The Open Air Part 7

Flecks of snow catch against the bunches of gra.s.s, against the furze-bushes, and boulders; if there is a ploughed field, against every clod, and the result is bewildering. There is nothing to guide the steps, nothing to give the general direction, and once off the track, unless well accustomed to the district, the traveller may wander in vain. After a few inches have fallen the roads are usually blocked, for all the flakes on miles of hills are swept along and deposited into hollows where the highways run. To be dug out now and then in the winter is a contingency the mail-driver reckons as part of his daily life, and the waggons going to and fro frequently pa.s.s between high walls of frozen snow. In these wild places, which can scarcely be said to be populated at all, a snow-storm, however, does not block the King's highways and paralyse traffic as London permits itself to be paralysed under similar circ.u.mstances. Men are set to work and cut a way through in a very short time, and no one makes the least difficulty about it. But with the tracks that lead to isolated farmsteads it is different; there is not enough traffic to require the removal of the obstruction, and the drifts occasionally acc.u.mulate to twenty feet deep. The ladies are imprisoned, and must be thankful if they have got down a box of new novels.

The dread snow-tempest of 1880-81 swept over these places with tremendous fury, and the most experienced shepherds, whose whole lives had been spent going to and fro on the downs, frequently lost their way. There is a story of a waggoner and his lad going slowly along the road after the thaw, and noticing an odd-looking scarecrow in a field.

They went to it, and found it was a man, dead, and still standing as he had stiffened in the snow, the clothes hanging on his withered body, and the eyes gone from the sockets, picked out by the crows. It is only one of many similar accounts, and it is thought between twenty and thirty unfortunate persons perished. Such miserable events are of rare occurrence, but show how open, wild, and succourless the country still remains. In ordinary winters it is only strangers who need be cautious, and strangers seldom appear. Even in summer time, however, a stranger, if he stays till dusk, may easily wander for hours. Once off the highway, all the ridges and slopes seem alike, and there is no end to them.

FOREST

The beechnuts are already falling in the forest, and the swine are beginning to search for them while yet the harvest lingers. The nuts are formed by midsummer, and now, the husk opening, the brown angular kernel drops out. Many of the husks fall, too; others remain on the branches till next spring. Under the beeches the ground is strewn with the mast as hard almost to walk on as pebbles. Rude and uncouth as swine are in themselves, somehow they look different under trees. The brown leaves amid which they rout, and the brown-tinted fern behind lend something of their colour and smooth away their ungainliness.

Snorting as they work with very eagerness of appet.i.te, they are almost wild, approaching in a measure to their ancestors, the savage boars.

Under the trees the imagination plays unchecked, and calls up the past as if yew bow and broad arrow were still in the hunter's hands. So little is changed since then. The deer are here still. Sit down on the root of this oak (thinly covered with moss), and on that very spot it is quite possible a knight fresh home from the Crusades may have rested and feasted his eyes on the lovely green glades of his own unsurpa.s.sed England. The oak was there then, young and strong; it is here now, ancient, but st.u.r.dy. Rarely do you see an oak fall of itself. It decays to the last stump; it does not fall. The sounds are the same--the tap as a ripe acorn drops, the rustle of a leaf which comes down slowly, the quick rushes of mice playing in the fern. A movement at one side attracts the glance, and there is a squirrel darting about. There is another at the very top of the beech yonder out on the boughs, nibbling the nuts. A brown spot a long distance down the glade suddenly moves, and thereby shows itself to be a rabbit. The bellowing sound that comes now and then is from the stags, which are preparing to fight. The swine snort, and the mast and leaves rustle as they thrust them aside. So little is changed: these are the same sounds and the same movements, just as in the olden time.

