It skirted the
low-lying fields at the foot of the uplands and slipped through
an iron gate to end in the far distance at the gigantic portal of
The Fort. This was a squat, ungainly pile of rugged gray stone,
symmetrically built, but aggressively ugly in its very
regularity, since it insulted the graceful curves of Nature
everywhere discernible. It stood nakedly amidst the bare, bleak
meadows glittering with pools of still water, with not even the
leaf of a creeper to soften its menacing walls, although above
them appeared the full-foliaged tops of trees planted in the
barrack-yard. It looked as though the grim walls belted a secret
orchard. What with the frowning battlements, the very few
windows diminutive and closely barred, the sullen entrance and
the absence of any gracious greenery, Gartley Fort resembled the
Castle of Giant Despair. On the hither side, but invisible to
the lovers, great cannons scowled on the river they protected,
and, when they spoke, received answer from smaller guns across
the stream. There less extensive forts were concealed amidst
trees and masked by turf embankments, to watch and guard the
golden argosies of London commerce.
Lucy, always impressionable, shivered with her hand in that of
Archie's, as she stared at the landscape, melancholy even in the
brilliant sunshine.
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