Six weeks passed, and Absalom did not return. Madge went over to her
mother. "He bean't come," she said, beginning to cry.
"I knowed a wassn't," said the old woman, rocking herself to and fro in
her low rush-bottomed chair, with her feet on the hearth, almost among
the ashes. "Thee's soon have to look out for theeself."
"How, mother?"
"Cos I'm going to die."
"Mother!"
"I be goin' to die," repeated the old woman in the same calm, hard tone.
A life of incessant labour had crushed all sentiment out of her--except
superstition--and she faced the hard facts of existence without emotion.
Madge began to weep.
"Thee go and shut up the cottage, wench, and come and bide wi' I."
Madge did so. In a few days the old woman took to her bed. She had it
dragged out of the next room--there was but one floor--and placed near
the fire, which was constantly kept up. Madge waited on her assiduously
when she was not out of doors at field-work. Work was growing scarcer
and scarcer as the winter advanced. The old woman slowly grew weaker and
weaker, till Madge could leave her no longer. So she stayed at home, and
so lost the little employment she had. One evening, when the firelight
was growing low and dark shadows were flickering over the ceiling, the
old woman seemed to recover a little strength, and sat up in bed.
"Madge!"
"Yes, mother."
"Thee must promise I one thing."
"What be it, mother?"
"As thee won't have I buried by the parish."
Madge began to cry.
"Dost thee hear?"
"I won't."
A long silence.
"Madge!"
"Yes, mother."
"Thee go to the fire. Dost thee see that brick in the chimbley as sticks
out a little way?"
"Yes."
"Pull it out."
Madge caught hold, and after a few tugs pulled the brick out.
"Put thee hand in!"
Madge thrust hand and arm into the cavity, and brought out a dirty
stocking.
"Has thee got th' stocking?"
"Yes, mother."
"Bury I wi' wots in thur, and take care o' the rest on't. Thee's want it
bad enough afore th' spring comes."
Madge replaced the stocking without examining it. She was heavy at
heart.
Before morning her mother was dead.
Madge went back to her own cottage, carrying with her just a sovereign
in sixpences and fourpenny-bits. She sat down and wept. No one came near
her. Her former gossips, always jealous of her beauty, left her alone
with her sorrow. But she knew that she could not remain idle. Something
must be done. So she went out to rick-work, but there was none to be
had. From farm to farm Madge wearily toiled along, meeting the same
answer everywhere--"Had got more on now than they could find work for."
Madge felt exceedingly ill as she slowly wended her way homewards. Then
for the first time she remembered that she must shortly become a mother.
In her weak state Madge caught cold. She shivered incessantly. The poor
child could not rise from her bed in the morning, her limbs were so
stiff and her head so bad. She lay there all day, crying to herself.
Hunger at last, towards evening, compelled her to get up and seek food.
There was only a piece of crust in the cupboard and a little lard. She
was trying to masticate these when there came a tap at the door. "Come
in," said Madge. Farmer Humphreys now appeared in the doorway. He was a
short, thick man, with a shock-head of yellow hair, small grey eyes, and
lips almost blue.
"There be ten weeks' rent a-owing," said he, sitting down; "and we
don't mean to wait no longer. And there's a half-side o' bacon an' a
load of faggots."
"How much is it altogether?"
"Seventeen-and-six."
"I ain't a-got but a pound, and Absalom bean't come whoam."
"The vagabond--cuss 'im!"
"A bean't no vagabond," cried Madge, firing up in defence of her
husband.
"Bist thee a-goin' to pay--or bisn't?" said the fellow, beginning to
bully.
Madge counted him out the money, and he left, casting an ugly leer on
her as he went.
Half-a-crown remained. On that half-crown Madge lived for one whole
month. The cold clung to her and grew worse. Her tongue burned and her
limbs shook; it was fever as well as cold--that low aguish fever, the
curse of the poor. Bread and lard day by day, bread and lard, and a
little weak tea. And at the month's end the half-crown was gone:
sixpence went for her last half-dozen faggots. Madge crawled upstairs
and wrapped herself up in a blanket, sitting on the side of the bed. It
was her miserable loneliness which troubled the poor child most. Her
cough, and the cold, and want of food and firing, might have been borne
had there been some one to talk to. But alone they did their work. Her
form was dreadfully shrunken, her hands as thin and bony as those her
old mother last stretched over the fire. The ale-house which had
absorbed her husband's earnings sent her no aid in this time of
distress, and he had offended the clergyman who would otherwise have
found her out. It grew dusky, as the poor creature sat on the edge of
the bed. Suddenly there was a hand on the latch of the door downstairs.
Madge trembled with eagerness as a heavy step sounded on the
floor--could it be Absalom? Her black eyes, looking larger from the
paleness of her sunken cheeks, began to blaze with a new light. The
steps came to the foot of the stairs and began ascending. She listened
eagerly. A head of yellow hair came up through the trap-door, and the
small grey eyes of young Humphreys leered on her. Disappointed and
amazed, Madge remained silent. Humphreys came up and sat on the bed
beside her.
"Thee's got thin," he said, with a sort of chuckle. "Like some grub,
wouldn't ye?"
No answer. He put his hand on her shoulder and muttered something in her
ear. Madge seemed scarcely to understand him, but sat staring wildly.
