Richard Jefferies

“ But, indeed, Margaret Estcourt could not but be observed, standing so manifestly apart from, and yet among, that simple congregation. A single flower in a gloomy room will sometimes light it up as with a glory—the eye instantly rests upon it; a single violet will fill the place with perfume. She was the violet in that ancient building. Yet there was nothing extraordinary about her—no marvellous hyacinthine or golden tresses, no burning eye flashing with southern passion. She was simply very near the ideal of a fair young English girl, in the full glow of youth and with all its exquisite bloom. ”

“ As for May, restless and ever in movement, glinting hither and thither like a sunbeam when the shadows of the branches dance in the breeze, she could never stay long enough to really search the boughs. She went from thicket to thicket, constantly finding one that bore more than that she had just left. This butterfly flight soon carried her away and hid her among the bushes, though her merry laugh came back in answer to Margaret’s call. Felix of course was with her.
Like money-getting, nut-gathering grows upon the searcher. ”

“ Hard as his own nether millstone was the heart of Andrew Fisher: does time soften the gnarled stem of the oak?
So he sat by the open window in his beehive chair that summer afternoon drowsily listening to the mill. In the window was the escutcheon of his family in coloured glass, and the name “Fischere” in old-fashioned letters. Fishere of the Warren was fined one hundred pounds as a noted malignant in the days of fear and trembling that followed Worcester fight.
The shadow stole forward on the dial, and there came the dull hollow sound of horse’s hoofs passing over the wooden bridge. ”

“ The Squire laughed heartily. By-and-by, as he leaned back in his carriage, the thought came into his mind that this was human life in little. First, pathos in the memory of his old friend; next, love—for he shrewdly suspected Geoffrey and Val—and beside that love the grim tomb and sad low mound; finally, the grotesque. Wherefore the old monks, seeing that all life came to the church in their day, carved fantastic faces on the gargoyles grinning down, sneering and mocking at it. And even sweet young love brought its regret. ”

“ Panting, he reached the summit; it was but a narrow ridge, and over it another coombe. Instead of a sea of mist here, one long streak, like a cloud, hung midway. No horse visible. Again he dashed forward, and passed through the stratum of mist-cloud as he went down, and the second time as he climbed the opposite rise—more slowly, for these Downs pull hard against the strongest chest. Then there was a gradually rising plateau—dusky, dotted with ghostly hawthorn bushes, but nothing moving that his straining eyes could discern. ”

“ But Felix St. Bees, riding towards Warren House once more, as he reached the first slopes of the hills, was suddenly bathed in the glory, and drew rein and gazed about him. A dome of fire above reflected by the dull earth—a faint, phosphoric, shimmering rosiness among the grass blades. Upon the margin of the world a thicker vapour swelling upward with a deeper red, as of smoke tinted by the furnace under. On the sunset side of the tree-trunks a streak of crimson, and every leaf gleaming on its shiny smoothness ”

“ Felix cut one of hazel, twice as long as himself; Valentine another of ash; Geoffrey carelessly slashed off the first willow-bough he came to, and trimmed it.
“Yours will not do,” said Margaret to him. “The willow is too weak—it will split.”
“Will mine answer?” asked Valentine, showing a stout piece of ash.
“Yes, that is tougher. Why don’t you get an ash, Geoffrey?”
“I shall trust in my first choice,” said Geoffrey, just a trifle annoyed even by so slight a matter; for when men’s minds are strung with love and jealousy the least thing nettles them. ”

“ Every branch and bush and blade of grass—the air above where the swallow floated, the furrow in the earth where the mice ran—all instinct with life; the glamour of the sunshine filling the field with a magic spell.
A little brook slipped away without a sound past the tall green rushes and the water-plantains and the grey chequered grass that lifts its spear-like points in moist places; a swift shallow streamlet winding through the meadow, its clear surface almost flush with the sward. Now running water draws a dreamer ”

