Andrew remembered the ploughing, as he walked across to begin his sowing, like the good farmer that he was, at the end-rigg. Here was the stump that had resisted gunpowder, leverage and fire, and that now was being tortured by saltpetre, charged in a deep augur hole. Well, it had been a right brave old tree, but the saltpetre would win to the stout oaken heart yet. It was perhaps a step in the right direction, this clearing of the woodland, but all progress seems cruel at first. Here—as he passed over what seemed a particularly smooth bit—the great stone lay hidden that had broken his ploughshare off with a crash, and sent him flying from between the plough-stilts. He would remember that stone for some time! So doubtless would good old Bess, whose patient brown shoulders had borne the brunt of the shock.
Ploughing a field is like ploughing the sea—one needs must have a chart of each to steer safely. That more formidable sea, "whose waves are years," has no chart. Next winter would see the uprooting of all these stumps, and the felling of more trees beyond. Next spring the plough would pass straight from end to end, and the seed-drill would sow the space which now he was about to sow in the old classic fashion—as they sowed, in intervals of stormy peace, the grain after the wooden ploughs on the Swiss hillsides; as Ulysses sowed the salt upon the seashore; as the sowers sowed the seed in the far-off East, as has been handed down to us in a matchless allegory.
He began his task, hand and foot moving in rhythm, and cadenced by the sharp swish, swish of the grain as it left his hand, spreading fan-wise over the soil. It takes a strong wrist and a peculiar "knack" to sow grain well by hand; he had both.
The dog followed him for a couple of ridges, but, besides the ploughed ground being distasteful to him (for he was a dainty dog and fastidious), the buckwheat hit him in the eyes, and his master paid no heed to him, a combination of circumstances not be borne; hence, he shortly betook himself to the woodland, where he raised a beautiful little wild rabbit and coursed after it, until with a final kick of its furry heels it landed safe beneath a great pile of black walnut logs, built up criss-cross fashion to mellow for the market. Rufus (named from "William the Red, surnamed Rufus") returned to his master, not dejectedly, but with a melancholy contempt for rabbits that would not "run it out," but took shelter in a sneaking way where they could not be come at.
By this time Andrew was well on with his work. The sack beneath his arm was growing limp, he himself was warm. He paused as a bird flew up from a turned sod at his feet, and a little search showed the simple nest of a grey-bird—open to the sun and rain, built guilelessly, without defence of strategy or strength.
There is something amiss with the man or woman whose heart is not touched by a bird's nest—the daintiest possible epitome of love, and home, and honest work, and self-sacrificing patience. Andrew had thrashed many a boy for robbing birds' nests, and had discharged a man in the stress of haying because he knocked down the clay nests of the swallows from beneath the granary eaves with a long pole. Now he bent above this nest with curious-tender eyes, touching the spotted eggs lightly whilst the bird, whose breast had left them warm, flitted to and fro upon the furrows. He remained but a moment (the bird's anxiety was cruel) then, fixing the spot in his memory that he might avoid it in the harrowing, he was about to go on his way, when his ears were assailed by a succession of the sweetest sounds he had ever heard—note after note of purest melody, flung forth unsyllabled, full-throated to the air, inarticulate but eloquent. Again and again it came, liquid, rich, and with that pathos which perfection always touches.
At first he could not fix the direction from whence it came. It was as if the heavens above had opened and showered down music upon his heart as he had flung forth the seed upon the earth: and indeed there were two sowings that morning and from each harvests were garnered—first the bloom and then the fruit thereof. But as he listened longer he knew it issued from the wood before him. At the first note some impulse made him snatch off his old felt hat, and he stood there, bareheaded in the sunshine, as one might stand to whom had come the pang of inspiration.
The singer was voicing no composition, only uttering isolated notes, or short crescendos, terminating in notes of exquisite beauty, but leaving a sense of incompleteness that was so intense us to be almost a physical pain to him—only forgotten when the next utterance robbed him of retrospect and filled him with hope. Any one who has heard a perfect singer practising, knows the sensation. In such fashion the unseen sirens sang, and men willingly risked death to touch the lips that had been parted by such melodious breath.
Andrew still stood, and at last silence fell—a silence he hardly comprehended at first, so filled was it with the dream of sound that had passed, so instinct with expectation: but it forced itself upon him, and then suddenly round him there sounded all the commonplace noises of life—the croaking of a tree toad, the buzzing of a chance fly, the far-off shouting of men, and the sounds of birds—all that had been deadened to his ear by the magic of that voice.
A voice—then whence?