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16 Malcolm Farmer, Juliet Sutherland, Tom Allen, Charles Franks and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team
THE OPEN AIR
RICHARD JEFFERIES
NOTE
For permission to collect these papers my thanks are due to the
Editors of the following publications: _The Standard_, _English
Illustrated Magazine_, _Longman's Magazine_, _St. James's Gazette_,
_Chambers's Journal_, _Manchester Guardian_, _Good Words_, and _Pall Mall
Gazette_.
R.J.
CONTENTS
SAINT GUIDO
GOLDEN-BROWN
WILD FLOWERS
SUNNY BRIGHTON
THE PINE WOOD
NATURE ON THE ROOF
ONE OF THE NEW VOTERS
THE MODERN THAMES
THE SINGLE-BARREL GUN
THE HAUNT OF THE HARE
THE BATHING SEASON
UNDER THE ACORNS
DOWNS
FOREST
BEAUTY IN THE COUNTRY
OUT OF DOORS IN FEBRUARY
HAUNTS OF THE LAPWING
OUTSIDE LONDON
ON THE LONDON ROAD
RED ROOFS OF LONDON
A WET NIGHT IN LONDON
SAINT GUIDO
St. Guido ran out at the garden gate into a sandy lane, and down the lane
till he came to a grassy bank. He caught hold of the bunches of grass and
so pulled himself up. There was a footpath on the top which went straight
in between fir-trees, and as he ran along they stood on each side of him
like green walls. They were very near together, and even at the top the
space between them was so narrow that the sky seemed to come down, and
the clouds to be sailing but just over them, as if they would catch and
tear in the fir-trees. The path was so little used that it had grown
green, and as he ran he knocked dead branches out of his way. Just as he
was getting tired of running he reached the end of the path, and came out
into a wheat-field. The wheat did not grow very closely, and the spaces
were filled with azure corn-flowers. St. Guido thought he was safe away
now, so he stopped to look.
Those thoughts and feelings which are not sharply defined but have a haze
of distance and beauty about them are always the dearest. His name was
not really Guido, but those who loved him had called him so in order to
try and express their hearts about him. For they thought if a great
painter could be a little boy, then he would be something like this one.
They were not very learned in the history of painters: they had heard of
Raphael, but Raphael was too elevated, too much of the sky, and of
Titian, but Titian was fond of feminine loveliness, and in the end
somebody said Guido was a dreamy name, as if it belonged to one who was
full of faith. Those golden curls shaking about his head as he ran and
filling the air with radiance round his brow, looked like a Nimbus or
circlet of glory. So they called him St. Guido, and a very, very wild
saint he was.
St. Guido stopped in the cornfield, and looked all round. There were the
fir-trees behind him--a thick wall of green--hedges on the right and the
left, and the wheat sloped down towards an ash-copse in the hollow. No
one was in the field, only the fir-trees, the green hedges, the yellow
wheat, and the sun overhead, Guido kept quite still, because he expected
that in a minute the magic would begin, and something would speak to him.
His cheeks which had been flushed with running grew less hot, but I
cannot tell you the exact colour they were, for his skin was so white and
clear, it would not tan under the sun, yet being always out of doors it
had taken the faintest tint of golden brown mixed with rosiness. His blue
eyes which had been wide open, as they always were when full of mischief,
became softer, and his long eyelashes drooped over them. But as the magic
did not begin, Guido walked on slowly into the wheat, which rose nearly
to his head, though it was not yet so tall as it would be before the
reapers came. He did not break any of the stalks, or bend them down and
step on them; he passed between them, and they yielded on either side.
The wheat-ears were pale gold, having only just left off their green, and
they surrounded him on all sides as if he were bathing.
A butterfly painted a velvety red with white spots came floating along
the surface of the corn, and played round his cap, which was a little
higher, and was so tinted by the sun that the butterfly was inclined to
settle on it. Guido put up his hand to catch the butterfly, forgetting
his secret in his desire to touch it. The butterfly was too quick--with a
snap of his wings disdainfully mocking the idea of catching him, away he
went. Guido nearly stepped on a humble-bee--buzz-zz!--the bee was so
alarmed he actually crept up Guido's knickers to the knee, and even then
knocked himself against a wheat-ear when he started to fly. Guido kept
quite still while the humble-bee was on his knee, knowing that he should
not be stung if he did not move. He knew, too, that humble-bees have
stings though people often say they have not, and the reason people think
they do not possess them is because humble-bees are so good-natured and
never sting unless they are very much provoked.
