Chapter V: Part 5

“‘Julien, Julien, won’t you make a great effort to kill your egoism? Cannot you see that your intolerance of all people because they have not the same fervour about poetry as yourself will eventually cripple all your powers? You sneer at Terry, who is one of the dearest boys, because he doesn’t want to hear you quote “The Hound of Heaven”; you sneer at your own father because you say that he doesn’t understand you. Oh, Julien, won’t you try to alter things for your own sake?’

“‘Not for yours?’ I sneered.

“‘For your own, Julien,’ she replied quietly.

“‘You don’t love me?’

“‘Not as you love me, Julien.’

“‘No, of course not! You don’t know what love is! I can eat my heart out for you; dream, dream, dream in London all the time, pine in the smoke, and no one understands me. No one! The poet is always the outcast, from Christ downwards. The world smashes and destroys genius--the genius that is always trying to make others see the beauty in the world, and make humanity happier.’

“‘No, not an outcast, Julien: a beloved friend who will rise above introspection, and be happy. But if that man be caged by egoism, isn’t it best to try to undo the door of that cage? Oh, Julien, if only you would believe.’

“She was distressed, and at the thought of hurting her a devil in me rejoiced. She had called Terry one of the dearest of boys. I seized upon the remark.

“‘No doubt you are in love with Terry, who is blue-eyed and has such nice wavy hair. Well, go and marry him. _I_ shall never ask you to marry me again. Good-bye, Louise.’

“I walked away, and after a while turned to go back to her. We had been quarrelling, at least I had made my pitiable remarks, just where we are standing now. But when I returned she had gone. An insane conceit made me want to hurt her. I wanted to break her spirit--to make her believe in me first: then I would try to alter my views. Already I could see the truth of her remarks. I brooded, and my vitality was sapped. My pride, or conceit, faltered. Then, when I determined to crave her pity, I found she had gone away to Devon with her father. I wrote a bitter letter to her and left my home. I never wrote again to Louise, nor did she write to me. Not for a year. Then she wrote to me. And I came back. I was already a changed man. Her letter was short, and in it she said that she wished and prayed for my happiness. I came back humbly to see her----”

He put a shaky hand up to his forehead, wet with moisture. His anguish was unbearable. I looked away to the yellow houses with their blue-gray roofs of slate; another tram passed in the High Street.

“She had died,” he muttered. “Little sweet Louise had pined away and become ill. One day she got wet through and developed rapid consumption. She was only eighteen--a child. They said it was consumption, but I knew better. _I_ killed her. I, the self-flaunted idealist, my eyes brimming for humanity, had neglected every one around me. I only realised it then. She had known it all the while, because love was a far holier and greater thing to her than it was to me. I thought because I had wanted to pour out my heart’s blood at her feet that therefore my love was not selfish, but real, divine! Ah, what did I know about love! I went to the churchyard and saw the mounded grave with a simple stone at the head, and it seemed to me that she was near, wearing the print frock and standing among the buttercups that reflected a gold vapour about her, her eyes dark with a shadow. The maiden eyes, the eyes soft with love, and yet so sad, regarded me, and so sharp was the impression of her standing there that I could hear her pleading, ‘Julien, for my sake now, Julien!’ In the churchyard I stood alone, looking at her, while in an orchard near the blossom was shaken by the fluttering of goldfinches. Spring was in the hearts of the wild birds I loved, but my heart was dead. What was there left? To recreate that love and cruelty, and write out of my sorrow and folly! Greater than all written art is life and happiness: a simple living with a beloved and the joy of children’s young voices. By the grassy mound I stayed with the shadows. My heart was broken, the more irretrievably because I had broken it myself. Remorse, remorse!”

Memory ceased. Again the dry whisper of the leaf overbore the wintry solitude and song-silence in that little wood in Whitefoot Lane, where the bark of the trees was stripped, and all undergrowth was trampled down. The green woodpeckers would laugh no more in spring: only a few poor wind-flowers and bluebells would tell of past loveliness. The pale visitant was gone, and with no sound of footfall.

The leaf spun insistently as the wind passed wearily onwards, and beside me the long green grasses held their drops of light-laden water, nor was there any mark as of feet having pressed there, nor any trail leading away.

With a vague mournfulness I turned and went along the miry path to the roadway, where a tattered fence gaped forlornly. The land would be sold, the trees cut down, and useful houses erected. Perhaps the spirit of the dead haunted that wilderness of torn branches and charred fire-circles, to find rest only where all was changed. Never again would I go back among those poor trees, where in the cruel days of youth sweet hopes had been crushed like a wood-anemone under careless and unknowing feet.

PROSERPINE’S MESSAGE

(_Written during the spring-like days of October, 1921, when the
prolonged drought had been broken by the rains following the
equinoctial gales._)

Some happy goldfinches flew twittering to the loosened thistle-heads on the sward of the promontory. Their wings fluttered as they took the seeds; they were timorous of alighting on the down, such a soft couch it was, too; their lives were wild and restless. Soon the flock rose and went to other haunts. The brief visitation gave me time to observe the crimson faces, the yellow bars on the wings--they were gone, and I was alone with the spirit of the apple blossom and the blue sky. On the trees of the inland orchards the ungathered apples were ready to fall. Goldfinches always associate themselves in my mind with the May month, when their nests are in the apple trees, but it is only when summer is gone that the wild beauty of spring--apple bloom time--is yearned for. The goldfinches that now flocked to the headland for the thistledown brought with them a thought of blossom.

