The morning was cold and sharp and sunny. The bare coppice at the edge of which the cottage stood was bathed in a slow yellow surge. Above it lay the down over which he had come two nights before in scurrying terror. His danger now was greater than ever, for was he not pledged at least to visit Lewes? And yet his fear was not so great. Before it had drowned reason. Now through contact with one firm spirit his reason was predominant. He knew that this was only for a time, that his full blinding cowardice would return, but he would make the most of this respite by deciding on his course of action. His quickest route to Lewes was by road, and quickness he desired. Like a runner in a relay race he wished to touch but the fringes of Lewes and retire, his duty fulfilled. The sooner he reached the town, the sooner he could escape. But though the road was the quickest route, he was very unwilling to trust to it. He imagined himself as a clear-cut conspicuous figure thrown up against a white, bare road, and behind every hedge the possibility of Carlyon or his two companions. No, by way of the downs was longer, but safer. There, if he could be seen, he could at least see others with equal clearness. And the down would take him by Ditchling Beacon and Harry’s Mount to the very threshold of Lewes. He could lie out on the last slope until dark came. He glanced at the sun with hate, his heart desirous of that dark.
On the slopes of the down the grass grew in long tufts, so that each foot that fell was clogged as though it had been plunged in treacle. When he reached the summit Andrews was out of breath and he lay down to rest. He wondered what hour it was. The sun seemed to indicate late morning, for as he faced inland it shone nearly full upon his back. We have both been tired, he thought, and have slept long, and he was glad that he had not wakened her. The down all around him was empty and refreshingly safe, and though danger might be lurking in the world below, it was dwarfed by distance. Somewhere twelve miles away lay Lewes, but for a little he need have no care for that. He was perched high up upon a safe instant of time and he clung hard to that instant, drowning all thought in mere sensation, the sight of the country unrolled like a coloured map below him, the feel of warmth creeping from neck to spine. In that long wash of sun, which left the moon an indistinct wraith in the transparent, fragile blue, lay a first hint of spring, and in the breeze, salt from the Channel, hidden from sight by yet another ridge of down, gorse-laden, prophesying green. There was no green yet in the coppice, which lay like a band of soft brown fur fringing the hill, but green crept cautiously, afraid still of an ambush from winter, into the flat ploughed fields below, advancing from pastures where small white sheep were grazing. Dotted across the distance were toy farms, which displayed how far from the isolation he had imagined was the cottage where Elizabeth slept. Along a white road a scarlet cart crawled like a ladybird along the rim of a leaf. The Surrey hills peered through a silver veil, as though they were an old nun’s face, austere, curious and indestructibly chaste. A cock a mile away crowed with frosty clarity and a lamb bewildered and invisible cried aloud. The turf on which he lay was fresh with the previous rain and mist, yet crisp with salt from the sea.
At the sound of a horse behind him Andrews turned, his mind again harried by fear. There was no cause. Some unknown farmer from the lands below, riding with uncovered head, passed across the brow of Ditchling Beacon, the horse stepping high and delicately, in the manner of a great lady conscious of a crowd. With ears pricked it watched its rider out of the corner of one desirous eye, heart yearning for the gallop, and was gone. The olive green slopes lay bare once more to the spring, which came as Jove to Danae in a shower of gold. A mile of grass and thirty miles of sea were carried in the breeze down over Plumpton and Ditchling and on past Lindfield and Ardingly to fade only before that quiet, impassive silver veil. Save for the passing wind and the small dots of moving men and cattle safely far, the world was motionless. Above a round blue dew-pond a singing bird floated in the air like a scrap of charred paper, too light to stir.
She will be awake now, he thought, and coming down the stairs into the kitchen. I wish I had stayed to thank her. Will she realise what the knife means? He watched the cottage intently, and as though it were a signal of remembrance to him upon the down a puff of white smoke emerged from the single chimney, hung whole for a moment in the sky and then was broken into fragments. Some the sun caught, so that they seemed like a drift of birds, wheeling and flashing their white underwings. He found in the crevice of his mind, where childhood harboured, the faint memory of a pictured saint, a young girl with pale, set face, round whose head a flock of doves turned and twisted. He rebuked the uneasiness which had made him leave his knife. She says there is a
