Part 8

“Tell me,” said the child, very happy, looking at his glorious wings, “Tell me, why do you speak to me? Do you speak to every one?”

“No,” said the swallow sadly, “I want to, but they will not listen. I know that the meadow grasses want to as well, but most of the people seem to be deaf. The meadow grasses talk to the butterflies and the coloured insects that dance among them, for they come to listen to the music of the wind as it swings the little gray and purple pollen-bells that you love to knock off with your hand. And the sound you hear is sometimes the love-whisper of the stems as they tell one another that the baby seeds are being born. For if the seeds are born before the mowers come they are very happy. It is always so among the wild flowers, my love. All they live for is the seeds.”

“I am sad when I see the grasses cut,” said Jo, “for often the little larks are killed and the sorrel dies, and the golden buttercups, and all the sweet flowers.”

“Do not be sad, darling,” twittered the swallow, “for all beauty must die. And beauty gives itself willingly in death when it loves. I remember when I was young we passed over a strange land at dawn, just as the light was coming to cheer us, and below were still figures on the slopes of the hill. We knew that they had given their lives to save their beautiful land: we knew because the wind told us that he had carried their spirits away at the moment of death.”

Little Jo began to sob again.

“Hush, my love, for is not the sun shining and the brook singing its wander-song? We do not know death, for all we think of is the lovely life we have now. The swallows do not struggle as you wise ones do, or kill one another, but each has sufficient and no more. And oh, we are so happy.”

“I am not happy, little swallow, for I am ugly.”

“My love, you are beautiful, for your heart is kind. We all love you so very much. And one day, when you are older, some one will come to you, some one to whom I talk now as I talk to you, and he will tell you that you are beautiful. He is great friends with the owl, who calls to him at night. But at present he is only a little boy.”

“How lovely,” Jo cried, jumping up and dancing. “Will he be long in coming? And will he have a horse, and a sword, and a squire to take off his armour?”

“One day he will have a sword, and he will be brave although his heart may be heavy. And when that is over, he will be sad for a long time, but always brave. But that is years to come. Sometimes even now he is sad, for his mother is dead, and his father thinks that he will grow up wild. Yet he is often jolly and naughty, especially with his friends in a wood. His name is Willie, and he is nine years old.”

“I must be beautiful when he sees me,” said the child-woman, “or he will go away.”

“He will only go away if you do not want him,” twittered the swallow, preening his feathers, “and one day he will need you very badly.”

“Oh, but I shall want my little boy,” she said, “and when I meet him I will tell him I’m his friend. But I am ugly,” and her eyes filled with tears.

“My love,” breathed the swallow, perching on her shoulder, “I have a gift for you, which I give gladly. It is all I have, and soon the meadow grasses will fall, and the roses on the hedges, and then we will be told by the wind that we must go again over the great sea into which so many of us fall. I shall have to die soon, so it does not matter,” he added to himself, but Jo did not hear, for she was wondering what the gift would be.

“Good-bye, dear,” whispered the swallow presently, “and do not forget us when you grow up. So many do.”

“No, swallow, no, but come back soon, and give my little boy a kiss for me, because he hasn’t any mummy.”

The swallow rose high in the air, and in gay flight sped over the cornfield; a swift brown bird dashed after him; a few light feathers danced in the air; a tiny poppy suddenly bloomed on a bended flag of wheat.

“O swallow,” wept the child. “O little, little swallow.”

Her heart still murmured with sadness as she went down the path towards home, past Great-uncle Sufford and a strange man, both painting at their easels. Jo wanted to look at his picture, but she thought that he might think her rude. At first he frightened her when he jumped up and exclaimed, “Oh, let me sketch your head, little lady. Beautiful, glorious!” speaking rapidly to himself, “such an angle, and glorious uplift!” But his eyes looked kind, and already she liked him. And Great-uncle Sufford was laughing.

“Don’t be frightened,” he said, “but just let Mr. Norman sketch your forehead. My child, I have only just noticed it. You have the most perfect brows I have ever seen, blue-black like a swallow wing, and such an angle! Norman, you must make your picture worthy of Jo.”

