Chapter 33

THE PROMISE OF MAY.

"Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam cari capitis?"

HORACE.

About the middle of May the lovely, sweet-scenting lilac comes into bloom. It brightens up the old, time-worn barns, and relieves the monotony of grey stone walls and mossy roofs in the Cotswold village.

The prevailing colour of the Cotswold landscape may be said to be that of gold. The richest gold is that of the flaming marsh-marigolds in the water meadows during May; goldilocks and buttercups of all kinds are golden too, but of a slightly different and paler hue. Yellow charlock, beautiful to look upon, but hated by the farmers, takes possession of the wheat "grounds" in May, and holds the fields against all comers throughout the summer. In some parts it clothes the whole landscape like a sheet of saffron. Primroses and cowslips are of course paler still. The ubiquitous dandelion is likewise golden; then we have birdsfoot trefoil, ragwort, agrimony, silver-weed, celandine, tormentil, yellow iris, St. John's wort, and a host of other flowers of the same hue. In autumn comes the golden corn; and later on in mid winter we have pale jessamine and lichen thriving on the cottage walls. So throughout the year the Cotswolds are never without this colour of saffron or gold. Only the pockets of the natives lack it, I regret to say.

Every cottager takes a pride in his garden, for the flower shows which are held every year result in keen competition. A prize is always given for the prettiest garden among all the cottagers. This is an excellent plan; it brightens and beautifies the village street for eight months in the year. In May the rich brown and gold of the gillyflower is seen on every side, and their fragrance is wafted far and wide by every breeze that blows.

Then there is a very pretty plant that covers some of the cottage walls at this time of year. It is the wistaria; in the distance you might take it for lilac, for the colours are almost identical.

Then come the roses--the beautiful June roses--the _nimium breves flores_ of Horace. But the roses of the Cotswolds are not so short lived for all that Horace has sung: you may see them in the cottage gardens from the end of May until Christmas.

How cool an old house is in summer! The thick walls and the stone floors give them an almost icy feeling in the early morning. Even as I write my thermometer stands at 58° within, whilst the one out of doors registers 65° in the shade. This is the ideal temperature, neither too hot nor too cold. But it is not summer yet, only the fickle month of May.

Tom Peregrine is getting very anxious. He meets me every evening with the same story of trout rising all the way up the stream and nobody trying to catch them. I can see by his manner that he disapproves of my "muddling" over books and papers instead of trying to catch trout. He cannot understand it all. Meanwhile one sometimes asks oneself the question which Peregrine would also like to propound, only he dare not, Why and wherefore do we tread the perilous paths of literature instead of those pleasant paths by the river and through the wood? The only answer is this: The _daemon_ prompts us to do these things, even as it prompted the men of old time.

"There is a divinity that shapes our ends, Rough hew them how we will."

If there is such a thing as a "call" to any profession, there is a call to that of letters. So with an enthusiasm born of inexperience and delusive hope we embark as in a leaky and untrustworthy sailing ship, built, for ought we know, "in the eclipse, and rigged with curses dark," and at the mercy of every chance breeze are wafted by the winds of heaven through chaos and darkness into the boundless ocean of words and of books. When the waves run high they resemble nothing so much as lions with arched crests and flowing manes going to and fro seeking whom they may devour, or savage dogs rushing hither and thither foaming at the mouth; and when old Father Neptune lets loose his hungry sea-dogs of criticism, then look out for squalls!

But again the _daemon_, that still small voice echoing from the far-off shores of the ocean of time, whispers in our ear, "In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that, or whether they both shall be alike good."

So we sow in weakness and in fear and trembling, "line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little," sometimes in mirth and laughter, sometimes in tears. Let us not ask to be raised in power. Let us resign all glory and honour and power to the Ancient of Days, prime source of the strength of wavering, weak mankind. Rather let us be thankful that by turning aside from "the clamour of the passing day" to tread the narrow paths of literature, however humble, however obscure our lot may have been, we gained an insight into the nobler destinies of the human soul, and learnt a lesson which might otherwise have been postponed until we were hovering on the threshold of Eternity.

