(2)
He came to Princhester an innocent and trustful man. The home life
at the old rectory of Otteringham was still his standard of truth and
reality. London had not disillusioned him. It was a strange waste of
people, it made him feel like a missionary in infidel parts, but it was
a kindly waste. It was neither antagonistic nor malicious. He had always
felt there that if he searched his Londoner to the bottom, he would
find the completest recognition of the old rectory and all its data and
implications.
But Princhester was different.
Princhester made one think that recently there had been a second and
much more serious Fall.
Princhester was industrial and unashamed. It was a countryside savagely
invaded by forges and mine shafts and gaunt black things. It was scarred
and impeded and discoloured. Even before that invasion, when the heather
was not in flower it must have been a black country. Its people were
dour uncandid individuals, who slanted their heads and knitted their
brows to look at you. Occasionally one saw woods brown and blistered by
the gases from chemical works. Here and there remained old rectories,
closely reminiscent of the dear old home at Otteringham, jostled and
elbowed and overshadowed by horrible iron cylinders belching smoke and
flame.
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