“ Baa—maa!
“For how many thousand years have the lambs been happy in the spring-tide?” thought Geoffrey. “And yet it is said that the world is growing old! Nature is always young. Earth was never younger than she is to-day. Goethe was right there:”
Thy works sublime are now as bright
As on creation’s day they rose.
“If we could only somehow translate that eternal youth into our own lives—if! The dew still lingers here in the shade. How slumberous it is even in the morning! Unseen lotos-flowers bloom in the spring, and the odour makes us drowsy.” ”

“ The rounded ridge of the Downs rose high to the south—so near that the fleecy clouds sailing up were not visible till they slid suddenly into view over the summit. Tiny toy-like sheep, reduced in size by the distance were dotted here and there on the broad slope. Over the corn hard by, the larks sprang up and sang at so great a height that the motion of their wings could not be distinguished. The earth exhaled a perfume, there was music in the sky, a caress in the breeze. ”

“ But how marked the contrast between the sunshine, the blue sky, the song of birds, the soft warm air, the green leaf and bud without!
Squire Thorpe’s pew of black oak occupied one entire side of the chancel; the choir and the barrel-organ were together, far down the side-aisle. From the raised dais of the chancel every member of the congregation could be discerned with ease. While the Rev. Basil Thorpe, cousin of the Squire, “droned in the pulpit,” or rather reading-desk, the Squire, sitting, kneeling, or standing, surveyed with keen glance every nook and corner. ”

“ When a thoughtful man feels an overpowering love—a great passion rising within him—his ideal often becomes a kind of judge. All the creed of life that has grown up in the mind is passed in review: will the half-formed scepticism, the firm dogma, the theory, stand before the new light thrown upon them by the love that is in itself a faith?
So he dreamed of Margaret, and saw and did not see the beauty around him. His feet, sinking into the soft green carpet, were dusted over with the yellow pollen of the buttercups. The young shoot of the bramble projecting from the bush caught at his sleeve ”

“ In that second—in the tenth of a second—he saw the sunbeams glance on the levelled barrel, and behind the twin circular orifices of the muzzle the smoke-blackened, frowning brow of the man who once had loved him.
“Fair play in the army!” shouted a hoarse voice, and a long stick of briar suddenly projected from the fern at Valentine’s side fell with a crash upon his barrel. The blow diverted the aim, but the charge exploded. Geoffrey uttered a sharp cry, turned round and put out his hand as if to lean against the oak, and then dropped. ”

“ When pockets are full and baskets running over, and a heap on the handkerchief spread upon the ground, though the palate is weary with eating, and the arms with working held high above the head, yet still the avarice increases. So Margaret gathered and gathered, and laughed and chatted, and stood on tiptoe, and enjoyed the gipsying. Her hat had fallen back almost upon her shoulder, the impudent snatches of the branches loosened her hair, and the fierce caress of the briars tore her skirt. Her cheek was flushed with the bloom of pure young blood put swiftly in motion by the labour. ”

“ He did not tell Margaret that it was a quarry; he said it was a steep place. She wanted to go on to the copse; with regret he noticed the weariness of her voice; she was tired. He led Kitty far on one side of the quarry, giving it a wide berth, and taking the line of the sheep, who had avoided the precipice more by luck than any sense they possess in that way. The extreme darkness had now passed; but the clouds remained, and it was gloomy. He walked slowly, thinking now of possible flint-pits. Suddenly Margaret drew rein, and slipped out of the saddle. ”

“ There a great low bank, a black wall of cloud, was rising rapidly, extending on either hand, growing momentarily broader, darker, threatening to cover the sky. He watched it come up swiftly, and saw that as it neared it became lighter in colour, first grey, then white. It was the morning mist driven along before the breeze, whose breath had not reached him yet. In a few minutes the wall of vapour passed over him as the waters rolled over Pharaoh. A puff of wind blew his hair back from his forehead, then another and another; presently a steady breeze, cool and refreshing. ”

