It was a glad May morning, the air soft-flowing and cool, the sunshine
warm and brilliant, when the youth cut his lectures and went out into the
fields, drawn irresistibly by the electric rush and sparkle of the spring.
The swallows were home from the Southern Tour, and the sky was singing.
He could not sit and listen to chemical formulae in a lecture-room; it was
not possible. He wandered out carelessly into the world of buttercups,
following the stream where the feathered willows bent in a wave of falling
green. It was a true bird-day, and his heart, uprising like the larks,
was shrilling. He felt exactly like a bird himself, and it made him laugh
as naturally as a bird might sing. He fell to copying their various
cries. They came up close and saw him. They were aware of him.
'Birds of the sweet spring skies!' he thought, and yearned to share their
strange collective life, individual still, yet part of their magical
community.
He soon found himself out of the scholastic town and among the flat
expanse of yellow fields beyond. The stream was blue, the grass an
emerald green, the willows laughed, showing their under leaves, the dew
still sparkled. Buttercups by the million nodded in the breeze; wings
were everywhere, the surface of the earth was dancing, and the whole air
fluttered. The earth was dressed in blue and gold.
The singing was so general that he had to pause in order to pick out the
separate melodies; the song of the birds was, indeed, so much a part of
their surroundings that an act of definite listening was necessary to hear
it. It linked him on to Nature; it made Nature articulate. He heard the
hearty whistle of the blackcap among the swaying tree-tops, shrill with
joy; a whitethroat tossed itself exultantly into the air beside him; he
heard the warblers trilling, the little calling cry of the chiff-chaff,
the tiny poem of the willow-warbler, the merry laughter of the dainty
wren. The tits shot everywhere, pecking in seed, pricking the sunshine
with their tiny beaks, darting, flashing. He passed a farm and saw the
vigorous outline of a blackbird, perched upon an oak bough still bare,
fluting as Pan fluted upon many-fountained Ida long ago; a chaffinch
dipped at him over the wall from wet shrubberies beyond, hopped to a twig
in the sunlight above the blackbird, and let loose a shower of notes like
silvery drops of water. Singing shook itself out of the atmosphere
everywhere, as though the whole of Nature moved and trembled into her
strange scale-less music. There was the joy of air upon the stirring
world.
The life of air was dominant, ruling the heavy earth--bird-life.
What delicious names they had, Whitethroat, Gold-oriel, Wheat-ear, Dipper,
Bunting, Redpoll, Osprey, Snowy-owl, Snow-bunting, Martin; what lyrical
names with fun and laughter in them, a childlike beauty of air and sunny
woodland-space. The magic of Spring captured him by its suggestion:
nothing was fully out, it was suggested only--eternal promise, ethereal
glamour: prophecy, hope, expectancy--fulfilment.
On all sides he felt the tremendous lift of the year that comes in May
with song and colour and movement. The world was rhythmical. It caught
him into joy, as though it would sweep him like a harp into passionate
response. Yet he remained dumb and inarticulate. He drank it in: but he
could not sing, he could not soar, he could not fly. This piping,
fluting, thrilling, this showering stream of sweet elemental song and
dance was not of the earth, but of the air. The strange yearning in him
grew and gathered into a dangerous accumulation. It must find expression
somehow or he would--burst.
He threw himself down in the long grass beside the blue-throated stream,
and became at once all eyes and ears. There was no other way. The cool
touch of the luxuriant herbage brought a slight relief, as did the
itemising of the songs he heard and imitated, the colours he gazed upon
and named: the shimmering sheen of the rooks in the elm trees yonder;
the deep, unpolished ebony of the blackbird with its beak of gleaming
yellow; the bright and roving eye of the little whitethroat picking food
along the bank; the shearing speed of the swifts cutting the air with
tapering, scythe-like wings; the piping sweetness of a thrush, invisible
in a thicket behind the farm buildings--all these combined to put the true
bird-ecstasy upon him as he lay and watched and listened. The amazing
outburst of spring music lifted him almost into the air to join the ropes
of starlings twisting and untwisting as if they reproduced the wild soft
tangle of his unsatisfied yearnings. And their tiny flickering shadows
fell upon the ground in ever-shifting patterns that he could never catch
or seize. Upon his mind fell similarly rushing thoughts he was unable to
express . . . the rhythm of some mighty promise that uplifted. He was
aware of love and beauty. The soul in him rose and twittered like a
lark. . . .
