ii6 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



There are parks on both sides of the road, bounded by 

 hedges or high brick walls, and the public road has all 

 the decorum of a drive. For a mile the very ivy which is 

 destined to adorn the goodly wall and spread into forms 

 as grand as those at Godstow Nunnery is protected by 

 wire netting. Doves croon in the oaks : underneath, 

 hazel and birch flicker their new leaves over the pools of 

 bluebells. The swallows fly low over every tuft of the 

 roadside grass and glance into every bay of the wood, and 

 then out above the white road, from which they rebound 

 suddenly and turn, displaying the white rays of their 

 tails. Now and then a gateway reveals the park. The 

 ground undulates, but is ever smooth. It is of the mellow 

 gieen of late afternoon. Bronzed oak woods bound the 

 undulations, and here and there a solitary tree stands out 

 on the grass and shows its poise and complexity with the 

 added grace of new leaf. The cattle graze as on a painted 

 lav/n. A woman in a white dress goes indolent and 

 stately towards the rhododendrons and rook-haunted elms. 

 The scene appears to have its own sun, mellow and serene, 

 that knows not moorland or craggy coast or city. Only 

 a thousand years of settled continuous government, of 

 far-reaching laws, of armies and police, of roadmaking, 

 of bloody tyranny and tyranny that poisons quietly with- 

 out blows, could have wrought earth and sky into such a 

 harmony. It is a thing as remote from me here on the 

 dusty road as is the green evening sky and all its tran- 

 quillity of rose and white, and even more so because the 

 man in the manor house behind the oaks is a puzzle to 

 me, while the sky is always a mystery with which I am 

 content. At such an hour the house and lawns and trees 

 are more wonderfully fortified by the centuries of time 



