^0 g\o 5 't V if A SHADOW PASSES SHADOW PASSES BY EDEN PHILLPOTTS THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK 1919 Ao/^ COPYRIGHT ' O beloved Pan and all ye other gods of this place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever outward things I have, I may be at peace with those within." The PHiTiDRUs. THE RIVERSIDE PRESS LIMITED. EDINBURGH A Shadow Passes CLOUD shadows sweep over the Moor with wings that are grey or nearly black, blue or violet-purple, according to the seasons and quality of air and sun- shine. On stormy days the case is altered and out of gloom there break beams to fly over the darkness of earth, like golden birds. The shadow and shaft of light both serve to bring out detail in the wilderness ; and while to-day passages of shade reveal the integument of heath and stone, or fling up the outline of a hill among others lost in light, to-morrow a sun-flash is apter to do these things and paint pictures set in cloudy frames. Light and shade both play their part in revelation of reaUties ; and while most men and women steadfastly suppose that only the light of success is needful to uncover the beautiful truth of them, it may be that they are mistaken and the shadow of failure would better do so. «?b STANDING under a beech-tree, waiting for the rain to pass, I marked a ghost of vanished carving on the grey bole. The tree had laboured to repair her wound, but it was graven deep, and still one might read A 5 A SHADOW PASSES " J.B.-N.W.," surrounded by the shadowy outline of a heart. May Jack and Nelly be stiU as near together and one in heart as their initials on the old beech. 15b BETTER than many more melodious singers, I love the monotonous music of the goatsucker. He has but two notes, and after sustaining the higher for thirty seconds, or more, drops half-a-tone upon the lower and so concludes his burst of song. He loves the twilight, for his great eyes hardly endure fuU day, and he haunts the stony places in the fern and open scrub at forest edge. His long-drawn purr, rising and falling and throbbing through the dusk of June, is precious in itself, and also because it wakens remembered vigils with lonely dingles in the gloaming, with still pools wherein stars were mirrored, and with the faces of grey stone-heaps fading into darkness. Such little shrines and sanctities are charged at crepuscule and moth- time with great solemnity. «Sb AN ant attempted to drag a fragment of leaf up the side of a quartz crystal. Eight times she fell, and then went round. One never knows what one can do until one tries ; but it is often well to give 6 A SHADOW PASSES oneself the benefit of the doubt. A precept for middle age — not youth. TWO cocks were crowing against each other in the hour before dawn, and one heard their futile challenges thrown backward and forward through the darkness. How little they knew that somebody was listening to them and weighing the sincerity of their voices. How little we know who may be listening to us and weighing our sincerity. If we did, perhaps we should not crow so often, or so loud. «5e NO light promised at sunset, yet just before hope died, one great saffron streak broke the western gloom and the dripping winter trees at forest side caught the flash upon their boughs and wove it into a glittering net of amber and gold. The signal and response were instantaneous ; then the sunset gleam vanished ; but the watchful trees had marked it and achieved another beauty. A great maxim : to lose no chance of achieving beauty. ON the dead thorns at the foot of a furze-bush hung a silvery object, that looked like a wisp of spun glass blown by the wind. Here a snake had wound himself, that the prickles might catch his slough 7 A SHADOW PASSES and help him to escape from it. He had wriggled clear of his old skin, to shine in the olive and brown and ebony of his new coat. Thorns are helpful things if you want to slough outgrown garments of prejudice, opinion or habit ; but the philosophers who provide them often use their prickles without any anaesthetic. Only the artist hides his thorn under beauty and laughter, as do the fragrant golden furzes. It follows that humanism is most effective in the artist's hand — a fact capable of massive proof were any so rash as to deny it. ^ IN the white dawn light an otter beaded across a deep pool. He swam invisible, and a chain of bubbles, that burst in the chill flash of morning, marked his hidden way. I was doubly glad : to see the otter beading, and to know that hounds met on another river. THERE is a little forest of dwarf oak-trees in the Moor, perched upon a stony hill. So small are they that ling and whortle climb their arms ; lowly woodrush and fern stand sure-footed in the green moss that drips from their boughs. A sage, having studied these elfin trees and counted their length of years, let it be known that the acorns they bore were sterile. The S A SHADOW PASSES wood contained seedlings of various ages, and those fruits that earth had not fulfilled went to the crops of the wood-pigeons and the stomachs of little mice ; but since the wise man declared these acorns unprolific it was long beheved and is even so reported still. Thus we credit the false even while we bark our shins on the true, being metaphysical creatures and sycophants to a man before a prosperous lie. «b WHEN the kingfisher catches a trout, he uses the whole of himself as a weapon and drops into the stream like a little dagger set with opals. His beak is the blade and his body the haft. He cannot swim, but rising from his stroke, beats hard, with short, strong wings, and ascends to his perch on a tree root, or overhanging ledge of stone, with the wriggling prey in his bill. ^> A WITHERED wisp of a woman was picking whortleberries among the grey rocks on the heath. Life had bent her to the task as it seemed and she plucked away among the wiry scrub laden with black fruit. Her wrinkled fingers were stained to purple. " Hurts be picking well, master," she said. " So I see, mother ; and how much will you get for your basket ? " 9 A SHADOW PASSES " Ninepence by evening I shouldn't wonder." " It's worth while I dare say." " It helps my grandson's beer," she explained. " He keeps me." So the long day's work will run down a thirsty young throat in a few more hours ; but she was cheer- ful and contented. «5b A FROG, with laborious propulsion from his hind legs, heaved up on to a tussock of blue grass above a pool. He shone with well-being and was striped yellow and black, while his eyes had a spark of ruby in them. Seeing me and marking an object unlike the forms of sheep and cattle familiar to him, he stopped to meditate before leaping into the water as he intended. This accidental pause served him well, for a large fly brought up suddenly on a blade of grass within reach. His tongue twinkled and the fly was gone. Thus often may strangers unconsciously do one another a good turn, from the accident of circumstance. iSb WHEN children run upon the Moor, they seldom look much farther than the ground at their feet, for there their treasures lie. When the old come 10 A SHADOW PASSES hither, they gaze far off into the hills and upon the sky above them. A PLACE breathes its own essence and they who dwell within the aura often know it not at all. The cairn upon the hill and the cloud upon the cairn ; the river winding shadow-cast, like a leaden snake, in the valley ; the rain and the west wind ; the byre, the shippon and the still, noontide house-place — these wake no note in the soul of the native sons. They pass to and fro, and stare sightless on the familiar earth and often-trodden ways. Of this wild spirit they are and know it not, nor guess their steadfast hearts and mother wit were nursed at granite nipples, very meet to nurture granite men. It is upon returning to their cradles after long absence, that Moor folk perceive the pith and marrow whence they sprang. Then they acknowledge it according to the measure of their intelligence and sentiment. II The Milk-maid's Song ANOTHER morn doth paint the skye, Dew pearle is on the grasse, A blessed lark sings up on high To see the black night passe. With blushes red the rivers wind Along a rosie plain, And silver trouts leap up to find Their morning meate again. Hark ! Hark ! The cocks doe crow, Up ! Up ! Ye merrie men ; And Vixen steals away unto Her little cubbies' den. Blue smoake is curling thro' the vale ; Come the sweet-breathing kine, Where down I set a milking paile To rub my mistie eyen. But now the Sun, with jollie mirth, Doth gladden all the land And bring another day to birth From God's Almighty Hand. Hark ! Hark ! The cocks doe crow. Up ! Up ! Ye merrie men ; And Vixen steals away unto