In spite of complaints of east winds and night frosts, May is the nicest month in the year take it all in all. In London this is the case even more than in the country. The trees in the parks have then the real vivid green foliage of the country. There is a freshness about everything in London which only lasts through May. By June the smoke and dirt are beginning to spoil the tender, fresh greenery of the young leaves. In the early morning of May 12th, 1897, more than an inch of snow fell in the Cotswolds, but it was all gone by eight o'clock. In spite of the weather, May is "the brightest, merriest month of all the glad New Year." Everything is at its best. Man cannot be morose and ill-tempered in May. The "happy hills and pleasing shade" must needs "a momentary bliss bestow" on the saddest of us all. Look at yonder thoroughbred colt grazing peacefully in the paddock: if you had turned him out a month ago he would have galloped and fretted himself to death; but now that the grass is sweet and health-giving, he is content to nibble the young shoots all day long. What a lovely, satin-like coat he has, now that his winter garments are put off! There is a picture of health and symmetry! He has just reached the interesting age of four years, is dark chestnut in colour, and sixteen hands two and a half inches in height; grazing out there, he does not look anything like that size. Well-bred horses always look so much smaller than they really are, especially if they are of good shape and well proportioned. Alas! how few of them, even thoroughbreds, have the real make and shape necessary to carry weight across country, or to win races! You do not see many horses in a lifetime in whose shape the critical eye cannot detect a fault. We know the good points as well as the bad of this colt, for we have had him two years. Deep, sloping shoulders are his speciality; and they cover a multitude of sins. Legs of iron, with large, broad knees; plenty of flat bone below the knee, and pasterns neither too long nor too upright. Well ribbed up, he is at the same time rather "ragged-hipped," indicative of strength and weight-carrying power. How broad are his gaskins! how "well let down" he is! What great hocks he has! But, alas I as you view him from behind, you cannot help noticing that his hindlegs incline a little outwards, even as a cow's do--they are not absolutely straight, as they should be. Then as to his golden, un-docked tail: he carries it well--a fact which adds twenty pounds to his value; but, strange to say, it is not "well set on," as a thoroughbred's ought to be. He does not show the quality he ought in his hindquarters. Still his head, neck and crest are good, though his eye is not a large one. How much is he worth--twenty, fifty, a hundred, or two hundred pounds? Who can tell? Will he be a charger, a fourteen-stone hunter, or a London carriage horse? All depends how he takes to jumping. His height is against him,--sixteen hands two and a half inches is at least two inches too big for a hunter. Nevertheless, there are always the brilliant exceptions. Let us hope he will be the trump card in the pack.

Talking of horses, how admirable was that answer of Dr. Johnson's, when a lady asked him how on earth he allowed himself to describe the word _pastern_ in his dictionary as the _knee_ of a horse. "Ignorance, madam, pure ignorance," was his laconic reply. So great a man could well afford to confess utter ignorance of matters outside his own sphere. But how few of mankind are ever willing to own themselves mistaken about any subject under the sun, unless it be bimetallism or some equally unfashionable and abstruse (though not unimportant) problem of the day!

What beautiful shades of colour are noticeable in the trees in the early part of May! The ash, being so much later than the other trees, remains a pale light green, and shows up against the dark green chestnuts and the still darker firs. But what shall I say of the great spreading walnut whose branches hang right across the stream in our garden in the Cotswold Valley?

About the middle of May the walnut leaves resemble nothing so much as a mass of Virginia creeper when it is at its best in September. Beautiful, transparent leaves of gold, intermingled with red, glisten in the warm May sunshine,--the russet beauties of autumn combined with the fresh, bright loveliness of early spring!

Not till the very end of May will this walnut tree be in full leaf. He is the latest of all the trees. The young, tender leaves scent almost as sweetly as the verbena in the greenhouse. It is curious that ash trees, when they are close to a river, hang their branches down towards the water like the "weeping willows." Is this connected, I wonder, with the strange attraction water has for certain kinds of wood, by which the water-finder, armed with a hazel wand, is able to divine the presence of _aqua pura_ hundreds of feet below the surface of the earth? What this strange art of rhabdomancy is I know not, but the "weeping" ash in our garden by the Coln is one of the most beautiful and shapely trees I ever saw. It will be an evil day when some cruel hurricane hurls it to the ground. We have lost many a fine tree in recent years, some through gales, but others, alas I by the hand of man.

A few years ago I discovered a spot about a quarter of a mile from my home which reminded me of the beautiful Eton playing-fields,

"Where once my careless childhood stray'd, A stranger yet to pain."

It consisted of a few grass fields shut off by high hedges, and completely encircled by a number of fine elm trees of great age and lovely foliage. At one end a broad and shallow reach of the Coln completed the scene.

Having obtained a long lease of the place, I grubbed up the hedges, turned three small fields into one, and made a cricket ground in the midst. My object was to imitate as far as possible the "Upper Club" of the Eton playing-fields.

