The story of Wandering Willie

by Lady Augusta Noel

And out of the mists of failing memory, where they have been hidden for so long, Cuthbert and Hildred, and I myself, seem to come forth again distinctly on that autumn morning; Cuthbert and I no longer boys, Hildred a girl, not any more a child.

Cuthbert raised his axe, and struck and struck, until he was fain, for want of breath, to draw back, and turn towards us and laugh. Hildred sat on the trunk of a fallen tree, with a great bundle of sticks she had been gathering, tied up in a red handkerchief at her feet, and I stood near her—sometimes speaking to her, oftener full of thoughts that were an idle many-coloured medley, brightly-tinted as the autumn woods themselves.

First of all it was sweet, passing sweet, to stand there beside Hildred. That was an old thought. It remained the same, while the rest shifted, and flitted to and fro, first one way, then another, like leaves that the wind plays with and blows about as it will. The tree—it would not be standing half an hour hence. Where would the rooks that had built in it for three summers past have their nest next spring? Cuthbert's strokes bit deeper into the tough heart-of-oak than any of the others. He was stronger even than Matt Clifford. Poor tree, it was hard for it, Hildred said just now, to leave its fair woodland world. Yes, and it would be hard to leave a great many things if one had to do so, first and foremost—I broke off there, for they had got a rope round the trunk, and Clifford called out to the men to stand clear. The great tree tottered. Hildred shouted with the rest, and clapped her hands.

Well, I must see it down now, though I really ought to be where the ploughs are going over the sunny 'Seven Acres,' on the hill, a mile away from here. Then I looked again at Hildred, perched laughing on her mossy seat, with the golden fern at her feet and the dark woods behind her, and I tried to find a rhyme to the word 'winsome' to end some verses I had been making in my head.

Master Caleb Morton had not given up lending me books, in the years since I had ceased to be a scholar of his, and ploughmen and shepherds, he told me, had been poets before now; so I tried to make verses too. I kept them very secret, never telling anyone about them, not even Hildred—whom indeed they chiefly concerned—or Cuthbert. Many an hour's hard work I beguiled by stringing my rhymes together, always hoping I was making something that would be beautiful.

But I was a poor scholar, for all Cuthbert and Hildred said, I was fonder of hard words than Master Caleb himself. My lines would not often come right. I was not good at putting my thoughts in harness. They were like a team that will not go together. Some got on too fast and covered too much ground, and others stood still, or else wanted to go off at quite a different pace. So I got disheartened. Besides, what was the use of such poor words as I could find? If I called the sunshine 'golden,' was that half bright enough for the life-giving light? And if I said the wind whispered, or the river sang, it was not what I meant.

Sometimes at night I thought I had made something very good, and went to sleep contented, but in the morning, when I said over my verses, all the meaning seemed to have gone out of them. I said to myself at last, 'You are very weak, and Nature is very strong. She can speak to your heart and tell you all things; but it is not given you to repeat what she says to others. From henceforth listen, but in silence.' And so I gave up making verses. I have listened all my life long, and now that I am old, I try once more to say a little of what I have been hearing all these years. And perhaps because I am more humble and expect less, perhaps because my eye and ear are growing duller, I am not so discontented as I once was. I know my words are poor, but I am waiting. Soon I shall learn the new song that they sing up there, beyond the sunlight, and then I shall be satisfied.

However, I had not got to that yet. I went on trying to find my rhyme, and failed, as better people may have done before me.

It was a pity. The word winsome might have been made for Hildred. Mistress Dorothy Morton, years ago, had called her the picture of a child. I am sure she was the picture of a maiden now. It was a very fair flower that had bloomed in our grey old ruin.

Those bygone times, when we used to let Hildred go about with us now and then, as a great treat for her, were very wonderful to look back to. Now I prized every minute that she lighted up with her sunbeam pleasure.