Her little cubbies' den. 12 A SHADOW PASSES LAST night the wind fought the wood and brought down many branches. I heard the trees suffering and lamenting where I lay sleepless ; but I could not go to help them. The great wind made me listen to him : he would not have listened to me. «5> THE peat fire was a glowing, rosy-red heap on the hearth and over it danced an aureola of delicate mauve, not flame, but the ghost of vanished sunshine — dawns and dimpsy Hghts that had gone to hearten and build the peat in past centuries. In the depth of the fire I saw again the heather's piiik and purple, the twining dodder, blue milkwort, yellow tormentil and sweet wild thyme. And I saw the forgotten moormen who had tramped it, the beasts that had padded over it, the birds that had built their nests in it. 15^ AT stream-side a man kept watch over a little boy and girl who were playing. He was a hairless, epicene thing with a mother's eyes on the children. He talked to me about their promise and good qualities ; but they were not his. He spoke only as a fond mother would have spoken. Indeed he might have borne them had he been created a woman, but he could never have got them. 13 A SHADOW PASSES A MAN and girl, engaged to be married, were looking at a spray of blackthorn, whereon clusters of ripe fruit misted purple under their delicate bloom, while a few bright yellow leaves clung to the bough for colour contrast. " What beauty ! " said the man. " Sloes make ripping gin," answered the girl. With such diversely sane points of view, one felt hopeful that they would be happy. BROODING motionless and silent, there came upon me suddenly a dog-fox. Trotting down wind, he leapt upon a boulder and found himself within ten yards of the enemy. I had time to admire the lean lines of him, his red coat, great white-tipped brush and black mask. Instinctively he showed his teeth, then hopped round and loped away, going easily- but fast. A gunshot off he stood and looked back, and behind he left a vulpine reek, doubtless startled from him by such painful proximity to a man. Lack of consciousness alone saves the wild creatures. Did they possess any sense of their eternal insecurity, it would shatter their will to live ; as so often happens with human beings, who destroy themselves because they cannot trust the world any longer. 14 A SHADOW PASSES OVER dew-drenched herbage, glittering grey with the dawn-mother's tears, some little creature had run home and left the mark of its paws green on the silver. To leave a footprint in the dew, for some son of the morning to see ere day has dried it — a modest ambition and within reach of the least of us, who try to make good things. It AFTER long search I found at last the Cornish moneywort trailing its tender sprays over a stone at stream-side. Would a purse of gold have delighted me as much as this fairy money ? More ; but the pleasure had been of a commoner quality. 15b AT a picnic by the river were present two old and kindly virgins who loved beautiful things. The talk ran on Rome ; then upon statues. They spoke of the Venus of Milo and both pressed the point, with eagerness, that the stone might not stand for Venus at all. Their desire was that it should not. I had it on my lips to ask : " Why deny to the greatest figure of woman genius of man has created, embodi- ment of the mightiest passion heart of man can know ? " But I was dumb, for they had missed love : other- wise they had not uttered such a hope. 15 A SHADOW PASSES AT winter nightfall appeared the ghostly beauty of a larch wood from which the final, lemon flash of autumn had fallen and left all bare. Every naked tree was defined among its neighbours by a touch of fading light, that ran in a thread round each pavilion and gave it distinction and entity amid the myriad similar shapes — all alike yet all differing. The colours of the wood were grey and dun mingled, but the dun faded as I watched. There was neither light nor darkness in the recesses of the trees and the gloom of earth heaved up through their transparent forms. Like an encampment of phantom tents they stood on the edge of night and armed ghosts seemed to move shadowy beneath them. «5e I MET an angler full of the science of his craft. He said : " The great thing is to know what a fly looks like to a fish." But a greater would be to know what his world looks like to a fish. If one might live in a trout's world for twenty-four hours, or a tiger's, or even a tom-tit's, one would write something worthy the name of book, CHALLENGED by the scream of a bird, I hastened to see a magpie, with blows from his heavy bill, hammering the life out of a wounded starling. Acting i6 A SHADOW PASSES on impulse, I interfered, sent the murderer off and let the broken- winged starling scuttle under a bush. But it can never fly again, and death, in shape of bird or stoat, is only a question of another day, or night. Had I left the matter alone, this creature would now be out of all trouble ; but well-meaning often lengthens misery, without forestalling it. I was being kind to myself, not to the starling, when I meddled. 15b IN the marshes the buckbean has lifted its feathery mist of flower spikes above the bed of trefoil leaves. The fimbriated flowers are a miracle of work- manship and every blossom exhibits an exquisite disorder of ragged petals finer than lace. But one needs a lens to judge of their beauty : it lies hidden from the power of our eyes, and menyanthes must have bloomed and passed a million times before there came any to perceive and salute her loveliness. The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. «b THE hunt was silhouetted for a few moments on the edge of a great hill, where little black men and black horses galloped against a welter of 17 A SHADOW PASSES white clouds. Then they came over the edge of the height and a sun-shaft swept them and touched their colours, while a horn sent its thin note winding across the waste. There was a flash of far-away pink, and a rider on a white horse stood out from the rest. Hounds also were visible for a moment strung forward. But the fox was not. Half the hurry and hubbub and horn-blowing in the world is provoked by things invisible till caught and worthless afterwards. But, for good or ill, you have had the glory of a fox hunt to make or mar you, and a brush is often won by manlier work than a peerage. i8 The Lover's Song BIRDS gived awver singin', Flittermice was wingin', Mist lay on the meadows — A purty sight to see. Downlong in the dimpsy, the dimpsy, the dimpsy— Downlong in the dimpsy Theer went a maid wi' me. Two gude mile o' walkin', Not wan word o' talkin'. Then I axed a question An' put the same to she. Uplong in the owl-light, the owl-light, the owl-light- Uplong in the owl-light Theer corned my maid wi' me. 19 A SHADOW PASSES A BIG fish, when he is going to take a fly, makes no mistake about it ; but little fish often miss and strike a fraction too soon or too late. Not only many sports but the game of life itself is largely a matter of timing. I have missed more than one good fly in my da}' ; but whether I struck too soon or too late is my affair. AN oyster-grey tabby kitten came to me carrying his ostrich-feather tail upright, as one who has done well. He brought in his mouth a golden-green dragon-fly, stmck down in the rushes by the river. The silver of the unlucky dragon's gauzes matched the captor's furry face and his body exactly echoed the kitten's eyes. In slaying the dragon-fly, the kitten had interfered with the cosmic scheme ; yet the result was most beautiful — as often happens in such cases. «?b ONLY our egotism conceives of any condition as lonely, for no loneliness exists where a blade of grass can grow, or a bee hum ; where a flower breaks bud, or an earth-born rock lifts its storj^ through the snow. It is by drawing hard and fast Unes between ourselves and everything else that we create the illusion of being alone. We can be solitary, but not alone. 