The driimming of a meteorite travelling through space would best express it “I ... I ... I . . . riding on electricity -••I--. I. ..I--, grasping electricity , , . I , , , I . .. I . . . alone . . . all-powerful . . . under the Mendips . . . letting loose my will upon Somerset ... my factories above . . . my electricity beneath. . . . I . . . I , . , Philip Crow . . . planting my will upon the future . . . moulding men . . . dominating Nature.”
His hard grey eyes began to soften a little and his gaze, leaving Mr. Didlington's face, turned itself towards vacancy.
“I shall have a completely new sort of boat made, to explore that subterranean river,” he thought, “flatter than a barge, lighter than a canoe. I'll build an electric engine for it and I'll have myself floated under the Witch's Rock and I'll make them leave me there; and I'll have that feeling. . . . Ill make it work too, I'll have water power for my plant run by the buried river in the heart of the Mendips! I'll electrify the caves of the Druids. I'll carry electricity deeper under the earth than anyone's ever done. How slowly this old ass reads!”
But Miss Elizabeth Crow, staring sometimes into the fire and sometimes out of the big window across the lawn, thought to herself,* “I should have had an easier life if I'd put up with Johnny Geard and stayed with Father.” She remembered how she had first seen this Glastonbury ex-preacher whose mystical ideas got such a fatal hold on William Crow's mind and on William Crow's heart. She had been visiting her mother in Switzerland; and when she came back there he was—the Somersetshire revivalist, installed in Northwold Rectory! “How his black eyes gleamed as he listened to Father's morning prayers! The man was fascinating in his own way. I can't blame Father for liking him.” She could hear now her father's resonant voice repeating the great poetical chapters in Isaiah. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her sin!” And she could hear this charlatan interrupt—an unheard-of thing for a servant to do!—and beg for another chapter of sacred rhetoric.
Tilly Crow's mind was neither conjuring up large legacies nor brooding over ancient grievances. It was occupied entirely with minute problems connected with the larder, the pantry, the kitchen, in her own home at Glastonbury. There was a certain shelf in the pantry that her housemaid always kept too crowded. Tilly Crow could see now a particular stream of light in which the sun motes were wont to flicker when she entered that pantry after breakfast. This light always fell upon a suspended dishcloth, different from the rest, with a little green border, which she kept for drying her best china cups herself when they had visitors. Then her mind left the pantry and made a journey of about a dozen feet to the larder. Here she saw with abominable vividness a bluebottle fly—she maintained a special and constant warfare against these—walking along the edge of a shelf where the butter and cheese were kept Not being able to endure this image with equanimity she gave a sharp little shake of her head to drive it away and as Mr. Didlington began a long list of freeholds in the parish of Thorpe her adventurous mind took a daring leap to her Glastonbury drawing-room where it concentrated upon the faded pink ottoman wherein she kept her wools. ll must re-line the ottoman,'* she said to herself. “There's that rent that Elizabeth's cat made. It always bothers me to see it. How sentimental Elizabeth looks, staring out of the window! Oh, I hope the Canon has left her enough money to go and live by herself in some nice seaside place!” At this point in Tilly Crow's thoughts there came an image that she would have been very reluctant to put into words; but as a mere image in the
His hard grey eyes began to soften a little and his gaze, leaving Mr. Didlington's face, turned itself towards vacancy.
“I shall have a completely new sort of boat made, to explore that subterranean river,” he thought, “flatter than a barge, lighter than a canoe. I'll build an electric engine for it and I'll have myself floated under the Witch's Rock and I'll make them leave me there; and I'll have that feeling. . . . Ill make it work too, I'll have water power for my plant run by the buried river in the heart of the Mendips! I'll electrify the caves of the Druids. I'll carry electricity deeper under the earth than anyone's ever done. How slowly this old ass reads!”
But Miss Elizabeth Crow, staring sometimes into the fire and sometimes out of the big window across the lawn, thought to herself,* “I should have had an easier life if I'd put up with Johnny Geard and stayed with Father.” She remembered how she had first seen this Glastonbury ex-preacher whose mystical ideas got such a fatal hold on William Crow's mind and on William Crow's heart. She had been visiting her mother in Switzerland; and when she came back there he was—the Somersetshire revivalist, installed in Northwold Rectory! “How his black eyes gleamed as he listened to Father's morning prayers! The man was fascinating in his own way. I can't blame Father for liking him.” She could hear now her father's resonant voice repeating the great poetical chapters in Isaiah. “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received of the Lord's hands double for all her sin!” And she could hear this charlatan interrupt—an unheard-of thing for a servant to do!—and beg for another chapter of sacred rhetoric.
Tilly Crow's mind was neither conjuring up large legacies nor brooding over ancient grievances. It was occupied entirely with minute problems connected with the larder, the pantry, the kitchen, in her own home at Glastonbury. There was a certain shelf in the pantry that her housemaid always kept too crowded. Tilly Crow could see now a particular stream of light in which the sun motes were wont to flicker when she entered that pantry after breakfast. This light always fell upon a suspended dishcloth, different from the rest, with a little green border, which she kept for drying her best china cups herself when they had visitors. Then her mind left the pantry and made a journey of about a dozen feet to the larder. Here she saw with abominable vividness a bluebottle fly—she maintained a special and constant warfare against these—walking along the edge of a shelf where the butter and cheese were kept Not being able to endure this image with equanimity she gave a sharp little shake of her head to drive it away and as Mr. Didlington began a long list of freeholds in the parish of Thorpe her adventurous mind took a daring leap to her Glastonbury drawing-room where it concentrated upon the faded pink ottoman wherein she kept her wools. ll must re-line the ottoman,'* she said to herself. “There's that rent that Elizabeth's cat made. It always bothers me to see it. How sentimental Elizabeth looks, staring out of the window! Oh, I hope the Canon has left her enough money to go and live by herself in some nice seaside place!” At this point in Tilly Crow's thoughts there came an image that she would have been very reluctant to put into words; but as a mere image in the
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