although his face tickled, for he was kind and had said that she was a
fairy.
WINTER’S EVE
(_To T. H. H. T._)
“_Woo--oo--oo--._”
Long drawn out as though the note is bubbling through water, it quavers
from the dark wood yonder, seen in the dim light of the stars. From the
other wood, across the grass land, a plain hoot floats back. _Woo-loo,
woo-loo!_ No sound of wings beating--the flight of the wood owl is
silent, his broad wings, covered with the softest down, fan the air as
he proceeds through the wood.
_Woo--oo! Woo--oo!_ There is mystery in the cry. All other creatures
are silent, except the field mice and voles running over the ground.
They cannot be seen by the human eye, but I can hear their squeaks.
Again the faraway answer haunts across the darkness over the grass.
The leaves have fallen long ago, they lie black and rotting on the
ground. Those that drifted down when summer died have already merged
into the earth whence will come the bluebells in April. But a short
time since they were scurrying over the grass and among the bramble
bushes, all crisp and brown. The wind caught them up and whirled them
in their thousands: then came the time of wintry rains and mists. Their
brittleness went, they sank into the earth.
The owl is silent. He has fanned his way from branch to branch, peering
to the ground. The slightest movement is watched by his large eyes. A
little dark thing running quickly over the leaves, a silent glide to
the ground, wings fanning the air, the clutch of a powerful foot, a
faint shriek as talons sink into the warm body, and then to the trees
again. The mouse is swallowed whole. The faintest of squeaks from
behind, the owl’s head turns and he peers down on the ground. The eyes
are fixed, but the head can be turned completely round. Those large
ears, hidden by the tiny feathers--the ear-cavity being twice the size
of an eye--take in every sound, even as the eyes can see in the dark
night. The faint squeak came from a rat that runs swiftly on the trail
of another. The next moment his body is seized in a grip of death--he,
too, screams, and is borne upward, limp and dead, to be devoured at
leisure. The owl’s beak opens to a wide gape, and a deep contralto
hoot, bubbling and quavering, carries to his mate who hunts in the
distant copse.
Heard thus in the loneliness of the winter night, there seems infinite
sadness in the deep mellow cries of these night fliers. To hear an
owl hooting repeatedly around the cottage at night is supposed, in
the country, to portend death. It is easy to imagine how such a
superstition arose. The species of owl that hoots, sounding like the
call of a lost soul from the blur of the forest, remains concealed
during the day, perched up against the bole of a fir tree, or in the
cavity of a hollow oak or elm. At night they are seen occasionally and
by chance, as their broad wings beat against the sky. Any such cries,
lonesome and ghostly, coming in the dark, can mean but one thing to the
countryman--death.
What fantasies are called up on a night like this, leaning up
against the barred gate, alone! Away in front, the dark, level grass
land--beyond, the forest. A sky bright with stars gleaming and
winking, high up, unattainable. There is Sirius, the largest star,
flaming with sudden molten crimson, then flashing a blue spearhead of
light. Possibly there is a mist around that sun, so many millions of
miles away, that breaks up the light as the prism of glass does the
colours of the spectrum. Over the thick blackness in front a figure is
moving-or am I imagining things? Just a faint feeling of fear, the
nerves strung up, caused perhaps by slumbering instinct. Thousands
of years ago a figure coming stealthily nearer in the darkness might
mean an enemy. I glance over my shoulder; there is a feeling that
some one might leap on to my back. But as he draws nearer I can hear
his footfalls in the frosty grass and his laboured breath--it is one
of the farm hands going home from the inn. He climbs over the gate,
starts violently as he sees me standing here, and bids me good-night.
I answer, adding that I have been listening to the owls. He politely
tells me that there are a “good few on ’em about,” but to himself says
that I am mazed. Then he passes on, his steps get fainter and fainter,
and I am alone.
_Yak wrik! Yak-yak-wrik!_ low over my head. A blood-curdling noise
if ever there was one. The latter part of the screech, the _wrik_,
is considerably higher in tone than the former part. The barn owl
passed over the gate, just above my head and only when he startled
me with his cry--not long and sobbing as the wood owl, but sharp and
high-pitched--did I know that he had gone. A white mistiness in the
night, wings beating slower than those of his hooting brother, and the
white or barn owl had drifted over the grass, hunting the mice and
field vole.
