9_th January_ 1892.
For some days the weather here has been wavering between Winter and
Spring. In the morning, perhaps, shivers will run over both land and water
at the touch of the north wind; while the evening will thrill with the
south breeze coming through the moonlight.
There is no doubt that Spring is well on its way. After a long interval
the _papiya_ once more calls out from the groves on the opposite
bank. The hearts of men too are stirred; and after evening falls, sounds
of singing are heard in the village, showing that they are no longer in
such a hurry to close doors and windows and cover themselves up snugly for
the night.
To-night the moon is at its full, and its large, round face peers at me
through the open window on my left, as if trying to make out whether I
have anything to say against it in my letter,--it suspects, maybe, that we
mortals concern ourselves more with its stains than its beams.
A bird is plaintively crying tee-tee on the sand-bank. The river seems not
to move. There are no boats. The motionless groves on the bank cast an
unquivering shadow on the waters. The haze over the sky makes the moon
look like a sleepy eye kept open.
Henceforward the evenings will grow darker and darker; and when,
to-morrow, I come over from the office, this moon, the favourite companion
of my exile, will already have drifted a little farther from me, doubting
whether she had been wise to lay her heart so completely bare last
evening, and so covering it up again little by little.
Nature becomes really and truly intimate in strange and lonely places. I
have been actually worrying myself for days at the thought that after the
moon is past her full I shall daily miss the moonlight more and more;
feeling further and further exiled when the beauty and peace which awaits
my return to the riverside will no longer be there, and I shall have to
come back through darkness.
Anyhow I put it on record that to-day is the full moon--the first full
moon of this year's springtime. In years to come I may perchance be
reminded of this night, with the tee-tee of the bird on the bank, the
glimmer of the distant light on the boat off the other shore, the shining
expanse of river, the blur of shade thrown by the dark fringe of trees
along its edge, and the white sky gleaming overhead in unconcerned
aloofness.