There I used to forget London, street by street. Sometimes I picked a
bunch of king-cups to show them to the hills.
I often came there. At first I noticed nothing about the field except its
beauty and its peacefulness.
But the second time that I came I thought there was something ominous
about the field.
Down there among the king-cups by the little shallow stream I felt that
something terrible might happen in just such a place.
I did not stay long there, because I thought that too much time spent in
London had brought on these morbid fancies and I went on to the hills as
fast as I could.
I stayed for some days in the country air, and when I came back I went to
the field again to enjoy that peaceful spot before entering London. But
there was still something ominous among the osiers.
A year elapsed before I went there again. I emerged from the shadow of
London into the gleaming sun; the bright green grass and the king-cups
were flaming in the light, and the little stream was singing a happy song.
But the moment I stepped into the field my old uneasiness returned, and
worse than before. It was as though the shadow was brooding there of some
dreadful future thing and a year had brought it nearer.
I reasoned that the exertion of bicycling might be bad for one, and that
the moment one rested this uneasiness might result.
A little later I came back past the field by night, and the song of the
stream in the hush attracted me down to it. And there the fancy came to me
that it would be a terribly cold place to be in the starlight, if for some
reason one was hurt and could not get away.
I knew a man who was minutely acquainted with the past history of that
locality, and him I asked if anything historical had ever happened in that
field. When he pressed me for my reason in asking him this, I said that
the field had seemed to me such a good place to hold a pageant in. But he
said that nothing of any interest had ever occurred there, nothing at all.
So it was from the future that the field's terrible trouble came.
For three years off and on I made visits to the field, and every time more
clearly it boded evil things, and my uneasiness grew more acute every time
that I was lured to go and rest among the cool green grass under the
beautiful osiers. Once to distract my thoughts I tried to gauge how fast
the stream was trickling, but I found myself wondering if it flowed faster
than blood.
I felt that it would be a terrible place to go mad in, one would hear
voices.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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