Bevis: The Story of a Boy

new leaf came, and thenightingale travelling up from the south sang in the musical Aprilnights. But this was when Orion was south, and Sirius flared like anight-sun over the great oak at the top of the Home Field.

  Sirius rose through the young oak opposite the garden wall, passedthrough a third group of elms, by the rick-yard, gleaming through thebranches--hung in the spring above the great oak at the top of the HomeField, and lowered by degrees westwards behind the ashes growing at thatend of the New Sea by the harbour. After it Arcturus came, and lordedthe Midsummer zenith, where now lucent Lyra looked down upon him.

  Up, too, through the little oak came Aldebaran the red Bull's-Eye, thebent rod of Aries, and the cluster of the Pleiades. The Pleiades heloved most, for they were the first constellation he learned to know.The flickering Pleiades, the star-dusted spot in Cancer, and Leo, camein succession. Antares, the harvest-star, scarcely cleared the greatoak southwards in summer. He got them all from a movable planisphere,the very best star-maps ever made, proceeding step by step, drawingimaginary lines from one to the other, as through the Pointers to thePole, and so knew the designs on our northern dome.

  He transferred them from the map to the trees. The north group of elms,the north-east group, the east oak, the south-east elms, the southerngreat oak, the westward ashes, the orchard itself north-west,--throughthese like a zodiac the stars moved, all east to west, except theenchanted circle about the Pole. For the Bear and the Lesser Bearsometimes seemed to move from west to east when they were returning,swinging under to what would have been their place of rising.

  Fixing them thus by night, he knew where many were by day; the Pole Starwas always over the north elms--when the starlings stayed and whistledthere before they flew to the housetop, when the rooks called therebefore the sun set on their way home to the jungle, when the fieldfaresin the gloomy winter noon perched up there. The Pole Star was alwaysover the elms.

  In the summer mornings the sun rose north of east, between the secondgroup of elms and the little oak--so far to the north that he came upover the vale instead of the downs. The morning beams then lit up thenorthern or outer side of the garden wall, and fell aslant through thenarrow kitchen window, under the beam of the ceiling. In the eveningthe sun set again northwards of the orchard, between it and the northelms, having come round towards the place of rising, and shining againon the outside of the garden wall, so that there seemed but a few milesbetween. He did not sink, but only dipped, and the dawn that travelledabove him indicated his place, moving between the north and north-eastelms, and overcoming the night by the little oak. The sun did not riseand sink; he travelled round an immense circle.

  In the winter mornings the sun rose between the young oak and the thirdgroup of elms, red and vapour hung, and his beams presently shot throughthe window to the logs on the kitchen hearth. He sank then between thesouth-westerly ashes and the orchard, rising from the wall of the Downs,and sinking again behind it. At noon he was just over, only a littlehigher than the great southern oak. All day long the outer side of thegarden wall was in shadow, and at night the northern sky was black tothe horizon. The travelling dawn was not visible: the sun rose andsank, and was only visible through half of the great circle. The cockscrowed at four in the afternoon, and the rooks hastened to the jungle.

  But by-and-by, when the giant Orion shone with his full width graspingall the sky, then in the mornings the sun's rising began to shiftbackwards--first to the edge of the third group of elms, then straightup the road, then to the little oak. In the afternoon, the place ofsetting likewise shifted backwards to the north, and came behind theorchard. At noon he was twice as high as the southern oak, and everyday at noontide the shadows gradually shortened. The nightingale sangin the musical April night, the cowslips opened, and the bees hummedover the meadows.

  Last of all, the sweet turtle-doves cooed and wooed; beauteous Junewearing her roses came, and the sun shone at the highest point of hisgreat circle. Then you could not look at him unless up through theboughs of a tree. Round the zodiac of the elms, and the little oak, thegreat oak, the ashes, and the orchard, the sun revolved; and the house,and the garden path by the strawberries--the best place to see--were inthe centre of his golden ring.

