A HARVESTING
The year was in its yellowing time, and the face of Nature a
study in old gold. "A field or, semee, with garbs of the same:"
it may be false Heraldry--Nature's generally is--but it correctly
blazons the display that Edward and I considered from the
rickyard gate, Harold was not on in this scene, being stretched
upon the couch of pain; the special disorder stomachic, as usual.
The evening before, Edward, in a fit of unwonted amiability, had
deigned to carve me out a turnip lantern, an art-and-craft he was
peculiarly deft in; and Harold, as the interior of the turnip
flew out in scented fragments under the hollowing knife, had
eaten largely thereof: regarding all such jetsam as his special
perquisite. Now he was dreeing his weird, with such assistance
as the chemist could afford. But Edward and I, knowing that this
particular field was to be carried to-day, were revelling in the
privilege of riding in the empty waggons from the rickyard
back to the sheaves, whence we returned toilfully on foot, to
career it again over the billowy acres in these great galleys of
a stubble sea. It was the nearest approach to sailing that we
inland urchins might compass: and hence it ensued, that such
stirring scenes as Sir Richard Grenville on the Revenge, the
smoke-wreathed Battle of the Nile, and the Death of Nelson, had
all been enacted in turn on these dusty quarter decks, as they
swayed and bumped afield.
Another waggon had shot its load, and was jolting out through the
rickyard gate, as we swung ourselves in, shouting, over its tail.
Edward was the first up, and, as I gained my feet, he clutched me
in a death-grapple. I was a privateersman, he proclaimed, and he
the captain of the British frigate Terpsichore, of--I forget
the precise number of guns. Edward always collared the best
parts to himself; but I was holding my own gallantly, when I
suddenly discovered that the floor we battled on was swarming
with earwigs. Shrieking, I hurled free of him, and rolled over
the tail-board on to the stubble. Edward executed a war-dance of
triumph on the deck of the retreating galleon; but I cared
little for that. I knew HE knew that I wasn't afraid of
him, but that I was--and terribly--of earwigs, "those mortal bugs
o' the field." So I let him disappear, shouting lustily for all
hands to repel boarders, while I strolled inland, down the
village.
There was a touch of adventure in the expedition. This was not
our own village, but a foreign one, distant at least a mile. One
felt that sense of mingled distinction and insecurity which is
familiar to the traveller: distinction, in that folk turned the
head to note you curiously; insecurity, by reason of the ever-
present possibility of missiles on the part of the more juvenile
inhabitants, a class eternally conservative. Elated with
isolation, I went even more nose-in-air than usual: and "even
so," I mused, "might Mungo Park have threaded the trackless
African forest and. . ." Here I plumped against a soft, but
resisting body.
Recalled to my senses by the shock, I fell back in the attitude
every boy under these circumstances instinctively adopts--both
elbows well up over the ears. I found myself facing a tall
elderly man, clean-shaven, clad in well-worn black--a
clergyman evidently; and I noted at once a far-away look in his
eyes, as if they were used to another plane of vision, and could
not instantly focus things terrestrial, being suddenly recalled
thereto. His figure was bent in apologetic protest: "I ask a
thousand pardons, sir," he said; "I am really so very absent-
minded. I trust you will forgive me."
Now most boys would have suspected chaff under this courtly style
of address. I take infinite credit to myself for recognising at
once the natural attitude of a man to whom his fellows were
gentlemen all, neither Jew nor Gentile, clean nor unclean. Of
course, I took the blame on myself; adding, that I was very
absent-minded too,--which was indeed the case.
"I perceive," he said pleasantly, "that we have something in
common. I, an old man, dream dreams; you, a young one, see
visions. Your lot is the happier. And now--" his hand had been
resting all this time on a wicket-gate--"you are hot, it is
easily seen; the day is advanced, Virgo is the Zodiacal sign.
Perhaps I may offer you some poor refreshment, if your
engagements will permit."
My only engagement that afternoon was an arithmetic lesson, and I
had not intended to keep it in any case; so I passed in, while he
held the gate open politely, murmuring "Venit Hesperus ite,
capellae: come, little kid!" and then apologising abjectly for a
familiarity which (he said) was less his than the Roman poet's.
A straight flagged walk led up to the cool-looking old house, and
my host, lingering in his progress at this rose-tree and that,
forgot all about me at least twice, waking up and apologising
humbly after each lapse. During these intervals I put two and
two together, and identified him as the Rector: a bachelor,
eccentric, learned exceedingly, round whom the crust of legend
was already beginning to form; to myself an object of special
awe, in that he was alleged to have written a real book. "Heaps
o' books," Martha, my informant, said; but I knew the exact rate
of discount applicable to Martha's statements.
We passed eventually through a dark hall into a room which struck
me at once as the ideal I had dreamed but failed to find. None
of your feminine fripperies here! None of your chair-backs and
tidies! This man, it was seen, groaned under no aunts. Stout
volumes in calf and vellum lined three sides; books sprawled
or hunched themselves on chairs and tables; books diffused the
pleasant odour of printers' ink and bindings; topping all, a
faint aroma of tobacco cheered and heartened exceedingly, as
under foreign skies the flap and rustle over the wayfarer's head
of the Union Jack--the old flag of emancipation! And in one
corner, book-piled like the rest of the furniture, stood a piano.
