For most of them there is doubtless
disappointment and disillusion:
It is a matter of the heart, a
sentiment about which some are not given to speak. He too, my
fellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his
dream not met with so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had
to tell his joy to some one, though it were to a stranger.
Chapter Fifteen: Summer Days on the Otter
The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest,
most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in
England, is that bit of country between the Exe and the Axe
which is watered by the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any
one of a dozen villages found beside these pretty little
rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very
agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the good
fortune which first led him into such a garden. Yet after a
week or two in this luxurious land I began to be dissatisfied
with my surroundings. It was June; the weather was
exceptionally dry and sultry. Vague thoughts, or "visitings"
of mountains and moors and coasts would intrude to make the
confinement of deep lanes seem increasingly irksome. Each day
I wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing whither
the devious path would lead me, never inquiring of any person,
nor consulting map or guide, since to do that is to deprive
oneself of the pleasure of discovery; always with a secret
wish to find some exit as it were - some place beyond the
everlasting wall of high hedges and green trees, where there
would be a wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructed over
leagues of open country to bring me back the sense of lost
liberty. I found only fresh woods and pastures new that were
like the old; other lanes leading to other farm-houses, each
in its familiar pretty setting of orchard and garden; and,
finally, other ancient villages, each with its ivy-grown grey
church tower looking down on a green graveyard and scattered
cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw. Finding
no outlook on any side I went back to the streams, oftenest to
the Otter, where, lying by the hour on the bank, I watched the
speckled trout below me and the dark-plumaged dipper with
shining white breast standing solitary and curtseying on a,
stone in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher
would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely grey
heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared,
although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that
gives the river its name. Still it was good to know that he
was there, and had his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank
under the rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of
overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmer during my stay,
but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter.
Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet
coats and blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds
and shouts of excited people, it had no sooner got half a mile
above Ottery St. Mary, where I had joined the straggling
procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of
me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found.
The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the
dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image
in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.
The watching was not wholly in vain, since there were here
revealed to me things, or aspects of things, that were new. A
great deal depends on atmosphere and the angle of vision. For
instance, I have often looked at swans at the hour of sunset,
on the water and off it, or flying, and have frequently had
them between me and the level sun, yet never have I been
favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, and the
golden-yellow varieties of that majestic waterfowl, whose
natural colour is white. On the other hand, who ever saw a
carrion-crow with crimson eyes? Yet that was one of the
strange things I witnessed on the Otter.
Game is not everywhere strictly preserved in that part of
Devon, and the result is that the crow is not so abhorred and
persecuted a fowl as in many places, especially in the home
counties, where the cult of the sacred bird is almost
universal. At one spot on the stream where my rambles took me
on most days a pair of crows invariably greeted my approach
with a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, flying
from tree to tree repeating their angry girdings until I left
the place. Their nest was in a large elm, and after some days
I was pleased to see that the young had been safely brought
off. The old birds screamed at me no more; then I came on one
of their young in the meadow near the river. His curious
behaviour interested me so much that I stood and watched him
for half an hour or longer. It was a hot, windless day, and
the bird was by himself among the tall flowering grasses and
buttercups of the meadow - a queer gaunt unfinished
hobbledehoy-looking fowl with a head much too big for his
body, a beak that resembled a huge nose, and a very monstrous
mouth. When I first noticed him he was amusing himself by
picking off the small insects from the flowers with his big
beak, a most unsuitable instrument, one would imagine, for so
delicate a task. At the same time he was hungering for more
substantial fare, and every time a rook flew by over him on
its way to or from a neighbouring too populous rookery, the
young crow would open wide his immense red mouth and emit his
harsh, throaty hunger-call.
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