'Careless as a bird! Bird-happy and bird-wise,' he murmured to himself
as they moved in a month later. For he had found a cottage as by
instinct. It was not on the agents' list of modern, ugly and comfortless
cages, but was an old-world little place that had caught his eye by the
corner of the lane as he returned to the country station, weary and
almost faith-less, after a vain inspection. A white board suddenly
peered at him through the branches of a yew, there were roses up the
walls, a tiny fountain played on the lawn, and beyond he caught a glimpse
of a neglected orchard, sloping fields of yellow ragwort, and a stream.
The stream, moreover, ran under the road just there, so that he could
look down into it from the old stone bridge. The water ran swiftly, but
deep enough to grow long weeds of green and gold that swung with the
current like thick fairy hair. Two or three silver birches shone and
rustled by the wicket-gate. He went in. A robin hopped up, inspected
him, and hopped away into the shadow of the yew.
The interior seemed to him like a bit of forest--the beams, the
panelling, the dark, stained settles. Yet there was a bathroom, too, the
kitchen was large and light, the bedrooms airy, the living-rooms just
right in size and number. The front windows looked out across the
rose-plot to the little green where the geese were gabbling, while the back
ones opened straight into the orchard, where fruit and walnut trees stood
ankle deep in uncut grass. The windows, too, were wide and high, letting
in big stretches of the sky. Also, there were a mulberry-bush and
several heavy quince trees. And the stream ran singing and bubbling
between the orchard and the farther fields, where, amid the sprinkled
gold of the ragwort, scuttled countless rabbits.
Moreover, it was cheap, the drains were safe, the church was as
picturesque as an old-fashioned Christmas card, and the vicar was brother
to a peer. Thus there was something for everybody. The nest was found.
Mother inspected it in due course and gave her modified approval;
Tom said it 'sounded ripping,' he would 'run down for week-ends'
whenever he could; and Joan, catching her breath when she saw it first
on the afternoon of a golden-brown October day, felt a lump in her throat
and moisture in her eyes, such happiness rose in her breast. She stood
with her father in the sandy lane,--Mother had gone inside at once,--the
larches rustling and the excited geese examining their stiff town
clothing from behind. On the topmost branch of an apple tree a big brown
thrush was singing its heart out over the garden, its small packed
outline silhouetted against the pale blue sky. Joan caught her father's
hand.
'Look!' she whispered, pointing. 'Listen!'
He did so. He felt the strange excitement in the child. Her lips were
parted and her shining eyes turned heavenwards a moment. The thrush
poured forth its liquid song deliciously; and the sound sank into his
heart as though it expressed the full happiness of the air that welcomed
them to the cottage and the garden. He experienced surely something of
the soft air-magic as he stood there watching, listening. The natural
joy and sweetness of it touched him deeply. And his daughter sang a
strange thing then, murmuring it to herself. He only just caught
the curious words:
'There's a bird for me
On the apple tree!
It's explaining all the garden!'
Up the scaffolding of the quaint phrases he passed, as it were, with her
into the clear air beside the singing bird: that scrap of nonsense
'explaining all the garden' did the trick. A sack of meanings seemed
emptied before him out of the sweet October sky. The interesting,
valuable ideas in life began, he realised, just where language stops--
intelligible, sensible language, that is. Then came either poetry,
legend, nonsense, or else mere silence. Joan used a combination of the
former.
'Words are parvenu people,' he recalled a Primer sentence, 'as compared
with thought and action. Communications between God and man must always
be either above or below them; for with words come in translations.'
'Explaining all the garden!' The touch of nonsense brought a thousand
'translations' into his mind. The air was full of fluttering meanings
that showered about him. He balanced aloft on the twig beside the singing
thrush, his sight darting, as with the bird's-eye view, upon recent
happenings. He read various translations instantaneously.
In front of him stood the cottage and garden, the fields and trees and
stream he had dreamed about with his daughter--an accomplished, solid
fact. It had come as by magic, materialised by thought and desire, and
yet, as Mother said, 'by chance.' But the chance included method,
because Fate obeyed a confident Belief. And circumstances were moulded
or modified by faith. He and Joan somehow held the sure sweetness of
fulfilment in their minds from the beginning; they had always believed,
indeed had known, the cottage would be found. And it had been found.
He had not fussed nor worried; there had been no friction due to the grit
of doubt. Like his queer, spontaneous daughter, he had believed in
his dream--and at the same time kept his eyes wide open like a hawk.
As he stood there, listening to the song of the thrush and aware of its
poise on the swaying twig balanced so steadily, yet alert for spontaneous
flight in any direction, these fluttering translations of the child's
nonsense words shot through him. The joy of the happy thrush shone in his
heart, explaining the garden that was life.
The bird, at that moment, flew off with a whirr of wings, still singing
as it vanished with an undulating swoop over the roof towards the
orchard. Across the patch of watery blue sky he had been watching shot
half a dozen swallows, then intent only upon darting insects, although on
the eve of their huge journey of ten thousand miles. Beyond them two
plover tumbled like blown leaves towards the ground, yet rising again
instantly before they touched it . . . and into his hand he felt Joan's
fingers creep softly. He looked down into her eyes, moist with
excitement, joy, and wonder. The magic of the air seemed all about them,
in their minds and hearts and very bodies even.
