Tickner Edwardes

‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member;
No warmth, no shine, no butterflies, no bees—
November!’

It was the old vicar of Windlecombe who ironically quoted the lines, as we went along our favourite path together—the path that runs between Arun river and the woods.

The first frosts had come and gone, and left us in the midst of the usual revolutions and surprises. In a single day, the ash-trees had cast their whole weight of foliage to earth, green as in summer prime. Though as yet not a single leaf had fallen from the other forest trees, all had changed miraculously. The beech-woods looked like vast smouldering fires. Every elm stood up clothed to its finger-tips in shreds of gold-leaf. Here and there in the wood a dash of vivid scarlet showed where a sycamore had been found and struck by the frost. Larch, willow, maple, birch, each added to the glowing prospect its individual shade of tawny brown, or drab, or yellow. We walked in a land where, for once, the sunshine seemed a superfluous thing. To turn the eye away for a little while from all that intolerable radiance, and rest it on the oak-woods where alone a vestige of summer greenery endured, or on the cool grey stems of the stripped ash-trees, was a pleasure I found myself furtively snatching as we went along, although I left the sentiment discreetly unexpressed. The old vicar stopped, removed his great white panama, and mopped his forehead luxuriously.

‘No warmth, no shine!’ he repeated. ‘Now where in the world could the poor soul have lived who wrote that? And no bees! Why, I can hear them now—thousands of them!’

It was true enough, and with the bees were the November butterflies too, if he could only have seen them. In a sunny corner by the path-side stood an old pollard ash, its trunk rearing up out of the thicket high over our heads, like a huge doubled fist thrust into a green gauntlet of ivy. It was only one tree among innumerable others in the wood, and the same stirring scene was enacting round each of them. Though with everything else the season was autumn, for the ivy it was the heyday of spring. The great tree above us was smothered in golden blossom, the nectar glistening in the sunshine, a rich honey scent burdening the still air. There were not only hive-bees and butterflies rioting at this, the last outdoor feast of the year, but bumble-bees, wasps, drone-flies, every other creature that could fly and had escaped the chills of the November nights. The air was misty with the glint of their wings, and full of a deep sweet song. As we passed along by the wood, we were always either drawing into the zone of this ivy music or leaving it behind us, and never once did it forsake our path all the morning through.

We came at last to a spot where the woods fell back from the waterside, and a stretch of wild, hillocky grassland, overgrown with brier and bramble, bordered the stream. Between the willows that stood upon the bank dipping their yellow autumn tresses in the flood, I could see the placid breadth of the river, with its topsy-turvy vision of the glowing hills beyond—hills that, by reason of the interlacing boughs above, were directly invisible. A lark broke up almost from under our feet, and went slanting aloft into the blue sky, singing as though it were April. The Reverend put a hand upon my arm.

‘Well: what do you see?’ he asked. ‘Everything must be changed since we were here last, and—’‘I see,’ said I, rather disturbed, ‘a painter’s easel straddled in front of your favourite creek—an easel with a three-legged stool before it, but no painter. I see also, a little farther on, a big white umbrella, with the top of a sombrero just showing above it, and a great cloud of tobacco smoke drifting out of it, but here again no other sign of painter or man. Shall we go back?’

But he was for pushing on. As we approached the umbrella, a throaty tenor voice was uplifted to a weird foreign strain:—

‘En passant par Square Montholon,
La digue-digue donc! la digue-digue donc!
Je rencontre une jeune tendron!
La digue-digue—

‘Superb! Su-perb! If only I could excite myself to— Ah! if only that tumultuous thrill, which I know always presages—

‘la digue-digue donc!
J’offre tout de suite ma main—ye
La brigue-donc-dain-ye—’

Or at least so the gibberish sounded. But now it suddenly left off. A palette went rattling to the ground. The short squat figure of the owner of the caravan burst into view.

‘Grewes! I cannot do it, I really cannot! I am not sufficiently inspired to-day! I am not great enough! I— Oh! I beg your pardon! I thought it was my friend’s step. Why! the water-bearer, to be sure! How do you do?’

It was my first glimpse of Spelthorne by light of day, and I owned to myself frankly that the night had been kind to him. A fringe of yellow-grey hair escaped in all directions beyond the brim of his hat. He had a florid, puffy, indeterminate face, eyes at once selfish and sentimental, and a week-old beard still further ostracised a chin already too retiring. Like his companion, he wore a gold watch-chain of heavy calibre, with a bunch of seals and trinkets upon it; but his clothes, that in the darkness had seemed much tattered and torn, now appeared entirely disreputable. They were, moreover, covered with finger-marks of paint, to which he was now adding, as he ceremoniously welcomed us.