The barn owl is more common than the wood or brown owl. The former is
snow white on its breast and under its wings. The wings themselves,
and the back, made it one of our most beautiful birds. They are of
an amber-yellow colour, shaded with ash gray, and streaked with
small white and brown markings. The pinion feathers and the broad
soft feathers of the tail are yellowy-white, barred with light
brown. Most remarkable of all is the face, which is heart-shaped,
surrounded by a line of gray and yellow featherlets standing out
like a ruffle. The eyes are black, a contrast to the pure white of
the down that surrounds them. In the summer evening he can be seen
beating up the hedges, pouncing as he goes. When hungry, his capacity
is enormous--nine or ten mice. He swallows the mice and small birds
whole--the indigestible part being cast up later in the form of a
grayish pellet. If a hollow tree, where these birds are likely to sleep
during the day, be tapped fairly loudly, it will often drive its tenant
into the light. Its exit will invariably be hailed by a chattering
chorus of tomtits or finches, who will pursue it. In the bright
sunlight the sight is dazzled, but in dull weather it would be able to
see quite easily.
A wind-blown copse crowns a hill a mile away from the park, and one day
in summer I found the skeleton of a barn owl flung among the thorns.
Of the dark eyes--each a wonderful instrument--nothing was left, only
a little dust collected in the empty orbits. Ants and flies had long
completed their work. The white of the breast feathers was turned a
dull gray by the rain’s bedragglement; the muscles of the shoulder had
withered, though the sinews were dry and silky. The feet were clenched
as though the bird had died in agony after the shot had rung out and
it sunk to the ground. An owl rarely dies immediately it is shot; it
lies back, if badly hit, resting lightly on its downy wings and stares
with a mournful anguish, as though puzzled, and conscious that this is
farewell to its mate. Owls pair for life, and, like most birds, their
lives are ideal. It seemed to me, regarding the skeleton, a sadness
that all that was left of a beautiful bird was a wasted bundle of bones
and feathers, flung among the thorns.
_Woo-loo-woo-loo-woo-o-oo!_ the brown owl calls in the night. And while
I am here on earth, let me be in the fields where I can see the bright
stars, and dream as my birds of mystery pass in silence and alone.
_1914._
ERNIE
My Devon hermitage is only a sixteenth-century cottage rented at four
pounds a year. There are two bedrooms, very small and lime-washed, and
a living room with a stone floor and open hearth. A simple place, built
of cob, and thatched, with a walled-in garden before it, and then the
village street. The churchyard with its elm-rookery is on one side, a
small brook below the wall. Even in the hot summer the water runs; I
have made a pool of stones where the swallows and martins can go for
the mud to build their homes. Beautiful it is to see, in the shadow of
the trees, these birds alighting softly on a boulder, or by the pool’s
edge, and shovelling the red mortar on their beaks. They are timid,
restless things, rising into the air at the least noise. I have passed
many hours in watching them, noting the number of times they came in
a minute, and how they mix fragments of dried grass and straw with the
mud before taking the material aloft. All the while the water murmured,
and the birds answered with gentle song. They soon came to know me, and
minded not my presence; and I kept away marauding village cats--lean
animals with pointed ears and staring eyes; a race existing on rats.
Sometimes a little boy comes and stands by me, and watches them too. He
is a funny little fellow, about two and a half years old, with yellow
curls and solemn brown eyes. His name is Ernie, and his father is a
labourer, a very kind man. He used to spend all his money in the inn,
but suddenly took a wife, and drank no more. When Ernie is a naughty
boy, he threatens to go “up to pub,” and Ernie wails immediately, and
is good again.
“I got this one,” says Ernie, coming to the cottage door, and holding
out in a filthy paw a piece of cake. “You ain’t got this one, ave ee?”
“Go away, Ernie, I’m writing.”
“You ain’t got this one,” he replies, munching the cake, “ave ee, Mis’r
Wisson?”
I feel more comfortable in the company of children than with
“grown-ups”; and to discourage his talk I put my tongue out, and make a
hideous face.
“Ah’ll cut ees tongue off, ah wull,” he gravely warns, repeating what
his mother has said to him when he has done it to her--a frequent
happening, I fear; I taught him to do it.
“Good-bye,” I shout.
