Only a breath away the English fields were quietly lying safe behind their hedges and the English sky changed from blue to green and from green to mother-of-pearl, and from mother-of-pearl to ivory, and stars stabbed, like silver nails, the great canopy of heaven, and the Cathedral bells rang peal after peal above the slowly lighting town.
Brandon was conscious of little of this as he moved on. Even the thought of Morris had faded from him. He could not think consecutively. His mind was broken up like a mirror that had been smashed into a thousand pieces. He was most truly in a dream. Soon he would wake up, out of this noise, away from these cries and lights, and would find it all as he had for so many years known it. He would be sitting in his drawing-room, his legs stretched out, his wife and daughter near to him, the rumble of the organ coming through the wall to them, thinking perhaps of to-morrow's duties, the town quiet all around them, friends and well-wishers everywhere, no terrible pain in his head, happily arranging how everything should be... happy...happy.... Ah! how happy that real life was! When he awoke from his dream he would realise that and thank God for it. When he awoke.... He stumbled over something, and looking up realised that he was in a very crowded part of the Fair, a fire was blazing somewhere near, gas-jets, although the evening was bright and clear, were naming, screams and cries seemed to make the very sky rock above his head.
Where was he? What was he doing here? Why had he come? He would go home. He turned.
He turned to face the fire that leapt close at his heel. It was burning at the back of a caravan, in a dark cul-de-sac away from the main thoroughfare; to its blazing light the bare boards and ugly plankings of the booth, splashed here and there with torn paper that rustled a little in the evening breeze, were all that offered themselves. Near by a horse, untethered, was quietly nosing at the trodden soil.
Behind the caravan the field ran down to a ditch and thick hedging.
Brandon stared at the fire as though absorbed by its light. What did he see there? Visions perhaps? Did he see the Cathedral, the Precincts, the quiet circle of demure old houses, his own door, his own bedroom? Did he see his wife moving hurriedly about the room, opening drawers and shutting them, pausing for a moment to listen, then coming out, closing the door, listening again, then stepping downstairs, pausing for a moment in the hall to lay something on the table, then stepping out into the green wavering evening light? Or did the flames make pictures for him of the deserted railway-station, the long platform, lit only by one lamp, two figures meeting, exchanging almost no word, pacing for a little in silence the dreary spaces, stepping back as the London express rolled in--such a safe night to choose for escape--then burying themselves in it like rabbits in their burrow?
Did his vision lead him back to the deserted house, silent save for its ticking clocks, black in that ring of lights and bells and shouting voices?
Or was he conscious only of the warmth and the life of the fire, of some sudden companionship with the woman bending over it to stir the sticks and lift some pot from the heart of the flame? He was feeling, perhaps, a sudden peace here and a silence, and was aware of the stars breaking into beauty one by one above his head.
But his peace, if for a moment he had found it, was soon interrupted. A voice that he knew came across to him from the other side of the fire.
"Why, Archdeacon, who would have thought to find you here?"