At last, after one horse had nearly put its head through the window of Mr. Dunnock’s study, and another had trampled down a rose bush, the plough was got into position at the far corner of the house. After that they all waited while the ploughman left the handles and began to hammer at part of his plough.
The fear which Anne had felt when she first looked out returned to her, and the sense of strangeness persisted. Was she waking or dreaming, was she afraid or was she glad? Suddenly she heard Maggie’s voice saying in excited tones:
“You are never going to plough up Mr. Dunnock’s doorstep!” and hearing these words Anne began to tremble.
At last the ploughman straightened his back and said:
“Calls us idle beggars, does he? And too busy to speak with us; we’ll mark Plough Monday in his prayer-book. Get up there....”
The horses strained, and the plough sank through the snow into the soft earth of a flower-bed, the traces tightened and the three horses pulled; a wrinkle or two showed itself in their haunches, and the share of the plough threw up a broad streak of raw earth.
“Steady, boys, steady by the doorstep,” called the ploughman, and the carters edged the horses nearer in to the wall of the house. In a moment the plough reached the door, and Anne, gazing down from above, saw the flagstone lift and topple, while the plough ran swiftly on, and the earth streamed out upon the snow.
“I must stop them,” she whispered, but she did not move, or take her eyes off the scene. Watching from above, the girl was fascinated and horrified by every detail; the swift and irresistible progress of the hidden ploughshare running through the earth delighted her; the strength of the three stalwart Suffolk Punches, and the lean, sinewy wrists of the ploughman guiding the handles, and the gay young men, all thrilled her. While watching, she could not have told what were her emotions: yet she knew that the scene was beautiful, the plough slipping so easily in the rich earth had the grace and lissom strength of a snake. Once again the horses turned, sweeping down and halting beside the hedge of laurel, and there was another pause while the plough was got into position, and then the team swept round and strained forward again to cut the second furrow, and, that finished, to draw the plough out into the roadway in front of the vicarage, while the ploughman threw the handles on one side and held them down so that the share skidded through the snow over the grass.
The men did not call out, nor even appear to speak or to laugh among themselves; having cut their two furrows, they went away swiftly, pausing only for a moment on the road to adjust the ploughshare, and then hurrying on to sing their songs under other windows.
Only when the plough had turned the corner of the lane and the last of the horses’ heads had vanished down the avenue of elm trees, did Anne Dunnock leave her position at the window, and only then did she burst into a flood of tears. “I cannot live after such an insult,” she said to herself. “How could they do such a thing to our house? But why is it that it seemed to me so beautiful as well as so cruel?” and as she asked herself this question she noticed that though she had dried her tears her hands were still trembling. “The lawn of virgin snow has been torn up by the plough, the naked earth exposed, and the garden trampled over by the iron shoes of the horses and the hobnails of the labourers,” she said. “And our doorstep has been overturned; my father’s fault, for he was in the wrong. I feel now as if I could never forgive him for bringing this shame on us, yet if it had not been him it might have been me, for the same fault of character is in both of us. We are rejected everywhere, unable to share in the life around us, or to understand it. Enid taught me that at Ely, but to-day it has been recognized by the ploughmen, and this broad gash in the earth and the uprooted doorstep proclaim it to our neighbours. I shall never dare show my face in the village after this.”