For Proserpine has returned--with a child-god in her arms. The nuts in the lane are ready for gathering, the blackberries are luscious, and the partridge coveys have been broken up many weeks. On the ledges of their precipice colony the gulls are no more, the swallows have followed the sun. Many times have I searched the flawless bell-flower of the sky for these ragtailed vagrants, but not even one is to be seen. I cannot understand it; my heart is heavy. Why have they gone so suddenly? The sun shines, and insects are plentiful. Usually the hosts foregather on the single telegraph wire that never ceases to hum between the sun-bleached posts in the sunken lane. This autumn there were no preparations for the great southerly flight. One night, in the quiet starlight, they disappeared, speeding down the silver stain of the Milky Way towards the big lantern star Fomalhaut. Did they flee the coming of the spring goddess? Other things have welcomed her. The lesser celandine flowers are in the hedge-banks, the sorrel is rising, the wild arum will shortly show its purple club in the green sheath, pink campion is blooming. Proserpine, the goddess of spring, has returned to see how her children are faring; and a little child-god is in her arms. With her, too, is the spirit of the apple blossom, symbolling felicity, whispered to me by those fairy heralds, the goldfinches; the loved swallows have not waited to see her. Again I wonder to myself if the penalty of meeting an Immortal is death. Dear swallows, already they brave much during their migrations--the storms, the waves, and the electric wires erected by a debased portion of humanity along their airlines.

The bracken upon the headland has rusted, and the gorse is brown and sapless. Never has there been such an untarnished sky fused with the sea. Those stately swans, the clouds, have sailed over the marge of the earth, leaving not even a downy feather to tell of their heavenly passage. Somewhere in a brake of blackthorn a robin sings frailly, while a red kestrel hangs above for sight of vole or mouse. Croaking deeply a raven wings towards a gully in the mainland where the shepherd pitches his dead sheep. The robin is quiet, and there is no other sound except the croak of the carrion raven: only the mellow sun of autumn, and the grape-frosty air, and the silence. But listen! that sweet birdsong must surely be of the nightingale. There is the low trill, the fluting cadence, the reedy melody that sinks away into silence. But the nightingale does not come to the West Country; only in my mind do I listen to the old and loved voice. The song of the nightingale is so joyous, so essentially pure spirit, that the listening heart feels an emotion beyond that of earthly life. It is passion more chaste than any Hellenic ideal--it is the voice of the wind, the meaning of the green leaf, the purpose of the seed, the secret of the star. But now as I listen the wistful song, only a little less perfect than Philomel’s own, brings poignantly the present before me. However I would dream, it is now October; I can read _The Pageant of Summer_ during the dreariness of autumn’s chill and winter’s murk; but it is not the same. Change is bitter to me, whether of falling leaf or friendship. Leaves must fall, but friends can be steadfast; yet everywhere is bitter change. For many days now the voice has run through the grape-frosty air; always the voice, but never sight of the singer. For hours and days I have sought to find the singing bird, but in vain, in vain. There is genius in the song--a hymn to the life-giving sun, to the light. Somewhere a rabbit screams in an iron gin; the bird sings on.

Gone is the evejar, that weird moth-taker who pairs for life. By the Nile, with the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swift, he flaps his mottled wings. The jackdaws and the curlews are with me; there is the seal four hundred feet below hunting the conger-eel come back to the deep pools. Of his summer diet of dogfish he must have wearied by now. The orange hawkbits are everywhere at my feet--common weeds, perhaps, but very dear: each yields a thought of beauty, each is a gold coin of our true heritage of the earth. The metal coin that they stamp with the die is false; I would have all the children of the earth spend the dandelions. Therein lies our hope--in the wild-flower and the sunlight, in what they symbol--let the children spend these. The more they spend, the richer they will be. They will never forget the flowers: and to remember them is to yearn towards goodness and beauty. Like the migrants that return, so the impressions of childhood come back to us. And like the swallows that every year grow scarcer, so every generation of man has more to contend with in heredity. This is the price we pay for our metal gold. Let us spend the golden treasure of the dandelions, now, on earth, while we may; so that those to follow may enjoy a more sunlit life. Sitting on the sward above the still blue sea, listening to the sadly-sweet song of the unknown, drinking the grape-frosty air, thus I meditated; perhaps Proserpine had paused in her wandering and whispered to a lonely mortal.

STRIX FLAMMEA

“Where man goes nature ends,” wrote Richard Jefferies. But the wild creatures cling to their ancient places with stubbornness, especially in and around London.

One day in summer, intolerably weary, I left Fleet Street very late--or very early. The morning star, Eosphoros the Light-bringer, was sweeping above the eastern line of buildings, the spectral dawn flooding into the concave dusk above. Pausing by the Temple Gardens near the Embankment I became aware of glints of sound from the lawns and under the trees, the cries of questing mice. Then something indistinctly white and with great winnowing wings went over, fluttered vaguely to the grass, rose again, and drifted away. Strix Flammea was in London, hunting in the very heart of its turmoil. My fatigue passed, and hope came into my heart: I would be as indifferent to my surroundings as my barn owl was to them!

There are owls in the city at night, but never before had I known Strix Flammea visiting. The quavering and mournful plaint of the wood or brown owl has often been heard in Hyde Park and St. James’s Park during the darkness. Once, from the top of a motor-bus, I saw one roosting in a chimney cowl near Marble Arch. He looked forlorn in such a neighbourhood. Such a strange object naturally caused many cockney sparrows to assemble for communal vituperation.

Unlike other birds, owls cannot exist where there is noise. Most of their hunting is done by sound, detected by the ultra-sensitive and enormous cavities in the sides of their head, much larger than their eyes.

Maybe you will see Strix Flammea as he floats, a great moth of a bird, round the ancient wharves and docks of London Bridge. But it will be in the forsaken silence of the morning, when the traffic of the streets is stilled and few people are about, except the human derelicts huddled by London’s river and an occasional poet enraptured at life’s beauty.

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FOOTNOTE:

[1] The loft over a shippen, or open cattle-shed.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is
entered into the public domain.