The spring of the year 1849 was remarkable, throughout the western
counties, for long drought. I know not how it may be in the east of
England, but I have observed that in the west long droughts occur only
in the spring and early summer. In the autumn we have sometimes as much
as six weeks without rain, and in the summer a month at most, but all
the real droughts (so far as my experience goes) commence in February or
March; these are, however, so rare, and April has won such poetic fame
for showers, and July for heat and dryness, that what I state is at
variance with the popular impression.
Be that as it may, about Valentine's-day, 1849, and after a length of
very changeable weather, the wind fixed its home in the east, and the
sky for a week was grey and monotonous. Brilliant weather ensued; white
frost at night, and strong sun by day. The frost became less biting as
the year went on, and the sun more powerful; there were two or three
overcast days, and people hoped for rain. But no rain fell, except one
poor drizzle, more like dew than rain.
With habits now so ingrained as to become true pleasures, I marked the
effects of the drought on all the scene around me. The meadows took the
colour of Russian leather, the cornlands that of a knife-board. The
young leaves of the wood hung pinched and crisp, unable to shake off
their tunics, and more like catkins than leaves. The pools went low and
dark and thick with a coppery scum (in autumn it would have been green),
and little bubbles came up and popped where the earth cracked round the
sides. The tap-rooted plants looked comely and brave in the morning,
after their drink of dew, but flagged and flopped in the afternoon, as a
clubbed cabbage does. As for those which had only the surface to suck,
they dried by the acre, and powdered away like the base of a bonfire.
The ground was hard as horn, and fissured in stars, and angles, and
jagged gaping cracks, like a dissecting map or a badly-plastered wall.
It amused me sometimes to see a beetle suddenly cut off from his home by
that which to him was an earthquake. How he would run to and fro, look
doubtfully into the dark abyss, then, rising to the occasion, bridge his
road with a straw. The snails shrunk close in their shells, and
resigned themselves to a spongy distance of slime. The birds might be
seen in the morning, hopping over the hollows of the shrunken ponds,
prying for worms, which had shut themselves up like caddises deep in the
thirsty ground. Our lake, which was very deep at the lower end, became
a refuge for all the widgeons and coots and moorhens of the
neighbourhood, and the quick-diving grebe, and even the summer snipe,
with his wild and lonely "cheep." The brink of the water was feathered,
and dabbled with countless impressions of feet of all sorts--dibbers,
and waders, and wagtails, and weasels, and otters, and foxes, and the
bores of a thousand bills, and muscles laid high and dry.
For my own pet robins I used to fill pans with water along the edge of
the grass, for I knew their dislike of the mineral spring (which never
went dry), and to these they would fly down and drink, and perk up their
impudent heads, and sluice their poor little dusty wings; and then, as
they could not sing now, they would give me a chirp of gratitude.
When the drought had lasted about three months, the east wind, which
till then had been cold and creeping, became suddenly parching hot.
Arid and heavy, and choking, it panted along the glades, like a dog on a
dusty road. It came down the water-meadows, where the crowsfoot grew,
and wild celery, and it licked up the dregs of the stream, and powdered
the flood-gates, all skeletons now, with grey dust. It came through the
copse, and the young leaves shrunk before it, like a child from the hiss
of a snake. The blast pushed the doors of our house, and its dry
wrinkled hand was laid on the walls and the staircase and woodwork; a
hot grime tracked its steps, and a taint fell on all that was fresh. As
it folded its baleful wings, and lay down like a desert dragon,
vegetation, so long a time sick, gave way at last to despair, and
flagged off flabbed and dead. The clammy grey dust, like hot sand
thrown from ramparts, ate to the core of everything, choking the
shrivelled pores and stifling the languid breath. Old gaffers were
talking of murrain in cattle, and famine and plague among men, and
farmers were too badly off to grumble.
But the change even now was at hand. The sky which had long presented a
hard and cloudless blue, but trailing a light haze round its rim in the
morning, was bedimmed more every day with a white scudding vapour across
it. The sun grew larger and paler, and leaned more on the heavens,
which soon became ribbed with white skeleton-clouds; and these in their
turn grew softer and deeper, then furry and ravelled and wisped. One
night the hot east wind dropped, and, next morning (though the vane had
not changed), the clouds drove heavily from the south-west. But these
signs of rain grew for several days before a single drop fell; as is
always the case after discontinuance, it was hard to begin again.
Indeed, the sky was amassed with black clouds, and the dust went
swirling like a mat beaten over the trees, and the air became cold, and
the wind moaned three days and three nights, and yet no rain fell. As
old Whitehead, the man at the lodge, well observed, it had "forgotten
the way to rain." Then it suddenly cleared one morning (the 28th of
May), and the west was streaked with red clouds, that came up to crow at
the sun, and the wind for the time was lulled, and the hills looked
close to my hand. So I went to my father's grave without the little
green watering-pot or a trowel to fill the chinks, for I knew it would
rain that very day.
