The wind had dropped, and the silence was such that one hardly liked to
tread even on the grass. From the lawn and fields there seemed to be a
mist rising--in truth, the moonlight caught on the dewy buttercups; and
across this ghostly radiance the shadows of the yew-trees fell in dense
black bars. Suddenly, I bethought me of the mare. How was she faring,
this marvellous night? Very softly opening the door into the yard, I
tiptoed across. A light was burning in her box. And I could hear her
making the same half-human noise she had made in the afternoon, as if
wondering at her feelings; and instantly the voice of the bearded man
talking to her as one might talk to a child: "Oover, me darlin'; yu've
a-been long enough o' that side. Wa-ay, my swate--yu let old Jack turn
'u, then!" Then came a scuffling in the straw, a thud, again that
half-human sigh, and his voice: "Putt your 'ead to piller, that's my
dandy gel. Old Jack wouldn' 'urt 'u; no more'n ef 'u was the queen!"
Then only her quick breathing could be heard, and his cough and mutter,
as he settled down once more to his long vigil. I crept very softly up
to the window, but she heard me at once; and at the movement of her head
the old fellow sat up, blinking his eyes out of the bush of his grizzled
hair and beard. Opening the door, I said:
"May I come in?"
"Oo, ay! Come in, Zurr, if 'u'm a mind to."
I sat down beside him on a sack, and for some time we did not speak,
taking each other in. One of his legs was lame, so that he had to keep
it stretched out all the time; and awfully tired he looked, grey-tired.
"You're a great nurse!" I said at last. "It must be hard work, watching
out here all night."
His eyes twinkled; they were of that bright grey kind through which the
soul looks out.
"Aw, no!" he said. "Ah don't grudge it vur a dumb animal. Poor
things--they can't 'elp theirzelves. Many's the naight ah've zat up with
'orses and beasts tu. 'Tes en me--can't bear to zee dumb creatures
zuffer!" And, laying his hand on the mare's ears: "They zay 'orses
'aven't no souls. 'Tes my belief they'm gotten souls, zame as us. Many's
the Christian ah've seen ain't got the soul of an 'orse. Zame with the
beasts--an' the sheep; 'tes only they can't spake their minds."
"And where," I said, "do you think they go to when they die?" He looked
at me a little queerly, fancying, perhaps, that I was leading him into
some trap; making sure, too, that I was a real stranger, without power
over him, body or soul--for humble folk in the country must be careful;
then, reassured, and nodding in his bushy beard, he answered knowingly:
"Ah don't think they goes zo very far!"
"Why? Do you ever see their spirits?"
"Naw, naw; I never zeen none; but, for all they zay, ah don't think none
of us goes such a brave way off. There's room for all, dead or alive.
An' there's Christians ah've zeen--well, ef they'm not dead for gude,
then neither aren't dumb animals, for sure."
"And rabbits, squirrels, birds, even insects? How about them?"
He was silent, as if I had carried him a little beyond the confines of
his philosophy, then shook his head:
"'Tes all a bit dimsy-like. But yu watch dumb animals, Zurr, even the
laste littlest one, and yu'll zee they knows a lot more'n what us
thenks; an' they du's things, tu, that putts shame on a man's often as
not. They've a got that in 'em as passes show." And not noticing my
stare at that unconscious plagiarism, he added: "Ah'd zuuner zet up of a
naight with an 'orse than with an 'uman; they've more zense, and
patience." And, stroking the mare's forehead, he added: "Now, my dear,
time for yu t' 'ave yure bottle."
I waited to see her take her draught, and lay her head down once more on
the pillow. Then, hoping he would get a sleep, I rose to go.
"Aw, 'tes nothin' much," he said, "this time o' year; not like in
winter. 'Twill come day before yu know, these buttercup-nights"; and
twinkling up at me out of his kindly bearded face, he settled himself
again into the straw. I stole a look back at his rough figure propped
against the sack, with the mare's head down beside his knee, at her
swathed chestnut body, and the gold of the straw, the white walls, and
dusky nooks and shadows of that old stable, illumined by the "dimsy"
light of the old lantern. And with the sense of having seen something
holy, I crept away up into the field where I had lingered the day
before, and sat down on the same half-way rock. Close on dawn it was,
the moon still sailing wide over the moor, and the flowers of this
"buttercup-night" fast closed, not taken in at all by her cold glory!
Most silent hour of all the twenty-four--when the soul slips half out of
sheath, and hovers in the cool; when the spirit is most in tune with
what, soon or late, happens to all spirits; hour when a man cares least
whether or no he be alive, as we understand the word.... "None of us
goes such a brave way off--there's room for all, dead or alive." Though
it was almost unbearably colourless, and quiet, there was warmth in
thinking of those words of his; in the thought, too, of the millions of
living things snugly asleep all round; warmth in realising that
unanimity of sleep. Insects and flowers, birds, men, beasts, the very
leaves on the trees--away in slumber-land. Waiting for the first bird to
chirrup, one had, perhaps, even a stronger feeling than in daytime of
the unity and communion of all life, of the subtle brotherhood of living
things that fall all together into oblivion, and, all together, wake.
When dawn comes, while moonlight is still powdering the world's face,
quite a long time passes before one realises how the quality of the
light has changed; and so, it was day before I knew it. Then the sun
came up above the hills; dew began to sparkle, and colour to stain the
sky. That first praise of the sun from every bird and leaf and blade of
grass, the tremulous flush and chime of dawn! One has strayed far from
the heart of things that it should come as something strange and
wonderful! Indeed, I noticed that the beasts and birds gazed at me as if
I simply could not be there at this hour which so belonged to them. And
to me, too, they seemed strange and new--with that in them "which
passeth show," and as of a world where man did not exist, or existed
only as just another sort of beast or bird.
But just then began the crowning glory of that dawn--the opening and
lighting of the buttercups. Not one did I actually see unclose, yet, of
a sudden, they were awake, and the fields once more a blaze of gold.