If she looked out into the dull street with its rare loiterers,
it was the same and yet it had altered, and if she opened the window in
the early morning the wind that entered came with a changed breath that
spoke some message that she could not understand. And day by day passed
by in the old course, and not even the four walls were altogether
familiar, and the voices of men and women sounded with strange notes,
with the echo, rather, of a music that came over unknown hills. And day
by day as she went about her household work, passing from shop to shop
in those dull streets that were a network, a fatal labyrinth of grey
desolation on every side, there came to her sense half-seen images of
some other world, as if she walked in a dream, and every moment must
bring her to light and to awakening, when the grey should fade, and
regions long desired should appear in glory. Again and again it seemed
as if that which was hidden would be shown even to the sluggish
testimony of sense; and as she went to and fro from street to street of
that dim and weary suburb, and looked on those grey material walls, they
seemed as if a light glowed behind them, and again and again the mystic
fragrance of incense was blown to her nostrils from across the verge of
that world which is not so much impenetrable as ineffable, and to her
ears came the dream of a chant that spoke of hidden choirs about all her
ways. She struggled against these impressions, refusing her assent to
the testimony of them, since all the pressure of credited opinion for
three hundred years has been directed towards stamping out real
knowledge, and so effectually has this been accomplished that we can
only recover the truth through much anguish. And so Mary passed the days
in a strange perturbation, clinging to common things and common
thoughts, as if she feared that one morning she would wake up in an
unknown world to a changed life. And Edward Darnell went day by day to
his labour and returned in the evening, always with that shining of
light within his eyes and upon his face, with the gaze of wonder that
was greater day by day, as if for him the veil grew thin and soon would
disappear. From these great matters both in herself and in her husband Mary shrank
back, afraid, perhaps, that if she began the question the answer might
be too wonderful. She rather taught herself to be troubled over little
things; she asked herself what attraction there could be in the old
records over which she supposed Edward to be poring night after night in
the cold room upstairs. She had glanced over the papers at Darnell's
invitation, and could see but little interest in them; there were one or
two sketches, roughly done in pen and ink, of the old house in the west:
it looked a shapeless and fantastic place, furnished with strange
pillars and stranger ornaments on the projecting porch; and on one side
a roof dipped down almost to the earth, and in the centre there was
something that might almost be a tower rising above the rest of the
building. Then there were documents that seemed all names and dates,
with here and there a coat of arms done in the margin, and she came upon
a string of uncouth Welsh names linked together by the word 'ap' in a
chain that looked endless. There was a paper covered with signs and
figures that meant nothing to her, and then there were the pocket-books,
full of old-fashioned writing, and much of it in Latin, as her husband
told her--it was a collection as void of significance as a treatise on
conic sections, so far as Mary was concerned. But night after night
Darnell shut himself up with the musty rolls, and more than ever when he
rejoined her he bore upon his face the blazonry of some great adventure. And one night she asked him what interested him so much in the papers he
had shown her. He was delighted with the question. Somehow they had not talked much
together for the last few weeks, and he began to tell her of the records
of the old race from which he came, of the old strange house of grey
stone between the forest and the river. The family went back and back,
he said, far into the dim past, beyond the Normans, beyond the Saxons,
far into the Roman days, and for many hundred years they had been petty
kings, with a strong fortress high up on the hill, in the heart of the
forest; and even now the great mounds remained, whence one could look
through the trees towards the mountain on one side and across the yellow
sea on the other. The real name of the family was not Darnell; that was
assumed by one Iolo ap Taliesin ap Iorwerth in the sixteenth
century--why, Darnell did not seem to understand. And then he told her
how the race had dwindled in prosperity, century by century, till at
last there was nothing left but the grey house and a few acres of land
bordering the river. 'And do you know, Mary,' he said, 'I suppose we shall go and live there
some day or other. My great-uncle, who has the place now, made money in
business when he was a young man, and I believe he will leave it all to
me. I know I am the only relation he has. How strange it would be. What
a change from the life here.' 'You never told me that. Don't you think your great-uncle might leave
his house and his money to somebody he knows really well? You haven't
seen him since you were a little boy, have you?' 'No; but we write once a year. And from what I have heard my father say,
I am sure the old man would never leave the house out of the family. Do
you think you would like it?' 'I don't know. Isn't it very lonely?' 'I suppose it is. I forget whether there are any other houses in sight,
but I don't think there are any at all near. But what a change! No City,
no streets, no people passing to and fro; only the sound of the wind and
the sight of the green leaves and the green hills, and the song of the
voices of the earth.'... He checked himself suddenly, as if he feared
that he was about to tell some secret that must not yet be uttered; and
indeed, as he spoke of the change from the little street in Shepherd's
Bush to that ancient house in the woods of the far west, a change seemed
already to possess himself, and his voice put on the modulation of an
antique chant. Mary looked at him steadily and touched his arm, and he
drew a long breath before he spoke again. 'It is the old blood calling to the old land,' he said. 'I was
forgetting that I am a clerk in the City.' It was, doubtless, the old blood that had suddenly stirred in him; the
resurrection of the old spirit that for many centuries had been
faithful to secrets that are now disregarded by most of us, that now day
by day was quickened more and more in his heart, and grew so strong that
it was hard to conceal.