The Spring Song

Leaning back against the leather cushion of the railway-carriage, Griffith Weston was conscious of an endless panorama of fields and meadows, of green hedges and white hawthorn, and blazing, yellow furze. The whole landscape was bathed in a crude glare of June sunlight, and the heat, and the vivid glittering light, and the rushing train, made his head ache.

He wore a light, loose, flannel suit, without a waistcoat, and his wide short trousers left his knees bare. A dark olive-green silk tie brought out unnecessarily the sallowness of his complexion; his straw hat lay on the seat beside him. He was not in the least a handsome boy, but his expression was pleasing. He looked quiet rather than shy; he looked intelligent, sensitive, and sweet-tempered. His eyes, beneath their drooping lids, had something of that sleepy gentleness which characterizes the angels and youths of Perugino, but the wide space between them gave the whole countenance, with its beautiful forehead, a kind of grave nobility and innocence.

A more brilliant colour glowed clearly enough in the fresh, ruddy cheeks of the sisters and brother who sat opposite him――Barbara, Ann, and Jim. Miss Johnson also sat on that side of the carriage, and Pouncer was at present invisible, somewhere under the seat.

The little boy’s position, in its comparative isolation, was characteristic; also the attitude of a watchful, listening silence he maintained amid the chatter of the others. His tutor had left a day or two ago, and he was now more or less independent, travelling by the same train as Miss Johnson and her pupils, but distinctly not of their party.

The eldest of these pupils, Barbara, dressed in white muslin, with slim, black, neatly-stockinged legs, and folded hands, looked demure and slightly priggish. Ann, who was fat, and had reddish hair and freckles, looked only very simple and plain. Her mouth was, as usual, slightly open, her hot little hands were not folded, and in no way did she present so lady-like an appearance as Barbara. One cannot be lady-like and breathe through one’s mouth, Miss Johnson had told her that very day, and poor Ann had felt at once that she was doomed. Jim, in his white sailor-suit, was fidgety and vivacious, hovering perilously on the obscure borderline which, in Miss Johnson’s opinion, separated the lively from the naughty.

It was not till the train drew in at a station that Pouncer made an appearance. He did so suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, and rushed to the window to look out, breathing noisily on the glass, and pushing aside Ann, who got in his way. There he remained, a ridiculous leather muzzle dangling under one ear, till the guard arrived with a basin of water. Pouncer lapped up the water with a big splashing red tongue, stopping every now and then to roll his round eyes and give a wag of his tail. With the amazing popularity of all bulldogs, he had managed in the space of some two minutes to attract the charmed attention of quite a group of persons. The group included the stationmaster, several boys, a postman, one or two porters, a sporting gentleman, and a lady who played the mandoline. Intending travellers, however, passed on in search of another compartment....

Again they tore through the glare and the heat. Jim’s black head was nodding now against Miss Johnson’s very angular elbow, and Grif, too, began to grow drowsy. He wondered what it would be like at grandpapa’s. Only Edward――who was to come on later from school――and Barbara had been there before. Edward and Barbara had given innumerable accounts of their previous visit, entering into all details, but things for Grif often had a mysterious way of turning out to be quite different from other people’s descriptions of them. His things were rarely their things; and it came into his sleepy head that everybody’s things must be unlike everybody else’s. His trees, for instance, were not Jim’s or Barbara’s, or Ann’s or Edward’s. They were just his――or were they his? Was he not rather theirs? Why, if he was not, did they stoop down with long green arms to catch him? and why was there such a roaring in their branches as he had never heard before? He tried to escape, to run away, but they closed him in on every side; they clutched him, and he tore at their green, shadowy embrace, scattering the leaves in showers....