Miss Ley

“ Miss Ley, a student of men, who could observe with interest the most diverse tendencies, (for to her sceptical mind no way of life nor method of thought was intrinsically more valuable than another,) was pleased with his stately, candid simplicity, and used with him a forbearance which was not customary to her.
“Well, Polly,” said the Dean, “I suppose now you are a woman of property you will give up your wild-goose chase after the unattainable. You will settle down and become a respectable member of society.” ”

“ Miss Ley looked at him as if she were thinking, then, with a dry smile: “My dear doctor, Mr. Craddock is so matter of fact—the moon will never rouse him to poetic ecstasies.”
“Miss Ley!” said the parson’s sister, in a tone of entreaty.
Miss Ley glanced from one to the other. “Do you want my serious opinion?” she asked, rather more gravely than usual. “The girl loves him, my dear doctor. Marriage, after all, is such a risk that only passion makes it worth while.”
Miss Glover looked up uneasily at the word passion. ”

“ You’re very independent because you have a beggarly five hundred a year, but apparently it isn’t enough for you to live without letting your flat when you go away. Remember that no one has any claims upon me, and I can make you a rich woman.”
Miss Ley replied with great deliberation.
“My dear, I have a firm conviction that you will live for another thirty years to plague the human race in general, and your relations in particular. ”

“ Nor did Miss Dwarris precisely dislike this independent spirit; she looked upon her, in fact, with a certain degree of affection and not a little fear. Miss Ley, seldom lacking a repartee, appeared really to enjoy the verbal contests, from which, by her greater urbanity, readiness, and knowledge, she usually emerged victorious; it confounded, but at the same time almost amused, the elder lady that a woman so much poorer than herself, with no smaller claim than others to the coveted inheritance, should venture not only to be facetious at her expense, but even to carry war into her very camp. ”

“ Castillyon? She’s dreadfully common, isn’t she?”
“My dear,” answered Miss Ley ironically, “her husband is a most important person—in Dorsetshire, and her own family has a whole page in the Gentleman’s Bible or the Landed Gentry.”
“I shouldn’t have thought she was county,” said Bella seriously; “she seemed to me very vulgar.”
“She is very vulgar,” answered Miss Ley, “but it’s the sort of vulgarity which is a mark of the highest breeding. To talk too loud and to laugh like a bus-driver, to use the commonest slang and to dress outrageously, are all signs of the grande dame. ”

“ Lord de Capit at that moment advanced to Lady Vizard, and Miss Ley took the opportunity to go to Mrs. Barlow-Bassett, superbly imposing as usual, who was talking with the Castillyons.
“It’s a great comfort to me to know he’s such a good boy,” she heard her saying. “He has no secrets from me, and I can assure you he hasn’t a thought which he needs to hide from anyone.”
“Who is this admirable person?” asked Miss Ley.
“I was thanking Mrs. Castillyon for being so good to Reggie. He’s just of an age when the influence of a woman of the world—a good woman—is so important.” ”

“ There’s no rest for the weary.”
He pulled a new briar-wood pipe from his pocket, filled and lit it.
“I feel better now.... Well, so-long; I shall be in to tea.”
Conclusions buzzed about Miss Ley, like midges on a summer’s day. She drew them all the afternoon; she drew them all through dinner. Bertha was effusive too, unusually so; and Miss Ley asked herself a dozen times if this stream of chatter, these peals of laughter, proceeded from a light heart or from a base desire to deceive a middle-aged and inquiring aunt. ”

“ By marrying this man you dishonour yourself and you dishonour me. How can you suffer to change the glorious name you bear for that of a miserable little counter-jumper! I have no right to ask you to refrain from marriage because I’m old and helpless, and you’ve made me utterly dependent on you, but I have a right to ask you not to disgrace the name of my family.”
Miss Ley had never before seen such severity in the gentle Dean; an unwonted fire had driven away the delightful sweetness which was his most charming trait, and two red spots burned on his cheeks. ”