"I'll give thee sixpence," said Humphreys, showing one.
Then a full sense of his dishonourable intentions, mingled with shame
and disgust at his unutterable meanness, came over Madge, and rising
with a flush on her cheek, she struck him with all her might. It was a
feeble blow, but he was unprepared: it over-balanced him; he staggered
backwards, and fell heavily down the stairs. Madge, her heart beating
painfully fast, leaned back on the bed and listened. There was not a
sound. A dreadful thought that he might be killed flashed across her
mind. Her impulse was to go down and see, but her strength failed, and
she sat down again and waited. It seemed hours before she heard him stir
and, after a noise like a great dog shaking himself, with mingled curses
and threats, leave the house. Then a great pain came over her. She felt
as if she should die, but the greatest dread was the dread of
loneliness. She staggered to the window and looked out. A boy was
passing, and she told him to go to Mrs. Green's and send her down. Then
she fell on the bed in a faint, with the window open and the cold,
bitter, biting east wind blowing in.
It was half a mile to Mrs. Green's--one of Madge's old gossips. The boy
got there in two hours. Mrs. Green was putting her baby to bed, but
instantly transferred that duty to her eldest girl, and went off eager
for news.
At nine that night the "Good Woman" inn resounded with talk of Madge.
Not a bit nor a drop was there in the house, according to Mrs. Green.
The landlord said Absalom owed him two shillings unpaid score: he could
forgive her the debt, but he couldn't give nothing. Mrs. Green went home
for her supper, and returning, found Madge conscious. She would not have
the parish doctor.
"Bellows," the tinker, had during these late months been out on an
itinerant journey. He came home that night, and at the "Good Woman"
heard the news. His quick wit put him up to a plan to serve the poor
girl. Early in the morning he took his pack and went through the village
up to the Rev. Mr. Horton's. There, under pretence of asking for kettles
to mend, he told the most dismal tale to the housemaid. At
breakfast-time this was reported to Mrs. Horton. Distress at such a time
was sufficient to engage any lady's attention. Mrs. Horton was a frail,
tender woman, but earnest in works of charity. The ponies were ordered,
and down they drove. The tale was not overdrawn. "Not a crust in the
cupboard--not a stick to light a fire: the poor creature starved,
and--and--you know, coming," said the good lady afterwards, describing
the scene. "John drove after the doctor instantly, and I stayed. Poor
girl! It was still-born; and she, poor thing! we saw, could not live
long."
Madge, indeed, died the same night, totally worn out at nineteen.
And Absalom? He had gone to work on a distant railway as a navvy, and,
earning good wages and able to enjoy himself nightly at the taverns,
forgot poor Madge. Months went on. News travels slowly among the poor,
but at last intelligence did reach him that his mother was dead and
Madge starving. To do him justice, he had never thought of that, and he
started at once for home, travelling on foot. But passing through a
village with his bundle on his shoulders, he was arrested by a policeman
who observed some blood on it. It was on the slop he had worn in the
fight at the "Good Woman," and came only from the nose. But there had
been a brutal murder in the neighbourhood, the public mind was excited,
and Absalom was remanded for inquiries. It took a fortnight to prove his
identity, and by then Madge was dead.
Absalom went back to the railway and drank harder than ever. It was
observed that he drank now by himself and for drinking's sake, whereas
before he had only been fond of liquor with company. After a year he
found his way back home. Madge was forgotten, and he easily got work.
Likely young men are not so common on farms: strict inquiries are rarely
made.
The last that was heard of him appeared in the local newspaper:--
"DRUNK AND DISORDERLY.--Absalom White was brought up in custody, charged
with obstructing the road while in a state of intoxication. Fined five
shillings and seven-and-six costs."
PART II.
_THE COMING OF SUMMER._
The June sky is of the deepest blue when seen above the fresh foliage of
the oaks in the morning before the sun has filled the heavens with his
meridian light. To see the blue at its best it needs something to form a
screen so that the azure may strike the eye with its fulness
undiminished by its own beauty; for if you look at the open sky such a
breadth of the same hue tones itself down. But let the eye rise upwards
along a wall of oak spray, then at the rim the rich blue is thick, quite
thick, opaque, and steeped in luscious colour. Unless, indeed, upon the
high downs,--there the June sky is too deep even for the brilliance of
the light, and requires no more screen than the hand put up to shade the
eyes. These level plains by the Thames are different, and here I like to
see the sky behind and over an oak.
About Surbiton the oaks come out into leaf earlier than in many places;
this spring[2] there were oak-leaves appearing on April 24, yet so
backward are some of them that, while all the rest were green, there
were two in the hedge of a field by the Ewell road still dark within ten
days of June. They looked dark because their trunks and boughs were
leafless against a background of hawthorn, elm, and other trees in full
foliage, the clover flowering under them, and May bloom on the hedge.
They were black as winter, and even now, on the 1st of June, the leaves
are not fully formed. The trees flowered in great perfection this
spring; many oaks were covered with their green pendants, and they hung
from the sycamores. Except the chestnuts, whose bloom can hardly be
overlooked, the flowering of the trees is but little noticed; the elm is
one of the earliest, and becomes ruddy--it is as early as the catkins on
the hazel; willow, aspen, oak, sycamore, ash, all have flower or
catkin--even the pine, whose fructification is very interesting. The
pines or Scotch firs by the Long Ditton road hang their sweeping
branches to the verge of the footpath, and the new cones, the sulphur
farina, and the fresh shoots are easily seen. The very earliest oak to
put forth its flowers is in a garden on Oak Hill; it is green with them,
while yet the bitter winds have left a sense of winter in the air.