‘Art—what is it?’ he cried, removing his hat, and running his fingers through his hair, when presently, at his earnest invitation, the Reverend had sat himself down before the easel, and was making a grave show of inspecting the canvas on it. ‘And the artist—where is he?’ He made a dramatic pause.

‘Where indeed?’ quoth the Reverend, grimly staring before him.‘You see this picture?’—wagging a chrome-yellow thumb over the canvas—‘nine-tenths of it are the work of one exalted day: the rest the unilluminated toil of a week! Strange that we should be made so! At one moment, like Prometheus, stealing the very fire from heaven, and at the next— Ah! but only an artist can really comprehend!’

He filled his pipe, with a resigned, quiet sadness.

‘Now Grewes—that is my friend who is travelling with me—’ he went on; ‘Grewes, poor fellow, he never realises the difficulties in his path because—because— Let me put it in the kindest way. Because—well, the truth is, poor Grewes has mistaken his calling. No better fellow in the world, you know! A hard plodder: always trying, always doing his best; but—but— You see, that brings us back to what I said just now: art and the artist—where will you find them? and what are they?’

A slight cough sounded in our rear. Looking round, I saw that the long lean man had returned to his easel unmarked by any of us. The Reverend got abruptly to his feet.

‘Well,’ said he, ‘you have a great responsibility. Supreme gifts in a man mean that much will be required of him. So bend your back to it. Good day!’As we passed by the other easel, its owner looked up pleasantly, but his brush kept busily to work.

‘Don’t go yet,’ he entreated, ‘I am so glad to— But you won’t mind, will you, if I go on with— You see, I have not had very long at it this morning. Spelthorne, he was getting so anxious about the stew, that I—I had to run back to the caravan and— Or else he would have— It wouldn’t have done, of course, to let him go himself. When once he has got into the mood, the slightest little thing—’

He rambled on thus, scarcely ever finishing a sentence, and all the while dabbing away industriously at his sketch. He, too, I had never yet beheld in daylight; but, unlike his friend, sunshine rather improved his appearance than otherwise. It could not fill up the gaps in his coat, nor had it a lustrating effect upon his linen; yet it revealed in his long, cadaverous face, and in his mild, sad eyes, a delicacy, a sensibility, that I had not remarked in them before. As he talked, the old vicar studied his voice attentively.

‘Spelthorne,’ he went on, in his curious, disjointed, breathless way, ‘Spelthorne, his work is so immeasurably— He has such a demand for it that— And I am always so glad, of course, to do any little thing to save him trouble. I—I really think no man in the world ever had a better friend.’

The Reverend was standing close behind him now. He laid a hand gently on Grewes’s dilapidated shoulder.

‘Don’t hurry,’ he said, ‘at least don’t hurry with your mind. Above all, don’t worry: it is all coming beautifully. When did you see your doctor last?’

The question, unexpected as it was by myself, seemed to surprise Grewes infinitely more. The blood got up into two bright points in his cheeks. His brushes rattled against his palette. He looked round at the old vicar tremulously.

‘Doctor? Why, do you— What makes you think I— Oh! I am very well indeed; never better.’

He stopped, looking up into the sightless, kindly blue eyes that appeared to be as steadily gazing down into his. There was a moment’s silence. And then, if I ever saw real untrammelled joy spring into a human face, I saw it in his.

‘Do you really think so?’ he cried. ‘You think I— Well, sometimes lately I have thought myself that—’

Spelthorne’s voice grumbled out from behind the umbrella.

‘Now, my dear Grewes, have I not frequently told you that, though I am willing to lend you anything I have, I always expect—’

Grewes sprang to his feet.

‘It is his cadmium,’ he whispered, horrified. ‘I borrowed it, and never— How very annoying for him!’

‘Now there is a strange thing,’ said the Reverend musingly, as we trudged on our way together. ‘A man well on in a rapid decline, and neither knowing nor caring about it; as glad, indeed, to hear the thing confirmed as if some one had left him a legacy! A month, did you say? Then he may never go out of Windlecombe by the road.’