Next he picked a corn buttercup; the flowers were much smaller than the
great buttercups which grew in the meadows, and these were not golden but
coloured like brass. His foot caught in a creeper, and he nearly
tumbled--it was a bine of bindweed which went twisting round and round
two stalks of wheat in a spiral, binding them together as if some one had
wound string about them. There was one ear of wheat which had black
specks on it, and another which had so much black that the grains seemed
changed and gone leaving nothing but blackness. He touched it and it
stained his hands like a dark powder, and then he saw that it was not
perfectly black as charcoal is, it was a little red. Something was
burning up the corn there just as if fire had been set to the ears. Guido
went on and found another place where there was hardly any wheat at all,
and those stalks that grew were so short they only came above his knee.
The wheat-ears were thin and small, and looked as if there was nothing
but chaff. But this place being open was full of flowers, such lovely
azure cornflowers which the people call bluebottles.
Guido took two; they were curious flowers with knobs surrounded with
little blue flowers like a lady's bonnet. They were a beautiful blue, not
like any other blue, not like the violets in the garden, or the sky over
the trees, or the geranium in the grass, or the bird's-eyes by the path.
He loved them and held them tight in his hand, and went on, leaving the
red pimpernel wide open to the dry air behind him, but the May-weed was
everywhere. The May-weed had white flowers like a moon-daisy, but not so
large, and leaves like moss. He could not walk without stepping on these
mossy tufts, though he did not want to hurt them. So he stooped and
stroked the moss-like leaves and said, "I do not want to hurt you, but
you grow so thick I cannot help it." In a minute afterwards as he was
walking he heard a quick rush, and saw the wheat-ears sway this way and
that as if a puff of wind had struck them.
Guido stood still and his eyes opened very wide, he had forgotten to cut
a stick to fight with: he watched the wheat-ears sway, and could see them
move for some distance, and he did not know what it was. Perhaps it was a
wild boar or a yellow lion, or some creature no one had ever seen; he
would not go back, but he wished he had cut a nice stick. Just then a
swallow swooped down and came flying over the wheat so close that Guido
almost felt the flutter of his wings, and as he passed he whispered to
Guido that it was only a hare. "Then why did he run away?" said Guido; "I
should not have hurt him." But the swallow had gone up high into the sky
again, and did not hear him. All the time Guido was descending the slope,
for little feet always go down the hill as water does, and when he looked
back he found that he had left the fir-trees so far behind he was in the
middle of the field. If any one had looked they could hardly have seen
him, and if he had taken his cap off they could not have done so because
the yellow curls would be so much the same colour as the yellow corn. He
stooped to see how nicely he could hide himself, then he knelt, and in a
minute sat down, so that the wheat rose up high above him.
Another humble-bee went over along the tips of the wheat--burr-rr--as he
passed; then a scarlet fly, and next a bright yellow wasp who was telling
a friend flying behind him that he knew where there was such a capital
piece of wood to bite up into tiny pieces and make into paper for the
nest in the thatch, but his friend wanted to go to the house because
there was a pear quite ripe there on the wall. Next came a moth, and
after the moth a golden fly, and three gnats, and a mouse ran along the
dry ground with a curious sniffling rustle close to Guido. A shrill cry
came down out of the air, and looking up he saw two swifts turning
circles, and as they passed each other they shrieked--their voices were
so shrill they shrieked. They were only saying that in a month their
little swifts in the slates would be able to fly. While he sat so quiet
on the ground and hidden by the wheat, he heard a cuckoo such a long way
off it sounded like a watch when it is covered up. "Cuckoo" did not come
full and distinct--it was such a tiny little "cuckoo" caught in the
hollow of Guido's ear. The cuckoo must have been a mile away.
Suddenly he thought something went over, and yet he did not see
it--perhaps it was the shadow--and he looked up and saw a large bird not
very far up, not farther than he could fling, or shoot his arrows, and
the bird was fluttering his wings, but did not move away farther, as if
he had been tied in the air. Guido knew it was a hawk, and the hawk was
staying there to see if there was a mouse or a little bird in the wheat.
After a minute the hawk stopped fluttering and lifted his wings together
as a butterfly does when he shuts his, and down the hawk came, straight
into the corn. "Go away!" shouted Guido jumping up, and flinging his cap,
and the hawk, dreadfully frightened and terribly cross, checked himself
and rose again with an angry rush. So the mouse escaped, but Guido could
not find his cap for some time. Then he went on, and still the ground
sloping sent him down the hill till he came close to the copse.
