Chapter IV: Part 4

By a dry mossy bank underneath a hedge of bullace in whose unleafed raggedness the sere and twisted chords of the traveller’s joy had grown, the willow herb flowers were still in bloom when October had yielded most of its blackberries. Below the pink flowers and on the same stem the long pods were splitting and their seeds, swung under down, drifting with the wind. As I watched, a humble bee, numbed with cold sought the sanctuary of a pink flower, clung for a moment swaying, then fell to the moss below and lay still on its side. The hooked legs moved feebly, the wings shivered; no warmth came from the weak sunshine, and so it died.

By night a mouse would consume its body--beautiful with the bar of tawny velvet on its duskiness. From the time of early spring, when first the willow wren had called by the stream, the bee had climbed over the flowers, bartering the gold grains of the pollen for the honey that it desired so eagerly. In April it had gone to the apple blossom in the orchard and heavy-odoured nettles filling the ditches; invaded the sanctities of all the flowers of summer’s lavishing. Busy was my hunchback bee, feeding on no other form of life, helping the birth of the seeds to which the hue and scent of the petals were servant, working for the future of her race, utterly selfless; humming a wander-song as the sun strengthened its vanes, now fretted by toil and labour.

Then there was no hope anywhere, no voice among the trees, nothing but the feeble winnowing of the leaves as they sank to the earth, and the dazed drone of a dying fly.

In the beechwood the split covers of the mast crushed under the feet, the leaves were crisped and curled. No cunning of sculptor in copper could fashion such as these. The beech tree is indeed the aristocrat of the forest, for it is superb at the fall. No leaves possess such a rich colour or have the appearance of majesty and preserved form. The elm leaves are drab and lifeless, the oak leaves blotched and frayed; from the horse chestnut the big green splayed leaves are either withered and rusted or drop when seemingly full of sap. The elderberry and the ash loosen their sprays at the first singe of autumn’s fire. But gradually dyed a deep golden-brown, and untouched by fungus or blight, the leaves of the beech preserve their outline and take on a silkiness and shining of surface. Seen against the blue sky the veins and arteries of each leaf are clear-cut and distinct; no degeneration in the beech tree. During the autumn the numerous summer tenants of the wood have quitted. There is silence in the cold air. Old and twisted, the beech trees have yielded generations of leaves uncurling from torch-like windings when first the swallows come across the sea; the rooks built in their massy summer greeneries; woodpeckers hewn a nesting place in the rotten boles, spreading a whiteness of chips on the moss beneath; starlings with wings of metallic gleaming stolen their old trysts, and jackdaws nested where the branches had decayed and gaped. Far down across the fields yonder the rooks are following the plough. The jackdaws have joined them, and as light ebbs at evening they will return in a long stream to the rookeries.

The starlings haunt the water-meadows, the mocking cry of the green “gallypot” is heard no more. Walking quietly through the solitude of the wood the wanderer may see a squirrel storing his granaries with mast and acorns, working earnestly lest the frost come early and bind the earth till the sun of March shall solve its graven pattern.

From the edge of the wood the field slopes downwards to the longpond, now covered with a haze in the sunshine. The rushes fringing its edge are rusted and bent like old Roman swords, the reeds like the spears of ancient Britons, thrown with Arthur’s sword, into the lake. By the pebbled shore the water is pure and clear and gloomy, the sunlight showing the moist brown velvet of the leaves upon its bed. Quietly feeding in the centre, a dozen moor-hens send ripples to the side, each wavelet bearing a shifting line of light over the leaves as it travels forward. Yonder the sallows have loosened their slips of leaves and the sunshine throws up their ruddy and yellow wands--broken segments of a rainbow trembling by the marge. A wren goes by, a fluttering moth of a bird, silent; sipping and twittering in sweet cadences a flock of goldfinches passes over towards the patch of thistledown in the meadow. A chuckling, rattling sound; the fieldfares and redwings have arrived from Scandinavian forests.

The path through the higher wood was covered with leaves, and bordered by bleached stalks of wild parsley and crumbling sorrel spires. From the tall grasses the sap went with summer, and like frail ghosts they drooped over the pathway. The sun was warm, as though it were celandine-time. Upright and pallid under the trees, and lit by the warm sunshine, the stalks of the year’s bluebells bore their skull-like caps filled with their black shining seeds. Even as the wind stirred the branches of the trees the old loved shadow lacings slipped and shuffled on the ground. The wind sounded as in summer, the loveliest goldy-brown brimmed the hollows under the oaks. The phantoms of summer were with me as I leant against a sapling, the cast feather of a chaffinch swung on a spider’s line encircling the trunk waved a gentle farewell. Where the shafts of sunlight lingered among the brambles their leaves were fired a lucent green; autumn is kind to the bramble, touching a leaf here and there only with blood red splash.

I waited under the oak, unable to leave the warmth and tranquillity. A cloud hid the sun. I wanted to see the beauteous light come again through the rifted clouds, to see the staining of the bramble leaves. Once more the sun gilded the bare branches, colouring the red berries of the holly that would feed the thrushes in winter, and lacquering the beech trees till they seemed like the tawny beards of vikings.