20 A SHADOW PASSES THE old beech kept me dry enough while the rain beat steadily on his head ; but he knew how to preserve the downpour for his own needs. From the mass of the leaves it passed to the ramage of the twigs that bore them and, gaining in volume, descended as a trickle to the branches and a brisk fountain to the boughs. Then the many channels met at the fork, to run down the bole in a torrent and vanish under the moss-covered earth. His mighty roots will drink the rain deep underground and send it back enriched to every bough and leaf-crowned twig. 1^ WHEN Shakespeare wrote and Elizabeth reigned, the Moor was more populous than now. The grey ridges of the tin-streamers are scattered over the valleys, where waters ran that have long passed to other channels ; and ruins of the blowing houses may still be found, with moulds carved from the granite into which the molten tin was poured. On Crockern's shaggy lap the old stannators met to hold their hypaethral parliament, right wrong and make the tinners' laws. Such hardy men are still with us. THE heath-lark builds her nest under a tuft of heather, where the green moss fingers about its roots. Her nursery is of dead grass and twigs, B 21 A SHADOW PASSES lined with hair, gathered from the thorns where cattle have passed by. Here she lays her dark brown eggs, and when some wandering colt sets his foot on the nest, to throw all in ruins, she laments through a brief hour of suffering and doubtless would regard the pony as a fiend of motiveless malignity if she could reason. But he browses on unknowing and innocent of the crushed eggs, or slain fledglings. So men once cried against the gods before unmerited disaster, and thus relieved their broken hearts ; but now they know their bale and boon arise from unconscious Circumstance, and that it is as vain to curse the evil as to bless the good. LITTLE black bees were on the blossoms of the wild cherry. They worked in its snow-white cups and often shook down the petals from the flowers. They darted from cluster to cluster, loading their thighs with primrose-coloured pollen, while their wings vibrated in a fitful, rather shrill murmur. They were ground bees and had made their home among the stones in a bank of fine grass, thyme and dog-violets not far distant. If man were driven by the communal impulse of the bee, instead of left groping with the anti- social instincts of the great ape, this world must long since have become another — less romantic, but how secure. Romance used to be enjoyed deep in the comfortable arm-chair of the real. But four long years have 22 A SHADOW PASSES changed that and turned what we thought was the real into a mythic tale. SKY always shines brighter than earth and the darkest thunder- cloud is as light to the shadow it casts on the hill, or valley beneath. There is no higher terrestrial radiance than snow in sunshine ; but the blue sky above it gives far greater illumination. Snow itself, whether whirling in wreaths or falling in flakes, is darker than the snow-cloud from which it comes. Only against a background of earth do we perceive its whiteness, and the artist who paints falling snow white against the sky, never saw it thus. «?b MEETING a carrion crow, he rose from the heath and croaked as he did so : " I know a horse that will be dead by to-morrow morn- ing ; but I sha'n't tell you where he is ; because I found him, and I'm going to peck out his eyes — not you ! " We are often jealous of our little secrets, though to another ear they generally convey neither profit nor entertainment. I HAVE passed this great pool below the bridge at every hour of the day and night, yet never known it to be dark. The pool has a trick to hold back 23 A SHADOW PASSES a little light after the day is done ; and it heralds morning long before the outlines of the hills are limned on the eastern sky. GRANITE, under certain stress of conditions, suffers a great change and emerges from the earth as kaolen, the stuff of the potter. Thus the cloam on the cottage table was once, perhaps, a part of these hills, and came from the clay beds a few miles distant. The cups and saucers will be dust again to-morrow and material for new hills and valleys ; for only matter is eternal, no form of it, and the mountains sink, fade, renew themselves as surely and easily as the rainbow and the cloud that weave their jewels and their crowns. «?b I FOUND an old tramp heavily asleep under an empty dung-cart that threw a patch of shade in a shadowless place. He lay there a decayed ruin, enjoying for an hour the blessing of unconsciousness. His pipe had fallen out of his mouth and I left an offering beside it without wakening him. He is near the end of his road and will get few other gifts but a coffin and a grave. 24 A SHADOW PASSES DIGGING deep into the heart of the prophylactic peat, turf-cutters often come across branches and boughs of trees, where no tree has stood within the memory of man. I saw once a soUd trunk unearthed from a depth of six feet in a peat bed. The timber was stained to chocolate, but the bark glimmered silvery through the dirt, answered the light, after a darkness of centuries, and showed the remains of a birch-tree. The bark had hardly suffered, though its texture was changed. With the most ancient living men and women also there is always something left from which you can reconstruct them and see them again as they must have been in green youth and vigour. It may be physical, but appears more often in their way of looking at things. The bark of character clings to the last. 25 Song of the Bereft ON Honeybag Down, when the lark's aloft And the sky shines blue and the wind blows soft, I mind the thought of a blessed thing That's gude to a man for remembering. For Widecombe Town From Honeybag Down, To they twinkling feet that did climb so oft. Was a journey of joy but yester Spring. On Honeybag Down, now the Winter's strife Turns earth to a flint and air to a knife, I tramp through the frost-bitten heath alone And answer the north wind moan to his moan. For Widecombe Town From Honeybag Down Be far as the journey from death to Hfe ; And they twinkling feet bide under a stone. 26 A SHADOW PASSES OVER curtains of emerald moss, bright drops were dripping into a river pool beneath. The crystal beads trickled down their green cushion and splashed into the water, where swam a trout, puzzled that this promising ruffle overhead brought nothing for him. \Vho has not hurried off to a promising ruffle, only to find that it brought nothing for him ? ONCE I saw the ' ammil ' — a very rare, winter phenomenon produced by sudden freezing of heavy rain, or fog. It differs widely from a frost and displays the world of trees and stones and heather as though thinly coated with transparent glass. Should a morning sun flash on such a spectacle, the earth emerges as an unfamiliar and glittering dream. ' Ammil ' must be a corruption of ' enamel,' for at such moments every feature of the natural scene is encrustad with frozen water. Before seeing it, I once asked an ancient woman to describe the wonder. She said : " 'Tis like nothing but the New Jerusalem." Of that city not made with hands, her dim eyes possessed the clearest vision. A RABBIT ran past me flying from terrible but invisible danger. Had he stopped beside me, he was safe ; but in me he only saw another enemy and, 27 A SHADOW PASSES though far spent, still struggled on. Close behind came two, little, cinnamon-coloured snaky things with a dab of white on their breasts. They streaked along the rabbit's trail and ran into him, not so far off but that I heard his death squeal as the weasels killed. Few can tell friend from foe when hard pressed, for at such times judgment is poisoned by terror and the world's face looms one menace. The instinct to trust was once a native thing, but has long been bred out of savage beast and man by civilisation. Yet barbaric peoples often proved as trustworthy as they were trustful ; while the spectacle of a Christian nation false to every oath and human obhgation is not far to seek. Such treason shows that trust depends on character, not culture. None knows the value of being able to trust a good man better than a bad, and the assured honour of the best is often a valuable tool to the worst. Yet the will to trust was not bom in every child for nothing and must play its part in the evolution of morals, when the power to trust becomes enlarged. UPON a bank, above the backwater of a stream, lay some empty shells of the fresh-water mussel. It is a secluded creature and one never thinks much about it until suddenly faced with its remains. But enemies know its dwelling, drag it up from its moorings and devour it. There are many similar, 28 A SHADOW PASSES shadowy acquaintance — people we have passed at right angles on the roads of life — whom we only remember again on hearing that they are dead. ^ THE grey cuckoo is back on the Cuckoo Stone — a granite boulder in mid-Moor. Long I watched him and his mate whirling, wheeling, luring each other backward and forward on love's invisible chain. The hollow echo of his song beats like a bell over the hills and valleys ; but he has another note — a deep, guttural gurgle — as loud as the first, but not so resonant. His song he offers to all : it is a part of the orchestra of Spring ; but his strange love cry, like an old man laughing, he keeps for a hen alone. I do not share the moral reprobation of