“Terry and I would go and fish there at five in the morning. Yes, well may you remember those lovely summer morns, the sun staining the air and charging its loveliness with light and life. We made our own rods of hazel wands, and floats from gray goose-quills and corks. The eagerness with which we put ground bait down the night before in the hope of snaring one of the monster carp that lurked in that little pond! I suppose really that none were there at all, but all through those springs and summers of boyhood we fished, never catching anything bigger than a small roach or dace. We used to argue about the merits of different baits: aniseed paste, small boiled potatoes, brandling worms and broad beans. Do you know what that pond is like now?” he cried, tragic eyes looking into mine. “All the people from the suburbs have cast their unwanted cats and split boots into the water. There are no fish in it now, not even an eft remains to float to the surface, turn over and show a stain of fire as he swims to the bottom. Everything is dead, dead! When the sun slants through the trees at its edge, you can see the blur of rusting tins and papers deep underneath. But in those days it was beautiful and beloved of a wandering kingfisher. By the shallow drinking-place the cattle came down to ponder, as with soft stare they stood in the mud. Sometimes a bullfinch came, and a turtle dove from the hawthorn: all the birds loved to splash and ruffle in the water. That little lake in the wood was a place of glamour and romance, especially in later years when I was deeply in love.”
The sun came over the houses, the starlings whistled and clucked among the smoke-burnt and red chimney pots. Wives in the houses were preparing breakfast for their men who soon would walk quickly down the pavements towards the station; another day’s work in London was beginning.
“Yes, I was deeply in love,” the pale stranger continued, “with Louise. That was her name to me, a name I gave her because——”
He faltered and ended. I looked away, for pain had come into his eyes and his voice. The heaped bean-sticks became indistinct as I looked. Again he spoke,—
“When I first saw her, I knew that I would love her, and that she would love me. The bluebells had drooped and faded, their spirits gone to make the sky a deeper hue, and somewhere in the wind pealed the ghostly chimes of their fragrance. The meadow was glorious with buttercups, and the light reflected upwards from so thick a cluster of golden rivets driven into the grasses glowed on her face as she walked slowly across the field. She wore a print dress, and her brown hair was thick and loosely coiled. But it was her eyes that made her face so sweet—they were gentle like those of a hare. I just stood and looked at her. Then she was gone, and I hid behind a hedge, but she did not look back. Her father was an artist living in a cottage by the farm, and she was his only daughter. When we knew each other, I used to talk a lot with him, and she would listen with earnest eyes upon me, as I could see without actually looking at her. When I did glance at her, she would look on the ground, and then we smiled, and in her cheeks I saw the bramble blossom steal and die. Her father sang the song of Julien in the opera Louise, and would think of his dead wife as he sat at the piano. And I would think of Louise as I first saw her, in her simple dress, bareheaded in the meadow, with a rich golden-brown light on her cheeks like the lacquered ripples of a stream hovering and gleaming under a bridge.”
“You are very sad,” I said.
“A poet is always sad,” he answered.
“Then there should be no poets if that is so. Happiness is greater than poetry.”
“You are right,” he whispered presently, “but let me tell you my tale before it is too late, for shortly the wood will be down, and on the place where we stand will be houses. And when that happens the last link will be broken.”
“Terry and I and Louise became fast friends, and so we grew up. I went away to London in order to learn the tea trade. Terry stopped here with his father, and, instead of sitting on a stool in a dim office, helped with the sowing and the reaping. One day in summer Louise and I were walking over the Seven Fields, and by a stile I put my arm round her, and she said, ‘No, Julien, not yet,’ but said it so softly and timidly that I knew she loved me. And I held her, the little thing that she was, in my arms, just to feel her making a small struggle, and to watch her shy eyes and tinted cheeks. But she would not let me kiss her, so I pretended to say farewell to her, but she pressed my hand and told me to stay. And when I asked her if she loved me, she would not answer.