Children of the Pool

A couple of summers ago I was staying with old friends in my native
county, on the Welsh border. It was in the heat and drought of a hot and
dry year, and I came into those green, well-watered valleys with a sense
of a great refreshment. Here was relief from the burning of London
streets, from the close and airless nights, when all the myriad walls of
brick and stone and concrete and the pavements that are endless give out
into the heavy darkness the fires that all day long have been drawn from
the sun. And from those roadways that have become like railways, with
their changing lamps, and their yellow globes, and their bars and studs
of steel; from the menace of instant death if your feet stray from the
track: from all this what a rest to walk under the green leaf in quiet,
and hear the stream trickling from the heart of the hill.

My friends were old friends, and they were urgent that I should go my
own way. There was breakfast at nine, but it was equally serviceable and
excellent at ten; and I could be in for something cold for lunch, if I
liked; and if I didn't like I could stay away till dinner at half past
seven; and then there was all the evening for talks about old times and
about the changes, with comfortable drinks, and bed soothed by memories
and tobacco, and by the brook that twisted under dark alders through the
meadow below. And not a red bungalow to be seen for many a mile around!
Sometimes, when the heat even in that green land was more than burning,
and the wind from the mountains in the west ceased, I would stay all day
under shade on the lawn, but more often I went afield and trod
remembered ways, and tried to find new ones, in that happy and
bewildered country. There, paths go wandering into undiscovered valleys,
there from deep and narrow lanes with overshadowing hedges, still
smaller tracks that I suppose are old bridlepaths, creep obscurely,
obviously leading nowhere in particular.

It was on a day of cooler air that I went adventuring abroad on such an
expedition. It was a "day of the veil." There were no clouds in the sky,
but a high mist, grey and luminous, had been drawn all over it. At one
moment, it would seem that the sun must shine through, and the blue
appear; and then the trees in the wood would seem to blossom, and the
meadows lightened; and then again the veil would be drawn. I struck off
by the stony lane that led from the back of the house up over the hill;
I had last gone that way a-many years ago, of a winter afternoon, when
the ruts were frozen into hard ridges, and dark pines on high places
rose above snow, and the sun was red and still above the mountain. I
remembered that the way had given good sport, with twists to right and
left, and unexpected descents, and then risings to places of thorn and
bracken, till it darkened to the hushed stillness of a winter's night,
and I turned homeward reluctant. Now I took another chance with all the
summer day before me, and resolved to come to some end and conclusion of
the matter.