The soft autumn suns.h.i.+ne, shorn of summer glare, lights up with colour the fern, the fronds of which are yellow and brown, the leaves, the grey gra.s.s, and hawthorn sprays already turned. It seems as if the early morning's mists have the power of tinting leaf and fern, for so soon as they commence the green hues begin to disappear. There are swathes of fern yonder, cut down like gra.s.s or corn, the harvest of the forest. It will be used for litter and for thatching sheds. The yellow stalks--the stubble--will turn brown and wither through the winter, till the strong spring shoot conies up and the anemones flower. Though the sunbeams reach the ground here, half the green glade is in shadow, and for one step that you walk in sunlight ten are in shade. Thus, partly concealed in full day, the forest always contains a mystery. The idea that there may be something in the dim arches held up by the round columns of the beeches lures the footsteps onwards. Something must have been lately in the circle under the oak where the fern and bushes remain at a distance and wall in a lawn of green. There is nothing on the gra.s.s but the upheld leaves that have dropped, no mark of any creature, but this is not decisive; if there are no physical signs, there is a feeling that the shadow is not vacant. In the thickets, perhaps--the shadowy thickets with front of thorn--it has taken refuge and eluded us. Still onward the shadows lead us in vain but pleasant chase.

These endless trees are a city to the tree-building birds. The round knot-holes in the beeches, the holes in the elms and oaks; they find them all out. From these issue the immense flocks of starlings which, when they alight on an isolated elm in winter, make it suddenly black.

From these, too, come forth the t.i.ts, not so welcome to the farmer, as he considers they reduce his fruit crop; and in these the gaudy woodp.e.c.k.e.rs breed. With starlings, wood-pigeons, and rooks the forest is crowded like a city in spring, but now in autumn it is comparatively deserted. The birds are away in the fields, some at the grain, others watching the plough, and following it so soon as a furrow is opened.

But the stoats are busy--they have not left, nor the weasels; and so eager are they that, though they hide in the fern at first, in a minute or two they come out again, and so get shot.

Like the fields, which can only support a certain proportion of cattle, the forest, wide as it seems, can only maintain a certain number of deer. Carrying the same thought further, it will be obvious that the forest, or England in a natural state, could only support a limited human population. Is this why the inhabitants of countries like France, where they cultivate every rood and try to really keep a man to a rood, do not increase in number? Certainly there is a limit in nature which can only be overcome by artificial aid. After wandering for some time in a forest like this, the impression arises that the fauna is not now large enough to be in thorough keeping with the trees--their age and size and number. The breadth of the arboreal landscape requires a longer list of living creatures, and creatures of greater bulk. The stoat and weasel are lost in bramble and fern, the squirrels in the branches; the fox is concealed, and the badger; the rabbit, too, is small. There are only the deer, and there is a wide gap between them and the hares. Even the few cattle which are permitted to graze are better than nothing; though not wild, yet standing in fern to their shoulders and browsing on the lower branches, they are, at all events, animals for the time in nearly a natural state. By watching them it is apparent how well the original wild cattle agreed with the original scenery of the island. One almost regrets the marten and polecat, though both small creatures, and wishes that the fox would come forth more by day. These acres of bracken and impenetrable thickets need more inhabitants; how well they are fitted for the wild boar! Such thoughts are, of course, only thoughts, and we must be thankful that we have as many wild creatures left as we have.

Looking at the soil as we walk, where it is exposed by the roots of a fallen tree, or where there is an old gravel pit, the question occurs whether forests, managed as they are in old countries, ever really increase the fertility of the earth? That decaying vegetation produces a fine mould cannot be disputed; but it seems here that there is no more decaying vegetation than is required for the support of the trees themselves. The leaves that fall--the million million leaves--blown to and fro, at last disappear, absorbed into the ground. So with quant.i.ties of the lesser twigs and branches; but these together do not supply more material to the soil than is annually abstracted by the extensive roots of trees, of bushes, and by the fern. If timber is felled, it is removed, and the bark and boughs with it; the stump, too, is grubbed and split for firewood. If a tree dies it is presently sawn off and cut up for some secondary use or other. The great branches which occasionally fall are some one's perquisite. When the thickets are thinned out, the f.a.gots are carted away, and much of the fern is also removed. How, then, can there be any acc.u.mulation of fertilising material? Rather the reverse; it is, if anything, taken away, and the soil must be less rich now than it was in bygone centuries. Left to itself the process would be the reverse, every tree as it fell slowly enriching the spot where it mouldered, and all the bulk of the timber converted into fertile earth. It was in this way that the American forests laid the foundation of the inexhaustible wheat-lands there. But the modern management of a forest tends in the opposite direction--too much is removed; for if it is wished to improve a soil by the growth of timber, something must be left in it besides the mere roots. The leaves, even, are not all left; they have a value for gardening purposes: though, of course, the few cartloads collected make no appreciable difference. There is always something going on in the forest; and more men are employed than would be supposed. In the winter the selected elms are thrown and the ash poles cut; in the spring the oak timber comes down and is barked; in the autumn the fern is cut.