I had barely accomplished the work, the cricket ground had just been levelled, when the landlord's agent--or more probably his "mortgagee"--arrived on the scene, accompanied by a hard-headed, blustering timber merchant from Cheltenham. To my horror and dismay I was informed that, money being very scarce, they contemplated making a clean sweep of these grand old elms. On my expostulating, they merely suggested that cutting down the trees would be a great improvement, as the place would be opened up thereby and made healthier.

In the hope of warding off the evil day we offered to pay the price of some of the finest trees, although they could only legally be bought for the present proprietor's lifetime.

The contractor, however, rather than leave his work of destruction incomplete, put a ridiculous price on them. He refused to accept a larger sum than he could ever have cleared by cutting them down. This is what Cowper would have stigmatised as

"disclaiming all regard For mercy and the common rights of man,"

and "conducting trade at the sword's point."

We then resolved to buy the farm. But the stars in their courses fought against us; we were unsuccessful in our attempt to purchase the freehold.

And so the contractor's men came with axes and saws and horses and carts. For days and weeks I was haunted by that hideous nightmare, the crash of groaning trees as they fell all around, soon to be stripped of all their glorious beauty. The cruel, blasphemous shouts of the men, as they made their long-suffering horses drag the huge, dismembered trunks across the beautifully levelled greensward of the cricket ground, were positively heart-rending. Ninety great elms did they strike down. A few were left, but of these the two finest came down in the great gale of March 1896.

"Sic transit gloria mundi."

Trees are like old familiar friends, we cannot bear to lose them; every one that falls reminds us of "the days that are no more." Struck down in all the pride and beauty of their days, they remind us that

"Those who once gave promise Of fruit for manhood's prime Have passed from us for ever, Gone home before their time."

They remind me that four of my greatest friends at school, ten short years ago, are long since dead. Like the trees felled by the woodman's axe, they were struck down by the sickle of the silent Reaper, even as the golden sheaves that are gathered into the beautiful barns. Other trees will spring up and shade the naked earth in the woods with their mantle of green: so, also,

"Others will fill our places Dressed in the old light blue."

And just as in the woods fresh young saplings are daily springing up, so also the merry voices of happy, generous boys are ringing, as I write, in the old, old courts and cloisters by the silvery Thames; their merry laughter is echoed by the bare grey walls, whereon the names of those who have long been dust are chiselled in rude handwriting on the mouldering stone.

Hundreds we knew have gone down. The fatal bullet, the ravaging fever, the roaring torrent, and the sad sea waves; the slow, sure grip of consumption, the fall at polo, and the iron hoofs of the favourite hunter;--all claimed their victims.

Perhaps this is why we love to linger in the woods watching the rays of golden light reflected upon the warm, red earth, listening to the heavenly voices of the birds and the hopeful babbling of the brook. Those purple hills and distant bars of gold in the western sky at the soft twilight hour are rendered ever so much more beautiful when we dimly view them through a mist of tears.

And now your thoughts are taken back five short years; you are once more staying with your old Eton friend and Oxford comrade in his beautiful home in far-off Wales. All is joy and happiness in that lovely, romantic home, for in six weeks' time the young squire, the best and most popular fellow in the world, is to be married to the fair daughter of a neighbouring house. Is it possible that aught can happen in that short time to mar the heavenly happiness of those two twin souls? Alas for the gallant, chivalrous nature I Well might he have cried with his knightly ancestor of the "Round Table," "Me forethinketh this shall betide, but God may well foredoe destiny." He had gone down to the lake in the most beautiful and romantic part of his lovely home, taking with him, as was his wont, his fishing-rod and his gun. One shot was heard, and one only, on that ill-fated afternoon, and then all, save for the songs of the birds and the rippling of the deep waters of the lake, was wrapped in silence. Then followed the report--whispered through the party assembled to do honour to the future bride and bridegroom--that "Bill" was missing. Then came the agonising suspense and the eight hours' search throughout the long summer evening.

Late that night the father found the fair young form of his boy in a thick and tangled copse,--there it lay under the silent stars, the face upturned in its last appeal to heaven; and close by lay the deadly twelve-bore which had been the cause of all the misery and grief that followed.

"Solemn before us Veiled the dark portal-- Goal of all mortal. Stars silent rest o'er us; Graves under us silent."

He had evidently pursued game or vermin of some sort into the dense undergrowth of the wood, and in his haste had slipped and fallen over his gun, for the shot had just grazed his heart

Who that knew him will ever forget Bill Llewelyn, prince of good fellows, "truest of men in everything"? In all relations of life, as in the hunting field, he went as straight as a die.