There is a broad streak of bright-yellow charlock--in the open arable
field beyond the Common. It lights up the level landscape; the glance
falls on it immediately. Field beans are in flower, and their scent
comes sweet even through the dust of the Derby Day. Red heads of
trifolium dot the ground; the vetches have long since been out, and are
so still; along the hedges parsley forms a white fringe. The charlock
seems late this year; it is generally up well before June--the first
flowers by the roadside or rickyard, in a waste dry corner. Such dry
waste places send up plants to flower, such as charlock and poppy,
quicker than happens in better soil, but they do not reach nearly the
height or size. The field beans are short from lack of rain; there are
some reeds in the ditch by them, and these too are short; they have not
half shot up yet, for the same reason. On the sward by the Long Ditton
road the goat's-beard is up; it grows to some size there every season,
but is not very common elsewhere. It is said to close its sepals at
noon, and was therefore called "Jack-go-to-bed-at-noon," but in fact it
shuts much earlier, and often does not open at all, and you may pass
twenty times and not see it open. Its head is like that of the
dandelion, and children blow it to see what's o'clock in the same way.
It forms a large ball, and browner; dandelion seed-balls are white. The
grass is dotted with them now; they give a glossy, silky appearance to
the meadows. Tiny pink geranium flowers show on bunches of dusty grass;
silver weed lays its yellow buttercup-like flower on the ground, placing
it in the angle of the road and the sward, where the sward makes a
ridge. Cockspur grass--three claws and a spur like a cock's foot--is
already whitened with pollen; already in comparison, for the grasses are
late to lift their heads this summer. As the petals of the May fall the
young leaves appear, small and green, to gradually enlarge through the
hay-time.
A slight movement of the leaves on a branch of birch shows that
something living is there, and presently the little head and neck of a
whitethroat peers over them, and then under, looking above and beneath
each leaf, and then with a noiseless motion passing on to the next.
Another whitethroat follows immediately, and there is not a leaf
forgotten nor a creeping thing that can hide from them. Every tree and
every bush is visited by these birds, and others of the insect-feeders;
the whole summer's day they are searching, and the caterpillar, as it
comes down on a thread, slipping from the upper branches, only drops
into their beaks. Birds, too, that at other periods feed on grain and
seed, now live themselves, and bring up their young, upon insects.
I went to look over a gate to see how the corn was rising--it is so
short, now in June, that it will not hide a hare--and on coming near
there was a cock chaffinch perched on the top, a fine bird in full
colour. He did not move though I was now within three yards, nor till I
could have almost touched him did he fly; he had a large caterpillar in
his beak, and no doubt his nest or the young from it were in the hedge.
In feeding the young birds the old ones always perch first at a short
distance, and after waiting a minute proceed to their fledgelings.
Should a blackbird come at full speed across the meadow and stay on a
hedge-top, and then go down into the mound, it is certain that his nest
is there. If a thrush frequents a tree, flying up into the branches for
a minute and then descending into the underwood, most likely the young
thrushes are there.
Little indeed do the birds care for appropriate surroundings; anything
does for them, they do not aim at effect. I heard a tit-lark singing his
loudest, and found him perched on the edge of a tub, formed of a barrel
sawn in two, placed in the field for the horses to drink from, as there
was no pond. Some swallows are very fond of a notice-board fastened to a
pole beside the Hogsmill bank. Upon its upper edge they perch and
twitter sweetly. There is a muddy pond by Tolworth Farm, near the road;
it is muddy because a herd of cows drink from and stand in it, stirring
up the bottom. An elm overhangs it, and the lower boughs are dead and
leafless. On these there are always swallows twittering over the water.
Grey and yellow wagtails run along the verge. In the morning the flock
of goslings who began to swim in the pond, now grown large and grey,
arrange themselves in a double row, some twenty or thirty of them, in
loose order, tuck their bills under their wings and sleep. Two old birds
stand in the rear as if in command of the detachment. A sow, plastered
with mud like the rhinoceri in the African lakes, lies on the edge of
the brown water, so nearly the hue of the water and the mire, and so
exactly at their juncture, as to be easily overlooked. But the sweet
summer swallows sing on the branches; they do not see the wallowing
animal, they see only the sunshine and the summer, golden buttercups and
blue sky.
In the hollow at Long Ditton I had the delight, a day or two since, to
see a kingfisher. There is a quiet lane, and at the bottom, in a valley,
two ponds, one in enclosed grounds, the other in a meadow opposite.
Standing there a minute to see if there was a martin among the birds
with which the pond in the grounds is thickly covered, something came
shooting straight towards me, and swerving only a yard or two to pass
me, a kingfisher went by. His blue wings, his ruddy front, the white
streak beside his neck, and long bill, were all visible for a moment;
then he was away straight over the meadow, the directness of his course
enabling it to be followed for some time till he cleared the distant
hedge, probably going to visit his nest. Kingfishers, though living by
the stream, often build a good way from water. The months have
lengthened into years since I saw one here before, sitting on the trunk
of a willow which bends over the pond in the mead. The tree rises out of
the water and is partly in it; it is hung with moss, and the kingfisher
was on the trunk within a foot or so of the surface. After that there
came severe winters, and till now I did not see another here. So that
the bird came upon me unexpectedly out from the shadow of the trees that
overhang the water, past me, and on into the sunshine over the
buttercups and sorrel of the field.