In the eastern shrubbery there was a pond, which my father had taken
much trouble to make and adorn; it was not fed by the mineral spring,
for that was thought likely to injure the fish, but by a larger and
purer stream, called the "Witches' brook," which, however, was now quite
dry. This pond had been planted around and through with silver-weed,
thrumwort and sun-clew, water-lilies, arrow-head, and the rare double
frog-bit, and other aquatic plants, some of them brought from a long
distance. At one end there was a grotto, cased with fantastic porous
stone, and inside it a small fountain played. But now the fountain was
silent, and the pond shrunk almost to its centre. The silver eels which
once had abounded here, finding their element likely to fail, made a
migration, one dewy night, overland to the lake below. The fish, in
vain envy of that great enterprise, huddled together in the small wet
space which remained, with their back-fins here and there above water.
When any one came near, they dashed away, as I have seen grey mullet do
in the shallow sea-side pools. Several times I had water poured in for
their benefit, but it was gone again directly. The mud round the edge
of the remnant puddle was baked and cracked, and foul with an oozy green
sludge, the relic of water-weeds.
This little lake, once so clear and pretty, and full of bright dimples
and crystal shadows, now looked so forlorn and wasted and old, like a
bright eye worn dim with years, and the trees stood round it so faded
and wan, the poplar unkempt of its silver and green, the willow without
wherewithal to weep, and the sprays of the birch laid dead at its feet;
altogether it looked so empty and sad and piteous, that I had been
deeply grieved for the sake of him who had loved it.
So, when the sky clouded up again, in the afternoon of that day, I
hastened thither to mark the first effects of the rain.
As I reached the white shell-walk, which loosely girt the pond, the
lead-coloured sky took a greyer and woollier cast, and overhead became
blurred and pulpy; while round the horizon it lifted in frayed festoons.
As I took my seat in the grotto, the big drops began to patter among the
dry leaves, and the globules rolled in the dust, like parched peas. A
long hissing sound ensued, and a cloud of powder went up, and the trees
moved their boughs with a heavy dull sway. Then broke from the laurels
the song of the long-silent thrush, and reptiles, and insects, and all
that could move, darted forth to rejoice in the freshness. The earth
sent forth that smell of sweet newness, the breath of young nature
awaking, which reminds us of milk, and of clover, of balm, and the smile
of a child.
But, most of all, it was in and around the pool that the signs of new
life were stirring. As the circles began to jostle, and the bubbles
sailed closer together, the water, the slime, and the banks, danced,
flickered, and darkened, with a whirl of living creatures. The surface
was brushed, as green corn is flawed by the wind, with the quivering dip
of swallows' wings; and the ripples that raced to the land splashed over
the feet of the wagtails.
Here, as I marked all narrowly, and seemed to rejoice in their gladness,
a sudden new wonder befell me. I was watching a monster frog emerge
from his penthouse of ooze, and lift with some pride his brown spots and
his bright golden throat from the matted green cake of dry weed, when a
quick gleam shot through the fibres. With a listless curiosity,
wondering whether the frog, like his cousin the toad, were a jeweller, I
advanced to the brim of the pool. The poor frog looked timidly at me
with his large starting eyes; then, shouldering off the green coil, made
one rapid spring, and was safe in the water. But his movement had
further disclosed some glittering object below. Determined to know what
it was, despite the rain, I placed some large pebbles for steps, ran
lightly, and lifted the weed. Before me lay, as bright as if polished
that day, with the jewelled hilt towards me, a long narrow dagger. With
a haste too rapid for thought to keep up, I snatched it, and rushed to
the grotto.
There, in the drought of my long revenge, with eyes on fire, and teeth
set hard and dry, and every root of my heart cleaving and crying to
heaven for blood, I pored on that weapon, whose last sheath had
been--how well I knew what. I did not lift it towards God, nor fall on
my knees and make a theatrical vow; for that there was no necessity.
But for the moment my life and my soul seemed to pass along that cold
blade, just as my father's had done. A treacherous, blue,
three-cornered blade, with a point as keen as a viper's fang,
sublustrous like ice in the moonlight, sleuth as hate, and tenacious as
death. To my curdled and fury-struck vision it seemed to writhe in the
gleam of the storm which played along it like a corpse-candle. I fancied
how it had quivered and rung to find itself deep in that heart.
My passions at length overpowered me, and I lay, how long I know not,
utterly insensible. When I came to myself again, the storm had passed
over, the calm pool covered my stepping stones, the shrubs and trees
wept joy in the moonlight, the nightingales sang in the elms, healing
and beauty were in the air, peace and content walked abroad on the
earth. The May moon slept on the water before me, and streamed through
the grotto arch; but there it fell cold and ghost-like upon the tool of
murder. Over this I hastily flung my scarf; coward, perhaps I was, for
I could not handle it then, but fled to the house and dreamed in my
lonely bed.
When I examined the dagger next day, I found it to be of foreign fabric.
"Ferrati, Bologna," the name and abode of the maker, as I supposed, was
damascened on the hilt. A cross, like that on the footprint, but
smaller, and made of gold, was inlaid on the blade, just above the
handle. The hilt itself was wreathed with a snake of green enamel,
having garnet eyes. From the fine temper of the metal, or some annealing
process, it showed not a stain of rust, and the blood which remained
after writing the letters before described had probably been washed off
by the water. I laid it most carefully by, along with my other relics,
in a box which I always kept locked.
So God, as I thought, by His sun, and His seasons, and weather, and the
mind He had so prepared, was holding the clue for me, and shaking it
clear from time to time, along my dark and many-winding path.