Betty, walking with her dog, had passed a heron
standing at the edge of a pool.
From her first discovery of them, she had been attracted by the marshes
with their English suggestion of the Roman Campagna, their broad expanse
of level land spread out to the sun and wind, the thousands of white
sheep dotted or clustered as far as eye could reach, the hues of the
marsh grass and the plants growing thick at the borders of the strips
of water. Its beauty was all its own and curiously aloof from the
softly-wooded, undulating world about it. Driving or walking along the
high road--the road the Romans had built to London town long centuries
ago--on either side of one were meadows, farms, scattered cottages, and
hop gardens, but beyond and below stretched the marsh land, golden and
grey, and always alluring one by its silence.
"I never pass it without wanting to go to it--to take solitary walks
over it, to be one of the spots on it as the sheep are. It seems as if,
lying there under the blue sky or the low grey clouds with all the world
held at bay by mere space and stillness, they must feel something we
know nothing of. I want to go and find out what it is."
This she had once said to Mount Dunstan.
Pages:
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741