Moonlight

THE other night, having some letters for London which must be collected by the van at 7 A.M. the following morning, I took cap and stick, meaning to walk to the roadside group of thatched cottages a mile away. It was a few minutes before midnight. I was tired, and the thought of the walk seemed wearisome. Equally wearisome appeared the idea of unlocking the garage and taking out the car. As I hesitated, the moon’s horn showed by the top of a fir tree on the hillside opposite. Well, it was the same sort of thing one had seen for years and years. An owl cried somewhere among the dark trees. So they always had cried. One had heard them so many times that they made no more impression on the mind than the noise of an exhaust made on the mind of a London bus driver.

Well, the letters must be posted, and, after the hours of enforced sitting still at the desk, perhaps it would be best to walk. One did n’t take enough exercise. Ah, if one could only feel about stars, moon, trees, grass, sea, as one felt about them years ago! Wordsworth, it was recalled, had felt an identical regret, almost remorse, for the passing of similar enthusiasms.

I walked down the garden path, across the lane, and into the deer park. The air was soft and still. I passed under the great lime trees, among whose leaves, in the past summer, hundreds of thousands of bees had murmured, in whose thickets around the trunks wood pigeons and jackdaws had nested. How many years since one had climbed to a bird’s nest? In a few moments I was on the bridge, looking down at the Bray water.

The moon was making the usual bright and broken lights on the three streams pouring from the three arches. Near the tail of the pool, where the water thinned and quickened, sudden tremulous strips of silver showed where a trout had risen. That was pleasing. Shadows of alders looked blacker than the trees themselves. The thought of that fact was wearisome, until I told myself it was not necessary to remember it for the purposes of writing it.

Surely, I said to myself, this is a beautiful and restful scene. It is interesting, too, for see! That glimmer, just under the fall of the middle arch, was surely the big trout turning over to take something — a ‘mullhead,’ perhaps, that had gone down with the stream.

Your trouble, or feeling of weariness, is only that you have got into the habit of using yourself as a receiving apparatus for natural impressions, for the purpose of rendering them into words, and thus obtaining money. You feel that you can never relax, become thoughtless in the sense of letting the inner nature rise up through the enslaved mind. There are nearly a dozen people entirely dependent on you, and unless you work all the time you will get into debt.

The camera of your mind is tired, abused by a demoniacal photographer. You have, in your need to rest, almost thought yourself into a nature hater. A man does not change, — Wordsworth was wrong, — but a man needs change. For a change, try and do what you really want to do.

So I sat on the bridge, and shut my eyes, and thought of nothing, breathing deeply and slowly, and as slowly respiring. The night was warm for October, and after a while I thought I would lie on the grass. What mattered if it were dew-damp? Rheumatism, so-called, came from ill feeding and drinking. I would lie on the grass. It was fine to lie on the grass, while the distant stable clock tolled midnight.

It seemed, as I rested there, that the stars had not been seen for years. The first frost would sharpen and make them glitter; but now they shone softly, as though very peacefully.

Closing my eyes again, I let the sounds of the river flow through me until I began to feel again a serenity of earth which no conscious thought could give. How often did the activities of the brain force one away from one’s true or inner or natural self! Damn the brain — a good servant, but a bad master.

I lay there until the clock tolled one, then I arose and walked happily, thoughtlessly, to the main road and the post box. Clearly the moon revealed the hour of collection, and I had brought an electric torch to make sure! Years ago the sight of anyone taking a torch for a night walk would have filled me with scornful protest. No sight — no insight.

And why go home? I was actually enjoying the walk. The windows of the cottages were all blank. The nose of the painted grotesque wooden stag’s head on one of the walls gleamed where a hibernating snail had crawled. Everything was so still and quiet. My body was non-apparent. The moonlight was in me and through me. I marveled at the cottage folk who, with one exception, had shut out this lovely air from their bedrooms. I would walk up to the moor and sleep in the heather if I wanted to, or walk on if I wanted to.

Certainly I would. I went home to get my coat. Having got it, I hesitated. To-morrow those book reviews must go off, and if one were tired — my breast seemed filled with the loveliness of the night, and this was the time to sleep. So I pulled my bed to the window and lay there happy, while the moon climbed far over the fir trees, until serrated by the silver fringe of thatch, and I fell away from myself in sleep.