There was a path. It must go somewhere, so she followed it right-handed, looking a bare yard in front of her feet but still stumbling every few paces. Round the shoulder of the hill the path dipped and they came out of the full blast of the wind, so she stopped and looked about her.
It was almost night, true night. They had climbed far above the deadly waters which stretched away on her right into dimness. There lay Wales, invisible in storm and dusk; ahead, though, a fault split the level clouds and a thin streak of gold evening sky showed through it, the last light of day gleaming off the water. Into this gold gleam on the sea crawled a black fleck, dirty as cinders; above it, just visible, rose its indomitable signal, puff-puff-puff. She waved again, though no one could possibly see her, then stumbled on along the path.
THE path started to climb again, curving through the dusk, then dipped; it was hard to see now that night was turning all colors to different shades of dark gray. She kept falling, and Scrub waited while she picked herself up. She tried to mount him once, but was too weak to pull her own weight up to the sodden saddle. She kept her eyes on the ground, only aware of the few feet of bristly turf round the dimming path. She could no longer feel anything, even the cold, but she knew that if they didn’t come to warmth and shelter soon she would die.
A gate blocked the path. Cattle snorted and fidgeted in the darkness down the slope. The voice of a hen tickled the night. She looked up at these homelike sounds and saw, not twenty yards away, the orange square of a lit window. The gate led into a farmyard. She fumbled at the chain with unfeeling fingers.
A tied dog lunged yelping at her the moment she had it open, but she edged round the limit of its reach, trying to think of a story. A door opened and a man’s voice shouted, “Quiet, you! Who’s there?” The dog slipped back to its kennel, duty done, and Margaret reeled towards the black figure outlined against firelight and lantern-light.
“We fell in the river,” she gasped, clinging to Scrub’s neck to hold herself from falling.
“Martin!” he shouted. “Horse to see to!”
A boy, younger than she, ran out and took Scrub confidently by the reins. The man grunted and caught her by the elbow as she melted towards the paving. Then she was lifted and carried into warmth and light, and the lovely smells she knew so well — curing bacon and fresh bread and a stew on the hob and woodsmoke and old leather and cider.
“Cold as a side of beef,” said the man’s voice, “and dripping wet.”
“She’ll have pneumony on her, likely,” said the soft voice of a woman.
“What’d we best do?” said the man. “She’s nobbut a girl.”
“Put her in my chair,” said the woman, “and fetch me two blankets and some towels. You can go and help Martin while I strip her off and dry her. I shan’t be ten minutes.”
“Aye,” said the man. “Horse’ll need a good rubbing down, given it’s as drenched as she is.”
Margaret heard a door close, and flickered her eyelids up to catch a picture of flecked green eyes in a large red face with a straggle of gray hair around it. She tried to say thank-you, but her lips wouldn’t move.
“There, there,” said the woman, “we’ll soon have you to rights, my dear. Warm and dry and sleeping like the angels.”
Then there was darkness.
Voices swam in the dark, and pictures which shifted into each other before they could really mean anything. Uncle Peter snorted in his chair by the fire, and the bull snorted towards her over the mashed turf, and Mr. Gordon raised his blackthorn stick and cried, “The Devil has taken his own!” Then they were all on the sledge, including Aunt Anne, racing along the hissing snow in glorious freedom, but the snow had melted and Tim was trying to haul the sledge through a plowed field, only now it was a capstan and the rope broke like a strand of wool and Uncle Peter, swinging his ax, galloped at her out of the smoke and she leaped for the tug but it wasn’t there and she was falling, falling, falling.
There were many dreams like that, sometimes with the dogs hurtling after her, sometimes with seas of petrol reeking over her, sometimes Mr. Gordon rocking and clucking till she forgot the lifesaving lie and blurted out the truth. But at last she woke to a strange ceiling with a black beam straight above her head, motes dancing in the sunlight, limed walls. A large woman in a gray dress sat by her bed, knitting placidly but looking very serious. Her eyes were the color of plovers’ eggs, and flecked with the same brown spots. She spoke as soon as Margaret opened her eyes.
“Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want to know. You talked enough — more than enough — in your fever.” “Oh,” whispered Margaret.
“Four days you’ve been lying here,” said the woman, “and talking I don’t know what wickedness.”
“No,” said Margaret. “It wasn’t like that, it really wasn’t. Please, I’d like to tell you. You look as though you’d understand.”
The needles clicked to the end of the row and the woman put them down.
“Tell me one thing first,” she said, “before I decide to listen. Do you believe, right in the honest heart of you, that you’ve done God’s will?”
“I’ve not thought of it that way,” said Margaret. “But yes, I suppose so. Once we’d begun we couldn’t have done anything else. It would have been wrong to stop.” “If you believe that,” said the woman, “really and truly, I’ll hear you out. Don’t you tire yourself, mind.”
So Margaret told her story while the needles rattled and the fat fingers fluttered and the motes drifted and shafts of sunlight edged across the room. All the words she needed came to her just when she wanted them. She never changed her voice, but let the story roll out in a steady whisper, even and simple, like water sliding into a millrace. All the time she watched the woman’s face, which never changed by the smallest wrinkle or the least movement of the mouth corners, up or down. When the story was ended she shut her eyes and tried to sink back into the darkness which had been her home for four days.
“Aye,” said the woman, “it’s wicked water, the
Severn. No, I don’t see what else you could have done, my dear. Thank you for telling me. My men are out sowing — that’s my husband and my son — and we won’t tell them what you and I know. They wouldn’t understand the rights and wrongs of it like we do, being women. My name’s Sarah Dore, and you’re welcome to stay here as long as you like.”
“Oh, you are kind,” said Margaret. “But really I must go and tell Aunt Anne what’s happened to Jonathan.” “Maybe you must,” said Mrs. Dore, “but not till you’re well inside yourself. Two days you were that nigh death I fairly gave you up.”
“How’s Scrub?” said Margaret.
“Right as rain. My Martin’s got a way with horses, so he’s pulling a cart up in Long Collins.”
Margaret smiled.
“He won’t like that ” she said and fell asleep again, a silky, dreamless, healing sleep that lasted until she woke to the hungry smell of frying bacon. She got out of bed, found a dressinggown on the chair where Mrs. Dore had sat and, holding weakly to walls and banisters, traced the smell down to the kitchen, where the Dores greeted her as though she’d belonged in that family ever since she could crawl. She stayed with them eighteen days, and at last rode off after trying to say thank-you in a hundred different ways, none of which seemed nearly enough. Indeed, the day before she left Martin brought up from the beach a gull with a broken wing, which he set before bandaging the bird into a fruit basket so that it could not harm itself with its struggles. Margaret looked into its desperate wild eye and tried to tell it that it was safe here.