Splitting up wood goes on nearly all the year round, so that you may always hear the axe. No charcoal-burning is practised, but the mere maintenance of the fences, as, for instance, round the pheasant enclosures, gives much to do. Deer need attention in winter, like cattle; the game has its watchers; and ferreting lasts for months. So that the forest is not altogether useless from the point of view of work. But in so many hundred acres of trees these labourers are lost to sight, and do not in the least detract from its wild appearance.

Indeed, the occasional ring of the axe or the smoke rising from the woodman's fire accentuates the fact that it is a forest. The oaks keep a circle round their base and stand at a majestic distance from each other, so that the wind and the suns.h.i.+ne enter, and their precincts are sweet and pleasant. The elms gather together, rubbing their branches in the gale till the bark is worn off and the boughs die; the shadow is deep under them, and moist, favourable to rank gra.s.s and coa.r.s.e mushrooms. Beneath the ashes, after the first frost, the air is full of the bitterness of their blackened leaves, which have all come down at once. By the beeches there is little underwood, and the hollows are filled ankle-deep with their leaves. From the pines comes a fragrant odour, and thus the character of each group dominates the surrounding ground. The shade is too much for many flowers, which prefer the nooks of hedgerows. If there is no scope for the use of "express" rifles, this southern forest really is a forest and not an open hillside. It is a forest of trees, and there are no woodlands so beautiful and enjoyable as these, where it is possible to be lost a while without fear of serious consequences; where you can walk without stepping up to the waist in a decayed tree-trunk, or floundering in a bog; where neither venomous snake not torturing mosquito causes constant apprehensions and constant irritation. To the eye there is nothing but beauty; to the imagination pleasant pageants of old time; to the ear the soothing cadence of the leaves as the gentle breeze goes over. The beeches rear their Gothic architecture, the oaks are planted firm like castles, una.s.sailable. Quick squirrels climb and dart hither and thither, deer cross the distant glade, and, occasionally, a hawk pa.s.ses like thought.

The something that may be in the shadow or the thicket, the vain, pleasant chase that beckons us on, still leads the footsteps from tree to tree, till by-and-by a lark sings, and, going to look for it, we find the stubble outside the forest--stubble still bright with the blue and white flowers of grey speedwell. One of the earliest to bloom in the spring, it continues till the plough comes again in autumn. Now looking back from the open stubble on the high wall of trees, the touch of autumn here and there is the more visible--oaks dotted with brown, horse chestnuts yellow, maples orange, and the bushes beneath red with haws.

BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY

I--THE MAKING OF BEAUTY

It takes a hundred and fifty years to make a beauty--a hundred and fifty years out-of-doors. Open air, hard manual labour or continuous exercise, good food, good clothing, some degree of comfort, all of these, but most especially open air, must play their part for five generations before a beautiful woman can appear. These conditions can only be found in the country, and consequently all beautiful women come from the country. Though the accident of birth may cause their register to be signed in town, they are always of country extraction.

Let us glance back a hundred and fifty years, say to 1735, and suppose a yeoman to have a son about that time. That son would be bred upon the hardest fare, but, though hard, it would be plentiful and of honest sort. The bread would be home-baked, the beef salted at home, the ale home-brewed. He would work all day in the fields with the labourers, but he would have three great advantages over them--in good and plentiful food, in good clothing, and in home comforts. He would ride, and join all the athletic sports of the time. Mere manual labour stiffens the limbs, gymnastic exercises render them supple. Thus he would obtain immense strength from simple hard work, and agility from exercise. Here, then, is a sound const.i.tution, a powerful frame, well knit, hardened--an almost perfect physical existence.

