d
obscure but very profitable manufactures. But its shipping is venerable,
and is really not an industry at all, being as proper as the owning of
deer-parks. On market day you would think you were in a French town, so
many are the agriculturists, and so quiet and solid the evidence of their
wellbeing. They own their farms, they love good horses, their wagons are
built like ships, and their cattle, as aboriginal as the county families,
might be the embodiment of the sleek genius of those hills and meadows,
so famous are they for cream. The people of that country live well. They
know their worth and the substance which they add to the strength of the
British community. And they pride themselves on the legends, peculiarly
theirs, which tell of their independence of mind, of their love of
freedom, of their liberal opinions and the nonconformity of their
religious views. They are stout folk, kind and companionable, and they do
not love masters.

It was the summer following the end of the War, and we were back again in
Torhaven. The recollection of its ancient peace, of its stillness and
light, of the refuge it offered, had enticed us there. Its very name had
been the hope of escape. Where should we find people more likely to be
quick and responsive? They would be among the first to understand the
nature of the calamity which had overtaken us. They would know, long
before amorphous and alien London, what that new world should be like
which we owed to the young, a world in which might grow a garden for the
bruised souls of the disillusioned.

Its light was the same. It was not only untarnished by such knowledge as
we brought with us, it was radiant. Yet it was not without its memory of
the disaster. We went into the church, whose porch had been restored;
symbolical, perhaps, of our entry into a world from which, happily, the
old things had passed. The church was empty, for this was market day.
Through its gloom, as through the penumbra of antiquity, shone faintly
the pale forms of a few recumbent knights, and the permanent appeal of
their upturned hands and faces kept the roof aware of human contrition.
Above one of the figures was a new Union Jack, crowned with laurels. The
sun made too vivid a scarlet patch of one of its folds.

Just below the church was the theatre, now a cinema hall. This was market
day, and the house was full. A poster outside pictured a bridge blowing
up, and a motor-car falling into space. The midday