It Would Perhaps Be Worth While To Form A Society To Investigate All
These Cases Of Persecution In Families, To Discover Whether Or Not They
Afford Any Support To The Notion Of An Inherited Antagonism Of Dark And
Light Races.
The Anthropological, Eugenic and Psychical Research
Societies might consider the suggestion.
XXXI
THE RETURN OF THE CHIFF-CHAFF
(SPRING SADNESS)
On a warm, brilliant morning in late April I paid a visit to a shallow
lakelet or pond five or six acres in extent which I had discovered some
weeks before hidden in a depression in the land, among luxuriant furze,
bramble, and blackthorn bushes. Between the thickets the boggy ground
was everywhere covered with great tussocks of last year's dead and
faded marsh grass - a wet, rough, lonely place where a lover of solitude
need have no fear of being intruded on by a being of his own species,
or even a wandering moorland donkey. On arriving at the pond I was
surprised and delighted to find half the surface covered with a thick
growth of bog-bean just coming into flower. The quaint three-lobed
leaves, shaped like a grebe's foot, were still small, and the
flowerstocks, thick as corn in a field, were crowned with pyramids of
buds, cream and rosy-red like the opening dropwort clusters, and at the
lower end of the spikes were the full-blown singular, snow-white,
cottony flowers - our strange and beautiful water edelweiss.
A group of ancient, gnarled and twisted alder bushes, with trunks like
trees, grew just on the margin of the pond, and by-and-by I found a
comfortable arm-chair on the lower stout horizontal branches
overhanging the water, and on that seat I rested for a long time,
enjoying the sight of that rare unexpected loveliness.
The chiff-chaff, the common warbler of this moorland district, was now
abundant, more so than anywhere else in England; two or three were
flitting about among the alder leaves within a few feet of my head, and
a dozen at least were singing within hearing, chiff-chaffing near and
far, their notes sounding strangely loud at that still, sequestered
spot. Listening to that insistent sound I was reminded of Warde
Fowler's words about the sweet season which brings new life and hope to
men, and how a seal and sanction is put on it by that same small bird's
clear resonant voice. I endeavoured to recall the passage, saying to
myself that in order to enter fully into the feeling expressed it is
sometimes essential to know an author's exact words. Failing in this, I
listened again to the bird, then let my eyes rest on the expanse of red
and cream-coloured spikes before me, then on the masses of flame-yellow
furze beyond, then on something else. I was endeavouring to keep my
attention on these extraneous things, to shut my mind resolutely
against a thought, intolerably sad, which had surprised me in that
quiet solitary place. Surely, I said, this springtime verdure and
bloom, this fragrance of the furze, the infinite blue of heaven, the
bell-like double note of this my little feathered neighbour in the
alder tree, flitting hither and thither, light and airy himself as a
wind-fluttered alder leaf - surely this is enough to fill and to satisfy
any heart, leaving no room for a grief so vain and barren, which
nothing in nature suggested! That it should find me out here in this
wilderness of all places - the place to which a man might come to divest
himself of himself - that second self which he has unconsciously
acquired - to be like the trees and animals, outside of the sad
atmosphere of human life and its eternal tragedy! A vain effort and a
vain thought, since that from which I sought to escape came from nature
itself, from every visible thing; every leaf and flower and blade was
eloquent of it, and the very sunshine, that gave life and brilliance to
all things, was turned to darkness by it.
Overcome and powerless, I continued sitting there with half-closed eyes
until those sad images of lost friends, which had risen with so strange
a suddenness in my mind, appeared something more than mere memories and
mentally-seen faces and forms, seen for a moment, then vanishing. They
were with me, standing by me, almost as in life; and I looked from one
to another, looking longest at the one who was the last to go; who was
with me but yesterday, as it seemed, and stood still in our walk and
turned to bid me listen to that same double note, that little spring
melody which had returned to us; and who led me, waist-deep in the
flowering meadow grasses to look for this same beautiful white flower
which I had found here, and called it our "English edelweiss." How
beautiful it all was! We thought and felt as one. That bond uniting us,
unlike all other bonds, was unbreakable and everlasting. If one had
said that life was uncertain it would have seemed a meaningless phrase.
Spring's immortality was in us; ever-living earth was better than any
home in the stars which eye hath not seen nor heart conceived. Nature
was all in all; we worshipped her and her wordless messages in our
hearts were sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
To me, alone on that April day, alone on the earth as it seemed for a
while, the sweet was indeed changed to bitter, and the loss of those
who were one with me in feeling, appeared to my mind as a monstrous
betrayal, a thing unnatural, almost incredible. Could I any longer love
and worship this dreadful power that made us and filled our hearts with
gladness - could I say of it, "Though it slay me yet will I trust it?"
By-and-by the tempest subsided, but the clouds returned after the rain,
and I sat on in a deep melancholy, my mind in a state of suspense.
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