He would marry, if fortunate, at thirty or thirty-five, naturally choosing the most charming of his acquaintances. She would be equally healthy and proportionally as strong, for the ladies of those days were accustomed to work from childhood. By custom soon after marriage she would work harder than before, notwithstanding her husband's fair store of guineas in the iron-bound box. The house, the dairy, the cheese-loft, would keep her arms in training. Even since I recollect, the work done by ladies in country houses was something astonis.h.i.+ng, ladies by right of well-to-do parents, by right of education and manners. Really, it seems that there is no work a woman cannot do with the best results for herself, always provided that it does not throw a strain upon the loins. Healthy children sprung from such parents, while continuing the general type, usually tend towards a refinement of the features. Under such natural and healthy conditions, if the mother have a good shape, the daughter is finer; if the father be of good height, the son is taller. These children in their turn go through the same open-air training. In course of years, the family guineas increasing, home comforts increase, and manners are polished. Another generation sees the cast of countenance smoothed of its original ruggedness, while preserving its good proportion. The hard chin becomes rounded and not too prominent, the cheek-bones sink, the ears are smaller, a softness spreads itself over the whole face. That which was only honest now grows tender. Again another generation, and it is a settled axiom that the family are handsome. The country-side, as it gossips, agrees that the family are marked out as good-looking. Like seeks like, as we know; the handsome intermarry with the handsome. Still, the beauty has not arrived yet, nor is it possible to tell whether she will appear from the female or male branches. But in the fifth generation appear she does, with the original features so moulded and softened by time, so worked and refined and sweetened, so delicate and yet so rich in blood, that she seems like a new creation that has suddenly started into being. No one has watched and recorded the slow process which has thus finally resulted. No one could do so, because it has spread over a century and a half. If any one will consider, they will agree that the sentiment at the sight of a perfect beauty is as much amazement as admiration. It is so astounding, so outside ordinary experience, that it wears the aspect of magic.

A stationary home preserves the family intact, so that the influences already described have time to produce their effect. There is nothing uncommon in a yeoman's family continuing a hundred and fifty years in the same homestead. Instances are known of such occupation extending for over two hundred years; cases of three hundred years may be found: now and then one is known to exceed that, and there is said to be one that has not moved for six hundred. Granting the stock in its origin to have been fairly well proportioned, and to have been subject for such a lapse of time to favourable conditions, the rise of beauty becomes intelligible.

Cities labour under every disadvantage. First, families have no stationary home, but constantly move, so that it is rare to find one occupying a house fifty years, and will probably become much rarer in the future. Secondly, the absence of fresh air, and that volatile essence, as it were, of woods, and fields, and hills, which can be felt but not fixed. Thirdly, the sedentary employment. Let a family be never so robust, these must ultimately affect the const.i.tution. If beauty appears it is too often of the unhealthy order; there is no physique, no vigour, no richness of blood. Beauty of the highest order is inseparable from health; it is the outcome of health--centuries of health--and a really beautiful woman is, in proportion, stronger than a man. It is astonis.h.i.+ng with what persistence a type of beauty once established in the country will struggle to perpetuate itself against all the drawbacks of town life after the family has removed thither.

When such results are produced under favourable conditions at the yeoman's homestead, no difficulty arises in explaining why loveliness so frequently appears in the houses of landed proprietors. Entailed estates fix the family in one spot, and tend, by inter-marriage, to deepen any original physical excellence. Constant out-of-door exercise, riding, hunting, shooting, takes the place of manual labour. All the refinements that money can purchase, travel, education, are here at work. That the culture of the mind can alter the expression of the individual is certain; if continued for many generations, possibly it may leave its mark upon the actual bodily frame. Selection exerts a most powerful influence in these cases. The rich and t.i.tled have so wide a range to choose from. Consider these things working through centuries, perhaps in a more or less direct manner, since the Norman Conquest. The fame of some such families for handsome features and well-proportioned frames is widely spread, so much so that a descendant not handsome is hardly regarded by the outside world as legitimate. But even with all these advantages beauty in the fullest sense does not appear regularly. Few indeed are those families that can boast of more than one. It is the best of all boasts; it is almost as if the Immortals had especially favoured their house. Beauty has no period; it comes at intervals, unexpected! it cannot be fixed. No wonder the earth is at its feet.

