CHAPTER XXII.
COMPTON RENNEL.
When I awoke, the pleasant rustle of the green foliage above me and the bright gleams of sunlight that flashed through the waving branches, with the songs of the birds that twittered from hedge to tree, excited a momentary astonishment; but the booming of the adjacent sea, as it rolled on the shelving beach, recalled all the adventures of the last night, and the complete desolation of my position. I clambered up a sloping bank, and for a time lay there under the shady chesnut-trees, gazing on the sunlit sea, and idly listening to the long rolling billows that broke in white foam and in endless succession on the sandy shore, abandoning myself "to the supreme happiness of doing nothing;" but soon came bitter reflections, and with them the necessity for action.
Seaward I saw a long white line of foam. That was the Sandridge; a few black stumps appeared above its snowy line. These were the piles whereon the beacon had stood. I shuddered and turned away, resolving to be wary of whom I trusted now, for already I had been (as they say in Australia) twice bound and free within a week—bound by the aggression of others, and free by my own energy.
As I proceeded and quitted the coppice for a highway that lay between thick green hedgerows, the influence of the beautiful morning and the fertility of the scenery raised my spirit. I was in a strange place, true—and without a penny; yet, boylike, the joyous novelty of perfect freedom—the memory of dangers dared and escaped (for I might have been left to perish amid the flames of the beacon), made me thankful and lighthearted, as I walked towards the red-brick English town, on the old grey Norman church tower of which the morning sun shone merrily.
Passing one or two manor-houses of quaint aspect, with oriel windows and clustered chimnies, that stood in lawns as flat and green as a billiard table; and by the wayside, a few rustic cottages, buried under arbours of honeysuckle and woodbine, a road that was so thickly arched over by oak, chesnut and plum trees in full foliage, as to resemble a leafy tunnel, brought me to the town, among the red-brick and square modern houses of which were many gable-ended, galleried and quaint old mansions of the Elizabethan age.
I paused at the head of the principal street, for I felt myself without friends, and what was still worse, without money. The morning seemed early, for few persons were yet abroad, and the almost grassy vista of the street, which was paved with little round pebbles, was silent and empty. Close by me were the parish stocks, and thereon I sat for a time to reflect on my loneliness. A man passed me, a bumpkin going afield. He had a pitchfork on his shoulder, and his face expressed that well-fed air of content which is as peculiar to England as his little round hat, his canvass frock, and hobnailed shoes.
"Good morning, measter," said he, passing thoughtlessly on.
"What town is this?" I asked.
"Where be you come from, not to ha' heerd o' Compton Rennel afore, eh? The best market town in any o' the Ridings o' Yorkshire," he replied, and passed on, singing merrily.