‘Cold!’ said he. ‘She will not begin to sit yet. Perhaps never on this
clutch. There is frost and snow ahead of us still, though all of us
forget it this weather, bird, beast, and man.’
The path led us into the hazelwood; hazel below, and overhead soaring
columns of beech, whose branches touched finger-tips everywhere across
the white-flecked blue of the sky. As we went along, the sound of our
footsteps in the fallen leaves was like the sound of wading through
water. I must read off to him what I saw about me as though it were from
a book.
‘The hazel-catkins were never so fine, I think, as they are this spring.
The wood is full of them, like showers of gold-green rain falling.
Whenever we brush against them, clouds of pollen drift off in the wind.
It is the wind that makes the hazel-nuts which we gather by and by. What
millions upon millions of spores only to make a few bushels of nuts! I
struck a single bush with my stick just now, and, for yards ahead, the
sunshine was misty with the floating green dust. Then, here and there on
every branch—’
‘Yes! I can see it all! There are little green buds each with a torch
of bright crimson at its tip, flaming in the sun. Why should they be so
vividly coloured, if only to catch what the wind brings—floating pollen
as blind as I? No, no! The hazel-nut was made for the bees originally,
depend upon it. Nature never uses bright colour unless to attract winged
life.’
We came out of the wood on the south side. Stopping just within the
shade of the last trees, we had a view over a chain of sunny, sheltered
meadows that lay between the riverside willows and the first steep
escarpment of the Downs. Here the wind was only a song above our heads.
Scarce a breath stirred where we leaned upon the gate in the sunshine. I
must be at my living book again, yet knew not where to begin, so crowded
was the page.
‘March is still three weeks off, and yet the hares are already as mad as
can be. Over there under the Hanger, a mile away, I can see them racing
and tumbling about together. There are more celandines and coltsfoot
blossom everywhere. I can see daisies wherever I look, and there is a
disc of dandelion by the gate-post just where you stand. What clouds of
midges! Thousands are dancing in the air above our heads, and I can see
their wings making a hazy streak of light all down the hedgerow, where
the elders are in flourishing green leaf. Did you ever hear so many
birds all singing at the same time? And there goes an army of rooks and
jackdaws overhead! What a din!—the high, yelping treble of the daws, and
the deep-voiced rooks singing bass to it.’
The Reverend put a hand upon my arm to stop me.
‘I can hear something else,’ he said. ‘A dandelion, did you say? Then
she will come straight for it.’ And as he spoke, I heard the old
familiar sound too. It was a hive-bee, tempted abroad by the glad spring
sunlight. She came straight over the meadows. Passing all other
blossoms by, she settled on the single flower half-hidden in its whorl of
ragged green leaves close beside us, and forthwith began to smother
herself in its yellow pollen.
‘And there she goes again!’ said the old vicar, as the soft, rich sound
mingled once more with the myriad other notes about us. ‘High up into
the air—doesn’t she?—making ever a wider and wider circle until she gets
her first flying-mark, and then in the usual zigzag course, home to the
hive! A bee-line! People always make the words stand for something
absolutely straight and direct. But a true bee-line is the easiest way
between two points, not necessarily the shortest. To take a bee-line, if
folk only knew it, is just to fly through the calmest, or most favouring
airs, judge the quickest way between all obstacles, dodge the ravenous
tits and sparrows, and so get home safe and sound to the hive.’