Smoke, in spite of two days of thunderstorms and rain, and at Clapham
Junction the line had been wrecked again; there were hundreds of
out-of-work clerks and shopmen working side by side with the customary
navvies, and we were jolted over a hasty relaying.
All down the line from there the aspect of the country was gaunt and
unfamiliar; Wimbledon particularly had suffered. Walton, by virtue of
its unburned pine woods, seemed the least hurt of any place along the
line. The Wandle, the Mole, every little stream, was a heaped mass of
red weed, in appearance between butcher s meat and pickled cabbage. The
Surrey pine woods were too dry, however, for the festoons of the red
climber. Beyond Wimbledon, within sight of the line, in certain nursery
grounds, were the heaped masses of earth about the sixth cylinder. A
number of people were standing about it, and some sappers were busy in
the midst of it. Over it flaunted a Union Jack, flapping cheerfully in
the morning breeze. The nursery grounds were everywhere crimson with
the weed, a wide expanse of livid colour cut with purple shadows, and
very painful to the eye. One s gaze went with infinite relief from the
scorched greys and sullen reds of the foreground to the blue-green
softness of the eastward hills.
The line on the London side of Woking station was still undergoing
repair, so I descended at Byfleet station and took the road to Maybury,
past the place where I and the artilleryman had talked to the hussars,
and on by the spot where the Martian had appeared to me in the
thunderstorm. Here, moved by curiosity, I turned aside to find, among a
tangle of red fronds, the warped and broken dog cart with the whitened
bones of the horse scattered and gnawed. For a time I stood regarding
these vestiges. . . .
Then I returned through the pine wood, neck-high with red weed here and
there, to find the landlord of the Spotted Dog had already found
burial, and so came home past the College Arms. A man standing at an
open cottage door greeted me by name as I passed.
I looked at my house with a quick flash of hope that faded immediately.
The door had been forced; it was unfast and was opening slowly as I
approached.
It slammed again. The curtains of my study fluttered out of the open
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