CHAPTER XXXVII

THE MIRROR

There are a hundred little landscapes on the walls by the roadside--of grey or silver or golden stone, embossed and fretted and chequered by green and gold-pointed mosses, frosty lichens, pale round penny-wort leaves and the orange foliage of cranesbill. At their feet are the young leaves of the larger celandine and the lustrous blossoms of the lesser, still swaddled in dead leaves where mice and squirrels are questing. On top, thorns and ash trees trail horizontally in many dragon shapes, and purple brambles overhang. Or there are low thorns which make way at intervals for straight hollies, spared by the billhook, or even carved by it into pagoda-like shapes. Sometimes even a thorn has been thus spared and honoured, but here they are not each knotted into impenetrable globes of twigs or interlaced in pairs as elsewhere. What fantasy persuades men to make those little wayside and even railwayside suggestions of a mild tree worship surviving yet? In places the walls are interrupted and replaced by a smooth, blue sheet of natural rock based in grass and making a home for vertebrate ferns, and stamped by white and yellow and green algæ which look as if they were the stains of a sunshine too strong to be wiped out. Some of the ash tree boles are heavily draped in a fur woven inextricably of dark green and fine-leaved ivy, pale green moss over which hover pendulous drops of gold, silver lichen, and ferns green and amber. Out of rock or wall gushes bright, crystal water, losing itself in moss and herbage below, or received into small stone tanks, and turned into a darkly gleaming, golden creature that throbs under the rain.

Between such walls the road winds into many valleys and over many fells towards the mountains. On either hand rise and fall many hollowed tawny meadows, with boulders embedded in heather and flowering gorse, and over them the pewits plunge and soar and modulate their crying by their speed. Here and there a family of oak or beech stands up in the midst of the fields. Between the meadows there are copses of hazel and oak, and snowdrops underneath, or a crisp, untrodden carpet of old leaves of many dying golds and browns and reds; or an arable field intervenes. The plough climbs the hill, turning the dry, grey soil to purple and brown that is dappled by rooks and gulls. Some of the gulls slide overhead against the wind, inclining their wings this way and that, rising and descending slightly, as if they could by tacking and delaying avoid the streamy wind.

The steeper hills are the home of oak and ash and birch and larch. The grey larch woods waver in colour like a dying trout, as the wind and the sunshine pass over them. In a five-minute shower the rainbow sets her foot among the trees before she leaps across the sky, and while yet her colours are uncertain among the luminous branches makes a small, fairy, remote world that speaks to the eye like the young moon on a fair evening or Cassiopeia when it crowns a sapphire night.

In ten miles there is an inn. “Pretty Polly” and “Sceptre” are on the walls, with notices of sales and advertisements of spirits. The hostess sings the cosmic melody of “Blue Bell” as she goes about her work--that marvellous melody over which farmboys become romantic and even cheerful at four o’clock on wild and sleety mornings in January as they go about their work. But the host has good ale, and he can sing the Holm-bank Hunting Song:--

“One morning last winter to Holm-bank there came A noble, brave sportsman, Squire Sandys was his name, Came a-hunting the fox, bold Reynard must die, And he flung out his train and began for to cry Tally-ho, tally-ho! Hark forward, away, tally-ho!

The season being frosty, and the morning being clear, A great many gentlemen appoint to meet there; To meet with Squire Sands with honour and fame And his dogs in their glory to honour his name.

There Gaby the huntsman with his horn in his hand, It sounded so clear and the dogs at command, Tantive! Tantive! the horn it did sound, Which alarmed the country for above a mile round.

It’s hark dogs together, while Jona comes in, There’s Joyful and Frolic, likewise little Trim, It’s hark unto Dinah, the bitch that runs fleet, There’s neat little Justice, she’ll set ’em to reet.

There’s Driver and Gamester, two excellent hounds, They’ll find out Bold Reynard if he lies above ground; Draw down to yon cover that lies to the south, Bold Reynard lies there, Trowler doubles his mouth.

