The sun was going down behind the copse, through which his beams came
aslant, chequered and mellow. The stream ran dimpling down, sleepily
swaying the masses of weed, under the surface and on the surface; and
the trout rose under the banks, as some moth or gnat or gleaming
beetle fell into the stream; here and there one more frolicsome than
his brethren would throw himself joyously into the air. The swifts
rushed close by, in companies of five or six, and wheeled, and
screamed, and dashed away again, skimming along the water, baffling the
eye as one tried to follow their flight. Two kingfishers shot suddenly
up on to their supper station, on a stunted willow stump, some twenty
yards below him, and sat there in the glory of their blue backs and
cloudy red waistcoats, watching with long sagacious beaks pointed to
the water beneath, and every now and then dropping like flashes of
light into the stream, and rising again, with what seemed one motion,
to their perches. A heron or two were fishing about the meadows;
and Tom watched them stalking about in their sober quaker coats, or
rising on slow heavy wing, and lumbering away home with a weird cry.
He heard the strong pinions of the wood pigeon in the air, and then
from the trees above his head came the soft call, “Take-two-cow-Taffy,
take-two-cow-Taffy,” with which that fair and false bird is said to
have beguiled the hapless Welchman to the gallows. Presently, as he
lay motionless, the timid and graceful little water-hens peered out
from their doors in the rushes opposite, and, seeing no cause for
fear, stepped daintily into the water, and were suddenly surrounded by
little bundles of black soft down, which went paddling about in and
out of the weeds, encouraged by the occasional sharp, clear, parental
“keck—keck,” and merry little dabchicks popped up in mid-stream, and
looked round, and nodded at him, pert and voiceless, and dived again;
even old cunning water-rats sat up on the bank with round black noses
and gleaming eyes, or took solemn swims out, and turned up their tails
and disappeared for his amusement. A comfortable low came at intervals
from the cattle, revelling in the abundant herbage. All living things
seemed to be disporting themselves, and enjoying, after their kind, the
last gleams of the sunset, which were making the whole vault of heaven
glow and shimmer; and, as he watched them, Tom blessed his stars as
he contrasted the river-side with the glare of lamps and the click of
balls in the noisy pool-room.
And then the summer twilight came on, and the birds disappeared, and
the hush of night settled down on river, and copse, and meadow—cool and
gentle summer twilight, after the hot bright day. He welcomed it too,
as it folded up the landscape, and the trees lost their outline, and
settled into soft black masses rising here and there out of the white
mist, which seemed to have crept up to within a few yards all round him
unawares. There was no sound now but the gentle murmur of the water,
and an occasional rustle of reeds, or of the leaves over his head, as
a stray wandering puff of air passed through them on its way home to
bed. Nothing to listen to, and nothing to look at; for the moon had not
risen, and the light mist hid everything except a star or two right up
above him. So, the outside world having left him for the present, he
was turned inwards on himself.