This hollow at Long Ditton is the very place of singing birds; never was
such a place for singing--the valley is full of music. In the oaks
blackbirds whistle. You do not often see them; they are concealed by the
thick foliage up on high, for they seek the top branches, which are more
leafy; but once now and then they quietly flutter across to another
perch. The blackbird's whistle is very human, like a human being playing
the flute; an uncertain player, now drawing forth a bar of a beautiful
melody and then losing it again. He does not know what quiver or what
turn his note will take before it ends; the note leads him and completes
itself. It is a song which strives to express the singer's keen delight,
the singer's exquisite appreciation of the loveliness of the days; the
golden glory of the meadow, the light, the luxurious shadows, the
indolent clouds reclining on their azure couch. Such thoughts can only
be expressed in fragments, like a sculptor's chips thrown off as the
inspiration seizes him, not mechanically sawn to a set line. Now and
again the blackbird feels the beauty of the time, the large white daisy
stars, the grass with yellow-dusted tips, the air which comes so softly
unperceived by any precedent rustle of the hedge, the water which runs
slower, held awhile by rootlet, flag, and forget-me-not. He feels the
beauty of the time and he must say it. His notes come like wild flowers,
not sown in order. The sunshine opens and shuts the stops of his
instrument. There is not an oak without a blackbird, and there are
others afar off in the hedges. The thrushes sing louder here than
anywhere; they really seem to have louder notes; they are all round.
Thrushes appear to vary their songs with the period of the year; they
sing loudly now, but more plaintively and delicately in the autumn.
Warblers and willow wrens sing out of sight among the trees; they are
easily hidden by a leaf; ivy-leaves are so smooth, with an enamelled
surface, that high up, as the wind moves them, they reflect the sunlight
and scintillate. Greenfinches in the elms never cease love-making, and
love-making needs much soft talking. There is a nightingale in a bush by
the lane which sings so loud the hawthorn seems to shake with the vigour
of his song; too loud, though a nightingale, if you stand at the verge
of the boughs, as he would let you without alarm; farther away it
becomes sweet and softer. Yellowhammers call from the trees up towards
the arable fields. There are but a few of them: it is the place of
singing birds.
The doves in the copse are nearer the house this year; I see them more
often in the field at the end of the garden. As the dove rises the white
fringe on the tip of the tail becomes visible, especially when flying up
into a tree. One afternoon one flew up into a hornbeam close to the
garden, beside it in fact, and perched there full in view, not twenty
yards at farthest. At first he sat upright, raising his neck and
watching us in the garden; then, in a minute or so, turned and fluttered
down to his nest. The wood-pigeons are more quiet now; their
whoo-hoo-ing is not so frequently heard. By the sounds up in the elms at
the top of the Brighton road (at the end of Langley Lane) the young
rooks have not yet all flown, though it is the end of the first week in
June. There is a little pond near the rookeries, and by it a row of
elms. From one of these a heavy bough has just fallen without the least
apparent cause. There is no sign of lightning, nor does it even look
decayed; the wood has fractured short off; it came down with such force
that the ends of the lesser branches are broken and turned up, though,
as it was the lowest limb, it had not far to fall, showing the weight of
the timber. There has been no hurricane of wind, nothing at all to cause
it, yet this thick bough snapped. No other tree is subject to these
dangerous falls of immense limbs, without warning or apparent cause, so
that it is not safe to rest under elms. An accident might not occur once
in ten years; nevertheless the risk is there. Elms topple over before
gales which scarcely affect other trees, or only tear off a few twigs.
Two have thus been thrown recently--within eighteen months--in the
fields opposite Tolworth Farm. The elm drags up its own roots, which are
often only a fringe round its butt, and leaves a hollow in the earth, as
if it had been simply stood on end and held by these guy-ropes. Other
trees do, indeed, fall in course of time, but not till they are
obviously on the point of tottering, but the elm goes down in full pride
of foliage. By this pond there is a rough old oak, which is the
peculiar home of some titmice; they were there every day, far back on
the frost and snow, and their sharp notes sounded like some one chipping
the ice on the horse-pond with an iron instrument. Probably, before now,
they have had a nest in a crevice.
The tallest grass yet to be seen is in a little orchard on the
right-hand side of the Long Ditton road. This little orchard is a
favourite spot of mine, meaning, of course, to look at: it is a natural
orchard and left to itself. The palings by the road are falling, and
held up chiefly by the brambles and the ivy that has climbed up them.
