There Came Both Mist and Snow Read Online Free PDF

family loggerheads before we had spent half a day in the house. But now we listened and asked questions and understood. In a state of mild intoxication which had nothing to do with Belrive’s excellent wines we even made suggestions which we fondly supposed might help. We were under the charm of a novelty made lucid by masterly exposition and stimulating by imaginative enthusiasm. Only Wale was a little aloof. But I could see that he was following closely and that he was impressed.
    But of all this so luminous talk I retain, curiously enough, only the most general impressions today. One aspect of the subject alone has stuck in my mind. Basil had a good deal to say about storm tracks, and on storm tracks I could still, I believe, write a tolerably full and accurate paragraph. There is a sort of tropical storm, it seems, which is next to unpredictable. Attempt to trace its causes and something seems to go wrong with the logic of the heavens; one is contemplating conditions which ought to lead not to storm but to calm. This alone I clearly remember, and I remember it because of its implicit irony. This talk of Basil’s had every appearance of bringing fair weather to Belrive. Actually, it was a very cradle of the tempest by which we were presently to be swept.
     
    It was a fine night, dry under foot and frosty. After coffee I put on a great-coat and strolled out to the terrace. Cecil was at a corner, studying Cudbird’s vast sign. He turned as I approached and it struck me that even in solitude and the dark he would bend upon that fantastic spectacle a glance carefully compounded of wise tolerance and inflexible judgement. ‘One must beware,’ he said, ‘of applying to such things one’s own rather chilly standards of good taste. There is much vitality in them, after all. Shelley would have delighted in that bottle.’
    If there was anybody, I reflected, at whose hypothetical reactions it was futile to guess, Shelley was the man. I made a non-committal murmur.
    ‘Or take Lucy’s stories,’ Cecil went on. ‘Doubtless they seem extravagant and crude enough to a disciple of Henry James.’ At this Cecil tapped me on the shoulder – an action which I must confess stirred me to obscure resentment. There is in James, heaven knows, ten times more than I could ever hope to learn: nevertheless I am beyond the age at which one relishes being pigeon-holed as the disciple of this man or that. ‘And yet, my dear Arthur, Lucy’s romances provide a great deal of innocent diversion. Moreover it is diversion with what may fairly be called an intellectual appeal, and this is an estimable thing in an age so recklessly emotional as ours.’ Cecil took off his glasses. ‘Some of us, I fear, lead sadly ill-regulated lives today.’
    It was at this point that I realized that Cecil was up to something, and that Shelley, James, Lucy, and her books had served to introduce a general proposition which was in its turn to be illustrated by some particular instance. ‘Ill-regulated lives?’ I asked. Whatever the confidence might be, it might as well be got over.
    Cecil took me by the arm; the action might have been described as his house-master’s grip. ‘Our walk,’ he said, ‘shall be to the ruins.’
     
    It was half past ten when we got back and I resolved to go straight up to bed. Passing through the drawing-room I found Basil again bent over his great map. Hubert was lounging beside him, a considering eye bent not on the great square of cloth but on his brother. I stopped with the intention of discovering what quarter of the earth was under review. But something intent about both men made me pass on without disturbing them. All I heard was fragments of what appeared to be a new vocabulary that evening: the Ross Quadrant, the Victoria Quadrant, the Barrier.
    The words meant nothing to my waking mind. But in sleep I knew better. I dreamt that night of a great waste of snow, of snow everywhere stretching to a remote horizon. I dreamt