Some sparrows came out from the copse, and he stopped and saw one of them
perch on a stalk of wheat, with one foot above the other sideways, so
that he could pick at the ear and get the corn. Guido watched the sparrow
clear the ear, then he moved, and the sparrows flew back to the copse,
where they chattered at him for disturbing them. There was a ditch
between the corn and the copse, and a streamlet; he picked up a stone and
threw it in, and the splash frightened a rabbit, who slipped over the
bank and into a hole. The boughs of an oak reached out across to the
corn, and made so pleasant a shade that Guido, who was very hot from
walking in the sun, sat down on the bank of the streamlet with his feet
dangling over it, and watched the floating grass sway slowly as the water
ran. Gently he leaned back till his back rested on the sloping ground--he
raised one knee, and left the other foot over the verge where the tip of
the tallest rushes touched it. Before he had been there a minute he
remembered the secret which a fern had taught him.
First, if he wanted to know anything, or to hear a story, or what the
grass was saying, or the oak-leaves singing, he must be careful not to
interfere as he had done just now with the butterfly by trying to catch
him. Fortunately, that butterfly was a nice butterfly, and very
kindhearted, but sometimes, if you interfered with one thing, it would
tell another thing, and they would all know in a moment, and stop
talking, and never say a word. Once, while they were all talking
pleasantly, Guido caught a fly in his hand, he felt his hand tickle as
the fly stepped on it, and he shut up his little fist so quickly he
caught the fly in the hollow between the palm and his fingers. The fly
went buzz, and rushed to get out, but Guido laughed, so the fly buzzed
again, and just told the grass, and the grass told the bushes, and
everything knew in a moment, and Guido never heard another word all that
day. Yet sometimes now they all knew something about him, they would go
on talking. You see, they all rather petted and spoiled him. Next, if
Guido did not hear them conversing, the fern said he must touch a little
piece of grass and put it against his cheek, or a leaf, and kiss it, and
say, "Leaf, leaf, tell them I am here."
Now, while he was lying down, and the tip of the rushes touched his foot,
he remembered this, so he moved the rush with his foot and said, "Rush,
rush, tell them I am here." Immediately there came a little wind, and the
wheat swung to and fro, the oak-leaves rustled, the rushes bowed, and the
shadows slipped forwards and back again. Then it was still, and the
nearest wheat-ear to Guido nodded his head, and said in a very low tone,
"Guido, dear, just this minute I do not feel very happy, although the
sunshine is so warm, because I have been thinking, for we have been in
one or other of these fields of your papa's a thousand years this very
year. Every year we have been sown, and weeded, and reaped, and garnered.
Every year the sun has ripened us and the rain made us grow; every year
for a thousand years."
"What did you see all that time?" said Guido.
"The swallows came," said the Wheat, "and flew over us, and sang a little
sweet song, and then they went up into the chimneys and built their
nests."
"At my house?" said Guido.
"Oh, no, dear, the house I was then thinking of is gone, like a leaf
withered and lost. But we have not forgotten any of the songs they sang
us, nor have the swallows that you see to-day--one of them spoke to you
just now--forgotten what we said to their ancestors. Then the blackbirds
came out in us and ate the creeping creatures, so that they should not
hurt us, and went up into the oaks and whistled such beautiful sweet low
whistles. Not in those oaks, dear, where the blackbirds whistle to-day;
even the very oaks have gone, though they were so strong that one of them
defied the lightning, and lived years and years after it struck him. One
of the very oldest of the old oaks in the copse, dear, is his grandchild.
If you go into the copse you will find an oak which has only one branch;
he is so old, he has only that branch left. He sprang up from an acorn
dropped from an oak that grew from an acorn dropped from the oak the
lightning struck. So that is three oak lives, Guido dear, back to the
time I was thinking of just now. And that oak under whose shadow you are
now lying is the fourth of them, and he is quite young, though he is so
big.
"A jay sowed the acorn from which he grew up; the jay was in the oak with
one branch, and some one frightened him, and as he flew he dropped the
acorn which he had in his bill just there, and now you are lying in the
shadow of the tree. So you see, it is a very long time ago, when the
blackbirds came and whistled up in those oaks I was thinking of, and that
was why I was not very happy."
"But you have heard the blackbirds whistling ever since?" said Guido;
"and there was such a big black one up in our cherry tree this morning,
and I shot my arrow at him and very nearly hit him. Besides, there is a
blackbird whistling now--you listen. There, he's somewhere in the copse.
Why can't you listen to him, and be happy now?"