The fisherman's daughter ere now has reached very high in the scale of beauty. Hardihood is the fisherman's talent by which he wins his living from the sea. Tribal in his ways, his settlements are almost exclusive, and his descent pure. The wind washed by the sea enriches his blood, and of labour he has enough. Here are the same constant factors; the stationary home keeping the family intact, the out-door life, the air, the sea, the sun. Refinement is absent, but these alone are so powerful that now and then beauty appears. The lovely Irish girls, again: their forefathers have dwelt on the mountainside since the days of Fingal, and all the hards.h.i.+ps of their lot cannot destroy the natural tendency to shape and enchanting feature. Without those constant factors beauty cannot be, but yet they will not alone produce it. There must be something in the blood which these influences gradually ripen. If it is not there centuries are in vain; but if it is there then it needs these conditions. Erratic, meteor-like beauty! for how many thousand years has man been your slave! Let me repeat, the sentiment at the sight of a perfect beauty is as much amazement as admiration. It so draws the heart out of itself as to seem like magic.

She walks, and the very earth smiles beneath her feet. Something comes with her that is more than mortal; witness the yearning welcome that stretches towards her from all. As the suns.h.i.+ne lights up the aspect of things, so her presence sweetens the very flowers like dew. But the yearning welcome is, I think, the most remarkable of the evidence that may be acc.u.mulated about it. So deep, so earnest, so forgetful of the rest the pa.s.sion of beauty is almost sad in its intense abstraction. It is a pa.s.sion, this yearning. She walks in the glory of young life; she is really centuries old.

A hundred and fifty years at the least--more probably twice that--have pa.s.sed away, while from all enchanted things of earth and air this preciousness has been drawn. From the south wind that breathed a century and a half ago over the green wheat. From the perfume of the growing gra.s.ses waving over honey-laden clover and laughing veronica, hiding the greenfinches, baffling the bee. From rose-loved hedges, woodbine, and cornflower azure-blue, where yellowing wheat-stalks crowd up under the shadow of green firs. All the devious brooklet's sweetness where the iris stays the sunlight; all the wild woods hold the beauty; all the broad hill's thyme and freedom: thrice a hundred years repeated. A hundred years of cowslips, blue-bells, violets; purple spring and golden autumn; suns.h.i.+ne, shower, and dewy mornings; the night immortal; all the rhythm of Time unrolling. A chronicle unwritten and past all power of writing: who shall preserve a record of the petals that fell from the roses a century ago? The swallows to the housetops three hundred times--think a moment of that. Thence she sprang, and the world yearns towards her beauty as to flowers that are past. The loveliness of seventeen is centuries old. Is this why pa.s.sion is almost sad?

II--THE FORCE OF FORM

Her shoulders were broad, but not too broad--just enough to accentuate the waist, and to give a pleasant sense of ease and power. She was strong, upright, self-reliant, finished in herself. Her bust was full, but not too prominent--more after nature than the dressmaker. There was something, though, of the corset-maker in her waist, it appeared naturally fine, and had been a.s.sisted to be finer. But it was in the hips that the woman was perfect:--fulness without coa.r.s.eness; large but not big: in a word, n.o.bly proportioned. Now imagine a black dress adhering to this form. From the shoulders to the ankles it fitted "like a glove." There was not a wrinkle, a fold, a crease, smooth as if cast in a mould, and yet so managed that she moved without effort. Every undulation of her figure, as she stepped lightly forward flowed to the surface. The slight sway of the hip as the foot was lifted, the upward and _inward_ movement of the limb as the knee was raised, the straightening as the instep felt her weight, each change as the limb described the curves of walking was repeated in her dress. At every change of position she was as gracefully draped as before. All was revealed, yet all concealed. As she pa.s.sed there was the sense of a presence--the presence of perfect form. She was lifted as she moved above the ground by the curves of beauty as rapid revolution in a curve suspends the down-dragging of gravity. A force went by--the force of animated perfect form.

