Americans -- England -- Fiction; England -- Social life and customs -- 20th century -- Fiction
Here beginneth the chronicle of the dreadfullest drive that ever was
driven. I pitied Sir Archibald with my whole heart to be left behind
with Greytoria and me, but what else could be done? There was a mist
when we started which degenerated after a bit into an intermittent
drizzle, and at intervals the wind blew a young tornado. The road was
dreary, but fascinating in its broad stretches of loneliness. We
passed green field and brown moor in turn, with all the trees looking
grey in the mist, and here and there the brawling of a stream to break
the silence. Sometimes there was a woodman working in a roadside
copse, sometimes a goggled stone-breaker pursuing his monotonous
task, sometimes a carrier bending beneath his weight of faggots. If it
had not been for the flaming gorse and the groups of red cattle, there
would have been no colour in the landscape. My spirits kept their
normal height for the first six or eight miles, but they sank little
by little as the hills grew in number and increased in height. Sir
Archibald refused to let me walk, and it made me wretched to see him
stalking beside the pony chaise, appealing to Greytoria's pride,
courage, conscience, ambition, and sense of decency, in turn, and
mostly without avail. We kept the best-travelled road, but it seemed
to lead us farther and farther from Grey Tor, which had quite
disappeared from the horizon and could not be used as a landmark.
There could be no conversation either going up or down hill, as Sir
Archibald was too breathless and busy. I, sitting in state, punctuated
the ascents and descents, as long as I had strength, with agreeable
persiflage something in this wise:--
'The guide-book says, "Pedestrianism is doubtless the ideal manner of
touring in Devonshire. Only on foot is it possible to view the more
romantic scenery. Motors are not advised and bicycles discouraged."'
Sir Archibald would smile, say something under his breath, and whack
Greytoria.
'Sir Archibald, there is a place in these parts where the devil is
said to have died of cold; it must be just here.'
'Sir Archibald, do 'e knaw I think we'm pixy-led? When Devonshire folk
miss the path home at night and go astray, they'm "pixy-led."'
If we two poor wayfarers could have sat quietly beside each other and
chatted in 'e dimpsey light, it would not have been a bit bad, but
there was something eternally doing. When the drag wasn't being put on
or off, the whip was being agitated, or Sir Archibald was looking for
a house to ask the way. Never was there such a route from one spot to
another as the one we took from Widdington-in-the-Wolds to the Grey
Tor Inn. If it was seven miles as the swallow flies, it was
twenty-seven as Greytoria flew. The dinner-hour passed, and the
luncheon baskets, with all other luggage, were in the motor. Sir
Archibald's last information, obtained from an unintelligible boy
driving a cow, was to the effect that we were only two miles from
home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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