“ When at last they drew near London, Mrs. Castillyon roused herself. She turned to her friend with a sort of despairing scorn.
“You’re fond of aphorisms, Miss Ley,” she said. “Here’s one that I’ve found out for myself: One can despise no one so intensely as the person one loves with all one’s heart.”
“Frank can say what he likes,” answered the other, “but there’s nothing like mortal pain for making people entertaining.”
A few days later Miss Ley, who prided herself that she made plans only for the pleasure of breaking them, started for Italy. ”

“ Miss Ley added.
“Then they will cut me too.”
“But you’re the last man in the world to give up these things. There’s nothing you enjoy more than dinner-parties and visits to country houses. Women’s smiles are all important to you.” ”

“ Miss Ley, accustomed, when she went abroad for the winter to let her little flat in Chelsea, had been obliged by unforeseen circumstances to return to England while her tenants were still in possession, and had asked Miss Dwarris whether she might stay with her in Old Queen Street. The old tyrant, much as she hated her relatives, hated still more to live alone; she needed someone on whom to vent her temper, and through the illness of a niece, due to spend March and April with her, had been forced to pass a month of solitude. ”

“ Her conversation braced Miss Dwarris, so that with her she was usually at her best, and sometimes, forgetting her overbearing habit, showed herself a sensible and entertaining woman of not altogether unamiable disposition.
“You’re growing old, my dear,” said Miss Dwarris when they sat down to dinner, looking at her guest with eyes keen to detect wrinkles and crow’s-feet.
“You flatter me,” Miss Ley retorted; “antiquity is the only excuse for a woman who has determined on a single life.” ”

“ They’ve not got its life-history right, and the stuff they believe about the way people catch it is sheer footle.”
“It doesn’t sound frightfully thrilling to me, and I’m under the impression you’re only trumping it up to conceal some scandalous amour with a ballet-girl.”
Miss Ley’s visit to Barnes seemed welcome neither to Jenny nor to Basil, who looked harassed and unhappy, and only with a visible effort assumed a cheerful manner when he addressed his wife. Jenny was still in bed, very weak and ill, but Miss Ley, who had never before seen her, was surprised at her great beauty ”

“ Of course the first year of married life is difficult, and the weariness of the flesh adds to the inevitable disillusionment. Every marriage has its moments of utter despair. The great danger is in the onlooker, who may pay to them too much attention and, by stepping in, render the difficulty permanent—cutting the knot instead of letting time undo it. Miss Ley’s cogitations brought her not unnaturally to the course which most suited her temperament ”

“ There is a battle cry in the word. You feel as if you had drawn a sword. A royal word, a conquering word, which if the weakest speak, they straight grow strong.”
CHAPTER VII—IN THE FOURTH WATCH LADY LEYLAND had ordered breakfast at ten o’clock and at that hour her guests were ready for it. Mistress Temple and Katherine showed no signs of weariness, but Lord Ley-land looked bored and Mistress Annis was silent concerning the squire and his manner of passing the night. Then Leyland said:
“By George! Madam, you are very right to be anxious. The company of ladies always makes me anxious. ”

“ The Patrol was on Kane's trail and the blaster in his hand was still warm when he shoved it up against Pop Ganlon's ribs and made his proposition.
He wanted to get off Mars—out to Callisto. To Blackwater, to Ley's Landing, it didn't matter too much. Just off Mars, and quickly. His eyes had a metallic glitter and his hand was rock-steady. Pop knew he meant what he said when he told him life was cheap. Someone else's life, not Kane's.
That's how it happened that The Luck lifted that night from Yakki, outward bound for Ley's Landing, with Pop and Kane aboard her alone. ”

“ In Suprema Ley, Gamboa has struck a universal chord. Such a story is no more Mexican than it is British, Italian, Russian. Indeed, there is a spirit of greatness in the book, which is, perhaps, one of the best conceived Mexican novels of modern times. Its faults are the faults of all modern Latin literature. The love interest is not all which the story contains, but it is all in all, or at least intended to be all in all while we peruse it. The amatory passages are prolonged, and the erotic psychology is intense, minutely described, and is capable of endless ramifications. ”

