ON the following day we went out soon after breakfast and walked up and
down a grass path between two yew hedges; the dew was not yet off the
grass that lay in shadow; and thin patches of gossamer still hung like
torn cambric on the yew shoots on either side. As we passed for the
second time up the path, the old man suddenly stooped and pushing aside
a dock-leaf at the foot of the hedge lifted a dead mouse, and looked at
it as it lay stiffly on the palm of his hand, and I saw that his eyes
filled slowly with the ready tears of old age.
“He has chosen his own resting-place,” he said. “Let him lie there. Why
did I disturb him?”––and he laid him gently down again; and then
gathering a fragment of wet earth he sprinkled it over the mouse. “Earth
to earth, ashes to ashes,” he said, “in sure and certain hope”––and then
he stopped; and straightening himself with difficulty walked on, and I
followed him.
“You seemed interested,” he said, “in my story yesterday. Shall I tell
you how I saw a very different sight when I was a little older?” And
when I had told him how strange and attractive his story had been, he
began.
“I told you how I found it impossible to see again what I had seen in
the glade. For a few weeks, perhaps months, I tried now and then to
force myself to feel that Presence, or at least to see that robe, but I
could not, because it is the gift of God, and can no more be gained by
effort than ordinary sight can be won by a sightless man; but I soon
ceased to try.
“I reached eighteen years at last, that terrible age when the soul seems
to have dwindled to a spark overlaid by a mountain of ashes––when blood
and fire and death and loud noises seem the only things of interest, and
all tender things shrink back and hide from the dreadful noonday of
manhood. Some one gave me one of those shot-pistols that you may have
seen, and I loved the sense of power that it gave me, for I had never
had a gun. For a week or two in the summer holidays I was content with
shooting at a mark, or at the level surface of water, and delighted to
see the cardboard shattered, or the quiet pool torn to shreds along its
mirror where the sky and green lay sleeping. Then that ceased to
interest me, and I longed to see a living thing suddenly stop living at
my will. Now,” and he held up a deprecating hand, “I think sport is
necessary for some natures. After all, the killing of creatures is
necessary for man’s food, and sport as you will tell me is a survival of
man’s delight in obtaining food, and it requires certain noble qualities
of endurance and skill. I know all that, and I know further that for
some natures it is a relief––an escape for humours that will otherwise
find an evil vent. But I do know this––that for me it was not necessary.
“However, there was every excuse, and I went out in good faith one
summer evening intending to shoot some rabbit as he ran to cover from
the open field. I walked along the inside of a fence with a wood above
me and on my left, and the green meadow on my right. Well, owing
probably to my own lack of skill, though I could hear the patter and
rush of the rabbits all round me, and could see them in the distance
sitting up listening with cocked ears, as I stole along the fence, I
could not get close enough to fire at them with any hope of what I
fancied was success; and by the time that I had arrived at the end of
the wood I was in an impatient mood.
“I stood for a moment or two leaning on the fence looking out of that
pleasant coolness into the open meadow beyond; the sun had at that
moment dipped behind the hill before me and all was in shadow except
where there hung a glory about the topmost leaves of a beech that still
caught the sun. The birds were beginning to come in from the fields, and
were settling one by one in the wood behind me, staying here and there
to sing one last line of melody. I could hear the quiet rush and then
the sudden clap of a pigeon’s wings as he came home, and as I listened I
heard pealing out above all other sounds the long liquid song of a
thrush somewhere above me. I looked up idly and tried to see the bird,
and after a moment or two caught sight of him as the leaves of the beech
parted in the breeze, his head lifted and his whole body vibrating with
the joy of life and music. As some one has said, his body was one
beating heart. The last radiance of the sun over the hill reached him
and bathed him in golden warmth. Then the leaves closed again as the
breeze dropped, but still his song rang out.
“Then there came on me a blinding desire to kill him. All the other
creatures had mocked me and run home. Here at least was a victim, and I
would pour out the sullen anger that had been gathering during my walk,
and at least demand this one life as a substitute. Side by side with
this I remembered clearly that I had come out to kill for food: that was
my one justification. Side by side I saw both these things, and I had no
excuse––no excuse.
