He felt as though, with a great sweeping stroke of his arm, all the cobwebs would be brushed away and he would be free. He rehearsed to himself some of the things that he would say: “You must see, dear, that the family don’t like me. They’re jealous of me. Much better that we go away for a year or two—right away—and allow them to get used to the idea. Then we can come back.”
But what would she say about Anna? Did she know anything about men, their lives and affairs? Would her fine picture of him be dimmed? He hoped a little that it would. He wanted simply to love her, that she should understand him and that he should understand her, and then they two together (the world, Garth, the Trenchards blown to the wind) should—
“That’s Tredden Cove, that dip beyond the wood,” said Katherine. “We used to go there—”
Yes, he was frightened. He felt as though this afternoon would be the crisis of his life. (There had been already a great many crises in his life.) He was impatient; he wanted to begin, now, in the waggonette. He could imagine turning to her, saying: “Katie, darling, I want to tell you—”
He was conscious that Lady Seddon was watching him. “Jolly day, isn’t it?” he said. He thought to himself. “She hates me as the others do.”
They had come to the Cross-Roads. Jacob put on the drag, and they began, very slowly, to creak down a precipitous hill. The fantastic element in the affair that Philip had been expecting as a kind of reply to his own sense of his personal adventure seemed to begin with this hill. It resembled no ordinary hill; it plunged down with a sudden curve that seemed to defy the wheels of any carriage; on their right the bank broke sheer away far down to one of the Rafiel four valleys, vivid green now with tufted trees. There was no fence nor wall, and one slip of the wheels would have hurled the carriage over. At a turn of the road a cluster of white cottages, forming one figure together as though they had been a great stone flung from the hill-top by some giant, showed in the valley’s cup. At his sense of that remoteness, of that lifting wildness of the rising hills, at the beauty of the green and grey and silver and white, he could not restrain a cry.
Katherine laughed. “That’s Blotch End,” she said. “One turn and we’re at the bottom.” The carriage wheeled round, crossed a brown bridge and had started down the road to Rafiel.... On one side of the road was a stream that, hurrying down from the valley, hastened past them to the sea; on the other side of them a wooded hill, with trees like sentinels against the sky—then the village street began, ugly at first, as are the streets of so many Glebeshire villages, the straight, uniform houses, with their grey slate roofs, now and then hideous-coloured glass over the doorways, and, ugliest of all, the Methodist chapel with ‘1870’ in white stone over the door. But even with such a street as this Rafiel could do something: the valley stream, hidden sometimes by houses, revealed itself suddenly in chuckling, leaping vistas. Before the houses there were little gardens, thick now with daffodils and primroses and hyacinths: through the deep mouth of the forge fires flamed, and a sudden curve of the street brought a bridge, a view of the harbour and a vision of little houses rising, tier on tier, against the rock, as though desperately they were climbing to avoid some flood. This contrast of the wild place itself, with the ugly patches of civilisation that had presented themselves first, was like the voice of the place chuckling at its visitors’ surprise.
First the row of villas, the tailor’s shop with a pattern picture in the window, the sweet shop, the ironmonger’s—now this sudden huddle of twisted buildings, wildly climbing to the very sky, a high, rugged peak guarding the little bay, two streams tossing themselves madly over the harbour ridges, the boats of the fleet rocking as though dancing to some mysterious measure, a flurry of gulls, grey and white, flashing, wheeling, like waves and foam against the sky, the screaming of the birds, the distant thud of the sea ... this was Rafiel.
They left the carriage and turned to go back to the schools, where the tea had already begun. Katherine slipped her arm into Philip’s: he knew that she was waiting for him to speak about the place, and he knew, too, that she was not expecting his praise as confidently as she would have expected it three weeks ago. A little of her great trust in him was shadowed by her surprise that he had not surrendered to Glebeshire more completely. Now he could tell her that it was to the Trenchards and not to Glebeshire that he had refused to surrender.
She could not tell, of course, that all his attention now was fixed on his determination to tell her everything as soon as he was alone. Walking with him up the road was that secret figure who attends us all—the fine, cherished personality whom we know ourselves to be.