Somewhere in the wood was the ghost of Proserpine returned to see how her children were faring--under the leaves were the seeds that would bring forth bloom and beauty and fragrance in the spring; deep in the earth lay the cocoons and shells whence would arise the happy throng of summery moths and butterflies. For this is the purpose of autumn: rest and quietude for those who have laboured throughout the summer to ensure life for their kind. So now in autumn my hope is as firm as the oak. Every leaf that falls is pushed from its hold by a bud awaiting the mystic order to unfold itself in spring; every flower lives but to form its seeds. All through the centuries the spirits of the flowers and the wild things have been growing more beautiful in the knowledge of their service.

As I walked away a timid song sounded on the air. Somewhere a robin was singing. He was not made miserable by thought--he was happy every moment. He did not need to brood upon immortality--he lived unconscious of time--every moment was _lived_, the beauty of the earth and the sun, and his mate, all accepted without question. The robin lives like an immortal here, upon the earth that is so beautiful: and all the wisdom of the dead civilisations is nothing to what the robin’s song tells, if you will but listen.

SWALLOW BROW: _A Fantasy_

(_To P. T._)

That morning as she brushed her hair little Jo felt a great joy in her heart, for the sunlight was making bright the room. Her real name was Mary, but they called her Jo for short. She dropped her brush and leaned out, while a blackbird with a yellow bill flew to the top of one of the apple trees in the garden and commenced to flute in a rich, beautiful voice. Then a wild bee crawled on the window-sill and began to clean gauzy wings with his legs. Little Jo watched him with the eager look that some small children have when regarding the lesser works of God, and thought that his body was very velvety, with a sash tied round the middle of it. A lark sang over the cornfield behind the garden, and she wanted to sing and shout, for everything was so lovely in the world. But it was nearly time for breakfast, and mother would be angry if she went downstairs after her sisters and brothers had eaten their porridge, so with her heart singing like the gold-bill outside, she picked up her brush and peered into the mirror.

Her face stared back at her, with its dark eyes and shyly smiling mouth. Then a June rose seemed to hover in each cheek, shedding their petals to give her beauty: and her eyes shone.

“Oh, you are pretty,” she thought, touching the glass with her hand.

She was soon dressed, and ran downstairs, almost falling in her eagerness to move, for the sunshine that came from over the orchard was still spinning its thread of happiness in her heart, as it was in the heart of the lark who sang above the green corn.

All breakfast time she thought of the face looking back at her from behind the mirror, and hardly heard the talk about the two visitors coming that day.

After the meal, when Great-uncle Sufford had gone into his study to read the paper before going down to the meadow to paint, Michael pulled her hair and said roughly, for he was her eldest brother, “What were you grinning at during brekker, eh, kid?”

“Nothing,” replied Jo, wishing she had a stick to bang his ankles.

“Well, ugly-face, if you are contemplating ragging my room, or sewing my pyjamas up, or trying any nonsense, you look out,” he said with the dignity of one whose voice had broken six weeks and three days.

“I’m not ugly-face!” she cried.

“Ho, aren’t you! You’re worse!” He pulled her hair again.

“Oh, I hate you, Micky.”

She ran out of the room, and upstairs in her bedroom she stared mournfully at her own image. It was true, she was an ugly-face, as Michael had said! Oh, and she wanted to be pretty, just to please other people.

Her mouth trembled, and a tear rolled down her cheek. Another and another fell, until she could not see anything, for the mirror was all misty.

“Oh, I want to be beautiful,” she sobbed. “Dear God, make me nice-looking.”

A butterfly drifted in at the open window and flew towards her as though she were a flower. Then, feeling that the gold-dust that came from the great blue sky no longer warmed the white and black bars of his sails, he flickered out again.

Little Jo brushed her eyes, and tripped down the stairs, her misery gone. She ran into the kitchen garden, down the path, past the flowering beans and the cabbages, and through the gate into the cornfield. Soon she reached the brook and flung herself down suddenly at its edge.

She watched the water rippling past, and the green water-weed waving to her. A school of roach went by, the light showing their bright red fins. Little Jo wondered if the fishes knew that they had lovely red fins, and if it was nice to stir the water with them. Behind her the corn seemed to sigh as the wind swept over, as though it knew of coming midsummer, with its hum over the fields, for that meant that August would follow, and the reapers come with the horses and machines.

Then she wondered if the sun loved the brook, for it shook with silvery flashes, and sang a sweet song where it ran into an eddy just by her feet. She was always wondering things. She turned on her back and tried to see a lark in the sky. It was so warm lying there in the sun, and the bees from her Great-uncle Sufford’s hives went over to the clover fields. So warm, and the tiny brook-song so sweet, that her eyes closed. Still the water murmuring softly and the lovely summer sun kissing her. She wondered dreamily if you felt like that when you were in heaven: then remembered that she was ugly and with a small sigh fell asleep.

A swallow flew low over the water, dipping his chestnut breast in the stream. Immediately Jo sat up and clapped her hands.

“Swallow, swallow,” she cried, “how little you are!”

“Am I, my love?” twittered the bird, circling over her head.

“Your wings are so blue, little swallow.”