"I will be happy, dear, as you are here, but still it is a long, long
time, and then I think, after I am dead, and there is more wheat in my
place, the blackbirds will go on whistling for another thousand years
after me. For of course I did not hear them all that time ago myself,
dear, but the wheat which was before me heard them and told me. They told
me, too, and I know it is true, that the cuckoo came and called all day
till the moon shone at night, and began again in the morning before the
dew had sparkled in the sunrise. The dew dries very soon on wheat, Guido
dear, because wheat is so dry; first the sunrise makes the tips of the
wheat ever so faintly rosy, then it grows yellow, then as the heat
increases it becomes white at noon, and golden in the afternoon, and
white again under the moonlight. Besides which wide shadows come over
from the clouds, and a wind always follows the shadow and waves us, and
every time we sway to and fro that alters our colour. A rough wind gives
us one tint, and heavy rain another, and we look different on a cloudy
day to what we do on a sunny one. All these colours changed on us when
the blackbird was whistling in the oak the lightning struck, the fourth
one backwards from me; and it makes me sad to think that after four more
oaks have gone, the same colours will come on the wheat that will grow
then. It is thinking about those past colours, and songs, and leaves, and
of the colours and the sunshine, and the songs, and the leaves that will
come in the future that makes to-day so much. It makes to-day a thousand
years long backwards, and a thousand years long forwards, and makes the
sun so warm, and the air so sweet, and the butterflies so lovely, and the
hum of the bees, and everything so delicious. We cannot have enough of
it."
"No, that we cannot," said Guido. "Go on, you talk so nice and low. I
feel sleepy and jolly. Talk away, old Wheat."
"Let me see," said the Wheat. "Once on a time while the men were knocking
us out of the ear on a floor with flails, which are sticks with little
hinges--"
"As if I did not know what a flail was!" said Guido. "I hit old John with
the flail, and Ma gave him a shilling not to be cross."
"While they were knocking us with the hard sticks," the Wheat went on,
"we heard them talking about a king who was shot with an arrow like yours
in the forest--it slipped from a tree, and went into him instead of into
the deer. And long before that the men came up the river--the stream in
the ditch there runs into the river--in rowing ships--how you would like
one to play in, Guido! For they were not like the ships now which are
machines, they were rowing ships--men's ships--and came right up into the
land ever so far, all along the river up to the place where the stream in
the ditch runs in; just where your papa took you in the punt, and you got
the waterlilies, the white ones."
"And wetted my sleeve right up my arm--oh, I know! I can row you, old
Wheat; I can row as well as my papa can."
"But since the rowing ships came, the ploughs have turned up this ground
a thousand times," said the Wheat; "and each time the furrows smelt
sweeter, and this year they smelt sweetest of all. The horses have such
glossy coats, and such fine manes, and they are so strong and beautiful.
They drew the ploughs along and made the ground give up its sweetness and
savour, and while they were doing it, the spiders in the copse spun their
silk along from the ashpoles, and the mist in the morning weighed down
their threads. It was so delicious to come out of the clods as we pushed
our green leaves up and felt the rain, and the wind, and the warm sun.
Then a little bird came in the copse and called, 'Sip-sip, sip, sip,
sip,' such a sweet low song, and the larks ran along the ground in
between us, and there were bluebells in the copse, and anemones; till
by-and-by the sun made us yellow, and the blue flowers that you have in
your hand came out. I cannot tell you how many there have been of these
flowers since the oak was struck by the lightning, in all the thousand
years there must have been altogether--I cannot tell you how many."
"Why didn't I pick them all?" said Guido.
"Do you know," said the Wheat, "we have thought so much more, and felt so
much more, since your people took us, and ploughed for us, and sowed us,
and reaped us. We are not like the same wheat we used to be before your
people touched us, when we grew wild, and there were huge great things in
the woods and marshes which I will not tell you about lest you should be
frightened. Since we have felt your hands, and you have touched us, we
have felt so much more. Perhaps that was why I was not very happy till
you came, for I was thinking quite as much about your people as about us,
and how all the flowers of all those thousand years, and all the songs,
and the sunny days were gone, and all the people were gone too, who had
heard the blackbirds whistle in the oak the lightning struck. And those
that are alive now--there will be cuckoos calling, and the eggs in the
thrushes' nests, and blackbirds whistling, and blue cornflowers, a
thousand years after every one of them is gone.
