.. all mysterious, and from the earth there rose
that breath--sea-wind, gorse, soil, saffron, grey stone--that breath that
is only Cornwall.
Peter--somewhere in some strange dim recesses of his soul--felt it about
his body. The wind, bringing all these scents, touched his cheek and his
hair and he was conscious that that dark traveller who now tenanted his
house closed the doors and windows upon that breath. It might waken
consciousness, and consciousness memory, and memory pain ... ah!
pain!--down with the shutters, bolt the doors--no vision of the outer world
must enter here.
The little station received gratefully the evening light that had descended
upon it. A few men and women, dim bundles of figures against the pale blue,
waited for the train, a crescent moon was stealing above the hedges, from
the chimneys of two little cottages grey smoke trembled in the air.
Suddenly there came to Peter, waiting there, the determination to drive. He
could not stand there, surrounded by this happy silence any longer. All
those shadows that were creeping about the dark spaces beyond his house
were only waiting for their moment when they might leap. This silence, this
peace, would give them that moment. He must drive--he must drive.
In the road outside the station a decrepit cab with a thin rake of a man
for driver was waiting for a possible customer.
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