‘Hark to the wind in the trees!’ he said. ‘That is a new voice: the elms must be in full bloom, and I can guess what they look like. And the sound is different in that clump of beeches there: the leaf-buds must be getting long and green now. Only the ash and the oak keep their winter voice in February.’
Thus it always was on our walks together. What he heard, he told me of; and what I saw, I gave him as well as I was able.
‘Listen!’ he said presently. ‘Did you hear that? That is the first chaffinch-song of the year. And there is the great-tit clashing his silver cymbals together, and the bullfinches blowing over the tops of their latchkeys, and a green woodpecker laughing—he never laughs in that grim, scornful way until the year is well on the wing!’
‘I see grass—fresh new growth pushing up everywhere. Young nettles too: they are coming up green amongst the old dead stems. But they cannot sting yet—yes, they can! and badly! Stop here a moment, Reverend! The celandines are out thick on the bank—you remember their shining, yellow, five-rayed stars, set in dark green leaves like the spade-blades of Hamlet’s diggers. Below on the bank, where it is too steep for anything else to grow, there are coltsfoot flowers. The drab earth glows with them—no leaves at all, but just long, curved, scaly stems, each ending in a tuft of golden fleece. And then there is—’
‘I know, I know! I can look back a dozen springs, and see them all as well as you. But listen to that thrush! That is his honeymooning note, and the pair must be nesting not far away. I have found thrushes’ nests in February many a time. See if you can find this one.’
‘Your singer has flown. And there goes the hen, out of the other side of the bush; if the nest is anywhere, it will be here under this tangle of clematis. Yes, two eggs already! I wish you could see their clear greenish-blue, with the dapple-marks on it.’
I guided his hand to the nest, and his fingers wandered lightly over it.
‘Cold!’ said he. ‘She will not begin to sit yet. Perhaps never on this clutch. There is frost and snow ahead of us still, though all of us forget it this weather, bird, beast, and man.’
The path led us into the hazelwood; hazel below, and overhead soaring columns of beech, whose branches touched finger-tips everywhere across the white-flecked blue of the sky. As we went along, the sound of our footsteps in the fallen leaves was like the sound of wading through water. I must read off to him what I saw about me as though it were from a book.