The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea turned grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the men departed slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth, about fifteen years old. Some important matter which he was revolving in his mind had detained him alone on the darkening beach. He sat down, then stood up and gazed at the rolling wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle at his feet; then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the resolute air of a man about to engage in a fight with an adversary nearly as big as himself. Stepping back a little space, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast himself in it, but only, as it turned out, with the object of catching some water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an incoming wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in hastily retreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he got up and renewed the assault, and when he succeeded in catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vigorously rubbed it over his dirty face. After repeating the operation about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several falls and wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched away homewards with a composed air.
Chapter Twenty: Salisbury Revisited
Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter, when I watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in early spring, I have been there a good many times, but never at the time when the bird colony is most interesting to observe, just before and during the early part of the breeding-season. At length, in the early days of June, 1908, the wished opportunity was mine—wished yet feared, seeing that it was possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique colony of stock-doves. It is true they appeared to be long established and well able to maintain their foothold on the building in spite of malicious persecuting daws, but there was nothing to show that they had been long there, seeing that it had been observed by no person but myself that the cathedral doves were stock-doves and not the domestic pigeon found on other large buildings. Great was my happiness to find them still there, as well as the daws and all the other feathered people who make this great building their home; even the kestrels were not wanting. There were three there one morning, quarrelling with the daws in the old way in the old place, halfway up the soaring spire. The doves were somewhat diminished in number, but there were a good many pairs still, and I found no dead young ones lying about, as they were now probably grown too large to be ejected, but several young daws, about a dozen I think, fell to the ground during my stay. Undoubtedly they were dragged out of their nests and thrown down, perhaps by daws at enmity with their parents, or it may be by the doves, who are not meek-spirited, as we have seen, or they would not be where they are, and may on occasion retaliate by invading their black enemies' nesting-holes.
Swallows, martins, and swifts were numerous, the martins especially, and it was beautiful to see them for ever wheeling about in a loose swarm about the building. They reminded me of bees and flies, and sometimes with a strong light on them they were like those small polished black and silvery-white beetles (Gyrinus) which we see in companies on the surface of pools and streams, perpetually gliding and whirling about in a sort of complicated dance. They looked very small at a height of a couple of hundred feet from the ground, and their smallness and numbers and lively and eccentric motions made them very insect-like.
The starlings and sparrows were in a small minority among the breeders, but including these there were seven species in all, and as far as I could make out numbered about three hundred and fifty birds—probably the largest wild bird colony on any building in England.
Nor could birds in all this land find a more beautiful building to nest on, unless I except Wells Cathedral solely on account of its west front, beloved of daws, and where their numerous black company have so fine an appearance. Wells has its west front; Salisbury, so vast in size, is yet a marvel of beauty in its entirety; and seeing it as I now did every day and wanting nothing better, I wondered at my want of enthusiasm on a previous visit. Still, to me, the bird company, the sight of their airy gambols and their various voices, from the deep human-like dove tone to the perpetual subdued rippling, running-water sound of the aerial martins, must always be a principal element in the beautiful effect. Nor do I know a building where Nature has done more in enhancing the loveliness of man's work with her added colouring. The way too in which the colours are distributed is an example of Nature's most perfect artistry; on the lower, heavier buttressed parts, where the darkest hues should be, we find the browns and rust-reds of the minute aerial alga, mixed with the greys of lichen, these darker stainings extending upwards to a height of fifty or sixty feet, in places higher, then giving place to more delicate hues, the pale tender greens and greenish greys, in places tinged with yellow, the colours always appearing brightest on the smooth surface between the windows and sculptured parts. The effect depends a good deal on atmosphere and weather: on a day of flying clouds and a blue sky, with a brilliant sunshine on the vast building after a shower, the colouring is most beautiful. It varies more than in the case of colour in the material itself or of pigments, because it is a "living" colour, as Crabbe rightly says in his lumbering verse:
The living stains, which Nature's hand alone,
Profuse of life, pours out upon the stone.
Greys, greens, yellows, and browns and rust-reds are but the colours of a variety of lowly vegetable forms, mostly lichens and the aerial alga called iolithus.
Without this colouring, its "living stains," Salisbury would not have fascinated me as it did during this last visit. It would have left me cold though all the architects and artists had assured me that it was the most perfectly beautiful building on earth.