He had halted first as his ear caught the merry chime of bells from
the opposite shore. Having mopped his brow, he moved forward and
halted again by a granite cross and drinking-trough whence the road
led steeply downhill between the first houses of the village. He was
visibly agitated. His hand trembled on his stick: his face flushed
hotly beneath its mask of dust and sweat, and upon the flush a
cicatrix--the mark of a healed bullet-wound--showed up for the moment
on his left cheek, white as if branded there.
The people were shouting below, cheering vociferously. Yes, and
along the harbour every vessel, down to the smallest sailing-boat,
was bedecked with bunting from bowsprit-end to taffrail. The bells
rang on like mad. The bells. . . . He dropped the hand which had
been shading his eyes, let dip his frayed cuff in the water of the
fountain and, removing his hat, dabbed his bald head. This--had he
known it--worsened the smears of dust. But he was not thinking of
his appearance.
He was thinking--had been thinking all the way from Plymouth--only of
the harbour at his feet, and the town beyond. His eyes rested on
them again, after ten years. All the way his heart had promised him
nothing but this. He had forgotten self; having in ten years, and
painfully, learnt that lesson.
But the music of the bells, the distant sounds of cheering, recalled
that forgotten self; or perhaps it leapt into assertiveness again
unwittingly, by association of ideas with the old familiar scene.
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