Page 235 - swanns-way

Sometimes, when the weather had completely broken,
we were obliged to go home and to remain shut up indoors.
Here and there, in the distance, in a landscape which, what
with the failing light and saturated atmosphere, resembled
a seascape rather, a few solitary houses clinging to the lower
slopes of a hill whose heights were buried in a cloudy dark-
ness shone out like little boats which had folded their sails
and would ride at anchor, all night, upon the sea. But what
mattered rain or storm? In summer, bad weather is no more
than a passing fit of superficial ill-temper expressed by the
permanent, underlying fine weather; a very different thing
from the fluid and unstable ‘fine weather’ of winter, its very
opposite, in fact; for has it not (firmly established in the soil,
on which it has taken solid form in dense masses of foliage
over which the rain may pour in torrents without weaken-
ing the resistance offered by their real and lasting happiness)
hoisted, to keep them flying throughout the season, in the
village streets, on the walls of the houses and in their gar-
dens, its silken banners, violet and white. Sitting in the little
parlour, where I would pass the time until dinner with a
book, I might hear the water dripping from our chestnut-
trees, but I would know that the shower would only glaze
and brighten the greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves,
and that they themselves had undertaken to remain there,
like pledges of summer, all through the rainy night, to as-
sure me of the fine weather’s continuing; it might rain as
it pleased, but to-morrow, over the white fence of Tanson-
ville, there would surge and flow, numerous as ever, a sea
of little heart-shaped leaves; and without the least anxiety I

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