The Heart of England/Chapter 27
CHAPTER XXVII
JANUARY SUNSHINE
It is a quiet valley in which moist fields of meadow, mowing grass, mangold, and stubble are bounded from one another by deep ditches and good hedges of maple, thorn and hazel, with here and there an oak, or by oak woods that rise above an undergrowth of grey ash. Every half mile there is a tiled farmhouse with low-pitched roof and low, square windows, their frames painted white, and between them rose trees climbing; in the gardens of most, two plots of lawn are surrounded by rich dark borders and divided by a path; and each has a careless shrubbery of Portuguese laurel, lilac, syringa and elder, hardly cut off from the orchard that grows as it will above grey rank grass, and close by at least two ponds. One little stream winds through the valley and gains at times much glory of speed and sound and foam from the rain off the hillside. A few grey, smooth roads cross the valley.
It is January, and the predominant grass is green and shining in the sun. The rusty oaks and the farmhouse roofs glow. The bare clean hedges glitter with all their stems of olive hazel, silver oak and ash and white thorn, and blackthorn ruddy where the cattle have rubbed. A lark rises and sings. A flock of linnets scatters and drops little notes like a rain of singing dew, and over all is a high blue sky, across which the west wind sets a fleet of bright white clouds to sail; into this blue sky the woods of the horizon drive their black teeth.
In the immense crystal spaces of fine windy air thus bounded by blue sky, black woods and green grass, the jackdaws play. They soar, they float, they dance, and they dive and carve sudden magnificent precipices in the air, crying all the time with sharp joyous cries that are in harmony with the great heights and dashing wind. The carter's boy raises his head from the furrow and shouts to them now and then, while the brass furnishings of his horses gleam, their shoulders grow proud and their black tails stream out above the blue furrow and the silver plough.
Suddenly a pheasant is hurled out of a neighbouring copse; something crosses the road; and out over a large and shining meadow goes a fox, tall and red, going easily as if he sailed in the wind. He crosses that meadow, then another, and he is half a mile away before a loud halloo sounds in the third field, and a mile away before the first hound crosses the road upon his scent.
Run hard hounds, and drown the jackdaws' calling with your concerted voices. It is good to see your long swift train across the meadow and away, away; on such a day a man would give everything to run like that. Run hard, fox, and may you escape, for it would not be well to die on such a day, unless you could perchance first set your fair teeth into the throats of the foolish ones who now break through the hedge on great horses and pursue you—I know not why—ignorant of the command that has gone forth from the heart of this high blue heaven, Be beautiful and enjoy and live!