A Traveller in Little Things | Page 3

the greatest change of all was in the appearance of things. He had had a hard life, and the hardest time was when he was a ploughboy and had to work so hard that he was tired to death at the end of every day; yet at four o'clock in the morning he was ready and glad to get up and go out to work all day again because everything looked so bright, and it made him happy just to look up at the sky and listen to the birds. In those days there were larks. The number of larks was wonderful; the sound of their singing filled the whole air. He didn't want any greater happiness than to hear them singing over his head. A few days ago, not more than half a mile from where we were standing, he was crossing a field when a lark got up singing near him and went singing over his head. He stopped to listen and said to himself, "Well now, that do remind me of old times!"
"For you know," he went on, "it is a rare thing to hear a lark now. What's become of all the birds I used to see I don't know. I remember there was a very pretty bird at that time called the yellow-hammer--a bird all a shining yellow, the prettiest of all the birds." He never saw nor heard that bird now, he assured me.
That was how the old man talked, and I never told him that yellow hammers could be seen and heard all day long anywhere on the common beyond the green wall of the elms, and that a lark was singing loudly high up over our heads while he was talking of the larks he had listened to sixty-five years ago in the Vale of Aylesbury, and saying that it was a rare thing to hear that bird now.

III
AS A TREE FALLS
At the Green Dragon, where I refreshed myself at noon with bread and cheese and beer, I was startlingly reminded of a simple and, I suppose, familiar psychological fact, yet one which we are never conscious of except at rare moments when by chance it is thrust upon us.
There are many Green Dragons in this world of wayside inns, even as there are many White Harts, Red Lions, Silent Women and other incredible things; but when I add that my inn is in a Wiltshire village, the headquarters of certain gentlemen who follow a form of sport which has long been practically obsolete in this country, and indeed throughout the civilised world, some of my readers will have no difficulty in identifying it.
After lunching I had an hour's pleasant conversation with the genial landlord and his buxom good-looking wife; they were both natives of a New Forest village and glad to talk about it with one who knew it intimately. During our talk I happened to use the words--I forget what about--"As a tree falls so must it lie." The landlady turned on me her dark Hampshire eyes with a sudden startled and pained look in them, and cried: "Oh, please don't say that!'
"Why not?" I asked. "It is in the Bible, and a quite common saying."
"I know," she returned, "but I can't bear it--I hate to hear it!"
She would say no more, but my curiosity was stirred, and I set about persuading her to tell me. "Ah, yes," I said, "I can guess why. It's something in your past life--a sad story of one of your family--one very much loved perhaps--who got into trouble and was refused all help from those who might have saved him."
"No," she said, "it all happened before my time--long before. I never knew her." And then presently she told me the story.
When her father was a young man he lived and worked with his father, a farmer in Hampshire and a widower. There were several brothers and sisters, and one of the sisters, named Eunice, was most loved by all of them and was her father's favourite on account of her beauty and sweet disposition. Unfortunately she became engaged to a young man who was not liked by the father, and when she refused to break her engagement to please him he was dreadfully angry and told her that if she went against him and threw herself away on that worthless fellow he would forbid her the house and would never see or speak to her again.
Being of an affectionate disposition and fond of her father it grieved her sorely to disobey him, but her love compelled her, and by-and-by she went away and was married in a neighbouring village where her lover had his home. It was not a happy marriage, and after a few anxious years she fell into a wasting illness, and