She knelt at
the bottom of the tonneau telling her beads without pause till, by short
cuts of the Doctor's invention, we had her to the sweetmeat shop once
more. It was a long afternoon crowded with mad episodes that rose and
dissolved like the dust of our wheels; cross-sections of remote and
incomprehensible lives through which we raced at right angles; and I went
home in the dusk, wearied out, to dream of the clashing horns of cattle;
round-eyed nuns walking in a garden of graves; pleasant tea-parties
beneath shaded trees; the carbolic-scented, grey-painted corridors of the
County Institute; the steps of shy children in the wood, and the hands
that clung to my knees as the motor began to move.
* * * * *
I had intended to return in a day or two, but it pleased Fate to hold me
from that side of the county, on many pretexts, till the elder and the
wild rose had fruited. There came at last a brilliant day, swept clear
from the south-west, that brought the hills within hand's reach--a day of
unstable airs and high filmy clouds. Through no merit of my own I was
free, and set the car for the third time on that known road. As I reached
the crest of the Downs I felt the soft air change, saw it glaze under the
sun; and, looking down at the sea, in that instant beheld the blue of the
Channel turn through polished silver and dulled steel to dingy pewter. A
laden collier hugging the coast steered outward for deeper water and,
across copper-coloured haze, I saw sails rise one by one on the anchored
fishing-fleet.
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