He looked at them resolved to
illuminate with reason's eye the fluttering shadows of dusk that gave to
the stone an illusion of life's bloom.
"Did their lips really move?" he asked aloud, and from the field beyond
the black cow lowed a melancholy negative. Whether the stone had spoken
or not, Mark accepted the revelation of his future as a Divine favour,
and thenceforth he regarded the ruined chapel of Wych Maries as the
place where the vow he made on that Whit-sunday was accepted by God.
"Aren't you ever coming?" the voice of Esther called across the field,
and Mark hurried away to rejoin her on the grassgrown drive that led
round the cedar grove to Rushbrooke Grange.
"It's too late now to go inside," he objected.
They were standing before the house.
"It's not too late at all," she contradicted eagerly. "Down here it
seems later than it really is."
Rushbrooke Grange lacked the architectural perfection of the average
Cotswold manor. Being a one-storied building it occupied a large
superficial area, and its tumbling irregular roofs of freestone, the
outlines of which were blurred by the encroaching mist of vegetation
that overhung them, gave the effect of water, as if the atmosphere of
this dank valley had wrought upon the substance of the building and as
if the architects themselves had been confused by the rivalry of the
trees by which it was surrounded.
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