How sweet the silence is! Ursula looked with hatred on the buffers of the diminishing wagon.The gatekeeper stood ready at the door of his hut, to proceed to open the gate.But Gudrun sprang suddenly forward, in front of the struggling horse, threw off the latch and flung the gates asunder, throwing one-half to the keeper, and running with the other half, forwards.
Gerald suddenly let go the horse and leaped forwards, almost on to Gudrun.
She was not afraid.As he jerked aside the mare's head, Gudrun cried, in a strange, high voice, like a gull, or like a witch screaming out from the side of the road:
`I should think you're proud.'
The words were distinct and formed.The man, twisting aside on his dancing horse, looked at her in some surprise, some wondering interest.Then the mare's hoofs had danced three times on the drum-like sleepers of the crossing, and man and horse were bounding springily, unequally up the road.
The two girls watched them go.The gate-keeper hobbled thudding over the logs of the crossing, with his wooden leg.He had fastened the gate.
Then he also turned, and called to the girls:
`A masterful young jockey, that; 'll have his own road, if ever anybody would.'
`Yes,' cried Ursula, in her hot, overbearing voice.`Why couldn't he take the horse away, till the trucks had gone by? He's a fool, and a bully.
Does he think it's manly, to torture a horse? It's a living thing, why should he bully it and torture it?'
There was a pause, then the gate-keeper shook his head, and replied:
`Yes, it's as nice a little mare as you could set eyes on -- beautiful little thing, beautiful.Now you couldn't see his father treat any animal like that -- not you.They're as different as they welly can be, Gerald Crich and his father -- two different men, different made.'
Then there was a pause.
`But why does he do it?' cried Ursula, `why does he? Does he think he's grand, when he's bullied a sensitive creature, ten times as sensitive as himself?'
Again there was a cautious pause.Then again the man shook his head, as if he would say nothing, but would think the more.
`I expect he's got to train the mare to stand to anything,' he replied.
`A pure-bred Harab -- not the sort of breed as is used to round here --different sort from our sort altogether.They say as he got her from Constantinople.'
`He would!' said Ursula.`He'd better have left her to the Turks, I'm sure they would have had more decency towards her.'
The man went in to drink his can of tea, the girls went on down the lane, that was deep in soft black dust.Gudrun was as if numbed in her mind by the sense of indomitable soft weight of the man, bearing down into the living body of the horse: the strong, indomitable thighs of the blond man clenching the palpitating body of the mare into pure control; a sort of soft white magnetic domination from the loins and thighs and calves, enclosing and encompassing the mare heavily into unutterable subordination, soft blood-subordination, terrible.
On the left, as the girls walked silently, the coal-mine lifted its great mounds and its patterned head-stocks, the black railway with the trucks at rest looked like a harbour just below, a large bay of railroad with anchored wagons.
Near the second level-crossing, that went over many bright rails, was a farm belonging to the collieries, and a great round globe of iron, a disused boiler, huge and rusty and perfectly round, stood silently in a paddock by the road.The hens were pecking round it, some chickens were balanced on the drinking trough, wagtails flew away in among trucks, from the water.
On the other side of the wide crossing, by the road-side, was a heap of pale-grey stones for mending the roads, and a cart standing, and a middle-aged man with whiskers round his face was leaning on his shovel, talking to a young man in gaiters, who stood by the horse's head.Both men were facing the crossing.
They saw the two girls appear, small, brilliant figures in the near distance, in the strong light of the late afternoon.Both wore light, gay summer dresses, Ursula had an orange-coloured knitted coat, Gudrun a pale yellow, Ursula wore canary yellow stockings, Gudrun bright rose, the figures of the two women seemed to glitter in progress over the wide bay of the railway crossing, white and orange and yellow and rose glittering in motion across a hot world silted with coal-dust.
The two men stood quite still in the heat, watching.The elder was a short, hard-faced energetic man of middle age, the younger a labourer of twenty-three or so.They stood in silence watching the advance of the sisters.
They watched whilst the girls drew near, and whilst they passed, and whilst they receded down the dusty road, that had dwellings on one side, and dusty young corn on the other.
Then the elder man, with the whiskers round his face, said in a prurient manner to the young man:
`What price that, eh? She'll do, won't she?'
`Which?' asked the young man, eagerly, with laugh.
`Her with the red stockings.What d'you say? I'd give my week's wages for five minutes; what! -- just for five minutes.'
Again the young man laughed.
`Your missis 'ud have summat to say to you,' he replied.
Gudrun had turned round and looked at the two men.They were to her sinister creatures, standing watching after her, by the heap of pale grey slag.She loathed the man with whiskers round his face.
`You're first class, you are,' the man said to her, and to the distance.
`Do you think it would be worth a week's wages?' said the younger man, musing.
`Do I? I'd put 'em bloody-well down this second --'
The younger man looked after Gudrun and Ursula objectively, as if he wished to calculate what there might be, that was worth his week's wages.
He shook his head with fatal misgiving.
`No,' he said.`It's not worth that to me.'
`Isn't?' said the old man.`By God, if it isn't to me!'
And he went on shovelling his stones.