There are trees on the left and trees on the right; a fine spruce fir at
the back. The apple-trees are not set in straight lines; they were at
first, but some have died away and left an irregularity. The trees
themselves lean this way and that; they are scarred and marked, as it
were, with lichen and moss. It is the home of birds. A blackbird had a
nest this spring in the bushes on the left side, a nightingale in the
bushes on the right side, and there he sang and sang for hours every
morning. A sharp, relentless shrike lives in one of the trees close by,
and is perpetually darting across the road upon insects on the sward
among the fern there. There are several thrushes who reside in this
orchard besides the lesser birds. Swallows sometimes twitter from the
tops of the apple-trees. As the grass is so safe from intrusion, one of
the earliest buttercups flowers here. The apple-bloom appears rosy on
the bare boughs only lately scourged by the east wind. After a time the
trees are in full bloom, set about into the green of the hedges and
bushes and the dark spruce behind. Bennets, the flower of the grass,
come up. The first bennet is to green things what a swallow is to the
breathing creatures of summer. White horse-chestnut blooms stand up in
their stately way, lighting the path, which is strewn with fallen
oak-flower. May appears on the hawthorn: there is an early bush of it.
Now the grass is so high the flowers are lost under it; even the
buttercups are overtopped; and soon as the young apples take form and
shape white bramble-bloom will cover the bushes by the palings. Acorns
will show on the oaks: the berries will ripen from red to black
beneath. Along the edge of the path, where the dandelions and plantains
are thick with seed, the greenfinches will come down and select those
they like best: this they often do by the footpath beside the road.
Lastly, the apples become red; the beech in the corner has an orange
spray, and cones hang long and brown upon the spruce. The thrushes after
silence sing again, and autumn approaches. But, pass when you may, this
little orchard has always something, because it is left to itself--I had
written neglected. I struck the word out, for this is not neglect, this
is true attention, to leave it to itself, so that the young trees trail
over the bushes and stay till the berries fall of their own
over-ripeness, if perchance spared by the birds; so that the dead brown
leaves lie and are not swept away unless the wind pleases; so that all
things follow their own course and bent. Almost opposite, by autumn,
when the reapers are busy with the sheaves, the hedge is white with the
large trumpet-flowers of the greater convolvulus. The hedgerow seems
made of convolvulus then, nothing but convolvulus; nowhere else does the
flower flourish so strongly, and the bines remain till the following
spring. This little orchard, without a path through it, without a
border, or a parterre, or a terrace, is a place to sit down and dream
in, notwithstanding that it touches the road, for thus left to itself it
has acquired an atmosphere of peace and stillness such as belongs to and
grows up in woods and far-away coombs of the hills. A stray passer-by
would go on without even noticing it, it is so commonplace and
unpretentious, merely a corner of meadow irregularly dotted with
apple-trees; a place that needs frequent glances and a dreamy mood to
understand as the birds understand it. They are always here, even in the
winter, starlings and blackbirds particularly, who resort to a kind of
furrow there, which, even in frost, seems to afford them some food. In
the spring thrushes move along, rustling the fallen leaves as they
search behind the arum-sheaths unrolling beside the palings, or under
the shelter of the group of trees where arum-roots are plentiful. There
are nooks and corners from which shy creatures can steal out from the
shadow and be happy. The dew falls softly, more noiseless than snow, and
a star shines to the north over the spruce fir. By day there is a
loving streak of sunshine somewhere among the tree-trunks; by night a
star above. The trees are nothing to speak of in size or height, but
they seem always to bloom well and to be fruitful; tree-climbers run up
these and then go off to the elms.
Beside the Long Ditton road, up the gentle incline on the left side, the
broad sward is broken by thickets and brake like those of a forest. If a
forest were cleared, as those in America are swept away before the axe,
but a line of underwood left beside the highway, the result would be
much the same as may be seen here when the bushes and fern are in
perfection. Thick hawthorn bushes stand at unequal distances surrounded
with brake; one with a young oak in the centre. Fern extends from one
thicket to the other, and brambles fence the thorns, which are
themselves well around. From such coverts the boar was started in old
English days, the fawns hide behind and about them even now in many a
fair park, and where there are no deer they are frequented by hares. So
near the dust which settles on them as the wheels raise it, of course,
every dog that passes runs through, and no game could stay an hour, but
they are the exact kind of cover game like. One morning this spring,
indeed, I noticed a cock-pheasant calmly walking along the ridge of a
furrow in the ploughed field, parted from these bushes by the hedge. He
was so near the highway that I could see the ring about his neck. I have
seen peewits or green plovers in the same field, which is now about to
be built on. But though no game could stay an hour in such places,
lesser birds love them, white-throats build there, gold-crests come down
from the dark pines opposite--they seem fond of pines--yellow-hammers
sit and sing on them, and they are visited all day long by one or other.
The little yellow flowers of tormentil are common in the grass as autumn
approaches, and grasshoppers, which do not seem plentiful here, sing
there. Some betony flowers are opposite on the other sward. There is a
marshy spot by one of the bushes where among the rushes various
semi-aquatic grasses grow. Blackberries are thick in favourable
seasons--like all fruit, they are an uncertain crop; and hawkweeds are
there everywhere on the sward towards the edge. The peculiar green of
fern, which is more of a relief to the eye than any other shrub with
which I am acquainted, so much so that I wonder it is not more imitated,
is remarkable here when the burning July sun shines on the white dust
thus fringed. By then trees are gone off in colour, the hedges are tired
with heat, but the fern is a soft green which holds the glance. This
varies much with various seasons; this year the fern is particularly
late from a lack of moisture, but sometimes it is really beautiful
between these bushes. It is cut down in its full growth by those who
have charge of the road, and the scene is entirely destroyed for the
remainder of the season; it is not often that such bushes and such fern
are found beside the highway, and, if not any annoyance to the
residents, are quite as worthy of preservation (not "preservation" by
beadle) as open spaces like commons. Children, and many of larger
growth, revel about them, gathering the flowers in spring and summer,
the grasses and the blackberries in autumn. It is but a strip of sward,
but it is as wild as if in the midst of a forest. A pleasure to every
one--therefore destroy it.
