She
had come from the farmhouse beneath the shaws to go to live in an Italian
house sheltered by a fringe of trees. That was her adventure. She knew it,
and she turned from the view of the downs to the view of the sea. The
plantations of Woodview touched the horizon, then the line dipped, and
between the top branches of a row of elms appeared the roofs of the town.
Over a long spider-legged bridge a train wriggled like a snake, the bleak
river flowed into the harbour, and the shingle banks saved the low land
from inundation. Then the train passed behind the square, dogmatic tower
of the village church. Her husband lay beneath the chancel; her father,
mother, all her relations, lay in the churchyard. She would go there in a
few years.... Her daughter lay far away, far away in Egypt. Upon this
downland all her life had been passed, all her life except the few months
she had spent by her daughter's bedside in Egypt. She had come from that
coombe, from that farmhouse beneath the shaws, and had only crossed the
down.
And this barren landscape meant as much to Esther as to her mistress. It
was on these downs that she had walked with William. He had been born and
bred on these downs; but he lay far away in Brompton Cemetery; it was she
who had come back! and in her simple way she too wondered at the mystery
of destiny.
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