NIGHT WOKK. 



n 



and that nothing has been or ever shall be. iVnd there is pleasure of a 

 kind even then. Best of all my haunts do I love that sunken 

 lane, with the winds overhead and the stillness of its sheltered 

 banks, where the light-winged moths flit across the ray of my lantern, 

 and the hedgehogs creep after the beetles, wliile the plovers and the 

 partridges call to their mates over tlie fields around. Sometimes again 

 I am on the hills, with a breeze coming uji along the slopes of the 

 valley. This lireezc only comes ; it never j/oex like the others. Ever- 

 lastingly up and up the slopes it runs and stops and vanishes. And it 

 too sings its song, but what the song is I cannot hear, although the 

 breeze comes and comes, again and again, and whispers it in my ear. 

 I think I cannot hear it because the breeze never seems to pass beyond 

 me. There is no time for it to echo in the brain. But there is a 

 suggestion in it of health and freshness, of dewy-scented flowers at 

 daybreak before the sun is high. Perhaps it is like the songs of the 

 birds, only to be felt, and not to be translated into notes and words. 

 Like the birds' songs, I can recognise its variations, and that now it sings 

 of this and now of that, but its meaning and its message are too deep, and 

 come from too far off in the future. Perhaps its meaning is hidden 

 because it comes from that chamber of mysteries — the Sea. 



And besides all these older and immortal spirits of the breeze, there 

 are the little earth-born fairy zephyrs, some haunting for days the 

 same hill-top and the same dell, and others, born for a moment in any 

 corner, whicli touch the cheek and die. Voiceless little elves are these, 

 but still presences to increase the sense of wonderment and awe. Men 

 talk of Ijeing alone at night, I am never less alone. What does it 

 matter that I laugh at myself and my fancies in the broad sunlight ? 

 Night comes again and I know them to be true. 



Such are some of the mysteries of the air. And the mysteries of 

 the earth are not less manifold. First come the perfumes — the fresh 

 clean smell of the earth that makes the heart strong, the elder-flowers, 

 the wild rose, the thyme, and, best loved of all b}^ me, the honeysuckle ; 

 all unmistakeable in themselves, but suggesting somehow in the darkness 

 all the host of flowers as well ; lilies of the valley where none can be, lilac, 

 jasmine, and many an aristocrat of the conservatory. Then the sounds 

 of the earth and its inhabitants. The creaking of the boughs as they 

 sway in the breeze ; the rustle of the mice in the wayside grass ; the 

 fox's bark; the clamorous good-night of the pheasant as he flies up 

 to his roost ; the owls that cry like lost souls ; the goat-suckers that 

 cla}) their wings overhead, and ventrilocpxise along the bough. Until 

 the nervous system is well trained to all these, there is more than 

 mystery in them, there is terror as well ; sometimes terror so abject 

 that the knees give way, and a faint shock creeps iip the nerves from 

 the heels even to the hair. I never quite get rid of this creep of the 

 nerves, nor do I greatly care to. It has become a refined sort of 

 pleasure to me — tluit ultimum of pleasure which is on the borderland 

 of pain. 



Loolv, too, how all the little stunted bushes become gnomes and dwarfs 

 and dull impisli figures ready to spring out from the holes and corners. 

 I am never sure whether a pei'fectly still night is the more awesonae, 

 or one wliereon a breeze makes the gnomes and dwarfs nod tlieir shape- 

 less heads and beckon with a weird and uncoutli finger, and sends the 

 shadows of the branches in the fitful moonlight, flitting like ghosts, 



