would love me. The bluebells had drooped and faded, their spirits
gone to make the sky a deeper hue, and somewhere in the wind pealed
the ghostly chimes of their fragrance. The meadow was glorious with
buttercups, and the light reflected upwards from so thick a cluster of
golden rivets driven into the grasses glowed on her face as she walked
slowly across the field. She wore a print dress, and her brown hair was
thick and loosely coiled. But it was her eyes that made her face so
sweet--they were gentle like those of a hare. I just stood and looked
at her. Then she was gone, and I hid behind a hedge, but she did not
look back. Her father was an artist living in a cottage by the farm,
and she was his only daughter. When we knew each other, I used to talk
a lot with him, and she would listen with earnest eyes upon me, as I
could see without actually looking at her. When I did glance at her,
she would look on the ground, and then we smiled, and in her cheeks
I saw the bramble blossom steal and die. Her father sang the song of
Julien in the opera _Louise_, and would think of his dead wife as he
sat at the piano. And I would think of Louise as I first saw her, in
her simple dress, bareheaded in the meadow, with a rich golden-brown
light on her cheeks like the lacquered ripples of a stream hovering and
gleaming under a bridge.”
“You are very sad,” I said.
“A poet is always sad,” he answered.
“Then there should be no poets if that is so. Happiness is greater than
poetry.”
“You are right,” he whispered presently, “but let me tell you my tale
before it is too late, for shortly the wood will be down, and on the
place where we stand will be houses. And when that happens the last
link will be broken.”
“Terry and I and Louise became fast friends, and so we grew up. I went
away to London in order to learn the tea trade. Terry stopped here with
his father, and, instead of sitting on a stool in a dim office, helped
with the sowing and the reaping. One day in summer Louise and I were
walking over the Seven Fields, and by a stile I put my arm round her,
and she said, ‘No, Julien, not yet,’ but said it so softly and timidly
that I knew she loved me. And I held her, the little thing that she
was, in my arms, just to feel her making a small struggle, and to watch
her shy eyes and tinted cheeks. But she would not let me kiss her, so I
pretended to say farewell to her, but she pressed my hand and told me
to stay. And when I asked her if she loved me, she would not answer.
“‘Would you break my heart, Louise?’ I said. ‘You know I love you.’
“‘No, Julien,’ she answered very softly, ‘but I do not want you to
break your own.’
“‘What do you mean, Louise?’
“But she would not say immediately, and when the time came for us to
go back to the cottage, she kissed me nervously on the cheek and
whispered that she might be enough for me now, but not later on; that
she was only a silly girl. Of course I loved her all the more, and
thinking of her, could not work much during the day at the tea trade,
but wrote books at night feverishly in order to immortalise my love.
All that summer we walked among the flowers, and one day I asked her to
marry me. She shook her head, and her eyes were wet and sorrowful.
“‘Not yet,’ she whispered.
“‘I don’t want to marry you now,’ I cried, the impetuous, eager fool
that I was, ‘I only want to know if you love me enough to marry me some
day. I want to feel that I possess you.’
“She laughed a little shaky laugh, and I took her close to kiss her;
but she drew back slightly, and immediately I felt that I wasn’t
wanted, and to cover my humiliation I spoke coldly and brutally. Fool
that I was!” he cried bitterly.
The drone of a tramcar passing towards Catford along the newly-made
high road a mile below the wood rose in pitch as it went faster with
its first burden of artisans and factory hands. The stranger brooded,
thinking of that time before the field had been built upon. And yet
he was still a youth, alone with me in the early hours of the winter
morning, standing in the long grass at the eastern edge of the wood.
Almost immediately he went on: his voice became wild with yearning.
“Spring came again, with the larks battling over the Seven Fields and
the wind anemones rising like wan-white stars above the dead leaves.
I fretted with brooding why she withheld herself. I was intensely
poetical and equally egoistical. The great artist rises above egoism,
the little one is killed by it, and becomes embittered--egoism narrows
the view and ruins happiness. But I could not help it--I was held in
chains by the tyranny of my own immature thoughts. Ah, God, if I had
only known!”
His thin hands covered the pale face, his shoulders shook, and once
again the bean-sticks were a smudge.
