beautiful, hazy, light sleep. I dreamt I was on Belmotte Tower at
sunrise and all around me was a great golden lake, stretching as far as I could see. There was nothing of the castle left at all, but I didn't seem to mind in the least.
While I was getting breakfast, Stephen told me that he wouldn't be in to lunch, as he usually is on Saturdays, because he was going to London to sit for Mrs. Fox-Cotton again.
"She wants to start work the very first thing tomorrow," he explained,
"so I'm to go up today and sleep the night there."
I asked if he had anything to pack his clothes in and he showed me a
moth-eaten carpet-bag that had belonged to his Mother.
"Gracious, you can't use that," I told him.
"I'll lend you my attache case--it's big enough."
"It'll be that, all right," he said, grinning. I found he was only taking his nightshirt, his safety-razor, a toothbrush and a comb.
"Couldn't you buy yourself a dressing-gown, Stephen -out of the five guineas you earned last time ?"
He said he had other things to do with that.
"Well, out of your wages, then. There's no need to hand them over now we have two hundred pounds."
But he said he couldn't make any change without discussing it with
Topaz.
"Maybe she'll be counting on me. And two hundred pounds won't last for ever. Don't you go feeling rich, it isn't safe."
In the end he agreed to think about getting a dressing-gown, but I knew he was only saying it to please me. No --I expect he just said it to
end the argument; he has given up trying specially to please me. And, no doubt, it is a very good thing.
He had barely left the house when Father came down, wearing his best
suit- he, too, was off to London, and for several days, if you
please!
"Where will you stay--with the Cottons?" I ventured-"ventured" being the way I ask him all questions these days.
"What where his Yes, I daresay I might. That's a very good idea. Any messages for the girls his Don't speak for a minute."
I stared at him in astonishment. He had picked up a plate from the
table and was examining it carefully--just a cracked old willow pattern plate I had found in the hen-house and brought in to relieve the
crockery shortage.
"Interesting, quite a possibility," he said at last then walked out to the gatehouse, taking the plate with him. After a few minutes he came back without it and started his breakfast.
I could see he was preoccupied, but I did want to know about that
plate. I asked if it was valuable.
"Might be, might be," he said, staring in front of him.
"Do you know anyone who would buy it?"
"Buy it his Don't be silly. And don't talk."
I gave it up.
There was the usual scrimmage to get him off in time to catch the
train. I wheeled his bicycle out for him and stood waiting in the
courtyard.
"Where are your things for the night?" I asked as he came out towards me empty-handed.
He looked faintly startled, then said: "Oh, well--I couldn't manage a suitcase on the bicycle. I'll do without. Hello--" He caught sight of Stephen's carpet-bag--I had thrown it out of the kitchen because it was crawling with moth-grubs.
"Now, that. I could use--I could sling it across the handlebars.
Quick, get my things!"
I began to point out the awfulness of the bag but he chivvied me
indoors, shouting instructions after me- so that I heard "Pyjamas!"
as I went across the kitchen, "Shaving tackle, on the kitchen stairs and "Toothbrush, handkerchiefs and a clean shirt if I have one!"
as I rummaged round his bedroom. By the time I reached the bathroom
there came a roar: "That's enough--come back at once or I shall miss my train." But when I rushed down to him he seemed to have forgotten there was any hurry- he was sitting on the backdoor step studying the carpetbag.
"This is most interesting pseudo-Persian," he began- then sprang up shouting: "Great Heaven, give me those things!" Godsend church striking the half had brought him back to earth.
He shoved everything into the bag, hung it on his bicycle and rode off full-tilt, mangling the corner of a flower-bed. At the gatehouse, he
suddenly braked, flung himself off and dashed up the tower stairs,
leaving the bicycle so insecurely placed that it slid to the ground. By the time I had run across and picked it up, he was coming down carrying the willow-pattern plate. He pushed it into the carpet-bag, then
started off again--pedaling frantically, with the bag thumping against his knees. At the first bend of the lane he turned his head sharply
and shouted:
"Good-bye"--very nearly falling off the bicycle. Then he was gone.
