Sheiks and Adders Read Free Page B

its being of recent foundation must excuse my not having heard of it at Oxford before.’
    ‘Our fame is all to earn, my dear sir. And there were those who objected to the innovation on the score that at Oxford there are abundant snakes in the grass already.’
    Appleby received this donnish witticism with appropriate subdued amusement, and lingered for a few moments in further talk. He rather hoped to be treated to a glimpse of this devoted scientist in action. But that didn’t happen. Perhaps the chap felt that, although engaged in the serious business of enlarging the frontiers of human knowledge, he must cut rather an absurd figure angling around on dry land for anything so elusive as the reptile creation. So Appleby wished him good hunting, and walked on.
    There was a further inviting turn, and a further hazel thicket ahead. He was now moving, as it happened, quite silently, since underfoot was a thick mast such as, in a properly organized rural economy, would have been regaling a sizable herd of swine. The trees from which this neglected fruitage had fallen were a random lot. Beech, oak and chestnut stood shoulder to shoulder – nudging or jostling one another, indeed, in a spirit of robust competition. It wasn’t a scene suggesting that at any previous time the Forest of Drool had been the object of much arboricultural care. One had a feeling that in this small patch of England Nature, despite the intrusion of Advanced Herpetology, was still contriving in a more or less primaeval fashion.
    Appleby rounded the further hazel thicket and at once came upon a changed spectacle. He was looking down into a large and deep basin or natural theatre, such as might have been punched into the yielding globe by some wandering celestial object which had then evaporated in flame long before life on earth began. And an effect of grand combustion, indeed, had for a moment the appearance of strangely lingering on the stage. This was because the glade – for it had to be called that – was ringed with elms in a manner which did perhaps suggest the hand of art, elms being more commonly hedgerow than woodland trees. But the point about these elms was that they were dead, every one. From a few of them tiny shoots were already springing from the bole, so that Nature was perhaps not going to be wholly defeated in the end. But at present the spectacle was as of the aftermath of a forest fire – or better, possibly, of some unfortunate nuclear episode in human history.
    The sudden desolation of this scene was very striking, but at the same time a little mitigated by what, near the centre of the basin, had the momentary appearance of a brilliantly sunlit pond. But the pond was too blue to be true, and was in fact a small remaining sea of bluebells. And then Appleby saw that this spectacle had diverted his gaze from something else. There was also a real pond – but one dark and only faintly glinting. Beside it on the grass was seated a strikingly beautiful girl. She was quite immobile, but she was copiously weeping. So fast fell her tears, indeed, that she might have been a garden statue designed softly to replenish the pool below.

 
     
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    Appleby’s immediate impulse was to withdraw from this strange scene as silently as he had come upon it. His presence had not yet been observed by the dolorous maiden, and his position was such that he could quickly drop out of view. Had the grief of a child been in question, he might have advanced and seen what comfort he could provide. But this was a young adult, not a child, so it would surely be intrusive to march up to her and propose consolation. She had chosen this solitary spot for her weeping, and must be left to get on with it.
    Yet Appleby hesitated. He did so, he realized, because of something inherently perplexing in the spectacle before him. It wasn’t precisely that there was anything theatrical about it; yet it did hauntingly suggest some familiar deliverance of art. Whether in poetry