“ Robert Ley, speaking as chairman of the Nazi Committee for the Protection of German Labor, stated:
“You may say, what else do you want, you have the absolute power, but we do not have the whole people, we do not have you workers 100 percent, and it is you whom we want; we will not let you be until you stand with us in complete, genuine acknowledgement.” ”

“ Where a mountain ridge stood in the path of a ley, the surveyor, instead of building a tump on the ridge as a sighting point, often cut a trench at the right angle and in the path of the ley. This shows as a notch against the sky and makes a most efficient sighting point from below. I have counted eight such artificial notches in the mountain ridge when on the road from Llanvihangel Crucorney to Longtown. Each notch can only be seen on the line of sight, and disappears when a quarter of a mile right or left. ”

“ The test is a thing so necessary for a soap-boiler, that it is impossible for him to conduct his operations with propriety without it; yet, I believe, there are hundreds in the trade that know nothing at all about it: be that as it will, I say, they ought to know it; nor can any man discover when a soap-ley is totally deprived of its alkali, without its assistance. ”

“ The ley and its sighting points were earlier than homesteads, hamlets, or towns, and as the latter evolved on the tracks, place names naturally bear traces of their origin.
It is no reflection on philologists that, not knowing of the ley, they have made misinterpretations, and have a huge mass of corrections to make. In particular they will find a past neglect in translating place names in the light of traders coming along the road and meeting the buyers at settled points. ”

“ The water in these excavations proved to be splendid sighting points by reflection from higher ground, and the moats with no tump but a flat plateau within a ring of water evolved. Many tumps on banks, as at Tre-Fedw, near Pandy, show no excavations. Many tumps were at the junction of leys, showing the technical skill of the early surveyors, who must have moved a temporary sighting point on one ley until it fell in the line of a second ley. A sighting tump always commanded a fine, clear view in at least two directions, and in after ages was coveted as a dwelling spot. ”

“ In practice churches can be treated as sighting points, but in some cases a ley passes through a tump or well close to the church. Avoid for a time the temptation of taking every bit of narrow straight road and extending it into a ley. Scrap every ley you think you have discovered if it does not pass through at least four undoubted sighting points exclusive of roads.
You must use Government ordnance maps. One mile to the inch is the working scale. ”

“ It was much like the Chamber well near the mill at Weobley. The Golden Well near Dorstone is on a ley running through Arthur’s Stone, the Gold Post (a mountain cot) , and terminating in Pen-y-Beacon. The two “golds” on one track indicate a trader’s way. Leys go straight to, and not beyond, many wells in the Malvern ridge—St. Ann’s, Holy Well, Walms (there is a Walmer Street named from a ley in Hereford and a surname Walmsley) , St. Pewtress, and one (whose name I do not find) near the Chase Inn, above Colwall, which village itself is the Cole’s—or magic man’s—well. ”

“ I have found that the persistent things down the ages are not the courses of the roads or tracks, but their sighting points, and that cross roads with a place name are such. Place names are also persistent, some of them going back to prehistoric times, but others evidently mediæval. But the real dating of the leys and when the system fell into decay is for future investigation.
INDIVIDUALITY OF A LEY.
Each ley or track was as separate and distinct from other leys as each animal or tree is an organism distinct from other animals or trees. ”

“ Actual trees are shown at the cross roads in two of the above in Taylor’s fine county map of 1757.
The Oak in the horse-shoe meadow at Ross is on the ley passing over Over Ross (the place name indicates it) and Wilton Castle. The steep little street coming down to the river from the Swan Hotel is dead on this ley.
Where a natural hill came under a ley it was often made a sighting point by the planting of a single tree, hence the numerous “one tree” hills, as at Backbury and on the Holmer Golf Links. ”

“ Life had become a habit for Pop, even if living had ended.
"What are you staring at, Pop?" Kane's voice was like the rest of him. Harsh and cold as space itself.
"At you, I guess," Pop said, "I was wondering what you'd done—and where—and to whom."
"You're a nosey old man," Kane said. "Just get me to Ley's Landing. That's what I'm paying for, not a thing more."
Pop nodded slowly and turned back to the control board. They were above the Belt by now, and a few short hours from turnover point. The cranky drives of The Luck needed all his attention. ”