the cuckoos' family arrangements, though their polyandrous methods are reactionary and not in the line of progress. But better a good foster parent than a mother without maternal instinct and a father unknown. If you lack genius for upbringing of a family, how far kinder to bestow your offspring on one who possesses it. These birds have no flair for 'home, sweet home ' — and know it. If we were as sensible, there would not be so many people sad. Better the ministry of hedge- sparrow or linnet than a cuckoo mother ; for good mothers are born, not made by the accident of maternity. Higher education is breeding out the instinct of mother- 29 A SHADOW PASSES hood and in time to come the world's population wiU decrease as the safety of nations ceases to depend upon their size. To breed without security for offspring is worse than the cuckoo. IF you cut slantwise through a stem of eagle fern, you will find in the frail fabric a very excellent picture of a spreading oak. That such a slight and delicate thing should hold the likeness of the stoutest tree, serves to remind one how the gentlest heart often hides a splendid pattern of fortitude and resolution. «?b RETURNING in the last twilight, after bee and bird had gone to their nests and only the beetles boomed, I came upon a tall granite spHnter set upright over the grave of a stone man. He must have been a chieftain, or seer, to have won such a memorial ; and gathering night made the menhir solemn, where it stood on a hill crest and kept tryst with the centuries. It spoke of the neoliths, who buried their heroes deep and set their graves on distant summits far from the hving. For they mistrusted the spirits of their dead and little Uked to think of them as returning to brood upon the scenes of their power and triumph. 30 A SHADOW PASSES ONE can reconstruct the stone men's lodges above the rings of grey granite that still mark them on hill-sides and in river valleys. It is easy to see again the cone-shaped domes of weathered hides, patched and hairy ; the smoke-wreath ascending from a hole at the top ; the sleeping ledge, lifted above the stone floor within ; the open hearth and the baby's wolf-skin cradle. The fur-clad people are thought to have been dwarfish and dark, with coarse, plentiful hair, prognathous profiles, low foreheads and heavy jaws. They were herdsmen and pounded their cattle by night against the wolf and bear. These and the wild deer they hunted, and their flint arrow-heads are still to be found at old fabricating places by the streams, or where the paws of rabbit and badger have scratched them out of burrow and holt. % NO more do they pray to their gods of the thunder and Hghtning ; no more do they bless the sun and rain, when their days were warmed with light and plenty. Their mortuaries lie under the heather and they that trod these wastes are part of it. The blood they shed has enriched the earth ; the tears they shed fell on the heath of their time, that bums on the hearthstone of ours. Their tale is told ; but their monuments remain and the granite that those hands 31 A SHADOW PASSES dragged hopefully to build a home, sadly to mark a grave, still stands in alignments and pounds, in circles and cairns and solitary stones remote. Under grey or golden weather, through the pageant of the seasons, their deserted villages lie in Time's lap ; and seeing them scattered here, so harmonious, so solemn, and so still, the heart goes out to those vanished shepherds across the centuries that roU between their pUgrimage and our own. «5j THOUGH, for man, her mockery of Hfe is too tremendous and distant to move him, the moon, steaHng across night, must ever be earth's monitor. Earth lifts her dewy eyes in sorrow to the ghost planet ; her hour of rest is saddened by the spirit of that dead and gone sister ; and she mourns on the height of her mountains and in the depth of her seas, that the moon is but a mirror to show, how for her and all who dwell on her bosom, Death in his patience also waits. He gathers up the stars Uke flowers and knows when the ruby and golden petals are ready to fall ; while Life sows new suns to bud and bloom and scatter the seed of other worlds around them in their season. For after unnumbered ages of frost and death, the dead stars meet at last in hurricanes of flame, to burn out upon the fields of space once more and write in letters of fire the prelude of another life story. 32 Song of the Old Singer HE came to sing some olden songs That hardly any now remember. He braved a night of wild December And tramped in pregnant with his wrongs. He grumbled at his weight of years And cursed the harsh, unfriendly season ; He offered a sufficient reason Why future time for him meant tears. Yet when the wight began to sing An ancient, Carolean ditty, He asked for no man's ruth, or pity, But made the cottage dresser ring. The song for him wove passing sleight To summon churchyard folk together. Help him forget his slender tether And wake a laugh that winter night. His far-off look and far-off smile Welcomed dead men and women, stealing With some faint, ghostly power of healing. To hearten him a little while. 35 A SHADOW PASSES A FARMER showed me a calf, and the point of his hopes and ambitions concerning it centred more in its parents than the httle, milky-nosed creature itself. He spoke with enthusiasm of its dam's varied virtues and its sire's bovine grandeur of girth and con- stitution, hoping that the little bull would develop these good points and better his havage in his progeny. Why do we not love our unborn as well as stock- raisers and those who labour at new onions and potatoes ? Surely the child is as important as the horse he will ride, or the beef and vegetables he will consume ? Let our hearts grow a little hotter for the boys and girls to be ; let them share our dreams with the sheep and the sweet-pea of the future. Let us think upon them oftener, that when they come we can trust them to be wiser than ourselves ; that when they have donned their flesh and we have doffed our own, they may look back and know that, despite our limitations, we loved them. The foreglow of such a hope is upon the horizon, but, curiously enough, the religious resent it. Yet eugenics must brighten into a good dawTi presently. SCOTCH firs, with tall red trunks, ^tand on a bank where the brake-fern ceases and a tract of fine grass slopes to the river. Here come many creatures 34 A SHADOW PASSES at dusk, and while the trout ring the water with their evening rise, pigeons and pheasants drink and rabbits play above them. A brook runs into the main stream at a pool, and never did tributary enter a parent river with less tumult, or emotional display. Hardly a bubble bursts. There is a swirl and eddy, no more, and the waters are one. Not so with some such unions, where we find immense stir, foamy kissing, silvery cuddling and general sentimentality, that take a long time to subside. But at last the rivers are tired of their transport and glide along together, like old married people. 152 THREE small boys were bathing at the river and looked like agitated pink pearls in a shell of grey granite and silvery water. One swam through the depths ; one waded to his middle ; and the third cut graceful antics on a boulder. He did not wet his toes, so far as one could see, but he certainly went home and said that he had been bathing. If you told some folk, who beUeve themselves chin- deep in the waters of life, that they are only cutting graceful antics on the bank, they might be vexed ; yet often so it is. 35 Song of the Sick Man BY a dew-lit, dawn-bright heath. Where crested lapwings wail And the green and odorous gale Breathes her sweet breath, He roamed through a vanished June To his heart's tune. And now, with bed-fellow pain And a bundle of nerves arack, Nigh drowned in the depth of night's black While driving rain Keeps mournful patter without. Where storm winds shout. He plays with time like a toy. Because Alma Mater was kind And granted a fashion of mind Thrifty of joy. Night, winter and pain all go : He wills it so. By a dew-lit, dawn-bright heath Where crested lapwings wail And the green and odorous gale Breathes her sweet breath, He roams through a vanished June To his heart's tune. 36 A SHADOW PASSES UPON a beach of silver sand by the stream there had fallen a heron's feather with ivory-white shaft and pearl-grey plume. If this were trimmed into a pen, how well one might write of solitude, since none loves tliat better than the heron and I. 1^ BETWEEN two and three o'clock — at the half- way house of night — I heard slow hoofs below my window, and leaning out, saw under moonshine two great cart-horses wandering down the road together. They