Tasha put her foot in the baby’s way and stood looking down at Pauvla Agrippa, where her small hands lay beneath her fine breast with its purple veins, and now Tasha did not feel quite the same resentment that she had felt earlier. It is true this body had done something irrevocable to Pauvla Agrippa, but she also realized that she, Tasha, must now do something to this body; it was the same with everything, nothing was left as it was, something was always altering something else. Perhaps it was an unrecognized law.
Pauvla Agrippa’s husband had gone out to see what could be done with the mare, and now the neighbour came in, saying that it would not come in over the sand, but that he—the husband—thought that it would walk toward the headland, as it was wont.
“If you could only carry her out to it,” he said.
Tasha called in two of her brothers and woke up the one on the floor. “Everything will be arranged for her comfort,” she said, “when we get her up there.” They lifted Pauvla Agrippa up and her baby began to laugh, asking to be lifted up also, and holding its little hands high that it might be lifted, but no one was paying any attention to him, because now they were moving his mother.
Pauvla Agrippa looked fine as they carried her, only her small hands parted and deserted the clef where they had lain, dropping down upon the shoulders of her brothers. Several children stood hand in hand watching, and one or two villagers appeared who had heard from the neighbours what was going on.
The mare had been induced to stand and someone had slipped a halter over its neck for the first time in many years; there was a frightened look in the one eye and the film that covered the other seemed to darken, but it made no objection when they raised Pauvla Agrippa and placed her on its back, tying her on with a fish net.
Then someone laughed, and the neighbour slapped his leg saying, “Look what the old horse has come to—caught and burdened at last.” And he watched the mare with small cruel eyes.
Pauvla Agrippa’s husband took the strap of the halter and began plodding through the sand, the two boys on either side of the horse holding to all that was left of Pauvla Agrippa. Tasha came behind, her hands folded, praying now to this horse, still trying to find peace, but she noticed with a little apprehension that the horse’s flanks had begun to quiver, and that this quiver was extending to its ribs and from its ribs to its forelegs.
Then she saw it turn a little, lifting its head. She called out to Pauvla Agrippa’s husband who, startled with the movement and the cry, dropped the rope.
The mare had turned toward the sea; for an instant it stood there, quivering, a great thin, bony thing with crooked legs; its blind eyes half covered with the black coarse lashes. Pauvla Agrippa with her head thrown a bit back rested easily, it seemed, the plaits of her yellow hair lying about her neck, but away from her face, because she was not supported quite right; still she looked like some strange new sea animal beneath the net that held her from falling.