Never have I known him so spasmodic--or have I? Wasn't he rather like that in the days when his temper was violent his As I walked back to
the house, it dawned on me that I was going to be alone for the
night--Thomas was spending the weekend with Harry, his friend at
school. For a second, I had a dismayed, deserted feeling but I soon
convinced myself there was nothing to be frightened of-we hardly ever get tramps down our lane and when we do they are often very nice;
anyway, Heloise is a splendid watchdog.
Once I got used to the idea of being by myself for so long I positively liked it. I always enjoy the different feeling there is in a house
when one is alone in it, and the thought of that feeling stretching
ahead for two whole days somehow intensified it wonderfully. The
castle seemed to be mine in a way it never had been before; the day
seemed specially to belong to me; I even had a feeling that I owned
myself more than I usually do. I became very conscious of all my
movements- if I raised my arm I looked at it wonderingly, thinking,
"That is mine!" And I took pleasure in moving, both in the physical effort and in the touch of the air--it was most queer how the air did seem to touch me, even when it was absolutely still. All day long I
had a sense of great ease and spaciousness. And my happiness had a
strange, remembered quality as though I had lived it before. Oh, how
can I recapture it- that utterly right, homecoming sense of recognition his It seems to me now that the whole day was like an avenue leading
to a home I had loved once but forgotten, the memory of which was
coming back so dimly, so gradually, as I wandered along, that only when my home at last lay before me did I cry: "Now I know why I have been happy!"
How words weave spells! As I wrote of the avenue, it rose before my
eyes- I can see it now, lined with great smooth-trunked trees whose
branches meet far above me. The still air is flooded with peace, yet
somehow expectant- as it seemed to me once when I was in King's Crypt cathedral at sunset. On and on I wander, beneath the vaulted roof of
branch and leaf .. . and all the time, the avenue is yesterday, that
long approach to beauty.
Images in the mind, how strange they are ...... I have been gazing at the sky I never saw it a brighter blue. Great featherbed clouds are
billowing across the sun, their edges brilliant silver. The whole day is silvery, sparkling, the birds sound shrill ...... Yesterday was
golden, even in the morning the light was softly drowsy, all sounds
seemed muted.
By ten o'clock I had finished all my jobs and was wondering what to do with the morning. I strolled round the garden, watched thrush on the
lawn listening for worms and finally came to rest on the grassy bank of the moat. When I dabbled my hand in the shimmering water it was so
much warmer than I expected that I decided to bathe. I swam round the castle twice, hearing the Handel "Water Music" in my head.
While I was hanging my bathing-suit out of the bedroom window, I had a sudden longing to lie in the sun with nothing on. I never felt it
before--Topaz has always had a monopoly of nudity in our household- but the more I thought of it, the more I fancied it. And I had the
brilliant idea of doing my sunbathing on the top of the bedroom tower, where nobody working in the fields or wandering up our lane could
possibly see me. It felt most peculiar crawling naked up the cold,
rough stone steps-exciting in some mysterious way I couldn't explain to myself. Coming out at the top was glorious, warmth and light fell
round me like a great cape. The leads were so hot that they almost
burnt the soles of my feet; I was glad I had thought of bringing up a blanket to spread.
It was beautifully private. That tower is the best-preserved of them
all; the circle of battlements is complete, though there are a few deep cracks--a marigold had seeded in one of them. Once I lay down flat I
couldn't even see the battlements without turning my head. There was
nothing left but the sun-filled dome of the cloudless sky.
What a difference there is between wearing even the skimpiest
bathing-suit and wearing nothing! After a few minutes I seemed to live in every inch of my body as fully as I usually do in my head and my
hands and my heart. I had the fascinating feeling that I could think
as easily with my limbs as with my brain--and suddenly the whole of me thought that Topaz's nonsense about communing with nature isn't
nonsense at all. The warmth of the sun felt like enormous hands
pressing gently on me, the flutter of the air was like delicate
fingers. My kind of nature-worship has always had to do with magic and folklore, though sometimes it turned a bit holy.