This trouble sent him out of doors and away over the Downs on his horse. Fiercely he hurled himself into his fields and lanes and farms, getting up sometimes very early and riding out to some distant place, thinking always, as he rode, of Rachel and what he was to do.
His devotion for the country round Seddon, a devotion that had stirred his heart since his first conscious sight of the outside world, nobly now rewarded him. The land seemed to understand that he was suffering, and drew closer to him and watched him with gentle and loving eyes, and soothed his soul.
Before Christmas there came some sharp, frosty mornings; he would go out very early and would see, first, the garden, the lawn crisp and white, the grey jagged wall that divided his land from the sweeping Downs, the grey house behind him so square and solid and comfortable. At the end of the garden away from the road there was an old iron gate with stone pillars, and upon these pillars sat old stone gryphons. These gryphons had been there since long ago and he liked the friendliness of their faces, the strength of their crouching bodies and the way that they would look out so patiently, over a great expanse of fields and hedges, until their gaze rested on the white chalk hollows in the rising hills away behind Lewes.
Roddy, standing with the Downs so immediately behind him and this green spread of land in front of him, was always conscious of happiness. Here he was at home. He knew those fields, the streams that ran through them, the farmers, the labourers, the horses and dogs that lived upon them. No fear here that "one of those clever fellers" would wonder at his stupidity, no sudden "letting you down" or "showing you up." Behind him was his house, before him the land that he had always known; here he was safe.
He had, too, beyond this, some unformulated recognition of a service and a worship that here he was called on to pay. He had always declared that he could understand those Johnnies who worshipped the sun and the earth. "Damn it all—there's something to catch on to there."—He did not, in his heart, believe in all this civilization, this preserving of the sick and tending of the maimed and halt. "You've got to clear out if you're broken up" was his opinion. "If you can't do your bit, can't see or smell or anything, you're just in the way."—What he meant was that the halt and maimed were simply insults to the vigour and vitality of his fields and sky.
But indeed, what would he have done during these days had he not had his riding, farms to visit, shepherds and farmers for company? At first Rachel had ridden with him and they had been closer together during those rides than at any other time, but lately she had refused, on one excuse or another, to come with him.
He went a good deal now to other houses, but it was awkward because Rachel would not come with him. She asked people to Seddon and was charming when they came, but she would not often go out with him when the country people invited them.
Since the Nita Raseley episode he had thought that she might show jealousy did he ride and drive with some girl in the country. He hoped that she would be jealous, that would have filled him with tingling happiness—but no, she seemed to be glad that he should find someone who could take her place.
Over all these things he brooded and brooded. He would look at his old friendly gryphons and feel, in some dumb confused way, that they were being insulted.—"Poor old beggars—I bet she doesn't know they're there"—And through all of this, he loved her more and more, and was, daily, more wretched and unhappy.