Merely as an animal, how grand and beautiful is a perfect woman! Simply as a living, breathing creature, can anything imaginable come near her?

There is such strength in shape--such force in form. Without muscular development shape conveys the impression of the greatest of all strength--that is, of completeness in itself. The ancient philosophy regarded a globe as the most perfect of all bodies, because it was the same--that is, it was perfect and complete in itself--from whatever point it was contemplated. Such is woman's form when nature's intent is fulfilled in beauty, and that beauty gives the idea of self-contained power.

A full-grown woman is, too, physically stronger than a man. Her physique excels man's. Look at her torso, at the size, the fulness, the rounded firmness, the depth of the chest. There is a n.o.bleness about it. Shoulders, arms, limbs, all reach a breadth of make seldom seen in man. There is more than merely sufficient--there is a luxuriance indicating a surpa.s.sing vigour. And this occurs without effort. She needs no long manual labour, no exhaustive gymnastic exercise, nor any special care in food or training. It is difficult not to envy the superb physique and beautiful carriage of some women. They are so strong without effort.

III--AN ARM

A large white arm, bare, in the suns.h.i.+ne, to the shoulder, carelessly leant against a low red wall, lingers in my memory. There was a house roofed with old grey stone slates in the background, and peaches trained up by the window. The low garden wall of red brick--ancient red brick, not the pale, dusty blocks of these days--was streaked with dry mosses hiding the mortar. Clear and brilliant, the gaudy sun of morning shone down upon her as she stood in the gateway, resting her arm on the red wall, and pressing on the mosses which the heat had dried. Her face I do not remember, only the arm. She had come out from dairy work, which needs bare arms, and stood facing the bold sun. It was very large--some might have called it immense--and yet natural and justly proportioned to the woman, her work, and her physique. So immense an arm was like a revelation of the vast physical proportions which our race is capable of attaining under favourable conditions. Perfectly white--white as the milk in which it was often plunged--smooth and pleasant in the texture of the skin, it was entirely removed from coa.r.s.eness. The might of its size was chiefly by the shoulder; the wrist was not large, nor the hand. Colossal, white, sunlit, bare--among the trees and the meads around it was a living embodiment of the limbs we attribute to the first dwellers on earth.

IV--LIPS

The mouth is the centre of woman's beauty. To the lips the glance is attracted the moment she approaches, and their shape remains in the memory longest. Curve, colour, and substance are the three essentials of the lips, but these are nothing without mobility, the soul of the mouth. If neither sculpture, nor the palette with its varied resources, can convey the spell of perfect lips, how can it be done in black letters of ink only? Nothing is so difficult, nothing so beautiful.

There are lips which have an elongated curve (of the upper one), ending with a slight curl, like a ringlet at the end of a tress, like those tiny wavelets on a level sand which float in before the tide, or like a frond of fern unrolling. In this curl there lurks a smile, so that she can scarcely open her mouth without a laugh, or the look of one. These upper lips are drawn with parallel lines, the verge is defined by two lines near together, enclosing the narrowest s.p.a.ce possible, which is ever so faintly less coloured than the substance of the lip. This makes the mouth appear larger than it really is; the bow, too, is more flattened than in the pure Greek lip. It is beautiful, but not perfect, tempting, mischievous, not retiring, and belongs to a woman who is never long alone. To describe it first is natural, because this mouth is itself the face, and the rest of the features are grouped to it. If you think of her you think of her mouth only--the face appears as memory acts, but the mouth is distinct, the remainder uncertain. She laughs and the curl runs upwards, so that you must laugh too, you cannot help it. Had the curl gone downwards, as with habitually melancholy people, you might have withstood her smile. The room is never dull where she is, for there is a distinct character in it--a woman--and not a mere living creature, and it is noticeable that if there are five or six or more present, somehow the conversation centres round her.

