that I, an ill-clad and pipe-smoking traveller, am
faintly uneasy in this House of Lords? I forget myself while reading
poetry and drop my tobacco cinders on the rug, missing the little silver
gourd that rests by my left foot. Straight the white-jacketed mulatto
sucks them up with a vacuum cleaner and a deprecating air. I pass to the
brass veranda at the end of the car for a bracing change of atmosphere.
And returning, the attendant has removed my little pile of books which I
left under my chair, and hidden them in his serving grotto. It costs me
at least a whiskey and soda to get them out.

It means, I suppose, that I am not marked for success. I am cigarless
and derbyless; I do not wear those funny little white margins inside my
vest. My scarf is still the dear old shabby one in which I was married
(I bought it at Rogers Peet's, and I shall never forget it) and when I
look up from Emily Dickinson's poems with a trembling thrill of painful
ecstasy, I am frightened by the long row of hard faces and cynic eyes
opposite me.

The House of Lords disquiets me. Even if I ring a bell and order a
bottle I am not happy. Is it only the swing of the car that nauseates
me? At any rate, I want to get home--home to that star-sown meadow and
the two brown arms at the journey's end.

_December, 1914._

COTSWOLD WINDS

Spring comes late on these windy uplands, and indoors one still sits
close to the fire. These are the days of booming gales over the
sheepwolds, and the afternoon ride with Shotover becomes an adventure. I
am not one of those who shirk bicycling in a wind. Give me a two-mile
spin with the gust astern, just to loosen the muscles and sweep the
morning's books and tobacco from the brain--and then turn and at it! It
is like swimming against a great crystal river. Cap off, head up--no
crouching over the handle-bars like the Saturday afternoon shopmen! Wind
in your hair, the broad blue Cotswold slopes about you, every ounce of
leg-drive straining on the pedals--three minutes of it intoxicates you.
You crawl up-wind roaring the most glorious nonsense, ribaldry, and
exultation into the face of the blast.

I am all for the Cotswolds in the last vacation before "Schools." In
mid-March our dear gray Mother Oxford sends us away for six weeks while
she decks herself against the spring. Far and wide we scatter. The
Prince to Germany--the dons to Devon--the reading parties to quiet
country inns here and there. Some blithe