We made a long day’s round, taking meadow, riverside, wood, and downland in our walk, and reaching home again only when the lights were beginning to star the misty combe; for we had a special object in our journey. To the townsman it may well seem as fruitless a task to seek wild flowers in November, as to go ‘gathering nuts in May.’ Well, here is a list of what we found in one November day’s ramble about a single village in highland Sussex—fifty-seven distinct species, and of many we could have gathered, not single flowers, but whole handfuls, had we willed. Nor is the list an exhaustive one either for the district or the time of year. Bringing more eyesight, leisure, and diligence to the task, no doubt a fuller inventory could be made in any mild season.—

II

There has come a spell of chilly, overcast weather, and the long dark evenings have settled upon us at a stroke. At twilight to-day, as I came into this silent-floored, comfortable room, and lit the candles on my work-table, it seemed strange that I should do so, and yet the ordinary life and traffic of the village be still going on outside. Hitherto, so it appeared, the village quiet had fallen always before the need for candlelight. I had looked out before drawing the curtains close, and heard not a step stirring, seen the windows dark in the lower storeys of the cottages, and here and there a pale light glimmering behind the drawn blinds of upper rooms, for your true Sussex villager hates to sleep in the dark. But to-night some new order of things seemed to have been suddenly ordained. Footsteps hurried or leisurely, voices old and young, the rumble of wheels, even the distant chime of Tom Clemmer’s hammer—all the sounds that go to make up the common rumour of work-a-day life in a village, were abroad in the air; though already the hills were lost in the gloaming: the white chrysanthemums by the garden-gate were nothing but a dim blotch on the murky autumn night.

I lit the candles—home-made candles of yellow beeswax—and set them on their little mats of plaited green leather. I got out a new quire of foolscap, sobering in its empty whiteness, its word-hungry look. I arranged the ruler, the old cut-glass inkpot, the painted leaden frog that serves for paperweight, the elephant that carries a penwiper as houdah, ash-tray and tobacco-jar and sheaf of favourite pipes, all in their proper stations. I drew the old oak elbow-chair sideways to the table—sideways because that was non-committal: too squarely business-like an approach in the outset, as I know of old time and cost, often scatters the fairies into the next county, and you may chew to shreds a whole quiverful of goose-quills before they again come crowding and whispering curiously about your ears.

But having made all these exact preparations, I chanced to turn to the open window for a final look down the street, and knew at once that I was lost. It was the steady far-off song from Tom Clemmer’s anvil that overcame me more than anything, and the red glow amidst the elder-boughs that overhung the forge. But all else conspired in one basilisk-like lure to get me forth. The busy wending to and fro, and the cheery commerce of tongues in the darkness, footsteps and voices that I knew as well as I knew my own; twinkling lights in cottages, the illumined windows of the little sweetstuff shop, the cobbler’s den, the inn, the village store; the church lit up for evensong, and the bell quietly tolling, as it seemed, somewhere far up in the black void of the sky; again, the smell of the night, that moist, earthy fragrance of decaying leaves, and tang of frost, and pungent scent of simmering fire-logs from stacks new-broached on these first chilly evenings in November—it all ranged itself together before me as something, ever present and constant in my life, that I too often disregarded, took for granted—the jumble of thatch and red-tiled roof and grey flint wall, sheep and lowing kine and cackling poultry, bevy of kindly human hearts, sharp tongues and willing hands, all wedged up together in one green crevice of the hills, and calling themselves collectively by the old South-Saxon name of Windlecombe.

I went first of all a few strides out over the green and looked backward, rightly to estimate, if I could, my own part in the little communal symphony. The bluff bulk of the house, with its coven roof and many gables, stood dark against the greyer darkness of the hills, and behind it rose sable elm plumes fast thinning under the recent autumn chills. From its windows shone lights of varying significance. There were my own red-shaded candles with a corner of a crammed bookcase dimly visible above them; there were naked kitchen lights with ware of polished pewter and copper glinting behind, and a pleasant clatter of crockery; there was a window where the light burnt red and low and wavering as from a spent hearth, and a quiet ripple of music from a piano keeping it congenial company; there was the window high up in the great gable, whose flickering light cast a bunch of head-shadows on the ceiling, suggestive of nursery bedtime, and fairy-tales round the fire. It was all very reassuring and enheartening. Yes: the old White House had its integral part to play in this good English game of Neighbourhood, and played it passing well.

Round Tom Clemmer’s forge a group of village lads was gathered, all looking on at the work with an interest that amounted well-nigh to fascination. As I came up, and stood unobserved in the shadow of the elder-tree, there was before me a picture in which two colours only were represented glowing crimson and deep velvety black. Young Tom stood, pincers in hand, watching the iron in the fire. Behind him his apprentice laboured at the bellows. With every wheezy puff, the furnace roared out an imprecation, and spat hot cinders upon the floor.