Then, presently, he raised his head above the screen of grass. There was
a sound of footsteps. His hearing was abnormally acute when this
bird-mood took him, for the tapping tread of a wagtail on the bank had
made itself distinctly heard. He saw the frisky creature, dainty as a
sprite, tripping nimbly among the rushes just below him. It balanced very
cleverly, neatly dressed in its tailor-made of feathers. He saw its fairy
ankles. It seemed to hold its skirts up. He caught its bright eye
peeping. It was gone.
'Soft, slip of a bird!' he thought to himself with a sharp sensation of
regret; 'why did it leave me in such a hurry?' He felt something tender
and earnest in him, something true and thorough, yet careless and light
with joy, a true bird-quality. He felt, too, the pathos of the sudden
disappearance: a moment ago it had been there in all its gracious beauty,
and now the spot was empty.
'Where, in what new haunted corner of these fields----' he began,
half-singing, when a new and startling flash of loveliness caught his eye
and took his breath away. Another wagtail, but this time yellow,
marvellous as a dream, came pricking into view.
Somehow, beyond all understanding, the sweet apparition focussed his
tangle of inarticulate yearning into a blaze of delight that was a climax.
The advent of the exquisite little creature, with its delicate carriage,
its bosom of pure yellow, seemed symbolical almost. The idea of something
sylph-like from the heart of the air flashed into him. The whole singing,
dancing, coloured element produced this living emblem from its central
heart of the flooding Spring. There was true air-magic in it.
The passion of Spring and the mystery of birds focussed together in the
tiny symbol. Imagination touched the pitch of ecstasy. He turned
abruptly. There was a whirr, a streak of burning yellow that lost itself
against the sea of buttercups, and lo! He was--alone again.
But this time the loneliness was more than he could bear.
He sprang to his feet, and at full speed took the direction in which it
disappeared. Some wisdom of the birds was in him possibly, though alas,
not their light rapidity, for while guided wisely along the windings of
the willow-guarded stream, across the fields, past hedges, copses, farms,
over ditches innumerable, he could not overtake his prize--and so at last
came into a lonely spot that lay far away upon the surface of the
countryside. The occasional flash of yellow had led him onwards in this
way, as though the bird enticed him of set purpose; it would land, then
shoot away again just as he came up with it. It left a trail of gold
across the sunlit fields. It was a will-o'-the-wisp--in sunlight.
It behaved like some spiritual decoy.
Afterwards, when he thought about it, his chase took on this aspect of
curious allurement, for he knew he could never catch the bird for actual
handling, even had he so desired. Nor did he wish to; he had no desire to
'prove' this symbol that summed up his imaginative passion. He only
wanted to come up with it; to meet its peeping eye, to watch it at close
quarters: its sylph-like beauty had seduced him. Twice he dashed through
the water, where the stream made a tiresome bend, and his track across the
fields of early hay would have warranted a farmer in putting dust-shot
into him. Yet he kept just within sight of it--of the flashing yellow
which made him oblivious of all else; and the brimstone butterflies, the
yellow-hammers, the orange-tinted kingfishers that obviously tried to
confuse the trail by shooting across his path, failed wholly to divert him
from the chase. He knew which gold to follow. It was in his heart.
