NATURE'S TRIUMPH
By • J. S. COLLIS
IT always holds my attention—a certain spot on the Maidstone Road. The floor of this earthly site is not made of soil. Bolts, screws, nails, nuts, broken bits from tools meet the eye ; look closer and still no earth can be seen—only tiny screws and nails, washers, miniature nuts, pieces of metal, ends of wire, all crushed together into a smooth dark surface. Such is the ground. Part of the area is filled by a public house in the middle, backed by every sort of shed. Two bungalows crouch down on each side, as if born diseased and blighted. The space between each bungalow and the pub. is heaped high with the wreckage of machinery—for the inhabitants are car-breakers. The nose of a Morris Cowley wipes the dust ; the chassis of another sits open to the sky ; inextricable tangles of wire and de-gutted machinery defeat the endeavour of two sides and four wheels to suggest a living ear ; the back of a saloon sits whcelless on the ground ; old tyres lie about ; half a hood shields a .back-axle ; three or four outwardly whole ears, now for ever stationary, wedged in dying embrace, and clothed snow-deep in rust, provide one bungalow's barrier against the East wind and rain.
The human settlers here are a queer lot. These men of machines are as creative as the men of horses from whom they are descended, and as happy. They spend their days overcoming the machines. Their faces are not weather-worn or tanned or elementary sage ; their hands are not dirty with the dust of the earth, they arc thickly grimed with every sort of oily blackness ; their eyes never look upwards into the sky, nor across any field. The derelict scene around moves them like the sight of flowers, it is their garden and their warming sun. But this spot is Nature's triumph. hersactually is the gkmry and the final force. These men never stay there. They remain for six months, then pass on. Then for another six months the place is empty. It is worth visiting during these empty periods.
I went there again the other day to see one of the mechanics. He had left—some months ago, I gathered. I walked round the premises. The inhabitants of both the bungalows had gone. All was silently desolate. I had been inside one of the dwellings—a scene more chaotic and dirty than outside, more extraordinary indeed in the dilapidation of the furniture and annihilation of comfort, than anything in a dream. On this occasion I stood outside the other one. It held my attention. The half-broken windows were filled-in with rags, the top of the door patched like a pair of trousers—the whole, you might say, painted with dirt and smudged with youthful decay. Two pails full of rubbish stood immediately outside the door ; there was a tea-pot on the ground beside a ruined kettle ; a few yards out, all by itself, a water-cock rose from the earth like an erect snake. Old tyres, piles of machinery entanglement, bonnets of cars, pieces of rubber, wrecked hoods, lay about.
They commanded attention. But what held me more was the triumph of nature and time over all this. Every- thing here was temporary save mother earth and father time. Marvellous to see how the hard unbending iron was melting into powder under the motion of the air ! Before my eyes the strong machinery was sinking down into the earth from which it came. Overthrown were the hulking vessels by the movement of a root, by the pressure of a leaf. Steadily and without pause the slender green shoots were quietly covering the unrcsistant metal. It would not be long before the same strange power of gentleness removed the bungalows from mortal sight. So, in this graveyard of mechanism, I attended at the resurrection of everlasting life.
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