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Updated: June 28, 2025
The tennis-ground was over-grown with grass his predecessor's family evidently had not cared about tennis. He recognised most of the trees in the garden. The old vine at the side of the house was green and full of unripe grapes. It was the only thing that had a cheerful look. Kellson returned to the hotel, and found that several of the inhabitants of the village had called and left cards.
One or two old fogeys came up and greeted Kellson in the street men he had known well in the old days, now so changed as to be almost unrecognisable. He passed the little room which had been used in the old days as a public library and reading-room. It was now shut up, and almost in ruins.
At about four o'clock, Kellson had disposed of all the cases, and was thus free for the rest of the afternoon, so he left the office and walked up towards his official residence. He had asked the Chief Constable to see to the fitting up of his room, and he now went to look over the premises.
"Now, Rachel," he said in a kind voice, "what can I do for you?" Rachel tried to speak, but sobs choked her. Kellson sat and watched her, trying to imagine the course of the change in her appearance through the nineteen years. Where had her beauty gone to the clear yellow of her cheeks, through which the red seemed to burn, making them look like ripe nectarines.
These recognitions hurt him so much that he could hardly keep from crying out. He feared to lift his eyes lest he should see some old acquaintance in the shape of a fly-blown picture grinning at him. The proprietor of the hotel and his family were all absent at church, and for this small mercy Kellson was devoutly thankful. Supper over, he strolled out into the silent village street.
After supper, he walked up again to the residency, and found the Chief Constable there, he having come to see whether the arrangements made were satisfactory. Kellson was much relieved to find he had company. He had dreaded entering the house alone in the dark. There was an old rustic seat under the verandah, and on this Kellson and the Chief Constable sat and talked for half an hour.
Night had fallen, although the red glow had not yet quite faded out of the west, when John Jukes Kellson, the newly appointed Civil Commissioner and Resident Magistrate of Marsonton, drove down the hill into the village in which he would henceforth reside and exercise his official functions.
The front door was still open, and Kellson, remembering this, went to shut it. The moon had now soared high above the mountain, and a spectacle, wonderfully and wildly beautiful, was revealed. Kellson walked into the garden and gazed on it. The mist, no longer smooth and clinging, but drawn and curled into fantastic wreaths, was rising slowly into the windless sky.
How familiar it all was; he knew every curve of the road and every ant-heap; every bush looming in the twilight seemed like an old acquaintance. Nineteen years had passed since Kellson had last seen the village. A clerk in the local public offices, he had left it on promotion, and now he was returning as chief Government functionary. How strange it seemed.
The cart drawn by four horses, which conveyed him, had been hired at a town over ninety miles away, and Kellson had driven that distance in two broiling hot days. As the cart went slowly down the hill, the moon was rising over the eastern mountains, and a breathless stillness reigned, broken only by the rumble of the vehicle.
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