Close to home, the first little eddy of wind
stirred, and the song of dripping twigs began; an owl hooted, honey-soft,
in the fog. We came on two farm hands mending the lane at the turn of
the avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, their cosy red collie
pup, waiting for them to finish work for the day. He raised his sharp
nose and looked at us dewily. We turned down, padding softly in the wet
fox-red drifts under the beechtrees, whereon the last leaves still
flickered out in the darkening whiteness, that now seemed so little
eerie. We passed the grey-green skeleton of the farm-yard gate. A hen
ran across us, clucking, into the dusk. The maze drew her long,
home-coming snuffle, and stood still.
1910.
THE PROCESSION
In one of those corners of our land canopied by the fumes of blind
industry, there was, on that day, a lull in darkness. A fresh wind had
split the customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping long drifts of
creamy clouds across a blue still pallid with reek. The sun even
shone--a sun whose face seemed white and wondering. And under that rare
sun all the little town, among its slag heaps and few tall chimneys, had
an air of living faster. In those continuous courts and alleys, where
the women worked, smoke from each little forge rose and dispersed into
the wind with strange alacrity; amongst the women, too, there was that
same eagerness, for the sunshine had crept in and was making pale all
those dark-raftered, sooted ceilings which covered them in, together with
their immortal comrades, the small open furnaces.
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