“One day I kissed her brutally and suddenly--Louise, more fragile of
spirit than the tenderest windflower. One day I crushed her lips with
my mouth. She struggled away, and the tenderest girl became a spitfire.
She reviled me for a weakling. She said that I had no sense of honour,
that I was not worthy of being a man--and then she seemed to shrink,
her expression of anger fled, and the tears streaming down her face,
she sobbed,--
“‘Julien, Julien, won’t you make a great effort to kill your egoism?
Cannot you see that your intolerance of all people because they have
not the same fervour about poetry as yourself will eventually cripple
all your powers? You sneer at Terry, who is one of the dearest boys,
because he doesn’t want to hear you quote “The Hound of Heaven”; you
sneer at your own father because you say that he doesn’t understand
you. Oh, Julien, won’t you try to alter things for your own sake?’
“‘Not for yours?’ I sneered.
“‘For your own, Julien,’ she replied quietly.
“‘You don’t love me?’
“‘Not as you love me, Julien.’
“‘No, of course not! You don’t know what love is! I can eat my heart
out for you; dream, dream, dream in London all the time, pine in
the smoke, and no one understands me. No one! The poet is always
the outcast, from Christ downwards. The world smashes and destroys
genius--the genius that is always trying to make others see the beauty
in the world, and make humanity happier.’
“‘No, not an outcast, Julien: a beloved friend who will rise above
introspection, and be happy. But if that man be caged by egoism, isn’t
it best to try to undo the door of that cage? Oh, Julien, if only you
would believe.’
“She was distressed, and at the thought of hurting her a devil in me
rejoiced. She had called Terry one of the dearest of boys. I seized
upon the remark.
“‘No doubt you are in love with Terry, who is blue-eyed and has such
nice wavy hair. Well, go and marry him. _I_ shall never ask you to
marry me again. Good-bye, Louise.’
“I walked away, and after a while turned to go back to her. We had been
quarrelling, at least I had made my pitiable remarks, just where we are
standing now. But when I returned she had gone. An insane conceit made
me want to hurt her. I wanted to break her spirit--to make her believe
in me first: then I would try to alter my views. Already I could see
the truth of her remarks. I brooded, and my vitality was sapped. My
pride, or conceit, faltered. Then, when I determined to crave her
pity, I found she had gone away to Devon with her father. I wrote a
bitter letter to her and left my home. I never wrote again to Louise,
nor did she write to me. Not for a year. Then she wrote to me. And I
came back. I was already a changed man. Her letter was short, and in
it she said that she wished and prayed for my happiness. I came back
humbly to see her----”
He put a shaky hand up to his forehead, wet with moisture. His anguish
was unbearable. I looked away to the yellow houses with their blue-gray
roofs of slate; another tram passed in the High Street.
“She had died,” he muttered. “Little sweet Louise had pined away
and become ill. One day she got wet through and developed rapid
consumption. She was only eighteen--a child. They said it was
consumption, but I knew better. _I_ killed her. I, the self-flaunted
idealist, my eyes brimming for humanity, had neglected every one
around me. I only realised it then. She had known it all the while,
because love was a far holier and greater thing to her than it was to
me. I thought because I had wanted to pour out my heart’s blood at her
feet that therefore my love was not selfish, but real, divine! Ah, what
did I know about love! I went to the churchyard and saw the mounded
grave with a simple stone at the head, and it seemed to me that she was
near, wearing the print frock and standing among the buttercups that
reflected a gold vapour about her, her eyes dark with a shadow. The
maiden eyes, the eyes soft with love, and yet so sad, regarded me, and
so sharp was the impression of her standing there that I could hear her
pleading, ‘Julien, for my sake now, Julien!’ In the churchyard I stood
alone, looking at her, while in an orchard near the blossom was shaken
by the fluttering of goldfinches. Spring was in the hearts of the wild
birds I loved, but my heart was dead. What was there left? To recreate
that love and cruelty, and write out of my sorrow and folly! Greater
than all written art is life and happiness: a simple living with a
beloved and the joy of children’s young voices. By the grassy mound I
stayed with the shadows. My heart was broken, the more irretrievably
because I had broken it myself. Remorse, remorse!”
