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"Not exactly, my worthy Captain," answered Ardan quietly, "though you were perhaps nearer to the mark than you expected. I don't mean exactly rows of sugar cane, but I do mean vast avenues of trees poplars, for instance planted regularly on each side of a great high road." "Still harping on vegetation!" said the Captain. "Ardan, what a splendid historian was spoiled in you!
There are also beeches, oaks, planes, poplars, maples, walnuts, limes, and even a magnolia, two cones of which have recently been obtained, proving that this splendid evergreen not only lived but ripened its fruit within the Arctic circle. Many of the limes, planes, and oaks were large-leaved species, and both flowers and fruit, besides immense quantities of leaves, are in many cases preserved.
For upon the hill of Cassel the air is sweet and fresh, the slopes are musical with a faint lullaby of falling showers, as the wind plays among the birches and the poplars, and over all there is a great peace. The motor-lorries avoid the declivities of Cassel, and the horsemen pass by on the other side.
They had the tall curve of elms, the tenuity of poplars, the ashen colour of olives under a rainy sky; and they stretched ahead of me for half a mile or more without a break in their arch. If ever I saw an avenue that unmistakably led to something, it was the avenue at Kerfol. My heart beat a little as I began to walk down it.
It was beautiful weather. As a rule, William and Lily and Paul went out in the morning together for a walk. William did not talk to his beloved much, except to tell her things from his boyhood. Paul talked endlessly to both of them. They lay down, all three, in a meadow by Minton Church. On one side, by the Castle Farm, was a beautiful quivering screen of poplars.
They had mounted a high hill and stopped for breath at its summit. The country over which they were to travel was spread out for their inspection. Down there in the valley the river choosing its leisurely course northward to the Seine, and beyond it the harlequin checkerboard of vine and meadow, the sentinel poplars, and to the east-ward the blue hills that sheltered Ivry-la-Bataille.
By the moonlight, the Ranger could see the pale chalky peach-bloom boles of the ghost birches, and the satiny poplars and cottonwoods, turning gold to the approaching autumn but going down gay, twinkling, laughing fellows to the year's death, actually clapping their hands, shaking with glee, sending leaves down in a rain of gold, which, it is to be hoped, the pixies picked up, the pixies sailing the air in feather parachutes of flower and cone seed!
"He's revealing his inmost secrets to the rabble," said the nearest poplar. "Let us stand erect and stiff and whisper and look aloft, dear brothers of the avenue!" All the poplars whispered. "I am decaying," said the willow-tree. "I am decaying in my top. How could it be otherwise? There's a puddle up there in summer, the snow lies there in winter and now it's full of moist earth.
The Medical Officer gave him "light duty" and he spent the day in camp, picking up matches, bits of paper, and miscellaneous rubbish. It seemed strange that the ruined houses, the belt of poplars, the damaged farm, and the wood with the white château were still standing there so peacefully after the bombardment of the previous night. The frogs, charming creatures, were still croaking merrily.
They spoke together as if they had but a single voice: "Oh Francis, you are more lovely than the light of the glow-worm gleaming in the moss, gentler than the brook which sings to us while we hang our warm nest in the fragrant shade of the young poplars. What matter that the hoarfrost and famine would banish us from your side and drive us far away to more fruitful lands?
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