"So that is why it is so sweet this minute, and why I want you, and your
people, dear, to be happy now and to have all these things, and to agree
so as not to be so anxious and careworn, but to come out with us, or sit
by us, and listen to the blackbirds, and hear the wind rustle us, and be
happy. Oh, I wish I could make them happy, and do away with all their
care and anxiety, and give you all heaps and heaps of flowers! Don't go
away, darling, do you lie still, and I will talk and sing to you, and you
can pick some more flowers when you get up. There is a beautiful shadow
there, and I heard the streamlet say that he would sing a little to you;
he is not very big, he cannot sing very loud. By-and-by, I know, the sun
will make us as dry as dry, and darker, and then the reapers will come
while the spiders are spinning their silk again--this time it will come
floating in the blue air, for the air seems blue if you look up.
"It is a great joy to your people, dear, when the reaping time arrives:
the harvest is a great joy to you when the thistledown comes rolling
along in the wind. So that I shall be happy even when the reapers cut me
down, because I know it is for you, and your people, my love. The strong
men will come to us gladly, and the women, and the little children will
sit in the shade and gather great white trumpets of convolvulus, and come
to tell their mothers how they saw the young partridges in the next
field. But there is one thing we do not like, and that is, all the labour
and the misery. Why cannot your people have us without so much labour,
and why are so many of you unhappy? Why cannot they be all happy with us
as you are, dear? For hundreds and hundreds of years now the wheat every
year has been sorrowful for your people, and I think we get more
sorrowful every year about it, because as I was telling you just now the
flowers go, and the swallows go, the old, old oaks go, and that oak will
go, under the shade of which you are lying, Guido; and if your people do
not gather the flowers now, and watch the swallows, and listen to the
blackbirds whistling, as you are listening now while I talk, then Guido,
my love, they will never pick any flowers, nor hear any birds' songs.
They think they will, they think that when they have toiled, and worked a
long time, almost all their lives, then they will come to the flowers,
and the birds, and be joyful in the sunshine. But no, it will not be so,
for then they will be old themselves, and their ears dull, and their eyes
dim, so that the birds will sound a great distance off, and the flowers
will not seem bright.
"Of course, we know that the greatest part of your people cannot help
themselves, and must labour on like the reapers till their ears are full
of the dust of age. That only makes us more sorrowful, and anxious that
things should be different. I do not suppose we should think about them
had we not been in man's hand so long that now we have got to feel with
man. Every year makes it more pitiful because then there are more flowers
gone, and added to the vast numbers of those gone before, and never
gathered or looked at, though they could have given so much pleasure. And
all the work and labour, and thinking, and reading and learning that your
people do ends in nothing--not even one flower. We cannot understand why
it should be so. There are thousands of wheat-ears in this field, more
than you would know how to write down with your pencil, though you have
learned your tables, sir. Yet all of us thinking, and talking, cannot
understand why it is when we consider how clever your people are, and how
they bring ploughs, and steam-engines, and put up wires along the roads
to tell you things when you are miles away, and sometimes we are sown
where we can hear the hum, hum, all day of the children learning in the
school. The butterflies flutter over us, and the sun shines, and the
doves are very, very happy at their nest, but the children go on hum, hum
inside this house, and learn, learn. So we suppose you must be very
clever, and yet you cannot manage this. All your work is wasted, and you
labour in vain--you dare not leave it a minute.
"If you left it a minute it would all be gone; it does not mount up and
make a store, so that all of you could sit by it and be happy. Directly
you leave off you are hungry, and thirsty, and miserable like the beggars
that tramp along the dusty road here. All the thousand years of labour
since this field was first ploughed have not stored up anything for you.
It would not matter about the work so much if you were only happy; the
bees work every year, but they are happy; the doves build a nest every
year, but they are very, very happy. We think it must be because you do
not come out to us and be with us, and think more as we do. It is not
because your people have not got plenty to eat and drink--you have as
much as the bees. Why just look at us! Look at the wheat that grows all
over the world; all the figures that were ever written in pencil could
not tell how much, it is such an immense quantity. Yet your people starve
and die of hunger every now and then, and we have seen the wretched
beggars tramping along the road. We have known of times when there was a
great pile of us, almost a hill piled up, it was not in this country, it
was in another warmer country, and yet no one dared to touch it--they
died at the bottom of the hill of wheat. The earth is full of skeletons
of people who have died of hunger. They are dying now this minute in your
big cities, with nothing but stones all round them, stone walls and stone
streets; not jolly stones like those you threw in the water, dear--hard,
unkind stones that make them cold and let them die, while we are growing
here, millions of us, in the sunshine with the butterflies floating over
us. This makes us unhappy; I was very unhappy this morning till you came
running over and played with us.
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