Memory ceased. Again the dry whisper of the leaf overbore the wintry
solitude and song-silence in that little wood in Whitefoot Lane, where
the bark of the trees was stripped, and all undergrowth was trampled
down. The green woodpeckers would laugh no more in spring: only a few
poor wind-flowers and bluebells would tell of past loveliness. The pale
visitant was gone, and with no sound of footfall.
The leaf spun insistently as the wind passed wearily onwards, and
beside me the long green grasses held their drops of light-laden water,
nor was there any mark as of feet having pressed there, nor any trail
leading away.
With a vague mournfulness I turned and went along the miry path to
the roadway, where a tattered fence gaped forlornly. The land would
be sold, the trees cut down, and useful houses erected. Perhaps the
spirit of the dead haunted that wilderness of torn branches and charred
fire-circles, to find rest only where all was changed. Never again
would I go back among those poor trees, where in the cruel days of
youth sweet hopes had been crushed like a wood-anemone under careless
and unknowing feet.
PROSERPINE’S MESSAGE
(_Written during the spring-like days of October, 1921, when the
prolonged drought had been broken by the rains following the
equinoctial gales._)
Some happy goldfinches flew twittering to the loosened thistle-heads
on the sward of the promontory. Their wings fluttered as they took the
seeds; they were timorous of alighting on the down, such a soft couch
it was, too; their lives were wild and restless. Soon the flock rose
and went to other haunts. The brief visitation gave me time to observe
the crimson faces, the yellow bars on the wings--they were gone, and I
was alone with the spirit of the apple blossom and the blue sky. On the
trees of the inland orchards the ungathered apples were ready to fall.
Goldfinches always associate themselves in my mind with the May month,
when their nests are in the apple trees, but it is only when summer is
gone that the wild beauty of spring--apple bloom time--is yearned for.
The goldfinches that now flocked to the headland for the thistledown
brought with them a thought of blossom.
For Proserpine has returned--with a child-god in her arms. The nuts
in the lane are ready for gathering, the blackberries are luscious,
and the partridge coveys have been broken up many weeks. On the ledges
of their precipice colony the gulls are no more, the swallows have
followed the sun. Many times have I searched the flawless bell-flower
of the sky for these ragtailed vagrants, but not even one is to be
seen. I cannot understand it; my heart is heavy. Why have they gone
so suddenly? The sun shines, and insects are plentiful. Usually the
hosts foregather on the single telegraph wire that never ceases to hum
between the sun-bleached posts in the sunken lane. This autumn there
were no preparations for the great southerly flight. One night, in
the quiet starlight, they disappeared, speeding down the silver stain
of the Milky Way towards the big lantern star Fomalhaut. Did they
flee the coming of the spring goddess? Other things have welcomed
her. The lesser celandine flowers are in the hedge-banks, the sorrel
is rising, the wild arum will shortly show its purple club in the
green sheath, pink campion is blooming. Proserpine, the goddess of
spring, has returned to see how her children are faring; and a little
child-god is in her arms. With her, too, is the spirit of the apple
blossom, symbolling felicity, whispered to me by those fairy heralds,
the goldfinches; the loved swallows have not waited to see her. Again I
wonder to myself if the penalty of meeting an Immortal is death. Dear
swallows, already they brave much during their migrations--the storms,
the waves, and the electric wires erected by a debased portion of
humanity along their airlines.
The bracken upon the headland has rusted, and the gorse is brown and
sapless. Never has there been such an untarnished sky fused with the
sea. Those stately swans, the clouds, have sailed over the marge of
the earth, leaving not even a downy feather to tell of their heavenly
passage. Somewhere in a brake of blackthorn a robin sings frailly,
while a red kestrel hangs above for sight of vole or mouse. Croaking
deeply a raven wings towards a gully in the mainland where the shepherd
pitches his dead sheep. The robin is quiet, and there is no other sound
except the croak of the carrion raven: only the mellow sun of autumn,
and the grape-frosty air, and the silence. But listen! that sweet
birdsong must surely be of the nightingale. There is the low trill, the
fluting cadence, the reedy melody that sinks away into silence. But
the nightingale does not come to the West Country; only in my mind do
I listen to the old and loved voice. The song of the nightingale is
so joyous, so essentially pure spirit, that the listening heart feels
an emotion beyond that of earthly life. It is passion more chaste than
any Hellenic ideal--it is the voice of the wind, the meaning of the
green leaf, the purpose of the seed, the secret of the star. But now as
I listen the wistful song, only a little less perfect than Philomel’s
own, brings poignantly the present before me. However I would dream,
it is now October; I can read _The Pageant of Summer_ during the
dreariness of autumn’s chill and winter’s murk; but it is not the same.
