A Familiar Instance Is That Of The
Consumptive, Whose Doctor And Friends Have Given Him Up And
Wait But To See The End, While He, Deluded Man, Still Sees
Life, An Illimitable, Green, Sunlit Prospect, Stretching Away
To An Infinite Distance Before Him.
Death is a reality only when it is very near, so close on us
that we can actually hear its swift stoaty feet rustling over
the dead leaves, and for a brief bitter space we actually know
that his sharp teeth will presently be in our throat.
Out in the blessed sunshine I listen to a blackcap warbling
very beautifully in a thorn bush near the cottage; then to the
great shout of excited joy of the children just released from
school, as they rush pell-mell forth and scatter about the
village, and it strikes me that the bird in the thorn is not
more blithe-hearted than they. An old rook - I fancy he is
old, a many-wintered crow - is loudly caw-cawing from the elm
tree top; he has been abroad all day in the fields and has
seen his young able to feed themselves; and his own crop full,
and now he is calling to the others to come and sit there to
enjoy the sunshine with him. I doubt if he is happier than
the human inhabitants of the village, the field labourers and
shepherds who have been out toiling since the early hours, and
are now busy in their own gardens and allotments or placidly
smoking their pipes at their cottage doors.
But I could not stay longer in that village of old unhappy
memories and of quiet, happy, uninteresting lives that leave
no memory, so after waiting two more days I forced myself to
say good-bye to my poor old landlady. Or rather to say "Good
night," as I had to start at one o'clock in the morning so as
to have a couple, of hours before sunrise at "The Stones"
on my way to Salisbury. Her latest effort to detain me a day
longer had been made and there was no more to say.
"Do you know," she said in a low mysterious voice, "that it is
not safe to be alone at midnight on this long lonely road - the
loneliest place in all Salisbury Plain?" "The safest," I
said. "Safe as the Tower of London - the protectors of all
England are there." "Ah, there's where the danger is!" she
returned. "If you meet some desperate man, a deserter with
his rifle in his hand perhaps, do you think he would hesitate
about knocking you over to save himself and at the same time
get a little money to help him on his way?"
I smiled at her simulated anxiety for my safety, and set forth
when it was very dark but under a fine starry sky. The
silence, too, was very profound: there was no good-bye from
crowing cock or hooting owl on this occasion, nor did any
cyclist pass me on the road with a flash of light from his
lamp and a tinkle from his bell. The long straight road on
the high down was a dim grey band visible but a few yards
before me, lying across the intense blackness of the earth.
By day I prefer as a rule walking on the turf, but this road
had a rare and peculiar charm at this time. It was now the
season when the bird's-foot-trefoil, one of the commonest
plants of the downland country, was in its fullest bloom, so
that in many places the green or grey-green turf as far as one
could see on every side was sprinkled and splashed with
orange-yellow. Now this creeping, spreading plant, like most
plants that grow on the close-cropped sheep-walks, whose
safety lies in their power to root themselves and live very
close to the surface, yet must ever strive to lift its flowers
into the unobstructed light and air and to overtop or get away
from its crowding neighbours. On one side of the road, where
the turf had been cut by the spade in a sharp line, the plant
had found a rare opportunity to get space and light and had
thrust out such a multitude of bowering sprays, projecting
them beyond the turf, as to form a close band or rope of
orange-yellow, which divided the white road from the green
turf, and at one spot extended unbroken for upwards of a mile.
The effect was so singular and pretty that I had haunted this
road for days for the pleasure of seeing that flower border
made by nature. Now all colour was extinguished: beneath and
around me there was a dimness which at a few yards' distance
deepened to blackness, and above me the pale dim blue sky
sprinkled with stars; but as I walked I had the image of that
brilliant band of yellow colour in my mind.
By and by the late moon rose, and a little later the east
began to grow lighter and the dark down to change
imperceptibly to dim hoary green. Then the exquisite colours
of the dawn once more, and the larks rising in the dim
distance - a beautiful unearthly sound - and so in the end I
came to "The Stones," rejoicing, in spite of a cloud which now
appeared on the eastern horizon to prevent the coming sun from
being seen, that I had the place to myself. The rejoicing
came a little too soon; a very few minutes later other
visitors on foot and on bicycles began to come in, and we all
looked at each other a little blankly. Then a motorcar
arrived, and two gentlemen stepped out and stared at us, and
one suddenly burst out laughing.
"I see nothing to laugh at!" said his companion a little
severely.
The other in a low voice made some apology or explanation
which I failed to catch.
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