were enj oying a phase of their existence unknown to us. They conversed in little sounds and when one stopped, to snort and sniff at the water of a duck-pond by the way, the other also stopped, raised his head and looked steadfastly up into the starry sky. I saw the moonlight in his big eyes. Presently they put their noses together. Then one gave a slight start — perhaps at the opinions of the other — and side by side they sauntered away into the night-hidden land. One knew that they were revealing much about themselves concealed from their masters, and meditat- ing upon life in their fashion while man slept. ^, A FISHERMAN once protested to me against the wicked destruction of small trout and. declared it an infamous thing that anybody should take them c 37 A SHADOW PASSES out of the river. Finding that he had caught none at all himself, either great or small, I told him how once in a carnival at Nice two women cried out in my hearing against the wicked destruction of violets. But they were not being pelted. THE migrant ring-ousel builds year after year in a granite quarry, and I have often heard him there. It is a solitary, forgotten place and he knows it better than most living people. He sang last spring from a rusty rib of old iron, driven into the rock by men long dust. His song differs from the intimate music of his kinsfolk, the blackbird and thrush. It is thinner, colder, more elfin — the pure tinkle of a mountain brook. With some birds you feel that they like you to listen to them ; not so the shy ring-ousel. One pays something in time and patience for his song, and values it the more. 9^ STANDING upon a high place, the smoke of swale- ing fires spread for miles beneath me. Like scattered feathers they roUed out, travelling from east to west ; and some, near at hand, were vast as clouds billowing above the heath ; while in the distance they shrank and dimmed, mile on mile, to mere grey puffs creeping over the Moor. 3S A SHADOW PASSES Tracts of the waste are thus annually cleansed by fire and the heather and furze brakes destroyed, that the grass may have light and air and the great grazing grounds offer more food to the flocks. Very dismal are the expanses of black char and grey ashes after the fires have nibbled and gnawed over them with their red teeth ; but grass breaks green from this rack at the first spring rain, and before autumn, round each furze stump and naked clump of burnt-out heath and whortle, young growths are breaking, enriched by the ashes, to build up their familiar splendour in a year or two. They will grow by stealth and flourish awhile ; then they will catch the eye of the moorman and be burned down again. WHITE bluebells thrive on an island in the river. Beside them lady ferns uncurl their silver-green fronds and the young woodrush buds for flower. From above, the sterile catkins of the sallows drop into the water. They are borne down-stream looking like silky caterpillars ; but only to our eyes : the trout do not think so. 9^ THE bird frightened from her nest, often builds another ; the wounded beast creeps to his den and dies without anger. Instinct is never impatient ; only reason knows to be. But the wild things, perishing hourly without succour, 39 A SHADOW PASSES have anodyne we know not. Terror of death and sense of wrong cannot wound their hearts. Perhaps they wonder a Httle at the first failures to take their prey and the growing hunger and weakness that follow ; but they have not long to wonder. Lapse from perfect, self-supporting life quickly turns the hunter into the hunted and the end of most wild creatures is sudden. A hard and protracted frost cuts the thread of countless soft-billed birds, who go to roost empty and fall from sleep into death. UNDER a grey crab-tree, in mid-winter, its autumn harvest was still lying, hard and plump, scattered on the moss in a woodland clearing. The fruit shone golden, beautifully flamed with scarlet ; but it had not tempted anybody. Here and there a mouse had broken an apple for the seeds, though not often. Many crab people have nourishing seeds in them ; but life is too short for the unpleasant toil of extraction. So they are left to wonder what it is that denies them the attention less worthy folk enjoy. They are conscious of their excellent seeds ; quite unconscious of the sour pulp in which they are packed away. GLOW-WORMS haunt the open, weedy-covered water-tables beside high roads. Here, after dusk, they scatter the grass with points of golden-green and 40 A SHADOW PASSES liquid light. It is a genial rather than cold radiance — warmer than many stars. At short range its brilliance is extraordinary ; but it does not penetrate and only reveals a few grass blades and inches of earth round the source of light. Yet upon those grass blades and grains of sand and soil exist many invisible creatures, who must see, or feel, the glow-worm's little lamp ; and to them her passing is far more tremendous than to us would be blaze of a great comet. For how rare the wonder when their whole tiny sky is filled with glory ! If they could think, doubtless they would take such an illumination to be the supreme fact in the cosmic scheme ; and so, perhaps, we err concerning the visible Universe ; which may only be the glow-worm of beings that move on a grander scale than we can imagine. 1^ THE dead grass, that looked so white yesterday, to-day is full of warm colour and almost bums through the snow that fell last night. The shadows of the oak saplings were grey yesterday ; they stretch sky-blue on the snow to-day ; while the granite boulders are turned a dark blue and the withered fern, russet overnight, is purple this morning. Snow changes all colour values and displays colour in objects that were colourless to our eyes before it fell. Strong character is often a similar touchstone, to bring out latent colour in its neighbours, or suppress their native hues. But 41 A SHADOW PASSES colour depends on the eye that chronicles it and character is often as illusory. How often we discover people to be colour-bUnd, when they examine us and our works. »5> A GREAT sheaf of king fern touched by the brush of autumn beckoned me, where it stood, like a pale flame, by the river. It rose over a fibrous black mass of intertwisted root, of which the lower portion was immersed ; and one felt something indeed regal in the splendid fronds towering breast-high, and still stout and strong, despite the gold of death deepening on every plume. I longed, as often before incommunicable mystery, to penetrate the secret of this beautiful thing and learn its good and ill, its plan and purpose, what it courted and dreaded about its throne. One often desires intimacy with creatures powerless to grant it, and shuns the confidence of others only too ready and wiUing to do so. " Enter into every man's Inner Self," says Marcus, " and let every man enter into thine." But how many portals worth entering will grant entrance, and before how many is not the door enough to frighten us from the knocker ? If your business be human nature, the unconscious confession often suffices, and speaks more certainly 42 A SHADOW PASSES than any professed revelaticJh tinctured by art or craft ; for consciousness, even though it be honest, is nearly always too self-conscious to be true. To many we cannot show ourselves ; from some we cannot hide. AN inn that I used to frequent was chiefly patronised by sportsmen, and they resembled each other in their general outlook on life and reaUty. Art, in the eyes of these robust and jolly persons, was not exactly man's work. They doubted and mistrusted those who practised it, dividing artists roughly into two classes. Some they held harmless lunatics ; some, who employed art in propaganda, they regarded as dangerous lunatics. But they agreed that all must be lunatic. «5b ONCE I met with the churn-owl in full day and found the hen busy on a rock feeding two tiny fledglings, as yet almost bare of feathers. But this bird only arrives in mid-May and departs in September. The date was already August, and it would be im- possible for these infant churn-owls to gain strength of wing and fullness of plumage during the few remaining weeks for their journey south. They were hatched too 43 A SHADOW PASSES late and a time was clearly coming when their mother would be called to choose between stopping to perish with them, or seeking winter quarters alone. She will not hesitate. The migratory impulse is stronger than the maternal in nobler mothers than the goatsucker ; and while her will to live takes the bird, a far more potent force drives the woman. THE battered trees on the hill-top fight a good fight ; but their struggle is a losing one and they fail slowly under the stress. Limbs that the winter storms have torn from them rot in the grass at their feet and more than one tree is down. They bleed and endure. Their neighbours in the coomb beneath are snug and prosperous, for they enjoy shelter from harsh winds and bask in the beam of noonday ; their limbs are sound and they show no scars. But they never see the sun rise or set, and their beauty is naught to that of the time-bom, weather-beaten veterans aloft. 