LITMIR.BIZ

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to struggle to keep even a little apart for yourself. It is so hard to stand aloof from our mothers, and yet they are only hurt and insulted if you tell them what is in your heart. It is such a relief not to have to be anything to anybody, but just to please yourself. I am sure Mother and I have suffered a great deal from trying to keep up our old relations. Yet she would not let me go. When I come home in the evening and think that I needn’t say anything to anybody, nor do anything for anybody, but just have the evening for myself, I am overjoyed.

      “I have begun to write a story —”

      Again, a little later, she wrote:

      “As I go to school by Old Brayford village in the morning the birds are thrilling wonderfully and everything seems stirring. Very likely there will be a set-back, and after that spring will come in truth.

      “When shall you come and see me? I cannot think of a spring without you. The railways are the only fine exciting things here — one is only a few yards away from school. All day long I am watching the great Midland trains go south. They are very lucky to be able to rush southward through the sunshine.

      “The crows are very interesting. They flap past all the time we’re out in the yard. The railways and the crows make the charm of my life in Brayford. The other day I saw no end of pairs of crows. Do you remember what they say at home? —‘One for sorrow.’ Very often one solitary creature sits on the telegraph wires. I almost hate him when I look at him. I think my badge for life ought to be-one crow —”

      Again, a little later:

      “I have been home for the week-end. Isn’t it nice to be made much of, to be an important cherished person for a little time? It is quite a new experience for me.

      “The snowdrops are full out among the grass in the front garden — and such a lot. I imagined you must come in the sunshine of the Sunday afternoon to see them. It did not seem possible you should not. The winter aconites are out along the hedge. I knelt and kissed them. I have been so glad to go away, to breathe the free air of life, but I felt as if I could not come away from the aconites. I have sent you some — are they much withered?

      “Now I am in my lodgings, I have the quite unusual feeling of being contented to stay here a little while — not long — not above a year, I am sure. But even to be contented for a little while is enough for me —”

      In the beginning of March I had a letter from the father:

      “You’ll not see us again in the old place. We shall be gone in a fortnight. The things are most of them gone already. George has got Bob and Flower. I have sold three of the cows, Stafford, and Julia and Hannah. The place looks very empty. I don’t like going past the cowsheds, and we miss hearing the horses stamp at night. But I shall not be sorry when we have really gone. I begin to feel as if we’d stagnated here. I begin to feel as if I was settling and getting narrow and dull. It will be a new lease of life to get away.

      “But I’m wondering how we shall be over there. Mrs Saxton feels very nervous about going. But at the worst we can but come back. I feel as if I must go somewhere, it’s stagnation and starvation for us here. I wish George would come with me. I never thought he would have taken to public-house keeping, but he seems to like it all right. He was down with Meg on Sunday. Mrs Saxton says he’s getting a public-house tone. He is certainly much livelier, more full of talk than he was. Meg and he seem very comfortable, I’m glad to say. He’s got a good milk round, and I’ve no doubt but what he’ll do well. He is very cautious at the bottom; he’ll never lose much if he never makes much.

      “Sam and David are very great friends. I’m glad I’ve got the boy. We often talk of you. It would be very lonely if it wasn’t for the excitement of selling things and so on. Mrs Saxton hopes you will stick by George. She worries a bit about him, thinking he may go wrong. I don’t think he will ever go far. But I should be glad to know you were keeping friends. Mrs Saxton says she will write to you about it —”

      George was a very poor correspondent. I soon ceased to expect a letter from him. I received one directly after the father’s.

      “My Dear Cyril,

      “Forgive me for not having written you before, but you see, I cannot sit down and write to you any time. If I cannot do it just when I am in the mood, I cannot do it at all. And it so often happens that the mood comes upon me when I am in the fields at work, when it is impossible to write. Last night I sat by myself in the kitchen on purpose to write to you, and then I could not. All day, at Greymede, when I was drilling in the fallow at the back of the church, I had been thinking of you, and I could have written there if I had had materials, but I had not, and at night I could not.

      “I am sorry to say that in my last letter I did not thank you for the books. I have not read them both, but I have nearly finished Evelyn Innes. I get a bit tired of it towards the end. I do not do much reading now. There seems to be hardly any chance for me, either somebody is crying for me in the smoke-room, or there is some business, or else Meg won’t let me. She doesn’t like me to read at night, she says I ought to talk to her, so I have to.

      “It is half-past seven, and I am sitting ready dressed to go and talk to Harry Jackson about a young horse he wants to sell to me. He is in pretty low water, and it will make a pretty good horse. But I don’t care much whether I have it or not. The mood seized me to write to you. Somehow at the bottom I feel miserable and heavy, yet there is no need. I am making pretty good money, and I’ve got all I want. But when I’ve been ploughing and getting the oats in those fields on the hillside at the back of Greymede church, I’ve felt as if I didn’t care whether I got on or not. It’s very funny. Last week I made over five pounds clear, one way and another, and yet now I’m as restless, and discontented as I can be, and I seem eager for something, but I don’t know what it is. Sometimes I wonder where I am going. Yesterday I watched broken white masses of cloud sailing across the sky in a fresh strong wind. They all seemed to be going somewhere. I wondered where the wind was blowing them. I don’t seem to have hold on anything, do I? Can you tell me what I want at the bottom of my heart? I wish you were here, then I think I should not feel like this. But generally I don’t, generally I am quite jolly, and busy.

      “By jove, here’s Harry Jackson come for me. I will finish this letter when I get back.

      “— I have got back, we have turned out, but I cannot finish. I cannot tell you all about it. I’ve had a little row with Meg. Oh, I’ve had a rotten time. But I cannot tell you about it tonight, it is late, and I am tired, and have a headache. Some other time perhaps —”

      “GEORGE SAXTON.”

      The spring came bravely, even in south London, and the town was filled with magic. I never knew the sumptuous purple of evening till I saw the round arc-lamps fill with light, and roll like golden bubbles along the purple dusk of the high road. Everywhere at night the city is filled with the magic of lamps: over the river they pour in golden patches their floating luminous oil on the restless darkness; the bright lamps float in and out of the cavern of London Bridge Station like round shining bees in and out of a black hive; in the suburbs the street lamps glimmer with the brightness of lemons among the trees. I began to love the town.

      In the mornings I loved to move in the aimless street’s procession, watching the faces come near to me, with the sudden glance of dark eyes, watching the mouths of the women blossom with talk as they passed, watching the subtle movements of the shoulders of men beneath their coats, and the naked warmth of their necks that went glowing along the street. I loved the city intensely for its movement of men and women, the soft, fascinating flow of the limbs of men and women, and the sudden flash of eyes and lips as they pass. Among all the faces of the street my attention roved like a bee which clambers drunkenly among blue flowers. I became intoxicated with the strange nectar which I sipped out of the eyes of the passers-by.

      I did not know how time was hastening by on still bright wings, till I saw the scarlet hawthorn flaunting over the road, and the lime buds lit up like wine drops in the sun, and the pink scarves of the lime buds pretty as louse-wort a-blossom in the gutters, and a silver-pink tangle of almond boughs against the blue sky. The lilacs came out, and in the pensive stillness of the suburb,

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