So she stood before him, smiling and with shining eyes, and once more the spirit of the wild rose was in her cheeks. The strange painter-man liked her!

Now, behind the hedge Michael, her eldest brother, was crouching, having crept sinuous and Indian-like, down to the hedge to track the two artists. He watched with disgust what was happening, and determined to take it out of Mary later on. Michael was already disgusted because another stupid girl had arrived in the house a little while ago, and was staying a week.

“Now, I must thank you,” beamed the bearded stranger, “for your beauty has inspired me, you sweet fairy. Now we’ll all go home, and you must meet my little daughter Elsie.”

He picked her up and kissed her lightly and Jo kissed him back, although his face tickled, for he was kind and had said that she was a fairy.

WINTER’S EVE

(_To T. H. H. T._)

“_Woo--oo--oo--._”

Long drawn out as though the note is bubbling through water, it quavers from the dark wood yonder, seen in the dim light of the stars. From the other wood, across the grass land, a plain hoot floats back. _Woo-loo, woo-loo!_ No sound of wings beating--the flight of the wood owl is silent, his broad wings, covered with the softest down, fan the air as he proceeds through the wood.

_Woo--oo! Woo--oo!_ There is mystery in the cry. All other creatures are silent, except the field mice and voles running over the ground. They cannot be seen by the human eye, but I can hear their squeaks. Again the faraway answer haunts across the darkness over the grass. The leaves have fallen long ago, they lie black and rotting on the ground. Those that drifted down when summer died have already merged into the earth whence will come the bluebells in April. But a short time since they were scurrying over the grass and among the bramble bushes, all crisp and brown. The wind caught them up and whirled them in their thousands: then came the time of wintry rains and mists. Their brittleness went, they sank into the earth.

The owl is silent. He has fanned his way from branch to branch, peering to the ground. The slightest movement is watched by his large eyes. A little dark thing running quickly over the leaves, a silent glide to the ground, wings fanning the air, the clutch of a powerful foot, a faint shriek as talons sink into the warm body, and then to the trees again. The mouse is swallowed whole. The faintest of squeaks from behind, the owl’s head turns and he peers down on the ground. The eyes are fixed, but the head can be turned completely round. Those large ears, hidden by the tiny feathers--the ear-cavity being twice the size of an eye--take in every sound, even as the eyes can see in the dark night. The faint squeak came from a rat that runs swiftly on the trail of another. The next moment his body is seized in a grip of death--he, too, screams, and is borne upward, limp and dead, to be devoured at leisure. The owl’s beak opens to a wide gape, and a deep contralto hoot, bubbling and quavering, carries to his mate who hunts in the distant copse.

Heard thus in the loneliness of the winter night, there seems infinite sadness in the deep mellow cries of these night fliers. To hear an owl hooting repeatedly around the cottage at night is supposed, in the country, to portend death. It is easy to imagine how such a superstition arose. The species of owl that hoots, sounding like the call of a lost soul from the blur of the forest, remains concealed during the day, perched up against the bole of a fir tree, or in the cavity of a hollow oak or elm. At night they are seen occasionally and by chance, as their broad wings beat against the sky. Any such cries, lonesome and ghostly, coming in the dark, can mean but one thing to the countryman--death.

What fantasies are called up on a night like this, leaning up against the barred gate, alone! Away in front, the dark, level grass land--beyond, the forest. A sky bright with stars gleaming and winking, high up, unattainable. There is Sirius, the largest star, flaming with sudden molten crimson, then flashing a blue spearhead of light. Possibly there is a mist around that sun, so many millions of miles away, that breaks up the light as the prism of glass does the colours of the spectrum. Over the thick blackness in front a figure is moving-or am I imagining things? Just a faint feeling of fear, the nerves strung up, caused perhaps by slumbering instinct. Thousands of years ago a figure coming stealthily nearer in the darkness might mean an enemy. I glance over my shoulder; there is a feeling that some one might leap on to my back. But as he draws nearer I can hear his footfalls in the frosty grass and his laboured breath--it is one of the farm hands going home from the inn. He climbs over the gate, starts violently as he sees me standing here, and bids me good-night. I answer, adding that I have been listening to the owls. He politely tells me that there are a “good few on ’em about,” but to himself says that I am mazed. Then he passes on, his steps get fainter and fainter, and I am alone.

