In a deep dene behind me an eddy of sudden wind drummed
through sheltered oaks, and spun aloft the first day sample of autumn
leaves. When I reached the beach road the sea-fog fumed over the
brickfields, and the tide was telling all the groins of the gale beyond
Ushant. In less than an hour summer England vanished in chill grey. We
were again the shut island of the North, all the ships of the world
bellowing at our perilous gates; and between their outcries ran the piping
of bewildered gulls. My cap dripped moisture, the folds of the rug held it
in pools or sluiced it away in runnels, and the salt-rime stuck to my
lips.
Inland the smell of autumn loaded the thickened fog among the trees, and
the drip became a continuous shower. Yet the late flowers--mallow of the
wayside, scabious of the field, and dahlia of the garden--showed gay in
the mist, and beyond the sea's breath there was little sign of decay in
the leaf. Yet in the villages the house doors were all open, and bare-
legged, bare-headed children sat at ease on the damp doorsteps to shout
"pip-pip" at the stranger.
I made bold to call at the sweetmeat shop, where Mrs. Madehurst met me
with a fat woman's hospitable tears. Jenny's child, she said, had died two
days after the nun had come. It was, she felt, best out of the way, even
though insurance offices, for reasons which she did not pretend to follow,
would not willingly insure such stray lives.
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