He was saturated
in the space, the sheer, immense simplicity of the wild, hardly touched
by the narrow strip of inhabited coast. He had given his existence to
the woods, to hunting cunning beasts, the stoical endurance of blinding
fatigue; he had scorned the, to him, sophistications of bricks and
civilization. But now, in the length of an evening, something invidious
and far different had become sentient in his being. Italian parties, and
Covent Garden with lanterns among the trees ... Trees clipped and
pruned, and gravel walks; seductions.
A falling meteor flashed a brilliant arc across the black horizon,
dropping into what illimitable wilderness? Fireworks set to the shrill
scraping of violins. One mingled with the other in his blood, fretting
him, spoiling the serene and sure vigour of youth, binding his feet to
the obscure past. Yet colouring all was the other, the black Welsh blood
of the Pennys. Ever since his boyhood he had heard the fact of his
peculiar inheritance explained, accepted. In the past he had been what
he was without thought, self-appraisal. But now he recognized an
essential difference from his family; it came over him in a feeling of
loneliness, of removal from the facile business of living in general.
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