The accidental discharge of a gun shortly after he came of age, and within a few weeks of his wedding day, has made the England of to-day the poorer by one of her most promising sons. Infinite charity! Infinite courage! Infinite truth! Infinite humility! Who could do justice in prose to those rare and godlike qualities? No: miserable, weak, and ineffectual though my gift of poesy may be, yet I will not let those qualities pass away from the minds of all, save the few that knew him well, without following in the footsteps (though at an immeasurable distance) of the divine author of "Lycidas," by endeavouring to render to his cherished memory "the meed of some melodious tear." For as time goes on, and the future unfolds to our view things we would have given worlds to have known long before, when the events that influenced our past actions and shaped our future destinies are seen through the dim vista of the shadowy, half-forgotten past, we must all learn the hard lesson which experience alone can teach, exclaiming with the "Preacher" the old, old words, "I returned, and saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong.... but time and chance happeneth to them all"

LINES IN MEMORY OF

WILLIAM DILLWYN LLEWELYN.

It may be chance,--I hold it truth,-- That of the friends I loved on earth The ones who died in early youth Were those of best and truest worth.

The swift, alas! the race must lose; The battle goes against the strong,-- God wills it 'Tis for us to choose, Whilst life is given, 'twixt right and wrong

'Tis not for us to count the cost Of losing those we most do love; He grudgeth not life's battle lost Who wins a golden crown above.

And oft beneath the shades of night, When tempests howl around these walls, A vision steals upon my sight, A footstep on the threshold falls.

I see once more that graceful form, Once more that honest hand grasps mine. Once more I hear above the storm The voice I know so well is thine.

I see again an Eton boy, A gentle boy, divinely taught, And call to mind bow full of joy In friendly rivalry we sought

The "playing-fields." Then, as I yield To fancy's dreams, I see once more The hero of the cricket field, The oft-tried, trusty friend of yore.

What tender yearnings, fond regret, These thoughts of early friendship bring! None but the heartless can forget 'Mid summer days the friends of spring.

Now thoughts of Oxford fill my mind: My Eton friend is with me still, But changed--from boy to man; yet kind And large of heart, and strong of will,

And blythe and gay. I recognise The athletic form, the comely face, The mild expression of the eyes, The high-bred courtesy and grace.

Once more with patient skill we lure The mighty salmon from the deep; Once more we tread the boundless moor, And wander up the mountain steep.

With gun in hand we scour the plain, Together climb the rocky ways; Regardless he of wind and rain Who loved to "live laborious days."

* * * * *

I see again fair Penllergare, Those woods and lakes you loved so well; It seems but yesterday that there I parted from you! Who can tell

The reason thou art gone before? It is not given to us to know, But doubtless thou wert needed more Than we who mourn thee here below.

Life's noblest lesson day by day Thy fair example nobly taught-- Self-sacrifice--to point the way By which the hearts of men are brought

Nearer to God. This was thy task, Humbly, unknowingly fulfilled; And it were vain for us to ask Why now thy voice is hushed and stilled.

O gallant spirit, generous heart! If thou had'st lived in days gone by, Thou would'st have loved to bear thy part In glorious deeds of chivalry.

I make no apology for this digression, nor for unearthing from the bottom of my drawer lines that, written years ago, were never penned with any idea of publication. For was not the subject of those verses himself half a Cotswold man?

But now to return once more to the trees, the loss of which caused me to digress some pages back; there are compensations in all things. Not every one who becomes a sojourner among the Cotswold Hills is fated to undergo such a trial as the loss of these ninety elms. And, notwithstanding this severe lesson, I am still glad that I alighted on the spot from which I am now writing.

I have learnt to find pleasure in other directions now that my "Eton playing-fields" have passed away for ever. I have become infected by the spirit of the downs. I love the pure, bracing air and the boundless sense of space in the open hills as much as I ever loved the more concentrated charms of the valley. And even in the valley I have possessions of which no living man is able to deprive me. From my window I can see the silvery trout stream, which, after thousands of years of restless activity, is still slowly gliding down towards the sea; I can listen on summer nights to the murmuring waterfall at the bottom of the garden, the hooting of the owls, and the other sounds which break the awful silence of the night.

Nor can the hand of man disturb the glorious timber round the house; for it is "ornamental," and therefore safe from the hands of the despoiler. Storms are gradually levelling the ancient beech and ash trees in the woods, but it will be many a long day before the hand of nature has marred the beauty of what has always seemed to me to be one of the fairest spots on earth.