The bird dived from above and perched at the edge of the brook. Jo could see his slim wings folded over his tail. He took one dainty sip, and then sped, light as a spider’s thread, into the air.

“Come back, little swallow,” she called, “come and perch on my finger. Unless you are afraid,” she added wistfully.

“I will come,” said the swallow. She could feel the tiny claws just touching her fingers.

“We are not afraid of you, my love,” he twittered, “we know that you would not hurt us.”

“Who told you?” she asked in wonder.

“The blackbird who sings on the highest branch of the apple tree by your window, and the humble bees, and the goldfinch into whose nest you peered without touching, and the baby hare you stroked, and all the wild folk.”

“But do they know then how I love them, little swallow?”

“Why, yes,” the bird answered softly, “all the wild things know when a man or a child loves them. Do you not remember the sparrows eating from the hand of an old man in London when you went there one day last year? And how they had no fear of him, but when a lady approached wearing what is called by some a beautiful hat, they all flew away?”

“Yes, I remember, dear swallow.”

“Well, my love, those despised sparrows knew that on that hat were the skins of nineteen humming birds, and though they knew that they themselves would not be desired, or have to give up their lives for the cause of beauty, yet they did not like the woman.”

“Oh, I hate her, I hate her,” cried Jo.

“Hush,” said the swallow. “When she bought the hat she did not think of nineteen of our tiny brothers killed for a hat. She was really a kind woman, only she never thought very much.”

“Tell me,” said the child, very happy, looking at his glorious wings, “Tell me, why do you speak to me? Do you speak to every one?”

“No,” said the swallow sadly, “I want to, but they will not listen. I know that the meadow grasses want to as well, but most of the people seem to be deaf. The meadow grasses talk to the butterflies and the coloured insects that dance among them, for they come to listen to the music of the wind as it swings the little gray and purple pollen-bells that you love to knock off with your hand. And the sound you hear is sometimes the love-whisper of the stems as they tell one another that the baby seeds are being born. For if the seeds are born before the mowers come they are very happy. It is always so among the wild flowers, my love. All they live for is the seeds.”

“I am sad when I see the grasses cut,” said Jo, “for often the little larks are killed and the sorrel dies, and the golden buttercups, and all the sweet flowers.”

“Do not be sad, darling,” twittered the swallow, “for all beauty must die. And beauty gives itself willingly in death when it loves. I remember when I was young we passed over a strange land at dawn, just as the light was coming to cheer us, and below were still figures on the slopes of the hill. We knew that they had given their lives to save their beautiful land: we knew because the wind told us that he had carried their spirits away at the moment of death.”

Little Jo began to sob again.

“Hush, my love, for is not the sun shining and the brook singing its wander-song? We do not know death, for all we think of is the lovely life we have now. The swallows do not struggle as you wise ones do, or kill one another, but each has sufficient and no more. And oh, we are so happy.”

“I am not happy, little swallow, for I am ugly.”

“My love, you are beautiful, for your heart is kind. We all love you so very much. And one day, when you are older, some one will come to you, some one to whom I talk now as I talk to you, and he will tell you that you are beautiful. He is great friends with the owl, who calls to him at night. But at present he is only a little boy.”

“How lovely,” Jo cried, jumping up and dancing. “Will he be long in coming? And will he have a horse, and a sword, and a squire to take off his armour?”

“One day he will have a sword, and he will be brave although his heart may be heavy. And when that is over, he will be sad for a long time, but always brave. But that is years to come. Sometimes even now he is sad, for his mother is dead, and his father thinks that he will grow up wild. Yet he is often jolly and naughty, especially with his friends in a wood. His name is Willie, and he is nine years old.”

“I must be beautiful when he sees me,” said the child-woman, “or he will go away.”

“He will only go away if you do not want him,” twittered the swallow, preening his feathers, “and one day he will need you very badly.”

“Oh, but I shall want my little boy,” she said, “and when I meet him I will tell him I’m his friend. But I am ugly,” and her eyes filled with tears.

“My love,” breathed the swallow, perching on her shoulder, “I have a gift for you, which I give gladly. It is all I have, and soon the meadow grasses will fall, and the roses on the hedges, and then we will be told by the wind that we must go again over the great sea into which so many of us fall. I shall have to die soon, so it does not matter,” he added to himself, but Jo did not hear, for she was wondering what the gift would be.

“Good-bye, dear,” whispered the swallow presently, “and do not forget us when you grow up. So many do.”

“No, swallow, no, but come back soon, and give my little boy a kiss for me, because he hasn’t any mummy.”

The swallow rose high in the air, and in gay flight sped over the cornfield; a swift brown bird dashed after him; a few light feathers danced in the air; a tiny poppy suddenly bloomed on a bended flag of wheat.

“O swallow,” wept the child. “O little, little swallow.”

Her heart still murmured with sadness as she went down the path towards home, past Great-uncle Sufford and a strange man, both painting at their easels. Jo wanted to look at his picture, but she thought that he might think her rude. At first he frightened her when he jumped up and exclaimed, “Oh, let me sketch your head, little lady. Beautiful, glorious!” speaking rapidly to himself, “such an angle, and glorious uplift!” But his eyes looked kind, and already she liked him. And Great-uncle Sufford was laughing.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, “but just let Mr. Norman sketch your forehead. My child, I have only just noticed it. You have the most perfect brows I have ever seen, blue-black like a swallow wing, and such an angle! Norman, you must make your picture worthy of Jo.”