44 The Tramp's Song I'M rotten as a bird-pecked pear Though only fifty-one I swear — Sing tooral — looral Hddy. And rather short of teeth and hair- Sing tooral — ^looral lay. My togs give many people pain, My shirt lets in the fleas and rain — Sing tooral — looral liddy. My trousers let 'em out again — Sing tooral — looral lay. A pub at every second mile, By night a shippon thatch, or tile — Sing tooral — looral liddy. Are all I'm asking from this isle — Sing tooral — looral lay. Upon the Moor some day I'll die, And when red brother fox goes by — Sing tooral — looral liddy, May he not find me gone too high — Sing tooral — looral lay. 45 A SHADOW PASSES And whether in the next abode I sport a crown, or feel a goad — Sing tooral — looral liddy — My Father, let there be a road — Sing tooral — looral lay. 46 A SHADOW PASSES THROUGH this valle}^ a trout stream ran when I was a boy, and many a good basket did I win there in the past. The river wound under banks of dwarf sallow, through green fiats and ferny bottoms, until it came to an old bridge that spanned a gorge. Here the stream tumbled sharply by waterfalls and hanging woods to a lower level, where opened meadow-land. Now the bridge is gone, the gorge is dammed and the green valley has turned into a lake. But its silver face cannot hide and its depths will never drown the days I spent there. Memory runs clearer as it rolls deeper, and there is a precious human instinct to preserve the impression of happy hours, but let the dark ones grow dim. ^> A KIND old woman blessed Providence to me because great provision was made one autumn for the birds. But birds are like the rest of us and enjoy their fruit when it is ripe. Only a few four- footed wild things know to hoard : no bird looks ahead. Liberal" though the harvest, when February comes and the ground is iron, there will be few berries left, save on the ivy. Then the birds follow their food into warm recesses of the woods, where still the earth is soft, or haunt the tideways and river estuaries. Farmyards and broken stacks also promise bounty, and fields, where manure is being scattered, are a blessing to great and small. Later, when frost breaks, 47 A SHADOW PASSES they pay court to the ploughman and wait at white dawn by the arable lands for him and his horses to arrive. This year many acres are under the coulter that have not been ploughed since the Peninsular War, so our birds should do well. 15b A STRANGE, leafless herb haunts the heather and dwarf furze, using them as a cushion for its lace- work. The lesser dodder looks Hke a rose-red spider's web matted in the plants from which it sucks life. Its tangle of bright filaments is knotted with clusters of little pale flowers. The parasite always reminds me of critics who bite the hand that feeds them and seek to strangle mightier writers on whom their own activities depend. Relij,ious predilections vitiate much criticism and often breed malice. The impotent dodder suggests De Quincey's pitiful assaults upon Goethe, Shelley, Lucretius; Ruskin baring his teeth at Darwin ; Mr Chesterton's crude insolence to Thomas Hardy. Live in a cage if you please, but do not make faces through the bars at your betters, who prefer to go free. Such bad manners' frighten many away from dogma to morals, where the breezes blow purer ; for people who live in cages create an atmosphere and the fumes are very unfavourable to honesty. Let the dust fall on such dishonoured pages — they were written with hate ; but we will cherish what these men wrote in love. 48 A SHADOW PASSES I WENT to see a woman whose husband had died since my last visit. She was still comatose with grief and her cottage desolate and neglected. One hesitated between the narcotic of sympathy and the tonic of sense. When to be firm, when gentle, needs judgment, and as a rule gentleness is more easy and firmness more wise. Sympathy's blade often turns in the hand, and sympathetic people, while they learn most about human nature, may be serving human nature worse than the practical, who lack imagination, or melody of manner. The ideal is a heart to share sorrow and a head to help it. Much depends on such a physical accident as the note and modulation of speech. I once heard a voice that said foolish things bring un- conscious comfort by its tone ; while an abrupt and grating utterance, charged with sense, missed any good purpose for the racked listener. It was a stupid man who succeeded where an intelligent woman failed. THE tramp of your own feet will weave places together and establish the link between them, so that after the long trudge they are never again separated in your mind as before. They are one in thought henceforth, together with the spaces that divide them. Ignorance of those spaces created the hiatus ; but having passed over the gap, it is a gap no more. Thus I have come to regard this pleasure ground and workshop of hamlets, farmsteads and inns, of solitary hills, river 49 A SHADOW PASSES valleys and far-flung, featureless levels, as an integral thing — not scattered acquaintance, but one huge friend. Only on foot, or horseback, could you learn it thus. Regions that demand long joumeyings between them, through spaces we shall never know, cannot be welded into one. THE March river was a roaring volume of cherry- red water, on which sailed shivering flakes of pale brown spume. The freshet ran up the black peat banks, drowned the beaches and spread into the bog- land on either side. Overhead was a chilly blue sky with the last rack and rearguard of the nightly storm blown across it. The reflection of the blue glinted a shade darker than itself on the water. A hump-backed man, carrying a battered creel and home-made rod, came to fish with worm. He was a tattered, hairy little creature and he had a merry face and bright eyes. With the wind in his rags and his beard, he looked more like a mommet than a man. " A dozen half-pounders before noon ! " he promised, and may have kept his word. «5b FILMY fern still haunts the rocks in sheltered glens and dingles beside the river ; but its tiny, transparent fronds resemble moss so nearly 50 A SHADOW PASSES that it generally escapes the hunter. At one time it was sought for Wardian cases ; now that fashion has departed and the filmy fern is left in peace . Another rare thing, lingering in caves and deserted mine adits, is the shining moss, that gUmmers like dim gold under darkness. Those who snatch at it and bring it to the daylight find only a little rusty earth in their hands. ISb ON still days, when the mind is resting and the sky clouded, yet not too heavily curtained to show the place of the sun ; on days at the edge of autumn, rest- ful days — a suspension between one storm and another — when the flame and pomp of the fading year are hidden in monotone ; there is awakened a melancholy that does not deepen into sadness, but rather sustains than casts down. It springs of the diurnal mood, spreads placidly through our thoughts and is welcome ; it comes in temperate guise and flings never a sharp shadow to heighten the splendour of great lights ; it brings no inspiration, but rather, like the mist, it dims and softens and leaves the mind gentle, receptive and pervious to sensation. Other days dominate by force and demand active emotion and action ; these still, grey hours steal upon the spirit and by their quality 51 A SHADOW PASSES win us to a pensive patience before the spectacle of life. 1^ THERE came an evening when I caught a trout for the last time, wound in my line, put away the flies, and took down my rod for ever. Over five and twenty years, without one break, I fished, and then determined to fish no more. We seldom deliberately do an accustomed deed for the last time. We often resolve that it shall be the last, yet fail of the resolution. But in this case no strength of purpose kept me to my plan ; I felt not one regret to stop ; no desire to go on again tempted me when the season returned. If a doctor had told me not to fish, or any obstacle had come in the way, I should, perhaps, have been sorry for myself and striven desperately for reasonable excuses to resume the sport. To break faith with a doctor, or plot to circumvent a promise to yourself is human ; to persist in a habit that has begun to weary you would be uiinatural. A GOLDEN bird sat on the golden gorse, and uttered his little, long-drawn plaintive song. On a sunny day, one would have loved better the lark aloft, or the thrush near his home in the larch ; but upon this spring morning of sad grey skies and fine rain misting on the south wind, the yellow-hammer's melody was right. 