The nights are pleasant in May, short and pleasant for travel. We will
leave the city asleep, and do our flight in the night to save time.
Trust yourselves, then, to the story-teller’s aërial machine. It is but
a rough affair, I own, rough and humble, unfitted for high or great
flights, with no gilded panels, or dainty cushions, or C-springs—not
that we shall care about springs, by the way, until we alight on
terra-firma again—still, there is much to be learned in a third-class
carriage if we will only not look while in it for cushions, and fine
panels, and forty miles an hour travelling, and will not be shocked
at our fellow-passengers for being weak in their h’s and smelling of
fustian. Mount in it, then, you who will, after this warning; the fares
are holiday fares, the tickets return tickets. Take with you nothing
but the poet’s luggage,
“A smile for Hope, a tear for Pain,
A breath to swell the voice of Prayer,”
and may you have a pleasant journey, for it is time that the stoker
should be looking to his going gear!
So now we rise slowly in the moonlight from St. Ambrose’s quadrangle,
and, when we are clear of the clock-tower, steer away southwards, over
Oxford city and all its sleeping wisdom and folly, over street and past
spire, over Christ Church and the canons’ houses, and the fountain in
Tom quad; over St. Aldate’s and the river, along which the moonbeams
lie in a pathway of twinkling silver, over the railway sheds—no,
there was then no railway, but only the quiet fields and foot-paths
of Hincksey hamlet. Well, no matter; at any rate, the hills beyond,
and Bagley Wood, were there then as now: and over hills and wood we
rise, catching the purr of the night-jar, the trill of the nightingale,
and the first crow of the earliest cock-pheasant, as he stretches his
jewelled wings, conscious of his strength and his beauty, heedless of
the fellows of St. John’s, who slumber within sight of his perch, on
whose hospitable board he shall one day lie, prone on his back, with
fair larded breast turned upwards for the carving knife, having crowed
his last crow. He knows it not; what matters it to him? If he knew it,
could a Bagley Wood cock-pheasant desire a better ending?
We pass over the vale beyond; hall and hamlet, church, and meadow,
and copse, folded in mist and shadow below us, each hamlet holding in
its bosom the materials of three-volumed novels by the dozen, if we
could only pull off the roofs of the houses and look steadily into
the interiors; but our destination is farther yet. The faint white
streak behind the distant Chilterns reminds us that we have no time
for gossip by the way; May nights are short, and the sun will be up
by four. No matter; our journey will now be soon over, for the broad
vale is crossed, and the chalk hills and downs beyond. Larks quiver
up by us, “higher, ever higher,” hastening up to get a first glimpse
of the coming monarch, careless of food, flooding the fresh air with
song. Steady plodding rooks labor along below us, and lively starlings
rush by on the look-out for the early worm; lark and swallow, rook and
starling, each on his appointed round. The sun arises, and they get
them to it; he is up now, and these breezy uplands over which we hang
are swimming in the light of horizontal rays, though the shadows and
mists still lie on the wooded dells which slope away southwards.
This is no chalk, this high knoll which rises above—one may almost say
hangs over—the village, crowned with Scotch firs, its sides tufted
with gorse and heather. It is the Hawk’s Lynch, the favorite resort
of Englebourn folk, who come up for the view, for the air, because
their fathers and mothers came up before them, because they came up
themselves as children—from an instinct which moves them all in leisure
hours and Sunday evenings, when the sun shines and the birds sing,
whether they care for view or air or not. Something guides all their
feet hitherward; the children, to play hide-and-seek and look for
nests in the gorse-bushes; young men and maidens, to saunter and look
and talk, as they will till the world’s end—or as long, at any rate,
as the Hawk’s Lynch and Englebourn last—and to cut their initials,
inclosed in a true lover’s knot, on the short rabbit’s turf; steady
married couples, to plod along together consulting on hard times and
growing families; even old tottering men, who love to sit at the feet
of the firs, with chins leaning on their sticks, prattling of days long
past, to any one who will listen, or looking silently with dim eyes
into the summer air, feeling perhaps in their spirits after a wider and
more peaceful view which will soon open for them. A common knoll, open
to all, up in the silent air, well away from every-day Englebourn life,
with the Hampshire range and the distant Beacon Hill lying soft on the
horizon, and nothing higher between you and the southern sea, what a
blessing the Hawk’s Lynch is to the village folk, one and all! May
Heaven and a thankless soil long preserve it and them from an inclosure
under the Act!