Chapter 27


Early next morning Vessons was calling the cows in for milking. He
leant over the lichen-green gate contemplatively.

All the colours were so bright that they were grotesque and startling.
Above the violently green fields the sky shone like blue glass, and
across the east were two long vermilion clouds. Behind the black hill
the sun had shouldered up, molten, and the shadow of Vessons, standing
monkey-like on the lowest bar of the gate, lay on the stretch of wet
clover behind him--a purple, elfin creature, gifted with a prehensile
dignity. The cows did not appear after his first call. He lifted his
head and called again in a high plaintive tone, as one reasons with a
fretful child. 'Come o-on, come o-on!' Then he sank into the landscape
again. After an interval, a polished red and white cow appeared at a
distance of five fields, coming serenely on at her own pace. A white
one and a roan followed her at long distances. They advanced through
the shadows, each going through the exact middle of the many gateways,
always kept open like doors in a suite of rooms at a reception. Vessons
waited patiently--more as a slave than a ruler--only uttering his
plaintive 'Come o-on!' once, when the last cow dallied overlong with a
tuft of lush grass in the hedge. This was the daily ritual. Every
morning he appeared, neutral-tinted, from the house, and cried upon an
apparently empty landscape; every morning they meandered through the
seven gates from the secret leafy purlieus where they spent the night.