But then they encountered the rest of the carts. They saw a whole line of them, accompanied by people on foot. So the postilion, hanging on to the guardrails of the top deck, began blasting on his horn as though it was the very ram’s horn of rage and despair. The astonishing, out-of-breath death rattle of his bellowings made dense flights of larks rise from the most distant fields. And, as though it had been hit broadside by an insurmountable wave, the Mail, almost touching the near bank, flew by the carts at full gallop, straightened itself out on the open road, and continued to race forward, still swaying on its springs, gradually regaining its equilibrium, while little by little the steam puffing out through the coachman’s whiskers stopped.

At Paddington they picked up a bag of mail. The borough was coming to life, stretching itself, making squeaking noises from all its storefronts. On his doorstep, a clothier was beating out his merchandise with a cat-o’-nine-tails. Beyond the town, the land became more rugged. The road narrowed and kept the coach to a trot. Wide-open plowlands darkened the terrain. Long streamers of crows flapped heavily behind the teams of oxen who were carrying on with the work.

The coach drove past some horsemen whose mounts were free of baggage. Some of them were heading into the open sea of the fields. Others were climbing, at a walking pace, up dirt tracks toward hills covered in dark-hued woods, from which a fine mist, like tobacco smoke, was streaming. The air was brisk but golden. From every farm along the way, the coach scared up flocks of geese. They tried to take flight and winnowed the lower limbs of the sycamores, furiously flapping their bent-back wings.

The willows hadn’t been pruned yet. They were still lifting their branches like trailing red harp strings. Through the deeper-hued branches, you saw the pallor of the sky. There must have been a melody inside those trees, though you couldn’t hear it because the wheels were rumbling, the springs were squealing, and the shoes of the four horses were clattering on the road. But when the coach passed right alongside a long barn where they were threshing barley, at the same time you could clearly hear the whole building whistling, “Alexandra, Please.” All of England was whistling “Alexandra, Please.”

From each crossroads, lanes led half a mile to village squares shaded by huge, almost leafless beech trees. You could see dogcarts pulled up in the squares, and a few men standing around, hands in their pockets, the butcher’s boy in his blue apron, pigs squealing. And, as though fixed motionless on a carousel, the whole scene swerved around all of a piece, in time with the four horses straining on the shaft. After the beeches came long lines of poplars, which also swerved around backward; then low-slung thatched cottages, with little arch-topped windows that looked out from under the furry brims of their black straw hats; next came beech groves, with the snouts of houses appearing here and there among the branches; next a long, white wall, overtopped by crosses and an oak, and a second oak; and behind the two oaks a church began not to rise up but to fall away, its stone cross having been the first thing visible among the twisted branches of the oaks; next its compact belfry with its zinc louvers; next its roof; then its stained-glass rose; next its door, wide enough for cartloads of virtuous offerings; next its four broad steps—they touched the ground just as the Mail passed by the cemetery gate.