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On through the village they swept, past Brumhill Lane-end, thence over the crest where the road branches south to Devizes, and down the last slope. The moon rose as they passed the fourth milestone out of Calne; another five minutes and they drew up, the horses panting and hanging their heads, in the main street of Chippenham.
The peculiar set look on his face stilled her. "Never mind, my son," she said. "You will be so much better when it is all over." Paul glanced swiftly at his mother in surprise and resentment. He did not want sympathy. Miriam met him at the lane-end. She was wearing a new dress of figured muslin that had short sleeves.
And Jack turned off at the lane-end towards his humble and dirty cottage in Main's Court. I might introduce you to his home, but "home" it could scarcely be called. It was full of squalor and untidiness, confusion and dirty children, where a slattern-looking woman was scolding. Ransom's cottage, On the contrary, was a home.
If the girls will promise not to be too long about their patterns and their gossip, and what not, we can be back to the lane-end by the time you get there; then we'll ride up t' other branch o' Redley Creek, to the cross-road, and out by Hallowell's. I want to have a squint at the houses and barns down that way; nothing like business, you know!"
His companion was a little fellow, lean and sharp-cut, with a head like a ferret's. We country-siders know your Londoner. Many an hour I had sat under the clump of elms at the lane-end and watched the travellers. Hence, doubtless, my taste in fashionable head-gear, like this of mine, lately belonging to Swift Nicks, now disposed carefully on the table at my side.
So he rode with her to her very lane-end, as kind and civil a person as she ever see, and then and there he said, 'Don't be afeard, Madam, for I, which have seen you home, is Sandy Flash himself, and here's somethin' more to remember me by, no sooner said than done, he put a gold guinea into her hand, and left her there as petrified as Lot's wife.
Finally the gate at the lane-end closed upon them, and the discomfited public rode on to the village, tormented by keen envy of the few who had been bidden to the funeral-dinner. When Mary alighted from her horse, the old lawyer approached her. "My name is Stacy, Mrs. Barton," he said, "and Miss Lavender will have told you who I am. Will you let me have a word with you in private?"
He had made a great cleavage in his life. He had had a great shock when she had told him their love had been always a conflict. Nothing more mattered. If it never had been much, there was no need to make a fuss that it was ended. He left her at the lane-end.
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