Peter finally quartered himself upon a lonely farm in Worcestershire.
The estate was large and wild, running down steep hills and banks to a
brook and tiny falls of water. The family who owned it scraped a
livelihood from odds and ends of country employment. They had some
orchard, and pasture for half a dozen cows. But there was no arable, and
they made up a yearly deficit by receiving visitors from the town.
Peter had the place to himself, and the peace of it was deeply
refreshing. The house stood high, whence the shapely hills of the
country were visible--Malvern hanging like a small cloud on the horizon.
For many days he lay in the June sun, listening to the stir of leaves,
watching with curiosity the lives of small creatures he could not name.
In deepest luxury he sat day by day on a fallen trunk across the stream,
grateful after the blazing descent of a broken hill for the cool shade
of trees meeting overhead, watching a fish lying under the bank or
rising to snap at a fly. Or he would be buried in grass, softly topped
by the light wind, diverted after long, empty moments by the appearance
of a rabbit or a bird not suspecting him. Peter dreamed away whole days,
utterly vacant of thought, recording things. He counted the number of
times a glossy black cow, munching beside him, masticated her food
between each return of the cud. There was a horse which had brought his
trunk to the house who always stood with his head thrust through a gap
in the hedge. Peter watched the flies collect upon his eyelids, and
waited lazily for the blink which regularly dispersed them in a tiny
cloud. Peter, in reaction from the fruitless activity of his last months
in London, rested and was pleased. It seemed as he lay upon the earth
that the scent of the grass was life enough; that reality, humming in
wings of the air, in the splashing of water, in noises of the cattle,
was sufficient for his uninquiring day. He took an enormous pleasure in
small material things--the spiriting of warm milk into the pail; the
breath of an old dog as he stood, watchful and erect, in the cold
morning; the slow, graceful sweeping of a scythe; the shining of the
first star after sunset; the clipping of hot fingers into the brook; the
odour of ham frizzling in the farmer's pan.
At night, with the curtains drawn, and by the light of an oil lamp whose
smell was ever after associated in Peter's mind with these rustic days,
he played with the books which Marbury had packed for him. Among them
was Burton's _Arabian Nights_ and Urquhart's _Rabelais_. Marbury had
well chosen. Peter had never felt before the wonder of _Rabelais_. Here,
alone with the beasts and with people whose lives were taken up with
their feeding and breeding, Peter smelt in _Rabelais_ the fresh dirt and
sweat of the earth. He squarely received between his shoulders the
hearty slap of a laughter broad as mankind. _Rabelais_ was the evening
chorus of his day in the fields. The voices of the hearty morning, the
slow noon, and the quiet evening sounded between the lines where
Grangousier warmed his great bulk by the fire and Gargantua thrived to
enormous manhood.
It was only after many days that Peter looked into Burton. He wondered
why Marbury should have included a book he knew only as a series of
pretty tales. Then he found that beside his _Rabelais_ upon the shelf
was the greatest song of the flesh yet uttered.
After his first night with Burton, Peter flung wide his window to the
air. A cat slunk cautiously into the garden and away. The farmer and his
wife came out for a moment to read the sky, and stood in the light of
the door. The old man lifted his face, and was moulded clearly in
silhouette--a face beaten hard with weather, but untroubled after
seventy years of appetites healthily satisfied. He was sagacious as
befitted his high species; he had eaten and drunk for sixty-five years,
and had bred of his kind. All this he had inevitably done as a creature
with his spade in the earth and his hand heavy upon the inferior beasts.
Mere flesh and blood was good, and it endured. Peter's heart was
pulsing now with a song older than an English farmer--a song of man who
was tickled under an Eastern sun and laughed, who was pricked with
absolute lust--who found his flesh not an obstacle between himself and
heaven, but his heritage and expression.
Peter was not thinking. He idly looked and received a faint rain of
impressions from the still night and from memories of a tale. A barrier
of fresh earth mounted between him and his troubles of the year. He was
content to rest and dream. He turned from the window, weary with air and
sun, stretching his elbows in an agreeable yawn. He felt the clean
flexion of the muscles of his arm. He stretched again, repeating a
healthy pleasure, and yawned happily to bed.
Haymaking under a burning sun began on the following day, and Peter
offered help to the farmer. The old man looked favourably at Peter's
broad shoulders and friendly eyes. Then there were long back-breaking
hours in the open field. Peter learned why there was leisure and grace
in the movements of his companion, and tried to imitate, under pleasant
chaff, the expert's artful economy of power.
