CHAPTER XXI
ON THE MOORLAND
Trix was walking over the moorland. The Duchessa and Miss Tibbutt had departed to what promised to be an exceedingly dull garden party some five miles distant. It had been decreed that it was entirely unnecessary to inflict the same probable dulness on Trix, therefore she had been left to freedom and her own devices for the afternoon.
Trix was playing the game of “I remember.” It can be a quite extraordinarily fascinating game, or an exceedingly painful one. Trix was finding it extraordinarily fascinating. It was so gorgeously delightful to find that nothing had shrunk, nothing lessened in beauty or mystery. A larch copse was every bit as much a haunt of the Little People as formerly; the moss every bit as much a cool green carpet for their tripping feet. A few belated foxglove stems added to the old-time enchantment of the place. Even a little stream rippling through the wood, was a veritable stream, and not merely a watery ditch, as it might quite well have proved. Then there was the view from the gate, through a frame of beech trees out towards the sea. It was still as entrancing an ocean, sun-flecked and radiant. There were still as infinite possibilities in the unknown Beyond, could one have chartered a white-winged boat, and have sailed to where land and water meet. There was a pond, too, surrounded by blackberry bushes and great spear-like rushes, perhaps not quite the enormous lake of one’s childhood, but a reasonably large pond enough, and there were still the blackberry bushes and the spear-like rushes. And, finally, there was the moorland, glowing with more radiant crimson lakes and madders than the most wonderful paint box ever held, and stretching up and down, and up again, till it melted in far away purples and lavenders.
Trix’s heart sang in accord with the laughing sun-kissed earth around her. It was all so gorgeous, so free and untrammelled. She lay upon the hot springy heather, and crushed the tiny purple flowers of the wild thyme between her fingers, raising the bruised petals to her face to drink in their strong sweet scent.
From far off she could hear the tinkle of a goat bell, and the occasional short bark of a sheep dog. All else was silence, save for the humming of the bees above the heather. Tiny insects floated in the still air, looking like specks of thistle-down as the sun caught and silvered their minute wings. Little blue butterflies flitted hither and thither like radiant animated flowers.
For a long time Trix sat very still, body and soul bathed in the beauty around her. At last she got to her feet, and made her way across the heather, ignoring the small beaten tracks despite the prickliness of her chosen route.
After some half-hour’s walking she came to a stone wall bordering a hilly field, a low wall, a battered wall, where tiny ferns grew in the crevices, and the stones themselves were patched with orange-coloured lichen.
Trix climbed the wall, and walked across the soft grass. A good way to the right was a fence, and beyond the fence a wood. Trix made her way slowly towards it. Thistles grew among the grass,—carding thistles, and thistles with small drooping heads. She looked at them idly as she walked. Suddenly a slight sound behind her made her turn, and with the turning her heart leapt to her throat.