The wagtail at last shot headlong past a clump of bramble-bushes, and
Wimble, arriving also headlong, saw to his amazement that the yellow of
its breast remained on the branches as though caught and fixed. To his
astonishment the gold lay in a shining stream across the prickles without
moving. It held fast. He saw the gleaming line of it. He thought he was
dreaming for an instant--then discovered that the stream of gold was a
yellow scarf that had been netted by the hedge. It belonged to a human
being. The same second he saw a sun-bonnet and a book lying on the other
side by a pond below some willows. And the being was a blue-eyed girl.
His sylph of the air had come to earth. Two black stockings hung on a
branch to dry. She was bare-footed. He certainly met her eye, and it
was a surprised, reproachful eye. He looked down at her, and she looked
up at him. His heart came up into his throat and then into his eyes.
'I suppose you know you're trespassing,' said a voice that was both cross
and sweet at once. 'These fields are father's.'
'Yes,' replied young Wimble of Trinity, staring at her in amazement.
'I'm awfully sorry.' He was lost in admiration and unable to conceal it.
She was more than a farmer's daughter, he was thinking, as instinctively
he transferred to her all the yearning, airy passion he had put into his
search for the yellow wagtail.
'Father complained last week again, and there are new boards up
everywhere.' He remembered vaguely there had been complaints about
trespassing; he had blundered into the very spot where the offences had
been committed. 'So you've no excuse!' she added, watching him.
'I'm awfully sorry,' he repeated, as he disentangled the yellow scarf and
passed the end into her outstretched hand. The sunburned skin just
matched the landscape, he noted the tiny bleached hairs upon her arm.
'I saw a yellow wagtail and went after it. They're rather uncommon.'
And then he added, 'I suppose it--you--got caught, scrambling through the
hedge. I'm frightfully sorry. Really, I'm ashamed. I saw the bird--and
forgot everything. I believe it flew back--flew into you!'
They stood looking at each other. If he cut a comical figure, she
certainly did not; for whereas his face was hot, his tie flown over one
shoulder, his grey trousers splashed with mud; she seemed in her natural
setting between the willows and the hedge, the untidy hair falling loose
about the neck, her arms akimbo and her sunburned face suiting her to
perfection. She looked cool and extraordinarily radiant. He thought she
was absurdly beautiful; his heart began to beat deliciously; and when she
lost the cross expression and smiled at him the next moment he blurted out
a confused, impetuous something before he could possibly prevent it.
'You're awfully becoming,' he stammered. 'I say--I'm jolly glad I saw
that yellow wagtail and followed it. I believe it flew back into your
heart.'
Her smile broadened into a laugh at once. It was impossible to be angry
with such a youth. 'You undergraduates,' she said, 'are the most
ridiculous people I've ever known. But I shan't let you go now I've got
you. You're fairly caught.'
'Rather,' said Wimble with unfeigned delight.
'Then you'd better come with me and see father at once,' she went on.
'You can explain yourself to him--about the wagtail.'
'Rather,' he repeated, though with less enthusiasm. It was the only word
that he could think of; and he added, 'presently.'
She looked him up and down. 'It's best, I think.' And her laughter was
now friendly.
'I will,' he repeated, 'I'll go anywhere with you. I admit I'm caught.
Do you think he'll be very nasty to me?'
But he scarcely knew what he was saying all the time, for his one desire
was not to lose sight of her now that he had found her. Her face, her
laughter, her singing voice, her attitude, everything about her made him
gasp. He already thought of her in bird-terms. He remembered the
redwing, delicate thrush, that comes to England from the North and is off
again too soon--of countless birds that haunt our fields with transient
beauty, then vanish suddenly, afraid to stay and rest. An anxious pang
transfixed his heart. Any moment she might spread big yellow wings and
leave him fluttering on the ground. 'If I've done any damage,' he added,
'I'll put it right. It was worth it, anyhow.' But he saw that she
laughed with him now, not at him, and he began to smile himself.
She was adorable. 'I'll swear she's a birdy girl,' the thought flashed
through him.
