5
As she was going down the quiet road past the high oak garden palings of the nearest house she heard the bumping and scrabbling of a heavy body against the palings and a dog leapt into the road almost at her feet, making the dust fly. It was an Irish terrier. It smiled and barked a little, waiting, looking up into her face and up and down the road. “It thought it knew me,” she pondered; “it mistook me for someone else.” She patted its head and went forward thinking of the joyful scrabbling, its headlong determination. The dog jerked back its head with a wide smile, tore down the road and came back leaping and smiling. Something disappeared from the vista of the roadway as the dog rushed along it nosing after scents, looking round now and again, and now and again rushing back to greet her. It brought back the sense of the house and the strange gay life she had just left to go on her errand to the little unknown town. It wore a smart collar; it belonged to that life. People in it were never alone; when they went out there was always a dog with them. “It thinks I’m one of them.” But it liked the wild; when they came out on to the common it rushed up a sandy pathway and disappeared amongst the gorse bushes. For a while Miriam hoped it would come back and kept looking about for it; then she gave it up and went ahead with the commons drifting slowly by on either side; she wished that the action of walking were not so jerky, that the expanses on either side might pass more smoothly and easily by: “that’s why people drive,” she thought; “you can only really see the country when you are not moving yourself.” Standing still for a moment she looked across the open stretch to her left and smiled at it and went on again, walking more quickly; the soft beauty that had retreated to the horizon when the dog was with her was spreading back again across the whole expanse and coming towards her; she hurried on singing softly at random, “Scorn such a foe ... though I could fell thee at a blow, though I-i, cou-uld fe-ell thee-ee a-at a-a blow” ... people walking and thinking and fussing, people driving somewhere in victorias were always coming along the road, to them it was a sort of suburb, quite ordinary, the bit near home. But it was big enough to be full of waves and waves of something real, something cool and true and unchanging. Had anybody seen it, did the people who lived there know it? Did anybody know this strange thing? She almost ran; my “commons,” she said. “I know how beautiful you are; if only I knew whether you know that I know. I know, I know,” she said, “I shan’t forget you.” “True, true till death; bear it, oh wind, on thy lightning breath.”
6
The sun was very warm; before she reached the end of the long road the sandy pathways were beginning to glare. There was the river and the little bridge and the first shop just beyond it, where her purchase was to be made. Its wood-work was very bright white; it had a seaside look. She stood still on the slight ascent of the bridge mopping her face and preparing to represent Mrs. Corrie in the shop. Scrambling up the shallow bank from the common came the yellow dog. “Oh, hooray—you duck,” she breathed, patting the warm stubbly head and listening to his breathless snortings. A piano-organ broke into loud music in the little street. It was not a mysterious little town, there was nothing of the village about it. The white framed windows held things you would see in a Regent Street confectioner’s; it was a special shop for the kind of people who lived here. Miriam felt for her three and six and asked for her pound of coffee creams with a bored air, wishing she knew the dog’s name so that she could claim him familiarly. She contented herself with telling him to lie down in an angry whisper repeatedly, as the creams were being weighed. He stood panting and gazing at her wagging his stump. “’Ullo, Bushy,” said the shopwoman languidly; the dog faced round panting more loudly. “There you are, Bush,” she said, as the scales balanced, and flung the dog a chocolate wafer which he caught with a snap. Miriam gazed vaguely at the unfamiliar spectacle, angrily feeling that the shopwoman was observing her. “You’re not going to take him through the town?” said the shopwoman severely.
“Oh, no,” said Miriam nervously.
“He’s the worst fighter in the parish; they never bring him into the town unless it’s the groom sometimes.”
“Thank you,” said Miriam, taking her bag of coffee creams. “Dogs are a nuisance, aren’t they?” she added, in an emphatically sympathetic tone, getting away through the swing door almost hating the yellow body that squeezed through at her side and stood eagerly facing towards the market-place waiting for her movements.