As the sound of his going died away, the girl raised herself and looked over the gate at his retreating figure. She felt as if she never wished to see a man again. They were creatures moved by some hidden spring that she could not divine nor understand—she, who stood perplexed on the outskirts of life. Passion and jealousy and the deep workings, set astir by womankind, of that primæval combat of male with male were unlearned lessons.
She rose and pursued her way along the fields, afraid to return to the lane, and resolving afresh, since she had seen Charles, not to venture out upon the high-road till dusk. Then she reflected that her pocket was empty and that when dusk came her prospects would be no better. Her goal was Losbury bridge; but she would have to travel some way on the other side of it before she reached the village she had in her mind. There was a post office there, she knew, for she had once been in it, and she meant to ask the post-mistress if there was anybody in the place who needed a girl to do servant’s work. It was a forlorn hope, but Catherine had burned her boats; and, with the pathetic trustfulness of youth, she did not believe that the world would let her starve. For a coward, she had grown bold indeed.
The foregoing day had poured with rain, and the grass was wet and heavy. She was so determined to keep far from all thoroughfares that she was obliged to go many times out of the straight line. She pushed her way through hedges and thickets and found herself, when the afternoon was well advanced, in sight of the road. Her feet were soaked, her boots coated with mud; and her skirts were soaked too, for a smart shower had caught her in the open. The skies had become overcast, and she shivered as she sat resting in the seclusion of a hollow.
Tears began to roll down her cheeks; excitement and wounded pride and the novelty of a definite object had kept her up; but at last these guides and supporters were losing their hold and her heart was sinking in the face of the cheerless outlook. Her teeth chattered and her head felt like lead. When she got up she was shaking so much that she had to lean against a tree. She dared not think of the miles between her and that little village over Losbury bridge, and she could not afford to await the falling of the light as she had meant to do before trusting herself to the open road. Down below her was yet one more pasture, and then she must emerge on the highway and take her chance of meeting some wayfarer who might recognise her. She plodded on, thinking less of that risk than of the increasing misery of dragging herself forward. A climb down a steep hedge-grown bank would bring her out not fifty yards from the whitewashed walls of a toll-house. Half a mile east of it was Losbury bridge, spanning a reach of the river above the flat, green meadows.
She looked up and down the road as she stood on the bank and bent back the strong suckers in the gap she had chosen; there was not a human creature within sight. A white milestone was on the hither side of the white toll and the white gates which barred the way. The window stared towards her up the vacant thoroughfare after the sleepless, vigilant fashion of toll-house windows. She began to scramble down, clinging to the tough whips of hazel; there was a cluster of nuts just by her shoulder, and she paused to gather it. She was not hungry, but she might be hungry yet and thankful for so much as a few filberts. As she turned, stretching out her disengaged hand, her foot went from under her. She was not the only person who had made a passage through that gap, and the wet mud had been trodden into a slide by some one else’s heel. The springy bough flew upwards, tearing itself from her grasp as she slipped and fell.
She lay at the roadside with one foot doubled beneath her. Movement brought a feeling of such deathly sickness that she raised her head only to drop it again on the moss of the bank. She felt sure that her leg must be broken, and, not daring to stir, forgot all but the black, imminent fear of pain; the moment’s despair was enough for her without the additional bewilderment of looking further.
She gathered her wits again to consider how long it might be before some one passed, and she prayed for the sound of human approach as earnestly as she dreaded it. But for the distant bark of a dog, the encompassing rural life might have been extinct and she herself in the desert of Sahara.
At last she was able to look up. Her leg could still move, she found, and she got herself into a less cramped position. Timidly she touched her ankle; it was already swollen, but, if it was not really broken, she might try to get as far as the toll. With the help of the tangled growth on the bank, she drew herself until she sat upright, and saw that a short, broad figure was standing in front of the gate contemplating her in an attitude suggesting interest, suspicion, and the power to deal forcibly with anything. The woman—if woman it were—stood, sharply outlined against the white bars, feet planted wide apart, arms akimbo, and head at an attentive and purposeful angle. Catherine raised herself on one arm and called as loudly as she could, then, as a twinge of pain shot through her foot, she lay back once more against the bank.
A minute afterwards she raised her eyes to a round, snub-nosed face within a yard of her own. It was surmounted by a man’s felt hat, secured in its place by a piece of twine which was tied in a careful bow under the chin. The loops of the bow were drawn to exact evenness and the long ends hung down over a person shaped much like a beehive. The notion that she had never seen any one wearing so many clothes wandered across the girl’s dazed brain.
“By Pharaoh! I thought ye was market-peart!” exclaimed a voice whose depth, coming from a petticoated being, made Catherine start. “Watchin’ ye, I were, to see how soon ye’d plump down again, once ye was up.”