“Oh, toast and water!” replied Hadria.
Part III.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE speed was glorious. Back flashed field and hill and copse, and the dear “companionable hedgeways.” Back flew iterative telegraph posts with Herculean swing, into the Past, looped together in rhythmic movement, marking the pulses of old Time. On, with rack and roar, into the mysterious Future. One could sit at the window and watch the machinery of Time’s foundry at work; the hammers of his forge beating, beating, the wild sparks flying, the din and chaos whirling round one’s bewildered brain;—Past becoming Present, Present melting into Future, before one’s eyes. To sit and watch the whirring wheels; to think “Now it is thus and thus; presently, another slice of earth and sky awaits me”—ye Gods, it is not to be realized!
The wonder of the flying land—England, England with her gentle homesteads, her people of the gentle voices; and the unknown wonder of that other land, soon to change its exquisite dream-features for the still more thrilling, appealing marvel of reality—could it all be true? Was this the response of the genius of the ring, the magic ring that we call will? And would the complaisant genius always appear and obey one’s behests, in this strange fashion?
Thoughts ran on rhythmically, in the steady, flashing movement through verdant England. The Real! that was the truly exquisite, the truly great, the true realm of the imagination! What imagination was ever born to conceive or compass it?
A rattle under a bridge, a roar through a tunnel, and on again, through Kentish orchards. A time of blossoming. Disjointed, delicious impressions followed one another in swift succession, often superficially incoherent, but threaded deep, in the stirred consciousness, on a silver cord:—the unity of the creation was as obvious as its multiplicity.
Images of the Past joined hands with visions of the Future. In these sweet green meadows, men had toiled, as thralls, but a few lifetimes ago, and they had gathered together, as Englishmen do, first to protest and reasonably demand, and then to buy their freedom with their lives. Their countrywoman sent a message of thanksgiving, backward through the centuries, to these stout champions of the land’s best heritage, and breathed an aspiration to be worthy of the kinship that she claimed.