_Yak wrik! Yak-yak-wrik!_ low over my head. A blood-curdling noise if ever there was one. The latter part of the screech, the _wrik_, is considerably higher in tone than the former part. The barn owl passed over the gate, just above my head and only when he startled me with his cry--not long and sobbing as the wood owl, but sharp and high-pitched--did I know that he had gone. A white mistiness in the night, wings beating slower than those of his hooting brother, and the white or barn owl had drifted over the grass, hunting the mice and field vole.

The barn owl is more common than the wood or brown owl. The former is snow white on its breast and under its wings. The wings themselves, and the back, made it one of our most beautiful birds. They are of an amber-yellow colour, shaded with ash gray, and streaked with small white and brown markings. The pinion feathers and the broad soft feathers of the tail are yellowy-white, barred with light brown. Most remarkable of all is the face, which is heart-shaped, surrounded by a line of gray and yellow featherlets standing out like a ruffle. The eyes are black, a contrast to the pure white of the down that surrounds them. In the summer evening he can be seen beating up the hedges, pouncing as he goes. When hungry, his capacity is enormous--nine or ten mice. He swallows the mice and small birds whole--the indigestible part being cast up later in the form of a grayish pellet. If a hollow tree, where these birds are likely to sleep during the day, be tapped fairly loudly, it will often drive its tenant into the light. Its exit will invariably be hailed by a chattering chorus of tomtits or finches, who will pursue it. In the bright sunlight the sight is dazzled, but in dull weather it would be able to see quite easily.

A wind-blown copse crowns a hill a mile away from the park, and one day in summer I found the skeleton of a barn owl flung among the thorns. Of the dark eyes--each a wonderful instrument--nothing was left, only a little dust collected in the empty orbits. Ants and flies had long completed their work. The white of the breast feathers was turned a dull gray by the rain’s bedragglement; the muscles of the shoulder had withered, though the sinews were dry and silky. The feet were clenched as though the bird had died in agony after the shot had rung out and it sunk to the ground. An owl rarely dies immediately it is shot; it lies back, if badly hit, resting lightly on its downy wings and stares with a mournful anguish, as though puzzled, and conscious that this is farewell to its mate. Owls pair for life, and, like most birds, their lives are ideal. It seemed to me, regarding the skeleton, a sadness that all that was left of a beautiful bird was a wasted bundle of bones and feathers, flung among the thorns.

_Woo-loo-woo-loo-woo-o-oo!_ the brown owl calls in the night. And while I am here on earth, let me be in the fields where I can see the bright stars, and dream as my birds of mystery pass in silence and alone.

_1914._

ERNIE

My Devon hermitage is only a sixteenth-century cottage rented at four pounds a year. There are two bedrooms, very small and lime-washed, and a living room with a stone floor and open hearth. A simple place, built of cob, and thatched, with a walled-in garden before it, and then the village street. The churchyard with its elm-rookery is on one side, a small brook below the wall. Even in the hot summer the water runs; I have made a pool of stones where the swallows and martins can go for the mud to build their homes. Beautiful it is to see, in the shadow of the trees, these birds alighting softly on a boulder, or by the pool’s edge, and shovelling the red mortar on their beaks. They are timid, restless things, rising into the air at the least noise. I have passed many hours in watching them, noting the number of times they came in a minute, and how they mix fragments of dried grass and straw with the mud before taking the material aloft. All the while the water murmured, and the birds answered with gentle song. They soon came to know me, and minded not my presence; and I kept away marauding village cats--lean animals with pointed ears and staring eyes; a race existing on rats.

Sometimes a little boy comes and stands by me, and watches them too. He is a funny little fellow, about two and a half years old, with yellow curls and solemn brown eyes. His name is Ernie, and his father is a labourer, a very kind man. He used to spend all his money in the inn, but suddenly took a wife, and drank no more. When Ernie is a naughty boy, he threatens to go “up to pub,” and Ernie wails immediately, and is good again.

“I got this one,” says Ernie, coming to the cottage door, and holding out in a filthy paw a piece of cake. “You ain’t got this one, ave ee?”

