Presently he came
to an open space where the young bracken was springing round a pool. He
flung himself down in the frondage, and the spice of it in his nostrils
was as if he were feeding upon summer. He was happy until he caught
sight of his own reflection in the pool, and then he could not bear to
stay any longer in this wood, because unlike the squirrel and the
woodpecker and the jay he was an ugly intruder here, a scarecrow in
ill-fitting clothes, round the ribbon of whose hat like a chain ran the
yellow zigzag of Haverton House. He became afraid of the wood,
perceiving nothing round him now except an assemblage of menacing
trunks, a slow gathering of angry and forbidding branches. The silence
of the day was dreadful in this wood, and Mark fled from it until he
emerged upon a brimming clover-ley full of drunken bees, a merry
clover-ley dancing in the sun, across which the sound of church bells
was being blown upon a honeyed wind. Mark welcomed the prospect of
seeing ugly people again after the humiliation inflicted upon him by the
wood; and he followed a footpath at the far end of the ley across
several stiles, until he stood beneath the limes that overhung the
churchyard gate and wondered if he should go inside to the service.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131