It was a large piece of metal that Tom had in work, something out of the ordinary run of his business, it seemed, and he turned it and shifted it with an anxious eye. No one spoke a word, for somehow we all knew that a crisis was coming, and we were expected to hold our tongues until it was victoriously past. At length the moment came. Tom thrust the pincers into the blaze and drew the white-hot iron out upon the anvil. Immediately the apprentice left the bellows, seized a great hammer, and swinging it over his head, began to let fall on the metal an unceasing rain of mighty blows. As Tom twisted and manoeuvred the glowing mass about with all the strength of his wiry arms, it lengthened, squared itself in the middle, flattened out at each end, bent into complicated curves, then turned upon itself and was united miraculously head to tail. Still gripping the writhing thing with one hand, Tom took a punch in the other, and pointed it to various parts of the work; and wherever he pointed, the hammer drove a bolt-hole clean and true through the rose-red iron. Finally Tom lifted the finished piece above his head, and came striding to the door with it. The crowd of onlookers scattered right and left. Out into the darkness he plunged, and straight to the pool by the roadside. We saw the thing poised for a moment like a mammoth fire-fly over the water; and then, with a roar and an angry splutter, it vanished into the pond.

It was scarcely six o’clock, and already the night was pitch-black, with a creeping, chilly air from the north. It was not loitering weather. People were moving briskly on their several ways. Cottage doors were shut, and windows diamonded with moisture. Roving about with no settled purpose but to humour the neighbourly fancy, and to identify myself with the evening life of the place, I presently came full tilt at a corner upon Farmer Coles.

‘The very man!’ said he, barring the way jovially with his stout oak stick. ‘Didn’t ye promise me that when I killed that four-year-old wether, ye’d come and take a bite along o’ us? Well, ’tis a saddle to-night, and I was on the road to fetch ye. Round about, man, and straight for the faarm!’

Now, when a South-Down flock-master—whose pedigree sheep are famous throughout the county—bids you to his table, with the announcement that the principal dish is to be mutton, there is only one thing to do, that is, if you are human, and of sane mind. I turned and went along with him without demur.

‘Jane’s sister and her man be with us,’ said Farmer Coles, as we left the village behind and mounted the steep lane that led to the farmhouse. ‘And Weaverly ’ull be there; and the gells be home, so we wunt lack for company. I don’t know as ye ever met Jane’s sister’s man?—Parrett by name. No? Wunnerful well-eddicated man, though, he be.’

We found the Rev. Mr. Weaverly, a shining gem of purest water, set in the ring of hearty country faces that surrounded the drawing-room fire. The broad-shouldered, broad-faced man, with a mat of sandy beard and a very bald head, who occupied the great armchair in the corner, I judged to be Mr. Parrett. Mrs. Coles and her sister, both comfortable of mien and rigidly ceremonious of visage, sat side by side in flowing black silk gowns, knitting as for a wager. The younger members of the household, who filled the interspaces of the circle, fidgeted in a constraint of merry silence, exchanging covert glances of boredom, and all obviously pricking ears for the first sound of the dinner-gong. This clanged out behind us almost at the moment of our entry into the room, providentially cutting short the first amenities of greeting; and before my fingers had done aching from Mr. Parrett’s grip, I found myself sitting at the loaded board with Mrs. Parrett’s voluminous drapery overflowing me on the one side, and, on the other, her husband’s great brown barricade of an elbow securely fencing me in.

‘Mutton,’ observed Mr. Weaverly presently, by way of filling up a pause in the conversation due to our all watching with secret anxiety Farmer Coles’s attack on the joint, ‘mutton, and on a Monday! You remember the little game of alliteration we played at the school treat, Mrs. Coles? Really, we could make an admirable sequence here! Mutton, and Monday, and Miss Matilda sitting by my side, and—and—if it were only March instead of—’‘And we’ll soon all be munchin’ of it, sir!’ cried Farmer Coles. ‘Ha, ha, ha! That’s the best Hem o’ all! Gravy, George?’

At the inclusion of her name in the sequence, the eldest Miss Coles had blushed, then let her glance demurely droop upon her chrysanthemum-wreathed bosom. It was a moment of exceeding pride and satisfaction to her, for here was Mr. Weaverly beside her—an incontestable, a beautiful fact—while Miss Sweet for once was half a mile away. Now she looked up coyly.

