After breakfast, after they were dressed, Mr Roxburgh said with an abruptness which startled his wife, ‘How long, Ellen, do you suppose we ought to stay before we can decently escape from “Dulcet”?’
Mrs Roxburgh felt she had been ambushed. ‘When we came out for you to be with the brother you haven’t seen in years? And Christmas not yet here!’
‘Oh, well — yes — yes.’ Mr Roxburgh wagged his head and shuffled.
Ellen Roxburgh was oppressed by her own glib words and a sensation as of her stays filling with an ampler form than the years she had actually lived with her respected husband could warrant. She recoiled at once from this premonition of a complacent, cosseted middle-age — by which time (if she reached it) the respected husband would more than likely have left her a widow.
Later in the morning as she sat with her sewing (a hated duty she sometimes prescribed for herself) she heard a thundering outside, and on looking out of the window, caught sight of Garnet Roxburgh on what she took to be her black mare. She was in a lather, nostrils distended pink, from being ‘ridden at the mountain’, Mrs Roxburgh presumed. Evidently the mare was to become one of her more unavoidable prescribed duties.
A few evenings later she was pouring tea for the gentlemen when her brother-in-law announced without preamble, ‘Your mount is chastened, if you feel any inclination to try her.’
Austin Roxburgh, who had consented almost cynically to her riding the horse, at once grew anxious. ‘Not alone, Ellen! I would not like you to ride alone. But there is no reason why you should not accompany Garnet when he rides out on whatever business calls him.’ Anyone must have recognized ‘that old woman’ to whom his brother had laughingly referred.
Mrs Roxburgh gave no definite answer as she stirred the sugar in her tea.
In the morning, however, she sent the girl to the master to tell him that, if he would not be overly delayed, she thought she would ride out with him that morning.
That he must be delayed, she knew, for she lingered over dressing, hoping that she might change her mind, or Garnet Roxburgh leave without her.
Holly, hooking her into the habit, was again in the sulks. ‘Ah,’ she sighed when questioned, and answered as usual, ‘’tis nothing.’
Then she said, ‘She’s a pretty little horse, and gentle — if you don’t lay whip or spur to her.’
‘Oh? Do you know?’
‘Mr Roxburgh allowed me to ride her. He taught me. He said I might use her sometimes — as a recreation — when she’s not wanted by anybody else.’
Mrs Roxburgh was adjusting her hat. Her hand trembled at the prospect of finding herself in the saddle again.
‘Is she so much in use?’
‘Oh, no. Only by Mrs Aspinall — when she comes.’
‘Mrs Aspinall?’
‘The doctor’s wife.’
‘Is she here often?’
The girl replied, ‘Not very,’ and held the glass for her lady to see whether she looked trim.
Mrs Roxburgh might have looked handsome, in her hard hat, from behind the tightly gathered net veil, had she allowed herself to approve. But her thoughts were so far distracted that she even forgot to take leave of her husband.
In the yard the assigned man who acted as groom stood holding the mare beside a mounting-block. She flashed the white of an eye in the direction of her prospective mistress, but seemed docile enough. Mr Garnet Roxburgh was already mounted on a thickset strawberry roan. He sat with the glimmer of a smile on his face, whether in approval or mild censure it was impossible to tell.
Their setting forth was sedate enough. After curveting briefly, the mare responded to her rider’s touch, perhaps sensing the hand of experience, for Ellen Gluyas had often bounced bareback for fun on their own hairy Cornish nag en route for serious labours in the fields, before she had ever ridden on more elegant and aimless expeditions on the slopes beyond Cheltenham.
Mr Garnet Roxburgh might have approved of his companion’s seat. He glanced sideways once or twice, and down at the fall of her bottle-green skirt, without comment, however.
‘What is her name?’ Mrs Roxburgh asked, and her voice, she thought, sounded flat enough to match her insipid inquiry.
He considered it unnecessary to name horses, but some liked to call the mare ‘Merle’. Mrs Roxburgh wondered which of Them it was.
When they had ridden a little way he suddenly raised his arm, embracing the landscape as it were, with a sweeping, almost passionate gesture. ‘Do you believe you would come across lusher pastures anywhere on earth?’
“I have not seen everywhere on earth.”
‘Oh, come! As dry as my brother. That was a manner of speaking. Out of your experience, I meant.’ He looked at her meaningly.
There was every reason why he should know that his brother had married her off a farm, so she did not hesitate in her reply. ‘Ours was for the most part poor land — swept by winds from the sea. It could not compare with such luxuriance as this. But for all its poverty, I loved it,’ she added.
To have humbled her seemed to have appeased him.
He said quite gently, ‘I did not mean to hurt your feelings.’
She was not so sure.
A little farther on a flock of sturdy lambs stood grazing in a field of brilliant clover. She was about to express her delight when Garnet Roxburgh, who had not at first noticed the lambs, caught sight of them, and shouted at the top of his voice, ‘God sod the bastard shepherds! But what can you expect of the scrapings from the streets of Dublin and London?’
There was no sign of any shepherd to prevent the flock pushing through a gap in a fence roughly built of logs. Garnet Roxburgh spurred forward, wheeled the lambs, and soon had them scampering back through the break. After which, he jumped down, and started to repair the collapsed fence by dragging three or four logs into place. Although not of the heaviest, they were awkward in shape and jagged where the branches had been lopped. As she rode up to rejoin him, she noticed the blood trickling from the back of one of his hands. His shirt was wet from his exertion and his face closed in anger.
She decided not to disturb what would have been silence except for his panting and a coughing from the now stationary lambs.
Still silent, Garnet Roxburgh re-mounted, and they made, purposefully it seemed, towards a patch of thinned-out scrub on a near-by rise. Here she saw a hut had been built out of its grey, natural surroundings from which it was all but indistinguishable.
The master started shouting again, and two slaves came tumbling out from under the thatch of leaves. ‘By Ghost,’ he cursed, ‘if those lambs bloat you’ll regret it! Do you suppose I employ you to grog yourselves stupid before the sun is properly up? If I wasn’t such a soft-hearted noodle I’d set up my own private triangle and see my own justice done. Now, go to it!’
As the two shepherds, bleary from sleep and spirits, stumbled past in the direction of their flock, Mrs Roxburgh detected the authentic blast of rum. She might have been more distressed by memories if the present situation had disgusted her less. She could not sympathize with the neglectful and unsavoury ‘miscreants’, but was sickened by the uncontrolled passion of their master, who let fly at their shoulders with his whip before they were out of range.
His rage abating somewhat, they continued their ride, though without any definite aim, she felt. Garnet Roxburgh had withdrawn to brood amongst his thoughts.
In the circumstances she was relieved to notice flies gathering where the blood had oozed from the gash on the back of his hand ‘Have you a clean handkerchief?’ she asked. ‘I’ll bind up the wound. My own handkerchief is too small to be of any use.’