Then he departs, and five minutes later I hear a feeble
“_’onk-’onk-’onk_” in my garden. Ernie is driving his car, which he has
made from my wheelbarrow, a cinder sifter, and an egg-shaped pair of
pram-wheels.
“’Onk-’onk,” he cries to the sparrows, “git out, ’onk-’onk.” Then on
seeing me: “I got this one. You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee?”
“Noomye!” I exclaim, while Ernie goes faster and faster.
This motor-car is not the only toy. The pram-wheels, or “wills,” as he
calls them, are a source of happiness. A broom tied to the axle acts as
a horse, and Ernie goes driving in the road. Other small brats come up,
and a puppy dog or two, and great fun they have, often ending up in the
stream.
Ernie’s mother is always finding him in the water. She cannot keep him
away. He goes out in a clean jersey, knickers, and socks, and suddenly
there is a cry for Ernie, a rushing past the door, a curse from myself,
and a loud wail.
“You come out of that water, my boy! I told you not to go in that
water. Little devil, you,” cries the exasperated mother.
“Ah’ll tull feyther,” shrieks Ernie, as he is driven like a porker past
the door. His sobs grow less, and a minute later he comes back and
stares at me.
“I got some good water,” he informs me. “You ain’t got no water, ’ave
ee?” And he toddles away for more.
He delights in the filthiest old can or bottle. He loves to kneel down
and see the water bubbling in. Sometimes it is a “cup of tea” he has
got, or a “glass of beer.” And always he has “got this one.”
He appears to be wandering about at all hours of the day and night.
The life of a recluse in a cottage, remote from ordinary life, has
its moments of exaltation, especially in the lovely months of spring
and summer, but when the wind sways the leafless trees and whirls the
cold rain, it is hard to prevent melancholy. On these occasions I go
and have a chat with Ernie’s parents, my immediate neighbours. Often I
find Ernie asleep at the table, with his curls in the empty plate. The
little imp has been all day in the water, or on a long tour in his
motor, and has fallen asleep from exhaustion. He breathes quietly, his
mouth droops.
“Poor lill chap, he’m be tired,” says Ernie’s father; “dear lill boy,
he’m be.”
It is always the same tender remark. No wonder Ernie loves his father.
But this does not prevent the most savage quarrelling sometimes. Then
through the wall I hear him yelling,--
“Dawbake!--dawbake!--dawbake!”
And his father’s threat (it never materialises into action), “Naughty
boy, swearin’! Ah’ll tell plicemun!”
“Dawbake!--dawbake!--dawbake!” yells Ernie.
“Ee shouldn’t speak tew ees feyther like that.”
“Dawbake!” moans Ernie, and hides his curly head at father’s knees.
“Could never whip ee,” mutters the parent, “ee be so little.”
“Of course,” I agree, having decided notions about the relation of the
big parent to the tiny child.
Every day it is the same. Ernie in the water, Ernie covered with mud
and jam. Ernie holding out pails, bottles, cans, kettles, and food for
me to see.
“You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee? I got this one. Ah’ll tell plicemun
of ee, Mis’r Wisson, swearin’! I got my wills. You ain’t got no wills.
I got the wills.”
“Go away, boy!” I shout, as once a schoolmaster used to bellow at me.
He departs, but returns with a cup of muddy water.
“I got a glass o’ beer. ’Tis mine, it is. Yaas.”
Dirty face, wet boots, disturbing voice, everlasting questions, and
possessive boastings--how can I complete the various volumes of _The
Flax of Dream_, with Ernie always pestering. I have told him again
and again that I wish he would go away to another cottage. But if he
were to, I should be miserable, and miss my long motor-rides with
Ernie among the cabbages, while the driver wears an enormous pair of
his father’s boots. I should miss, too, the accounts of how Ernie has
killed rats and rabbits with a stone and how he cut off the policeman’s
head with a knife because the policeman used a swear word to Ernie.
