Mr. Fortune by Sylvia Townsend Warner; Adam Mars-jones

Author:Sylvia Townsend Warner; Adam Mars-jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781590174036
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 1927-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

THE SALUTATION

THE SUN was voyaging towards the horizon. The poplars unrolled their shadows towards the well; before long the water’s unblinking reflection of the sky would be meshed over by the footfalls of the breeze, and a leaf or two, already done with summer, would waver down. But it was still the hour of the siesta, for a while yet nothing would move but the sun and the shadows. All round the house, for miles and miles and miles, though there was no ear to hear it, a continuous small sound existed—the crackle of the ripened sunflower seeds breaking from their envelopes. On all sides the land travelled smoothly to the sky-line. To the eastward it was a pale silvery gold, to the westward, dun. The vegetation was so close and even that it had the appearance of turf—only where the road ran did the eye relinquish the hallucination, realising the height of the summer growth. Moving slowly through that growth the backs of the cattle appeared as porpoises lolling on the ocean surface.

The House of the Salutation was old. It was long, low and rambling, with differing roof levels. Only in the centre block had it an upper story. It was colour-washed in various tints of ochre and lemon, and its deep-set windows were guarded with wrought-iron jalousies, so rusty and brittle that a good blow would have shattered them like withies. The farm buildings were more recent. They were built of brick and corrugated iron, expensively. Two wind-fans for pumping water stood near by. When the breeze came they would begin to clank, gently, and that would be the signal for waking.

But now everything slept. The yellow bitch lay poured out in the shade. She had whelped recently, and she lay on her side to ease her swollen teats. Her pups slept in a confused rumple of soft fur beside her: five straight tails stuck out from the mass—puppy-dogs’ tails, broad at the base, diamonded to a point. The sappy pumpkin leaves wilted under the sun’s rays, sprawling flaccidly over the fruit. A snake lay asleep on a stone, relaxed, its life narrowed into the pin-points of its eyes, and a bucket lay on its side, sleeping too.

The fowls had scratched themselves dust baths, and basked in their usual place, round the arbour. It had been put up long ago, in the taste of mid–nineteenth century Europe, sentimentally eclectic, and from the interior of its rather Swiss roof topped with a spiral there dangled an empty bird-cage. Round it were beds of balsam and portulaca, and it was here, in the soft earth, that the fowls scratched themselves in. When the pumping fans began to clank, Quita would come out and shoo them away; and on the morrow they would sleep there again. Everything slept, the slow indefinite contours of the pampas seemed to heave and fall towards the horizon, heave and fall with the rhythmical tide of slumber. Even the vultures, slowly wheeling overhead, seemed to sleep on that blue.

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