For some days he haunted the spot, then became a lodger at the farm-house, and now after making some inquiries he had found that the owner was willing to sell the place for something more than its market value, and he was going up to London about it.
At Waterloo I wished him happiness in his old home found again after so many years, then watched him as he walked briskly away—as commonplace-looking a man as could be seen on that busy crowded platform, in his suit of rough grey tweeds, thick boots, and bowler hat. Yet one whose fortune might be envied by many even among the successful—one who had cherished a secret thought and feeling, which had been to him like the shadow of a rock and like a cool spring in a dry and thirsty land.
And in that host of undistinguished Colonials and others of British race from all regions of the earth, who annually visit these shores on business or for pleasure or some other object, how many there must be who come with some such memory or dream or aspiration in their hearts! A greater number probably than we imagine. For most of them there is doubtless disappointment and disillusion: it is a matter of the heart, a sentiment about which some are not given to speak. He too, my fellow-passenger, would no doubt have held his peace had his dream not met with so perfect a fulfilment. As it was he had to tell his joy to some one, though it were to a stranger.
Chapter Fifteen: Summer Days on the Otter
The most characteristic district of South Devon, the greenest, most luxuriant in its vegetation, and perhaps the hottest in England, is that bit of country between the Exe and the Axe which is watered by the Clyst, the Otter, and the Sid. In any one of a dozen villages found beside these pretty little rivers a man might spend a month, a year, a lifetime, very agreeably, ceasing not to congratulate himself on the good fortune which first led him into such a garden. Yet after a week or two in this luxurious land I began to be dissatisfied with my surroundings. It was June; the weather was exceptionally dry and sultry. Vague thoughts, or "visitings" of mountains and moors and coasts would intrude to make the confinement of deep lanes seem increasingly irksome. Each day I wandered miles in some new direction, never knowing whither the devious path would lead me, never inquiring of any person, nor consulting map or guide, since to do that is to deprive oneself of the pleasure of discovery; always with a secret wish to find some exit as it were—some place beyond the everlasting wall of high hedges and green trees, where there would be a wide horizon and wind blowing unobstructed over leagues of open country to bring me back the sense of lost liberty. I found only fresh woods and pastures new that were like the old; other lanes leading to other farm-houses, each in its familiar pretty setting of orchard and garden; and, finally, other ancient villages, each with its ivy-grown grey church tower looking down on a green graveyard and scattered cottages, mostly mud-built and thatched with straw. Finding no outlook on any side I went back to the streams, oftenest to the Otter, where, lying by the hour on the bank, I watched the speckled trout below me and the dark-plumaged dipper with shining white breast standing solitary and curtseying on a stone in the middle of the current. Sometimes a kingfisher would flash by, and occasionally I came upon a lonely grey heron; but no mammal bigger than a watervole appeared, although I waited and watched for the much bigger beast that gives the river its name. Still it was good to know that he was there, and had his den somewhere in the steep rocky bank under the rough tangle of ivy and bramble and roots of overhanging trees. One was shot by a farmer during my stay, but my desire was for the living, not a dead otter. Consequently, when the otter-hunt came with blaze of scarlet coats and blowing of brass horns and noise of barking hounds and shouts of excited people, it had no sooner got half a mile above Ottery St. Mary, where I had joined the straggling procession, than, falling behind, the hunting fury died out of me and I was relieved to hear that no quarry had been found. The frightened moorhen stole back to her spotty eggs, the dipper returned to his dipping and curtseying to his own image in the stream, and I to my idle dreaming and watching.
The watching was not wholly in vain, since there were here revealed to me things, or aspects of things, that were new. A great deal depends on atmosphere and the angle of vision. For instance, I have often looked at swans at the hour of sunset, on the water and off it, or flying, and have frequently had them between me and the level sun, yet never have I been favoured with the sight of the rose-coloured, the red, and the golden-yellow varieties of that majestic waterfowl, whose natural colour is white. On the other hand, who ever saw a carrion-crow with crimson eyes? Yet that was one of the strange things I witnessed on the Otter.
Game is not everywhere strictly preserved in that part of Devon, and the result is that the crow is not so abhorred and persecuted a fowl as in many places, especially in the home counties, where the cult of the sacred bird is almost universal. At one spot on the stream where my rambles took me on most days a pair of crows invariably greeted my approach with a loud harsh remonstrance, and would keep near me, flying from tree to tree repeating their angry girdings until I left the place. Their nest was in a large elm, and after some days I was pleased to see that the young had been safely brought off. The old birds screamed at me no more; then I came on one of their young in the meadow near the river. His curious behaviour interested me so much that I stood and watched him for half an hour or longer. It was a hot, windless day, and the bird was by himself among the tall flowering grasses and buttercups of the meadow—a queer gaunt unfinished hobbledehoy-looking fowl with a head much too big for his body, a beak that resembled a huge nose, and a very monstrous mouth. When I first noticed him he was amusing himself by picking off the small insects from the flowers with his big beak, a most unsuitable instrument, one would imagine, for so delicate a task. At the same time he was hungering for more substantial fare, and every time a rook flew by over him on its way to or from a neighbouring too populous rookery, the young crow would open wide his immense red mouth and emit his harsh, throaty hunger-call. The rook gone, he would drop once more into his study of the buttercups, to pick from them whatever unconsidered trifle in the way of provender he could find. Once a small bird, a pied wagtail, flew near him, and he begged from it just as he had done from the rooks: the little creature would have run the risk of being itself swallowed had it attempted to deliver a packet of flies into that cavernous mouth. I went nearer, moving cautiously, until I was within about four yards of him, when, half turning, he opened his mouth and squawked, actually asking me to feed him; then, growing suspicious, he hopped awkwardly away in the grass. Eventually he permitted a nearer approach, and slowly stooping I was just on the point of stroking his back when, suddenly becoming alarmed, he swung himself into the air and flapped laboriously off to a low hawthorn, twenty or thirty yards away, into which he tumbled pell-mell like a bundle of old black rags.
Then I left him and thought no more about the crows except that their young have a good deal to learn upon first coming forth into an unfriendly world. But there was a second nest and family close by all the time. A day or two later I discovered it accidentally in a very curious way.
There was one spot where I was accustomed to linger for a few minutes, sometimes for half an hour or so, during my daily walks. Here at the foot of the low bank on the treeless side of the stream there was a scanty patch of sedges, a most exposed and unsuitable place for any bird to breed in, yet a venturesome moorhen had her nest there and was now sitting on seven eggs. First I would take a peep at the eggs, for the bird always quitted the nest on my approach; then I would gaze into the dense tangle of tree, bramble, and ivy springing out of the mass 'of black rock and red clay of the opposite bank. In the centre of this rough tangle which overhung the stream there grew an old stunted and crooked fir tree with its tufted top so shut out from the light by the branches and foliage round it that it looked almost black. One evening I sat down on the green bank opposite this tangle when the low sun behind me shone level into the mass of rock and rough boles and branches, and fixing my eyes on the black centre of the mass I encountered a pair of crimson eyes staring back into mine. A level ray of light had lit up that spot which I had always seen in deep shadow, revealing its secret. After gazing steadily for some time I made out a crow's nest in the dwarf pine top and the vague black forms of three young fully fledged crows sitting or standing in it. The middle bird had the shining crimson eyes; but in a few moments the illusory colour was gone and the eyes were black.