Change is bitter to me, whether of falling leaf or friendship. Leaves
must fall, but friends can be steadfast; yet everywhere is bitter
change. For many days now the voice has run through the grape-frosty
air; always the voice, but never sight of the singer. For hours and
days I have sought to find the singing bird, but in vain, in vain.
There is genius in the song--a hymn to the life-giving sun, to the
light. Somewhere a rabbit screams in an iron gin; the bird sings on.
Gone is the evejar, that weird moth-taker who pairs for life. By the
Nile, with the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swift, he flaps his
mottled wings. The jackdaws and the curlews are with me; there is the
seal four hundred feet below hunting the conger-eel come back to the
deep pools. Of his summer diet of dogfish he must have wearied by now.
The orange hawkbits are everywhere at my feet--common weeds, perhaps,
but very dear: each yields a thought of beauty, each is a gold coin of
our true heritage of the earth. The metal coin that they stamp with
the die is false; I would have all the children of the earth spend the
dandelions. Therein lies our hope--in the wild-flower and the sunlight,
in what they symbol--let the children spend these. The more they spend,
the richer they will be. They will never forget the flowers: and to
remember them is to yearn towards goodness and beauty. Like the
migrants that return, so the impressions of childhood come back to us.
And like the swallows that every year grow scarcer, so every generation
of man has more to contend with in heredity. This is the price we pay
for our metal gold. Let us spend the golden treasure of the dandelions,
now, on earth, while we may; so that those to follow may enjoy a more
sunlit life. Sitting on the sward above the still blue sea, listening
to the sadly-sweet song of the unknown, drinking the grape-frosty air,
thus I meditated; perhaps Proserpine had paused in her wandering and
whispered to a lonely mortal.
STRIX FLAMMEA
“Where man goes nature ends,” wrote Richard Jefferies. But the wild
creatures cling to their ancient places with stubbornness, especially
in and around London.
One day in summer, intolerably weary, I left Fleet Street very late--or
very early. The morning star, Eosphoros the Light-bringer, was sweeping
above the eastern line of buildings, the spectral dawn flooding
into the concave dusk above. Pausing by the Temple Gardens near the
Embankment I became aware of glints of sound from the lawns and under
the trees, the cries of questing mice. Then something indistinctly
white and with great winnowing wings went over, fluttered vaguely to
the grass, rose again, and drifted away. Strix Flammea was in London,
hunting in the very heart of its turmoil. My fatigue passed, and hope
came into my heart: I would be as indifferent to my surroundings as my
barn owl was to them!
There are owls in the city at night, but never before had I known
Strix Flammea visiting. The quavering and mournful plaint of the wood
or brown owl has often been heard in Hyde Park and St. James’s Park
during the darkness. Once, from the top of a motor-bus, I saw one
roosting in a chimney cowl near Marble Arch. He looked forlorn in such
a neighbourhood. Such a strange object naturally caused many cockney
sparrows to assemble for communal vituperation.
Unlike other birds, owls cannot exist where there is noise. Most of
their hunting is done by sound, detected by the ultra-sensitive and
enormous cavities in the sides of their head, much larger than their
eyes.
Maybe you will see Strix Flammea as he floats, a great moth of a bird,
round the ancient wharves and docks of London Bridge. But it will be
in the forsaken silence of the morning, when the traffic of the streets
is stilled and few people are about, except the human derelicts huddled
by London’s river and an occasional poet enraptured at life’s beauty.
[Illustration]
GLASGOW: W. COLLINS SONS AND CO. LTD.
Messrs.
