“Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Deane,” called Mrs. Will Werrit, shrill and piping.
Andy stood idly watching the low sun slant across the graves, and across the woman’s kneeling figure. A cuckoo cried up into the clear, keen air; a little way off a cock was crowing. Something that Andy felt, and tried to grasp, and couldn’t, was in that quiet afternoon.
He came back over the fields with his hands deep in his pockets, unconsciously trying to make out what it was, and he felt inclined to write a piece of poetry that afternoon because he was young and alone and in love with life. It is an instinct, under such circumstances, for people to try to catch hold of the glory by putting it into words, just as a child instinctively tries to get hold of the sunshine, and both occupations are equally silly and joyful and engrossing.
So Andy walked in through his study window and sat at his table, looking out over the green and golden day that shimmered up by most exquisite gradations to a sky just before sunset. Green of the close-cut lawn—green and gold of the holly hedge—gold and green of the trees full in the sun—gold of the lower sky—translucent green of the cloudless upper reaches. No wonder Andy’s growing soul groped and groped after some way of keeping this. No wonder he stretched out baby hands of the soul. And no wonder that he grasped nothing. Or so near nothing that this is all he found to say about the Werrits near the church porch with Mrs. Will Werrit bending over them. He called it “The Others,” and was melancholy—as all happy poets are—
“When I can bear no more
The sound of tears,
And all the muffled roar
Of hopes and fears,
I let my tired mind a vigil keep,
To watch in silence where the others sleep.