Mr. Measure was rather a tragic figure. A wealthy Canadian of cultured
tastes, he had been stricken when only in the fifties, and this was a
last visit to Europe to see once again the beautiful things that he
knew so well and would regret so keenly. For "Dying," as he said to me,
"would be nothing if were it not for what we leave behind."
They had been to Florence, to Siena, to Perugia, to Venice, to Rome, to
little quiet places among the Italian hills that had old associations,
to Chamounix again, to Avignon and Arles, to Puy-de-Dôme. In a day or
so they were to sail for Quebec, where his home was and where his grave
would be.
He had but one wish left as regarded his English visit, and that was to
hear the nightingale. It had suddenly come to him as he read in a paper
some reference to their season of song--he had had the idea that it was
earlier and now finished--and his wife had chanced upon Ben's signboard
and had asked for information there: as it happened, very fortunately.
I called at their hotel to discuss our plan of action. Mr. Measure,
poor fellow, was clearly very ill; he was thin and weak, but his eye
was bright and he was full of enthusiasm for the adventure. He did not
want to sleep in a country inn, but did not mind how late he returned
to London. Would I mind driving in a motor ambulance with himself and
his wife?
Not at all.
His idea was that we should leave London after a very early dinner and
go straight to a likely spot, hear the nightingale, and drive back. If
we heard one sooner, so much the better.
"I know of a practically certain place," I said, "but it is a little
late. A fortnight ago would have been better. Remember, I can't
promise."
It was a favourable evening on which we slid away from Mr. Measure's
hotel. I had my mind on a particular meadow in Sussex, just north of
the Downs, skirted by a lane. This meadow is surrounded by a high,
untrimmed hedge with oaks at intervals, and there is a tinkling stream
close by. A few cottages here and there in the neighbourhood complete
the nightingales' requirements, for they are fond of human sounds. In
this meadow, which has never disappointed me yet--at any rate in late
April and all May--nightingales have the enchanting habit of singing in
threes, one against the other at the points of the triangle.
Knowing by bitter experience how useless it is to squander minute
directions on such insensitive, non-receptive, unobservant, and
unremembering creatures as chauffeurs, I sat on the box; not sorry
either, for it was warm, and talking in a car is fatiguing.
We left London by way of Battersea Bridge and kept on the Brighton
road as far as Hand Cross--over Walton Heath and down Reigate Hill
and through Crawley. At Hand Cross we branched to the right, leaving
Cuckfield on our left, and came through Bolney to Albourne and due
south as far as Muddles Wood cross-roads. At intervals I had fancied I
heard the magic notes and had slackened the car--you know how easy it
is to imagine this sound--but always it was a false alarm, or the song
had been only of momentary duration.
At Muddles Wood we turned to the right. The air was warm and there
was no wind, only a sighing of the earth. The moon was now bright and
the great bulk of the South Downs, sweetly undulating, rose against
the quiet sky. We crept slowly along for a quarter of a mile and then
dipped sharp to the left for fifty yards and stopped. This was the spot.
For a while there was not a sound, save now and then a rustle in the
undergrowth, the whistle of a far-distant train, a car on the Henfield
road, an owl's hoot, or a dog barking.
I had begun to be assured of the worst when there came a liquid note.
Then silence again; and then suddenly a burst of song. It was very
brief, and there was again a disconcerting silence; but then another
singer replied, and gradually their songs grew more steady. They
behaved like angels; they went through everything in the repertory, and
although their voices were not in the perfection of mid-May, they were
beautiful enough, and one of them repeated that plaintive single cry
seventeen times.
Even the chauffeur was impressed. He had heard about nightingales all
his life, but this was his first experience of them. Like a canary,
wasn't it?
I did not intrude upon the sick man until the time came to go. He was
in an ecstasy and I wished that Ben could see him. It would have been a
triumph for "The Beck and Call."
"But I should call that song a happy one," he said. "Certainly not
melancholy, except very rarely. Its charm is its volume and exultation,
and the careless ease of it."
I agreed. "I am against Matthew Arnold here," I said. "To me the truest
line about the bird in our poetry is in William Cory:--
Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake.
That's what they are: pleasant voices, triumphantly 'telling the
world.'"
"Even Keats," he said, "makes the song a little too voluptuous and
passionate, although how true to say that the nightingale 'among the
leaves' has never known