And John Gore gave her a sweep of his hat, never dreaming for the moment that Winnie Jennifer might one day prove a right dear friend.
Mr. Christopher rode with them a mile or more, saying very little, for he was a silent man, and accustomed to leave the talking to his wife. He looked sincerely puzzled by Mr. Pepys’s jokes, tickling his chin with a stumpy forefinger, and grinning occasionally as though wishing to be polite. They reached the Three Ashes, and Mr. Jennifer would have ridden farther with them, but Mr. Pepys, still obstinately sure of his own powers, refused to carry the farmer another furlong. Chris Jennifer gave them some very rambling directions, and after a long, dog-like stare at John Gore—a look that betrayed that he wished to say something graceful and could not—he wished them God-speed, and rode off on the brown filly.
Mr. Pepys professed himself wholly enlightened by the farmer’s rigmarole of “keep to t’ beech hanger on thy left”—“get ye down into t’ bottom”—“second lane ye come by afore t’ brook, and t’ second yonder along under t’ brow wid a turnip-field under t’ hedge.” John Gore had the seaman’s sense of direction, nothing more. Mr. Pepys was accustomed to strange documentary ambiguities, and persisted cheerfully that he knew just how to go.
And thus it befell that the Secretary lost himself valiantly a second time that day, and meeting not so much as a ploughboy to put him right, he lumbered on stubbornly, trusting to good-fortune. The dusk came down and caught them as they followed a rough “ride” that pretended to run in the direction of Battle Town. But it led them ungenerously into the heart of a wood, and then disappeared amid impassable undergrowth that was black with the coming night.
Mr. Pepys could face it out no longer. They were lost, and he accepted the blame of it, ruefully wishing that he had bottles in lieu of pistols in his holsters.
“What’s to be done, Jack? No ‘Half Moon’ for us to-night.”
A wind had risen and was beating through the underwood, making a dismal moan and setting the brown leaves shivering. The horses’ hoofs sucked at the spongy soil. Woodland and sky would soon be one great black void.
“We had better pick our way back and trust to luck.”
“And to think, John, that we left that warm corner of a kitchen! I would give a guinea for the smell of the smoked bacon, and a glimpse of the wood fire licking the chimney.”
They began to pick their way back again, the woodland “ride” growing black as the gallery of a mine. Their horses drooped their heads and went mopingly as though feeling as hungry and dismal as their masters. The hazel twigs kept stinging Mr. Pepys’s face, and though he swore peevishly at the first flick across the cheek, he pulled his hat down over his nose and took his punishment with the grim silence of a man who has only himself to blame.