which stand between the 400-foot Valhalla to the east, and the Valkyries Rock to the west. Around me lie open the silver-grey leaves of the sand-rose, the yellow flowers spread to thevitalising rays of the sun. Plant life in this light soil is small; buttercups of stunted growth cover bleached bones of rabbits and minute snail-shells; here is the lowly pimpernel, the little towers of the centaury with its pink bells, heart’s-ease with diminutive faces of pansies, their tame rich cousins of civilised gardens. Here all plant life exists in a tangle of uttermost poverty, finding the barest of livelihood in the loose sandy soil with its food formed of dead plants and insects and shell-life.
The pride and beauty of this incult sward is the burnet rose, petals of curled ivory among the low briars, their servants. A blue butterfly goes by, pausing to sip honey from one; then comes a small heath, aimless in flight with the breeze but with one purpose: to be achieved before those brown sails are enfeebled by age, counting its days as man reckons decades. So common, the small heath butterfly, and yet so wonderful as it flickers and dabbles over the rock-roses and the empty skulls of rabbits, finding joy in the sun, and hope in the sudden tremendous sight of another like itself, but more than itself, for joining with this other self it will enter into immortality, in the pearls that are its eggs; and duty done, find rest in that which bore it.
A cloud covers the sun. Others follow, beyond the point of the headland. These are not cumulus, but nimbus. They have ragged edges, truant vapour from the mass. A wind frets the sea, there are still sparkles, but no longer calm. The dance of small winged life is coming to its end, and the ivory shells of the burnet roses already shrinking smaller, closing their petals.
Rain was falling in the afternoon, colour was gone with the sun. It was unbearably lonely in the cottage; the postman brought no further letter; and after two days of almost solitary confinement to the wet lanes and the dark cottage Phillip counted his money, five shillings and fourpence; and having asked the village carpenter to make him a simple dresser for the cups, plates, and saucers, a kitchen table for downstairs and two smaller tables, one for each bedroom, to bear basin and ewer, he locked the door and set out across Dartmoor to the north coast of Devon, meaning to call on his Aunt Theodora on his way to Cambridge. Hatless, wearing his old trench-coat over tweed jacket, grey flannel trousers with socks and brogue shoes, he thought to reach Cambridge by early evening.
The journey across Dartmoor took longer than he had worked out, owing to continuously twisting narrow roads. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still overcast. It was beginning to rain again as he reached Lynmouth, after averaging 28 m.p.h. for theeighty odd miles. He skidded and slid with his feet as balancers down the steep hill above the forest glooms of the river roaring in its chasm far below. His aunt had two old ladies in her cottage. One was peering round the kitchen door when she let him in. Both were dresssed in black, mid-Victorian clothes, with jet-beaded bodices like armour up to their chins. And so tiny! Seeming to be twins, each was no more than five feet high, with identically coiled white hair and cameo brooches pinned at the throat. One curtsied to him, the other followed her sister. He heard a strange story about them, while Aunt Dora cooked breakfast for him.
“Let me see, you were here last in, I think, the autumn of 1916, Boy? How the time flies! It seems like last year, only! Yes, of course, you were fighting at Passchendaele in 1917, were you not? It was then that someone came from London, and rented a furnished cottage next to mine, with two old ladies in her care. We became acquainted, as neighbours do, without becoming intimate friends, for we had no tastes in common; and a fortnight before Christmas she said she
The pride and beauty of this incult sward is the burnet rose, petals of curled ivory among the low briars, their servants. A blue butterfly goes by, pausing to sip honey from one; then comes a small heath, aimless in flight with the breeze but with one purpose: to be achieved before those brown sails are enfeebled by age, counting its days as man reckons decades. So common, the small heath butterfly, and yet so wonderful as it flickers and dabbles over the rock-roses and the empty skulls of rabbits, finding joy in the sun, and hope in the sudden tremendous sight of another like itself, but more than itself, for joining with this other self it will enter into immortality, in the pearls that are its eggs; and duty done, find rest in that which bore it.
A cloud covers the sun. Others follow, beyond the point of the headland. These are not cumulus, but nimbus. They have ragged edges, truant vapour from the mass. A wind frets the sea, there are still sparkles, but no longer calm. The dance of small winged life is coming to its end, and the ivory shells of the burnet roses already shrinking smaller, closing their petals.
Rain was falling in the afternoon, colour was gone with the sun. It was unbearably lonely in the cottage; the postman brought no further letter; and after two days of almost solitary confinement to the wet lanes and the dark cottage Phillip counted his money, five shillings and fourpence; and having asked the village carpenter to make him a simple dresser for the cups, plates, and saucers, a kitchen table for downstairs and two smaller tables, one for each bedroom, to bear basin and ewer, he locked the door and set out across Dartmoor to the north coast of Devon, meaning to call on his Aunt Theodora on his way to Cambridge. Hatless, wearing his old trench-coat over tweed jacket, grey flannel trousers with socks and brogue shoes, he thought to reach Cambridge by early evening.
The journey across Dartmoor took longer than he had worked out, owing to continuously twisting narrow roads. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still overcast. It was beginning to rain again as he reached Lynmouth, after averaging 28 m.p.h. for theeighty odd miles. He skidded and slid with his feet as balancers down the steep hill above the forest glooms of the river roaring in its chasm far below. His aunt had two old ladies in her cottage. One was peering round the kitchen door when she let him in. Both were dresssed in black, mid-Victorian clothes, with jet-beaded bodices like armour up to their chins. And so tiny! Seeming to be twins, each was no more than five feet high, with identically coiled white hair and cameo brooches pinned at the throat. One curtsied to him, the other followed her sister. He heard a strange story about them, while Aunt Dora cooked breakfast for him.
“Let me see, you were here last in, I think, the autumn of 1916, Boy? How the time flies! It seems like last year, only! Yes, of course, you were fighting at Passchendaele in 1917, were you not? It was then that someone came from London, and rented a furnished cottage next to mine, with two old ladies in her care. We became acquainted, as neighbours do, without becoming intimate friends, for we had no tastes in common; and a fortnight before Christmas she said she
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