52 A SHADOW PASSES THERE is a clear spring under a pent roof of moss- grown and ferny stones on the open Moor. When the sun slants, you can read a date upon the granite — 1568 ; and tradition tells that John Fitzford, an old lawyer and star-reader, being pixy-led and losing his way upon the heath, found the spring, drank of it and so escaped from his spell. In gratitude he built up these stones to commemorate the incident ; and I have met old men who vowed the waters still hold healing and are good against many ills. Preserve all local sanctities of place and oral tradi- tion as you can. The antiquary may be trusted for the one ; but words and myths have many foes and vanish before the schools, like ghosts at the grey breath of morning. The morning is welcome, yet I mourn the death of many pleasant ghosts, slain with bell, book and candle of unimaginative learning. In folklore of fairies, in good wishing and evil wishing, in charms of hurt and healing, in simples gathered at right seasons under sun and moon, in churchyards and legends and natural things set to supernatural use, much appears that influenced the lives of the old people, who were born in belief of these spells and mysteries. They re- acted on character ; and you who write of such legends, hold none too archaic or grotesque to set down in its place ; for these things fall quicklier than the elms at March, and cannot be recovered. Hourly they perish, in the withering brains of ancient men and women, and are lost for ever. 53 A SHADOW PASSES THE West wind is blind and does not see his work. He blows neither to pleasure the world nor the people in it. He has played on this granite harp of crags since it was flung up out of the earth, sometimes in whispers and sometimes with energy so huge that the stone trembled to his touch. He has shepherded centuries of clouds and brought to earth the leaves of a miUion autumns. He brushes your cheek and passes on with caress as rough, or gentle, to the beasts of the field and the graves of the dead. He helps the fledglings' flight and drowns the ocean-going ships ; he scatters the thistledown and drags up the forest by its roots ; he sows the invisible seed of the fern and hurls down much patient work of man. He woke with the creation of the earth, and not until the sun begins to grow cold and our planet dies will he, also, fold up his mighty wings and perish. THE East wind is a rare painter and can do more with his veils and gauzes and feathers upon the naked sky than the \^^est wind, for all those giant peaks and pinnacles of cloud he lifts from old ocean. The East wind knows not the crystal clarity of rain- soaked air. He works with dry brushes and hides the horizon under enchanted colours, so that though earth curdles beneath his stroke, the woods ache through and through, the waters show their teeth, the cattle turn their backs, 54 A SHADOW PASSES aloft float tender, fairy tones and the hills lie under many-tinted haze. The tyrant loves to go in delicate raiment of azare and silver and rose, draped orient- wise over his steel bosom. His dagger leaps from a sheath of pearl and opal and he smiles while he stabs. 55 The Gaffer's Song A SUDDEN wakin', a sudden weepin' ; A li'l suckin', a li'l sleepin' ; A cheel's full joys an' a cheel's short sorrows, Wi' a power o' faith in gert to-morrows. Young blood red-hot an' the love of a maid ; Wan glorious hour as'll never fade ; Then shadows and sunshine an' triumphs an' tears Pile the gatherin' weight o' the flyin' years. Now auld man's talk o' the days behind me ; My darter's youngest darter to mind me ; A li'l dreamin', a li'l dyin', A li'l, lew corner o' airth to lie in. 56 A SHADOW PASSES THE old oak-tree was passing, as he had lived — nobly. The lightning had struck him and torn off a mighty bough, from which wound death crept downward into the mass of his trunk ; but still he broke amber buds in spring, dropped acorns in autumn, and poured his energy and high courage into the living limbs, that they might be distinguished and splendid so long as the sap would mount. He will go game and may be an object worthy of admiration for some human generations yet. Lesser things than the oak, if blessed with good blood, also die hke gentlemen. A Persian carpet, or piece of Sheraton makes a distinguished end and bears itself with dignity to the last — as aristocrats before the guillotine. But a Brussels, or bit of mid- Victorian will be found to grovel, show its unlovely wounds and scream for pity. 9^ AMID coarse or illiterate speech one often catches a dignified, old English phrase in the mouth of the folk. If repeated, as coming from a rustic, such expressions would be doubted and the chronicler ques- tioned by those who had not heard them. When a woman is going to bear a baby, the doctor says she is pregnant ; the lower middle-class speaks of her as enceinte (an& pronounces the word wrongly) ; the monthly nurse aUudes to her as in the family way ; 57 A SHADOW PASSES a stone-breaker once told me, simply and beautifully, that his wife was with child. ON the face of the low granite cliff, that buttressed a sheaf ol young oak-trees, I saw the patient beauty of a caryatid, for ever holding up treasiu"es more lovely than she, that yet depended for their safety on her sleepless service. But my companion valued the placid face of the rock for itself, because it was unfretted with detail and offered fine, tranquil planes for movement of hght and shadow. Thus two men may love the same girl and yet love different girls, since she is a different girl in the eyes of each. The man who sees the vital things may win her ; but she is far more likely to love the man who does not see the vital things. Yet who can name the vital things that will ensure happiness with a Hfe's partner ? To judge, you must know the characters of both man and woman, and also allow for their reaction. IT is interesting to note how most art lovers and critics are town-bred and town-minded. They reck little of the stuff from which so much that they treasure springs. Of painters, Turner and Girtin, 58 A SHADOW PASSES Whistler and Monet may be a part of their aesthetic life ; but bid them rise before dawn to see a winter sunrise ; make them tramp a scorching summer wlder- ness at noon ; drive them to sweat for their beauty, freeze for it, drown for it, go hungry and thirsty for it, lessen their vitality for it, and they would rebel. They are concerned with the artist's revelation, not the thing itself, and this second-hand attitude breeds a bad con- sequence, because an urban critic of rural painting, or fiction, is ignorant whether the work of art be right in its vitals. He often praises falsehood, or censures truth as a result of this ignorance, and especially is he apt to mistake realism for reality. Because a thing is grim, hideous and brutal, it does not in the least foUow that it is true, any more than it need be false because cheerful, humorous and sweet. Distinction, selection, form, style, technique — all are vain if squandered on an intrinsic lie ; and that holds good despite Nietzsche's aphorism. He says : " Art is with us that we shall not perish of too much truth " ; but there is no fear of any such surfeit. Truth is a rare bird still — so rare that few recognise it even if the artist show it to them. ¥^ THE great, solitary rowan-tree did much good, for it gave a welcome shade to the cattle and the traveller ; it broke the Une of the level fiat gratefully, 59 A SHADOW PASSES it offered pleasure to the eye at bud-break and sparkled with bunches of scarlet fruit in the autumn, which both gladdened the spectator and fed the missel- thrushes. But the good it did was all in the day's work and came of no effort, no self-denial. The mountain ash was in- tent on his own business and prosperity alone. It is the same with the good that most of us do. We take it in our stride and never seek the opportunity till it challenges us. Then we fume a little and either shirk the fence, or hop over. And, for the largest- hearted of us, what is the word we write most often in our cheque-books ? " Self." Men recollect their good deeds readily enough ; yet those who can, have not many to bless themselves with. " He that gives should never remember ; he that receives should never forget," says the Talmud — an ordinance