flat pastures, full of ancient thorn-trees just bursting into bloom. I
gained the towing-path, which led me out gradually into the heart of
the fen; the river ran, or rather moved, a sapphire streak, between its
high green flood-banks; the wide spaces between the embanked path and
the stream were full of juicy herbage, great tracts of white
cow-parsley, with here and there a reed-bed. I stood long to listen to
the sharp song of the reed-warbler, slipping from spray to spray of a
willow-patch. Far to the north the great tower of Ely rose blue and
dim above the low lines of trees; in the centre of the pastures lay the
long brown line of the sedge-beds of Wicken Mere, almost the only
untouched tract of fenland; slow herds of cattle grazed, more and more
minute, in the unhedged pasture-land, and the solitary figure of a
labourer moving homeward on the top of the green dyke, seemed in the
long afternoon to draw no nearer. Here and there were the floodgates
of a lode, with the clear water slowly spilling itself over the rim of
the sluice, full of floating weed. There was something infinitely
reposeful in the solitude, the width of the landscape; there was no
sense of crowded life, no busy figures, intent on their small aims, to
cross one's path, no conflict, no strife, no bitterness, no insistent
voice; yet there was no sense of desolation, but rather the spectacle
of glad and simple lives of plants and birds in the free air, their
wildness tamed by the far-off and controlling hand of man, the calm
earth patiently serving his ends. I seemed to have passed out of
modern life into a quieter and older world, before men congregated into
cities, but lived the quiet and sequestered life of the country side;
and little by little there stole into my heart something of a dreamful
tranquillity, the calm of the slow brimming stream, the leisurely
herds, the growing grass. All seemed to be moving together, neither
lingering nor making haste, to some far-off end within the quiet mind
of God. Everything seemed to be waiting, musing, living the untroubled
life of nature, with no thought of death or care or sorrow. I passed a
trench of still water that ran as far as the eye could follow it across
the flat; it was full from end to end of the beautiful water violet,
the pale lilac flowers, with their faint ethereal scent, clustered on
the head of a cool emerald spike, with the rich foliage of the plant,
like fine green hair, filling the water. The rising of these beautiful
forms, by some secret consent, in their appointed place and time, out
of the fresh clear water, brought me a wistful sense of peace and
order, a desire for I hardly know what--a poised stateliness of life, a
tender beauty--if I could but win it for myself!
On and on, hour by hour, that still bright afternoon, I made my slow
way over the fen; insensibly and softly the far-off villages fell
behind; and yet I seemed to draw no nearer to the hills of the horizon.
Now and then I passed a lonely grange; once or twice I came near to a
tall shuttered engine-house of pale brick, and heard the slow beat of
the pumps within, like the pulse of a hidden heart, which drew the
marsh-water from a hundred runlets, and poured it slowly seawards.
Field after field slid past me, some golden from end to end with
buttercups, some waving with young wheat, till at last I reached a
solitary inn beside a ferry, with the quaint title: "_No hurry! five
miles from anywhere._" And here I met with a grave and kindly welcome,
such as warms the heart of one who goes on pilgrimage: as though I was
certainly expected, and as if the lord of the place had given charge
concerning me. It would indeed hardly have surprised me if I had been
had into a room, and shown strange symbols of good and evil; or if I
had been given a roll and a bottle, and a note of the way. But no such
presents were made to me, and it was not until after I had left the
little house, and had been ferried in an old blackened boat across the
stream, that I found that I had the gifts in my bosom all the while.
The roll was the fair sight that I had seen, in this world where it is
so sweet to live. My cordial was the peace within my spirit. And as
for the way, it seemed plain enough that day, easy to discern and
follow; and the heavenly city itself as near and visible as the blue
towers that rose so solemnly upon the green horizon.
