io6 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



Nevertheless the town smells heartily of cattle, sheep, 

 and malt; a rookery and white orchard confront the rail- 

 way station, and in the midst of the streets the long grass 

 is rough and wet and full of jonquils round ancient 

 masonry : seen from a height the town shares the sunlight 

 equally with massy foliage and finds its place as a part 

 of Nature, and the peregrine takes it in its sweep. 



The turtle-doves have come and the oaks are budding 

 bronze in the Weald. The steep roadside banks are 

 cloaked in grass, violet, and primrose still, and robin-run- 

 in-the-hedge and stitchwort and cuckoo flowers, and the 

 white-throats talk in the hazel copses. A brooklet runs 

 in a hollow that would almost hold the Thames, and 

 crossing the road fills a rushy mill-pond deep below, and 

 makes a field all golden and shining with marigold. Just 

 beyond, a gnarled lime avenue leads to a grey many- 

 windowed house of stone within a stately park. Opposite 

 the gate an old woman sits on the grass, her feet in the 

 dust at the edge of the road; motor-cars sprinkle her and 

 turn her black to drab; she sits by the wayside eternally, 

 expecting nothing. 



Turn out of this main road, and by-ways that tempt 

 neither cyclists nor motorists go almost as straight. Here 

 is no famous house, not a single inn or church, but only 

 the unspoilt Weald, and far away, a long viaduct that 

 carries noiseless trains against the sky above hollow 

 meadows. Bluebell, primrose, anemone — anemone, prim- 

 rose, bluebell — star and cloud the lush banks and the roots 

 of the blackthorns, hazels and maples of the hedge. A 

 stream washes the roots of many oaks, and flows past flat 

 fields of dusky grass, cuckoo flower and marigold, — black 

 pines at the verge. The light smoke of a roadside fire 



