Part 7

I was filled with an ecstasy; the car, ordinarily so drab with its burden of artisans and factory workers, seemed illumined and vitalised with yellow, the colour of happiness; a radiance hovered about the children, as though the buttercups had dislustred their gold upon the air. I wanted to shout my joy aloud. Here was a manifestation of my hopes for mankind, the thoughts ever with me; at night when only the stars are in the sky, or when the moon is old and like a scarred shield nailed under the rafters of heaven; at dawn, when the light flows over the eastern bar of the world till it drains into the western sunset. One thought by night and one thought by day--my hope is for the happiness of mankind. Could words of mine but tell you of the dream that lurks by the brook in summer, or with the clouds floating with snowy sails in cerulean waters! There the Immortals are waiting. See the joy and happiness that is with every swallow flying low over a lake, his liquid image gliding under him. What is all the philosophy in the world to the joy of the beautiful swallow? Civilisations have risen and crumbled, faded into nothingness, like footprints in the desert obliterated by sand. The sweet little whispering call of my long-tailed titmice fashioning their bottle nest, so happy in the sunshine, is a wiser and more profound utterance than all the philosophy collected from the books of the world....

The tram drew nearer London with its ragged children; had I doubted it before, no longer was the ideal of the artist obscured from me--you must hear it. It must be the ideal of man to beautify the lives of those who pass nearly all their days in the places whence the wild birds and the flowers have gone for evermore.

I thought of these things as the voice of the brook mingled with the love-whisper of my little bottle-birds, and the bees droned their anthem to the pealing chimes of the bluebells. For every year the flowers come, the migrants travel across the great dim sea, the wheat sways and bends as the wind rushes over, and the silver-burning sun swings across the sky; but never enough of these do the little ones in the city see; life does not remain for long. And I saw the children of the trams reflected in the light-burthened brook, and was glad, even though the buttercups had gone from the meadow, and the wandering bees sought in vain in those other woods for the loveliness of the stained apple blossom.

MEADOW GRASSES

(To B. E. H. T.)

A brimstone butterfly drifted with the wind over the waving grasses, and settled on the shallow cup of a tall flower, John-go-to-bed-at-noon. The bright flowers were closing, for the sun was high. It paused for an instant only, and then fluttered over the hedge and was gone. Came a common white butterfly--a weed of the air, hated by the countrymen: yet part of summer’s heart as it flickered like a strayed snowflake in the sunshine, passing the whorled spires of red-green sorrel and glazed petals of buttercup, living its brief hour among the scents and colours of summer. Vibrating their sun-crisped wings with shrill hum, the hover-flies shot past: the wild humble bees sang to themselves as in a frenzy of labour for their ideal they took the pollen from the roses in the hedge; the cuckoos sent call after call of melody from the distant hazel coppice. The sound of summer was everywhere, the earth filled with swelling ecstasy--everything so green and alive, the waving grasses and the hawthorns; the green kingdom charged and surcharged with energy, from the wild strawberry to the mighty, sap-surfeited bole of the oak. Although so still, the vast earth was humming and vibrating, the crescendo of passion reached gradually while the sun swept nearer, day by day, the zenith of its curve.

In one corner of the meadow was a small pond, half hidden by rushes, bearing a golden blazon of flower--in autumn the countrypeople would grind the roasted seeds of the iris to make their “poor man’s coffee.” With them grew the bog asphodel, crowned by a tapering spike of starlike flowers, also yellow, the colour of happiness: in old time this plant was supposed to soften the bones of cattle, hence the Latin name, ossifragum. Hidden securely among the rushes, the moor-hen had her nest of dried water-weed, a platform on which at night rested her children, little black balls of fluff with a red beak. A faint chirruping came from the flags, a splash, and silence: the mother had heard my slow approach and called to her young to remain still. Something with a thin, stick-like body, enamelled blue and fanned by a whirling crystal of light, alighted on the open white petals of a crowsfoot--the water-buttercup; the dragonfly folded its gauzy wings and contemplated the still deeps from which, a few hours before, it had crept--a summer thing that would fulfil its destiny so quickly, and die. Like the civilised bees that leave the security of skep and stored caves of honey to the new race, so all the wild things live but to secure the future of their species. Everything strives for the beautiful, the ideal, without conscious effort, maybe, but the ideal is there--all for the species. The nightingale that silvers the dusk with song has finer notes than his ancestor of olden time; he has learnt so much during the centuries; through generations of faithful loyalty to an ideal his tiny soul-flame has become brighter, and his voice speaks with sweeter poetry. On the may trees in the hedge, already shaking their blossoms into the wind, the wild roses were open to the sky; it was now their brief hour of sunshine. Simple petals stained with roseal hue, they waited for the wild bee to bring the pollen that would change the beauty into life.

