MY housekeeper and her husband have begged for a holiday from this
morning till Boxing-day, and I could not refuse. I can do without them
for so short a time. I might have spent the Christmas with one of my
children, but they live far away and travelling is now irksome to me. I
was seventy years old a month past. Besides, they are married and have
their own friends, of whom I know nothing. I have locked the door of my
cottage and shall walk to No-man’s Corner.
It is a dark day; the sky is covered evenly with a thick cloud. There is
no wind except a breath now and then from the north-east. It is not a
frost, but it is cold, and a thick mist covers the landscape. It is no
thicker in the river bottom than on the hills; it is everywhere the same.
The field-paths are in many places a foot deep in mud, for the autumn has
been wet. They are ploughing the Ten Acres, and the plough is going
along the top ridge so that horses and men are distinctly outlined, two
men and four horses, but the pace is slow, for the ground is very heavy.
I can just hear the ploughman talking to his team. The upturned earth is
more beautiful in these parts than I have seen it elsewhere—a rich,
reddish brown, for there is iron in it. The sides of the clods which are
smoothed by the ploughshare shine like silver even in this dull light. I
pass through the hop-garden. The poles are stacked and a beginning has
just been made with the weeds. A little further on is the farmhouse. It
lies in the hollow and there is no road to it, save a cart-track. The
nearest hard road is half a mile distant. The footpath crosses the
farmyard. The house is whitewashed plaster and black-timbered, and
surrounded by cattle-pens in which the oxen and cows stand almost up to
their knees in slush. A motionless ox looks over the bar of his pen and
turns his eyes to me and my dog as we pass. It is now twelve, and it is
the dinner-hour. The horses have stopped work and are steaming with
sweat under the hayrick. The men are sitting in the barn. Leaving the
farmyard I go down to the brook which steals round the wood and stop for
a few minutes on the foot-bridge. I can hear the little stream in the
gully about twenty feet below, continually changing its note, which
nevertheless is always the same. In the wood not a leaf falls. O
eternal sleep, death of the passions, the burial of failures, follies,
bitter recollections, the end of fears, welcome sleep!