The sky was not so blue, nor the sea so alive with twinkles, nor the gulls so full of jocund play now as then. But the outlines of the cliffs, the features of the shore, were the same; reef and rubble, the line of torn seaweed and pounded shells still marking the receding tide, the savour of the sea, the murmur of the waves, these were the same.
There lay a mass of fallen rock a little way off—chalk with some flints in it, and behind that there was wont of old to be a pool left by the retreating tide, in which delicate pink and green weed-lace floated, and where a few left crabs ran along the bottom.
He looked at it with a swelling heart.
He remembered that rock. A portion of it, facing the sea, was low and level, and formed a seat. On that he had sat many years ago, looking seaward, and then—not alone.
He removed his beaver. There was a holiness in the spot, sanctified by sweet, loving, pure remembrances, when life was an open door, and pulses beat with hope, and the sun was over all.
Mr. Holwood wiped his brow, and let himself down on the stone.
'Merciful Olympian powers,' said he in a low tone to himself. 'It was here—here it all began.'
He set his hat with curved brim on the pebbles at his feet. He looked for the little pool—but it was gone, filled with rounded stones. He rested his head between his palms, and his long white fingers played a tattoo on his temples.
At that moment the past was intensely vivid.
A barbed past can never be cut out of the memory; it leaves behind its fangs, its canker. It may be covered over, and forgotten, but it reasserts itself inevitably, excruciatingly, and the fester begins to ooze forth and the wound to gape.