So she stood before him, smiling and with shining eyes, and once more the spirit of the wild rose was in her cheeks. The strange painter-man liked her!

Now, behind the hedge Michael, her eldest brother, was crouching, having crept sinuous and Indian-like, down to the hedge to track the two artists. He watched with disgust what was happening, and determined to take it out of Mary later on. Michael was already disgusted because another stupid girl had arrived in the house a little while ago, and was staying a week.

“Now, I must thank you,” beamed the bearded stranger, “for your beauty has inspired me, you sweet fairy. Now we’ll all go home, and you must meet my little daughter Elsie.”

He picked her up and kissed her lightly and Jo kissed him back, although his face tickled, for he was kind and had said that she was a fairy.

WINTER’S EVE

(_To T. H. H. T._)

“_Woo--oo--oo--._”

Long drawn out as though the note is bubbling through water, it quavers from the dark wood yonder, seen in the dim light of the stars. From the other wood, across the grass land, a plain hoot floats back. _Woo-loo, woo-loo!_ No sound of wings beating--the flight of the wood owl is silent, his broad wings, covered with the softest down, fan the air as he proceeds through the wood.

_Woo--oo! Woo--oo!_ There is mystery in the cry. All other creatures are silent, except the field mice and voles running over the ground. They cannot be seen by the human eye, but I can hear their squeaks. Again the faraway answer haunts across the darkness over the grass. The leaves have fallen long ago, they lie black and rotting on the ground. Those that drifted down when summer died have already merged into the earth whence will come the bluebells in April. But a short time since they were scurrying over the grass and among the bramble bushes, all crisp and brown. The wind caught them up and whirled them in their thousands: then came the time of wintry rains and mists. Their brittleness went, they sank into the earth.

The owl is silent. He has fanned his way from branch to branch, peering to the ground. The slightest movement is watched by his large eyes. A little dark thing running quickly over the leaves, a silent glide to the ground, wings fanning the air, the clutch of a powerful foot, a faint shriek as talons sink into the warm body, and then to the trees again. The mouse is swallowed whole. The faintest of squeaks from behind, the owl’s head turns and he peers down on the ground. The eyes are fixed, but the head can be turned completely round. Those large ears, hidden by the tiny feathers--the ear-cavity being twice the size of an eye--take in every sound, even as the eyes can see in the dark night. The faint squeak came from a rat that runs swiftly on the trail of another. The next moment his body is seized in a grip of death--he, too, screams, and is borne upward, limp and dead, to be devoured at leisure. The owl’s beak opens to a wide gape, and a deep contralto hoot, bubbling and quavering, carries to his mate who hunts in the distant copse.

Heard thus in the loneliness of the winter night, there seems infinite sadness in the deep mellow cries of these night fliers. To hear an owl hooting repeatedly around the cottage at night is supposed, in the country, to portend death. It is easy to imagine how such a superstition arose. The species of owl that hoots, sounding like the call of a lost soul from the blur of the forest, remains concealed during the day, perched up against the bole of a fir tree, or in the cavity of a hollow oak or elm. At night they are seen occasionally and by chance, as their broad wings beat against the sky. Any such cries, lonesome and ghostly, coming in the dark, can mean but one thing to the countryman--death.

What fantasies are called up on a night like this, leaning up against the barred gate, alone! Away in front, the dark, level grass land--beyond, the forest. A sky bright with stars gleaming and winking, high up, unattainable. There is Sirius, the largest star, flaming with sudden molten crimson, then flashing a blue spearhead of light. Possibly there is a mist around that sun, so many millions of miles away, that breaks up the light as the prism of glass does the colours of the spectrum. Over the thick blackness in front a figure is moving-or am I imagining things? Just a faint feeling of fear, the nerves strung up, caused perhaps by slumbering instinct. Thousands of years ago a figure coming stealthily nearer in the darkness might mean an enemy. I glance over my shoulder; there is a feeling that some one might leap on to my back. But as he draws nearer I can hear his footfalls in the frosty grass and his laboured breath--it is one of the farm hands going home from the inn. He climbs over the gate, starts violently as he sees me standing here, and bids me good-night. I answer, adding that I have been listening to the owls. He politely tells me that there are a “good few on ’em about,” but to himself says that I am mazed. Then he passes on, his steps get fainter and fainter, and I am alone.

_Yak wrik! Yak-yak-wrik!_ low over my head. A blood-curdling noise if ever there was one. The latter part of the screech, the _wrik_, is considerably higher in tone than the former part. The barn owl passed over the gate, just above my head and only when he startled me with his cry--not long and sobbing as the wood owl, but sharp and high-pitched--did I know that he had gone. A white mistiness in the night, wings beating slower than those of his hooting brother, and the white or barn owl had drifted over the grass, hunting the mice and field vole.

