Some Do Not … · Part I · Chapter 1 7 (3/3)

“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 tomorrow 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 around 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 forever⁠ ⁠… But you’re a good man. And very clever.⁠ ⁠… You will get through.⁠ ⁠…”

Not ten yards ahead Tietjens 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 seahorse 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 blancmange!

“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: gleaming black⁠ ⁠… God curse it: it passed them: stopped ten yards down⁠ ⁠… the horse rearing back: mad! Clean mad⁠ ⁠… something like a scarlet and white cockatoo, fluttering out of the small car door⁠ ⁠… a general. In full tog. White feathers! Ninety medals! Scarlet coat! Black trousers with red stripe. Spurs too, by God!

Tietjens said:

“God damn you, you bloody swine. Go away!”

The apparition, past the horse’s blinkers, said:

“I can, at least, hold the horse for you. I went past to get you out of Claudine’s sight.”

“Damn good-natured for you,” Tietjens said as rudely as he could. “You’ll have to pay for the horse.”

The General exclaimed:

“Damn it all! Why should I? You were driving your beastly camel right into my drive.”

“You never sounded your horn,” Tietjens said.

“I was on private ground,” the General shouted. “Besides I did.” An enraged, scarlet scarecrow, very thin, he was holding the horse’s bridle. Tietjens was extending the half petticoat, with a measuring eye, before the horse’s chest. The General said:

“Look here! I’ve got to take the escort for the Royal party at St. Peter-in-Manor, Dover. They’re laying the Buff’s colours on the altar or something.”

“You never sounded your horn,” Tietjens said. “Why didn’t you bring your chauffeur? He’s a capable man.⁠ ⁠… You talk very big about the widow and child. But when it comes to robbing them of fifty quid by slaughtering their horse⁠ ⁠…”

The General said:

“What the devil were you doing coming into our drive at five in the morning?”

Tietjens, who had applied the half petticoat to the horse’s chest, exclaimed:

“Pick up that thing and give it me.” A thin roll of linen was at his feet: it had rolled down from the hedge.

“Can I leave the horse?” the General asked.

“Of course you can,” Tietjens said. “If I can’t quiet a horse better than you can run a car⁠ ⁠…”

He bound the new linen strips over the petticoat: the horse dropped its head, smelling his hand. The General, behind Tietjens, stood back on his heels, grasping his gold-mounted sword. Tietjens went on twisting and twisting the bandage.

“Look here,” the General suddenly bent forward to whisper into Tietjens’ ears, “what am I to tell Claudine? I believe she saw the girl.”

“Oh, tell her we came to ask what time you cast off your beastly otter hounds,” Tietjens said; “that’s a matutinal job.⁠ ⁠…”

The General’s voice had a really pathetic intonation:

“On a Sunday!” he exclaimed. Then in a tone of relief he added: “I shall tell her you were going to early communion in Duchemin’s church at Pett.”

“If you want to add blasphemy to horse-slaughtering as a profession, do,” Tietjens said. “But you’ll have to pay for the horse.”

“I’m damned if I will,” the General shouted. “I tell you you were driving into my drive.”

“Then I shall,” Tietjens said, “and you know the construction you’ll put on that.”

He straightened his back to look at the horse.

“Go away,” he said, “say what you like. Do what you like! But as you go through Rye send up the horse-ambulance from the vet’s. Don’t forget that. I’m going to save this horse.⁠ ⁠…”

“You know, Chris,” the General said, “you’re the most wonderful hand with a horse⁠ ⁠… There isn’t another man in England⁠ ⁠…”

“I know it,” Tietjens said. “Go away. And send up that ambulance.⁠ ⁠… There’s your sister getting out of your car.⁠ ⁠…”

The General began:

“I’ve an awful lot to get explained⁠ ⁠…” But, at a thin scream of: “General! General!” he pressed on his sword hilt to keep it from between his long, black, scarlet-striped legs, and running to the car pushed back into its door a befeathered, black bolster. He waved his hands to Tietjens:

“I’ll send the ambulance,” he called.

