Then a burst of catcalling caused us to fly from the verandah doorway.
We had been seen from the hillside by the party with the mouth organs.
Evie, adorably red, gave a low laugh ... and this time I did kiss her,
to fresh cheers and calls of "Wot cher!" The lads and lasses outside did
not see the caress, but perhaps, after all, it was not very wonderful
thought-reading.
Then, after another delighted tour, we locked the house up and came out
on to the Heath again.
And now that the scales of preoccupation were removed from our eyes, we
could look on all the life and colour and movement spread before us and
feel ourselves part of it. It was well worth looking at. There is a long
ravine near the Viaduct; we looked across it through a bright stipple of
sunny birches; and to close the eyes for a second or two only was to
see, on reopening them, a new picture. Purple and lavender and the black
lamb's-wool coats pervaded that picture; the colours were sown over the
hillside like confetti. They moved slowly, as coloured granules might
have moved in some half-fluid suspension; and spaces that one moment
were spangled with them, the next were unexpectedly empty patches of
green. I am speaking of the thing in the mass, as of a panorama.
Doubtless the sprinkling of white that lay everywhere would resolve
itself on the morrow into torn paper, to be laboriously impaled on
spiked sticks and carried away in baskets; doubtless to-day much of it
on a nearer view would consist of impure complexions and rank odour; but
it was strong and piping-hot Life, inspiring, infinitely analysable, and
irresistibly setting private griefs and joys and over-emphasised
sensations into place and proportion.... And as we left the Viaduct road
and approached a great show in a hollow, the increasing din of a steam
organ became as if we waded deeper and deeper into a sea, not of water,
but of sound.
I only remembered that I still had the key of the little house in my
pocket as we pushed and jostled through the crowded town of striped
canvas that covered the Lower Heath. My fingers encountered it as we
took a back way behind a long fluttering sheet against which cocoanut
balls smacked every moment. It was necessary to return with it; and, as
men behind the lace-curtained caravans began to make ready the naphtha
lights for the evening, we turned into another thoroughfare down which
the purple and lamb's-wool and lavender and bright neckerchiefs poured
as if down a river-bed. In twenty minutes we had reached the tea-garden
again; I spied a couple in the act of leaving a leafy arbour that held a
table awash with spilt beer; and I put Evie into a still warm seat and
bade her hold it against all comers. I left her, and presently returned
with two glasses, of which I had managed to retain the greater part of
the contents; and I sat down by her.
"Did you give them the key?" she asked, seizing my arm.
"Yes, I gave them 'the' key. I'm going to see the agent to-morrow."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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