Seen on this stormy December day with a north-wester raging off the sea and the wind turning the forest music to "a hurricane of harps," Coombe Valley lives with music and movement. Far away in the gap eastward rises a blue mound with Kilkhampton Church-tower perched thereon, and thence, by winding woods, the way opens to the historic mill. Full of tender colour are the tree-clad hills—a robe of grey and amber and amethyst, jewelled here and there, where the last of the leaves still hang. Wind-beaten oak and larch, beech and ash twine their arms together and make a great commotion where the woven texture of their boughs is swaying and bending. Their yield and swing challenge the grey daylight, and it plays upon them and flings a tracery of swift brightness over the forest. The light is never still, but trembles upon the transparent woods, so that every movement of their great mass wins an answering movement from the illumination that reveals them. Beneath, under the tremulous curtain and visible through its throbbing, lies the earth's bosom, all brown with fallen leaves. It swells firm and solid under restless branch and bough, and listens to the great song of the trees. Sometimes a sunburst from the sky touches the woodland, and the ramage aloft sparkles like a gauze of silver over the russet and gold beneath.
In the heart of the valley there runs a river, and, freed from her work, the mill-stream leaps to join it. The mill-wheel thunders, as it did when little Rose Salterne set stout hearts beating and dreamed dreams, wherein no sorrow homed or horror whispered. But time has not forgotten Coombe Mill, and, to one who may love flowers, the evidence of progress chiefly lies among them. There is a garden here and many a plant, that had not yet faced the buffets of an English winter when Kingsley's heroine tended her clove-pinks and violets, now thrives contented in this little garth.
Beside the mill-pond, flogged by the December storm, Kaffir lilies wave their crimson and the red fuchsia flourishes. A bush of golden eleagnus is happy, and a shrubby speedwell thrives beside it; honeysuckles climb to the thatch of the white-washed homestead; a rambler rose hangs out its last blossoms; and a yellow jasmine also blooms upon the wall. Marigolds and lavender and blue periwinkles trail together in a bright wreath against the darkness of the water-wheel; there are stocks and Michaelmas daisies, too, with the silver discs of honesty and the fading green of tamarisk.
Many suchlike things flourish in this cradle of low hills, for winter is a light matter here, and great cold never comes to them. They push forth and creep into the lanes and hedges; they find the water-meadows and love the shelter of the apple trees and the brink of the stream.
Beside the mill there towers a great ivy-tod in fruit, and rises the weathered mill-house, stoutly built to bear the strain within. Once granite mill-wheels ground the corn, but now their day is over and they repose, flower crowned, in the hedges outside. The eternal splashing of water has painted a dark stain here, and ferns have found foothold. One great hart's tongue lolls fifty wet green leaves out from the gloom of the wheel-chamber.
All is movement and bustle; the mill-stream races away to the river, and the river to the sea. The tree-tops bend and cry; the clouds tell of the gale overhead, now thinning to let the sunshine out, now darkening under a sudden squall and dropping a hurtle of hail.
From the mill-pool to the west opened another vision of meadows with a little grey bridge in the midst of them. Hither winds the stream, trout in every hover, and the brown hills rise on either side, barren and storm-beaten. Then, at the mouth of the land between them, a great welter of white foam fills the gap, for the storm has beaten the sea mad, and the roar of it ascends in unbroken thunder over the meadows. Behind the meeting-place of land and ocean, there roll the lashed and stricken seas, all dim and grey; and their herds are brightened with sunshine or darkened by cloud, as the wind heaves them to shore. But there is no horizon from which we can trace them. They emerge wildly out of the flying scud of cloud that presses down upon the waters.
OLD DELABOLE