'If you'll turn your back a moment, please,' he heard her saying,
'I'll put my shoes and stockings on again. There's no good paddling any
more with _you_ here.'
'Rather not,' he said, and ran down to fetch them for her.
And so it began and ended in the brief ten minutes of this intoxicating
May morning beside the willow pond where the birds of the countryside came
down to bathe at dawn and drink at sunset. It was an ideal opening.
She put her stockings on, but not before he had complained that she was
slow about it because a thorn had run into her toe, blaming him so that he
had to extract it with trembling fingers and a penknife. They were
laughing together like two children by the time he finished; and by the
time they reached the house he had dipped into her being and found, as in
a book of poetry, that all his favourite passages were marked. Moreover,
she had led him by so round a way that they had been obliged to rest under
the hedges more than once, and had discovered also that they were very
hungry. The sudden intimacy was the sudden falling in love of two young
persons who were obviously made for one another. It was the mating of two
birds. They had met by the pond, exchanged glances, and then flown off
together across the lawn. For it was spring and nesting time. . . . The
dust of blue and bronze was on the dragon-flies, the bloom and promise of
deep-bosomed summer in the air. . . .
'Father, this is my friend, Mr. Wimble,' she introduced him.
'You remember, I told you. He's at Trinity.'
'You'll stay and have a bite with us, won't you then? It's just time,'
was the genial invitation, given to hide his excusable lack of
recognition. There was no mention of the damaged fields nor of the
trespassing. 'Come, Joan, let's get at it, for I'm starving.'
The name sounded wonderful, but Joseph knew it already and had already
used it, his face close against her red lips and shining eyes. He also
knew his fate was sealed, and he wished to heaven his own father was as
nice as hers.
'I'm a chandler,' he was told in the course of the talk across the
luncheon table by the window while the birds hushed their song outside,
well knowing it was noon, 'a corn-chandler down in Norfolk. But I've got
two farms up here in Cambridgeshire, and I'm just up to look over 'em for
a chap as wants to buy 'em off me.' He was a rough-and-ready type, free
in his drink and language, using meaningless oaths more frequently as
intimacy grew, and betraying a somewhat irascible temperament as well.
Yet he was kindly enough. And before Joseph left to go back to his
forgotten lectures there had been an invitation too: 'You must come down
and see us there some time if you don't mind a bit of roughing it.
We live very simple.'
From all of which it was clear that the corn-chandler was favourably
impressed by the visit of an Undergraduate of Cambridge University, and
would not be at all averse to marrying his daughter to the first available
young man with reasonable credentials. It was all so easy, instinctive,
natural. It ran so smoothly. It flowed, it flew. No obstacles appeared.
There was flight and rapture in it from the very start. The couple
managed to see one another once a day at least for the next three weeks,
but before the first week ended they were engaged. Young Wimble said
nothing at home because he knew his father would object to the daughter of
a corn-chandler who lived in Norfolk. By September they were married.
But by the end of September Joseph realised that they were married--quite
another thing. For his father meant what he said, and beyond a modest
allowance from the chandler to his daughter, they started life with
nothing but the small lump sum by means of which Mr. Wimble senior eased
his conscience and set himself right with the outside world. The capitals
of Europe were not visited.
Joseph and Joan, however, took the situation like a pair of birds, lightly
and carelessly. They were as thoughtless as two finches on the lawn, and
as faithful as red linnets. The game of the yellow wagtail chase was kept
up between them. He pretended that it was her flying scarf he had seen
shining two miles across the buttercup fields, and she declared that she
had gone to the willow pond on purpose, knowing in her bones--she called
them feathers--that one day some one would find her there and capture her.
The actual wagtail was a real decoy. It was his yearning and her own
materialised.
They laughed and played with the idea till it grew very real. And the
future did not frighten them a bit. They took their money and spent it on
their honeymoon, leaving for the south in October with the birds.