A SEED IN WASTE PLACES
(_To M. G. S._)
To and fro over the heated surface of Fleet Street passed the red
omnibuses, a sickly pale vapour coming from the engines. It was a
Saturday afternoon in August, and there were few people about. For
myself, I had to toil at my useless and fretting work of getting
material for one of the big Sunday newspapers. Saturday was the day
when the paper became alive, and the Editor more exacting and more
like an Egyptian slave-driver than ever. This was from the point of
view of the wretched hack-writers who were privileged to work from ten
o’clock in the morning till midnight the same day. Possibly the Editor
did not regard himself as one so omnipotent, since he was the target
for the deadly arrows of the proprietor’s wrath on Tuesday morning,
should any blemish in the make-up of the paper be discovered, or any
important item of news be missed. Nevertheless, we loathed the Editor
on Saturdays, especially at evening. His face grew whiter, and his
despairful leer at our non-success in obtaining some facts from a West
End flunkey whose mistress had that morning lost a pearl necklace,
or a reputation, was most exasperating for men with tired feet and
grit-filled eyes.
That afternoon of August London was more arid than ever. I looked with
despair for any sign of beauty, something that could take my mind away
from dinginess. My mind was drouthy, and the roots of calm thought were
sapped. The blue sky overhead made me miserable: I thought of the waves
lapping the sunlit sands of the West Country that I knew so well. There
the gray stock-doves flew from the bushes growing on the headland cliff
sides, and the lark’s song was ever in the air. Here by the church of
Mary-le-Strand all nature was dead. True, there were pigeons, but their
wings were tinged with soot, and they were alienated from the wild
dove whose nest was among the blackthorns. Even the bark of the plane
trees was unrefreshed, and guarded by iron cages; my thought was shut
in too. My mind was never in my drudge work, however much I tried to
force myself to think in terms of sensation and factory-made phrases.
Everything was ugly, the competition, the smoke, the grimy buildings.
And then I saw, floating across the shimmering roadway, a few downy
seeds. They came from the direction of the Thames. They swung in the
motion of the street-air, and the light glistened on their filaments.
One drifted to the pavement at my feet, and released a curved brown
seed. By its size I knew it to be that of the Yellow Goatsbeard, or
John-go-to-bed-at-noon. Immediately the bus-rattle, the whirr of
cab-wheels, and the burnt-oil smell sank away. The seed bloomed in
the palm of my hand, and I saw its flowers of pure yellow, and a
whitethroat was slipping through the nettles of the ditch. The city
was old, but the brown seed was older. Men raised their buildings
anew after the great fire, hundreds of years ago; the flower did not
change. My mind reached back before the time of the Romans with their
tiled baths and chariots; further still, when the first wild settlers
made their hut circles by the marge of the wooded river. All the while
the dandelion had been blooming so that the seed should be formed. No
haste, no strife, no misery: growing in the sunlight. A lovely disk
of gold, a summer day, a wandering bee, and the mother-beauty became
the child-seed. And this common speck, coming with the moving air to
my feet, was as old as the spirit that manifests itself through dull
matter in a million million forms and ways.
I dropped the seed and went away, no longer stifled by the weary
monotony of my useless work. Then I thought that I would like to
keep it, and plant it in some known corner in order to watch its
increasing joy as the plant grew in spring, and to take to myself some
of its happiness. I searched on the pavement, but it was so small and
commonplace I could not see it. A passerby asked if he might help me:
had I lost anything and was it of any value--a gold ring, perhaps? I
replied in my enthusiasm that it was of more value than a gold ring,
hoping (as ever the dreamer has) that he would share my wonder of this
seed in London. He was interested and puzzled, so I told him it was the
seed of a sort of dandelion that I sought. He stared at me as though
I had said that God was in the Strand, and had just spoken to me; and
then he turned away with a smile.
THE CHANGE: _A Fantasy of Whitefoot Lane_
(_To J. R._)
He was standing at the edge of the strip of wood, quite still, and
looking towards the east as though at something far away. No wind was
blowing.
As I approached he did not move, although my feet made a sighing in the
long grass. Abruptly he turned.
“When I was last here, the field swept away, open and free, for many
miles. In summer, the wheat grew yellow in the sunshine. Now the houses
are nearly to the wood, and the little piece of land left is turned
into allotments. But even those are deserted, for they are going to
build shortly.”
Dreary patches of decaying cabbages, their leaves sodden and drab,
were between the edge of the wood and the fences protecting the small
back-gardens. Old broken pails and bundles of bean-sticks littered the
allotments; sparrows chirped as they searched the backyards for crumbs.
