Cycling another day between Lyndhurst and Burley, I reached the east entrance of Burley Lodge, which is on higher ground than the farm spread out to the right in the valley. The whole valley was filled with thick white mist, as level as a lake, so that nothing could be seen of the fields. The setting sun was low down at the further extremity of the valley, and the surface of the mist-lake reflected its rays in a rosy sheen, with a track of brighter light in the middle, stretching from the far end of the lake in a broad path almost to where I was standing; just as we see the track of sunlight or moonlight, sometimes, on the sea, from the shore. This phenomenon is not uncommon when one is looking down from the top of a hill in the sunshine, upon a valley full of mist, but I have never seen it before from comparatively low ground, as on this occasion.
My summers at Aldington were nearly always too busy to allow me to take a holiday, except for a very few days, but when the urgent work of the year was over, the harvest completed, and the hops and the fruit picked, we always had a clear month away from home, about the middle of October to the middle of November; and, as we found the autumn much less advanced in the south than in the midlands, we often spent the time on the south coast or in the Isle of Wight, and we were nearly always favoured by fine weather. On one of these occasions, when we were exploring the whole island on bicycles, I never once found it necessary to carry a waterproof cape, though in the course of this visit we rode over 600 miles.
[Illustration: NOTE. THE CHANGING COURSE OF STREAMS.]
CHAPTER XXI.
BIRDS: PEACOCKS—A WHITE PHEASANT—ROOKS' ARITHMETIC.
"Hail to thee, blithe spirit!
Bird thou never wert,
That from heaven or near it,
Pourest thy full heart."
—SHELLEY: To a Skylark.
We read of the peacocks which Solomon's navy of Tarshish brought once in three years with other rare and precious commodities to contribute to the splendour of his court; and doubtless their magnificence added a distinct feature even where so much that was beautiful was to be seen; but, to show itself off to the best advantage, one cannot imagine a better place for a peacock than a grey old English home, round whose mellow stone walls time is lingering lovingly. The touch of brilliant life beside the appeal of the venerable past adds perfection to the picture. I have always had an immense admiration for peacocks, and soon after I came to Aldington I bought a pair. The cock we named Gabriel Junks, after the famous bird in one of Scrutator's books; he was a grand presence, and loved to display the huge fan of his gorgeously-eyed tail, quivering his rattling quills in all the glory of its greens and blues, and cinnamon-coloured wing feathers, on the little piece of lawn under the chestnut trees in front of the Manor.
He learned to come to the window every morning at breakfast-time for a piece of bread-and-butter, and if the window was closed he would rap impatiently upon it with his beak. He roosted in the orchard just across the road on the trunk of an ancient leaning apple-tree. One night Bell heard a terrible fluttering, and looking out saw a fox making off with the peacock; he shouted and the fox dropped the peacock and bolted. Gabriel was not hurt, but sadly ruffled inwardly and outwardly, though, next day, he was quite happy and apparently unconscious of his narrow escape. But alas! some months later Reynard paid another visit, and poor Gabriel was never seen again. Some years after we bought another pair, not nearly so tame as the first, and sometimes flying on to the cottage roofs and scraping holes in the thatch in which to bask in the sun. The villagers complained that the birds sat under their black currant bushes, and devoured the currants as fast as they ripened! We could not keep them within bounds, and later sold them to St. John's College, Oxford, where we saw them soon afterwards in good plumage, and exactly in keeping with their beautiful surroundings.
One of my neighbours appeared to find these birds a special infliction, and complained of the invasion of his premises by "them paycocks." The word "pea" is always rendered "pay" in Worcestershire, and, like "tay" for "tea," is probably the old correct pronunciation. I lately saw a notice on some tumble-down premises near Southampton, "Pay and bane stiks for sale." Another notice, not too happily composed, is to be seen at a Forest village; after the owner's name, "Carpenter, builder and undertaker—repairs neatly executed."
The neighbour referred to was exercised in his mind as to my position in various unwelcome parochial offices, but I was completely mystified when he told me that he had read in history of a King Alfred, but had never heard of a King Arthur. I did not grasp the force of his remark, possibly because King Arthur was a familiar character to me, until I was nearly at my own door, when it dawned upon me to my intense enjoyment. If the reader fails, like me, to see the point, let him turn to the title-page of this book, and read the name of the writer.