The barn owl is more common than the wood or brown owl. The former is snow white on its breast and under its wings. The wings themselves, and the back, made it one of our most beautiful birds. They are of an amber-yellow colour, shaded with ash gray, and streaked with small white and brown markings. The pinion feathers and the broad soft feathers of the tail are yellowy-white, barred with light brown. Most remarkable of all is the face, which is heart-shaped, surrounded by a line of gray and yellow featherlets standing out like a ruffle. The eyes are black, a contrast to the pure white of the down that surrounds them. In the summer evening he can be seen beating up the hedges, pouncing as he goes. When hungry, his capacity is enormous--nine or ten mice. He swallows the mice and small birds whole--the indigestible part being cast up later in the form of a grayish pellet. If a hollow tree, where these birds are likely to sleep during the day, be tapped fairly loudly, it will often drive its tenant into the light. Its exit will invariably be hailed by a chattering chorus of tomtits or finches, who will pursue it. In the bright sunlight the sight is dazzled, but in dull weather it would be able to see quite easily.

A wind-blown copse crowns a hill a mile away from the park, and one day in summer I found the skeleton of a barn owl flung among the thorns. Of the dark eyes--each a wonderful instrument--nothing was left, only a little dust collected in the empty orbits. Ants and flies had long completed their work. The white of the breast feathers was turned a dull gray by the rain’s bedragglement; the muscles of the shoulder had withered, though the sinews were dry and silky. The feet were clenched as though the bird had died in agony after the shot had rung out and it sunk to the ground. An owl rarely dies immediately it is shot; it lies back, if badly hit, resting lightly on its downy wings and stares with a mournful anguish, as though puzzled, and conscious that this is farewell to its mate. Owls pair for life, and, like most birds, their lives are ideal. It seemed to me, regarding the skeleton, a sadness that all that was left of a beautiful bird was a wasted bundle of bones and feathers, flung among the thorns.

_Woo-loo-woo-loo-woo-o-oo!_ the brown owl calls in the night. And while I am here on earth, let me be in the fields where I can see the bright stars, and dream as my birds of mystery pass in silence and alone.

_1914._

ERNIE

My Devon hermitage is only a sixteenth-century cottage rented at four pounds a year. There are two bedrooms, very small and lime-washed, and a living room with a stone floor and open hearth. A simple place, built of cob, and thatched, with a walled-in garden before it, and then the village street. The churchyard with its elm-rookery is on one side, a small brook below the wall. Even in the hot summer the water runs; I have made a pool of stones where the swallows and martins can go for the mud to build their homes. Beautiful it is to see, in the shadow of the trees, these birds alighting softly on a boulder, or by the pool’s edge, and shovelling the red mortar on their beaks. They are timid, restless things, rising into the air at the least noise. I have passed many hours in watching them, noting the number of times they came in a minute, and how they mix fragments of dried grass and straw with the mud before taking the material aloft. All the while the water murmured, and the birds answered with gentle song. They soon came to know me, and minded not my presence; and I kept away marauding village cats--lean animals with pointed ears and staring eyes; a race existing on rats.

Sometimes a little boy comes and stands by me, and watches them too. He is a funny little fellow, about two and a half years old, with yellow curls and solemn brown eyes. His name is Ernie, and his father is a labourer, a very kind man. He used to spend all his money in the inn, but suddenly took a wife, and drank no more. When Ernie is a naughty boy, he threatens to go “up to pub,” and Ernie wails immediately, and is good again.

“I got this one,” says Ernie, coming to the cottage door, and holding out in a filthy paw a piece of cake. “You ain’t got this one, ave ee?”

“Go away, Ernie, I’m writing.”

“You ain’t got this one,” he replies, munching the cake, “ave ee, Mis’r Wisson?”

I feel more comfortable in the company of children than with “grown-ups”; and to discourage his talk I put my tongue out, and make a hideous face.

“Ah’ll cut ees tongue off, ah wull,” he gravely warns, repeating what his mother has said to him when he has done it to her--a frequent happening, I fear; I taught him to do it.

“Good-bye,” I shout.

Then he departs, and five minutes later I hear a feeble “_’onk-’onk-’onk_” in my garden. Ernie is driving his car, which he has made from my wheelbarrow, a cinder sifter, and an egg-shaped pair of pram-wheels.

“’Onk-’onk,” he cries to the sparrows, “git out, ’onk-’onk.” Then on seeing me: “I got this one. You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee?”

“Noomye!” I exclaim, while Ernie goes faster and faster.

This motor-car is not the only toy. The pram-wheels, or “wills,” as he calls them, are a source of happiness. A broom tied to the axle acts as a horse, and Ernie goes driving in the road. Other small brats come up, and a puppy dog or two, and great fun they have, often ending up in the stream.

Ernie’s mother is always finding him in the water. She cannot keep him away. He goes out in a clean jersey, knickers, and socks, and suddenly there is a cry for Ernie, a rushing past the door, a curse from myself, and a loud wail.

“You come out of that water, my boy! I told you not to go in that water. Little devil, you,” cries the exasperated mother.

“Ah’ll tull feyther,” shrieks Ernie, as he is driven like a porker past the door. His sobs grow less, and a minute later he comes back and stares at me.

“I got some good water,” he informs me. “You ain’t got no water, ’ave ee?” And he toddles away for more.