VI
The Well and the Chapel
It is not often that one is fortunate enough to see two perfectly
beautiful things in one day. But such was my fortune in the late
summer, on a day that was in itself perfect enough to show what
September can do, if he only has a mind to plan hours of delight for
man. The distance was very blue and marvellously clear. The trees had
the bronzed look of the summer's end, with deep azure shadows. The
cattle moved slowly about the fields, and there was harvesting going
on, so that the villages we passed seemed almost deserted. I will not
say whence we started or where we went, and I shall mention no names at
all, except one, which is of the nature of a symbol or incantation; for
I do not desire that others should go where I went, unless I could be
sure that they went with the same peace in their hearts that I bore
with me that day.
One of the places we visited on purpose; the other we saw by accident.
On the small map we carried was marked, at the corner of a little wood
that seemed to have no way to it, a well with the name of a saint, of
whom I never heard, though I doubt not she is written in the book of
God.
We reached the nearest point to the well upon the road, and we struck
into the fields; that was a sweet place where we found ourselves! In
ancient days it had been a marsh, I think. For great ditches ran
everywhere, choked with loose-strife and water-dock, and the ground
quaked as we walked, a pleasant springy black mould, the dust of
endless centuries of the rich water plants.
To the left, the ground ran up sharply in a minute bluff, with the soft
outline of underlying chalk, covered with small thorn-thickets; and it
was all encircled with small, close woods, where we heard the pheasants
scamper. We found an old, slow, bovine man, with a cheerful face, who
readily threw aside some fumbling work he was doing, and guided us; and
we should never have found the spot without him. He led us to a
stream, crossed by a single plank with a handrail, on which some
children had put a trap, baited with nuts for the poor squirrels, that
love to run chattering across the rail from wood to wood. Then we
entered a little covert; it was very pleasant in there, all dark and
green and still; and here all at once we came to the place; in the
covert were half a dozen little steep pits, each a few yards across,
dug out of the chalk. From each of the pits, which lay side by side, a
channel ran down to the stream, and in each channel flowed a small
bickering rivulet of infinite clearness. The pits themselves were a
few feet deep; at the bottom of each was a shallow pool, choked with
leaves; and here lay the rare beauty of the place. The water rose in
each pit out of secret ways, but in no place that we could see. The
first pit was still when we looked upon it; then suddenly the water
rose in a tiny eddy, in one corner, among the leaves, sending a little
ripple glancing across the pool. It was as though something, branch or
insect, had fallen from above, the water leapt so suddenly. Then it
rose again in another place, then in another; then five or six little
freshets rose all at once, the rings crossing and recrossing. And it
was the same in all the pits, which we visited one by one; we descended
and drank, and found the water as cold as ice, and not less pure; while
the old man babbled on about the waste of so much fine water, and of
its virtues for weak eyes: "Ain't it cold, now? Ain't it, then? My
God, ain't it?"--he was a man with a rich store of simple
asseverations,--"And ain't it good for weak eyes neither! You must
just come to the place the first thing in the morning, and wash your
eyes in the water, and ain't it strengthening then!" So he chirped on,
saying everything over and over, like a bird among the thickets.
We paid him for his trouble, with a coin that made him so gratefully
bewildered that he said to us: "Now, gentlemen, if there's anything
else that you want, give it a name; and if you meet any one as you go
away, say 'Perrett told me' (Perrett's my name), and then you'll see!"
What the precise virtue of this invocation was, we did not have an
opportunity of testing, but that it was a talisman to unlock hidden
doors, I make no doubt.
We went back silently over the fields, with the wonder of the thing
still in our minds. To think of the pure wells bubbling and flashing,
by day and by night, in the hot summer weather, when the smell of the
wood lies warm in the sun; on cold winter nights under moon and stars,
for ever casting up the bright elastic jewel, that men call water, and
feeding the flowing stream that wanders to the sea. I was very full of
gratitude to the pure maiden saint that lent her name to the well and I
am sure she never had a more devout pair of worshippers.
