It was early in June that I had an urgent call from Ben asking if I would help her. A Canadian woman had been in to say that her husband, who was an invalid, had one mastering wish, and that was to hear the nightingale again before he returned home, probably for ever. Ben knew nothing of nightingales; but she wanted to oblige, and would I take the affair in hand?—my acquaintance with those birds being (I assume) notorious.

I agreed.

Mr. Measure was rather a tragic figure. A wealthy Canadian of cultured tastes, he had been stricken when only in the fifties, and this was a last visit to Europe to see once again the beautiful things that he knew so well and would regret so keenly. For "Dying," as he said to me, "would be nothing if were it not for what we leave behind."

They had been to Florence, to Siena, to Perugia, to Venice, to Rome, to little quiet places among the Italian hills that had old associations, to Chamounix again, to Avignon and Arles, to Puy-de-DÔme. In a day or so they were to sail for Quebec, where his home was and where his grave would be.

He had but one wish left as regarded his English visit, and that was to hear the nightingale. It had suddenly come to him as he read in a paper some reference to their season of song—he had had the idea that it was earlier and now finished—and his wife had chanced upon Ben's signboard and had asked for information there: as it happened, very fortunately.

I called at their hotel to discuss our plan of action. Mr. Measure, poor fellow, was clearly very ill; he was thin and weak, but his eye was bright and he was full of enthusiasm for the adventure. He did not want to sleep in a country inn, but did not mind how late he returned to London. Would I mind driving in a motor ambulance with himself and his wife?

Not at all.

His idea was that we should leave London after a very early dinner and go straight to a likely spot, hear the nightingale, and drive back. If we heard one sooner, so much the better.

"I know of a practically certain place," I said, "but it is a little late. A fortnight ago would have been better. Remember, I can't promise."

It was a favourable evening on which we slid away from Mr. Measure's hotel. I had my mind on a particular meadow in Sussex, just north of the Downs, skirted by a lane. This meadow is surrounded by a high, untrimmed hedge with oaks at intervals, and there is a tinkling stream close by. A few cottages here and there in the neighbourhood complete the nightingales' requirements, for they are fond of human sounds. In this meadow, which has never disappointed me yet—at any rate in late April and all May—nightingales have the enchanting habit of singing in threes, one against the other at the points of the triangle.

Knowing by bitter experience how useless it is to squander minute directions on such insensitive, non-receptive, unobservant, and unremembering creatures as chauffeurs, I sat on the box; not sorry either, for it was warm, and talking in a car is fatiguing.

We left London by way of Battersea Bridge and kept on the Brighton road as far as Hand Cross—over Walton Heath and down Reigate Hill and through Crawley. At Hand Cross we branched to the right, leaving Cuckfield on our left, and came through Bolney to Albourne and due south as far as Muddles Wood cross-roads. At intervals I had fancied I heard the magic notes and had slackened the car—you know how easy it is to imagine this sound—but always it was a false alarm, or the song had been only of momentary duration.

At Muddles Wood we turned to the right. The air was warm and there was no wind, only a sighing of the earth. The moon was now bright and the great bulk of the South Downs, sweetly undulating, rose against the quiet sky. We crept slowly along for a quarter of a mile and then dipped sharp to the left for fifty yards and stopped. This was the spot.

For a while there was not a sound, save now and then a rustle in the undergrowth, the whistle of a far-distant train, a car on the Henfield road, an owl's hoot, or a dog barking.

I had begun to be assured of the worst when there came a liquid note. Then silence again; and then suddenly a burst of song. It was very brief, and there was again a disconcerting silence; but then another singer replied, and gradually their songs grew more steady. They behaved like angels; they went through everything in the repertory, and although their voices were not in the perfection of mid-May, they were beautiful enough, and one of them repeated that plaintive single cry seventeen times.

Even the chauffeur was impressed. He had heard about nightingales all his life, but this was his first experience of them. Like a canary, wasn't it?

I did not intrude upon the sick man until the time came to go. He was in an ecstasy and I wished that Ben could see him. It would have been a triumph for "The Beck and Call."

"But I should call that song a happy one," he said. "Certainly not melancholy, except very rarely. Its charm is its volume and exultation, and the careless ease of it."

I agreed. "I am against Matthew Arnold here," I said. "To me the truest line about the bird in our poetry is in William Cory:—

That's what they are: pleasant voices, triumphantly 'telling the world.'"

"Even Keats," he said, "makes the song a little too voluptuous and passionate, although how true to say that the nightingale 'among the leaves' has never known

He paused, and then repeated, almost in a whisper, the lines:—

To me, though he was but a stranger, these lines, as he murmured them, were, since I knew his secret, infinitely pathetic; to his poor wife they must have meant anguish.

The next morning I called at the hotel to see how Mr. Measure was and to bid him good-bye. He re-expressed his gratitude for the night's entertainment, and said he should die with that music in his ears. I reproved him for talking of dying soon with such certainty.

"Dying men," he said, "can prepare for death with more courage, composure, and acceptance than those who watch them, and I have no doubt that you are sorrier for me than I am for myself. Not that I want to die, but I know I must. I won't be insincere about it. I know I am going to die very shortly after reaching home, because I have the means of death always with me. I know that my trouble is incurable and that it is getting worse. Would you have me a burden on those around me? My mind, as I grow weaker, will be less clear, less trustworthy; would you cherish decay?"

I had no rebutting argument to set up.

"I have always," he went on, "dreaded this disease, and when I was hale and strong I prepared accordingly. I have no fears; any postponement is due to the fact that I want to see my lawyer again and be at home. Otherwise I should take a dose to-day.

"The greatest drawback to suicide," he continued, with a whimsical smile, "is not want of decision, but a dislike of giving trouble. If I were to commit suicide now, it would have to be done in a hotel, and that isn't fair to the hotel. Nor should I care to be found lying in a field: that would mean a shock to someone and too much newspaper squalor after. Also a public mortuary. In any well-organized State there would, of course, be a great pool of quicklime into which, after taking poison, we could roll; but lacking that we must behave ourselves as best we can. By waiting till I get to Canada, I can complete my will, fold my arms, and die like a gentleman in bed."

"While admiring," I replied, "your determination and nice taste, I would remind you that next spring the nightingales will be singing again. You might still be alive and well enough to hear them."

"I refuse," he said, "to linger on, a wreck."

And so passed Mr. Adrian Measure from my life.