The horse, its upper leg swathed with crisscrosses of white through which a purple stain was slowly penetrating, stood motionless, its head hanging down, mule-like, under the blinding sun. To ease it Tietjens began to undo the trace. The girl hopped over the hedge and, scrambling down, began to help him.

“Well. My reputation’s gone,” she said cheerfully. “I know what Lady Claudine is.⁠ ⁠… Why did you try to quarrel with the General?⁠ ⁠…”

“Oh, you’d better,” Tietjens said wretchedly, “have a lawsuit with him. It’ll account for⁠ ⁠… for your not going to Mountby⁠ ⁠…”

“You think of everything,” she said.

They wheeled the cart backwards off the motionless horse. Tietjens moved it two yards forward⁠—to get it out of sight of its own blood. Then they sat down side by side on the slope of the bank.

“Tell me about Groby,” the girl said at last.

Tietjens began to tell her about his home.⁠ ⁠… There was, in front of it, an avenue that turned into the road at right angles. Just like the one at Mountby.

“My great-great-grandfather made it,” Tietjens said. “He liked privacy and didn’t want the house visible by vulgar people on the road⁠ ⁠… just like the fellow who planned Mountby, no doubt.⁠ ⁠… But it’s beastly dangerous with motors. We shall have to alter it⁠ ⁠… just at the bottom of a dip. We can’t have horses hurt.⁠ ⁠… You’ll see⁠ ⁠…” It came suddenly into his head that he wasn’t perhaps the father of the child who was actually the heir to that beloved place over which generation after generation had brooded. Ever since Dutch William! A damn Nonconformist swine!

On the bank his knees were almost level with his chin. He felt himself slipping down.

“If I ever take you there⁠ ⁠…” he began.

“Oh, but you never will,” she said.

The child wasn’t his. The heir to Groby! All his brothers were childless⁠ ⁠… There was a deep well in the stable yard. He had meant to teach the child how, if you dropped a pebble in, you waited to count sixty-three. And there came up a whispering roar.⁠ ⁠… But not his child! Perhaps he hadn’t even the power to beget children. His married brothers hadn’t.⁠ ⁠… Clumsy sobs shook him. It was the dreadful injury to the horse which had finished him. He felt as if the responsibility were his. The poor beast had trusted him and he had smashed it up. Miss Wannop had her arm over his shoulder.

“My dear!” she said, “you won’t ever take me to Groby⁠ ⁠… It’s perhaps⁠ ⁠… oh⁠ ⁠… short acquaintance; but I feel you’re the splendidest⁠ ⁠…”

He thought: “It is rather short acquaintance.”

He felt a great deal of pain over which there presided the tall, eel-skin, blonde figure of his wife.⁠ ⁠…

The girl said:

“There’s a fly coming!” and removed her arm.

A fly drew up before them with a blear-eyed driver. He said General Campion had kicked him out of bed, from beside his old woman. He wanted a pound to take them to Mrs. Wannop’s, waked out of his beauty sleep and all. The knacker’s cart was following.

“You’ll take Miss Wannop home at once,” Tietjens said, “she’s got her mother’s breakfast to see to.⁠ ⁠… I shan’t leave the horse till the knacker’s van comes.”

The fly-driver touched his age-green hat with his whip.

“Aye,” he said thickly, putting a sovereign into his waistcoat pocket. “Always the gentleman⁠ ⁠… a merciful man is merciful also to his beast.⁠ ⁠… But I wouldn’t leave my little wooden ’ut nor miss my breakfast, for no beast.⁠ ⁠… Some do and some⁠ ⁠… do not.”

He drove off with the girl in the interior of his antique conveyance.

Tietjens remained on the slope of the bank, in the strong sunlight, beside the drooping horse. It had done nearly forty miles and lost, at last, a lot of blood.

Tietjens said:

“I suppose I could get the governor to pay fifty quid for it. They want the money.⁠ ⁠…”

He said:

“But it wouldn’t be playing the game!”

A long time afterwards he said:

“Damn all principles!” And then:

“But one has to keep on going.⁠ ⁠… Principles are like a skeleton map of a country⁠—you know whether you’re going east or north.”

The knacker’s cart lumbered round the corner.