100 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



they seem spies in the unguarded by-ways. But there 

 are also days — and spring and summer days, too — when 

 a quiet horror thicks and stills the air outside London. 



The ridges of trees high in the mist are very grim. 

 The isolated trees stand cloaked in conspiracies here and 

 there about the fields. The houses, even whole villages, 

 are translated into terms of unreality as if they were 

 carved in air and could not be touched; they are empty 

 and mournful as skulls or churches. There is no life 

 visible; for the ploughmen and the cattle are figures of 

 light dream. All is soft and grey. The land has drunken 

 the opiate mist and is passing slowly and unreluctantly 

 into perpetual sleep. Trees and houses are drowsed 

 beyond awakening or farewell. The mind also is infected, 

 and gains a sort of ease from the thought that an eternal 

 and universal rest is at hand without any cry or any pain. 



SUSSEX. 



The road skirts the marshland, the stream and the 

 town, and goes through a gap in the Downs towards 

 another range and more elms and farms at its feet. Stately 

 walks the carter's boy with his perpendicular brass-bound 

 whip, alongside four waggon-horses, while the carter rides. 

 It is a pleasant thing to see them going to their work in 

 the early gold of the morning, fresh, silent, their horses 

 jingling, down the firm road. If they were leading their 

 team to yoke them to the chariot of the sun they could 

 not be more noble. They are the first men I have seen 

 this morning, and truly they create for a little while the 

 illusion that they are going to guide the world and that 

 all will be well in the golden freshness under the blue. 