“Go away, Ernie, I’m writing.”

“You ain’t got this one,” he replies, munching the cake, “ave ee, Mis’r Wisson?”

I feel more comfortable in the company of children than with “grown-ups”; and to discourage his talk I put my tongue out, and make a hideous face.

“Ah’ll cut ees tongue off, ah wull,” he gravely warns, repeating what his mother has said to him when he has done it to her--a frequent happening, I fear; I taught him to do it.

“Good-bye,” I shout.

Then he departs, and five minutes later I hear a feeble “_’onk-’onk-’onk_” in my garden. Ernie is driving his car, which he has made from my wheelbarrow, a cinder sifter, and an egg-shaped pair of pram-wheels.

“’Onk-’onk,” he cries to the sparrows, “git out, ’onk-’onk.” Then on seeing me: “I got this one. You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee?”

“Noomye!” I exclaim, while Ernie goes faster and faster.

This motor-car is not the only toy. The pram-wheels, or “wills,” as he calls them, are a source of happiness. A broom tied to the axle acts as a horse, and Ernie goes driving in the road. Other small brats come up, and a puppy dog or two, and great fun they have, often ending up in the stream.

Ernie’s mother is always finding him in the water. She cannot keep him away. He goes out in a clean jersey, knickers, and socks, and suddenly there is a cry for Ernie, a rushing past the door, a curse from myself, and a loud wail.

“You come out of that water, my boy! I told you not to go in that water. Little devil, you,” cries the exasperated mother.

“Ah’ll tull feyther,” shrieks Ernie, as he is driven like a porker past the door. His sobs grow less, and a minute later he comes back and stares at me.

“I got some good water,” he informs me. “You ain’t got no water, ’ave ee?” And he toddles away for more.

He delights in the filthiest old can or bottle. He loves to kneel down and see the water bubbling in. Sometimes it is a “cup of tea” he has got, or a “glass of beer.” And always he has “got this one.”

He appears to be wandering about at all hours of the day and night. The life of a recluse in a cottage, remote from ordinary life, has its moments of exaltation, especially in the lovely months of spring and summer, but when the wind sways the leafless trees and whirls the cold rain, it is hard to prevent melancholy. On these occasions I go and have a chat with Ernie’s parents, my immediate neighbours. Often I find Ernie asleep at the table, with his curls in the empty plate. The little imp has been all day in the water, or on a long tour in his motor, and has fallen asleep from exhaustion. He breathes quietly, his mouth droops.

“Poor lill chap, he’m be tired,” says Ernie’s father; “dear lill boy, he’m be.”

It is always the same tender remark. No wonder Ernie loves his father. But this does not prevent the most savage quarrelling sometimes. Then through the wall I hear him yelling,--

“Dawbake!--dawbake!--dawbake!”

And his father’s threat (it never materialises into action), “Naughty boy, swearin’! Ah’ll tell plicemun!”

“Dawbake!--dawbake!--dawbake!” yells Ernie.

“Ee shouldn’t speak tew ees feyther like that.”

“Dawbake!” moans Ernie, and hides his curly head at father’s knees.

“Could never whip ee,” mutters the parent, “ee be so little.”

“Of course,” I agree, having decided notions about the relation of the big parent to the tiny child.

Every day it is the same. Ernie in the water, Ernie covered with mud and jam. Ernie holding out pails, bottles, cans, kettles, and food for me to see.

“You ain’t got this one, ’ave ee? I got this one. Ah’ll tell plicemun of ee, Mis’r Wisson, swearin’! I got my wills. You ain’t got no wills. I got the wills.”

“Go away, boy!” I shout, as once a schoolmaster used to bellow at me.

He departs, but returns with a cup of muddy water.

“I got a glass o’ beer. ’Tis mine, it is. Yaas.”

Dirty face, wet boots, disturbing voice, everlasting questions, and possessive boastings--how can I complete the various volumes of _The Flax of Dream_, with Ernie always pestering. I have told him again and again that I wish he would go away to another cottage. But if he were to, I should be miserable, and miss my long motor-rides with Ernie among the cabbages, while the driver wears an enormous pair of his father’s boots. I should miss, too, the accounts of how Ernie has killed rats and rabbits with a stone and how he cut off the policeman’s head with a knife because the policeman used a swear word to Ernie.

