Here is a winter’s day already, and still November. As I looked forth at
sunrise this morning, the whole village was white with frost. I could
hear the ice in the wheel-ruts crackling under the tread of passers-by.
A single thrush piped forlornly somewhere in the dense thicket of the
churchyard. And as I leaned out into the nipping blast, a word came up
to me, bandied between a trudging labourer and his friend, a word that
brought with it an entire new sheaf of thoughts and memories. ‘More ’n
’aaf like Christmas, bean’t ut, Bill?’ It was said but in jest, and that
unthinkingly. Yet, by the calendar, as a glance now told me, Christmas
was scarce a month away.
While the sun was yet no more than a white spot in the faint gold mists
of morning, I took the lane that led to the Downs. It was strange to see
how the frost had missed all the bright-hued berries in the hedgerows,
and how the ivy-leaves were only rimmed with white. It was the same with
the prickly holly foliage. The spines were thickly encrusted, while the
dark green membranes of the leaves had given no fingerhold to the frost.
But the colour of the grass, and dead dry herbage, by the wayside was
completely blotted out. Every blade and twig stood up stark and white
against its fellow; and here it was easy to see which way the frozen air
had been drifting all night long, because on the windward side the pale
accretion was thicker: in the more exposed places it more than doubled
the natural girth of the stems.
Where the dew-pond lay, at the top of the hill, far above the swimming
lowland mists, there must have been bright sunshine from the very first;
for here the veneer of frost had melted into dewdrops, that flashed back
a thousand prismatic rays amidst the emerald of the grass at every step.
But behind each upstanding tussock, the frost still held as white and
thick as ever. The water, too, in the pond was still frozen over. As I
came up to the rail, a flock of starlings rose whirring over my head.
They had been waiting there on the sunny side of the bank for the ice to
melt round the pond edges, and thither they would return to slake their
morning thirst, as soon as I passed on.
Keen and unkindly blew the blast, so that one must keep ever moving to
withstand the chill of it. Looking round me on the waste of hills, I
could see that the northern slopes still retained their wintry hue,
though all those facing to the sun were intensely green. Below in the
valley only the oak-woods kept their bronze stain of autumn. Every other
tree, the hedges that divided ploughlands and meadows, the winding line
of thicket marking the course of the river, all looked bare and dark in
the glistening pallor of the sun. The river itself, between the broad
water-meadows, seemed like a river of ink.
[Picture: “The Ferryman’s Cottage”]
As I took in all the cheerless, void purity of what lay below me,
thinking to myself that this indeed was winter, there came a sudden
cawing and dawing high up in the frosty steel-blue dome of the sky; and
here again was confirmation of that unenlivening fact. A great company
of rooks and jackdaws was streaming by, but with none of its summer zest
and purpose. The throng made a general progress towards the south, yet
it was obviously doing little more than killing time, spinning out the
business of a doubtful journey into the semblance of a morning’s task.
Instead of going straight forward in one steady strong tide, the birds
were incessantly veering back in wide circles, crossing and re-crossing
each other’s paths aimlessly, and weaving a mazy dark pattern on the sky.
I watched this dubious host from the hill-top until it vanished in the
eye of the sun; and then, fairly beaten at last by the razor-edged north
wind, turned and went back to the village. It was winter again, in very
truth; and there was little sense or profit in blinking it. I would
strike my flag now, as I had struck it often before. And the flag with
me was the little staging of fernery that still concealed the yawning
blackness of my study hearth. I pulled it all down and stowed it away;
and by and by, when the ash logs were sizzling and glowing, and the
sparks were volleying up the flue, and a living warmth pervading the
room, I plucked up new heart and courage:
‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member;
No warmth, no shine—’
It was all as false now as it must ever have been. And as for
butterflies and bees, what but a sick fancy could crave for such
delicacies out of season?