‘And what about the trees?’ he asked presently. ‘Is it death or life there? The cuckoo never will wait for his green leaves, you know.’
‘Green leaves I see, but leafage nowhere. All the wood-top is chequered into different clear zones of green, or grey, or russet, or soft sad yellow—buds bursting and leaves just promising everywhere; but leaves, as I want them, none. How slow it all is! I can understand the cuckoo’s impatience. Flying all the way from Africa only to find—’
He had ceased to listen. He had turned swiftly towards the sun-bathed meadows. He put up a thin hand—blue-veined, almost transparent—against the light. He visibly started.
‘I heard the throb of a wing—a new sound. It must be—’
‘Yes, there it is! The first swallow! Wheeling and darting over the buttercups yonder, like a bit of bright, blue-tempered steel!’
And as I uttered the words, there drifted out of the thorn-hedge hard by us the note we had come to seek. All the ringing music of the woodland seemed to grow mute at the sound. Wild and pure, with a force and a lingering sweetness indescribable, the nightingale’s song poured out of the thicket, dwelling upon the one silver, clarion note, moment after moment, as though it would never cease. At my side two gaunt arms rose tremblingly into the sunshine:
‘They are all here!’—the voice was husky, faltering—‘All! all! I have heard them again, every one of them, the good God be praised! Though I never hoped to— Yes, one by one, I bade them all a long farewell last year!’
IV
Down in the village, when I left it this morning, hardly a breath was stirring under the warm April sun; but the wind is never still for more than an hour or two, here on the top of Windle Hill. At first, there was only a gentle wayward air out of the blue south-west. But already the wind is freshening as the sun lifts; and, with the growing heat, it is sure to strengthen. Midday may find half a gale singing in the long grass-bents around me, the gold tassels of the cowslips lashing to and fro in the grip of a madcap breeze.
To get the true spirit of the Sussex Downs, you must become a lover of the wind, loving it in all its moods. There are rare moments, even on Windle Hill, when the sun glows in a halcyon sky, and the blue air about you lies as still and silent as a sheltered woodland mere. But this is not true Downland weather. A calm day in the valleys may stand for tranquillity, and be well enough; but here it savours rather of stagnation. The very life of the Downs is in their flowing, ever-changing atmosphere—the sweet pure current coming to you unwinnowed over a visible course of twenty miles. When the wind is still, it is good to keep to the lowlands, under their green canopies of whispering leaves, within sound of their purling undertone of brooks; for the valley has its own companionable voices of earth, even under silent skies. But the Downs are as a strung harp, that will yield no music save to the touch of the one gargantuan player. Their very essence of life is in the careering air. You must learn to love the wind for its own sake, or you will never come to be a true Sussex highlander—to know what the magic is that brings Sussex men, meeting by chance in some far-off nook of the world, to talk first of all of the Downs, when, in the stifling heat of a tropic night, or by northern camp-fires, pipes are aglow, and tired hearts wistfully homing.