They Had Thus Secured The Prize For Which
They Had Gone So Many Thousands Of Miles And Had Toiled For So Many
Years, But They Were Certainly Not Happy.
Poor Mr. Blake, cut off from
his fellow-creatures by that wall that stood before him, had found
companionship
In the bottle, and was seen less and less of by his
neighbours; and when his wife came to us to spend two or three days
"for a change," although her home was only a couple of hours' ride
away, the reason probably was that her husband was in one of his bouts
and had made the place intolerable to her. I remember that she always
came to us with a sad, depressed look on her face, but after a few
hours she would recover her spirits and grow quite cheerful and
talkative. And of an evening when there was music she would sometimes
consent, after some persuasion, to give the company a song. That was a
joy to us youngsters, as she had a thin cracked voice that always at
the high notes went off into a falsetto. Her favourite air was "Home,
sweet Home," and her rendering in her wailing cracked voice was as
great a feast to us as the strange laugh of our grotesque neighbour
Gandara.
And that is all I can say about her. But now when I remember that
episode of the snake in the orchard, she looks to me not unbeautiful
in memory, and her voice in the choir invisible sounds sweet enough.
CHAPTER XVI
A SERPENT MYSTERY
A new feeling about snakes - Common snakes of the country - A barren
weedy patch - Discovery of a large black snake - Watching for its
reappearance - Seen going to its den - The desire to see it again - A
vain search - Watching a bat - The black serpent reappears at my feet -
Emotions and conjectures - Melanism - My baby sister and a strange
snake - The mystery solved.
It was not until after the episode related in the last chapter and the
discovery that a serpent was not necessarily dangerous to human
beings, therefore a creature to be destroyed at sight and pounded to a
pulp lest it should survive and escape before sunset, that I began to
appreciate its unique beauty and singularity. Then, somewhat later, I
met with an adventure which produced another and a new feeling in me,
that sense of something supernatural in the serpent which appears to
have been universal among peoples in a primitive state of culture and
still survives in some barbarous or semi-barbarous countries, and in
others, like Hindustan, which have inherited an ancient civilization.
The snakes I was familiar with as a boy up to this time were all of
comparatively small size, the largest being the snake-with-a-cross,
described in an early chapter. The biggest specimen I have ever found
of this ophidian was under four feet in length; but the body is thick,
as in all the pit vipers. Then, there was the green-and-black snake
described in the last chapter, an inhabitant of the house, which
seldom exceeded three feet; and another of the same genus, the most
common snake in the country. One seldom took a walk or ride on the
plain without seeing it. It was in size and shape like our common
grass-snake, and was formerly classed by naturalists in the same
genus, Coronella. It is quite beautiful, the pale greenish-grey body,
mottled with black, being decorated with two parallel bright red lines
extending from the neck to the tip of the fine-pointed tail. Of the
others the most interesting was a still smaller snake, brightly
coloured, the belly with alternate bands of crimson and bright blue.
This snake was regarded by every one as exceedingly venomous and most
dangerous on account of its irascible temper and habit of coming at
you and hissing loudly, its head and neck raised, and striking at your
legs. But this was all swagger on the snake's part: it was not
venomous at all, and could do no more harm by biting than a young dove
in its nest by puffing itself up and striking at an intrusive hand
with its soft beak.
Then one day I came upon a snake quite unknown to me: I had never
heard of the existence of such a snake in our parts, and I imagine its
appearance would have strongly affected any one in any land, even in
those abounding in big snakes. The spot, too, in our plantation, where
I found it, served to make its singular appearance more impressive.
There existed at that time a small piece of waste ground about half an
acre in extent, where there were no trees and where nothing planted by
man would grow. It was at the far end of the plantation, adjoining the
thicket of fennel and the big red willow tree on the edge of the moat
described in another chapter. This ground had been ploughed and dug up
again and again, and planted with trees and shrubs of various kinds
which were supposed to grow on any soil, but they had always
languished and died, and no wonder, since the soil was a hard white
clay resembling china clay. But although trees refused to grow there
it was always clothed in a vegetation of its own; all the hardiest
weeds were there, and covered the entire barren area to the depth of a
man's knees. These weeds had thin wiry stalks and small sickly leaves
and flowers, and would die each summer long before their time. This
barren piece of ground had a great attraction for me as a small boy,
and I visited it daily and would roam about it among the miserable
half-dead weeds with the sun-baked clay showing between the brown
stalks, as if it delighted me as much as the alfalfa field, blue and
fragrant in its flowering-time and swarming with butterflies.
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