BLUEBELLS IN SURREY.
I said, “There is no man so poor but he can afford to take pleasure in Bluebells, and, even if he live in a town, there are wild flowers for sale in the streets, and a bunch of Spring to be bought for a penny. And there is no man so rich that he can wall up the treasures of heaven, or build his walls so high but a Rose will peep over the edge. Poor and rich are free of their thoughts, and there are thoughts and enough to spare, in a hedgerow or a wood. Uncaged birds sing best, and wild flowers yield the purest scents. You and I are fellow dreamers, and this wood is our garden, and these birds our orchestra, and this grass our carpet; and even when I am underneath the brown earth I love so well, you will sit here and listen for the sound of carriage wheels, and wonder if you will catch a glimpse of red hair and a satin dress through the long-silent avenue. There are mountains, Stone Dog, that still feel the pressure of the foot of Moses; and hills under which Roman soldiers lie; and there are woods growing where orchard gardens were; and gardens planted where the wild boar once ravaged.”
After I had said this came wild shouts, and the laughter of children, and a great clatter as the four children of the woodcutter came running from the village school.
As I left that place, and turned, before a bend of the road shut out the sight of the wood, I saw the sea of Bluebells, and the sky above, the Primroses and the Wind Flowers and last year’s leaves all melt into one. The figure they made was the figure of Lady Perpetua standing there smiling. Then I heard the wheels of a carriage on the road, and I could have sworn I saw the Stone Dog turn his head.
VII
THE TAILOR’S SISTER’S TOMBSTONE
I was on the hill over against the village where my friend the tailor lived, and was preparing to descend into the valley to inquire the whereabouts of his cottage, when one of those sharp summer storms came on, the sky being darkened as if a hand had drawn a curtain across it, and the entire village lit by a vivid, unnatural light, like limelight in its intensity.
Turning about, as the first great drops fell, to look for shelter, I spied a rough shed by the wayside, shut in on three sides with gorse, wattle and mud, and roofed over with heather thatch. Into this I scuttled and found a comfortable seat on a sack placed on a pile of hurdles.
It was evidently a place used by a shepherd for a store-house of the implements of his craft. At the back of a shed was one of those houses on wheels shepherds use in the lambing season; besides this were hurdles, sacks, several rusty tins, and a very rusty oil-stove. All very primitive, and possessed of a nice earthy smell. It gave me a sudden desire to be a shepherd.