‘I think,’ she hesitated, ‘I could suggest a— Oh! I know a lovely one!’

Mr. Weaverly laid down knife and fork, to rub his hands delightedly.

‘Do tell us!’ he murmured. ‘I am positively longing to—’

The eldest Miss Coles turned him glamorous eyes.

‘Marmaduke!’ she said.

And I think I was the only one present to realise the whole ingenuity of the manoeuvre. For she had contrived here, in the open family circle, before a dozen people, yet with entire meetness and propriety, to address Mr. Weaverly by his Christian name.

As the meal progressed, and tongues became generally loosened, Mr. Parrett—whose silence, except as regarded his hearty application to his food, had so far remained unbroken—now essayed to contribute his share of the talk. His first effort was a startling one.

‘D-d-d’ he began, smiling over his shoulder at me, ‘d-do you l-l-l—’ He stopped, and gazed helplessly towards his wife.

‘Like, dear?’ suggested Mrs. Parrett, softly.

‘N-no! I was agoing t-t-to ask ye if ye l-l-l—’

‘Lend, then?’

‘Hur, hur! Emma, I don’t want to b-b-borrow nauthin’ o’ the gentleman! It was just to ask if he l-l-lived—there y’ are!—in W-w-w— Whatsay, Jane?’

‘’Tis apple-pie, George. Or maybe ye’d sooner try the—’

‘Pie, Jane! Pie, my d-dear! Pie, if you please, mum! An’ a double dose o’ sh-sh-shuggar. They allers says—don’t they, sir?—as if a man has a sweet-t-t-t—’

‘Sweetheart, dear?’

‘Oo, ay!’ laughed Mr. Parrett, suddenly inspired. He looked across the table roguishly at Mr. Weaverly and Matilda, and all glances followed his. ‘Ah, well: n-n-never mind! We was all young once, and—’

Mrs. Coles deftly drew the fire of attention away from the absorbed, unconscious pair.

‘William, dear; Emma has nothing in her glass. And there you sit, staring at the cheese as if—as if it were only for show, and as wooden as you are! And do pray pass the old ale to Mr.—’

‘Oh, deplorably, deplorably so!’ sighed Mr. Weaverly to the rapt Matilda. ‘Over and over again I have remonstrated with her, but all in vain, I fear. Each time I have said, “Mrs. Gates, if you will feed little children on new hot bread, and red herrings, and”—only think of it!—“beer, you will find not only their physical but their moral nature entirely—”’

It is strange how, in a room full of heterogeneous talk, the attention of a quiet listener flits uncontrollably from one quarter to another. Much as I was interested in Mrs. Gates’s domestic policy, I lost it here, to find myself in the rick-yard, taking part, against my will, in some complicated sporting affray.

‘And there were three of them, father, in the trough; and I crept up and got the gun-barrel through a hole in the side of the sty, and just as the old buck-rat—’

And then it was Mr. Parrett again.

‘Emma ’ull tell ye b-b-better ’n me, Jane. It came hoot-tooting round the corner, and afore I could s-s-s—’

‘Stop, George?’

‘N-n-nonsense!—afore I could s-s-s—’

‘Seize hold o’ the—?’‘Emma, do bide quiet!—afore I could s-s-say Jack Robinson, the ould mare, she b-b-backed upon her harnches, and she—’

And from Miss Matilda:

‘Oh! I should so love to, Mr. Weaverly! Is there a very beautiful view? And could we walk there and back in an afternoon, do you think?’

And from Farmer Coles, folding up his napkin: ‘Well, if no one wunt have no more—’

The rest was lost in the rustle of Mrs. Coles’s skirts, as she uprose.

‘And now, William dear, I think we ladies will leave you to your smoke. And when you are quite ready, we will have a rubber and a little music.’

In the drawing-room presently, the farmer and his wife, and Mr. and Mrs. Parrett, sat down to a solemn, silent game of whist. A ‘Happy Family’ party made a vortex of merriment in a far corner. At the piano stood Mr. Weaverly, translating into soft melodious trifles such songs as ‘The Wolf’ and ‘Hearts of Oak.’ As for me, I was happy in the great chair with the family portrait album, full of early Victorian photographs, which I sincerely believe to be amongst the most fascinating and informing productions of all that fertile reign. But after an hour of this inspiring occupation, I was suddenly roused to the contemplation of a still greater wonder. One of the card-players had spoken, and that sharply.

‘Emma! Emma, my dear!’

