Last night we had a very beautiful experience. We were searching
for a man on most important business, but as the wrong address had
been given, that part of it ended in wild-goose chase. Nevertheless
we were brought into contact with a real bit of wonder. It was an
exquisite night. The moon, big, warm, and round as a harvest moon
at home, hung low near the dreaming world. The trees stood still
and ghost-like, and the river ran through a picture of breathless
beauty. We had got away beyond houses, and were climbing up through
a great far-stretching glade. The roar before us was a trellis of
shadow and moonlight. Suddenly we had to stand and listen. It was the
nightingale. How indescribably glorious! The note of inquiry, repeated
and repeated, like a searching sadness; and then the liquid golden
stream of other-world song. How wonderfully peaceful the night lay all
around--the very moonlight seemed to soften in the listening. And yet
again came the question with the sob in it; and then the cry of the
heart running over.
The valley lay lapped in luminous haze, a lake somewhere shining. But
there was no other sound, no motion, no sign of life anywhere--only
ourselves standing in that shadow glade, and that song of the
beginnings of the world's sadness, yearning, and delight, somewhere in
the thicket near.
It was difficult to believe that we were in a land of war; that not far
from us lay ruined towns of ancient story; that the same moonlight,
so flooded with delight for us, was falling on the uninterred, the
suffering, and the dying, and the graves where brave dust was buried.
It was all very beautiful. And yet, somehow, it made me weary. For I
could not help thinking of the boy we had laid down to rest, so far
from home, and the piper playing "Lochaber No More" over his grave. And
of the regiment we had seen that very day, marching in full equipment,
with the pipers at the head of the column, so soon to be separated from
the peat fires and the dear ones more widely than by sundering seas.
And we hated the war. God recompenses the cruel ones who loosened that
bloody curse from among the old-time sorrows which were sleeping, to
afflict again the world!