POINTS OF VIEW.
If you are the sort of person who likes detail and accuracy, who can always tell where the north is even in a strange house (there are people like this; I met one the other day), and—this generally goes with it—are good at geography, you had better skip this article. It might annoy you. But if you like Debussy, and like watching the sun shine through a mist, and have no bump of locality, and hate being shown over ruins, you are the sort of person I am, and you will sympathise with me.
My trouble is this. Whenever I go to stay in the country I am always sooner or later taken a walk, generally a long one, to the highest hill they happen to have, and there I am shown a view. Not that I would mind if they left it at that, but they don't. One's host generally seems to have an absurd pride in some distant church, or gap in a hill "through which on fine days you can see the sea;" but even if he hasn't he will always—if you happen to be in the south of England—point out a patch of trees like a small piece of black sticking-plaster and tell you that that is Chanctonbury Ring. I never escape Chanctonbury Ring, though I have often gone far, even refused invitations, to avoid it. Once in Yorkshire—but nobody ever will believe that story, though I never pretended it was the same Ring. What I said was that there may be two of the same name, or even more: like Richmond, for instance.
"Do you see that hill over there?" he begins. I look where he is pointing and see three. "No, not that one," and he comes behind me and points over my shoulder. "Follow my finger," he says, and I follow it and see a perfectly flat field. But he has to be humoured, and anyhow there is lunch to be thought of.
"Yes, yes, I see," I reply hastily, with a touch of "How stupid of me!" in my voice.
"Well, carry your eye along the valley on its left, over the white house"—this is the only place where there is no white house for miles—"and along the strip of road. See the strip of road?" ("See the strip of road!" I've been lost in a bog for ages.) "Well, right up as far as you can see, following that road and a little to the right, do you see a patch of trees?"
When he says "patch of trees," I know.
"Chanctonbury Ring," I say brightly. At any rate, that's finished.
"Yes; how did you know?" he asks disappointedly.
Brute that I am! Why didn't I let him say it?
Only once, as far as I can remember, was I wrong. It was in the Cotswolds and we were in a garden, on the side of a hill. From the terrace outside the house was a magnificent view. My host strolled up. "Pity it's so misty," he said. (I had just been thinking how lovely it looked.) "On a fine day, you know, we can see——"
"Not Chanctonbury Ring?" I said pleadingly.
He looked puzzled.
"Tewkesbury,", he said rather coldly, and soon afterwards strolled away again.
There are only a very few people whose sympathy one feels sure of when one confides troubles to them such as this Ring-finding one of mine. Of the very few I feel surest of my Uncle Edward, so I thought I would tell him about it when I went to stay with him a little while ago.
"By the by," I said, as we laboured breathlessly up a hill—he lives in Surrey—"have you ever noticed ... when you're staying with people anywhere in the South of England ... and they take you for a walk ... they always, sooner or later——"
"Just wait a minute," he said as we reached the top. "Ah yes, I thought you could"—he was smiling happily at something. "I wanted to show you before we went on—just over there——" I waited. Somehow the words seemed familiar. "See that dark patch right over there, on the furthest hill? Well, that's Chanctonbury Ring."
"Yes, you can only see it on a fine day," I replied bitterly.