Orchards
SRELY nowhere is it pleasanter to be living in spring than in an orchard. Some almost Hesperidian orchard perhaps, a grove of apple-trees on a lonely islet in the peacock blue waters of the South, would be the ideal place in which to await and look for spring's advances, for there the cuckoo would be heard as it is most lovely to hear it, with the sigh of waves on shingle as a melan- choly undertone to its chiming calls, and the warm scent of the blossoming land would be sharpened rarely in the salty atmosphere : but such islets, though they have been sought continually by wanderers one may suppose since men made ships with sails, are easier dreamed about than found, and lacking one it is still good to be housed amidst the lichened trees of an old orchard somewhere in the tame country of England : for the best of an orchard in spring is that it gives the illusion of remoteness, it is a place not only of flower and song but of drowsiness and dreams, so that even if its situation seems, from outside, to be dull and commonplace, you have only to get well amongst the trees to discover yourself in enchanted territory, not marked on any map however near to cities or main roads it may be.
, Of course, cuckoos arc confirmed orchard lovers, and certainly they arc responsible for some of that magic effect of solitude that broods over the blossom, for though the cuckoo's cry is loud and bell-like, an orchard always seems able to muffle it and make it sound far away, a voice haunting the wilderness. But there is another bird that belongs as surely and properly to .orchards as the cuckoo, and that is the chaffinch. The chaffinch has a sweet and a generally much underrated song, being supposed by many people only to be capable of "pink ! .pink.!" when in fact its silver-clear spring music is hardly, more monotonous than _that of the lark, and is much- • more- definitely melodious. But then the chaffinch, is . a little vagabond of a bird, that sings its best on _hidden boughs, whereas the lark may be heard by any poet who ever went for a day's outing in. the Country. The chaffinch equally with the cuckoo has that faculty of keeping its song faint, muffled, and always dwindling far among orchard trees. But you cannot help catching sight of it sometimes, flitting on its white- barred wings where the lichen grows thickest, the cock's breast astonishingly matching the deep pink of the apple-flowers. It is the familiar spirit especially of trees that are old and gnarled, in whose crooked elbows the tiny neat smooth nests are so cunningly set.
No good orchard should be without the pheasant-eyed narcissus, blooming in long grass amongst the wide- Spaced trunks, for what flower, unless perhaps the grass of Parnassus that so profusely sprinkles the upland meadows of southern lands, can compare with the nar- cissus for remote and starlike unworldliness ? It has a wondering -look as though it is aware that its gold eye beholds a magic place; and and a . delicate beauty that is alWays at better advantage in untended, grassy places than amomgst the trim cosmopolitan banks of garden flowers. And it is a marvel how often, even in the most neglected of orchards, the narcissus is found growing. Who planted it here, long ago ? Is it agreed by everyone that the narcissus is an orchard's right flower ? Or does the narcissus seed- itself in orchards of its own accord, blowing on the wind to its own place guided by some wisdom of nature beyond the reckoning of gardeners ?
But that is only one of the many mysteries that haunt those regions over which orchards spread their spring enchantment. The rarest mystery of all is perhaps hardly a thing to be mentioned. now without apology to the spirits of those for whom a crafty and jealous but sweetly-piping god of wildernesses did certainly exist, so familiar with the appearance of this deity have the mushy illustrated paper artists made. us and so lightly do sentimental versifiers admit to having seen him chasing troops of girlish dryads and whatnot. Yet if one can forget this .stupid stuff it does seem that a presence, not friendly to man, not to be pictured, lingers about deserted orchards and keeps them wild, even wilder than woods that were never tended : and if there is water in the orchard, as there should be, a shallow stream of cresses and . clear pools, it is possible here, if anywhere, to catch the strains of some faint music that is neither of the birds nor bees nor of the water
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