They started on the great Southern Tour, building their first nest far
away in a sun-drenched Algerian garden where the air, soft with the bloom
of an eternal summer, mastered the earth and made it seem of small
account. Nothing could weigh them down, nor cage them in. They led a
true air-life together, the winds were softly scented, stars shone nightly
above their cosy tent, they sang in the golden sunsets and washed their
young bodies in the morning dew.
It was the paradise of a realised dream, a sparkling ecstasy they thought
could never end. Her beauty seemed to him the one thing necessary.
The autumn migration of the birds, mysterious with grandeur, had always
suggested to him a passing-away from earth, a procession to another life,
and a returning to sing of it with rapture in the spring. Their honeymoon
was this dream come true. They mated and married as birds do, on the
wing, and singing. And their first-born, a girl, was the offspring of a
passion as intense and radiant as any passion can be in this world.
Their imaginative ecstasy, prolonged wondrously through golden months,
lifted them from the earth towards the very stars. In it was singing,
flight, and rapture, the freedom of wild free spaces and the glory of
flashing, coloured wings.
It was of the air. They fluted to one another beneath the moon; they
soared above the noonday heat, they warbled in the scented dusk.
Their child, conceived of sun and wind, in a transport of bliss akin to
that careless passionate happiness that makes bird-life a ceaseless
running song, was born where the missel-thrush sings in the moonlight, and
the nightingales in February. She was a veritable child of air. A bird
on the wing dropped her to earth in passing, and was gone. . . .
But something else was gone about that time as well. There came the
collapse of inevitable reaction--tragedy. It was as pitiful as anything
well could be. Having accomplished her chief end in life, the wife's
strange beauty faded: her lightness, brilliance waned, her rapture sank
and died; she became a heavy, rather stupid mother; she returned to type
whence youth and imagination had temporarily rescued her. Her underlying
traits of ordinary texture dulled the colour of her yellow wings.
She bequeathed her all to this radiant, sparkling firstborn, and herself
went out. The thing he loved in her vanished or became obliterated.
He had caught her main drift; he tired. She tired too. In him patient
affection replaced ecstatic adoration; in her there was tolerance,
misunderstanding, then disappointment. To live longer on the heights they
had first climbed became impossible. All that had fascinated him, caught
him into the air, departed from her. The bird flew from her--into the
little girl with yellow hair and big blue eyes.
She wearied of the life in tents and spoke of 'artistic furniture' at
home, of comfort, and began to wonder how their 'living' could be
'earned.' The practical outlook developed, the carelessness of air
decreased. Tom, the second-born, was the culminating proof of the
saddening descent. He was just a jolly little dirty animal. 'He's like a
rabbit,' thought his father, looking with disappointment on him, thus
introducing the big, bitter quarrel that ended in their coming back to the
heavy skies of England, settling in a flat in Maida Vale, and led
eventually to his taking up work in connection with a modern publishing
house to provide the necessary food and rent and clothing. They landed
with a distinctly heavy thud--on earth.
It was, on the mother's part, a great tragedy of sacrifice. Having given
all her best qualities to the first-born, she kept none over for herself--
not even enough to appreciate her loss. Her radiance, sparkle, lightness,
all her airy wonder, joy and singing, passed from her into yellow-haired
little Joan. She stared at it with dull misunderstanding in her heart.
She had not retained enough even to understand herself. She did not even
discover that she had changed, for only when a fragment remains is the
loss of the rest recognised, much less regretted.
By expressing herself in reproduction, she had not grown richer, but had
somehow merely emptied herself. Her husband, moreover, was not heartless.
He was not even to blame. He remained tender, kind, and true, but he did
not love. For the thing he loved had gone--into another form.
Like the shifting shadows of the wings upon the Cambridge flats that gay
spring morning, there fell upon his mind a shower of vague and
indescribable thoughts, only one of which he pounced upon before it fled
away.
'What has been so long unconscious in me, little Joan may perhaps make
conscious. I wonder . . .!' He wondered till he died. He kept his
wings, that is.