The Golden Age | Page 6

quite a new
lion this time,--something you can't even imagine." And he raced off to
his post. Charlotte hesitated; then she went timidly on, at each step
growing less Charlotte, the mummer of a minute, and more the anxious
Pilgrim of all time. The lion's wrath waxed terrible at her approach; his
roaring filled the startled air. I waited until they were both thoroughly
absorbed, and then I slipped through the hedge out of the trodden
highway, into the vacant meadow spaces. It was not that I was
unsociable, nor that I knew Edward's lions to the point of satiety; but
the passion and the call of the divine morning were high in my blood.
Earth to earth! That was the frank note, the joyous summons of the day;
and they could not but jar and seem artificial, these human discussions
and pretences, when boon Nature, reticent no more, was singing that
full-throated song of hers that thrills and claims control of every fibre.
The air was wine; the moist earth-smell, wine; the lark's song, the wafts
from the cow-shed at top of the field, the pant and smoke of a distant
train,--all were wine,--or song, was it? or odour, this unity they all
blended into? I had no words then to describe it, that earth- effluence of
which I was so conscious; nor, indeed, have I found words since. I ran
sideways, shouting; I dug glad heels into the squelching soil; I splashed
diamond showers from puddles with a stick; I hurled clods skywards at
random, and presently I somehow found myself singing. The words
were mere nonsense,-- irresponsible babble; the tune was an
improvisation, a weary, unrhythmic thing of rise and fall: and yet it
seemed to me a genuine utterance, and just at that moment the one
thing fitting and right and perfect. Humanity would have rejected it

with scorn, Nature, everywhere singing in the same key, recognised and
accepted it without a flicker of dissent.
All the time the hearty wind was calling to me companionably from
where he swung and bellowed in the tree-tops. "Take me for guide
to-day," he seemed to plead. "Other holidays you have tramped it in the
track of the stolid, unswerving sun; a belated truant, you have dragged
a weary foot homeward with only a pale, expressionless moon for
company. To-day why not I, the trickster, the hypocrite? I, who whip
round corners and bluster, relapse and evade, then rally and pursue! I
can lead you the best and rarest dance of any; for I am the strong
capricious one, the lord of misrule, and I alone am irresponsible and
unprincipled, and obey no law." And for me, I was ready enough to fall
in with the fellow's humour; was not this a whole holiday? So we
sheered off together, arm-in-arm, so to speak; and with fullest
confidence I took the jigging, thwartwise course my chainless pilot laid
for me.
A whimsical comrade I found him, ere he had done with me. Was it in
jest, or with some serious purpose of his own, that he brought me
plump upon a pair of lovers, silent, face to face o'er a discreet
unwinking stile? As a rule this sort of thing struck me as the most
pitiful tomfoolery. Two calves rubbing noses through a gate were
natural and right and within the order of things; but that human beings,
with salient interests and active pursuits beckoning them on from every
side, could thus--! Well, it was a thing to hurry past, shamed of face,
and think on no more. But this morning everything I met seemed to be
accounted for and set in tune by that same magical touch in the air; and
it was with a certain surprise that I found myself regarding these
fatuous ones with kindliness instead of contempt, as I rambled by,
unheeded of them. There was indeed some reconciling influence abroad,
which could bring the like antics into harmony with bud and growth
and the frolic air.
A puff on the right cheek from my wilful companion sent me off at a
fresh angle, and presently I came in sight of the village church, sitting
solitary within its circle of elms. From forth the vestry window
projected two small legs, gyrating, hungry for foothold, with
larceny--not to say sacrilege--in their every wriggle: a godless sight for
a supporter of the Establishment. Though the rest was hidden, I knew

the legs well enough; they were usually attached to the body of Bill
Saunders, the peerless bad boy of the village. Bill's coveted booty, too,
I could easily guess at that; it came from the Vicar's store of biscuits,
kept (as I knew) in a cupboard along with his official trappings.
For a moment I hesitated; then I passed on