The Heart of England/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BARGE
Spring and summer and autumn had come—flowing into one another with that secrecy which, as in the periods of our life, spares us the pain of the irretraceable step—and still a golden tree stood here and there in the hollowed lawns… Snow fell on singing thrushes and golden trees, and when it was over a half moon of untouched grass under a dense hawthorn was as a green shadow on the white land… Then the year paused; there was a swallow still here and there; but again there was snow…
The world had been black and white for many days. The cygnet-coloured sky had been low from dawn to sunset; rarely a cloud dimly appeared in it, seen and lost and seen again, like a slow fish in rippling water. By night the iron firmament had been immense and remote.
Out of doors, as we walked, it was a source of faint satisfaction that we were clothed and fed; and it was easy to think of a less happy condition. We were in a primitive world. In those short days the world seemed to have grown larger; distance was more terrible. A friend living thirty miles off seemed inaccessible in the snow. The earth had to be explored, discovered, and mapped again; it was as it had been centuries ago, and progress was not very real to our minds. Only when we saw a great fire at an inn, a red face or two, a copper vessel thrust in among the coals to warm the ale, did there appear to be much being done to fight winter and to subjugate this primitive world. We saw the birds around us for what they were—little, tender, hungry things, entirely sorrowful, easily killed, and not mere melodious attendants upon our delight.
A train crawling along the valley at a distance was very feeble in our eyes. The strength and purpose were concerted. It was like a thought which is without the implements for action—pathetic and impotent, it was absorbed easily by the vast white land. It shrieked and was lost in a tunnel.
There were only two real things—the cold and the thought of man. The cold expressed itself easily by the whiteness and the leaden shade, the great power of distance, the obliteration of colours, footpaths, landmarks, the silence. Thought was not equally vigorous. It could not sustain itself alone. Men had to walk hard, to talk and even then to change the subjects rapidly, especially if they were abstract. Thus to compare the ham of Wiltshire with that of South Wales was pleasant and easy for a time; but to discuss the nature of love or style or virtue was not long possible.
Under the ice of a pond lay the last summer's nest of a grebe among the rotten reeds. High and low in the hedges, old nests were as the jetsam of summer's wreck—as if a galleon should be represented by a boot on the shore.
Through the land went a dusky river, and in it a black barge with merrily painted prow. It was guided by a brown woman wearing a yellow scarf and she stood boldly up. In the midst of it a man played on a concertina and sang. The barge was light and high in the water; lonely and unnoticed, it threaded the long curves and still the concertina lamented and the tall woman stood boldly up. As it disappeared the dolorous air began to darken and I knew why that barge stood so high and light—because its cargo was merely all the flowers and the birds and the joys and pains of spring, the contentments of summer, the regrets of autumn, of all men and women who had lived through the now dying year; and no one claimed them, no one sought them, no one stood on the bank to salute them.