi-comprehensible remark. Perhaps in letting Groby Great Tree be cut down God was lifting the ban off the Tietjenses. He might well.
Gunning, however, had said something like:
“Sheddn gaw dahn theer. Ride Boldro up to farm ’n’ put he in loose box.” She gathered that if she would ride her horse to some farm he could be put in a loose box and she could rest in the farmer’s parlour. Gunning was looking at her with a queer intent look. She could not just think what it meant.
Suddenly it reminded her of her childhood. Her father had had a head gardener just as gnarled and just as apparently autocratic. That was it. She had not been much in the country for thirty years. Apparently country people had not changed much. Times change; people not so much.
For it came back to her with sudden extraordinary clearness. The side of a greenhouse, down there in the west where she had been “Miss Sylvia, oh Miss Sylvia!” for a whole army of protesting retainers, and that old, brown, gnarled fellow who was equally Mr. Carter for them all, except her father. Mr. Carter had been potting geranium shoots and she had been a little teasing a white kitten. She was thirteen, with immense plaits of blonde hair. The kitten had escaped from her and was rubbing itself, its back arched, against the leggings of Mr. Carter, who had a special affection for it. She had proposed—merely to torment Mr. Carter—to do something to the kitten, to force its paws into walnut shells perhaps. She had so little meant to hurt the kitten that she had forgotten what it was she had proposed to do. And suddenly the heavy man, his bloodshot eyes fairly blazing, had threatened if she so much as blew on that kitten’s fur to thrash her on a part of her anatomy on which public schoolboys rather than young ladies are usually chastised … so that she would not be able to sit down for a week, he had said.
Oddly enough, it had given her a queer pleasure, that returned always with the recollection. She had never otherwise in her life been threatened with physical violence, and she knew that within herself the emotion had often and often existed: If only Christopher would thrash her within an inch of her life. … Or yes—there had been Drake. … He had half-killed her: on the night before her wedding to Christopher. She had feared for the child within her! That emotion had been unbearable!
She said to Gunning—and she felt for all the world as if she were trying a torment on Mr. Carter of years ago:
“I don’t see why I need go to the farm. I can perfectly well ride Boldero down this path. I must certainly speak to your master.”
She had really no immediate notion of doing anything of the sort, but she turned her horse towards the wicket gate that was a little beyond Gunning.
He scrambled off his horse with singular velocity and under the necks of those he led. It was like the running of an elephant, and, with all the reins bunched before him, he almost fell with his back on the little wicket towards whose latch she had been extending the handle of her crop. … She had not meant to raise it. She swore she had not meant to raise it. The veins stood out in his hairy open neck and shoulders. He said: No, she didn’!
Her chestnut was reaching its teeth out towards the led horses. She was not certain that he heard her when she asked if he did not know that she was the wife of the Captain, his master, and guest of Lord Fittleworth, his ex-master. Mr. Carter certainly had not heard her years ago when she had reminded him that she was his master’s daughter. He had gone on fulminating. Gunning was doing that too—but more slowly and heavily. He said first that the Cahptn would tan her hide if she so much as disturbed his brother by a look; he would hide her within an inch of her life. As he had done already.
Sylvia said that by God he never had; if he said he had he lied. Her immediate reaction was to resent the implication that she was not as good a man as Christopher.
