John Powys - Ducdame

There were many feelings in her proud young heart that she had always found it easier to confide to horses and dogs than to her own species; and with Lion especially she had come to find a satisfying sense of dropping her reserve and giving way to this or that primitive and even savage emotion such as her stoical training had taught her to suppress in the presence of her own race.

She came down the Dorsal side of the hill with a gayer and more light-hearted tread than she had used for many a long day in her diurnal strolls. She watched the rabbits with the eye of a sportsman, at once sympathetic and predatory. She snuffed the air, at one big clump of bracken, catching the familiar taint of a fox in that misty windless atmosphere; and she stopped more than once to place her foot on the loose up-flung trail of earth mould which marked the movement of a burrowing mole. A few of her husband’s black namesake birds kept up a perpetual clamour above the high tops of the trees as if to make sure that no invading jay or magpie should interfere with the return of their tribe when later in the afternoon they “made wing to the rooky wood,” while the whirring headlong flight of more than one family of partridges made her forget her obligation to her own offspring!

It was only when she was quite close to the cottage at the foot of the hill that her mood veered. It was as if the master of the vessel of her mind had suddenly come on deck and given orders to swing sheer round, from larboard to starboard. It was a quick instinctive rush of anger against Rook that decided her.

“I’ll turn round and go straight back,” she thought. “That room is nothing to me now; and Lion will only want to go home with me if he sees me.”

She was so close to the gap in the hedge, however, by which the lane was reached, a little to the right of the cottage, that she was led on, by that curious and childish instinct which demands that the most drifting of human walks should have some sort of goal, to struggle cautiously down the bank to the familiar road.

Once in the lane it occurred to her that the most sensible way home would be round by the barley fields; for Heron’s Ridge was much less of an eminence there, and she could stroll back at leisure by the village road and the two bridges.

She turned to the right accordingly at this point, and soon found herself opposite the gate into the wood where she had first revealed to Rook that she was with child. An unpleasantly familiar voice came suddenly to her ears from the other side of this gate. She moved a step toward it; and there, under the brushwood, she saw Binnory.

Nor was the idiot alone. Occupied, beneath his fascinated scrutiny, in collecting some especial herbalist’s plant — which may even have been, for all Ann knew about such things, the famous classical hellebore — the old trot, Betsy Cooper herself, turned toward her the sort of menacing scrutiny that a sinister sorceress of ancient times might have turned toward some Eurynome or Dione, big with the child of an Olympian.

“Save us and help us if it ain’t her ladyship’s own self!” cried the crone, rising from her knees and coming forward.

“’Tis my pretty leddy! ’Tis my pretty leddy!” ejaculated the idiot, approaching the gate with still more alacrity. “Have ’ee been to Lunnon to find Squire Ash’ver, what rumpled thee fine feathers for ’ee unbeknownst to any but poor Binnory?”

Lady Ann instinctively drew away from these two discomfortable figures, retreating, as she pulled her cloak around her, toward the middle of the lane. Here she stopped and faced them; but neither the old woman nor the boy made any attempt to come farther than the gate.

“Thee best get up along over Hern’s Top as quickly as thee may,” said Betsy Cooper. “’Twere only last night when I be cleaning me horse-cart, out where us do bide now, and me partners were quiet-like and ’twere all still as churchyard stones, that a voice inside me belly said to I, ‘Look i’ thik wold crystal, Betsy lass; look i’ thik wold crystal!’ And no sooner did I do what ’un did say than, Lord bless us and keep us! There was that black parson of yours a-murderin’ of poor dear Squire!”

She stopped to take breath and Lady Ann moved as if to go on down the lane.

“It’s true as God’s dear blood, your ladyship!” screamed the old woman, making a feeble attempt to open the gate. “Get home with you, you owdacious turleypin!” This was addressed to Binnory, who was staring at the girl in the road as if he meditated a wild rush toward her.

“I can’t listen to you now,” said Lady Ann calmly. “But if you’d like to come up to the house later I’m sure you’ll be made welcome.”

She spoke in the tone she habitually used to poor people, the tone that was at once easy and distant. What it implied was: “I have no time now to chatter with picturesque vagabonds; but my servants will be charmed to give you tea in the kitchen!”

Betsy Cooper by no means missed the quality of this rebuff; but she was too excited to enter into personal adjustments just then; besides, beyond all her eccentricity, she was saturated with a feudal respect for the house of Ashover.

“Don’t ’ee take on, your ladyship,” she pleaded. “Don’t ’ee take on! ’Twere after I’d a-seen that murderin’ parson in Cimmery stone that I heard a voice out of one of me partner’s mouths. They innocents do talk if it be talking, your ladyship; and it’s what me partner said that do most bide in me mind. ’A said a terrible queer word, Lady Ash’ver; and it’s as true as God’s dear blood what I be telling thee.”

The idiot, who had now climbed to the top of the gate and was balancing himself there like a demonic gargoyle, burst in with an exultant cry at this point.

“I do know what the half beastie did say, pretty leddy! Binnory do know what the half beastie did say to Granny Cooper!”

“I can’t listen to you now,” repeated Lady Ann sternly. “Come up to the house later; and you, too, Binnory, if you like. Good-afternoon to you both!” And she swept off down the lane with all a grand lady’s indifference as to whether the populace commented on her condition or held their peace.

She did not put her hands to her ears, however, as many prospective mothers of heroes and demigods have been driven ere now to do; and for that reason it was impossible not to hear what the old woman shouted after her.

“Till book be burned no child’ll be borned!”

The idiot, who had now scrambled over the gate, ran after her down the lane. “Till book be burned no child’ll be borned!” he screamed in his shrill voice; and it was only after Lady Ann had turned twice round, threatening him with her parasol, that he desisted and drifted back to his companion.

Even when she was out of all sight and hearing of these two troublesome beings and had rounded the corner at the point opposite Titty’s Ring she still seemed to hear that ominous and fantastic oracle. The magpies chattered it; the green finches chittered it; the very rooks themselves, who now began to gather in larger numbers, seemed echoing it with their rueful cawings. The whole incident was peculiarly distasteful to the girl’s mind; but the first effect it had upon her was doubtless an excellent one. It roused to full flood her gallant fighting spirit. What impertinence! What intolerable impertinence! And then her invincible youthfulness came to her aid. There was something that tickled her realistic sense of humour about the whole thing. “It’s just a trick to get money out of us,” she thought. “That fool Hastings has probably been telling everybody what he told me on New Year’s night, about his abominable theories. No doubt when he spent that day in the caravan with Netta Page the old woman listened to his mad talk. The dwarfs probably heard him, too! In fact, the chances are that our absurd clergyman and his insane fancies are the common gossip of the whole neighbourhood.”