CHAPTER XIV 



AN OLD HOUSE AND A BOOK WILTSHIRE 



The country is deserted in the rain, and I have the 

 world to myself, a world of frenzied rain among the elms 

 of the lowland, an avenue of elms up to a great house, 

 hidden sheep tinkling and bleating, shepherds muffled, 

 huge slopes of grass and pearled clover above a coombe 

 where a grey heron sails and clanks alone, a farm desolate 

 among elder and ash at the highest part of the hills, and 

 then miles of pathless pasture and stubble descending past 

 an old camp and a tumulus to the submerged vale, where 

 yellow elms tremble about a church tower, a cluster of 

 red cottages and bowed yellow dahlias and chrysanthe- 

 mums, and a house standing aloof. This house is some 

 way from the Downs themselves, but just at the foot of a 

 lesser slope, a fair golden hill — golden with cowslips in 

 May — that rises on one side with a swift, short ascent 

 and then shoots forward, as if with the impetus, almost 

 level until, after crowning itself with beeches, it descends 

 in a lazy curve to a field, roughened by the foundations 

 of a vanished house, at one corner of which the chimneys 

 join with another group of elms in the haze of rain. 



Hanging from the wall in rags, too wet even to flap, 

 are the remains of an auctioneer's announcement of a sale 

 at the house behind. Mahogany — oak chests — certain 

 ounces of silver — two thousand books — portraits and 

 landscapes and pictures of horses and game — of all these 

 and how much else has the red house been disem- 



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