High sang the larks over the meadow, striving with fluttering wings to reach the blue vision of heaven. Their voices trailed to the earth and filled the heart with hope and joy. Afar, the noisy rooks fed their young in the colony in the elm-tops; at hand, on the ground, golden buttercup and white moon-daisy, lemon-coloured hawk-weed and obstinate charlock, beloved of the visiting bee for its great dowry of honey. The sunbeams had flooded the cold earth during the springtide of the year, and now the earth had sent its flowers and its grasses with their faces turned above, whence came the light that was life, the light that was truth to the birds and the bees, the flowers and the grasses. For years I pondered the higher meaning of life, studying in a city, amid the smoke and clattering hum of traffic; the wild ones have never needed to seek--they have been happy by the brook with its lanced sunpoints and swallowy song of summer over the pebbles and the mossy boulders; they have had no illusions. Nor have they needed philosophies or discarnate paradises.

Everything loved the mowing meadow. By the stream the blackbirds sought for food, the finches came to sip, the hover-flies fanned above the kingcups. Scarlet soldier flies and little plain moths clung to bennet-bloom and spray-like awn, the wind sighed in the grasses as it shook the dust-pollen from the heads. The meadow grasses were timorous of the breeze, and trembled at its coming, like the heart of a maiden reluctant yet yearning: whispering to the wind to bear the seeds, for the mowers would come shortly. Over the water-meadow the lapwings wheeled and spun--the lapwing holds the secret of the swamps and boglands, and you hear it in his wild voice as his wings sough above. In the early spring he makes over the dull furrows his plaintive music, climbing high and diving to the ground as though it were sweet ecstasy to fall, wing-crumpled and broken-hearted, before his mate. Something in the call of the peewit fills me with sadness, like the memory of those passed springs that were in boyhood so glamorous. The peewit’s song is wild, he knows that all things pass, that the leaves and the flowers will die and nothing remain.

Now, as he saw me, his voice was harsher, more husky; somewhere among the tufts of spiked grass his young were crouching, depending on their plumage in harmony with the ground to remain unseen. See-oo-sweet, see-oo-sweet, woo, cried the mother: her curled crest was visible against the sky as she turned on broad pinions.

One morning, when the cuckoo was silent and the young partridges were following their parents through the culms of the meadow-forest, two labourers arrived with the mowing machine, drawn by a pair of chestnut horses. The overture to the midsummer hum was beginning to be heard in the fields: wild and tame bees ceased not from their labours; the wolf spiders were everywhere in the long grass, searching for fly or insect in their blood lust. Another kind of spider had erected a net-like web between the stalks, with a round silky tunnel in the middle, in which he crouched among the skins of beetles, glowing a dull bronzy green in the sun; the torn wings of a red admiral butterfly never again to pass with colour-dusty sails above the blue scabious flowers; all the tragic remainder of his catch scattered like jetsam at the sea’s marge. The larks still sang into the sunshine. It was the time of year, just past the fullness of young summer, when the song of visitant birds was over and the insect hum had begun its shimmering undertone.

The mowing machine, drawn by the glossy-coated horses, moved down one side of the field. One of the mowers sat on the iron seat and drove the pair; his mate walked alongside and scooped the cut grasses from the knives with a rake. The horses tossed their manes and swished their tails, drawing along with magnificent power the light machine, and leaving behind a swathe of broken grasses and coloured flowers whose fragrance and hue availed no longer--in an instant the life was gone--whither? Rhythmically they moved in straight line, the clattering of the machine mingling with the cries of the driver: like a sea-green wave overcurled and spent in foam the flowery grasses lay in the sun. Cat’s-tail grass, foxtail grass, meadow soft grass, pale red in tint and sometimes called Yorkshire fog; couch grass--the agropyron of ancient Greece--the wild kin of the wheat; the sweet-smelling Vernal grass without whose presence one of the fleeting scents of summer were denied us. Steadily the mowing machine was drawn round the field, fresh wallow lay where but a moment before the meadow-forest bowed and returned to the wind, and the dandelion wrought its goldened disk in the image of the sun. With the lilac flower of the scabious lay the incarnadine head of the poppy--tokening sleep that now had claimed its own. Meadow crane’s-bill, which had overtopped the grasses with the wine-dark sorrel and prickly thistle, the vetch, and the blue speedwell--from the highest to the lowest--all brought low by the skirring knives.

Years ago in an old village the mowers went down into the meadow with their curved scythes, and throughout the long summer day they swung their ancient implements. Every now and then they paused to whet the sap-blurred blades with a stone carried in their belts. Tu-whet, tu-whaat--holding the symbol of olden times near the point: it was the extreme edge of the curve that required such constant sharpening. Their hats were bleached by the showers and the sunshine--I do not recollect seeing a new one--but it may have been a faulty impression of childhood. It was thirsty work wielding the scythe on its long handle, and required much skill to prevent the point from digging into the ground. Great wooden “bottles,” or firkins, of ale were brought out in the early morning and hidden in the nettle ditch, well down in the cool and shade; and often a gallon of small ale was drunken by each labourer before the Goatsbeard closed its flowers at noon.

