Explore "Decline and Fall" by Evelyn Waugh on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"I'm looking forward to seeing our new house," said Beste-Chetwynde as they drove out from the station. "Mamma says it may be rather a surprise."
The lodges and gates had been left undisturbed, and the lodge-keeper's wife, white-aproned as Mrs. Noah, bobbed at the car as it turned into the avenue. The temperate April sunlight fell through the budding chestnuts and revealed between their trunks green glimpses of parkland and the distant radiance of a lake. "English spring," thought Paul. "In the dreaming ancestral beauty of the English country. " Surely, he thought, these great chestnuts in the morning sun stood for something enduring and serene in a world that had lost its reason and would so stand when the chaos and confusion were forgotten? And surely it was the spirit of William Morris that whispered to him in Margot Beste-Chetwynde's motorcar about seedtime and harvest, the superb succession of the seasons, the harmonious interdependence of rich and poor, of dignity, innocence, and tradition? But at a turn in the drive the cadence of his thoughts was abruptly transected. They had come into sight of the house.