THE FIELD
When one has seen Spring's blossom fall in London, and Summer appear andripen and decay, as it does early in cities, and one is in London still,then, at some moment or another, the country places lift their floweryheads and call to one with an urgent, masterful clearness, upland behindupland in the twilight like to some heavenly choir arising rank on rank tocall a drunkard from his gambling-hell. No volume of traffic can drown thesound of it, no lure of London can weaken its appeal. Having heard itone's fancy is gone, and evermore departed, to some coloured pebble agleamin a rural brook, and all that London can offer is swept from one's mindlike some suddenly smitten metropolitan Goliath.
The call is from afar both in leagues and years, for the hills that callone are the hills that were, and their voices are the voices of long ago,when the elf-kings still had horns.
I see them now, those hills of my infancy (for it is they that call), withtheir faces upturned to the purple twilight, and the faint diaphanousfigures of the fairies peering out from under the bracken to see ifevening is come. I do not see upon their regal summits those desirablemansions, and highly desirable residences, which have lately been builtfor gentlemen who would exchange customers for tenants.
When the hills called I used to go to them by road, riding a bicycle. Ifyou go by train you miss the gradual approach, you do not cast off Londonlike an old forgiven sin, nor pass by little villages on the way that musthave some rumour of the hills; nor, wondering if they are still the same,come at last upon the edge of their far-spread robes, and so on to theirfeet, and see far off their holy, welcoming faces. In the train you seethem suddenly round a curve, and there they all are sitting in the sun.
I imagine that as one penetrated out from some enormous forest of thetropics, the wild beasts would become fewer, the gloom would lighten, andthe horror of the place would slowly lift. Yet as one emerges nearer tothe edge of London, and nearer to the beautiful influence of the hills,the houses become uglier, the streets viler, the gloom deepens, the errorsof civilisation stand bare to the scorn of the fields.
Where ugliness reaches the height of its luxuriance, in the dense miseryof the place, where one imagines the builder saying, "Here I culminate.Let us give thanks to Satan," there is a bridge of yellow brick, andthrough it, as through some gate of filigree silver opening on fairyland,one passes into the country.
To left and right, as far as one can see, stretches that monstrous city;before one are the fields like an old, old song.
There is a field there that is full of king-cups. A stream runs throughit, and along the stream is a little wood of osiers. There I used often torest at the streams edge before my long journey to the hills.
There I used to forget London, street by street. Sometimes I picked abunch of king-cups to show them to the hills.
I often came there. At first I noticed nothing about the field except itsbeauty and its peacefulness.
But the second time that I came I thought there was something ominousabout the field.
Down there among the king-cups by the little shallow stream I felt thatsomething terrible might happen in just such a place.
I did not stay long there, because I thought that too much time spent inLondon had brought on these morbid fancies and I went on to the hills asfast as I could.
I stayed for some days in the country air, and when I came back I went tothe field again to enjoy that peaceful spot before entering London. Butthere was still something ominous among the osiers.
A year elapsed before I went there again. I emerged from the shadow ofLondon into the gleaming sun; the bright green grass and the king-cupswere flaming in the light, and the little stream was singing a happy song.But the moment I stepped into the field my old uneasiness returned, andworse than before. It was as though the shadow was brooding there of somedreadful future thing and a year had brought it nearer.
I reasoned that the exertion of bicycling might be bad for one, and thatthe moment one rested this uneasiness might result.
A little later I came back past the field by night, and the song of thestream in the hush attracted me down to it. And there the fancy came to methat it would be a terribly cold place to be in the starlight, if for somereason one was hurt and could not get away.
I knew a man who was minutely acquainted with the past history of thatlocality, and him I asked if anything historical had ever happened in thatfield. When he pressed me for my reason in asking him this, I said thatthe field had seemed to me such a good place to hold a pageant in. But hesaid that nothing of any interest had ever occurred there, nothing at all.
So it was from the future that the field's terrible trouble came.
For three years off and on I made visits to the field, and every time moreclearly it boded evil things, and my uneasiness grew more acute every timethat I was lured to go and rest among the cool green grass under thebeautiful osiers. Once to distract my thoughts I tried to gauge how fastthe stream was trickling, but I found myself wondering if it flowed fasterthan blood.
I felt that it would be a terrible place to go mad in, one would hearvoices.
At last I went to a poet whom I knew, and woke him from huge dreams, andput before him the whole case of the field. He had not been out of Londonall that year, and he promised to come with me and look at the field, andtell me what was going to happen there. It was late in July when we went.The pavement, the air, the houses and the dirt had been all baked dry bythe summer, the weary traffic dragged on, and on, and on, and Sleepspreading her wings soared up and floated from London and went to walkbeautifully in rural places.
When the poet saw the field he was delighted, the flowers were out inmasses all along the stream, he went down to the little wood rejoicing. Bythe side of the stream he stood and seemed very sad. Once or twice helooked up and down it mournfully, then he bent and looked at theking-cups, first one and then another, very closely, and shaking his head.
For a long while he stood in silence, and all my old uneasiness returned,and my bodings for the future.
And then I said, "What manner of field is it?"
And he shook his head sorrowfully.
"It is a battlefield," he said.