And I Wish He Could Have Said That It Was As Irreligious To Go To Stonehenge, That Ancient Temple Which

Man raised to the unknown god thousands of years ago, to indulge in noise and horseplay at the hour of

Sunrise, as it would be to go to Salisbury Cathedral for such a purpose.

Chapter Twenty-Two: The Village and "The Stones"

My experiences at "The Stones" had left me with the idea that but for the distracting company the hours I spent there would have been very sweet and precious in spite of the cloud in the east. Why then, I asked, not go back on another morning, when I would have the whole place to myself? If a cloud did not matter much it would matter still less that it was not the day of the year when the red disc flames on the watcher's sight directly over that outstanding stone and casts first a shadow then a ray of light on the altar. In the end I did not say good-bye to the village on that day, but settled down to listen to the tales of my landlady, or rather to another instalment of her life-story and to further chapters in the domestic history of those five small villages in one. I had already been listening to her every evening, and at odd times during the day, for over a week, at first with interest, then a little impatiently. I was impatient at being kept in, so to speak. Out-of-doors the world was full of light and heat, full of sounds of wild birds and fragrance of flowers and new-mown hay; there were also delightful children and some that were anything but delightful - dirty, ragged little urchins of the slums. For even these small rustic villages have their slums; and it was now the time when the young birds were fluttering out of their nests - their hunger cries could be heard everywhere; and the ragged little barbarians were wild with excitement, chasing and stoning the flutterers to slay them; or when they succeeded in capturing one without first having broken its wings or legs it was to put it in a dirty cage in a squalid cottage to see it perish miserably in a day or two. Perhaps I succeeded in saving two or three threatened lives in the lanes and secret green places by the stream; perhaps I didn't; but in any case it was some satisfaction to have made the attempt.

Now all this made me a somewhat impatient listener to the village tales - the old unhappy things, for they were mostly old and always unhappy; yet in the end I had to listen. It was her eyes that did it. At times they had an intensity in their gaze which made them almost uncanny, something like the luminous eyes of an animal hungrily fixed on its prey. They held me, though not because they glittered: I could have gone away if I had thought proper, and remained to listen only because the meaning of that singular look in her grey-green eyes, which came into them whenever I grew restive, had dawned on my careless mind.

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