“I turned my head every way and moved a step or two back to catch sight
of him again, and, although, this may sound fantastic and overwrought,
in my whole being was a struggle between light and darkness. Every fibre
of my life told me that the thrush had a right to live. Ah! he had
earned it, if labour were wanting, by this very song that was guiding
death towards him, but black sullen anger had thrown my conscience, and
was now struggling to hold it down till the shot had been fired. Still I
waited for the breeze, and then it came, cool and sweet-smelling like
the breath of a garden, and the leaves parted. There he sang in the
sunshine, and in a moment I lifted the pistol and drew the trigger.
“With the crack of the cap came silence overhead, and after what seemed
an interminable moment came the soft rush of something falling and the
faint thud among last year’s leaves. Then I stood half terrified, and
stared among the dead leaves. All seemed dim and misty. My eyes were
still a little dazzled by the bright background of sunlit air and rosy
clouds on which I had looked with such intensity, and the space beneath
the branches was a world of shadows. Still I looked a few yards away,
trying to make out the body of the thrush, and fearing to hear a
struggle of beating wings among the dry leaves.
“And then I lifted my eyes a little, vaguely. A yard or two beyond where
the thrush lay was a rhododendron bush. The blossoms had fallen and the
outline of dark, heavy leaves was unrelieved by the slightest touch of
colour. As I looked at it, I saw a face looking down from the higher
branches.
“It was a perfectly hairless head and face, the thin lips were parted in
a wide smile of laughter, there were innumerable lines about the corners
of the mouth, and the eyes were surrounded by creases of merriment. What
was perhaps most terrible about it all was that the eyes were not
looking at me, but down among the leaves; the heavy eyelids lay
drooping, and the long, narrow, shining slits showed how the eyes
laughed beneath them. The forehead sloped quickly back, like a cat’s
head. The face was the colour of earth, and the outlines of the head
faded below the ears and chin into the gloom of the dark bush. There was
no throat, or body or limbs so far as I could see. The face just hung
there like a down-turned Eastern mask in an old curiosity shop. And it
smiled with sheer delight, not at me, but at the thrush’s body. There
was no change of expression so long as I watched it, just a silent smile
of pleasure petrified on the face. I could not move my eyes from it.
“After what I suppose was a minute or so, the face had gone. I did not
see it go, but I became aware that I was looking only at leaves.
“No; there was no outline of leaf, or play of shadows that could
possibly have taken the form of a face. You can guess how I tried to
force myself to believe that that was all; how I turned my head this way
and that to catch it again; but there was no hint of a face.
“Now, I cannot tell you how I did it; but although I was half beside
myself with fright, I went forward towards the bush and searched
furiously among the leaves for the body of the thrush; and at last I
found it, and lifted it. It was still limp and warm to the touch. Its
breast was a little ruffled, and one tiny drop of blood lay at the root
of the beak below the eyes, like a tear of dismay and sorrow at such an
unmerited, unexpected death.
“I carried it to the fence and climbed over, and then began to run in
great steps, looking now and then awfully at the gathering gloom of the
wood behind, where the laughing face had mocked the dead. I think,
looking back as I do now, that my chief instinct was that I could not
leave the thrush there to be laughed at, and that I must get it out into
the clean, airy meadow. When I reached the middle of the meadow I came
to a pond which never ran quite dry even in the hottest summer. On the
bank I laid the thrush down, and then deliberately but with all my force
dashed the pistol into the water; then emptied my pockets of the
cartridges and threw them in too.
“Then I turned again to the piteous little body, feeling that at least I
had tried to make amends. There was an old rabbit hole near, the grass
growing down in its mouth, and a tangle of web and dead leaves behind. I
scooped a little space out among the leaves, and then laid the thrush
there; gathered a little of the sandy soil and poured it over the body,
saying, I remember, half unconsciously, ‘Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,
in sure and certain hope’––and then I stopped, feeling I had been a
little profane, though I do not think so now. And then I went home.
“As I dressed for dinner, looking out over the darkening meadow where
the thrush lay, I remember feeling happy that no evil thing could mock
the defenceless dead out there in the clean meadow where the wind blew
and the stars shone down.”
We reached in our going to and fro up the yew path a little seat at the
end standing back from the path. Opposite us hung a crucifix, with a
pent-house over it, that the old man had put up years before. As he did
not speak I turned to him, and saw that he was looking steadily at the
Figure on the Cross; and I thought how He who bore our griefs and
carried our sorrows was one with the heavenly Father, without whom not
even a sparrow falls to the ground.
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