At last they began to come to open country. There was the darkness of the land, the smell of the wet fields, the strung spare lights of night across the countryside. They began to feel the force of the wind as it swooped down at them across the fields and shivered against the sides of the car. It was blowing the fog away and the sky was lifting. And now, against the damp, low, thick, and dismal ceiling of the clouds, there was an immense corrupted radiance, as if all the swelter, smoke, and fury of London’s unending life had been caught up and resumed there. With every revolution of the wheels the glow receded farther behind them.
And now, with the lonely countryside all round him, George became conscious of the mysterious architecture of night. As he felt the abiding strength and everlastingness of the earth, he began to feel also a sense of exultation and release. It was a feeling he had had many times before, a feeling that every man who lives in a vast modern city must feel when, after months within the hive of the city’s life—months of sweat and noise and violence, months of grimy brick and stone, months of the incessant thrust and intershift and weaving of the endless crowd, months of tainted air and tainted life, of treachery, fear, malice, slander, blackmail, envy, hatred, conflict, fury, and deceit, months of frenzy and the tension of wire-taut nerves and the changeless change—he leaves the city and is free at last, out beyond the remotest filament of that tainted and tormented web. He that has known only a jungle of mortared brick and stone where no birds sing, where no blade grows, has now found earth again. And yet, unfathomable enigma that it is, he has found earth and, finding it, has lost the world. He has found the washed cleanliness of vision and of soul that comes from earth. He feels himself washed free of all the stains of ancient living, its evil and its lust, its filth and cruelty, its perverse and ineradicable pollution, But curiously, somehow, the wonder and the mystery of it all remains, its beauty and its magic, its richness and its joy, and as he looks back upon that baleful glow that lights the smoky blanket of the sky, a feeling of loss and loneliness possesses him, as if in gaining earth again he has relinquished life.
The car sped onwards and still onwards, until finally the last outpost of London was left behind and the glow in the sky was gone. They were driving through dark country and night towards their journey’s end. McHarg had not uttered a word. He still sat with legs sprawled out and head thrown back, swaying from the motion of the car but held in position by one limp arm which was hooked in the strap beside him. George was getting more and more alarmed at the thought of bringing him in this exhausted state to the house of an old friend whom he had not seen for years. At last he stopped the car and told the driver to wait while he pleaded with his master.
He switched on the overhead light and shook him, and to his surprise McHarg opened his eyes right away and by his responses showed that his mind was completely clear and alert. George told him that, worn out as he must be, he could not possibly enjoy a visit with his friend. He begged him to change his mind, to return to London for the night, to let him telephone his friend from the nearest town to say that he had been delayed and would see him in a day or two, but by all means to defer his visit until he felt better able to make it. After McHarg’s former display of obstinate determination, George had little hope of success, but to his amazement McHarg now proved most reasonable. He agreed to everything George said, confessed that he himself thought it would be better not to see his friend that night, and said he was prepared to embrace any alternative George might propose, except—on this he was most blunt and flat—he would not go back to London. All day his desire to get out of London had had the force and urgency of an obsession, so George pressed no further on that point. He agreed that they should not turn back, but asked McHarg if he had any preference about where they should go. McHarg said he didn’t care, but after meditating with chin sunk forward on breast for several moments, he said suddenly that he would like the sea.