IT is a quiet, warm day in June. The wind is westerly, but there is only
just enough of it to waft now and then a sound from the far-off town, or
the dull, subdued thunder of cannon-firing from ships or forts distant
some forty miles or more. Massive, white-bordered clouds, grey
underneath, sail overhead; there was heavy rain last night, and they are
lifting and breaking a little. Softly and slowly they go, and one of
them, darker than the rest, has descended in a mist of rain, blotting out
the ships. The surface of the water is paved curiously in green and
violet, and where the light lies on it scintillates like millions of
stars. The grass is not yet cut, and the showers have brought it up
knee-deep. Its gentle whisper is plainly heard, the most delicate of all
the voices in the world, and the meadow bends into billows, grey,
silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across
it. The larks are so multitudinous that no distinct song can be caught,
and amidst the confused melody comes the note of the thrush and the
blackbird. A constant under-running accompaniment is just audible in the
hum of innumerable insects and the sharp buzz of flies darting past the
ear. Only those who live in the open air and watch the fields and sea
from hour to hour and day to day know what they are and what they mean.
The chance visitor, or he who looks now and then, never understands them.
While I have lain here, the clouds have risen, have become more aërial,
and more suffused with light; the horizon has become better defined, and
the yellow shingle beach is visible to its extremest point clasping the
bay in its arms. The bay itself is the tenderest blue-green, and on the
rolling plain which borders it lies intense sunlight chequered with
moving shadows which wander eastwards. The wind has shifted a trifle,
and comes straight up the Channel from the illimitable ocean.