Peter soon found in his new friend a surprising fund of wisdom painfully
gathered. The farmer's knowledge was limited, but very sure. He had
learned life for himself, with scraps inherited from his father and
collected from his friends. His prejudices, even when absurd, were
rooted in the earth. Peter felt he would exchange all his books for a
blank mind where Nature could write in so firm a hand.
His wife brought cider and cheese to them in the field, and they sat
under a hedge contemplating the morning's work in the pauses of a rough
meal.
"Plenty to do yet," said Peter, looking at the large field with a sense
of labour to come.
"Matter o' twenty-four hours."
The old man paused on the rim of his mug, and narrowed his eyes at the
blue sky. "We can be gentle with the work. You'll find it pays to be
gentle."
Peter drank gratefully at the cool cider.
"Thirsty, sir?" The old man filled Peter's mug and watched him drink it.
"That's good liquor. Forty years she's brewed it." He jerked his thumb
towards the house.
"Your wife?" asked Peter most politely.
"Married forty years," nodded the old man. "It's well to marry when
you're lusty. Nature's kind when you live natural, but, if you thwart
her, she turns you a beast in the end. Married yourself?" he suddenly
asked, surveying Peter as a likely young animal.
"I'm only twenty-one," said Peter, with a shocked inflexion.
"Not too young for marriage," grossly chuckled the old man. "There's
many uneasy lads of your age and less would do well to be married. The
devil tickles finely the members of a young lad."
Peter had heard these things discussed in a public hall, but the
language had been decently scientific or medical. How vulgar and timid
seemed these late evasions under the burning sun! Peter was ashamed not
to be able frankly to meet an old man who talked clearly of nature
without picking his words.
Peter sweated through the day, and in the evening sat happily tired at
the window. His day's work had brought him nearer yet to the earth. The
faint smell of the drying grass, and a dim line of the field where the
green blade met the grey, was witness of a day well spent. Manual labour
was delightful after lounging weeks of mental work with nothing to show.
There was something ultimate and real about physical expenditure. Could
anything in the world be finer than to be just a very sagacious animal?
A low, gurgling song--it seemed the voice of a woman--came and went
among the trees of the garden. Then there was silence. Soon there were
footsteps, and two figures appeared in the shadow of some bushes beside
the gate which gave upon the lawn beneath him. The figures stood close,
and a man's voice, pleading, alternated with low laughter in the tone
which previously had been the tone of the song. At last the man moved
forward, and the woman, still laughing, allowed herself to be kissed. As
Peter drew instinctively back he heard her laughter muted by the man's
lips. The incident stirred Peter more than he cared to acknowledge. He
heard his heart beating, and saw his hand tremble on the sill.
He angrily shut the window, and, lighting the lamps, took down his books
from the shelf. But the books would not hold his brain. The stifled
laugh of the woman by the gate echoed there. He caught himself staring
at the page, restless, feeling that the room oppressed him. It seemed
that life was beating at the window, that the room in which he sat was
unvisited, and that he was holding the visitor at bay.
He gave up all pretence of reading, and again let in the air. He stared
into the garden, which now seemed the heart of the world. The figures by
the gate had vanished, but Peter fancied he heard, from the dark, whiffs
of talk, and breathing movements.
At last there were steps unmistakable, and the same low song Peter had
first heard. This time the woman was alone. She carried a hat in her
hand. She stood by the gate a moment, and pushed the pins into her hair.
Then she came over the lawn into the light of the house window, walking
free and lithe. She paused at the window and looked mischievously in
upon the old couple below. Clearly she had come to surprise them. She
opened the door upon them in a gleam of sly excitement. Peter saw with a
renewed beating of the heart how full were the smiling lips he had
heard stifled into silence. His mind threw back the girl, as she stood
in the light, into the shadow of a man's embrace.
A clamour of greeting from below scattered his thoughts.
"Why, if it isn't Bess!" he heard the old man say. Then there was a
hearty kissing, and the door was shut on a murmur of welcoming talk.
Peter lay long into the night, listening to the clatter of tongues over
a meal below. Bess was clearly a favourite. When the kitchen door
opened, and the family tramped to bed, he heard once more the low
vibrating voice of the girl.
"Good night, grandpa!"
Then he heard the women above him in the attic, making up a bed. One of
them came down, and the house dropped into silence save for the quiet
movements of the girl upstairs.