of no wide observance, for human nature tends to the contrary. n> MEETING a stranger at luncheon, he asked me whether I knew Dartmoor. I answered : " Not as well as I could wish." Whereupon he told me that once he had motored across it. " Hardly a thing you'd do twice, certainly," he confessed. I told him to try walking across it and the advice amused him. " Surely no sane man would waste his time hke that," he declared. Concerning fiction, this barbaric person explained that he never read novels, " because they were all Ues " ; 60 A SHADOW PASSES and when I inquired if the same objection prevented him from looking at pictures and statues, he said : " No ; such things are worth money if they have been made by celebrities." He was most entertaining and owned coal mines ; but art had been left out of him — a misfortune that may overtake people who own coal mines. The wealthy and the poverty-stricken are in like case : both are too preoccupied with finance to use time to better purpose. Perhaps that is a sound argument for sweeping both classes away, FROM a great southern tor by night you can see a beam flashing over the Eddystone ; and by day battleships, swinging in Plymouth Sound, adjust their compasses with the aid of this steadfast hill. In its heart is the Pixies' Cave, where a famous Devon cavalier hid from Cromwell's Ironsides. It links ancient with modern romance and serves the last ' Dreadnought ' as willingly as it helped the soldier of King Charles to escape his foe, and me to write The Virgin in Judgment. rb How reasonable is all that one can appreciate in these high places. Everything proceeds stead- fastly from cause to effect ; everything is governed and 6i A SHADOW PASSES controlled ; and in the measure of our own reason, so we perceive the inexorable procedure and consent to enforced conditions. The conditions themselves spring reasonably from remoter causes and the balance hangs true. Only we reasoning creatures are irrational and deride our supreme gift. The talk is of perishing faith, and reason answers that sooner will the principles of gravitation and evolution perish than faith. Faith is a permanent and vital endowment of the human mind — a part of reason itself. The insane alone are without it. We all back something, if only ourselves, and a man can no more disbelieve in everything than he can believe in opposites. Agnosticism is faith in the suspended judgment ; atheism is faith that existence depends upon the properties of matter and not the purposes of conscious Will. The faith of those who acknowledge a revealed religion is founded on a Supreme Being and His intention ; the faith of most free-thinkers rests in a con\'iction that the possibilities latent in human reason suffice for right human progress. They do not pretend to know where reason will bring us ; but they affirm, since the evolution of morals is upward and towards righteousness, that reason may be trusted above any other guide. They believe that, had the world been governed by reason, the present disaster had not fallen upon it. Yet archaic minds still argue that war must be a static institution for reasonable beings. No ; Reason will inevitably banish it off the earth, when she wins the power, for it is contrary to reason and nature also that 62 A SHADOW PASSES the elder generations should slaughter the younger of their own species. I LIKE to believe that Keats stood by some of the old grey circles scattered on the Moor, to mark the stone man's meeting-places. Whether these signs were set for sacrifice to gods, or the concourse of the people's parliaments, we know not ; but still they stand in lonely places, to challenge the poet who comes upon them. And though that familiar image in Hyperion is imputed to his wanderings in Cumberland or Scotland, I choose rather to think that a Dartmoor monument inspired Keats. For the poem was published in 1820, after his sojourn at Teignmouth, and he never looked up to the girth of Heytor, the steep of Lastleigh, or the crown of huge Rippon without seeking to climb them and penetrate what lay within those oorder heights. Surely his eyes brooded over the wilderness and flashed at many visions hidden from us. But why did he despise the Devon folk so heartily ? I have often wondered what offence awoke this contempt. l?b THERE are rare moments when the golden link of all matter seems visible and we forget our in- significance and feel a part appreciable of the splendid 63 . A SHADOW PASSES whole. The air we breathe is the same that burns in glory under the sun ; the water and the lime that build our delicate bodies are also in the precipices and palaces of the summer clouds and the bones of the land beneath our feet. On such days we claim kinship with the elements and share their life and greatness and justifica- tion. They are festivals of all earth's thanksgiving and their lyric hymn throbs from the harp of a mighty minstrel, for it is the anthem of the rapture of life. 15, THE Moor was mist-laden and colourless. The children of sunshine slept while nature worked in black and white, and every shade of pearl, cobweb and sulky lead went to her autumn picture. The dim outhnes of the hills and the silver birches ; the granite and the bramble with grey under-leaves brushed up by the wind ; the river and rock and the withered thistle hanging over them ; the flying seeds and dead heather blossom — all these developed the harmony from which colour seemed to be so cunningly abstracted. In the woods the grey lichen and the grey boughs were paramount. Unconsidered incident piessed upon you — unguessed congruities in the passing of those things whose funerals know no pomp and whose palls are silver and sere. A grey day reveals the inner texture of nature's robe and those soft fabrics that cling close to her heart and hide her bosom. 64 A SHADOW PASSES ^]'ATURE'S cult is above all things reasonable and S thus fulfils the conditions of a good working faith. Much is hidden ; much is lucid and practical. Mystery does not lack, for there are many holies where no foot has trodden ; but the rudiments are plain, and first appears the necessity for obedience. Break the law and the law will break you. Her outworn creeds fall like the flower, whose seed, set from better pollen than its own, will lift the next generation into nobler beauty than we shall see and furnish richer and sweeter fruit than we shall taste. Her impulse is onward. Nothing to her is an end in itself ; everything is a beginning for something else. Only give her time ; she is not weary ; her laws have not fulfilled themselves ; they justify full faith in the destiny of our heirs and generous trust in the future. *52 HOPE beckons from the days to come, and who but can take joy in that march forward ? Our feet loiter long by the way and turn back to evil paths again ; but nature's pressure is ceaseless : she leads us onward from the jungles of the ape and tiger to the uplands, where Reason, also, shall have a place in the sun. We are as much a part of the immemorial plan as the Galaxy ; we are the links in an eternal chain, and our part is neither to mourn the prevalent pattern, nor un- duly to glorify it, but keep the personal link free from 65 A SHADOW PASSES rust, that it may sustain its proper strain in the world order. So shall there steal into life, peace and patience and that " quiet unity which alone can compress any achievement into the few human years." RETURNING from Switzerland, I lifted my eyes for the first glimpse of Dartmoor, in cheerful expecta- tion of her crowns and turrets. They were gone and only a grey sky met me. Then looking far, far beneath the clouds, I found my tors, shrunk to molehills upon the level heart of little Devon. But their heights shall still pierce the sky for me, their lights still gleam, their shadows still hold good things ; their songs and silences still utter the best music I can hear. For they have earned the right to beguile me. There are some illusions not to be surrendered even though the effort is heroic that preserves them ; while to others we cannot bid farewell if we would. Quarrel with no man's dreams, for what you cherish in him may haply spring from them alone. 66 Song of the Shadow A SHADOW passes Over the grasses, Alike in tune With the sun or moon. By hill and vale, High heath and dale. For a brief day He pursues his way. And then no more. Upon the hoar And ancient place, Can he show his face. But wiser shades Will haunt these glades And meditate Trulier on Fate. Knowing to glean From each steadfast scene, A living rede For our human need. THE END sm THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. 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