In the evening from the rise of the road here I sometimes hear the cry
of a barn owl skirting the hedge of Southborough Park, and disappearing
under the shadow of the elms that stand there. The stars appear and the
whole dome of the summer night is visible, for in a level plain like
this a slight elevation brings the horizon into view. Without moon the
June nights are white; a faint white light shows through the trees of
Southborough Park northwards; the west has not lost all its tint over
the Ditton hollow; white flowers stand in the grass; white road, white
flint-heaps even, white clouds, and the stars, too, light without
colour.
By day the breeze comes south and west, free over fields, over corn and
grass and hedgerow; so slight a mound as this mere rise in the
river-side plain lifts you up into the current of the air. Where the
wind comes the sunlight is purer.
The sorrel is now high and ripening in the little meadows beside the
road just beyond the orchard. As it ripens the meadow becomes red, for
the stalks rise above the grass. This is the beginning of the feast of
seeds. The sorrel ripens just as the fledgelings are leaving the nest;
if you watch the meadow a minute you will see the birds go out to it,
now flying up a moment and then settling again. After a while comes the
feast of grain; then another feast of seeds among the stubble, and the
ample fields, and the furze of the hills; then berries, and then winter,
and the last seed.
A June rose. Something caught my eye on the top of the high hawthorn
hedge beside the Brighton road one evening as it was growing dusk, and
on looking again there was a spray of briar in flower, two roses in full
bloom and out of reach, and one spray of three growing buds. So it is
ever with the June rose. It is found unexpectedly, and when you are not
looking for it. It is a gift, not a discovery, or anything earned--a
gift like love and happiness. With ripening grasses the rose comes, and
the rose is summer: till then it is spring. On the green banks--waste
places--beside the "New Road" (Kingsdown Road formerly) the streaked
pink convolvulus is in flower; a sign that the spring forces have spent
themselves, that the sun is near his fulness. The flower itself is
shapely, yet it is not quite welcome; it says too plainly that we are
near the meridian. There are months of warmth to follow--brilliant
sunshine and new beauties; but the freshness, the joyous looking forward
of spring is gone. Upon these banks the first coltsfoot flowers in
March, the first convolvulus in summer, and almost the last hawkweed in
autumn. A yellow vetchling, too, is now opening its yellow petals beside
the Long Ditton road: another summer flower, which comes in as the blue
veronica is leaving the sward.
As tall as the young corn the mayweed fringes the arable fields with its
white rays and yellow centre, somewhat as the broad moon-daisies stand
in the grass. By this time generally the corn is high above the mayweed,
but this year the flower is level with its shelter. The pale corn
buttercup is in flower by the New Road, not in the least overshadowed by
the crops at the edge of which it grows. By the stream through Tolworth
Common spotted persicaria is rising thickly, but even this
strong-growing plant is backward and checked on the verge of the
shrunken stream. The showers that have since fallen have not made up for
the lack of the April rains, which in the most literal sense cause the
flowers of May and June. Without those early spring rains the wild
flowers cannot push their roots and develop their stalks in time for the
summer sun. The sunshine and heat finds them unprepared. In the ditches
the square-stemmed figwort is conspicuous by its dark green. It is very
plentiful about Surbiton. Just outside the garden in a waste corner the
yellow flowers of celandine are overhung by wild hops and white bryony,
two strong plants of which have climbed up the copse hedge, twining in
and out each other. Both have vine-like leaves; but the hops are
wrinkled, those of the bryony hairy or rough to the touch. The hops seem
to be the most powerful, and hold the bryony in the background. The
young spruce firs which the wood-pigeon visited in the spring with an
idea of building there look larger and thicker now the fresh green
needles have appeared.
In the woodland lane to Claygate the great elder-bushes are coming into
flower, each petal a creamy-white. The dogwood, too, is opening, and the
wild guelder-roses there are in full bloom. There is a stile from which
a path leads across the fields thence to Hook. The field by the stile
was fed off in spring, and now is yellow with birdsfoot lotus, which
tints it because the grass is so short. From the grass at every footstep
a crowd of little "hoppers" leap in every direction, scattering
themselves hastily abroad. The little mead by the copse here is more
open to the view this year, as the dry winter has checked the growth of
ferns and rushes. There is a flock of missel-thrushes in it: the old
birds feed the young, who can fly well in the centre of the field.
Lesser birds come over from the hedges to the bunches of rushes. Slowly
wandering along the lane and looking over the mound on the right hand
(cow-wheat with yellow lip is in flower on the mound), there are
glimpses between the bushes and the Spanish chestnut-trees of far-away
blue hills--blue under the summer sky.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] 1881.
