In Touch with Nature: Tales and Sketches from the Life

“I see,” I replied, without removing my eyes from the crackling logs and melting sea-coal, “I see a beautifully fitted caravan, drawn by two nice horses, jogging merrily along a lovely road, among green trees, rose-clad hedgerows and trailing wild flowers. It is a beautiful evening, the clouds in the west are all aglow with the sunset-rays. I see figures on the broad coupé– female figures, one, two, three; and I can almost hear the jingle of the silver bells on the horses’ harness.”

“Who are the ladies – can you distinguish them?” asked Frank.

“Not quite.”

“O! I know, it’s me and ma and Maggie May.” This from little Ida.

“Ida,” I said, “your language is alliterative, but hardly grammatical.”

“Never mind about the grammar,” said Frank, laughing. “You’ve got an idea of some sort in your head, so just let us have it.”

“I have it already,” cried Maggie May, springing towards me with a joy-look in her eyes, and a glad flush on her cheek. “I dreamt it,” she added. “The caravan is already built, and you are going to take us all gipsying when summer comes.”

I am not good at equivocation, so I confessed at once that Maggie May was right, and from the amount of pleasurable excitement the announcement gave her, I augured well. Indeed, we all felt sure that from our romantic trip, Maggie May would return home as well as ever she had been in all her little life.

There is nothing to be compared to the joy of anticipating pleasure to come. And from the very day our beautiful caravan rolled into the yard and was drawn up on the lawn, everybody set about doing what he or she could towards the completion of the fittings, of the already luxuriously furnished saloon of the house upon wheels.[1 - A complete description of this caravan is to be found in my book, “The Cruise of the Land Yacht Wanderer,” published by Messrs Hodder and Stoughton, Paternoster Row. The book is at all libraries.]

This was indeed a labour of love. There were so many little things to be thought about, to say nothing of decorations, neat and pretty curtains, a lovely little library of tiny but nicely bound books, mirrors, flower vases, etc.

The cooking department had its head centre in the after-cabin; here, however, no bulky open and dusty stove burned, but a pretty little oil range, and the kitchen fittings and pantry fixings would have compared favourably even with those of Lady Brassey’s yacht, the Sunbeam.

Frank and I, being both old campaigners, saw to everything else.

We had a good coachman, two splendid horses, besides an extra smaller covered cart in which Frank himself, who was to be both valet and cook, could sleep at night.

To make sure of not being robbed on the road we had good revolvers, and, better than all, our noble Newfoundland, Hurricane Bob.

When everything was complete and ready for the road, we had nothing to do but sit down and long for spring to come.

“I really believe,” said honest Frank to me one bright beautiful morning in March, “that the child is better already with the thoughts of going on this romantic tour of yours.”

And so indeed it seemed, and that forenoon, when my friend and I prepared to go out for a ramble, Maggie May was by our side, fully equipped and in marching order.

“It really does seem,” she said joyfully, “that spring is coming.”

Spring is Coming

The birds and the buds were saying it, and the winds were whispering the glad news to the almost leafless trees. The early primroses that snuggled in under the laurels, and the modest blue violets half hidden among their round leaves, were saying “Spring is coming.” And the bonnie bell-like snowdrops nodded their heads to the passing breeze and murmured “Spring is coming.”

Cock-robin, who sang to us and at us now whenever we came into the garden, told the tale to the thrush, and the thrush told it to the blackbird, and the blackbird hurried away to build his nest in the thick yew hedge; he would not sing, he said, until his work was finished. But the mad merry thrush sang enough for ten, and mocked every sound he heard.

The lark, who pretended that he had already built his nest among the tender-leaved wheat, just beginning to shimmer green over the brown earth, sang high in air. You could just see him fluttering against a white cloud, and looking no bigger than the head of a carpet tack. He sang of nothing but spring – such a long song, such a strong song, such a wild melodious ringing lilt, that you could not have helped envying him, nor even sharing some of his joy.

“Oh, skylark! for thy wing!
Thou bird of joy and light,
That I might soar and sing,
At heaven’s empyreal height!
With the heathery hills beneath me,
Whence the streams in glory spring,
And the pearly clouds to wreathe me,
Oh, skylark! on thy wing!”

“Spring is coming:” every rippling rill, every sparkling brook, were singing or saying it.

The hedgerows put forth tiny white-green budlets, the elders and the honeysuckles expanded early leaves, those on the former looking like birds’ claws, those on the latter like wee olive-green hands.

We saw to-day, in the woods, early butterflies and early bees, and many a little insect friend creeping gaily over the green moss.

