Once they were past the turn, Bob let the horse slip into a walk, and moved in his seat with something like relief. Now they were out of reach of the following eyes, and especially of Marget’s terrible eyes. Even they, piercing as they were, could not bore through stone and rising earth. The remains of his youth awoke at this touch of adventure and escape, and he looked about him from side to side, and whistled as if compelled by the rhythm of the hoofs. The old man stirred, too, and looked about, and suddenly, with a half-mechanical lifting of the hand, he began to eat his buttered scone. He forgot it again, however, after a couple of bites, because his memories crowded in too fast.
“Houses never outstared you on the marsh”
“Shore-grasses never really still”
They came to the twilight spot on the river bank where he had played until Marget found him out, but he barely looked at it as he drove past. He was a different person to-day from the shabby fiddler who had played through stolen hours to an idle ring. A charm had begun to work after he reached the turn, so that he was no longer the down-trodden creature rated by a shrew. Now he was just the simple old man who had lived at the sea’s edge with a fiddle under his arm. Marget’s voice was no longer in his ears, but the voice of the peewit and gull and the rush of the incoming tide. And Bob, too, was changed from a dull epitome of mistakes to a soul who remembered the pride and spring of life. If Kit had turned to look at him just then, he would have seen him a moment in his splendid youth, with the wrestler’s steady eye and muscular grace. He remembered him conqueror in many a ring, and wondered what had become of his cups and belts. They were not at the cottage, he felt sure of that. Marget would have been sure to say they were “in the road,” and at least he would have seen the children using them in their play. Bob’s exploits were never mentioned in that house, because Marget was of opinion that wrestling was low. Probably the trophies had gone long since to provide other things more necessary if less proud. But in the old days there had been a grand show of them on the dresser at the farm, polished glories that, when the dusk came, made silver points of light both above and within the oak.
The river still ran by them on the left, and beyond it was the climbing sweep of the park, with the belts of wood binding it east and west. Once, coming home in the dawn from a dance on the far side, he had found a little fawn in a dim glade. It was said to be lucky to find a new-born fawn. Over the hill-top the wishing-trees used to stand, but he had never been back there since they were cut down. Things couldn’t alter as long as you didn’t go back. They stayed the same while you kept them so in your mind.... The further wood was slowly growing black, because of the hill between it and the west. At the foot of the wood was the long, clean-coloured house, with its pillars and flat windows and wide, stately steps. Kit saw his own life clearly when he looked at the house, because the lives within and around the house were bound together like a bundle of sticks. Through all his memories the romance of a higher class ran like a silken thread through a homespun cloth. High and low, they had seen together so much that was the same. They had watched death and life changing the country-side, and awakened each morning to the gift of the same day. They had done many things together, too, and where one had done them alone, the one that looked on seemed still to have his share. Glancing back from a great age, it was hard to tell where the lives really drew apart. Rich or poor, they belonged to the same scheme of things, and had their final share in the same earth.
He could not have told you how many squires he had known. The old family had died off fast, and in the multitude of their names he could not be certain which had gone churchwards first. He was always put to it when asked to say whether Philip Edmund or Edmund John had died before the succession honours were barely his; whether John Philip or merely John had lived to the striking age of fifty-one. One who had lived to be really old had died when Kit was a lad; a fine, old-fashioned autocrat who knew his place. Folks saluted on all sides when he walked up the street, and the women had had to go in and shut their doors. Perhaps he was at his best in the church over the hill, with its hacked Crusader monument and its floor paved with names. All who served him had to come to church, wearing the livery of their class. Even the keepers from over the sands had to be there, crossing the river-channel when they could. The head keeper wore a scarlet coat, he thought, and the others green, and the men with the hound-dogs, blue. Coachmen and grooms came in livery, too, with buttons that shone like little moving moons. Through the deep, diamond-paned windows you could see the churchyard full of gold laburnum trees, and old houses with their feet among the tombs, and luminous patches of morning sky. Those who had been rich or poor in their lives shared the gold of the laburnum equally in death. Nobody nodded in the sermon under the Squire’s eye, or moved a foot to the aisle until he had left the church.
Now they were passing the agent’s house on the right, a creepered dwelling facing river and hill. It was many a long year since he had been inside, but a certain room was always clear in his mind. He had gone to ask for the farm when his father died, and taken with him the lass he meant to wed. They had sat stiffly on the leather chairs, speaking their parts as bravely as they could. Ann had been far the smarter of the two, spoken up better and known what she was about. Likely enough they had got the farm because of her, but he wasn’t the only man who had to own to that. She was always the better horse, as everybody knew....
Now, when he thought of the room, it was like a picture in a book, and the shy young couple seemed like pictures, too. Yet all his life he had thought of Ann as she was then, with her dark stuff gown and the colour bright in her cheeks, and his real self was still that daft young man, twisting his cap on the edge of an office chair. Folks said you lived your life before you were twenty-five, and that all the rest was simply looking back. Marget would have it he had changed, but change couldn’t touch that picture in his mind. Ann and Kit still sat on their leather chairs, smiling at him, steadfastly alive.