The Delectable Duchy | Page 9

going on between
thrush and chaffinch--"Cheer up, cheer up, Queen!" "Clip clip, clip,
and kiss me--Sweet!"--one against the other.
Now, the behaviour of the Registrar of Births, Deaths, and Marriages
changed as he descended the valley. At first he went from side to side,
because the loose stones were sharp and lay unevenly; soon he
zig-zagged for another purpose--to peer into the bank for violets, to
find a gap between the trees where, by bending down with a hand on
each knee and his head tilted back, he could see the primroses
stretching in broad sheets to the very edge of the pine-woods. By
frequent tilting his collar broke from its stud and his silk hat settled far
back on his neck. Next he unbuttoned his waistcoat and loosened his
braces; but no, he could not skip--his boots were too tight. He looked at
each tree as he passed. "If I could only see"--he muttered. "I'll swear
there used to be one on the right, just here."
But he could not find it here--perhaps his memory misgave him--and
presently turned with decision, climbed the low fence on his left,
between him and the hollow of the coombe, and dropped into the
plantation on the other side. Here the ground was white in patches with
anemones; and as his feet crushed them, descending, the babel of the
birds grew louder and louder.
He issued on a small clearing by the edge of the brook, where the grass
was a delicate green, each blade pushing up straight as a spear-point

from the crumbled earth. Here were more anemones, between patches
of last year's bracken, and on the further slope a mass of daffodils. He
pulled out a pocket-knife that had sharpened some hundreds of quill
pens, and looking to his right, found what he wanted at once.
It was a sycamore, on which the buds were swelling. He cut a small
twig, as big round as his middle finger, and sitting himself down on a
barked log, close by, began to measure and cut it to a span's length,
avoiding all knots. Then, taking the knife by the blade between finger
and thumb, he tapped the bark gently with the tortoise-shell handle.
And as he tapped, his face went back to boyhood again, in spite of the
side-whiskers, and his mouth was pursed up to a silent tune.
For ten minutes the tapping continued; the birds ceased their contention,
and broke out restlessly at intervals. A rabbit across the brook paused
and listened at the funnel-shaped mouth of his hole, which caught the
sound and redoubled it.
"Confound these boots!" said the Registrar, and pulling them off,
tossed them among the primroses. They were "elastic-sides."
The tapping ceased. A breath of the land-ward breeze came up,
combing out the tangle that winter had made in the grass, caught the
brook on the edge of a tiny fall, and puffed it back six inches in a spray
of small diamonds. It quickened the whole copse. The oak-saplings
rubbed their old leaves one on another, as folks rub their hands, feeling
life and warmth; the chestnut-buds groped like an infant's fingers; and
the chorus broke out again, the thrush leading--"Tiurru, tiurru,
chippewee; tio-tee, tio-tee; queen, queen, que-een!"
In a moment or two he broke off suddenly, and a honey-bee shot out of
an anemone-bell like a shell from a mortar. For a new sound
disconcerted them--a sound sharp and piercing. The Registrar had
finished his whistle and was blowing like mad, moving his fingers up
and down. Having proved his instrument, he dived a hand into his
tail-pocket and drew out a roll, tied around with ribbon. It was the
folded leather-bound volume in which he kept his blank certificates.
And spreading it on his knees, he took his whistle again and blew,

reading his music from the blank pages, and piping a strain he had
never dreamed of. For he whistled of Births and Marriages.
O, happy Registrar! O, happy, happy Registrar! You will never get into
those elastic-sides again. Your feet swell as they tap the swelling earth,
and at each tap the flowers push, the sap climbs, the speck of life
moves in the hedge-sparrow's egg; while, far away on the downs, with
each tap, the yellow van takes bride and groom a foot nearer felicity. It
is hard work in worsted socks, for you smite with the vehemence of
Pan, and Pan had a hoof of horn.
* * * * *
The Registrar's mother lived in the fishing-village, two miles down the
coombe. Her cottage leant back against the cliff so closely, that the
boys, as they followed the path above, could toss tabs of turf down her
chimney: and this was her chief annoyance.
Now, it was close on the