We Go Out A-Walking In The Wet Roads.
But The Roads About Grez Have A Trick Of Their Own.
They go on for
a while among clumps of willows and patches of vine, and then,
suddenly and without
Any warning, cease and determine in some miry
hollow or upon some bald knowe; and you have a short period of
hope, then right-about face, and back the way you came! So we draw
about the kitchen fire and play a round game of cards for ha'pence,
or go to the billiard-room, for a match at corks and by one consent
a messenger is sent over for the wagonette - Grez shall be left to-
morrow.
To-morrow dawns so fair that two of the party agree to walk back
for exercise, and let their kidnap-sacks follow by the trap. I
need hardly say they are neither of them French; for, of all
English phrases, the phrase 'for exercise' is the least
comprehensible across the Straits of Dover. All goes well for a
while with the pedestrians. The wet woods are full of scents in
the noontide. At a certain cross, where there is a guardhouse,
they make a halt, for the forester's wife is the daughter of their
good host at Barbizon. And so there they are hospitably received
by the comely woman, with one child in her arms and another
prattling and tottering at her gown, and drink some syrup of quince
in the back parlour, with a map of the forest on the wall, and some
prints of love-affairs and the great Napoleon hunting. As they
draw near the Quadrilateral, and hear once more the report of the
big guns, they take a by-road to avoid the sentries, and go on a
while somewhat vaguely, with the sound of the cannon in their ears
and the rain beginning to fall. The ways grow wider and sandier;
here and there there are real sand-hills, as though by the sea-
shore; the fir-wood is open and grows in clumps upon the hillocks,
and the race of sign-posts is no more. One begins to look at the
other doubtfully. 'I am sure we should keep more to the right,'
says one; and the other is just as certain they should hold to the
left. And now, suddenly, the heavens open, and the rain falls
'sheer and strong and loud,' as out of a shower-bath. In a moment
they are as wet as shipwrecked sailors. They cannot see out of
their eyes for the drift, and the water churns and gurgles in their
boots. They leave the track and try across country with a
gambler's desperatin, for it seems as if it were impossible to make
the situation worse; and, for the next hour, go scrambling from
boulder to boulder, or plod along paths that are now no more than
rivulets, and across waste clearings where the scattered shells and
broken fir-trees tell all too plainly of the cannon in the
distance.
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