“Ah—yes. I thank you. I met Mrs. Witherby on the bridge. Ah—I was about to say....”
“Can that possibly be Florence pounding up the hill? Yes, it is. Dear me. Really, I wish she were more sedate, to-day of all days.”
Rosamond was talking against time; her words meant nothing more than that she desired to keep the Judge at bay until the carriage arrived, when she would pretend she had visits to make and so dismiss him. Not understanding this, the Judge was inspired by her last sentence to a very pretty belief; namely, that Mrs. Mearely wished her mare to trot sedately on this day, because she was on her way to the cemetery; a visit to the Mearely plot being her delicate method of assuring both the departed and Roseborough that her return to colours betokened no frivolity of spirit—that she was still a Mearely and would maintain the Mearely dignity. This also, he thought, was a good omen for him; since there could be no question about his superfitness to assist her in her loyal task.
“My dear lady....” He spoke with a slow profundity which made the blinking, sparkling eyes open wide at him. “You are on the way to his—ah—grave. I understand. I may say I more than understand. I will postpone until this evening—ah—the communication I came here to make to you. Um—ah—drop a posy—ah—on the poor fellow for me, will you not?”
Rosamond stared at him as blankly as any milkmaid.
“What?” said she, with unmodified bluntness.
Whatever might have developed, in the course of explanation, was prevented by a rival emissary of fate, with less propriety and more force than Judge Giffen. Florence rounded the curve. She had the bit in her teeth and blood in her eye—and the devil himself in her heels and her head. Blake was chiefly occupied in administering punishment. If she would bolt, she should do it under the whip, until discouragement set in.
Florence, being dumb, could not explain what it was about the stolid, large, high-backed, flea-bitten white horse (and possibly his imposing master) which irritated her beyond endurance; but she expressed herself after her temperament. She swerved from the road and, charging upon the unsuspecting nag—whose back was toward her, his head sunk in the timothy along the wall—bit him sharply on the rump. The flea-bitten white was less stolid than he looked. He emitted a shrill snort and kicked with all his might; the Judge lost his hat and almost lost his seat. Florence pranced in and nipped the other side. Whereupon the flea-bitten white sounded his protest to all the world, reared, turned and ran at a racing gait down the hill. The Judge’s pince-nez flew off in one direction and his crop in the other; the bridle had already been jerked from his easy hold, so that it is no slur on his horsemanship to say that Judge Giffen rode down the first two winds of the hill clinging to the pommel.
What of Florence? In sidling in to take her second nip, she had swung the light vehicle half-round, and now, ere Blake could get the mastery, she swung it all the way and charged off down the hill again. The pounding of hoofs on the gravel brought more than one Roseborough dweller to her front windows. Presumably Mrs. Mearely’s were not the only eyes to see the finale. The judge’s horse, ignoring the shouts of the toll-man and the closing of the bridge to let a tow go by, leaped the gates and the towline and galloped over the bridge and disappeared in a cloud of dust.
Blake’s experience was less happy. Florence did not include the carriage in her calculations, but attempted to perform the same feat. She got through the barrier, by taking it with her; but the wheels were tipped by the fence rails, the vehicle rose upon its side and Blake dived, as if from a springboard, into the river. His aquatics seemed to satisfy Florence’s passion for excitement for that day at least. She righted herself deftly and began to crop the clover beside the path, all mildness now as to mien.