The sun bronzed their arms and dried the wallows; colour soon faded. The scarlet poppy shrivelled to a purple brown, the gold of the dandelion became dulled, the grasses wilted as they fell. It was great fun to follow the workers, to gather whole armfuls of flowers, and to pull their petals apart. They were but flowers to me then, pretty things, their colours delighting the eye, so many of them: the boy was natural and thought little, knowing nothing of life. I have not been there for years, but even now, when so many stacks have grown and dwindled near the barn, I am wandering in those fields. No other meadows can be the same, the flowers there were fairer, the sunlight brighter as it followed the clouds. With so many summers burnt out in autumnal fires there is a dearer thought for every flower of blue chicory: and each germander speedwell, so common in the hedgerow, has in its little petals something of the mystery of the sky. The breath of all the springtimes, the light and shade of summery months, the colour and song of the fields stored, layer upon layer, in the boy’s mind, return a hundredfold, and with them a desire, never ceasing, for others to share in this secret of happiness--the thoughts given by nature.

In the evening the village girls came into the field to turn the hay when the grass was fully dried by the sun, and nothing remained of luscious clover or disk of corn feverfew. The young larks or corncrakes, caught perchance by the rasping sweep of scythe, had been dead many days. They raked the harvest of the meadow into mound-like wakes, while the master haymaker, ever watching the clouds and the wind, urged them to greater endeavour, for rain meant instant loss. We tossed wisps of hay at one another, and formed ourselves into rival parties, each with its castle, and defied our enemies with shrill cries. The lumbering wain came back from the stack, a host of flies pestering the horse, who stamped and kicked in vain when a gadfly fastened to his side and drew his blood. If the weather were fine, and no danger of rain impending, the carter would, as a great treat, let us ride on the broad back of the horse, who appreciated the fan of wych-elm twigs that was whisked about his ears and eyes.

They were happy days--gone now with the wielders of the scythes in their faded hats and their wooden ale-bottles. Now the knives of the mowing machine shear the field in half a day; the happy girls no longer turn the swathes in the evening. The old spirit of the country is dying, and the factory and town calls to its children--there is more life there, and more money to be made. The “big house” is sold, and a new squire has arrived, once a merchant and now a rich man; the sons of the old squire lie somewhere in the deep sea near Jutland, so why retain the estate, heavily taxed and scarce self-supporting, when it will eventually pass away into other hands?

I have come to know other meadows now, but they can never be quite the same. I lie in the flowery fields, seeing the quaking-grass against the sky, and a wild bee swinging on a blue columbine, while a lark rains joy from on high. These return, these are eternal; and with them a voice that is silent, a colour that is faded.

TIGER’S TEETH

(To J. S. of Croyde)

The story of the Tiger’s great climb is still told in the village, although it happened a dozen or more years ago.

The headland runs out into the Atlantic for nearly two miles, and is a mile wide across its base. They grow oats there, for the ground is starved. Some of it, indeed, is so poor that the plough never furrows it, and only sheep stray upon the sward. Gorse grows plentifully, hiding many rabbits’ holes, and in summer near the cliff-edge at the Point the curled cast feathers of the gulls tremble in the wind.

At the Point the cliff drops almost sheer to the rocks three hundred and ten feet below, forming an indentation in the headland known as the Hole. Gulls dwell in colonies upon the ledges and in the crannies, and like drifting snowflakes a swirl of birds floats on the air, uprising from the sea and uttering gabbling cries of alarm when an intruder passes near the lip of the Hole.

The village historian told me the story one rainy night in the Nightcrow Inn. He was a great friend of mine, and universally known as “Muggy”; he had been in most places on the earth, returning eventually to his remembered village, happy in the open air with his simple livelihood. The returned wanderer did all kinds of jobs in the hamlets round about, gathered and sold watercress and mushrooms in their seasons, arranged for the purchase of patent manures by the farmers, representing many firms, and was also--“I be nothing if I be not up to date, zur, do ee see?”--an agent for fire insurance in the big town eight miles away. For generations his family had lived in the village; his grandfather had bought the wreckage of H.M.S. Weasel, that went on the rocks of the Hole over a century ago, all but one man being drowned. He had the newspaper cuttings of the wreck, and sure enough, his ancestor was mentioned. He cherished that cutting.

One night we had finished our game of whist with the frayed cards, and were talking. The Inn has a low ceiling of black oak beams, roughly shaped, and is lit by a paraffin lamp having a permanent black fringe to its orange flame. In a momentary silence we heard the sharp patter of rain flung against the window by a rapidly rising wind.

“It would be dangerous at the Point to-night,” I murmured, shivering.

Amid a chorus of assent my friend Muggy remembered the epic story of the climb of Raven Rock. Had I heard tell of it? No, I hadn’t, and I settled my elbows more comfortably on the oak table, and prepared for the yarn. More beer first, of course. Muggy would not have any; he drank but a pint every night, he said.

The pots were brought back, foaming with home-brew, the landlord adjusted the milled screw of the lamp so that less dark soot-shadows slipped against the whitewashed guard above, and we listened in silence while the wind drove hard against the western face of the house, bringing the rain-clouds straight from over the wild wastes of the Atlantic.

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