Now you have
come home--now it is all done with, that ugliness. Please, please don't
mind."
"No, no," said the stricken voice, "you don't know, you don't know,
thank God. But I swear I've paid--I swear, I swear I have. When the
others used to take their dirty drugs to make them forget, they would
dream of strange paradises, unknown heavens--but through the haze and
mist that they brought, I would remember--I would remember. The filth
and the squalor and vileness would fade and dissolve--and I would see
the sun-dial, with the yellow roses on it, warm in the sun, and smell
the clove pinks in the kitchen border, and touch the cresses by the
brook, cool and green and wet. All the sullen drums and whining flutes
would sink to silence, and I would hear the little yellow-headed cousin
of the vicar's singing in the twilight, singing, 'There is a lady, sweet
and kind' and 'Weep you no more, sad fountains' and 'Hark, hark, the
lark.' And the small painted yellow faces and the little wicked hands
and perfumed fans would vanish and I would see again the gay beauty of
the lady who hung above the mantel in the long drawing-room, the lady
who laughed across the centuries in her white muslin frock, with eyes
that matched the blue ribbon in her wind-blown curls--the lady who was
as young and lovely as England, for all the years! Oh, I would remember,
I would remember! It was twilight, and I was hurrying home through the
dusk after tennis at the rectory; there was a bell ringing quietly
somewhere and a moth flying by brushed against my face with velvet--and
I could smell the hawthorn hedge glimmering white, and see the first
star swinging low above the trees, and lower still, and brighter still,
the lights of home.
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