This I hailed with a squeal of delight. "Want to strum?"
inquired my friend, as if it was the most natural wish in the
world--his eyes were already straying towards another corner,
where bits of writing-table peeped out from under a sort of
Alpine system of book and foolscap.
"O, but may I?" I asked in doubt. "At home I'm not allowed to--
only beastly exercises!"
"Well, you can strum here, at all events," he replied; and
murmuring absently, Age, dic Latinum, barbite, carmen, he made
his way, mechanically guided as it seemed, to the irresistible
writing-able. In ten seconds he was out of sight and call. A
great book open on his knee, another propped up in front, a score
or so disposed within easy reach, he read and jotted with an
absorption almost passionate. I might have been in Boeotia, for
any consciousness he had of me. So with a light heart I
turned to and strummed.
Those who painfully and with bleeding feet have scaled the crags
of mastery over musical instruments have yet their loss in
this,--that the wild joy of strumming has become a vanished
sense. Their happiness comes from the concord and the relative
value of the notes they handle: the pure, absolute quality and
nature of each note in itself are only appreciated by the
strummer. For some notes have all the sea in them, and some
cathedral bells; others a woodland joyance and a smell of
greenery; in some fauns dance to the merry reed, and even the
grave centaurs peep out from their caves. Some bring moonlight,
and some the deep crimson of a rose's heart; some are blue, some
red, and others will tell of an army with silken standards and
march-music. And throughout all the sequence of suggestion, up
above the little white men leap and peep, and strive against the
imprisoning wires; and all the big rosewood box hums as it were
full of hiving bees.
Spent with the rapture, I paused a moment and caught my friend's
eye over the edge of a folio. "But as for these Germans," he
began abruptly, as if we had been in the middle of a
discussion, "the scholarship is there, I grant you; but the
spark, the fine perception, the happy intuition, where is it?
They get it all from us!"
"They get nothing whatever from US," I said decidedly: the
word German only suggesting Bands, to which Aunt Eliza was
bitterly hostile.
"You think not?" he rejoined, doubtfully, getting up and walking
about the room. "Well, I applaud such fairness and temperance in
so young a critic. They are qualities--in youth--as rare as they
are pleasing. But just look at Schrumpffius, for instance--how
he struggles and wrestles with a simple {GREEK gar} in this very
passage here!"
I peeped fearfully through the open door, half-dreading to see
some sinuous and snark-like conflict in progress on the mat; but
all was still. I saw no trouble at all in the passage, and I
said so.
"Precisely," he cried, delighted. "To you, who possess the
natural scholar's faculty in so happy a degree, there is no
difficulty at all. But to this Schrumpffius--" But here,
luckily for me, in came the housekeeper, a clean-looking woman of
staid aspect.
"Your tea is in the garden," she said, as if she were
correcting a faulty emendation. "I've put some cakes and things
for the little gentleman; and you'd better drink it before it
gets cold."
He waved her off and continued his stride, brandishing an aorist
over my devoted head. The housekeeper waited unmoved till there
fell a moment's break in his descant; and then, "You'd better
drink it before it gets cold," she observed again, impassively.
The wretched man cast a deprecating look at me. "Perhaps a
little tea would be rather nice," he observed, feebly; and to my
great relief he led the way into the garden. I looked about for
the little gentleman, but, failing to discover him, I concluded
he was absent-minded too, and attacked the "cakes and things"
with no misgivings.
After a most successful and most learned tea a something happened
which, small as I was, never quite shook itself out of my memory.
To us at parley in an arbour over the high road, there entered,
slouching into view, a dingy tramp, satellited by a frowsy woman
and a pariah dog; and, catching sight of us, he set up his
professional whine; and I looked at my friend with the heartiest
compassion, for I knew well from Martha--it was common
talk--that at this time of day he was certainly and surely
penniless. Morn by morn he started forth with pockets lined; and
each returning evening found him with never a sou. All this he
proceeded to explain at length to the tramp, courteously and even
shamefacedly, as one who was in the wrong; and at last the
gentleman of the road, realising the hopelessness of his case,
set to and cursed him with gusto, vocabulary, and abandonment.
He reviled his eyes, his features, his limbs, his profession, his
relatives and surroundings; and then slouched off, still oozing
malice and filth. We watched the party to a turn in the road,
where the woman, plainly weary, came to a stop. Her lord, after
some conventional expletives demanded of him by his position,
relieved her of her bundle, and caused her to hang on his arm
with a certain rough kindness of tone, and in action even a dim
approach to tenderness; and the dingy dog crept up for one lick
at her hand.
"See," said my friend, bearing somewhat on my shoulder, "how this
strange thing, this love of ours, lives and shines out in the
unlikeliest of places! You have been in the fields in early
morning? Barren acres, all! But only stoop--catch the light
thwartwise--and all is a silver network of gossamer! So the
fairy filaments of this strange thing underrun and link together
the whole world. Yet it is not the old imperious god of the
fatal bow--{3 GREEK}not that--nor even the placid respectable
{GREEK}--but something still unnamed, perhaps more mysterious,
more divine! Only one must stoop to see it, old fellow, one must
stoop!"
The dew was falling, the dusk closing, as I trotted briskly
homewards down the road. Lonely spaces everywhere, above and
around. Only Hesperus hung in the sky, solitary, pure, ineffably
far-drawn and remote; yet infinitely heartening, somehow, in his
valorous isolation.<113>
