1
A Winnowing
by Robert Hugh Benson
1910
Prologue
I
HE had passed down into the realm of pure sensation and association, losing for the time all that constituted his present objective life, inhabiting instead those inner chambers of memory where his past lay stored. Yet he did not regard them as the past, but as the present. He did not criticise, weigh, or appraise his actions; rather he retraced, as it seemed, in his own proper person, his actual experiences.
For example, it seemed that he was a boy again, how old he did not consider; but somewhere at that age when the external world, rather than the internal, is the source of sensation. It was a summer morning; lawns were radiant in sunshine; there was a target somewhere and a bow and arrows; and the great house with green-shuttered windows dozed in the heat. There was a sense of ecstatic well-being within him, of tremendous and vital youth... From within the house a piano, in some cool darkened room, poured out a torrent of melody; a gavotte danced in the air; and he knew that his mother, dead years ago, was playing. Presently she would come out... in fact, she was already come out, standing at the French windows in her big straw hat and white dress, looking out for him.
Then again it was the close of a summer afternoon; he was going out riding with his father--dead, too, years ago; and he stood, radiantly happy, listening to the champ and jingle of horses coming round from the stable. On the lawn, just out of sight, stood the tea-table, silver, china, in the shade of the lime, with his mother and sister the one who had died when he was ten years old--talking together there. Fro