They Were Large Enough To Have The Charm Of Vague, Indefinite
Extension, And Yet All Could Be Distinctly Seen.
Large squares of green
corn that was absorbing its yellow from the sunlight; chess squares,
irregularly placed, of brown furrows; others of rich blood-red trifolium;
others of scarlet sainfoin and blue lucerne, gardens of scarlet poppies
here and there.
Not all of these, of course, at once, but they followed
so quickly in the summer days that they seemed to be one and the same
pictures, and had you painted them altogether on the same canvas,
together with ripe wheat, they would not have seemed out of place. Never
was such brilliant colour; it was chalk there, and on chalk the colours
are always clearer, the poppies deeper, the yellow mustard and charlock a
keener yellow; the air, too, is pellucid. Waggons going along the tracks;
men and women hoeing; ricks of last year still among clumps of trees,
where the chimneys and gables of farmhouses are partly visible; red-tiled
barns away yonder; a shepherd moving his hurdles; away again the black
funnel of an idle engine, and the fly-wheel above hawthorn bushes - all so
distinct and close under that you might almost fear to breathe for fear
of dimming the mirror. The few white clouds sailing over seemed to belong
to the fields on which their shadows were now foreshortened, now
lengthened, as if they were really part of the fields, like the crops,
and the azure sky so low down as to be the roof of the house and not at
all a separate thing. And the sun a lamp that you might almost have
pushed along his course faster with your hand; a loving and interesting
sun that wanted the wheat to ripen, and stayed there in the slow-drawn
arc of the summer day to lend a hand. Sun and sky and clouds close here
and not across any planetary space, but working with us in the same
field, shoulder to shoulder, with man. Then you might see the white doves
yonder flutter up suddenly out of the trees by the farm, little flecks of
white clouds themselves, and everywhere all throughout the plain an
exquisite silence, a delicious repose, not one clang or harshness of
sound to shatter the beauty of it. There you might stand on the high down
among the thyme and watch it, hour after hour, and still no interruption;
nothing to break it up. It was something like the broad folio of an
ancient illuminated manuscript, in gold, gules, blue, green; with
foliated scrolls and human figures, somewhat clumsy and thick, but
quaintly drawn, and bold in their intense realism.
There was another wheat-field by the side of which I used to walk
sometimes in the evenings, as the grains in the cars began to grow firm.
The path ran for a mile beside it - a mile of wheat in one piece - all
those million million stalks the same height, all with about the same
number of grains in each car, all ripening together. The hue of the
surface travelled along as you approached; the tint of yellow shifted
farther like the reflection of sunlight on water, but the surface was
really much the same colour everywhere. It seemed a triumph of culture
over such a space, such regularity, such perfection of myriads of plants
springing in their true lines at the same time, each particular ear
perfect, and a mile of it. Perfect work with the plough, the drill, the
harrow in every detail, and yet such breadth. Let your hand touch the
ears lightly as you walk - drawn through them as if over the side of a
boat in water - feeling the golden heads. The sparrows fly out every now
and then ahead; some of the birds like their corn as it hardens, and some
while it is soft and full of milky sap. There are hares within, and many
a brood of partridge chicks that cannot yet use their wings. Thick as the
seed itself the feathered creatures have been among the wheat since it
was sown. Finches more numerous than the berries on the hedges; sparrows
like the finches multiplied by finches, linnets, rooks, like leaves on
the trees, wood-pigeons whose crops are like bushel baskets for capacity;
and now as it ripens the multitude will be multiplied by legions, and as
it comes to the harvest there is a fresh crop of sparrows from the nests
in the barns, you may see a brown cloud of them a hundred yards long.
Besides which there were the rabbits that ate the young green blades, and
the mice that will be busy in the sheaves, and the insects from
spring-time to granary, a nameless host uncounted. A whole world, as it
were, let loose upon the wheat, to eat, consume, and wither it, and yet
it conquers the whole world. The great field you see was filled with gold
corn four feet deep as a pitcher is filled with water to the brim. Of
yore the rich man is said, in the Roman classic, to have measured his
money, so here you might have measured it by the rood. The sunbeams sank
deeper and deeper into the wheatears, layer upon layer of light, and the
colour deepened by these daily strokes. There was no bulletin to tell the
folk of its progress, no Nileometer to mark the rising flood of the wheat
to its hour of overflow. Yet there went through the village a sense of
expectation, and men said to each other, 'We shall be there soon.' No one
knew the day - the last day of doom of the golden race; every one knew it
was nigh. One evening there was a small square piece cut at one side, a
little notch, and two shocks stood there in the twilight. Next day the
village sent forth its army with their crooked weapons to cut and slay.
It used to be an era, let me tell you, when a great farmer gave the
signal to his reapers; not a man, woman, or child that did not talk of
that.
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