And high aloft, among some gigantic elms, the rooks were cawing lustily, as they swang on the branches near their nests. We heard a mole rustling beneath dead leaves, and to our joy we saw a squirrel run up a branch and sit to bask in a a little streak of sunshine.

“Yes,” said Frank, “sure enough spring is coming.”

The Storm

March 15. – Why, it is only two days since that delightful ramble of ours. Two days, but what a change! The snow has been falling all night long. It was falling still when these lines were penned, falling thick and fast. Not in those great lazy butterfly-like flakes, that look so strange and beautiful when you gaze skywards, nor in the little millet-seed snow-grains that precede the bigger flakes, but in a mingled mist of snow-stars, that falls O! so fast and looks so cold.

The whole world is robed in its winding-sheet. The earth looks dead. To-day is but the ghost of yesterday. The leafless elms, the lindens and the oaks are trees of coral, the larches and pines mere shapes of snow shadowed out with a faint green hue beneath.

And the birds! Well, the thrush still sings. What a world of hope the bird must carry in his heart! But the blackbird flies now and then through the snow-clad shrubbery with sudden bickering screams that startle even the sparrows. The lark is silent again, and shivering robin comes once more to the study-window to beg for crumbs and comfort.

And this snow continues to fall, and fall till it lies six good inches deep on roof and road and hedgerow. And it is sad to think of the buried snowdrops, of the crocuses, yellow and blue, and the sweet-scented primroses.

March 17. – The pines are borne groundwards, at least their branches droop with the weight of snow; they are very weird-like, very lovely. The snow has melted on the roofs, but the dripping water has frozen into a network of crystal on the rose-bushes that cling around the verandah. It has mostly melted off the tall lindens also, only leaving pieces here and there that look for all the world like a flock of strange big birds.

Everything is beautiful – but all is silent, all is sad.

The sun goes down in a purple haze, looking like a big blood orange; and an hour afterwards, when the stars come out, there is all along the horizon a long broad band of rose tint, shading upwards into yellow, and so into the blue of the night.

I close my study-windows, and go into the next room; how bright the fire looks, how cheerful the faces round it! Hurricane Bob is snoring on the hearth, Ida is asleep beside him, Maggie May has got hold of a picture and wants me to weave a story to it.

Note that she says “‘Weave’ a story.”

“I would have put it plainer,” says Frank, laughing, “and said ‘Spin a yarn.’”

At another time, I might have been inclined to attach some semi-comical signification to the picture Maggie May held coaxingly out to me.

It represented a wide unbroken field of dazzling snow, with the outlines of a pine-wood in the far distance. There were two dark and ugly figures in the centre of the snow-field – an ugly fierce-like boar and a gaunt and hungry, howling wolf. You could see he was howling.

But with the rising wind beginning to moan drearily round our house, and the icicle-laden rose-twigs rattling every now and again against the glass, I could see nothing amusing in Maggie May’s little picture.

The Fairy Forest

“Had you been walking across that wild wintry waste, Maggie May,” I began, “you would have seen at some distance before you a great pine-wood, half buried in drifting snow, the tall trees bending before the icy blast and tossing their branches weirdly in the wind.”

“Don’t you want slow music to that?” said Frank, pretending to reach for his fiddle.

“Hush, Frank! When you looked again, Maggie May, lo! what a change! The fairy forest has been transformed into a city. There is a blue uncertain mist all over it, but you can plainly distinguish streets and terraces, steeples, towers, ramparts, and ruins; and instead of the mournful sighing of the wind that previously fell on your ear, you can now listen to the music of bells and the pleasant murmur of the every-day life of a great town. Towards this town then, one day, a big wolf was journeying. It was summer then, the sun shone bright, clouds were fleecy, and the sky was blue, and the plain all round him was bright with the greenery of grass and dotted with wild flowers. But neither the beauty of the day, nor the loveliness of the scenery, had any effect on the gaunt and ugly wolf. Not being good himself, he could see no goodness in Nature.

“‘I’m far too soon,’ he grumbled to himself, ‘I must curl up till nightfall; I wish the sun wasn’t shining, and I wish the birds wouldn’t sing so. Moonlight and the owls would suit me far better. I wonder what makes that skylark so happy? Well, I was happy once,’ he continued as he lay down behind a bush, ‘yes I was, but, dear me, it is long ago. When I was young and innocent, ha! ha! I wouldn’t have stolen a tame rabbit or a chicken for all the world; I was content with the food I found in the wild woods, and now I’m lying here waiting for night, that I may fall upon and slay a dozen at least of those pretty lambkins I see gambolling down on yonder lea. I wouldn’t mind being young again though, I think I might lead a better life, I think – ’