'You've found a real nest, Daddy, but we can travel everywhere from
here.' It was said simply, as though a bird had learned to speak.
'Think of the journeys we shall make--just by staying here!'
'The cottage seems swung in the branches, doesn't it?' he replied.
'Come on, now; let's go inside.' And he walked across the lawn, lifting
his feet quickly, lightly, as though he feared his weight might hurt the
earth, yet still more as though he might any instant spring into the air
and follow the thrush, the plover, or the swallows.
Upon the threshold of the open door, at that minute, Mother faced them.
Having made her inspection of the arrangements and the furniture, all
that the workmen had done in the last few days, she came out to report.
She stood there very solidly, her feet in goloshes, planted tenaciously
upon the damp October earth. She was smiling contentedly; behind her
gleamed the white apron of the parlourmaid. Tea obviously was ready and
she was waiting for them to come in. A fire burned pleasantly in the
dining-room, glinting on a clean white table-cloth. There were buttered
toast and a jug of cream--solid realities both. This atmosphere of
wholesome, earthly comfort glowed about her. Her very smile conveyed it.
'Mother's settled down already,' Joan whispered. 'She likes it!
That means Tom'll like it too. But she'll live indoors.'
In his own mind, however, rose another thought, although he agreed with
what she said. He was thinking how odd it was that Mother always appeared
to be settled in the mouth of a hole. She stood, framed by the dark
doorway, as though a deep burrow stretched behind her and below.
The simile of the nervous badger, peering forth upon a dangerous upper
world, passed through him. A great tenderness rose in his heart.
Mother, he knew, though she had done no actual work, had felt the move a
heavy strain. To dig a new hole, of course, was a dusty and laborious
job, whereas to flutter across a few fields to another tree was but a
careless joy.
'I've been through all the rooms,' she said cautiously, as they went
down the passage, 'and everything seems very nice indeed, Joe. The wood
makes it seem a bit dark, perhaps, but it's all very respectable. And
the parlour looks really quite distinguished. Tea's laid for us in the
dining-room.'
They went in; the fire shone brightly; the lamp was lit. Mother moved
towards the great silver tea-pot, letting herself down with a sigh into
the black horsehair arm-chair. It was as though she went down into the
earth. He sat with his cup of tea in the wide settle of the ingle-nook,
and Joan, having first seen to her parents' wants, then took the corner
facing him.
They settled in. Yet this settling was characteristic of the family, for
whereas Mother settled down, Mr. Wimble and his daughter became
unsettled. That is, they felt restless. Mother, with the security of a
comfortable home and comfortable income at her back, cropped her food
safely, yet wondered why she felt dull and bored and lonely. There is no
call to describe the actions and reactions of her familiar type to the
conditions of the quiet country life, and her chief tragedy that winter
was perhaps that when 'his lordship, the vicar,' called, he surprised her
in old garden clothes, the fire in the 'distinguished parlour'
(kept unused against just this particular event) unlighted, so that she
was obliged to receive him in the dark dining-room with the ungentlemanly
settles.
Joan and her father were unsettled for the very reason that made her
settled. Mother felt her feet. They felt their wings.
A week after the settling in, their restless feeling, wholly
unanticipated, came to a head. The windy skies were already calling the
swallows together swiftly, collecting their mobile squadrons in a few
hours for the grand southern tour. And these amazing birds seemed nothing
less than an incarnation of the air itself. There is nothing of earth
about them anywhere; their feet are too weak to stand on the ground;
every darting turn they make is a movement of the entire creature, rather
than of the head first and then the body; they have no necks, their
bullet heads turn simultaneously with the tail, and all at once. Joan and
her father watched them daily going about their careless, windy life,
gathering on the telegraph wires, giving the young ones hints, on the
wing to the very last minute. They had no packing-up to do.
'They'll be off soon now,' said Joan. 'Wherever they are, they go--don't
they?' There was a tinge of restless desire in her eyes as she followed
their movements.
'A few days, yes,' said her father. 'About the middle of the month they
leave. _They_ know right enough.'
And two days later--it was October 15th--Joan woke at dawn and looked out
of her open window. The twittering of many thousand voices had called
her out of sleep, but something in her heart had called her too.
It was very early, the daylight of dawn, yet not the daylight quite, and
everywhere, from fields and trees, the chorus of bird-life was audible.
Birds sing their best and loudest always in that half-hour which precedes
the actual dawn. The volume is astonishing. 'As the real daylight
comes, it sinks and almost ceases, and never in the whole twenty-four
hours is there such an hour again.' The entire air seemed calling
'good-bye and safe return' to those about to leave.
Joan ran and woke her father. 'They're off,' she whispered, as he
crawled out of his warm bed, careful not to waken his wife. 'Come and
say good-bye.'
The peculiar joy and mystery of early morning was in the quiet house and
in the sharp tang of the fresh, cool autumn air. In nightgown and
pyjamas, a single rug about their shoulders, they leaned out
of the upper window. The ivy rustled just beneath them on the wall,
there was a whisper among the yellow walnut leaves to their right, the
orchard trees hung still and motionless, breathing out the perfume of
earth and fruit and heavy dew.
