The Hill of Dreams | Page 4

loudly as the cicadas, the hills
smell of rosemary, and white walls of the old farmhouses blaze in the
sunlight as if they stood in Arles or Avignon or famed Tarascon by
Rhone.
Lucian's father was late at the station, and consequently Lucian bought
the Confessions of an English Opium Eater which he saw on the
bookstall. When his father did drive up, Lucian noticed that the old trap
had had a new coat of dark paint, and that the pony looked advanced in
years.
"I was afraid that I should be late, Lucian," said his father, "though I
made old Polly go like anything. I was just going to tell George to put
her into the trap when young Philip Harris came to me in a terrible state.
He said his father fell down 'all of a sudden like' in the middle of the

field, and they couldn't make him speak, and would I please to come
and see him. So I had to go, though I couldn't do anything for the poor
fellow. They had sent for Dr. Burrows, and I am afraid he will find it a
bad case of sunstroke. The old people say they never remember such a
heat before."
The pony jogged steadily along the burning turnpike road, taking
revenge for the hurrying on the way to the station. The hedges were
white with the limestone dust, and the vapor of heat palpitated over the
fields. Lucian showed his Confessions to his father, and began to talk of
the beautiful bits he had already found. Mr. Taylor knew the book
well--had read it many years before. Indeed he was almost as difficult
to surprise as that character in Daudet, who had one formula for all the
chances of life, and when he saw the drowned Academician dragged
out of the river, merely observed "J'ai vu tout ça." Mr. Taylor the
parson, as his parishioners called him, had read the fine books and
loved the hills and woods, and now knew no more of pleasant or
sensational surprises. Indeed the living was much depreciated in value,
and his own private means were reduced almost to vanishing point, and
under such circumstances the great style loses many of its finer savors.
He was very fond of Lucian, and cheered by his return, but in the
evening he would be a sad man again, with his head resting on one
hand, and eyes reproaching sorry fortune.
Nobody called out "Here's your master with Master Lucian; you can get
tea ready," when the pony jogged up to the front door. His mother had
been dead a year, and a cousin kept house. She was a respectable
person called Deacon, of middle age, and ordinary standards; and,
consequently, there was cold mutton on the table. There was a cake, but
nothing of flour, baked in ovens, would rise at Miss Deacon's evocation.
Still, the meal was laid in the beloved "parlor," with the view of hills
and valleys and climbing woods from the open window, and the old
furniture was still pleasant to see, and the old books in the shelves had
many memories. One of the most respected of the armchairs had
become weak in the castors and had to be artfully propped up, but
Lucian found it very comfortable after the hard forms. When tea was
over he went out and strolled in the garden and orchards, and looked

over the stile down into the brake, where foxgloves and bracken and
broom mingled with the hazel undergrowth, where he knew of secret
glades and untracked recesses, deep in the woven green, the cabinets
for many years of his lonely meditations. Every path about his home,
every field and hedgerow had dear and friendly memories for him; and
the odor of the meadowsweet was better than the incense steaming in
the sunshine. He loitered, and hung over the stile till the far-off woods
began to turn purple, till the white mists were wreathing in the valley.
Day after day, through all that August, morning and evening were
wrapped in haze; day after day the earth shimmered in the heat, and the
air was strange, unfamiliar. As he wandered in the lanes and sauntered
by the cool sweet verge of the woods, he saw and felt that nothing was
common or accustomed, for the sunlight transfigured the meadows and
changed all the form of the earth. Under the violent Provençal sun, the
elms and beeches looked exotic trees, and in the early morning, when
the mists were thick, the hills had put on an unearthly shape.
The one adventure of the holidays was the visit to the Roman fort, to
that fantastic hill about whose steep bastions and haggard oaks he had
seen the flames of sunset writhing nearly three years