CHAPTER II 



THE END OF WINTER SUFFOLK HAMPSHIRE 



SUFFOLK. 



There are three sounds in the wood this morning — 



the sound of the waves that has not died away since the 



sea carried off church and cottage and cliff and the other 



half of what was once an inland wood; the sound of 



rees, a multitudinous frenzied sound, of rustling dead 



ik-leaves still on the bough, of others tripping along the 



>ath like mice, or winding up in sudden spirals and falling 



igain, of dead boughs grating and grinding, of pliant 



young branches lashing, of finest twigs and fir needles 



sighing, of leaf and branch and trunk booming like one; 



and through these sounds, the song of a thrush. Rain 



falls and, for a moment only, the dyked marshland below 



and beyond the wood is pale and luminous with its flooded 



pools, the sails of windmills climb and plunge, the pale 



sea is barred with swathes of foam, and on the whistling 



sands the tall white waves vaunt, lean forward, topple 



and lie quivering. But the rain increases : the sound and 



the mist of it make a wall about the world, except the 



world in the brain and except the thrush's song which, 



so bright and clear, has a kind of humanity in it by 



contrast with the huge bulk of the noises of sea and wood. 



Rain and wind cease together, and here on the short 



grass at the cliff's edge is a strange birth — a gently convex 



fungus about two inches broad, the central boss of it 



15 



