Tallyn Hall was eight miles from Beechcote. The ladies were to drive,
but in order to show Mrs. Colwood something of the country, Diana
decreed that they should walk up to the downs by a field path, meeting
the carriage which bore their luggage at a convenient point on the
main road.
The day was a day of beauty--the trees and grass lightly rimed, the air
sparkling and translucent. Nature was held in the rest of winter; but
beneath the outward stillness, one caught as it were the strong
heart-beat of the mighty mother. Diana climbed the steep down without a
pause, save when she turned round from time to time to help her
companion. Her slight firm frame, the graceful decision of her
movements, the absence of all stress and effort showed a creature
accustomed to exercise and open air; Mrs. Colwood, the frail
Anglo-Indian to whom walking was a task, tried to rival her in vain; and
Diana was soon full of apologies and remorse for having tempted her to
the climb.
"Please!--please!"--the little lady panted, as they reached the
top--"wasn't this worth it?"
For they stood in one of the famous wood and common lands of Southern
England--great beeches towering overhead--glades opening to right and
left--ferny paths over green turf-tracks, and avenues of immemorial age,
the highways of a vanished life--old earth-works, overgrown--lanes
deep-sunk in the chalk where the pack-horses once made their
way--gnarled thorns, bent with years, yet still white-mantled in the
spring: a wild, enchanted no-man's country, owned it seemed by rabbits
and birds, solitary, lovely, and barren--yet from its furthest edge, the
high spectator, looking eastward, on a clear night, might see on the
horizon the dim flare of London.
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