THE WIND.

This afternoon the sunlight paints upon the grimed brick
wall the sharp black shadows of the bare hollyhock stems. Every
leaf upon the pathway and the lawn shines brown and gold bronze
or keenest yellow. The raw still air speaks of frost and the
dropping of the few lingering leaves standing now for their
moment of lonely individuality opaque and dry against the shimmer-
ing blue or showing, all sharp form and colour, on the background
made by the whitewashed walls of the little colony of studios
across the way.

Once more the clumped trimmed bushes, the barberry and holly,
the box and privet, the laurel and the yew, begin their monotonous
supremacy, bearing - at this moment when the riches of autumn are
told, and the memory of the past blossoming and the love of the
blossoming that is to come are at their utmost gnawing intensity -
but little immediate relief, giving, however, presently in return
for a measure of patient acceptance a rewarding vision of the part
they still may play. They remind you that they may beguile, drap-
ing their too perpetual faces in the soft shroudings of the urban
winter, that they will wear the jewels of the morning, and perhaps,
before they are again thrust aside, they will make the unwearied
heart dance as they stand transformed beneath the burden of the
snow. But, more than all these things, they tell how when they stand
out there among their silent neighbours you will bless them for

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rendering up the voice of even the gentlest of raindrops.

And on nights when the wind is still, when there is no rain
to mitigate the sound of the ceaseless going to and fro, and sleep
stands far off, the thought of them motionless beneath your window
will be as a cup of quiet in your need, and sometimes, draining
it, you may go away into memory, far and deep. The half-light
which finds its relentness way through the window draperies to
beat upon your closed eyelids will be forgotten, and you will be
away - away in the rich depth of the long November night in the
open country.

Darkness envelops you, obliterating the walls of your cham-
ber, immense and formless. Your wide-flung, curtainless window
throws not the faintest glimmer - for the sky hangs low over the
sleeping fields. Nothing stirs. Your days have dropped and
dropped since high summer to this serenest of all the sweetness
of the year, this full moment between memory and promise. . . .
You waken on such a night to find that you have been carried by
dreamless slumber to the heart of tranquillity, surprising con-
sciousness at its richest brimming. . . .

Suddenly in the stillness there sounds away across the
marshes a little wailing voice. Five clear dropping notes it
utters, and ceases. And then you know what has brought you from
the depths. You wait, scarcely breathing. There is a long

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silence. Then again the little sound breaks, high and thin, and
threadlike and very far away. So clear it is, out there, and in-
timate, that it might be speaking from your garden space or rising
from the deep furrows of the stubble field beyond. But you know that
it has come out of the sea and is wandering along the distant de-
solate shore. And as you turn to give yourself the better to your
listening, joy laughs at the thought of the clear country-side, no-
thing between you and the sound but the slope of naked fields and
the wide marsh beyond. You lie listening. . . . There it is. . . .
It has left the foreshore and is roaming along the margin of the
marshes, creeping in and out among the sedges, complaining.

Presently you seem to see, as you hear it rise from whisper-
ing to a querulous shrillness, the rows of huddled willows, black
and crouching, straggling along the dykes. You feel the conflict,
the rattling of the scanty slender leaves, the straining of the
maimed twig-like branches, the trouble of the scattered pools
waiting since the falling of the autumn rains for the frost to
being them sleep.

Gathering strength like a wave, voices are sweeping up and
up over the land now, borne on a wide undertone, shouting and
moaning in long-drawn ululation, rising and falling, breaking
and dying down to a low sobbing.

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Surging onwards they have reached the flat dew-drenched
fields. The dense hedgerows are answering with deep singing.
Across the way the ever-green oak quivers under the threatening
breath, harp-like in all its burdened branches. For a moment the
stillness falls again, and then the tumult rushes forward in full
strength, wild from the sea, gigantic, sweeping headlong until,
with rapid blows and yells and mighty shaking, it seizes your
dwelling and encircles it with a roaring, fierce, flamelike. In
at your window, down your wide chimney it rushes. You are at the
heart of the uproar. The wind has found its prey upon the bare
hillside.