He nodded. “It’s all in the clouds at present. At least these whifflers of Cloud-Cuckoo-City think it is. But I don’t. They don’t see the Star of John Baltazar in the ascendant. I do. My dear, there’s not an adverse influence in all the bag of planetary tricks!”
If he could have seen and appreciated what was happening some forty miles off he might have observed in a certain conjunction of planets, to wit, Venus and Mars, something that would have modified his optimistic prognostication.
CHAPTER XIX
THERE they were in a punt on one of the silent upper reaches of the Thames above Moulsford; Venus in white serge, with a blue veil around hat and throat, reclining gracefully on the cushions, and Mars in white flannels standing, punt-pole in hand. It was one of those days when Spring, in exuberant mood, throws off her shyness and masquerades in the gorgeousness of Summer. The noontide vapours quivered over the sun-baked meadow beyond the tow-path, and the shadows beneath the willows on the opposite bank loomed black and cool. The punt was proceeding up a patch of blazing river, and the drops from the pole sparkled like diamonds. Just ahead there was a bend lapped in the violent shade of overhanging elms.
“This is the nearest thing to Heaven,” said Lady Edna.
“Wait till we tie up under the trees and it’ll be Heaven itself,” said Godfrey.
Even in the boating times of peace this stretch was rarely frequented, being too far both for the London crowd whose general limit was Goring, and for the Oxford town excursionist who seldom pushed below Wallingford. Also the cognoscenti declared it an uninteresting bit of river, dull and flat, devoid of the unspeakable charm of Clevedon and Pangbourne, and therefore unworthy of especial consideration. Still, the River is the River. Talk to an Englishman of the River, and he will not think of the Severn or the Wye, or the historic highway between London Bridge and the sea, but of those few miles of England’s fairy-stream, the beloved haunts of beauty and gentleness and love and laughter, where all the cares of the world are soothed into dreamful ease and the vague passions and aspirations of youth are transformed into magical definition. To the Londoner, at any rate, it is as sacred as Westminster Abbey. So the stretches of loveliness pronounced dull by the superior, were never neglected, and even this remote section, on Sundays especially, had its sparse devotees. But now, in war-time, not a blade or oar or paddle, not a glistening punt-pole disturbed the sweet stillness of the waters. Only once, since they had left the boat-house, had a barge passed them; a barge gay as to its poop with yellow and red, a thin spiral of smoke from its cabin funnel proclaiming the cooking of the Sunday dinner, while the barge-folk lounged on deck, their eyes and attitudes suggestive of those who were already overfed on lotus, and one small, freckled sunwraith of a child flitted along the tow-path beside the mild old horse.
But half an hour had passed since then. The very meadows no longer showed the once familiar pairs of Sunday lovers. Were it not for the pleasant cows, it would have been a scene of lovely desolation.
“There,” said Godfrey, shipping the pole, and guiding the punt by the aid of the branches to a mooring. “Allow me to introduce you to Heaven.”
She kissed her hand to the greenery and the dark water and laughed lightly. “How d’ye do, Heaven?”