FOR about six weeks from the middle of February we had bitter northerly
winds. The frost was not very severe, but the wind penetrated the
thickest clothing and searched the house through and through. The
shrubs, even the hardiest, were blackened by its virulence. There was
scarcely any sunshine, and every now and then a gloomy haze, like the
smoke in London suburbs, invaded us. The rise and fall of the barometer
meant nothing more than a variation in the strength of the polar current.
Growth was nearly arrested, although one morning I found three primroses
in a sheltered hollow. Never had the weather seemed more hopeless than
towards the close of March. On the last evening of the month the sky was
curiously perplexed and agitated notwithstanding there was little
movement in the air above or below. Next morning the change had come.
The wind had backed to the south, and a storm from the Channel was raging
with torrents of warm rain. O the day that followed! Massive April
clouds hung in the air. How much the want of visible support adds to
their charm! One enormous cloud, with its base nearly on the horizon,
rose up forty-five degrees or so towards the zenith. Its weight looked
tremendous, but it floated lightly in the blue which encompassed it.
Towards the centre it was swollen and dark, but its edges were dazzling
white. While I was watching it, it went away to the east and partly
broke up. A new cloud, like and not like, succeeded it . . . I followed
the lane, stopped for a few minutes at a corner where the grassy
road-margin widens out near the tumble-down barn, looked over the gate
westward across the valley to the hills beyond, and then went down to the
brook that winds along the bottom. It runs in a course which it has cut
for itself, and is flanked on either side by delicately-carved miniature
cliffs of yellow sandstone overhung with broom and furze. It was full of
pure glittering moor-water, which seemed to add light to the stones in
its bed, so brilliant was their colour. It fell with incessant, rippling
murmur over its little ledges, gathering itself up into pools between
each, and so it went on to the mill-pond a mile away. Close to me a
blackbird was building her nest. She moved when I peeped at her, but
presently returned. Her back was struck by the warm sun and was glossy
in its rays. A scramble of half a mile up a rough track brought me to
the common, and there, thirty miles distant, lay the chalk downs,
unsubstantial, a light-blue mist.
Youth with its heat in the blood may be more capable of exultation at
this season, but to the old man it brings the sounder hope and deeper
joy.