“Ay, and Jim.”
“Nay, then, I want nowt about Jim!”
“Ay, well, it’s a bit since now,” Simon said hastily, thinking that it seemed as long ago as when there was firm land stretching from Ireland to the marsh.
“Over forty year.”
“It’s a bit since,” he said again, just as he said equally of the Creation of the world, or his own boyhood, or the last time he was at Witham Show.
“Surely to goodness we were right enough then? We shouldn’t ha’ said thank you for any other spot. Nay, and we wouldn’t ha’ gone later on, neither, if we’d gitten chanst. It would never ha’ done for Geordie to come back and find the old folks quit.”
“Nay, nor for Jim—” he began again thoughtlessly, and bit it off. “Ay, well, I doubt he’ll never come back now!”
“He’s likely best where he is.” Sarah shut her mouth with a hard snap. Once again she stared straight in front of her over the horse’s head, staring and staring at the image which she had set up.
A motor-horn challenged them presently from behind, and Simon pulled aside without even turning his head. He had never really grown used to the cars and the stricter rule of the road. He belonged to the days when the highway to Witham saw a leisurely procession of farmers’ shandrydans, peat-carts, and carriers’ carts with curved hoods; with here and there a country gentleman’s pair of steppers flashing their way through. He never took to the cars with their raucous voices and trains of dust, their sudden gusts of passage which sent his heart into his mouth. His slack-reined driving forced him to keep to the crown of the road, and only an always forthcoming miracle got him out of the way in time. He used to shrink a little when the cars drew level, and the occupants turned their curious heads. Somehow the whole occurrence had the effect of a definite personal attack. Sometimes he thought they laughed at the jolting trap, the shabby old couple and the harness tied with string. The rush of the cars seemed to bring a crescendo of mocking voices and leave a trail of diminishing mirth. But as a matter of fact he did not often look at them when they looked at him. There was nothing to link their hurrying world with his.
This particular car, however, seemed an unusually long time in getting past. The horn sounded again, and, muttering indignantly, he pulled still further into the hedge-side. He held his breath for the usual disturbance and rush, but they did not come. The car kept closely behind him, but it did not pass. Round each corner, as they reached it, he lost and then caught again the subdued purring of the engine and the soft slurring of the wheels. When they met anything, it fell further back, so that at times he felt sure that it must have stopped. Then he would draw his breath, and drop into a walk, but almost at once it would be at his back again. The note of it grew to have a stealthy, stalking sound, as of something that waited to spring upon its prey.
The strangeness of this proceeding began suddenly to tell upon Simon’s nerves. Lack of interest had at first prevented him from turning his head, but now it changed into sheer inability to look behind. Soon he was in the grip of a panic fear that the car at his back might not be a real car, after all. He began to think that he had only imagined the horn, the gentle note of the engine and the soft sound of the wheels. Perhaps, now that he was old, his ears were playing him false, just as Sarah’s eyes, so it seemed, were suddenly playing her false. Presently he was sure, if he turned, he would see nothing at all, or that, instead of nothing at all, he would see a ghost. Something that moved in another world would be there, with spidery wheels and a body through which he could see the fields; something that had once belonged to life and gone out with a crash, or was only just coming into it on the road. …
It was quite true that there was something peculiar about the behaviour of the car. From its number, it must have come from the county next below, and it was splashed as if it had travelled far and fast. During the last few miles, however, it had done nothing but crawl. More than one farmer had heard it behind him and wondered why it took so long to pass, but it had never dallied and dawdled so long before. Almost at once it had gathered speed and slithered by, and the man inside had turned with a friendly hail. He was a stranger, so they said afterwards, with a puzzled air, but at the time they answered the hail as if he were one of themselves.
But Simon, at least, had no intention of hailing anybody just then. Indeed, he was fast losing both his sense and his self-control. He slapped the reins on the horse’s back, making urgent, uncouth sounds, and doing his best to yank it into a sharper trot. It plunged forward with an air of surprise, so that the old folks bumped in their seats, knocked against each other and were jerked back. Presently it bundled itself into an aged gallop, while Simon clicked at it through his scanty teeth.
“Nay, now, master, what are you at!” Sarah protested, gripping the rail. “We’ve no call to hurry ourselves, think on.”
“It’s yon danged car!” Simon growled, feeling somehow as though he were galloping, too. He was quite sure now that a boggle was hot on his track, and the sweat stood
