‘There blew in that gardynge a soft piplyng cold
Enbrethyng of Zepherus with his pleasant wynde.’
I went merrily along. The birds were not singing, but my heart did not need them. It was Spring-time there, whatever it might be in the world. The heaven of my childhood wanted no lark to make it gay. Had the trees been bare, and the frost shining on the ground, it would have been all the same. The sunlight was enough.
I was standing on the root of a great beech-tree, gazing up into the gulf of its foliage, and watching the broken lights playing about in the leaves and leaping from twig to branch, like birds yet more golden than the leaves, when a voice startled me.
‘You’re not looking for apples in a beech-tree, hey? it said.
I turned instantly, with my heart in a flutter. To my great relief I saw that the speaker was not Sir Giles, and that probably no allusion was intended. But my first apprehension made way only for another pang, for, although I did not know the man, a strange dismay shot through me at sight of him. His countenance was associated with an undefined but painful fact that lay crouching in a dusky hollow of my memory. I had no time now to entice it into the light of recollection. I took heart and spoke.
‘No,’ I answered; ‘I was only watching the sun on the leaves.’
‘Very pretty, ain’t it? Ah, it’s lovely! It’s quite beautiful—ain’t it now? You like good timber, don’t you? Trees, I mean?’ he explained, aware, I suppose, of some perplexity on my countenance.
‘Yes,’ I answered. ‘I like big old ones best.’
‘Yes, yes,’ he returned, with an energy that sounded strange and jarring to my mood; ‘big old ones, that have stood for ages—the monarchs of the forest. Saplings ain’t bad things either, though. But old ones are best. Just come here, and I’ll show you one worth looking at. It wasn’t planted yesterday, I can tell you.’
I followed him along the path, until we came out of the wood. Beyond us the ground rose steep and high, and was covered with trees; but here in the hollow it was open. A stream ran along between us and the height. On this side of the stream stood a mighty tree, towards which my companion led me. It was an oak, with such a bushy head and such great roots rising in serpent rolls and heaves above the ground, that the stem looked stunted between them.