Gunning, his bloodshot eyes fixed on her, moved his lips vindictively. She had, in face of those ghostly manifestations across hills and sky, a moment of real panic. Such as she had felt when they had been shelling near the hotel in France, when she had sat amidst palms with Christopher under a glass roof. … A mad desire to run—or as if your soul ran about inside you like a parcel of rats in a pit awaiting an unseen terrier.
What was she to do? What the devil was she to do? … She felt an itch. … She felt the very devil of a desire to confront at least Mark Tietjens … even if it should kill the fellow. Surely God could not be unfair! What was she given beauty for—the dangerous remains of beauty!—if not to impress it on the unimpressible! She ought to be given the chance at least once more to try her irresistible ram against that immovable post before … She was aware. …
Gunning was saying something to the effect that if she caused Mrs. Valentine to have a miscarriage or an idiot child, ’Is Lordship woul’ flay all the flesh off ’er bones with ’is own ridin’ crop. ’Is Lordship ’ad fair done it to ’im, Gunning, ’isself when ’e lef’ ’is missis then eight and a arf munce gone to live with old Mother Cressy! The child was bore dead.
The words conveyed little to her. … She was aware. … She was aware. … What was she aware of? … She was aware that God—or perhaps it was Father Consett that so arranged it, more diplomatically, the dear!—desired that she should apply to Rome for the dissolution of her marriage with Christopher, and that she should then apply to the civil courts. She thought that probably God desired that Christopher should be freed as early as possible, Father Consett suggesting to Him the less stringent course.
A fantastic object was descending at a fly-crawl the hill-road that went almost vertically up to the farm amongst the beeches. She did not care!
Gunning was saying that that wer why ’Is Lordship giv ’im th’ sack. Took away the cottage an’ ten bob a week that is Lordship allowed to all as had been in his service thritty yeer.
She said: “What! What’s that?” … Then it came back to her that Gunning had suggested that she might give Valentine a miscarriage. … Her breath made a little clittering sound, like the trituration of barley ears, in her throat; her gloved hands, reins and all, were over her eyes, smelling of morocco leather; she felt as if within her a shelf dropped away—as the platform drops away from beneath the feet of a convict they are hanging. She said: “Could …” Then her mind stopped, the clittering sound in her throat continuing. Louder. Louder.
Descending the hill at the fly’s pace was the impossible. A black basket-work pony phaeton: the pony—you always look at the horse first—four hands too big; as round as a barrel, as shining as a mahogany dining-table, pacing for all the world like a haute école circus steed, and in a panic bumping its behind into that black vehicle. It eased her to see. … But … fantastically horrible, behind that grotesque coward of a horse, holding the reins, was a black thing, like a funeral charger; beside it a top hat, a white face, a buff waistcoat, black coat, a thin, Jewish beard. In front of that a bare, blond head, the hair rather long—on the front seat, back to the view. Trust Edith Ethel to be accompanied by a boy-poet cicisbeo! Training Mr. Ruggles for his future condition as consort!
She exclaimed to Gunning:
“By God, if you do not let me pass, I will cut your face in half. … !”
It was justified! This in effect was too much—on the part of Gunning and God and Father Consett. All of a heap they had given her perplexity, immobility and a dreadful thought that was griping her vitals. … Dreadful! Dreadful!
She must get down to the cottage. She must get down to the cottage.
She said to Gunning:
“You damn fool. … You damn fool. … I want to save …”
He moved up—interminably—sweating and hairy, from the gate on which he had been leaning, so that he no longer barred her way. She trotted smartly past him and cantered beautifully down the slope. It came to her from the bloodshot glance that his eyes gave her that he would like to outrage her with ferocity. She felt pleasure.
She came off her horse like a circus performer to the sound of “Mrs. Tietjens! Mrs. Tietjens,” in several voices from above. She let the chestnut go to hell.
It seemed queer that it did not seem queer. A shed of log-parings set upright, the gate banging behind her. Apple-branches spreading down; grass up to the middle of her grey breeches. It was Tom Tiddler’s Ground; it was near a place called Gemmenich on the Fourth of August, 1914! … But just quietude: quietude.
Mark regarded her boy’s outline with beady, inquisitive eyes. She bent her switch into a half hoop before her. She heard herself say:
“Where are all these fools? I want to get them out of here!”
He continued to regard her: beadily: his head like mahogany against the pillows. An apple-bough caught in her hair.
She said:
“Damn it all, I had Groby Great Tree cut down: not that tin Maintenon. But, as God is my Saviour, I would not tear another woman’s child in the womb!”
He said:
“You poor bitch! You poor bitch! The riding has done it!”
She swore to herself afterwards that she had heard
