Jackson's Dilemma by Iris Murdoch Page A

materialising at the church, surprised to find them all confounded, taken in by the awful evil false message. After changing into her male attire, Rosalind left Penndean, not by the drive, but by a gate in the wall farther down the road, reached by a little path through the trees. The gate, sometimes locked, was now fortunately not locked. She crossed the road and followed through tall grass a scarcely perceptible right of way running steeply down to the River Lip at a place where there was a shaky little wooden bridge, always said to be likely to fall down. Crossing swiftly, lightly, she glimpsed below her the dark little river enclosed by the many wild flowers, whose names she could not remember. After the river, she had left Benet’s territory, and entered Edward’s territory. (They still feuded about the bridge.) She climbed over a stile and slowed down in a field which showed evidence of cultivation. Here she paused to greet a dear friend, a horse called Spencer, once a hunter, a very old horse now, Edward had told the girls about him some time ago. Spencer, who knew her well, advanced slowly moving his big gentle brown head to and fro. Rosalind hugged his head, and tears which she had been checking came again, and her wet tears smeared his brown glossy cheek and coat. ‘Oh Spencer, dear dear Spencer —’ She kissed him near to his soft mouth, then hurried on, down a hill, over a five-barred gate and another meadow, walking breathlessly. Hatting Hall was by now well in sight. Rosalind, now passing another gate, which was open, crossed a narrow tarmac road, and, over mown grass, approached the gates, always open by day, of the handsome building. The drive was short, passing between two huge and very old mulberry trees. Steps led up to the large ornate door, beside and above which the tall Elizabethan windows glittered in the sunshine and the turrets rose high above the doorway and above the battlemented roof which supported also the magnificent twirling chimneys, each one different. The sun shone upon the warm soft powdery red-brown brickwork. This external glory of Hatting however was mainly limited to its façade, since Cromwell’s troops who had battered Saint Michael had also occupied and devastated the interior and, perhaps accidentally, set fire to it. Marks of the fire could still be found in places upon the frontal bricks. The rather ramshackle and unattractive house which had been hastily put up behind the façade had happily fallen down in the early eighteenth-century, when a large elegant Georgian house was at last firmly fitted behind the Tudor front. Edward’s family, who had lived, ‘forever’ they said, in Cornwall and had come to own valuable lead mines, bought Hatting early in the eighteenth century. The huge beautiful garden, invisible from the front, was said to have been designed by Capability Brown.
    Rosalind was running now, the coat-tails of her jacket flying behind her. She could see, as she passed between the mulberry trees, the steps, and the front door which was open. She ran up the steps, paused gasping at the top, then cautiously pushed the open door a little farther, and entered the hall. There was silence now, except for her slowly calming breath. Neither the butler, Montague nor his wife Millie, were in evidence. She looked about, blinking her eyes after the bright sun, gazing in, what for a time seemed a twilight, at the big hall and, through open doors, the drawing room and farther off the billiard room where they used to play ‘Freda’.
    Edward appeared upon the stairs. He stopped. For a second Rosalind thought that he had taken her to be her sister. Then he said, ‘Is there any news?’
    ‘No. I’m sorry. I mean not that I know. I - I just thought I’d come to you in case, before you went to London — I could help somehow - I’m so sorry, I’m so terribly sorry — ’
    Edward, who had been grasping the banisters, came slowly down, then stood near Rosalind looking away