“ Over the glade a dome of deep-blue sky, and a warm loving sun, whose drowsy shadows lingered and moved slow.
After a while they reached the hazel bushes, acres upon acres of them; tall straight rods, with tapering upturned branches, whose leaves fell in a shower when the stem was shaken. Nuts are the cunningest of fruit in their manner of growth; outwardly they show a few clusters fairly enough, especially bunches at an almost inaccessible height; when these are gathered, those who are not aware of the ways of the hazel naturally pass on, leaving at least twice as many unseen. ”

“ His foot striking against it caused him to stumble, and, to recover himself, he snatched at a projecting branch of nut-wood. A twig, or perhaps his sleeve, touched the trigger of his gun—the muzzle still towards the hedge—and the sudden explosion that followed jerked the gun from his arm to the ground. Like a bullet the cartridge sang through between the ashpoles, and cut a small pendent bough of willow in twain, not two feet in front of Valentine’s face. ”

“ He had carelessly wandered in a day-dream from the footpath, and was now in the midst of mowing-grass, to walk in which is against the unwritten laws of country life, because when trampled down it is difficult to mow. Yet there is a great pleasure in pushing through it, tall grasses and bennets and sorrel stems reaching to the knee—the very dogs delight in it. See a spaniel just let loose; how he circles round, plunging over it!—visible as he bounds up, lost to sight next moment in the matted mass; the higher it is the more he likes it. ”

“ Past a field of oats, rising hardly a foot high in the barren soil—in the corner an upturned plough with rusty share and wooden handles painted red. Down below in the plains between the hills squares of drooping barley and bold upstanding wheat, whose tender green the sun had invaded with advancing hues of gold. Over all the brooding silence of the summer eve, one brown lark alone singing in the air above the plain, far away from the distant ridge the faint tinkle of a sheep-bell. ”

“ A fiery blaze surged up into the sky, shooting from the west to the zenith, and thence to the east in the twinkling of an eye; like the glow of a grand aurora, but ninefold more brilliant, a deep-tinted crimson. Men stayed and looked up, amazed at the beauty and the awe of it; for the world was changed, as if it were on fire, and the flames like a flood sweeping up from the western edge. Into the chamber came the reflection—as of the last conflagration that we dare not think of, when the sky shall roll away as parchment—and the place was filled with a luminous glamour. ”

“ There was a narrow space clear of wood, where a green footpath little used went by, and a large, gnarled, crooked-grown ash-stole opposite, forming a natural arm-chair, well lined with soft dry moss, and canopied overhead with leafy branches, drooping woodbine, and climbing briar, whose roses would soon bloom. The brake fern, young yet and tender, rose up and gave itself for her footstool—for Margaret sat there, leaning back luxuriously in her woodland throne. ”

“ Valentine was bitter against his old friend: Geoffrey had not forgotten the contretemps at the nutting. It had been long before Margaret accepted his protestations of regret for his hasty words. Now no man, who is a man, likes the part of penitence. He considered that Valentine had forced him into that unpleasant position, and his wrath smouldered against him.
After the turnips, they got through a gap into the meadow land, which, being of poor quality, as is often the case near a wood, was dotted with dead thistles, rushes in the hollows, and bunches of tussocky grass. ”

“ The shepherd, Jabez, remained at his work, and he and Augustus Basset, the “bailie,” did a little, throwing up a mead or two into “wakes” for carting; but their exertions were of small avail. While they talked and deliberated, Margaret, beckoning May, slipped out and went down to the stables. Diamond and Captain were led out into the sunshine, and stood like statuary, waiting to be bidden. For the beauty of simple strength nothing equals a fine cart-horse: the vast frame, the ponderous limb, the massive neck, speak of power in repose. ”

“ An orange light rose up and spread about the horizon, then turned crimson, and the upper edge of the sun’s disk lifted itself over the hill. A swift beam of light shot like an arrow towards him, and the hawthorn bush obeyed with instant shadow: it passed beyond him over the green plain, up the ridge and away. The great orb, quivering with golden flames, looked forth upon the world.
He arose and involuntarily walked a few steps towards it, his heart swelling, the inner voice lifted. The larks sang with all their might, the swallows played high overhead. ”