He delights in the filthiest old can or bottle. He loves to kneel down and see the water bubbling in. Sometimes it is a “cup of tea” he has got, or a “glass of beer.” And always he has “got this one.”

He appears to be wandering about at all hours of the day and night. The life of a recluse in a cottage, remote from ordinary life, has its moments of exaltation, especially in the lovely months of spring and summer, but when the wind sways the leafless trees and whirls the cold rain, it is hard to prevent melancholy. On these occasions I go and have a chat with Ernie’s parents, my immediate neighbours. Often I find Ernie asleep at the table, with his curls in the empty plate. The little imp has been all day in the water, or on a long tour in his motor, and has fallen asleep from exhaustion. He breathes quietly, his mouth droops.

“Poor lill chap, he’m be tired,” says Ernie’s father; “dear lill boy, he’m be.”

It is always the same tender remark. No wonder Ernie loves his father. But this does not prevent the most savage quarrelling sometimes. Then through the wall I hear him yelling,--

“Dawbake!--dawbake!--dawbake!”

And his father’s threat (it never materialises into action), “Naughty boy, swearin’! Ah’ll tell plicemun!”

“Dawbake!--dawbake!--dawbake!” yells Ernie.

“Ee shouldn’t speak tew ees feyther like that.”

“Dawbake!” moans Ernie, and hides his curly head at father’s knees.

“Could never whip ee,” mutters the parent, “ee be so little.”

“Of course,” I agree, having decided notions about the relation of the big parent to the tiny child.

Every day it is the same. Ernie in the water, Ernie covered with mud and jam. Ernie holding out pails, bottles, cans, kettles, and food for me to see.

“You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee? I got this one. Ah’ll tell plicemun of ee, Mis’r Wisson, swearin’! I got my wills. You ain’t got no wills. I got the wills.”

“Go away, boy!” I shout, as once a schoolmaster used to bellow at me.

He departs, but returns with a cup of muddy water.

“I got a glass o’ beer. ’Tis mine, it is. Yaas.”

Dirty face, wet boots, disturbing voice, everlasting questions, and possessive boastings--how can I complete the various volumes of _The Flax of Dream_, with Ernie always pestering. I have told him again and again that I wish he would go away to another cottage. But if he were to, I should be miserable, and miss my long motor-rides with Ernie among the cabbages, while the driver wears an enormous pair of his father’s boots. I should miss, too, the accounts of how Ernie has killed rats and rabbits with a stone and how he cut off the policeman’s head with a knife because the policeman used a swear word to Ernie.

A SEED IN WASTE PLACES

(_To M. G. S._)

To and fro over the heated surface of Fleet Street passed the red omnibuses, a sickly pale vapour coming from the engines. It was a Saturday afternoon in August, and there were few people about. For myself, I had to toil at my useless and fretting work of getting material for one of the big Sunday newspapers. Saturday was the day when the paper became alive, and the Editor more exacting and more like an Egyptian slave-driver than ever. This was from the point of view of the wretched hack-writers who were privileged to work from ten o’clock in the morning till midnight the same day. Possibly the Editor did not regard himself as one so omnipotent, since he was the target for the deadly arrows of the proprietor’s wrath on Tuesday morning, should any blemish in the make-up of the paper be discovered, or any important item of news be missed. Nevertheless, we loathed the Editor on Saturdays, especially at evening. His face grew whiter, and his despairful leer at our non-success in obtaining some facts from a West End flunkey whose mistress had that morning lost a pearl necklace, or a reputation, was most exasperating for men with tired feet and grit-filled eyes.

That afternoon of August London was more arid than ever. I looked with despair for any sign of beauty, something that could take my mind away from dinginess. My mind was drouthy, and the roots of calm thought were sapped. The blue sky overhead made me miserable: I thought of the waves lapping the sunlit sands of the West Country that I knew so well. There the gray stock-doves flew from the bushes growing on the headland cliff sides, and the lark’s song was ever in the air. Here by the church of Mary-le-Strand all nature was dead. True, there were pigeons, but their wings were tinged with soot, and they were alienated from the wild dove whose nest was among the blackthorns. Even the bark of the plane trees was unrefreshed, and guarded by iron cages; my thought was shut in too. My mind was never in my drudge work, however much I tried to force myself to think in terms of sensation and factory-made phrases. Everything was ugly, the competition, the smoke, the grimy buildings.

And then I saw, floating across the shimmering roadway, a few downy seeds. They came from the direction of the Thames. They swung in the motion of the street-air, and the light glistened on their filaments. One drifted to the pavement at my feet, and released a curved brown seed. By its size I knew it to be that of the Yellow Goatsbeard, or John-go-to-bed-at-noon. Immediately the bus-rattle, the whirr of cab-wheels, and the burnt-oil smell sank away. The seed bloomed in the palm of my hand, and I saw its flowers of pure yellow, and a whitethroat was slipping through the nettles of the ditch. The city was old, but the brown seed was older. Men raised their buildings anew after the great fire, hundreds of years ago; the flower did not change. My mind reached back before the time of the Romans with their tiled baths and chariots; further still, when the first wild settlers made their hut circles by the marge of the wooded river. All the while the dandelion had been blooming so that the seed should be formed. No haste, no strife, no misery: growing in the sunlight. A lovely disk of gold, a summer day, a wandering bee, and the mother-beauty became the child-seed. And this common speck, coming with the moving air to my feet, was as old as the spirit that manifests itself through dull matter in a million million forms and ways.

