"It is pretty when you get here," he said, "but it's like climbing
over a mile of garbage to get out of one's front door. No European
city would endure being isolated by such a desert of squalor and
abominable desolation."
But Athalie merely smiled. She had been far too excited to notice the
familiar ugliness and filth of the dirty city's soiled and ragged
outskirts.
And now the car sped on amid the flat, endless acres of cultivated
land, and already her dainty nose was sniffing familiar but
half-forgotten odours--the faintest hint of ocean, the sun-warmed
scent of freshly cut salt hay; perfumes from woodlands in heavy
foliage, and the more homely smell from barn-yard and compost-heap;
from the sunny, dusty village streets through which they rolled; from
village lanes heavy with honeysuckle.
"I seem to be speeding back toward my childhood," she said. "Every
breath of this air, every breeze, every odour is making it more real
to me.... I wonder whatever became of my ragged red hood and cloak. I
can't remember."
"I'd like to have them," he said. "I'd fold them and lay them away
for--"
He checked himself, sobered, suddenly and painfully aware that the
magic of the moment had opened for him an unreal vista where, in the
false dawn, the phantom of Hope stood smiling. Her happy smile had
altered, too; and her gloved hand stole out and rested on his own for
a moment in silence. Neither said anything for a while, and yet the
sky was so blue, the wind so soft and aromatic, and the sun's
splendour was turning the very earth to powdered gold. And maybe the
gods would yet be kind. Maybe, one day, others, with Athalie's hair
and eyes, might smooth the faded scarlet hood and cloak with softly
inquiring fingers.
He spoke almost harshly from his brief dream: "There is the Bay!"
But she had turned to look back at the quiet little cemetery already
behind them, and a moment or two passed before she lifted her eyes and
looked out across the familiar stretch of water. Azure and silver it
glimmered there in the sun. Red-shouldered blackbirds hovered,
fluttered, dropped back into the tall reeds; meadow larks whistled
sweetly, persistently; a slow mouse-hawk sailed low over the fields,
his broad wings tipped up like a Japanese kite, the silver full-moon
flashing on his back as he swerved. And then the old tavern came into
sight behind its new hedge of privet.
Athalie caught sight of it,--of the tall hedge, the new posts of stone
through which a private road now curved into the grounds and around a
circle before the porch; saw the new stone wall inclosing it ablaze
with nasturtiums, the brilliant loveliness of the old and long
neglected garden beyond; saw the ancient house in all its quaint and
charming simplicity bereft of bow-window, spindle, and gingerbread
fretwork,--saw the white front of it, the green shutters, the big,
thick chimneys, the sunlight sparkling on small square panes, and on
the glass of the sun parlour.