The leaders taking the hedges, the main
squadron splashing through a marshy place, the outsiders straining to
come up, and the last man behind, who rode harder than any--all could be
seen at the same time.
It was a lovely spot, too, for dreaming on a summer's day, reclining on
the turf, with the harebells swinging in the faint breeze. The extreme
solitude was its charm: no lanes or tracks other than those purely
pastoral came near. There were woods on either hand; in the fir
plantations the jays chattered unceasingly. The broad landscape
stretched out to the illimitable distance, till the power of the eye
failed and could trace it no farther. But if the gaze was lifted it
looked into blue space--the azure heaven not only overhead, but, as it
seemed, all around.
Dickon was always to and fro the mansion here, and took me with him. His
object was ostensibly business: now it was a horse to buy, now a fat
bullock or sheep; now it was an acre or two of wood that was to be cut.
The people of the mansion were so much from home that their existence
was almost forgotten, and they were spoken of vaguely as 'on the
Continent.' There was, in fact, a lack of ready-money, perhaps from the
accumulation of settlements, that reduced the nominal income of the head
to a tithe of what it should have been.
Yet they were too proud to have in the modern builder, the modern
upholsterer, and, most dreadful of all, the modern 'gardener,' to put in
French sashes, gilding and mirrors, and to root up the fine old yew
hedges and level the grand old trees.
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