On the summit they paused. The sky had grown wilder since
he stood there last hour, giving to the land a tragic greatness
that is rare in Surrey. Grey clouds were charging across tissues
of white, which stretched and shredded and tore slowly, until
through their final layers there gleamed a hint of the
disappearing blue. Summer was retreating. The wind roared, the
trees groaned, yet the noise seemed insufficient for those vast
operations in heaven. The weather was breaking up, breaking,
broken, and it is a sense of the fit rather than of the
supernatural that equips such crises with the salvos of angelic
artillery. Mr. Beebe's eyes rested on Windy Corner, where Lucy
sat, practising Mozart. No smile came to his lips, and, changing
the subject again, he said: "We shan't have rain, but we shall
have darkness, so let us hurry on. The darkness last night was
appalling."
They reached the Beehive Tavern at about five o'clock. That
amiable hostelry possesses a verandah, in which the young and the
unwise do dearly love to sit, while guests of more mature years
seek a pleasant sanded room, and have tea at a table comfortably.
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