“This was a field for poppies,” he said softly. “Before the stems of
wheat stiffened, while the awns and flags whispered softly in the
air, the poppies were among the green corn like blood-drops. What
untamed colours there were amongst the civilised wheat! The yellow
charlock grew every year; we hated the wild mustard, but still it grew.
Everywhere the alien creeps in, and hangs fiercely to life. Great big
thistles held their spears and purple plumes higher than the grain
with the yellow ragwort in August. And the moon daisies, sought by the
moths at night. But you think that I am talking foolishly. Perhaps wild
flowers are nothing to you.”
He looked at me quickly, and in his face was youth. Yet he had said
that he remembered the field before it became part of the suburb: that
must have been many years ago.
“Sweetest of all things is wild-flower air,” I quoted from old memory.
“Ah! You have not forgotten!”
With a wild poignancy he spoke.
“I am remembering now.”
He faced me so abruptly that the hair flung over his forehead. Then he
spoke again, and my heart was heavy.
“In the early morning the birds sang sweetly, and the air was pure. I
used to creep down the stairs, holding my boots in my hand. The third
step from the bottom creaked and had to be avoided. The cat asleep on
its rug in the kitchen stirred and stretched and yawned as I opened the
door, then curled and slept again. It’s funny how I remember things
like that so vividly. When my boots were laced, I used to tiptoe to the
door, draw the bolt and turn that creaking lock with its huge key, and
then outside into the morning. Sometimes I came to this very place,
listening to a nightingale, and his song then was not yearning as it
was at night. I watched the warblers at their work of weaving cradles
among the brambles. I had a friend in those days, a true friend, to
whom I told all the things in my heart. Together we wandered and
explored the big woods in the country.”
He sighed, while a little wind stirred a leaf upon the oak tree above,
a leaf alone among the guarded buds of next spring and the buff oak
apples upon the twigs. The leaf made a faint risping as it spun and
shook, and he looked up at it, and never had I seen a face so sad.
“Not so long ago that leaf was a bud, opening timorously to the spring
sunshine and the lark-song far up into heaven. I wonder if, in its
own obscure way, it wondered about the world, and wove a little dream
of happiness for ever, like the dream of a child. The nightingale
sings no more when it is spring; he is gone like the wheat and its
silky wind-wave. Terry--that was the name of my friend--came to me
one day and held out his hand, and said shyly, ‘I say, shall we swear
life-friendship?’ He had been reading some romantic book. After that we
went everywhere together. Ah, now you begin to remember the round pond
over by the Seven Fields.”
“Terry and I would go and fish there at five in the morning. Yes,
well may you remember those lovely summer morns, the sun staining the
air and charging its loveliness with light and life. We made our own
rods of hazel wands, and floats from gray goose-quills and corks. The
eagerness with which we put ground bait down the night before in the
hope of snaring one of the monster carp that lurked in that little
pond! I suppose really that none were there at all, but all through
those springs and summers of boyhood we fished, never catching anything
bigger than a small roach or dace. We used to argue about the merits of
different baits: aniseed paste, small boiled potatoes, brandling worms
and broad beans. Do you know what that pond is like now?” he cried,
tragic eyes looking into mine. “All the people from the suburbs have
cast their unwanted cats and split boots into the water. There are no
fish in it now, not even an eft remains to float to the surface, turn
over and show a stain of fire as he swims to the bottom. Everything is
dead, dead! When the sun slants through the trees at its edge, you can
see the blur of rusting tins and papers deep underneath. But in those
days it was beautiful and beloved of a wandering kingfisher. By the
shallow drinking-place the cattle came down to ponder, as with soft
stare they stood in the mud. Sometimes a bullfinch came, and a turtle
dove from the hawthorn: all the birds loved to splash and ruffle in
the water. That little lake in the wood was a place of glamour and
romance, especially in later years when I was deeply in love.”
The sun came over the houses, the starlings whistled and clucked
among the smoke-burnt and red chimney pots. Wives in the houses were
preparing breakfast for their men who soon would walk quickly down
the pavements towards the station; another day’s work in London was
beginning.
“Yes, I was deeply in love,” the pale stranger continued, “with Louise.
That was her name to me, a name I gave her because----”
He faltered and ended. I looked away, for pain had come into his eyes
and his voice. The heaped bean-sticks became indistinct as I looked.
Again he spoke,--