Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/21

THE HILL OF DREAMS few of a worse class in the school, solemn sycophants, prigs perfected from tender years, who thought life already 'serious,' and yet, as the headmaster said, were 'joyous, manly young fellows.' Some of these dressed for dinner at home, and talked of dances when they came back in January. But this virulent sort was comparatively infrequent, and achieved great success in after life. Taking his school days on the whole, he always spoke up for the system, and years afterwards he described with enthusiasm the strong beer at a roadside tavern, some way out of the town. But he always maintained that the taste for tobacco, acquired in early life, was the great note of the English Public School.

Three years after Lucian's discovery of the narrow lane and the vision of the flaming fort, the August holidays brought him home at a time of great heat. It was one of those memorable years of English weather, when some Provençal spell seems wreathed round the island in the northern sea, and the grasshoppers chirp loudly as the cicadas, the hills smell of rosemary, and white walls of old farmhouses blaze in the sunlight as if they stood in Arles or Avignon or famed Tarascon by Rhone. 11