So we sped on in silence, thinking--at least I thought--how the water
leaped and winked in the sacred wells, and how clear showed the chalk,
and the leaves that lay at the bottom: till at last we drew to our
other goal. "Here is the gate," said my companion at last.
On one side of the road stood a big substantial farm; on the other, by
a gate, was a little lodge. Here a key was given us by an old hearty
man, with plenty of advice of a simple and sententious kind, until I
felt as though I were enacting a part in some little _Pilgrim's
Progress_, and as if _Mr Interpreter_ himself, with a very grave smile,
would come out and have me into a room by myself, to see some odd
pleasant show that he had provided. But it was perhaps more in the
manner of _Evangelist_, for our guide pointed with his finger across a
very wide field, and showed us a wicket to enter in at.
Here was a great flat grassy pasture, the water again very near the
surface, as the long-leaved water-plants, that sprawled in all the
ditches, showed. But when we reached the wicket we seemed to be as far
removed from humanity as dwellers in a lonely isle. A few cattle
grazed drowsily, and the crisp tearing of the grass by their big lips
came softly across the pasture. Inside the wicket stood a single
ancient house, uninhabited, and festooned with ivy into a thing more
bush than house; though a small Tudor window peeped from the leaves,
like the little suspicious eye of some shaggy beast.
A stone's throw away lay a large square moat, full of water, all
fringed with ancient gnarled trees; the island which it enclosed was
overgrown with tiny thickets of dishevelled box-trees, and huge
sprawling laurels; we walked softly round it, and there was our goal: a
small church of a whitish stone, in the middle of a little close of old
sycamores in stiff summer leaf.
It stood so remote, so quietly holy, so ancient, that I could think of
nothing but the "old febel chapel" of the _Morte d'Arthur_. It had, I
know not why, the mysterious air of romance all about it. It seemed to
sit, musing upon what had been and what should be, smilingly guarding
some tender secret for the pure-hearted, full of the peace the world
cannot give.
Within it was cool and dark, and had an ancient holy smell; it was
furnished sparely with seat and screen, and held monuments of old
knights and ladies, sleeping peacefully side by side, heads pillowed on
hands, looking out with quiet eyes, as though content to wait.
Upon the island in the moat, we learned, had stood once a flourishing
manor, but through what sad vicissitudes it had fallen into dust I care
not. Enough that peaceful lives had been lived there; children had
been born, had played on the moat-edge, had passed away to bear
children of their own, had returned with love in their hearts for the
old house. From the house to the church children had been borne for
baptism; merry wedding processions had gone to and fro, happy Christmas
groups had hurried backwards and forwards; and the slow funeral pomp
had passed thither, under the beating of the slow bell, bearing one
that should not return.
Something of the love and life and sorrow of the good days passed into
my mind, and I gave a tender thought to men and women whom I had never
known, who had tasted of life, and of joyful things that have an end;
and who now know the secret of the dark house to which we all are bound.
When we at last rose unwillingly to go, the sun was setting, and flamed
red and brave through the gnarled trunks of the little wood; the mist
crept over the pasture, and far away the lights of the lonely farm
began to wink through the gathering dark.
But I had seen! Something of the joy of the two sweet places had
settled in my mind; and now, in fretful, weary, wakeful hours, it is
good to think of the clear wells that sparkle so patiently in the dark
wood; and, better still, to wander in mind about the moat and the
little silent church; and to wonder what it all means; what the love is
that creeps over the soul at the sight of these places, so full of a
remote and delicate beauty; and whether the hunger of the heart for
peace and permanence, which visits us so often in our short and
difficult pilgrimage, has a counterpart in the land that is very far
off.
VII
The Cuckoo
I have been much haunted, indeed infested, if the word may be pardoned,
by cuckoos lately. When I was a child, acute though my observation of
birds and beasts and natural things was, I do not recollect that I ever
saw a cuckoo, though I often tried to stalk one by the ear, following
the sweet siren melody, as it dropped into the expectant silence from a
hedgerow tree; and I remember to have heard the notes of two, that
seemed to answer each other, draw closer each time they called.
