PART TWO
THE LAND OF TOPSY TURVY
CHAPTER I
THE GREY HOUSE
You come on it unexpectedly, round a little spur in the side of the valley, which screens it from view. It stands below you as you first see it, not a big house, not a little one, but just comfortable. It seems in keeping with the gardens, the tennis courts, the orchards which lie around it in a hap-hazard sort of manner, as if they had just grown there years and years ago and had been too lazy to move ever since. Peace is the keynote of the whole picture—the peace and contentment of sleepy unwoken England.
Down in the valley below, the river, brown and swollen, carries on its bosom the flotsam and jetsam of its pilgrimage through the country. Now and then a great branch goes bobbing by, only to come to grief in the shallows round the corner—the shallows where the noise of the water on the rounded stones lulls one to sleep at night, and sounds a ceaseless reveille each morning. On the other side of the water the woods stretch down close to the bank, though the upper slopes of the hills are bare, and bathed in the golden light of the dying winter sun. Slowly the dark shadow line creeps up—creeps up to meet the shepherd coming home with his flock. Faint, but crisp, the barks of his dog, prancing excitedly round him, strike on one's ears, and then of a sudden—silence. They have entered the purple country; they have left the golden land, and the dog trots soberly at his master's heels. One last peak alone remains, dipped in flaming yellow, and then that too is touched by the finger of oncoming night. For a few moments it survives, a flicker of fire on its rugged tip, and then—the end; like a grim black sentinel it stands gloomy and sinister against the evening sky.
The shepherd is out of sight amongst the trees; the purple is changing to grey, the grey to black; there is no movement saving only the tireless swish of the river....
To the man leaning over the gate the scene was familiar—but familiarity had not robbed it of its charm. Involuntarily his mind went back to the days before the Madness came—to the days when others had stood beside him watching those same darkening hills, with the smoke of their pipes curling gently away in the still air. Back from a day's shooting, back from an afternoon on the river, and a rest at the top of the hill before going in to tea in the house below. So had he stood countless times in the past—with those others....
The Rabbit, with a gun under his arm, and his stubby briar glowing red in the paling light. The Rabbit, with his old shooting-coat, with the yarn of the one woodcock he nearly got, with his cheery laugh. But they never found anything of him—an eight-inch shell is at any rate merciful.
Torps—the naval candidate: one of the worst and most gallant riders that ever threw a leg across a horse. Somewhere in the depths of the Pacific, with the great heaving combers as his grave, he lies peacefully; and as for a little while he had gasped and struggled while hundreds of others gasped and struggled near him—perhaps he, too, had seen the hills opposite once again even as the Last Fence loomed in front and the whispered Kismet came from his lips....