A SEED IN WASTE PLACES

(_To M. G. S._)

To and fro over the heated surface of Fleet Street passed the red omnibuses, a sickly pale vapour coming from the engines. It was a Saturday afternoon in August, and there were few people about. For myself, I had to toil at my useless and fretting work of getting material for one of the big Sunday newspapers. Saturday was the day when the paper became alive, and the Editor more exacting and more like an Egyptian slave-driver than ever. This was from the point of view of the wretched hack-writers who were privileged to work from ten o’clock in the morning till midnight the same day. Possibly the Editor did not regard himself as one so omnipotent, since he was the target for the deadly arrows of the proprietor’s wrath on Tuesday morning, should any blemish in the make-up of the paper be discovered, or any important item of news be missed. Nevertheless, we loathed the Editor on Saturdays, especially at evening. His face grew whiter, and his despairful leer at our non-success in obtaining some facts from a West End flunkey whose mistress had that morning lost a pearl necklace, or a reputation, was most exasperating for men with tired feet and grit-filled eyes.

That afternoon of August London was more arid than ever. I looked with despair for any sign of beauty, something that could take my mind away from dinginess. My mind was drouthy, and the roots of calm thought were sapped. The blue sky overhead made me miserable: I thought of the waves lapping the sunlit sands of the West Country that I knew so well. There the gray stock-doves flew from the bushes growing on the headland cliff sides, and the lark’s song was ever in the air. Here by the church of Mary-le-Strand all nature was dead. True, there were pigeons, but their wings were tinged with soot, and they were alienated from the wild dove whose nest was among the blackthorns. Even the bark of the plane trees was unrefreshed, and guarded by iron cages; my thought was shut in too. My mind was never in my drudge work, however much I tried to force myself to think in terms of sensation and factory-made phrases. Everything was ugly, the competition, the smoke, the grimy buildings.

And then I saw, floating across the shimmering roadway, a few downy seeds. They came from the direction of the Thames. They swung in the motion of the street-air, and the light glistened on their filaments. One drifted to the pavement at my feet, and released a curved brown seed. By its size I knew it to be that of the Yellow Goatsbeard, or John-go-to-bed-at-noon. Immediately the bus-rattle, the whirr of cab-wheels, and the burnt-oil smell sank away. The seed bloomed in the palm of my hand, and I saw its flowers of pure yellow, and a whitethroat was slipping through the nettles of the ditch. The city was old, but the brown seed was older. Men raised their buildings anew after the great fire, hundreds of years ago; the flower did not change. My mind reached back before the time of the Romans with their tiled baths and chariots; further still, when the first wild settlers made their hut circles by the marge of the wooded river. All the while the dandelion had been blooming so that the seed should be formed. No haste, no strife, no misery: growing in the sunlight. A lovely disk of gold, a summer day, a wandering bee, and the mother-beauty became the child-seed. And this common speck, coming with the moving air to my feet, was as old as the spirit that manifests itself through dull matter in a million million forms and ways.

I dropped the seed and went away, no longer stifled by the weary monotony of my useless work. Then I thought that I would like to keep it, and plant it in some known corner in order to watch its increasing joy as the plant grew in spring, and to take to myself some of its happiness. I searched on the pavement, but it was so small and commonplace I could not see it. A passerby asked if he might help me: had I lost anything and was it of any value--a gold ring, perhaps? I replied in my enthusiasm that it was of more value than a gold ring, hoping (as ever the dreamer has) that he would share my wonder of this seed in London. He was interested and puzzled, so I told him it was the seed of a sort of dandelion that I sought. He stared at me as though I had said that God was in the Strand, and had just spoken to me; and then he turned away with a smile.

THE CHANGE: _A Fantasy of Whitefoot Lane_

(_To J. R._)

He was standing at the edge of the strip of wood, quite still, and looking towards the east as though at something far away. No wind was blowing.

As I approached he did not move, although my feet made a sighing in the long grass. Abruptly he turned.