I dropped the seed and went away, no longer stifled by the weary monotony of my useless work. Then I thought that I would like to keep it, and plant it in some known corner in order to watch its increasing joy as the plant grew in spring, and to take to myself some of its happiness. I searched on the pavement, but it was so small and commonplace I could not see it. A passerby asked if he might help me: had I lost anything and was it of any value--a gold ring, perhaps? I replied in my enthusiasm that it was of more value than a gold ring, hoping (as ever the dreamer has) that he would share my wonder of this seed in London. He was interested and puzzled, so I told him it was the seed of a sort of dandelion that I sought. He stared at me as though I had said that God was in the Strand, and had just spoken to me; and then he turned away with a smile.

THE CHANGE: _A Fantasy of Whitefoot Lane_

(_To J. R._)

He was standing at the edge of the strip of wood, quite still, and looking towards the east as though at something far away. No wind was blowing.

As I approached he did not move, although my feet made a sighing in the long grass. Abruptly he turned.

“When I was last here, the field swept away, open and free, for many miles. In summer, the wheat grew yellow in the sunshine. Now the houses are nearly to the wood, and the little piece of land left is turned into allotments. But even those are deserted, for they are going to build shortly.”

Dreary patches of decaying cabbages, their leaves sodden and drab, were between the edge of the wood and the fences protecting the small back-gardens. Old broken pails and bundles of bean-sticks littered the allotments; sparrows chirped as they searched the backyards for crumbs.

“This was a field for poppies,” he said softly. “Before the stems of wheat stiffened, while the awns and flags whispered softly in the air, the poppies were among the green corn like blood-drops. What untamed colours there were amongst the civilised wheat! The yellow charlock grew every year; we hated the wild mustard, but still it grew. Everywhere the alien creeps in, and hangs fiercely to life. Great big thistles held their spears and purple plumes higher than the grain with the yellow ragwort in August. And the moon daisies, sought by the moths at night. But you think that I am talking foolishly. Perhaps wild flowers are nothing to you.”

He looked at me quickly, and in his face was youth. Yet he had said that he remembered the field before it became part of the suburb: that must have been many years ago.

“Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air,” I quoted from old memory.

“Ah! You have not forgotten!”

With a wild poignancy he spoke.

“I am remembering now.”

He faced me so abruptly that the hair flung over his forehead. Then he spoke again, and my heart was heavy.

“In the early morning the birds sang sweetly, and the air was pure. I used to creep down the stairs, holding my boots in my hand. The third step from the bottom creaked and had to be avoided. The cat asleep on its rug in the kitchen stirred and stretched and yawned as I opened the door, then curled and slept again. It’s funny how I remember things like that so vividly. When my boots were laced, I used to tiptoe to the door, draw the bolt and turn that creaking lock with its huge key, and then outside into the morning. Sometimes I came to this very place, listening to a nightingale, and his song then was not yearning as it was at night. I watched the warblers at their work of weaving cradles among the brambles. I had a friend in those days, a true friend, to whom I told all the things in my heart. Together we wandered and explored the big woods in the country.”

He sighed, while a little wind stirred a leaf upon the oak tree above, a leaf alone among the guarded buds of next spring and the buff oak apples upon the twigs. The leaf made a faint risping as it spun and shook, and he looked up at it, and never had I seen a face so sad.

“Not so long ago that leaf was a bud, opening timorously to the spring sunshine and the lark-song far up into heaven. I wonder if, in its own obscure way, it wondered about the world, and wove a little dream of happiness for ever, like the dream of a child. The nightingale sings no more when it is spring; he is gone like the wheat and its silky wind-wave. Terry--that was the name of my friend--came to me one day and held out his hand, and said shyly, ‘I say, shall we swear life-friendship?’ He had been reading some romantic book. After that we went everywhere together. Ah, now you begin to remember the round pond over by the Seven Fields.”

“Terry and I would go and fish there at five in the morning. Yes, well may you remember those lovely summer morns, the sun staining the air and charging its loveliness with light and life. We made our own rods of hazel wands, and floats from gray goose-quills and corks. The eagerness with which we put ground bait down the night before in the hope of snaring one of the monster carp that lurked in that little pond! I suppose really that none were there at all, but all through those springs and summers of boyhood we fished, never catching anything bigger than a small roach or dace. We used to argue about the merits of different baits: aniseed paste, small boiled potatoes, brandling worms and broad beans. Do you know what that pond is like now?” he cried, tragic eyes looking into mine. “All the people from the suburbs have cast their unwanted cats and split boots into the water. There are no fish in it now, not even an eft remains to float to the surface, turn over and show a stain of fire as he swims to the bottom. Everything is dead, dead! When the sun slants through the trees at its edge, you can see the blur of rusting tins and papers deep underneath. But in those days it was beautiful and beloved of a wandering kingfisher. By the shallow drinking-place the cattle came down to ponder, as with soft stare they stood in the mud. Sometimes a bullfinch came, and a turtle dove from the hawthorn: all the birds loved to splash and ruffle in the water. That little lake in the wood was a place of glamour and romance, especially in later years when I was deeply in love.”

