h, ranged in ranks one behind the other, gradually
receded into the remote distance of the home park. At such moments I
would feel joyously conscious of having within me the same young, fresh
force of life as nature was everywhere exuding around me. When, however,
the sky was overcast with grey clouds of morning and I felt chilly after
bathing, I would often start to walk at random through the fields and
woods, and joyously trail my wet boots in the fresh dew. All the while
my head would be filled with vivid dreams concerning the heroes of my
last-read novel, and I would keep picturing to myself some leader of an
army or some statesman or marvellously strong man or devoted lover or
another, and looking round me in, a nervous expectation that I should
suddenly descry HER somewhere near me, in a meadow or behind a tree.
Yet, whenever these rambles led me near peasants engaged at their work,
all my ignoring of the existence of the "common people" did not
prevent me from experiencing an involuntary, overpowering sensation of
awkwardness; so that I always tried to avoid their seeing me. When the
heat of the day had increased, it was not infrequently my habit--if the
ladies did not come out of doors for their morning tea--to go rambling
through the orchard and kitchen-garden, and to pluck ripe fruit there.
Indeed, this was an occupation which furnished me with one of my
greatest pleasures. Let any one go into an orchard, and dive into the
midst of a tall, thick, sprouting raspberry-bed. Above will be seen the
clear, glowing sky, and, all around, the pale-green, prickly stems
of raspberry-trees where they grow mingled together in a tangle of
profusion. At one's feet springs the dark-green nettle, with its slender
crown of flowers, while the broad-leaved burdock, with its bright-pink,
prickly blossoms, overtops the raspberries (and even one's head) with
its luxuriant masses, until, with the nettle, it almost meets the
pendent, pale-green branches of the old apple-trees where apples, round
and lustrous as bone, but as yet unripe, are mellowing in the heat
of the sun. Below, again, are seen young raspberry-shoots, twining
themselves around the partially withered, leafless parent plant,
and stretching their tendrils towards the sunlight, with green,
needle-shaped blades of grass and young, dew-coated pods peering through
last year's leaves, and growing juicily green in the perennial shade, as
though they care nothing for the bright