"It was such a wonderful day that I wanted to be out under the sky for a long time--to ride a long way," she explained."I have been looking at hop gardens as I rode.Ihave watched them all the summer--from the time when there was only a little thing with two or three pale green leaves looking imploringly all the way up to the top of each immensely tall hop pole, from its place in the earth at the bottom of it--as if it was saying over and over again, under its breath, `Can I get up there? Can I get up? Can I do it in time? Can I do it in time?' Yes, that was what they were saying, the little bold things.I have watched them ever since, putting out tendrils and taking hold of the poles and pulling and climbing like little acrobats.And curling round and unfolding leaves and more leaves, until at last they threw them out as if they were beginning to boast that they could climb up into the blue of the sky if the summer were long enough.And now, look at them!" her hand waved towards the great gardens."Forests of them, cool green pathways and avenues with leaf canopies over them.""You have seen it all," he said."You do see things, don't you? A few hundred yards down the road I passed something you had seen.I knew it was you who had seen it, though the poor wretches had not heard your name."She hesitated a moment, then stooped down and took up in her hand a bit of pebbled earth from the pathway.There was storm in the blue of her eyes as she held it out for him to look at as it lay on the bare rose-flesh of her palm.
"See," she said, "see, it is like that--what we give.It is like that." And she tossed the earth away.
"It does not seem like that to those others.""No, thank God, it does not.But to one's self it is the mere luxury of self-indulgence, and the realisation of it sometimes tempts one to be even a trifle morbid.Don't you see," a sudden thrill in her voice startled him, "they are on the roadside everywhere all over the world.""Yes.All over the world."
"Once when I was a child of ten I read a magazine article about the suffering millions and the monstrously rich, who were obviously to blame for every starved sob and cry.It almost drove me out of my childish senses.I went to my father and threw myself into his arms in a violent fit of crying.I clung to him and sobbed out, `Let us give it all away; let us give it all away and be like other people!' ""What did he say?"
"He said we could never be quite like other people.We had a certain load to carry along the highway.It was the thing the whole world wanted and which we ourselves wanted as much as the rest, and we could not sanely throw it away.It was my first lesson in political economy and I abhorred it.Iwas a passionate child and beat furiously against the stone walls enclosing present suffering.It was horrible to know that they could not be torn down.I cried out, `When I see anyone who is miserable by the roadside I shall stop and give him everything he wants--everything!' I was ten years old, and thought it could be done.""But you stop by the roadside even now."
"Yes.That one can do."
"You are two strong creatures and you draw each other,"Penzance had said."Perhaps you drew each other across seas.
Who knows?"
Coming to West Ways on a chance errand he had, as it were, found her awaiting him on the threshold.On her part she had certainly not anticipated seeing him there, but--when one rides far afield in the sun there are roads towards which one turns as if answering a summoning call, and as her horse had obeyed a certain touch of the rein at a certain point her cheek had felt momentarily hot.
Until later, when the "picking" had fairly begun, the kilns would not be at work; but there was some interest even now in going over the ground for the first time.
"I have never been inside an oast house," she said; "Bolter is going to show me his, and explain technicalities.""May I come with you?" he asked.
There was a change in him.Something had lighted in his eyes since the day before, when he had told her his story of Red Godwyn.She wondered what it was.They went together over the place, escorted by Bolter.They looked into the great circular ovens, on whose floors the hops would be laid for drying, they mounted ladder-like steps to the upper room where, when dried, the same hops would lie in soft, light piles, until pushed with wooden shovels into the long "pokes"to be pressed and packed into a solid marketable mass.Bolter was allowed to explain the technicalities, but it was plain that Mount Dunstan was familiar with all of them, and it was he who, with a sentence here and there, gave her the colour of things.
"When it is being done there is nearly always outside a touch of the sharp sweetness of early autumn," he said "The sun slanting through the little window falls on the pale yellow heaps, and there is a pungent scent of hops in the air which is rather intoxicating.""I am coming later to see the entire process," she answered.
