With the fresh air my senses gradually came back to me, and I began to understand why it was I could not see the cow. The reason was that the house was between us. By some mysterious process I had been discharged into the back garden. I still had the milking-stool in my hand, but the cow no longer troubled me. Let her see if she could wake Veronica by merely bellowing outside the door; it was more than I had ever been able to do.
I sat down on the stool and opened my note-book. I headed the page: “Sunrise in July: observations and emotions,” and I wrote down at once, lest I should forget it, that towards three o’clock a faint light is discernible, and added that this light gets stronger as the time goes on.
It sounded footling even to myself, but I had been reading a novel of the realistic school that had been greatly praised for its actuality. There is a demand in some quarters for this class of observation. I likewise made a note that the pigeon and the corncrake appear to be among the earliest of Nature’s children to welcome the coming day; and added that the screech-owl may be heard, perhaps at its best, by anyone caring to rise for the purpose, some quarter of an hour before the dawn. That was all I could think of just then. As regards emotions, I did not seem to have any.
I lit a pipe and waited for the sun. The sky in front of me was tinged with a faint pink. Every moment it flushed a deeper red. I maintain that anyone, not an expert, would have said that was the portion of the horizon on which to keep one’s eye. I kept my eye upon it, but no sun appeared. I lit another pipe. The sky in front of me was now a blaze of glory. I scribbled a few lines, likening the scattered clouds to brides blushing at the approach of the bridegroom. That would have been all right if later on they hadn’t begun to turn green: it seemed the wrong colour for a bride. Later on still they went yellow, and that spoilt the simile past hope. One cannot wax poetical about a bride who at the approach of the bridegroom turns first green and then yellow: you can only feel sorry for her. I waited some more. The sky in front of me grew paler every moment. I began to fear that something had happened to that sun. If I hadn’t known so much astronomy I should have said that he had changed his mind and had gone back again. I rose with the idea of seeing into things. He had been up apparently for hours: he had got up at the back of me. It seemed to be nobody’s fault. I put my pipe into my pocket and strolled round to the front. The cow was still there; she was pleased to see me, and started bellowing again.
I heard a sound of whistling. It proceeded from a farmer’s boy. I hailed him, and he climbed a gate and came to me across the field. He was a cheerful youth. He nodded to the cow and hoped she had had a good night: he pronounced it “nihet.”
“You know the cow?” I said.
“Well,” he explained, “we don’t precisely move in the sime set. Sort o’ business relytionship more like – if you understand me?”
Something about this boy was worrying me. He did not seem like a real farmer’s boy. But then nothing seemed quite real this morning. My feeling was to let things go.
“Whose cow is it?” I asked.
He stared at me.
“I want to know to whom it belongs,” I said. “I want to restore it to him.”
“Excuse me,” said the boy, “but where do you live?”
He was making me cross. “Where do I live?” I retorted. “Why, in this cottage. You don’t think I’ve got up early and come from a distance to listen to this cow? Don’t talk so much. Do you know whose cow it is, or don’t you?”
“It’s your cow,” said the boy.
It was my turn to stare.
“But I haven’t got a cow,” I told him.
“Yus you have,” he persisted; “you’ve got that cow.”
She had stopped bellowing for a moment. She was not the cow I felt I could ever take a pride in. At some time or another, quite recently, she must have sat down in some mud.
“How did I get her?” I demanded.
“The young lydy,” explained the boy, “she came rahnd to our plice on Tuesday – ”
I began to see light. “An excitable young lady – talks very fast – never waits for the answer?”
“With jolly fine eyes,” added the boy approvingly.
“And she ordered a cow?”
“Didn’t seem to ’ave strength enough to live another dy withaht it.”
“Any stipulation made concerning the price of the cow?”
“Any what?”
“The young lady with the eyes – did she think to ask the price of the cow?”
“No sordid details was entered into, so far as I could ’ear,” replied the boy.
They would not have been – by Robina.
“Any hint let fall as to what the cow was wanted for?”
“The lydy gives us to understand,” said the boy, “that fresh milk was ’er idea.”
That surprised me: that was thoughtful of Robina. “And this is the cow?”
“I towed her rahnd last night. I didn’t knock at the door and tell yer abaht ’er, cos, to be quite frank with yer, there wasn’t anybody in.”
“What is she bellowing for?” I asked.
“Well,” said the boy, “it’s only a theory, o’ course, but I should sy, from the look of ’er, that she wanted to be milked.”
“But it started bellowing at half-past two,” I argued. “It doesn’t expect to be milked at half-past two, does it?”
“Meself,” said the boy, “I’ve given up looking for sense in cows.”
In some unaccountable way this boy was hypnotising me. Everything had suddenly become out of place.
The cow had suddenly become absurd: she ought to have been a milk-can. The wood struck me as neglected: there ought to have been notice-boards about, “Keep off the Grass,” “Smoking Strictly Prohibited”: there wasn’t a seat to be seen. The cottage had surely got itself there by accident: where was the street? The birds were all out of their cages; everything was upside down.
“Are you a real farmer’s boy?” I asked him.
“O’ course I am,” he answered. “What do yer tike me for – a hartist in disguise?”
It came to me. “What is your name?”
“’Enery – ’Enery ’Opkins.”
“Where were you born?”
“Camden Tahn.”
Here was a nice beginning to a rural life! What place could be the country while this boy Hopkins was about? He would have given to the Garden of Eden the atmosphere of an outlying suburb.
“Do you want to earn an occasional shilling?” I put it to him.
“I’d rather it come reggler,” said Hopkins. “Better for me kerrickter.”
“You drop that Cockney accent and learn Berkshire, and I’ll give you half a sovereign when you can talk it,” I promised him. “Don’t, for instance, say ‘ain’t,’” I explained to him. “Say ‘bain’t.’ Don’t say ‘The young lydy, she came rahnd to our plice;’ say ‘The missy, ’er coomed down; ’er coomed, and ’er ses to the maister, ’er ses.. ’ That’s the sort of thing I want to surround myself with here. When you informed me that the cow was mine, you should have said: ‘Whoi, ’er be your cow, surelie ’er be.’”
“Sure it’s Berkshire?” demanded Hopkins. “You’re confident about it?” There is a type that is by nature suspicious.
“It may not be Berkshire pure and undefiled,” I admitted. “It is what in literature we term ‘dialect.’ It does for most places outside