The sky, however, was alive; it seemed all motion; even the streaky
clouds tinged with pale colour looked like stretched wings mightily
extended. And the vague murmur of a flock of birds rose everywhere.
There was a hurricane of wings above the world, as the armies of the
swallows came carelessly together. They left in scattered groups, but
with every party that left, another instantly assembled, born out of
empty space. Multitudes took the wing towards the sea, while other
darting multitudes collected instantly behind them. The air, indeed, was
alive and whirring into a symbol of lovely, rushing flight--swarming,
settling, turning, wheeling in a turmoil of ascending and descending
feathers that yet expressed a design of ordered beauty. Myriad clusters
formed, then instantly dispersed again, threaded together upon one
invisible pattern; now herded into a wedge, shaped like a wild black
comet, now circling, streaming, dividing, melting away into a living
cloud. The evolutions were bewildering.
As the eastern horizon began to burn with red and gold, the wings took
colour faintly, brightening as an upward slant revealed their pallid
under-sides, then darkening again as they tilted backwards.
The swallows alternately focussed and dispersed. Separate hordes, turning
at high velocity with one accord, shot forth and away to the south. They
rose, they sank, they vanished. They went first to the coast; for their
migration, led by the infallible sense of orientation which is
subconscious knowledge, takes place chiefly in the night--in darkness.
Within a brief half-hour the whole of the immense army disappeared.
The sky was still and silent, motionless and empty. The swallows were
gone.
'They've taken part of me with them,' whispered Joan, 'part of my
warmth,' and she drew the rug closer about her shoulders as the October
sun came up above the misty fields.
'They'll be in Algeria to-morrow,' sighed her father, 'and I'd like to be
there too.' His thought went back to the sun-drenched garden where
nightingales sang in the February moonlight. . . . The old romance
stirred in him painfully. 'Mother, poor old Mother,' he murmured to
himself, 'she seemed so wonderful then. How strange!' He felt himself
old suddenly. He felt himself caught, caged--stuck.
'That's where I was born, wasn't it?' Joan asked, catching the sentence.
She straightened herself suddenly, throwing the rug aside; the sun shone
into her face and on her golden hair that fell rippling over her
nightgown. The light gleamed, too, in her moistened eyes. He saw joy
steal back upon her. 'But, Daddy,' she exclaimed with an odd touch of
confident wonder in her voice and look, 'we _can_ be there just the
same, if we want to.' She raised herself on her toes a moment as though
she were going to dance or fly. In the pale gold light of the sunrise
she looked like some ethereal bird of fire rising into the air.
'We can be everywhere--everywhere at once--really! Don't you see?
We always want to be somewhere else anyhow. That proves it.'
And as she said it, he remembered the cinema, and felt his wings again;
he was free, uncaged; of course he could go anywhere, everywhere at once
almost. He knew himself eternally young. He realised Air, that which is
everywhere at once and cannot age. Earth obeys time, grows old, changes,
and eventually dies; but air is ever changeless, free of time altogether,
unageing. It cannot wear away, it is invisible, omnipresent. The wings
of the spirit opened in him, rose into space and light, then flashed,
darting after the amazing swallows. 'Wherever I am, I go,' he hummed, as
he went softly back along the cold passage and crept cautiously into bed
beside his wife, who, heavily breathing still, had not moved since he
left her, and lay in ignorance of the sunrise, as also of the army of
happy wings that by now were already out of England and far across the
sea.
And, later in the day, as he stood with her near a gravel-pit beside the
road, watching a colony of busy starlings, she objected: 'What a noise
and fuss about nothing! What a nuisance they are, Joe. _Do_ come on,
dear. There's really nothing to watch, and I want to get in and change
my things in case any callers come.'
He remembered a passage about starlings written by a strenuous big-game
hunter, who yet had the air-magic in his blood. He quoted it to her, as
best he could, and she said it was pretty:
'Happy birdies! What a bore all morality seems, as one watches them.
How tiresome it is to be high in the scale (and human)! Those who would
shake off the cobwebs--who are tired of teachings and preachings and
heavy-high novellings, who would see things anew, and not mattering,
rubbing their eyes and forgetting their dignities, missions, destinies,
virtues, and the rest of it--let them come and watch a colony of
starlings at work in a gravel-pit.'
'Yes,' he agreed, 'quite pretty. Selous got a glimpse there--didn't he?
--but only a glimpse. The great thing is to see it _all_. He forgot the
swallows.'
His thought ran on, fragments becoming audible sometimes. 'It's all one,
you see. Stars and starlings are the same one thing, only differently
expressed. . . . That's what genius does, of course. Genius has the
bird's-eye point of view. . . . It sees analogies everywhere, the
underlying unity of everything--sees the similar in the dissimilar.
It reduces the Many to the One,' he added in a louder tone, as a Primer
came opportunely to his support.
'I ask you, Mother,' he cried with enthusiasm, 'what else is genius but
that? I ask you?'
'What?' said Mother, as they went indoors.