COLLINS’
Latest Novels
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regularly to readers who will send name and address._
PIRACY
Michael Arlen
This is the story of Ivor Pelham Marlay between the ages of 18 and 32,
and the period is London, 1910-1922. It is the history of England,
two loves, and an ideal. Mr. Arlen deals with all the types of London
Society, and he likes to bring out the queer and unexpected sides of
his characters. No one who read Mr. Arlen’s first book, _A London
Venture_, or his delightful short stories, _A Romantic Lady_, needs to
be told that he writes wittily and well.
TYLER OF BARNET
Bernard Gilbert
Author of _Old England_
This long, powerful novel shows the dilemma of a middle-aged man with
an invalid wife and grown-up children, who falls passionately in love
for the first time. As he is a man of iron self-control he represses
his passion till it bursts all bounds, with a tragic result. No one
now writing knows so well or describes so vividly life in the English
countryside as does Bernard Gilbert.
THE PIT-PROP SYNDICATE
Freeman Wills Crofts
Another brilliantly ingenious detective story by the author of _The
Ponson Case_. The mystery of the real business of the syndicate utterly
baffled the clever young “amateurs” who tried to solve it, and it took
all the experience and perseverance of the “professionals” to break up
the dangerous and murderous gang.
THE BEAUTIFUL AND DAMNED
F. Scott Fitzgerald
This book has caused an even greater sensation in America than _This
Side of Paradise_. It is a long, searching, and absolutely convincing
study of degeneration, that degeneration which ruins so many of the
rich, young, idle people. The “smart set” of New York is hurled into
the limelight and mercilessly revealed. A witty, pungent, and entirely
original book.
DANDELION DAYS
Henry Williamson
This is the tale of a boy’s last terms at a public school, a very
sensitive, unusual boy, and it is in a sense a sequel to _The Beautiful
Years_. It is the work of a very clever young writer whose nature
essays have attracted the widest attention here and in America, and is
utterly unlike the usual “school story.” It is a subtle and beautifully
written study of character.
BEANSTALK
Mrs. Henry Dudeney
A charmingly told novel of Sussex. The theme is Motherhood, and all the
emotional subtleties of the desire for children.
PENDER AMONG THE RESIDENTS
Forrest Reid
This is an episode in the life of Rex Pender, who inherited and came
to live at Ballycastle. It is the story of the curious spiritual
experience which came to him there. It is in a sense a “ghost story,”
but it is told by an artist and a stylist. “The Residents,” moreover,
are admirably contrasted, and in some cases deliciously humorously
drawn. A charming, enigmatic, “different” book.
THE DEAVES AFFAIR
Hulbert Footner
This is a story of Evan Weir’s wooing, and a very strenuous and
original pursuit it proved. In fact the lady of his choice so far
dissembled her love, as frequently to threaten his further existence.
At the time, Evan was acting as secretary to old Simeon Deaves, famed
as the possessor of the “tightest wad” in New York.
Now certain individuals had designs upon old Simeon and his hoard, and
amongst them was the forcible and beautiful object of Evan’s affections.
Like _The Owl Taxi_, it goes with a splendid snap, and is packed with
exciting and humorous incidents.
ROSEANNE
Madame Albanesi
The author calls this an “old-fashioned story.” It does not concern
itself with sex or any other problems, but is just a lively, well-told
life of a very fascinating heroine who has plenty of adventures
sentimental and otherwise.
Collins’ ‘First Novel’ Library
AUTUMN TITLES
EXPERIENCE
Catherine Cotton
This charming chronicle has no “plot.” It is an attempt to present a
happy, witty, simple-minded woman who attracted love because she gave
it out. This is a very difficult type of book to write. The attention
of the reader must be aroused and held by the sheer merit of the
writing, and the publishers believe they have found in Catherine Cotton
a writer with just the right gifts of wit, sympathy, and understanding.
DOMENICO
H. M. Anderson
This is the story of a Cardinal of Rome, a member of one of the great
noble families. In his youth something had happened which had thrown
a shadow over his life. There are three great crises in his life, one
of them due to this shadow, one to the contrast between his conscience
and his ambition, and the third when, an exile in England, he falls in
love. Miss Anderson shows much skill in drawing the character of this
great and tragic figure.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The loft over a shippen, or open cattle-shed.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
The cover image for this eBook was created by the transcriber and is
entered into the public domain.