The sun came over the houses, the starlings whistled and clucked among the smoke-burnt and red chimney pots. Wives in the houses were preparing breakfast for their men who soon would walk quickly down the pavements towards the station; another day’s work in London was beginning.

“Yes, I was deeply in love,” the pale stranger continued, “with Louise. That was her name to me, a name I gave her because----”

He faltered and ended. I looked away, for pain had come into his eyes and his voice. The heaped bean-sticks became indistinct as I looked. Again he spoke,--

“When I first saw her, I knew that I would love her, and that she would love me. The bluebells had drooped and faded, their spirits gone to make the sky a deeper hue, and somewhere in the wind pealed the ghostly chimes of their fragrance. The meadow was glorious with buttercups, and the light reflected upwards from so thick a cluster of golden rivets driven into the grasses glowed on her face as she walked slowly across the field. She wore a print dress, and her brown hair was thick and loosely coiled. But it was her eyes that made her face so sweet--they were gentle like those of a hare. I just stood and looked at her. Then she was gone, and I hid behind a hedge, but she did not look back. Her father was an artist living in a cottage by the farm, and she was his only daughter. When we knew each other, I used to talk a lot with him, and she would listen with earnest eyes upon me, as I could see without actually looking at her. When I did glance at her, she would look on the ground, and then we smiled, and in her cheeks I saw the bramble blossom steal and die. Her father sang the song of Julien in the opera _Louise_, and would think of his dead wife as he sat at the piano. And I would think of Louise as I first saw her, in her simple dress, bareheaded in the meadow, with a rich golden-brown light on her cheeks like the lacquered ripples of a stream hovering and gleaming under a bridge.”

“You are very sad,” I said.

“A poet is always sad,” he answered.

“Then there should be no poets if that is so. Happiness is greater than poetry.”

“You are right,” he whispered presently, “but let me tell you my tale before it is too late, for shortly the wood will be down, and on the place where we stand will be houses. And when that happens the last link will be broken.”

“Terry and I and Louise became fast friends, and so we grew up. I went away to London in order to learn the tea trade. Terry stopped here with his father, and, instead of sitting on a stool in a dim office, helped with the sowing and the reaping. One day in summer Louise and I were walking over the Seven Fields, and by a stile I put my arm round her, and she said, ‘No, Julien, not yet,’ but said it so softly and timidly that I knew she loved me. And I held her, the little thing that she was, in my arms, just to feel her making a small struggle, and to watch her shy eyes and tinted cheeks. But she would not let me kiss her, so I pretended to say farewell to her, but she pressed my hand and told me to stay. And when I asked her if she loved me, she would not answer.

“‘Would you break my heart, Louise?’ I said. ‘You know I love you.’

“‘No, Julien,’ she answered very softly, ‘but I do not want you to break your own.’

“‘What do you mean, Louise?’

“But she would not say immediately, and when the time came for us to go back to the cottage, she kissed me nervously on the cheek and whispered that she might be enough for me now, but not later on; that she was only a silly girl. Of course I loved her all the more, and thinking of her, could not work much during the day at the tea trade, but wrote books at night feverishly in order to immortalise my love. All that summer we walked among the flowers, and one day I asked her to marry me. She shook her head, and her eyes were wet and sorrowful.

“‘Not yet,’ she whispered.

“‘I don’t want to marry you now,’ I cried, the impetuous, eager fool that I was, ‘I only want to know if you love me enough to marry me some day. I want to feel that I possess you.’

“She laughed a little shaky laugh, and I took her close to kiss her; but she drew back slightly, and immediately I felt that I wasn’t wanted, and to cover my humiliation I spoke coldly and brutally. Fool that I was!” he cried bitterly.

The drone of a tramcar passing towards Catford along the newly-made high road a mile below the wood rose in pitch as it went faster with its first burden of artisans and factory hands. The stranger brooded, thinking of that time before the field had been built upon. And yet he was still a youth, alone with me in the early hours of the winter morning, standing in the long grass at the eastern edge of the wood. Almost immediately he went on: his voice became wild with yearning.

“Spring came again, with the larks battling over the Seven Fields and the wind anemones rising like wan-white stars above the dead leaves. I fretted with brooding why she withheld herself. I was intensely poetical and equally egoistical. The great artist rises above egoism, the little one is killed by it, and becomes embittered--egoism narrows the view and ruins happiness. But I could not help it--I was held in chains by the tyranny of my own immature thoughts. Ah, God, if I had only known!”

His thin hands covered the pale face, his shoulders shook, and once again the bean-sticks were a smudge.

“One day I kissed her brutally and suddenly--Louise, more fragile of spirit than the tenderest windflower. One day I crushed her lips with my mouth. She struggled away, and the tenderest girl became a spitfire. She reviled me for a weakling. She said that I had no sense of honour, that I was not worthy of being a man--and then she seemed to shrink, her expression of anger fled, and the tears streaming down her face, she sobbed,--