He pressed into the labyrinth as ardently as if he could hope to speak to her if they met. How dark it was with the sky shut out! The foliage sighed a little overhead; the tangle was so low that often he had to stoop. His feet crushed the litter of dry dead leaves; the branches of the wild-rose clung to his clothes. He attained to light. Solitude engulfed him, and the bracken was as high as his knees; in the cool, moist hush he could hear a twig drop upon the moss. He stood reflecting that it was not a place for a girl to roam in unprotected—the nearest habitation might have been miles away. Near as it was, no scream could reach it, no cry for help was likely to penetrate even to the road. His mind was now less occupied with agreeable visions of discovering her than with solicitude for her safety every day. At this moment he was startled by a stealthy tread.
A rough figure was creeping cautiously between the trees. He did not see David; but for an instant David saw nothing but him, nothing but the cruel eyes, the avid face, the upraised arm. For an instant. In the next, he saw—trusting itself to earth a few yards off—a starling; and the lad stole towards it greedily, the only thought quickened in him by its loveliness, the idea of smashing it with a stone. It was the country.
The bird's plumage gleamed like satin; the little creature was so confident, so fragile, so happy that the hellishness of the thing turned the man's heart sick. He flung his pipe, and the starling flew upward, saved, a second before the stone was hurled. The lad was both aggrieved and contemptuous: viewed as a missile, the pipe argued the man a fool. Then David, who burned to thrash him, explained himself with heat; but the other showed such dull amazement at his indignation, such utter lack of understanding, that wrath gave place to misery in the poet. It even seemed to him, as he moved away, that he had been unjust. A little later in the year cultured men and graceful women would also murder birds for fun. One bird, or another, with a gun, or a stone—? To the yokel, too, his shame was "sport." The difference in the barbarism was only a difference of class.
David had had enough of the wood. Having recovered his pipe among the ferns, he made his way out, and sauntered back along the high-road. Overtaking a large sack, slung across the shoulder of a small boy, who at close quarters revealed the peaked cap and uniform of a postman, he asked to be directed to Daisymead, and learnt that he had not far to go.
It was a low white house, with stiff white curtains hanging in the windows, and full white roses climbing on the walls. The sight of it disappointed him rather, and it seemed to him to be on the wrong side of the way, though he had never preconceived its situation consciously. A flight of steps led to a white gate and a patch of front-garden wonderfully abloom—a revel of pinks and canterbury-bells, and the velvet of sweetwilliam. He gave a knock, questioning a little how to account for his application, for he saw no card with the familiar London legend, "Furnished Apartments," over the door.
It was opened by a strapping woman, drying her hands on her apron. She was not a peasant—her eyes were alert, her face was mobile; and, though she had grey hair, she bore herself erect. Her gaze widened at him; there was even a tinge of apprehension in it.
"Good morning," he said; "I'm looking for rooms—or for one room if I can't get any more. Have you any to let?"
"Y-e-s," answered the woman, hesitatingly. "Can I see them?"
"Well, I'm not quite sure," she faltered. He understood that it was his appearance that made her doubtful. "I don't know whether—Might I ask 'oo it was that recommended you?"
He pointed airily. "The postman directed me here. I've just come down from town; my luggage is at the station."