XXII

She thought of nothing but the sun and wind, the flowers and the running stream. She listened to the wind in the trees and began herself to sing. The child was led along by unknown impulses, as if voices issued from the woods calling her to enter. It would have been impossible for her to tell why she was so happy in the freedom of the fields.

Not once now and then, or one day only, when the smiling hours of early June lit the meadows, but every day, the year round, Felise went forth with the same joy.

She trod the paths to their utmost ending, through meads and wheatfields, round the skirt of copses where pheasants feeding hurried in at her coming, or wood-pigeons rose with a clatter from the firs. Climbing the rugged stiles, treading the bending plank stretched across the streamlet, stepping from stone to stone in the watery ways where woods and marshes met, up the steep hill where the shepherds had cut steps in the turf, she traced the path to its ending. Through the long lanes, hazel-boughs on one side, hawthorn on the other; along the rude wagon-tracks winding in and out the corn; by shadowy green arcades of the covers; by deep valleys, sunless because of the massy beeches high on the slopes.

There was not a spot made beautiful by trees and hedges, by grass and flowers, and sun and shade, that she had not visited and lingered in. She knew when each would look at its loveliest⁠—the corner of maple-bushes when the first frosts had yellowed the spray and strewn the sward with colour of leaves; the row of oaks when the acorns were ripe, and the rooks above and the pheasants beneath were feasting; the meadow where the purple orchis grew in the first days of May; the osier-beds where the marsh marigolds flowered, and again in the time of the yellow iris.

She knew where the hill, lifting itself in a bold brow thrown forward from the range, gave a view over the wooded plain almost to the horizon; where the downs opening in a pass, the broad green sea gleamed out to the clouds.

The place where the stream ran at the foot of a cliff, overshadowed by the trees on the summit; where it came again to sweet meads, moving between its banks without a sound except what the birds made for it calling in the sedges.

The time when the fields were fullest of flowers; the time when the green wheat began to grow tall, and to contain wheatears like hidden treasures among its innumerable stalks; the time when it became golden; the time when the partridges called at even in the short stubble.

The sound of the wind in the oaks and in the pines; the rush it came with across the grass; the rustle of the dry corn swinging.

The light of the sun shining on the green sward, on the treetops, on the clouds at sunset.

Storms darkening the face of heaven; strong gales casting fragments of branches afar from the trees; thunder rolling back in heavier echoes from the hills; lightning springing athwart the darkness.

The blackness of frost; the white of the snow; the crystal rime in the early morning; the heavy days of long, long rain; moaning wind in the elms.

The first swallow, and the hawthorn leaf green on the dark bough; the song of the nightingale; the first call of the cuckoo; the first apple-bloom; the first scent of the hay; the first sheaf of wheat; the first beech-boughs turning red and gold.

The coming of the redwings, and the fieldfares; the thrushes singing again in the mild autumn days; the last harebell from the hill.

The stars rising, constellation by constellation, as the year went on; those that had fulfilled their time of shining in the evening sky marching to the westwards, while others came up in the east. The visible path of the earth rolling onward in space, made visible by night to those who watch the stars⁠—visible by day in the shortening shadows of summer noon, and the long shadows of winter.

The glowing planets⁠—calm Jupiter, red Mars, silvery Venus⁠—glowing over the trees in the evening.

Swallows building under the eaves⁠—swallows building in the chimneys; thrushes in the hawthorn-bushes; great missel-thrushes in the apple-trees of the orchard; the blue sparrow’s egg in the hedge; the chaffinch’s moss and lichen nest against the elm; the dove’s nest up in the copse, fearlessly building because no rude hand disturbed them; the pheasant’s eggs carelessly left on the ground by the bramble-bush, the corncrake’s found by the mower; the moorhen’s nest by the trout-pool.

She knew and loved them all⁠—the colour and sound and light, the changing days, the creatures of the wood and of the field. With these she lived, and they became familiar to her, as the threads of the pattern are known to those who sit the livelong day embroidering⁠—the woven embroidery of the earth; so beautiful, because without design.

Not so much the actual realities, the woods and hills, as the mystery that brooded among them. Yet “mystery” does not convey what she felt, for there was nothing concealed; rather it was the openness, the pure frankness of nature which drew her. Perhaps “glamour” would be better⁠—the glamour of the woodland and the grassy solitude.

It was noticed that she gathered very few flowers, sometimes only bringing home some fragment of spray; it was what she felt among them that was so dear to her.

