Some Do Not . . ._ A Novel - Ford Madox Ford [72]
The girl gave a little squeak that went to his backbone; the hoofs clattered unusually; the cart went on. Tietjens went after it; it was astonishing; it had completely disappeared. Then he ran into it: ghostly, reddish and befogged. It must have got much thicker suddenly. The fog swirled all round the near lamp as he replaced it in its socket.
Did you do that on purpose?' he asked the girl. 'Or can't you hold a horse?'
'I can't drive a horse,' the girl said; 'I'm afraid of them. I can't drive a motor-bike either. I made that up because I knew you'd say you'd rather have taken Gertie over in the side-car than driven with me.'
'Then do you mind,' Tietjens said, 'telling me if you know this road at all?'
'Not a bit!' she answered cheerfully. 'I never drove over it in my life. I looked it up on the map before we started because I'm sick to death of the road we went by. There's a one-horse bus from Rye to Tenterden, and I've walked from Tenterden to my uncle's over and over again...'
'We shall probably be out all night then,' Tietjens said. 'Do you mind? The horse may be tired...
She said:
'Oh, the poor horse!...I meant us to be out all night...But the poor horse...What a brute I was not to think of it.'
'We're thirteen miles from a place called Brede; eleven and a quarter from a place whose name I couldn't read; six and three-quarters from somewhere called something like Uddlemere Tietjens said. 'This is the road to Uddlemere.'
'Oh, that was Grandfather's Wantways all right,' she declared. 'I know it well. It's called "Grandfather's" because an old gentleman used to sit there called Gran'fer Finn. Every Tenterden market day he used to sell fleed cakes from a basket to the carts that went by. Tenterden market was abolished in 1845--the effect of the repeal of the Corn Laws, you know. As a Tory you ought to be interested in that.'
Tietjens said patiently: He could sympathize with her mood; she had now a heavy weight off her chest; and, if long acquaintance with his wife had not made him able to put up with feminine vagaries, nothing ever would.
'Would you mind,' he said then, 'telling me...
'If,' she interrupted, 'that was really Gran'fer's Want-ways: midland English. "Vent" equals four crossroads: high French carrefour...Or, perhaps, that isn't the right word. But it's the way your mind works...'
'You have, of course, often walked from your uncle's to Gran'fer's Wantways,' Tietjens said, 'with your cousins, taking brandy to the invalid in the old toll-gate house. That's how you know the story of Grandfer. You said you had never driven it; but you have walked it. That's the way your mind works, isn't it?'
She said: 'Oh!'
'Then,' Tietjens went on, 'would you mind telling me--for the sake of the poor horse--whether Uddlemere is or isn't on our road home. I take it you don't know just this stretch of road, but you know whether it is the right road.'
'The touch of pathos,' the girl said, 'is a wrong note. It's you who're in mental trouble about the road. The horse isn't...
Tietjens let the cart go on another fifty yards; then he said:
'It is the right road. The Uddlemere turning was the right one. You wouldn't let the horse go another five steps if it wasn't. You're as soppy about horses as as I am.'
'There's at least that bond of sympathy between us,' she said drily. 'Gran'fer's Wantways is six and three-quarter miles from Udimore; Udimore is exactly five from us; total, eleven and three-quarters; twelve and a quarter if you add half a mile for Udimore itself. The name is Udimore, not Uddlemere. Local place-name enthusiasts derive this from "O'er the mere." Absurd! Legend as follows: Church builders desiring to put church with relic of St Rumwold in wrong place, voice wailed: "O'er the mere." Obviously absurd!...Putrid! "O'er the" by Grimm's law impossible