And Hot And Tired As I Had Felt A
Few Moments Before, And Desirous Of An Interval Of Rest In
The
cool shade, I was glad to be out in the burning sun once more,
for the sight of that
Young woman had chilled my blood and
made the heat out-of-doors seem grateful to me.
The sight of such a face in the midst of such surroundings had
produced a shock of surprise, for it was noble in shape, the
features all fine and the mouth most delicately chiselled, the
eyes dark and beautiful, and the hair of a raven blackness.
But it was a colourless face, and even the lips were pale.
Strongest of all was the expression, which had frozen there,
and was like the look of one on whom some unimaginable
disaster or some hateful disillusionment had come, not to
subdue nor soften, but to change all its sweet to sour, and
its natural warmth to icy cold.
Chapter Eighteen: Branscombe
Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact,
inland or on the sea, have no attractions for me and I was
more than satisfied with a day or two of Sidmouth. Then one
evening I heard for the first time of a place called
Branscomb - a village near the sea, over by Beer and Seaton,
near the mouth of the Axe, and the account my old host gave me
seemed so attractive that on the following day I set out to
find it. Further information about the unknown village came
to me in a very agreeable way in the course of my tramp. A
hotter walk I never walked - no, not even when travelling
across a flat sunburnt treeless plain, nearer than Devon by
many degrees to the equator. One wonders why that part of
Devon which lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actually
hotter than other regions which undoubtedly have a higher
temperature. After some hours of walking with not a little of
uphill and downhill, I began to find the heat well-nigh
intolerable. I was on a hard dusty glaring road, shut in by
dusty hedges on either side. Not a breath of air was
stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud
appeared. If the vertical sun had poured down water instead
of light and heat on me my clothing could not have clung to me
more uncomfortably. Coming at length to a group of two or
three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one and
asked for something to quench my thirst - cider or milk. There
was only water to be had, but it was good to drink, and the
woman of the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was
glad to rest an hour and talk with her in her cool kitchen.
There are English counties where it would perhaps be said of
such a woman that she was one in a thousand; but the Devonians
are a comely race.
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