There was a lady I knew who had lips like these. Of the kind they were perfect. Though she was barely fourteen she was _the_ woman of that circle by the magnetism of her mouth. When we all met together in the evening all that went on in some way or other centred about her. By consent the choice of what game should be played was left to her to decide. She was asked if it was not time for some one to sing, and the very mistress of the household referred to her whether we should have another round or go in to supper. Of course, she always decided as she supposed the hostess wished. At supper, if there was a delicacy on the table it was invariably offered to her. The eagerness of the elderly gentlemen, who presumed on their grey locks and conventional harmlessness to press their attentions upon her, showed who was the most attractive person in the room. Younger men feel a certain reserve, and do not reveal their inclinations before a crowd, but the harmless old gentleman makes no secret of his admiration. She managed them all, old and young, with unconscious tact, and never left the ranks of the other ladies as a crude flirt would have done. This tact and way of modestly holding back when so many would have pushed her too much to the front retained for her the good word of her own s.e.x. If a dance was proposed it was left to her to say yes or no, and if it was not too late the answer was usually in the affirmative. So in the morning, should we make an excursion to some view or pleasant wood, all eyes rested upon her, and if she thought it fine enough away we went.

Her features were rather fine, but not especially so; her complexion a little dusky, eyes grey, and dark hair; her figure moderately tall, slender but shapely. She was always dressed well; a certain taste marked her in everything. Upon introduction no one would have thought anything of her; they would have said, "insignificant--plain;" in half an hour, "different to most girls;" in an hour, "extremely pleasant;"

in a day, "a singularly attractive girl;" and so on, till her empire was established. It was not the features--it was the mouth, the curling lips, the vivacity and life that sparkled in them. There is wine, deep-coloured, strong, but smooth at the surface. There is champagne with its richness continually rus.h.i.+ng to the rim. Her lips flowed with champagne. It requires a clever man indeed to judge of men; now how could so young and inexperienced a creature distinguish the best from so many suitors?

OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY

The cawing of the rooks in February shows that the time is coming when their nests will be re-occupied. They resort to the trees, and perch above the old nests to indicate their rights; for in the rookery possession is the law, and not nine-tenths of it only. In the slow dull cold of winter even these noisy birds are quiet, and as the vast flocks pa.s.s over, night and morning, to and from the woods in which they roost, there is scarcely a sound. Through the mist their black wings advance in silence, the jackdaws with them are chilled into unwonted quiet, and unless you chance to look up the crowd may go over unnoticed. But so soon as the waters begin to make a sound in February, running in the ditches and splas.h.i.+ng over stones, the rooks commence the speeches and conversations which will continue till late into the following autumn.

The general idea is that they pair in February, but there are some reasons for thinking that the rooks, in fact, choose their males at the end of the preceding summer. They are then in large flocks, and if only casually glanced at appear mixed together without any order or arrangement. They move on the ground and fly in the air so close, one beside the other, that at the first glance or so you cannot distinguish them apart. Yet if you should be lingering along the by-ways of the fields as the acorns fall, and the leaves come rustling down in the warm sunny autumn afternoons, and keep an observant eye upon the rooks in the trees, or on the fresh-turned furrows, they will be seen to act in couples. On the ground couples alight near each other, on the trees they perch near each other, and in the air fly side by side. Like soldiers each has his comrade. Wedged in the ranks every man looks like his fellow, and there seems no tie between them but a common discipline. Intimate acquaintance with barrack or camp life would show that every one had his friend. There is also the mess, or companions.h.i.+p of half a dozen, or dozen, or more, and something like this exists part of the year in the armies of the rooks. After the nest time is over they flock together, and each family of three or four flies in concert.

Later on they apparently choose their own particular friends, that is the young birds do so. All through the winter after, say October, these pairs keep together, though lost in the general ma.s.s to the pa.s.sing spectator. If you alarm them while feeding on the ground in winter, supposing you have not got a gun, they merely rise up to the nearest tree, and it may then be observed that they do this in pairs. One perches on a branch and a second comes to him. When February arrives, and they resort to the nests to look after or seize on the property there, they are in fact already paired, though the almanacs put down St. Valentine's day as the date of courts.h.i.+p.

