Page:The Climber (Benson).djvu/46

36 Besides—though it appeared wildly improbable—little opportunities which might lead to the big opportunities might be floating about even here; she must be on the look-out for everything, snatch everything no, that was not the word, put out her hand to everything very gently, and then catch hold of it very tight.

Lucia smiled to herself as she made this verbal alteration in her thought, and got out of bed, for she was too wide awake to care to go through drowsy processes to make her sleepy again, and tiptoed downstairs to her bath, putting her sponge at the bottom below the tap, so that the noise of the water splashing in should not rouse the aunts. Yet it was not quite kindness or the desire not to break their rest that dictated the consideration of this; she wanted the sense that nobody else was awake.

She dressed quickly and went out, feeling a thrill of delight in the fact of being alone and awake in this translucent dawn, while the sleepy town still dozed abed, and her quickened perception of herself seemed to have vivified her all through, so that it was with an unsealed and kindled eye that she saw the familiar places at which she had looked a hundred times without seeing them. She turned her back on the town, and struck upward across a couple of fields that led to the great hump of down that overlooked the city. Here in the meadows the grass was still covered with the seed-pearls of the dew, though the sun was risen, and as she walked there was thrown round the shadow of her head a pale iridescence that accompanied her as she moved. Buttercups spread their gold on the green velvet of the fields, and in the hedges the leaves of the hawthorn were varnished with the dew, and cascades of starry blossom, vigorous and refreshed by the night, were spilled and sprayed over them. Then still mounting, she came to the down, all carpeted with thyme and cushions of rockrose, and stiff and springy to the feet with its short closegrowing grasses. Harebells trembled on wire-like stalks, and over all had been thrown the magic shuttle of the gossamer webs. Then turning round, Lucia looked over the hollow that held the town itself. Night-mists and the lighting of early fires half shrouded it in skeins of bluish vapour, but the taller houses and spires pricked through this covering and stood gilded with the early sunlight. Even as she looked the veils of vapour got gradually more and more suffused with the Eastern fire until they were withdrawn, and vanished in the glory of the mounting sun.

The same awakened perceptions which had shown her herself made her more alert to see these things. During this last year