But when she had gone a few paces up the road someone shouted something after her, and there was a noise of laughter and then of the shuffling of many feet behind her, and jeers and cat-calls and the beating of the tin can.  She went on, looking to the right and the left for some old friend to come out and take her to shelter, but now she knew that there would be none.  These people would drive her on and on.  And when she got home to Yaverland’s End, if they would let her go there, and did not trample her down on the roadside first, she would lose her child.  The core of her body and soul would be torn out from her, and all promise of pleasure and all occasion of pride.  For there was no pleasure in the world save that to which she had looked forward these seven months, of seeing that perfect little body that she knew so well and kissing its smooth skin and waiting for it to open those eyes—­those black eyes; and there could be no greater degradation than to bring forth death, when for months the sole sustenance against the world’s contempt had been that she was going to give birth to a king of life.  There danced before her eyes all the sons of whom she was to be bereft in the person of this son.  The staggering child, the lean, rough-headed boy of ten with his bat, the glorious man.

Now her loss was certain.  All the people were running out into the gardens of the little houses on the right and throwing up the windows over the shuttered shops on the left, and all wore the flushed and amused masks that meant they were determined that she should lose her child.  Mrs. Hobbs, who kept the general store, the kind old woman whom she had thought would take her in, and Mrs. Welch, the village drunkard, were leaning over adjacent garden walls, holding back the tall, divine sunflowers that they might hobnob over this delight, and their faces were indistinguishable because of those masks.  Even Lily Barnes, standing on the doorstep of the nice new Lily Villa her husband, Job Barnes the builder, had built for their marriage, with her six months old baby in her arms, was thus disguised, and seeming, like Mr. Goode, to look through her old friend at some obscene and delicious fact, sent up that hooting wordless cry.

Marion was so appalled that a woman carrying her baby should connive at the death of another’s that she stood quite still and stared at her, until the boys behind her thrust her with sticks.  When she passed the alley between the post-office and the carrier’s she saw the cattle-man, Goodtart, looking out at her from its shadows; he did not move, but his dark brown eyes were more alive than she had ever seen them.  A stranger stepped out of the inn and laughed so heartily that he had to loose his neckerchief.  Of course she must look funny, walking bareheaded, with earth and blood caking her hair, and her skin sweating and yellow with nausea and her burdened body, her face grimacing with anguish every time Ned Turk danced in front of her and beat the tin can in her ears.