But of late I have become familiar with the silvery grey body and the
gliding flight; and this year I have been almost dogged by them. One
flew beside me, as I rode the other day, for nearly a quarter of a mile
along a hedgerow, taking short gliding flights, and settling till I
came up; I could see his shimmering wings and his long barred tail. I
dismounted at last, and he let me watch him for a long time, noting his
small active head, his decent sober coat. Then, when he thought I had
seen enough, he gave one rich bell-like call, with the full force of
his soft throat, and floated off.
He seemed loath to leave me. But what word or gift, I thought, did he
bring with him, false and pretty bird? Do I too desire that others
should hatch my eggs, content with flute-like notes of pleasure?
And yet how strange and marvellous a thing this instinct is; that one
bird, by an absolute and unvarying instinct, should forego the dear
business of nesting and feeding, and should take shrewd advantage of
the labours of other birds! It cannot be a deliberately reasoned or
calculated thing; at least we say that it cannot; and yet not Darwin
and all his followers have brought us any nearer to the method by which
such an instinct is developed and trained, till it has become an
absolute law of the tribe; making it as natural a thing for the cuckoo
to search for a built nest, and to cast away its foundling egg there,
as it is for other birds to welcome and feed the intruder. It seems so
satanically clever a thing to do; such a strange fantastic whim of the
Creator to take thought in originating it! It is this whimsicality,
the _bizarre_ humour in Nature, that puzzles me more than anything in
the world, because it seems like the sport of a child with odd
inconsequent fancies, and with omnipotence behind it all the time. It
seems strange enough to think of the laws that govern the breeding,
nesting, and nurture of birds at all, especially when one considers all
the accidents that so often make the toil futile, like the stealing of
eggs by other birds, and the predatory incursions of foes. One would
expect a law, framed by omnipotence, to be invariable, not hampered by
all kinds of difficulties that omnipotence, one might have thought,
could have provided against. And then comes this further strange
variation in the law, in the case of this single family of birds, and
the mystery thickens and deepens. And stranger than all is the
existence of the questioning and unsatisfied human spirit, that
observes these things and classifies them, and that yet gets no nearer
to the solution of the huge, fantastic, patient plan! To make a law,
as the Creator seems to have done; and then to make a hundred other
laws that seem to make the first law inoperative; to play this gigantic
game century after century; and then to put into the hearts of our
inquisitive race the desire to discover what it is all about; and to
leave the desire unsatisfied. What a labyrinthine mystery! Depth
beyond depth, and circle beyond circle!
It is a dark and bewildering region that thus opens to the view. But
one conclusion is to beware of seeming certainties, to keep the windows
of the mind open to the light; not to be over-anxious about the little
part we have to play in the great pageant, but to advance, step by
step, in utter trustfulness.
Perhaps that is your message to me, graceful bird, with the rich joyful
note! With what a thrill, too, do you bring back to me the brightness
of old forgotten springs, the childish rapture at the sweet tunable
cry! Then, in those far-off days, it was but the herald of the glowing
summer days, the time of play and flowers and scents. But now the soft
note, it seems, opens a door into the formless and uneasy world of
speculation, of questions that have no answer, convincing me of
ignorance and doubt, bidding me beat in vain against the bars that hem
me in. Why should I crave thus for certainty, for strength? Answer
me, happy bird! Nay, you guard your secret. Softer and more distant
sound the sweet notes, warning me to rest and believe, telling me to
wait and hope.
