sly elegant and
vivacious He did not see his father. His fancy had little relation to
reality. But this did not mar his pleasure... Then he saw himself
talking over the hedge, wittily, to amiable and witty persons in the
garden of the Orgreaves.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

THREE.

He had not his key to the new house, but he knew a way of getting into
it through the cellar. No reason in doing so; nevertheless he must get
into it, must localise his dream in it! He crouched down under the
blank east wall, and, feet foremost, disappeared slowly, as though the
house were swallowing him. He stood on the stillage of the cellar, and
struck a match. Immense and weird, the cellar; and the doorless
doorway, leading to the cellar steps, seemed to lead to affrighting
matters. He was in the earth, in it, with the smells of damp mortar and
of bricks and of the earth itself about him, and above him rose the
house, a room over him, and a room over that and another over that, and
then the chimney-cowl up in the sky. He jumped from the stillage, and
went quickly to the doorway and saw the cellar steps. His heart was
beating. He trembled, he was afraid, exquisitely afraid, acutely
conscious of himself amid the fundamental mysteries of the universe. He
reached the top of the steps as the match expired. After a moment he
could distinguish the forms of things in the hall, even the main
features of the pattern of the tiles. The small panes in the glazed
front door, whose varied tints repeated those of the drawing-room window
in daytime, now showed a uniform dull grey, lifeless. The cellar was
formidable below, and the stairs curved upwards into the formidable.
But he climbed them. The house seemed full of inexplicable noises.
When he stopped to listen he could hear scores of different
infinitesimal sounds. His spine thrilled, as if a hand delicate and
terrible had run down it in a caress. All the unknown of the night and
of the universe was pressing upon him, but it was he alone who had
created the night and the universe. He reached his room, the room in
which he meant to inaugurate the new life and the endeavour towards
perfection. Already, after his manner, he had precisely settled where
the bed was to be, and where the table, and all the other objects of his
world. There he would sit and read rare and beautiful books in the
original French! And there he would sit to dra