  The sward on the path on which Bevis used to lie and gaze up in thesummer evening, was real, and tangible; the earth under was real; and sotoo the elms, the oak, the ash-trees, were real and tangible--things tobe touched, and known to be. Now like these, the mind, stepping fromthe one to the other, knew and almost felt the stars to be real and notmere specks of light, but things that were there by day over the elms aswell as by night, and not apparitions of the evening departing at thetwittering of the swallows. They were real, and the touch of his mindfelt to them.

  He could not, as he reclined on the garden path by the strawberries,physically reach to and feel the oak; but he could feel the oak in hismind, and so from the oak, stepping beyond it, he felt the stars. Theywere always there by day as well as by night. The Bear did not sink,the sun in summer only dipped, and his reflection--the travelling dawn--shone above him, and so from these unravelling out the enlarging sky, hefelt as well as knew that neither the stars nor the sun ever rose orset. The heavens were always around and with him. The strawberries andthe sward of the garden path, he himself reclining there, were movingthrough, among, and between the stars; they were as much by him as thestrawberry leaves.

  By day the sun, as he sat down under the oak, was as much by him as theboughs of the great tree. It was by him like the swallows.

  The heavens were as much a part of life as the elms, the oak, the house,the garden and orchard, the meadow and the brook. They were no moreseparated than the furniture of the parlour, than the old oak chairwhere he sat, and saw the new moon shine over the mulberry-tree. Theywere neither above nor beneath, they were in the same place with him;just as when you walk in a wood the trees are all about you, on a planewith you, so he felt the constellations and the sun on a plane with him,and that he was moving among them as the earth rolled on, like them,with them, in the stream of space.

  The day did not shut off the stars, the night did not shut off the sun;they were always there. Not that he always thought of them, but theywere never dismissed. When he listened to the greenfinches sweetlycalling in the hawthorn, or when he read his books, poring over theOdyssey, with the sunshine on the wall, they were always there; therewas no severance. Bevis lived not only out to the finches and theswallows, to the far-away hills, but he lived out and felt out to thesky.

  It was living, not thinking. He lived it, never thinking, as thefinches live their sunny life in the happy days of June. There wasmagic in everything, blades of grass and stars, the sun and the stonesupon the ground.

  The green path by the strawberries was the centre of the world, andround about it by day _and_ night the sun circled in a magical goldenring.

  Under the oak on New Formosa that warm summer night, Bevis looked up ashe reclined at the white pure light of Lyra, and forgot everything butthe consciousness of living, feeling up to and beyond it. The earth andthe water, the oak, went away; he himself went away: his mind joineditself and was linked up through ethereal space to its beauty.

  Bevis, as you know did not think: we have done the thinking, theanalysis for him. He felt and was lost in the larger consciousness ofthe heavens.

  The moon moved, and with it the shadow of the cliff on the waterbeneath, a planet rose eastwards over their new Nile, water-fowl cluckedas they flew over.

  Kaak! Kaak! Another heron called and his discordant piercing yellsounded over the water, seeming to penetrate to the distant and shadowyshores. The noise awoke him, and he went down to the hut. Mark wasfirm asleep, the lantern burned in the niche; Pan had been curled up bythe bedside, but lifted his head and wagged his tail, thumping the flooras he entered. Bevis let down the curtain closing the doorway, put outthe lantern, and in three minutes was as firm as Mark. After some time,Pan rose quietly and went out, slip
ping under the curtain, which fellback into its place when he had passed.

  Volume Three, Chapter II.

  NEW FORMOSA--THE RAFT.

  They did not get up till the sun was high, and when Mark lifted thecurtain a robin flew from the table just outside, where he had beenpicking up the crumbs, across to the gate-post in the stockade. Thegate had not been shut--Pan was lying by it under the fence, which casta shadow in the morning and evening.

  "Pan!" said Mark; the lazy spaniel wagged his tail, but did not come.

  "I shall go and finish the sun-dial while you get the breakfast," saidBevis. It was Mark's turn to-day, and as he went out at the gate hestooped and patted Pan, who looked up with speaking affection in hiseyes, and stretched himself to his full length in utter lassitude.

  Bevis drew the line from the gnomon to the mark he had made the nightbefore, this was the noon or meridian. Then he drew another from themark where the shadow had fallen at four o'clock in the afternoon. Thespace