_THE GOLDEN-CRESTED WREN._
This lovely little bird is so small and light that it can cling
suspended on the end of a single narrow leaf, or needle of pine, and it
does not depress the least branch on which it may alight. The gold-crest
frequents the loneliest heath, the deepest pine wood, and the immediate
neighbourhood of dwellings indifferently. A Scotch fir or pine grew so
near a house in which I once lived that the boughs almost brushed the
window, and when confined to my room by illness, it gave me much
pleasure to watch a pair of these wrens who frequently visited the tree.
They are also fond of thick thorn hedges, and, like all birds, have
their favourite localities, so that if you see them once or twice in one
place you should mark the tree or bush, for there they are almost
certain to return. It would be quite possible for a person to pass
several years in the country and never see one of these birds. There is
a trick in finding birds' nests, and a trick in seeing birds. The first
I noticed was in an orchard; soon after, I found a second in a yew-tree
(close to a window), and after that constantly came upon them as they
crept through brambles or in hedgerows, or a mere speck up in a
fir-tree. So soon as I had seen one I saw plenty.
_AN EXTINCT RACE._
There is something very mournful in a deserted house, and the feeling is
still further intensified if it happens to have once been a school,
where a minor world played out its little drama, and left its history
written on the walls. For a great boys' school is like a kingdom with
its monarchs, its ministers, and executioners, and even its changes of
dynasty. Such a house stood no long while since on the northern
border-land of Wilts and Berks, a mansion in its origin back in the days
of Charles II., and not utterly unconnected with the great events of
those times, but which, for hard on a hundred years--from the middle of
the eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century--was used as a
superior grammar-school, or college, as it would now be called.
Gradually falling in reputation, and supplanted by modern rivals for
fifteen or twenty years, the huge hollow halls and endless dormitories
were silent, and the storms that sway with savage force down from the
hills wreaked their will upon the windows and the rotting roof. Inside
the refectory--the windows being blown in--and over the antique-carved
mantelpiece, two swallows' nests had been built to the ceiling or
cornice. The whitewashed walls were yellow and green with damp, and
covered with patches of saltpetre efflorescence. But they still bore,
legible and plain, the hasty inscriptions scrawled on them, years and
years before, by hands then young, but by now returned to dust. The
history of this little kingdom, the hopes and joys, the fears and
hatreds of the subjects, still remained, and might be gathered from
these writings on the walls, just as are the history of Egypt and of
Assyria now deciphered from the palaces and tombs. Here were the names
of the kings--the head-masters--generally with some rough doggerel
verse, not often very flattering, and illustrated with outline
portraits. Here were caricatures of the ushers and tutors, hidden in
some corner of the dormitories once, no doubt, concealed by the
furniture, coupled with the very freest personalities, mostly in pencil,
but often done with a burnt stick. Dates were scattered everywhere--not
often the year, but the day of the month, doubtless memorable from some
expedition or lark played off half a century since. Now and then there
was a quotation from the classics--one describing the groaning and
shouting of the dying Hercules, till the rocks and the sad hills
resounded, which irresistibly suggested the idea of a thorough caning.
Other inscriptions were a mixture of Latin and any English words that
happened to rhyme, together producing the most extraordinary jumble.
Where now are the merry hearts that traced these lines upon the plaster
in an idle mood? Attached to the mansion was a great garden, or rather
wilderness, with yew hedges ten feet high and almost as thick, a
splendid filbert walk, an orchard, with a sun-dial. It is all--mansion
and garden, noble yew-tree hedges and filbert walk, sun-dial and
all--swept away now. The very plaster upon which generation after
generation of boys recorded their history has been torn down, and has
crumbled into dust. Greater kingdoms than this have disappeared since
the world began, leaving not a sign even of their former existence.
_ORCHIS MASCULA._
The _Orchis mascula_ grew in the brook corner, and in early spring sent
up a tall spike of purple flowers. This plant stood alone in an angle of
the brook and a hedge, within sound of water ceaselessly falling over a
dam. In those days it had an aspect of enchantment to me; not only on
account of its singular appearance, so different from other flowers, but
because in old folios I had read that it could call up the passion of
love. There was something in the root beneath the sward which could make
a heart beat faster. The common modern books--I call them common of
_malice prepense_--were silent on these things. Their dry and formal
knowledge was without interest, mere lists of petals and pistils, a
dried herbarium of plants that fell to pieces at the touch of the
fingers. Only by chipping away at hard old Latin, contracted and dogged
in more senses than one, and by gathering together scattered passages in
classic authors, could anything be learned. Then there arose another
difficulty, how to identify the magic plants? The same description will
very nearly fit several flowers, especially when not actually in flower;
how determine which really was the true root? The uncertainty and
speculation kept up the pleasure, till at last I should not have cared
to have had the original question answered. With my gun under my arm I
used to look at the orchis from time to time, so long as the spotted
leaves were visible, till the grass grew too long.
