No one must see the chair-carriage and Dickon and Mary after they turned a certain corner of the shrubbery and entered upon the walk outside the ivied walls.
But when at last they turned into the Long Walk by the ivied walls the excited sense of an approaching thrill made them, for some curious reason they could not have explained, begin to speak in whispers.
When they rose up from the ground, and took the shady track which led them through the wood, she bounded on before, printing her tiny footsteps in the moss, which rose elastic from so light a pressure and gave it back as mirrors throw off breath; and thus she lured the old man on, with many a backward look and merry beck, now pointing stealthily to some lone bird as it perched and twittered on a branch that strayed across their path, now stopping to listen to the songs that broke the happy silence, or watch the sun as it trembled through the leaves, and stealing in among the
ivied trunks of stout old trees, opened long paths of light.
'The old house will brighten up now,' he said, as he looked towards it, 'and there will be a merry fireside beneath its
ivied roof.
The venerable cathedral towers, and the old jackdaws and rooks whose airy voices made them more retired than perfect silence would have done; the battered gateways, one stuck full with statues, long thrown down, and crumbled away, like the reverential pilgrims who had gazed upon them; the still nooks, where the
ivied growth of centuries crept over gabled ends and ruined walls; the ancient houses, the pastoral landscape of field, orchard, and garden; everywhere - on everything - I felt the same serener air, the same calm, thoughtful, softening spirit.
In a year, maybe two, I thought, I'd find my way into the
ivied cloister, and when I emerged on the other end I'd no longer be just another impoverished newcomer: A Columbia degree would accredit me, would validate me and suggest to those around me, from members of my family to potential employers, that I was a man in full, worthy of my slice of the American pie.
These distressed souls have created a "call-out culture" behind the
ivied walls, a place of surveillance and offense taking that stifles free speech and rewards emotionalism.
After Berkeley and a Master's degree from UCLA, she relocated to the
Ivied East, and in the ensuing decades there built an esteemed career as an innovative, incisive, and wry academic Historian.
In the overgrown garden, stood between the old,
ivied sculptures, a big bag slung over one shoulder, Pigeon watches the dark house.
Under sheltering trees and within its
ivied walls, the academic world is a retreat that parallels a pastoral retreat.
In the evening we gather again, down the steep slopes to the estate, greeted by
ivied stone and slate roofs, nestled in brilliant gardens even this late in the year.