I strolled over, and watched the play. Something had happened to disturb Mr. Parrett, for though his face was turned from me, I could see that his bald head had taken on a purple hue. And gradually, as the game progressed, the mystery became clear.

‘Emma, my d-d-dear! Emma!’

It was Mr. Parrett’s voice again, and this time with a sharper ring of warning and remonstrance. Two or three times in the next half-hour he spoke thus, and each time now I was able to detect the cause. Mrs. Parrett was cheating. Continually her neck craned for a sidelong view of her opponents’ cards. She revoked unblushingly. Once I could have sworn I saw a card-corner sticking out of a fold in her silken lap. The aces she seemed to be trying to mark with her thumb-nail. And all the time, though Mr. Parrett got momentarily redder and more wrathful, Farmer Coles and his wife sat serenely smiling, evidently well used to dear Emma and her little harmless, eccentric ways.

III

Here is a winter’s day already, and still November. As I looked forth at sunrise this morning, the whole village was white with frost. I could hear the ice in the wheel-ruts crackling under the tread of passers-by. A single thrush piped forlornly somewhere in the dense thicket of the churchyard. And as I leaned out into the nipping blast, a word came up to me, bandied between a trudging labourer and his friend, a word that brought with it an entire new sheaf of thoughts and memories. ‘More ’n ’aaf like Christmas, bean’t ut, Bill?’ It was said but in jest, and that unthinkingly. Yet, by the calendar, as a glance now told me, Christmas was scarce a month away.

While the sun was yet no more than a white spot in the faint gold mists of morning, I took the lane that led to the Downs. It was strange to see how the frost had missed all the bright-hued berries in the hedgerows, and how the ivy-leaves were only rimmed with white. It was the same with the prickly holly foliage. The spines were thickly encrusted, while the dark green membranes of the leaves had given no fingerhold to the frost. But the colour of the grass, and dead dry herbage, by the wayside was completely blotted out. Every blade and twig stood up stark and white against its fellow; and here it was easy to see which way the frozen air had been drifting all night long, because on the windward side the pale accretion was thicker: in the more exposed places it more than doubled the natural girth of the stems.

Where the dew-pond lay, at the top of the hill, far above the swimming lowland mists, there must have been bright sunshine from the very first; for here the veneer of frost had melted into dewdrops, that flashed back a thousand prismatic rays amidst the emerald of the grass at every step. But behind each upstanding tussock, the frost still held as white and thick as ever. The water, too, in the pond was still frozen over. As I came up to the rail, a flock of starlings rose whirring over my head. They had been waiting there on the sunny side of the bank for the ice to melt round the pond edges, and thither they would return to slake their morning thirst, as soon as I passed on.

Keen and unkindly blew the blast, so that one must keep ever moving to withstand the chill of it. Looking round me on the waste of hills, I could see that the northern slopes still retained their wintry hue, though all those facing to the sun were intensely green. Below in the valley only the oak-woods kept their bronze stain of autumn. Every other tree, the hedges that divided ploughlands and meadows, the winding line of thicket marking the course of the river, all looked bare and dark in the glistening pallor of the sun. The river itself, between the broad water-meadows, seemed like a river of ink.

“The Ferryman’s Cottage”

As I took in all the cheerless, void purity of what lay below me, thinking to myself that this indeed was winter, there came a sudden cawing and dawing high up in the frosty steel-blue dome of the sky; and here again was confirmation of that unenlivening fact. A great company of rooks and jackdaws was streaming by, but with none of its summer zest and purpose. The throng made a general progress towards the south, yet it was obviously doing little more than killing time, spinning out the business of a doubtful journey into the semblance of a morning’s task. Instead of going straight forward in one steady strong tide, the birds were incessantly veering back in wide circles, crossing and re-crossing each other’s paths aimlessly, and weaving a mazy dark pattern on the sky.

I watched this dubious host from the hill-top until it vanished in the eye of the sun; and then, fairly beaten at last by the razor-edged north wind, turned and went back to the village. It was winter again, in very truth; and there was little sense or profit in blinking it. I would strike my flag now, as I had struck it often before. And the flag with me was the little staging of fernery that still concealed the yawning blackness of my study hearth. I pulled it all down and stowed it away; and by and by, when the ash logs were sizzling and glowing, and the sparks were volleying up the flue, and a living warmth pervading the room, I plucked up new heart and courage:

‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member;
No warmth, no shine—’

It was all as false now as it must ever have been. And as for butterflies and bees, what but a sick fancy could crave for such delicacies out of season?