“I have been a fool,” she thought, “a sentimental fool. Love is not for me. I am just an average woman, an average middle-class woman. And like all women, I have expected too much of life. Life has been very kind to me; I mustn’t grumble. Life has given him back to me. Isn’t that enough?”
She looked at the man by her side. He drove steadily, wrist giving to horse’s mouth. A loose dust-coat hid the lines of his figure: under it, legs, feet and ankles showed white in boating-attire. Soft hat, brim down-turned, shadowed the thin face, the serious eyes.
Again she thought, “I have been a fool. Life holds nothing better than this: to be one’s husband’s friend. Love is only for the very young. We are old married people. We have been married over ten years. I will be reasonable. I will content myself with the much that is mine. He has always been good to me. He has always been faithful to me. I have the children.”
The mare trotted on, steadily, soberly, resigned to loose bit, to ungalling collar and easy load. Even so, Patricia resigned herself to matrimony. . . .
Peter set down his wife at Sunflowers, drove on to Tebbits’ alone. “Back in half-an-hour,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ll just help the old man unharness Kitty.” But old man Tebbits would never unharness the brown mare again! He had died an hour back; painlessly; asleep in the vast wooden chair Charlie had made for him.
“He always slept his few minutes after his dish of tea,” explained Miss Tebbits. “And when I tried to wake him, I found I couldn’t.”
There was no uproar at the farm, no confusion; but none of the labourers had gone home. “He was a good father to us all,” said Harry, unbuckling the traces with firm fingers. “I’m making no complaint about him.” Sid Dyson, the carter—a heavy-footed shaggy man with grizzled beard—led the mare to her stable. William, a big bent fellow who lived with his mother at Little Arlsfield, came wheeling his mud-encrusted bike from the cowhouse. “Good-night, Mr. Harry,” called William. “Good-night to you.” The “boy”—(“never keep more than one boy—two talks,” had been one of old man Tebbits’ aphorisms)—stood about, now on one leg, now on the other, uncertain of his duty.
“You’d better be off,” ordered Harry. The blond giant turned to Peter. “Would you care to see him, sir? . . .”
They had carried the old man as far as the kitchen sofa; spread a patchwork quilt over his limbs. In the scullery, Miss Tebbits was washing up: Peter could hear the trickle of water, the clink of crockery, as he stood gazing down on the gnarled happy face. “Thus, men should die,” thought Peter “not. . . .” Old pictures came crowding on his mind; he saw other faces, dreadful faces, faces of young men who should have been alive. . . .
Charlie Tebbits, summoned from Arlsfield, stalked hatless into the room. “He was a good father,” said Charlie, “I’ve no complaint to make about him.”