BOOK I: CRAG AND TORRENT

BOOK II: GARISH DAY

BOOK III: LEAD, KINDLY LIGHT

EPILOGUE: THE MORN

THE
VISION SPLENDID

BOOK I

CRAG AND TORRENT

CHAPTER I

(1)

The broad faces of the sunflowers surveyed, with theireternal, undiscriminating smile, the nape of Horatia'swhite neck, and were no wiser. Her back was towardsthem, and they could not see what book was in her lap.But the hollyhocks further down the border wereprobably aware that she was not really reading anything.They swayed a little, disturbing a blundering bee; andHoratia, turning her head towards the flower-bed,glanced for a moment at those tall warriors en fête.

A gust of perfume suddenly shook out at her fromthe border. Certainly the summer seemed hardlywithin sight of its end, though on this Monday, thethirtieth of August, 1830, much of the corn was cutalready.

Horatia's own summer was at the full, and it wasnow only old-fashioned people who thought the singlewoman of twenty-four in peril of the unblest autumn ofperpetual maidenhood. For the sake of the red-goldbunches of curls at her temples, the dazzling skin thatgoes with such hair, the straight, wilful little nose, themouth holding in its curves some petulance and muchsweetness, an admirer might well have been sittingbeside her in this agreeable old garden. Yet HoratiaGrenville was not accounted a beauty. She wasneither statuesque nor drooping. But part of theblame lay undeniably with the book on her lap, theRepublic of Plato in the original. Horatia could anddid read Greek without too much difficulty; couldnot, or would not, occupy her fingers for ever withembroidery or knitting, and was believed to despiseamateur performance upon the harp. In short she was"blue," and therefore—at least in her own county—wasnot beautiful; she was learned, and could not, inBerkshire, be lovely.

Yes, she was twenty-four, and unmarried; a countryparson's daughter, but wel

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