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Page 13
"Get up."
Stanistreet muttered wrathfully under his mustache, and she caught the
words "damned foolery."
"Bundle out this minute." She made a grab at the rail in an undignified
manner.
He doubled the reins firmly over his right hand, and with his left arm he
forced her back into her seat. He was holding her there when Farmer Ashby
turned out of a by-lane and followed close behind them. And Farmer Ashby
had a nice tale to tell at "The Cross-Roads" of how he had seen the
Captain driving with his arm round Mrs. Tyson's waist.
That was another stone.
Stanistreet tugged at the reins with both hands and pulled the mare
almost on to her haunches; her hoofs shrieked on the iron road; she stood
still and snorted, her forelegs well out, her hide smoking.
When he had made quite sure that the animal's attitude was that of
temporary exhaustion rather than of passion, Stanistreet changed seats,
and gave the reins to Mrs. Nevill Tyson; and Scarum burst into her
second heat.
"I suppose you have a right to drive your own animal into the ditch,"
said he.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson set her teeth with a determined air, planted her feet
firmly on the floor of the trap to give herself a good purchase; she gave
the reins a little twist as she had seen Stanistreet do, she balanced the
whip like a fishing-rod, with the line dangling over Scarum's ears, and
then she rattled away over the wrinkling roads at a glorious pace; she
reeled over cart-ruts, she went thump over sods and bump over mud-heaps,
she grazed walls and hedges, skimmed over the brink of ditches, careened
round corners, and tore past most things on the wrong side; and
Stanistreet's sense of deadly peril was lost in the pleasure of seeing
her do it. When she was not chattering to him she was encouraging Scarum
with all sorts of endearments, small chirping sounds and delicate
chuckles, smiling that indefinably malicious, lop-sided smile which
Stanistreet had been taught all his life to interpret as a challenge.
Now they were going down a lane of beeches, they bent their heads under
the branches, and a shower of rime fell about her shoulders, powdering
her black hair; he watched it thawing in the warmth there till it
sparkled like a fine dew; and now they were running between low hedges,
and the keen air from the frosted fields smote the blood into her cheeks
and the liquid light into her eyes; it lifted the fringe from her
forehead and crisped it over the fur border of her hat; flying ends of
lace and sable were flung behind her like streamers; she seemed to be
winged with the wind of speed; she was the embodiment of vivid, reckless,
beautiful life.
It came over him with a sort of shock that this woman was Tyson's wife,
irrevocably, until one or other of them died. And Tyson was not the sort
of man to die for anybody's convenience but his own.
At last they swayed into the courtyard at Thorneytoft. "Thank heaven
we're alive!" he said, as he followed her into the house.
Mrs. Nevill Tyson turned on the threshold. "Do you mean to say you didn't
enjoy it!"
"Oh, of course it was delightful; but I don't know that it was
exactly--safe."
"I see--you were afraid. We were safe enough so long as _I_ was driving."
He smiled drearily. He felt that he had been whirled along in a delirious
dream--a madman driven by a fool. As if in answer to his thoughts, she
called back over the banisters--
"I'm not such a fool as I look, you know."
No, for the life of him Stanistreet did not know. His doubt was absurd,
for it implied that Mrs. Nevill Tyson practiced the art of symbolism, and
he could hardly suppose her to be so well acquainted with the resources
of language. On the other hand, he could not conceive how, after living
more than half a year with Tyson, she had preserved her formidable
_na�vet�_.
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