_THE LIONS IN TRAFALGAR SQUARE._
The lions in Trafalgar Square are to me the centre of London. By those
lions began my London work; from them, as spokes from the middle of a
wheel, radiate my London thoughts. Standing by them and looking south
you have in front the Houses of Parliament, where resides the mastership
of England; at your back is the National Gallery--that is art; and
farther back the British Museum--books. To the right lies the wealth and
luxury of the West End; to the left the roar and labour, the craft and
gold, of the City. For themselves, they are the only monument in this
vast capital worthy of a second visit as a monument. Over the entire
area covered by the metropolis there does not exist another work of art
in the open air. There are many structures and things, no other art. The
outlines of the great animals, the bold curves and firm touches of the
master hand, the deep indents, as it were, of his thumb on the plastic
metal, all the _technique_ and grasp written there, is legible at a
glance. Then comes the _pose_ and expression of the whole, the calm
strength in repose, the indifference to little things, the resolute view
of great ones. Lastly, the soul of the maker, the spirit which was taken
from nature, abides in the massive bronze. These lions are finer than
those that crouch in the cages at the Zoological Gardens; these are
truer and more real, and, besides, these are lions to whom has been
added the heart of a man. Nothing disfigures them; smoke and, what is
much worse, black rain--rain which washes the atmosphere of the
suspended mud--does not affect them in the least. If the choke-damp of
fog obscures them, it leaves no stain on the design; if the surfaces be
stained, the idea made tangible in metal is not. They are no more
touched than Time itself by the alternations of the seasons. The only
noble open-air work of native art in the four-million city, they rest
there supreme and are the centre. Did such a work exist now in Venice,
what immense folios would be issued about it! All the language of the
studios would be huddled together in piled-up and running-over
laudation, and curses on our insular swine-eyes that could not see it. I
have not been to Venice, therefore I do not pretend to a knowledge of
that mediaeval potsherd; this I do know, that in all the endless pictures
on the walls of the galleries in London, year after year exposed and
disappearing like snow somewhere unseen, never has there appeared one
with such a subject as this. Weak, feeble, mosaic, gimcrack, coloured
tiles, and far-fetched compound monsters, artificial as the graining on
a deal front door, they cannot be compared; it is the gingerbread gilt
on a circus car to the column of a Greek temple. This is pure open air,
grand as Nature herself, because it _is_ Nature with, as I say, the
heart of a man added.
But if any one desire the meretricious painting of warm light and cool
yet not hard shade, the effect of colour, with the twitching of
triangles, the spangles glittering, and all the arrangement contrived to
take the eye, then he can have it here as well as noble sculpture.
Ascend the steps to the National Gallery, and stand looking over the
balustrade down across the square in summer hours. Let the sun have
sloped enough to throw a slant of shadow outward; let the fountains
splash whose bubbles restless speak of rest and leisure, idle and
dreamy; let the blue-tinted pigeons nod their heads walking, and anon
crowd through the air to the roof-tops. Shadow upon the one side, bright
light upon the other, azure above and swallows. Ever rolling the human
stream flows, mostly on the south side yonder, near enough to be
audible, but toned to bearableness. A stream of human hearts, every atom
a living mind filled with what thoughts?--a stream that ran through Rome
once, but has altered its course and wears away the banks here now and
triturates its own atoms, the hearts, to dust in the process. Yellow
omnibuses and red cabs, dark shining carriages, chestnut horses, all
rushing, and by their motion mixing their colours so that the commonness
of it disappears and the hues remain, a streak drawn in the groove of
the street--dashed hastily with thick camel's hair. In the midst the
calm lions, dusky, unmoved, full always of the one grand idea that was
infused into them. So full of it that the golden sun and the bright wall
of the eastern houses, the shade that is slipping towards them, the
sweet swallows and the azure sky, all the human stream holds of wealth
and power and coroneted panels--nature, man, and city--pass as naught.
Mind is stronger than matter. The soul alone stands when the sun sinks,
when the shade is universal night, when the van's wheels are silent and
the dust rises no more.
At summer noontide, when the day surrounds us and it is bright light
even in the shadow, I like to stand by one of the lions and yield to the
old feeling. The sunshine glows on the dusky creature, as it seems, not
on the surface, but under the skin, as if it came up from out of the
limb. The roar of the rolling wheels sinks and becomes distant as the
sound of a waterfall when dreams are coming. All the abundant human life
is smoothed and levelled, the abruptness of the individuals lost in the
flowing current, like separate flowers drawn along in a border, like
music heard so far off that the notes are molten and the theme only
remains. The abyss of the sky over and the ancient sun are near. They
only are close at hand, they and immortal thought. When the yellow
Syrian lions stood in old time of Egypt, then too, the sunlight gleamed
on the eyes of men, as now this hour on mine. The same consciousness of
light, the same sun, but the eyes that saw it and mine, how far apart!
The immense lion here beside me expresses larger nature--cosmos--the
ever-existent thought which sustains the world. Massiveness exalts the
mind till the vast roads of space which the sun tramples are as an
arm's-length. Such a moment cannot endure long; gradually the roar
deepens, the current resolves into individuals, the houses return--it is
only a square.
But a square potent. For London is the only _real_ place in the world.
The cities turn towards London as young partridges run to their mother.
The cities know that they are not real. They are only houses and
wharves, and bricks and stucco; only outside. The minds of all men in
them, merchants, artists, thinkers, are bent on London. Thither they go
as soon as they can. San Francisco thinks London; so does St.
Petersburg.
Men amuse themselves in Paris; they work in London. Gold is made
abroad, but London has a hook and line on every napoleon and dollar,
pulling the round discs hither. A house is not a dwelling if a man's
heart be elsewhere. Now, the heart of the world is in London, and the
cities with the simulacrum of man in them are empty. They are moving
images only; stand here and you are real.
THE END.
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
End of Project Gutenberg's The Toilers of the Field, by Richard Jefferies