But one further thought! One is expected, by people of conventional
and orthodox minds, to base one's conceptions of God on the writings of
frail and fallible men, and to accept their slender and eager testimony
to the occurrence of abnormal events as the best revelation of God that
the world contains. And all the while we disregard his own patient
writing upon the wall. Every day and every hour we are confronted with
strange marvels, which we dismiss from our minds because, God forgive
us, we call them natural; and yet they take us back, by a ladder of
immeasurable antiquity, to ages before man had emerged from a savage
state. Centuries before our rude forefathers had learned even to
scratch a few hillocks into earthworks, while they lived a brutish
life, herding in dens and caves, the cuckoo, with her traditions
faultlessly defined, was paying her annual visits, fluting about the
forest glades, and searching for nests into which to intrude her
speckled egg. The patient witness of God! She is as direct a
revelation of the Creator's mind, could we but interpret the mystery of
her instincts, as Augustine himself with his scheme of salvation
logically defined. Each of these missions, whether of bird or man, a
wonder and a marvel! But do we not tend to accept the eager and
childish hopes of humanity, arrayed with blithe certainty, as a nearer
evidence of the mind of God than the bird that at his bidding pursues
her annual quest, unaffected by our hasty conclusions, unmoved by our
glorified visions? I have sometimes thought that Christ probably spoke
more than is recorded about the observation of Nature; the hearts of
those that heard him were so set on temporal ends and human
applications, that they had not perhaps leisure or capacity to
recollect aught but those few scattered words, that seem to speak of a
deep love for and insight into the things of earth. They remembered
better that Christ blasted a fig-tree for doing what the Father bade
the poor plant do, than his tender dwelling upon grasses and lilies,
sparrow and sheep. The withering of the tree made an allegory: while
the love of flowers and streams was to those simple hearts perhaps an
unaccountable, almost an eccentric thing. But had Christ drawn human
breath in our bleaker Northern air, he would have perhaps, if those
that surrounded him had had leisure and grace to listen, drawn as grave
and comforting a soul-music from our homely cuckoo, with her punctual
obedience, her unquestioning faith, as he did from the birds and
flowers of the hot hillsides, the pastoral valleys of Palestine. I am
sure he would have loved the cuckoo, and forgiven her her heartless
customs. Those that sing so delicately would not have leisure and
courage to make their music so soft and sweet, if they had not a hard
heart to turn to the sorrows of the world.
Yet still I am no nearer the secret. God sends me, here the frozen
peak, there the blue sea; here the tiger, there the cuckoo; here
Virgil, there Jeremiah; here St Francis of Assisi, there Napoleon. And
all the while, as he pushes his fair or hurtful toys upon the stage,
not a whisper, not a smile, not a glance escapes him; he thrusts them
on, he lays them by; but the interpretation he leaves with us, and
there is never a word out of the silence to show us whether we have
guessed aright.
VIII
Spring-time
Yesterday was a day of brisk airs. The wind was at work brushing great
inky clouds out of the sky. They came sailing up, those great rounded
masses of dark vapour, like huge galleons driving to the West, spilling
their freight as they came. The air would be suddenly full of tall
twisted rain-streaks, and then would come a bright burst of the sun.
But a secret change came in the night; some silent power filled the air
with warmth and balm. And to-day, when I walked out of the town with
an old and familiar friend, the spring had come. A maple had broken
into bloom and leaf; a chestnut was unfolding his gummy buds; the
cottage gardens were full of squills and hepatica; and the mezereons
were all thick with damask buds. In green and sheltered underwoods
there were bursts of daffodils; hedges were pricked with green points;
and a delicate green tapestry was beginning to weave itself over the
roadside ditches.
The air seemed full of a deep content. Birds fluted softly, and the
high elms which stirred in the wandering breezes were all thick with
their red buds. There was so much to look at and to point out that we
talked but fitfully; and there was, too, a gentle languor abroad which
made us content to be silent.
In one village which we passed, a music-loving squire had made a
concert for his friends and neighbours, and doubtless, too, for our
vagrant delight; we stood uninvited to listen to a tuneful stir of
violins, which with a violoncello booming beneath, broke out very
pleasantly from the windows of a village school-room.