There is very often a warm interval in February, sometimes a few days earlier and sometimes later, but as a rule it happens that a week or so of mild sunny weather occurs about this time. Released from the grip of the frost, the streams trickle forth from the fields and pour into the ditches, so that while walking along the footpath there is a murmur all around coming from the rush of water. The murmur of the poets is indeed louder in February than in the more pleasant days of summer, for then the growth of aquatic gra.s.ses checks the flow and stills it, whilst in February every stone, or flint, or lump of chalk divides the current and causes a vibration, With this murmur of water, and mild time, the rooks caw incessantly, and the birds at large essay to utter their welcome of the sun. The wet furrows reflect the rays so that the dark earth gleams, and in the slight mist that stays farther away the light pauses and fills the vapour with radiance. Through this luminous mist the larks race after each other twittering, and as they turn aside, swerving in their swift flight, their white b.r.e.a.s.t.s appear for a moment. As while standing by a pool the fishes came into sight, emerging as they swim round from the shadow of the deeper water, so the larks dart over the low edge, and through the mist, and pa.s.s before you, and are gone again. All at once one checks his pursuit, forgets the immediate object, and rises, singing as he soars. The notes fall from the air over the dark wet earth, over the dank gra.s.s, and broken withered fern of the hedge, and listening to them it seems for a moment spring. There is suns.h.i.+ne in the song; the lark and the light are one.

He gives us a few minutes of summer in February days. In May he rises before as yet the dawn is come, and the sunrise flows down to us under through his notes. On his breast, high above the earth, the first rays fall as the rim of the sun edges up at the eastward hill. The lark and the light are as one, and wherever he glides over the wet furrows the glint of the sun goes with him. Anon alighting he runs between the lines of the green corn. In hot summer, when the open hillside is burned with bright light, the larks are then singing and soaring.

Stepping up the hill laboriously, suddenly a lark starts into the light and pours forth a rain of unwearied notes overhead. With bright light, and suns.h.i.+ne, and sunrise, and blue skies the bird is so a.s.sociated in the mind, that even to see him in the frosty days of wjnter, at least a.s.sures us that summer will certainly return.

Ought not winter, in allegorical designs, the rather to be represented with such things that might suggest hope than such as convey a cold and grim despair? The withered leaf, the snowflake, the hedging bill that cuts and destroys, why these? Why not rather the dear larks for one?

They fly in flocks, and amid the white expanse of snow (in the south) their pleasant twitter or call is heard as they sweep along seeking some gra.s.sy spot cleared by the wind. The lark, the bird of the light, is there in the bitter short days. Put the lark then for winter, a sign of hope, a certainty of summer. Put, too, the sheathed bud, for if you search the hedge you will find the buds there, on tree and bush, carefully wrapped around with the case which protects them as a cloak.

Put, too, the sharp needles of the green corn; let the wind clear it of snow a little way, and show that under cold clod and colder snow the green thing pushes up, knowing that summer must come. Nothing despairs but man. Set the sharp curve of the white new moon in the sky: she is white in true frost, and yellow a little if it is devising change. Set the new moon as something that symbols an increase. Set the shepherd's crook in a corner as a token that the flocks are already enlarged in number. The shepherd is the symbolic man of the hardest winter time.

His work is never more important than then. Those that only roam the fields when they are pleasant in May, see the lambs at play in the meadow, and naturally think of lambs and May flowers. But the lamb was born in the adversity of snow. Or you might set the morning star, for it burns and burns and glitters in the winter dawn, and throws forth beams like those of metal consumed in oxygen. There is nought that I know by comparison with which I might indicate the glory of the morning star, while yet the dark night hides in the hollows. The lamb is born in the fold. The morning star glitters in the sky. The bud is alive in its sheath; the green corn under the snow; the lark twitters as he pa.s.ses. Now these to me are the allegory of winter.

These mild hours in February check the hold which winter has been gaining, and as it were, tear his claws out of the earth, their prey.