There were no women at Mr. Goring’s to show her the delicate lines that divide decorum from impropriety. He dreaded at first lest she should insensibly contract the manners of the village girls, although she did not consort with them; but he was soon set at rest on that point. Her manners remained as in the beginning; all the freedom of the fields did not induce the slightest change. Except that she romped with the great spaniel now and then, there was nothing she did the most fastidious could find fault with. Relieved of this fear, he let her wander whither she listed. Once only she overstepped the unwritten law of the country; she rode her pony into some young wheat, and galloped him to and fro.

It was Robert Godwin’s wheat, and he watched her do it in the wild delight of her youth. She had no thought of injury; she had found a broad open space, and she liked to spurn the earth and the fresh green blades of wheat beneath the pony’s hoofs.

He did not interfere; he let her trample it as much as she pleased. She was the only human being he did not drive.

Felise was very contrite when it was explained to her at home that she had done wrong; this happened in early days, not long after her arrival at Beechknoll.

Always out in the garden, or the field, or the copse with her uncle Goring, whom she called “papa,” he taught her the names of the trees and plants, the ways of the birds, the signs of spring, the indications of autumn. Sometimes he was trimming the shrubs in the garden, sometimes mending a gate, sometimes chopping poles with an axe in the copse. She brought a book and sat near him, every now and then asking questions⁠—called every now and then to observe something.

The birds were bolder in this copse than elsewhere, for no gun was ever fired; even the herons came to the pool and the stream unchecked. Nothing was interfered with; not even the weasels. Yet every wild creature abounded, despite the absence of trap, gin, and gun.

To Felise, this man who knew so much was an interpreter⁠—translating for her the language of the trees, the words of the wind, the song of the sun at his rising and his setting, the still calm intent of the stars. His gardening and planting was in reality only a manner of self-employment, so that he might be ever under the sun by day, under the stars in the evening, that he might be out-of-doors face to face with the wonders of the earth and sky.

So that it was not only the physical joy of her strong limbs that led her to the hill to climb and run with the wind. It was the open secret of the day, the glamour of the light; it was her heart and soul as much and more than those strong limbs which gloried in the free air.

Felise grew and became beautiful.

There were books at Beechknoll such as are seldom read outside the circle of the learned, though they are books far more interesting than those of modern days. The reason the classics are not read is because there still lingers a tradition, handed down from the eighteenth century, that it is useless to read them unless in the original. A tone of sarcastic contempt is maintained towards the person who shall presume to peruse Xenophon not in the original Greek, or Virgil not in the original Latin.

In the view of these critics it is the Greek, it is the Latin, that is valuable, not the contents of the volume. Shakespeare, however, the greatest genius of England, thought otherwise. It is known that his ideas of Grecian and Roman history were derived from somewhat rude translations, yet it is acknowledged that the spirit of the ancient warriors and of the ancient luxury lives in his “Antony and Cleopatra,” and nowhere in all the ancient writers is there a poem breathing the idea of Aphrodite like his “Venus and Adonis.” The example of so great a genius may shield us in an effort to free the modern mind from this eighteenth century incubus.

The truth is, the classics are much better understood in a good translation than in the original. To obtain a sufficient knowledge of Greek, for instance, to accurately translate is almost the work of a lifetime. Concentration upon this one pursuit gradually contracts the general perceptions, and it has often happened that an excellent scholar has been deficient in common knowledge, as shown by the singular character of his own notes. But his work of translation in itself is another matter.

It is a treasure; from it poets derive their illustrations; dramatists their plots; painters their pictures. A young mind full of intelligence, coming to such a translation, enters at once into the spirit of the ancient writer. A good translation is thus better than the original.

Such books Mr. Goring had accumulated for his own study; they were now opened to Felise by the same kindly hand and voice that had opened to her the knowledge of the fields and woods.

She read the beautiful memoirs of Socrates, some parts of Plato, most of the histories, and the higher and purer poets. Therein she found expressed in words and metre the very ideas, the very feelings which had come to her in the flowery meadows and woodland solitudes; ideas and feelings that floated in her mind, but which she could not utter. Here they were⁠—written down at the lips of the flowers that had faded two thousand years ago.

The soul of Greece⁠—the pure soul of antique Greece⁠—visited her as she read and dreamed.

Felise grew and became yet more beautiful.

Her heart, too, had grown within her⁠—the heart of a woman as it is in its purest nature. She was unconvinced. No specious casuistry of the vain world or the false priest, no arguments of the tyrannic science of the nineteenth century, nothing could convince her that the emotion of her heart was wrong. She was unconvinced. All the sophistry and chicanery, all the philosophy and the sociology, all the statutes on the statute book, all the Acts of Parliament, would have utterly failed for one instant to shake that heart, would have failed to convince her that wrong was right, or that a lie was the truth.

Felise was unswervingly true to herself.