Three times round low Furness they chased him full hard, At last he sneaked off and through Urswick churchyard, He listened to the singers as I’ve heard them say, But the rest of the service he could not well stay.

The dogs coming up made Reynard look sly, Then he marked out his tricks for to give ’em the by; They being bred to their business they managed their cause And they made him submit to their attention close.

Through Kirkby and Woodland they nimbly passed, Broughton and Dunnerdale they came to at last, Then down across Duddon to Cumberland side, And at Grass-gards in Ulpha, bold Reynard he died.

Since Reynard is dead he’ll do no more ill, He hadn’t much time for to make a long will, He has left all his states to his survivor and heir, He has a right to a widow for she’ll claim her share.

Of such a fox chase as never was known, The horsemen and footmen were instantly thrown, To keep within sound didn’t lie in their power, For the dogs chased the fox eighty miles in five hours.

You gentlemen and sportsmen wherever you be, All you that love hunting draw near unto me, Since Reynard is dead, we have heard of his downfall, Here’s a health to Squire Sands of High Graythwaite Hall. Tally-ho, tally-ho! Hark forward, away, tally-ho!”

The road has turned away into a valley. The mountains are close ahead, and the billowy moorland prepares me for them, with hawks in all its hollows, and small ponds, the silent sport of winds that roar in crags and hiss in grasses, and then at length a long, blue pool, edged by yellow reeds and receiving the shadow of a steep oak wood. There the wind is lured into many metamorphoses among the ripples--at one moment a writhing, hundred-headed snake, at another the wraith perhaps of a swift skater who was once drowned in the water, and again a swarm of dark bees. At first sight this blue expanse, with narrow ends running into the moorland, and its edge of shivering reed, lays hold upon the mind. All day, unseen of any but the shepherd, the water reflects the birds and the clouds, and all night the stars, until it might be supposed to have acquired a symbolic sadness and tranquillity by thus keeping watch on all the nights and days since it began. There, in its depths, hang the mountain clouds and the immense spaces of sky, with something added by the reflecting water, as if it were some gloomy opiate personality that turned all things to its own tune. Even the joyous, golden fleece of the perfect summer morning are rendered by the pool with touches of wizardry and night, and when a little breeze erases them for a moment it is like a breath of delight sweeping over an immortal pain. The nearest mountain, too, is there. The highest summit, engraved with snow, shows in the depths like a bleached skull emerging from ridgy tracts of dark sand. There, also, are the long, tawny and olive flanks of the ascent, inlaid with purple and blue by precipices and cloud-shadows, with grey and ruddy woods below, and the silver wounds of birches. Now and then my own shadow flits among them, as if a magician had compelled me to wander in that giddy profound of water and sky. As I look down I seem to see what men have made of the universe in the past, with the help of poet and priest, by plunging it in the sorrows and uncertainties of their own heart and brain. There is superstition, there religion and poetry, confining the great heavens and the hills with sun and moon and stars, within these few acres of desolate mountain water. There are the stories of the gods and of a heaven that overhung mortals with hideous aspect. There, also, the eager courage of man’s soul when first he tried to burst “the strong bars of Nature’s gateways”--while the sun and wind contend upon the water--and set out upon the adventure which has made us “equal with heaven.” Looking up, away from the pool, there still are the mountains and the sky, just as they were, still inscrutably holding out in one hand laughter and in one hand tears for us to choose from. I look down and the singing lark, against a white cloud, is singing high and wise things in some contemplative poet’s verse. I look up and, behold! the new joy of the spring, unintelligible, and for the moment not asking to be understood, but to be shared; and as we climb happily the pool no longer imposes its version of life, for yonder is the True upon the hills, and the eyes dilate and the nostrils and the lungs accept the air and the “darling of men and gods ... mistress of the nature of things” takes her place with us.