II
About him in the turf the grasshoppers kept up their accursed zig-a- zig. Little cads! At least they might be gentlemen enough not to crack their jokes just now.
The thought tickled him. He began to smile. Plucking a grass-blade, he smote one of his annoyers across the tail. It hopped gloriously. The boy laughed, and rose to his feet, his heart rising with him.
After all he had done his best. Now he must get to Lewes and make his report.
He started.
About him the turf was bare and brown. Here a patch of tall thistles, hoary-crowned, stood out among grey bents. There a clump of gorse and bramble darkened the turf.
Before him a sea of long smooth hills, billow behind billow, rolled in on him out of Infinity. It seemed to him that a giant wind had crept beneath the carpet of green and lifted it. Smooth as water it flowed down to the sea on every side. There were no trees, no hedges, no habitations. It was the loneliest land he had ever seen, and one of the loveliest. Here Earth, the Woman, rounded and beautiful, reclined at her ease before him, naked as God had made her. How different she was from that savagely shaggy man-land in the North whence he sprang! But for a haystack like a hive on a far ridge, a fold in a hollow, and the hillsides patched here and there with plough, it might have been an uninhabited land.
Here he was alone with the Eternal.
A poet to the heart, the boy's soul rose within him. For the moment he forgot his troubles. He was walking on the back of the world, his head in heaven. Beneath him rose the sea, sheer as a wall. The sight of it, dropped from heaven, as it seemed, filled him with awe. It was so near, and yet so far.
The breeze had fallen; all was still. He could hear the rustle of the tide, and the chuckle of jackdaws. Overhead a raven flapped by with slow-skewing head.
Horror of loneliness swept upon the boy. He shrank into his body. The windows of his spirit shut with a bang. Night came down.
All was darkness, mortality, and fear.
Somewhere at the bottom of the coombe beneath lay that ring of still things. Behind rose the blackened skeleton of the signal-station—and heaven knew what inside! He glanced back fearfully. They weren't after him—yet.
He took to his heels, and ran, screaming.
A familiar face greeted him. In a flash he recognised it—a meadow- brown come all the way from Northumberland to comfort him. That was beautiful of the meadow-brown, it was Christian of the meadow-brown, seeing the war to the death that he and Gwen had waged against it at home.
The butterfly gave its message to the boy's heart and settling on a blue flower, began to sip leisurely. Dash it!—the meadow-brown wasn't afraid. Need he be?
His soul took charge again with a smile.