IV
Down in the village, when I left it this morning, hardly a breath was stirring under the warm April sun; but the wind is never still for more than an hour or two, here on the top of Windle Hill. At first, there was only a gentle wayward air out of the blue south-west. But already the wind is freshening as the sun lifts; and, with the growing heat, it is sure to strengthen. Midday may find half a gale singing in the long grass-bents around me, the gold tassels of the cowslips lashing to and fro in the grip of a madcap breeze.
To get the true spirit of the Sussex Downs, you must become a lover of the wind, loving it in all its moods. There are rare moments, even on Windle Hill, when the sun glows in a halcyon sky, and the blue air about you lies as still and silent as a sheltered woodland mere. But this is not true Downland weather. A calm day in the valleys may stand for tranquillity, and be well enough; but here it savours rather of stagnation. The very life of the Downs is in their flowing, ever-changing atmosphere—the sweet pure current coming to you unwinnowed over a visible course of twenty miles. When the wind is still, it is good to keep to the lowlands, under their green canopies of whispering leaves, within sound of their purling undertone of brooks; for the valley has its own companionable voices of earth, even under silent skies. But the Downs are as a strung harp, that will yield no music save to the touch of the one gargantuan player. Their very essence of life is in the careering air. You must learn to love the wind for its own sake, or you will never come to be a true Sussex highlander—to know what the magic is that brings Sussex men, meeting by chance in some far-off nook of the world, to talk first of all of the Downs, when, in the stifling heat of a tropic night, or by northern camp-fires, pipes are aglow, and tired hearts wistfully homing.
Out of the blue south-west comes the gentle wind, bringing with it the colour of the skies to every dell and shady woodland track in the far-spreading vista. Violet-hued the lazy cloud-shadows creep over the hills, or travel the lowland country to the south, dimming the green of blunting corn and the rich brown of new tilth, with their own soft scrumbling of azure. Where the village lies, far below at the foot of the hill, the elm-tops seem full of green: but this is only the scale of the bygone blossom. It will all fall to earth in tiny emerald discs, each with its crimson centre, before the true abiding green of the leaf appears. In the cottage gardens—looking, from the heights, like patchwork in a quilt—the cherry-trees make snow-white wreaths and posies. The lane that leads to the hill is flanked with ancient blackthorn hedges whiter yet. Blackthorn and sloe, and bright festoons of marsh-marigold weave a dwindling pattern over the low brook-country beyond, where the grey-blue thread of Arun river winds in and out on its long journey towards the sea. And, far beyond all, glistens the sea itself—one vivid streak of blue, incredibly high in the heaven—a long broad band as though made with a single sweep of a brush charged with pure sapphire, and fretted here and there with a few scarce, dragging, crumbling touches of gold.
Swallows go by overhead in the sun-steeped air chattering pleasantly. Every bush and branch, it would seem, below in the combe, must have its singer; for how else to account for such a bewildering, dim babel of song? All the larks in the world, you think, must be congregated in the blue region above the hill-top, and to be giving back to the sun a dozen gay trills for every beam he squanders down. While there is daylight, there will be this incessant lark-song, here on the green pinnacle of the wind-washed hill. With the first light of dawn the merry round began: it will hardly cease with the last red glimmer of the highland evening, when, an hour before, the leaf-shrouded combe has grown silent in the blackness of night. The stars will hear the last of it then, just as they will hear again its earliest music before they are quenched by the white of morrow. And if a drab, forbidding sky lowers over everything, or the rain-clouds wrap the hills about with mist of water, still the larks will sing. Nothing daunts the little grey highland minstrel. So that there be light enough to guide him upward, he will soar and sing, carrying his music indifferently up into the glory of this perfect April morning, or the gloom of the winter torrent and whistling winter blast.
Human fret and worry have a habit of keeping to the lowlands, as all lovers of the Downs know well. You cannot climb the hill-top, and bring with you all the care that burdened your footsteps down in the dusty shadow-locked vale. Somehow or other, every stride upward over the springy turf seems to lighten the load; and once on the summit, you seem to have lifted head and shoulders far above the strife. The hurrying mountain freshet of a breeze singing in your ears, and the rippling lark-music, have washed the heart clean of all but gladness; and you see with awakened eyes. You have soared with the lark, and now must needs sing with him. You cannot help looking over and onward, as he does, at the brightness that is always pressing hard on the heels of human worry and care.
It is the great wide expanses in Nature that have most effect on the hearts and lives of men. The sea has its own intrinsic influence; but it is too fraught with echoes of old wrath and unreasoning violence, overpast yet still remembered, even in its quietest moods. You cannot forget its grim levy on human lives, and the stout ships beaten to splinters uselessly. The leviathan lies crooning, inert, under the hot April noon, all lazy benevolent gentleness; yet you owe it many bitter grudges rightfully, and see the silken treachery lurking deep down in its placid depths. But the story of the Downs is one long tale of harmless good. They have no record of strife and disaster. Their tale of the ages is a whole philosophy of life without its terror:—Nature’s great good gift to world-worn souls, the bringing of calm into human life, with calm’s inherent far-seeing; reason working through worry towards hope and trust for the best.
The blithe spring day wears on; the sun lifts higher and higher; and the blue tree-shadows, that span the village down at the foot of the hill, have shrunk to half their former length. With the ripe heat of midday, the wind has freshened to a surging, roistering gale; but its rough touch is full of kindly warmth and jollity. The cloud-shadows that, in the serener mood of the morning, crept so stealthily over hill and dale, now stride from peak to peak in a wild chevy-chase after the sunbeams; leaping the valleys in their path, and filling them with rollicking grey and gold. The sky, with its griddle of white cloud, has come strangely near, and the Downs have risen suddenly to meet it. You seem buoyed up on an ever-lifting tide of green hills, that rock and sway as the broad bars of sun and shadow drive onward under the goad of the breeze. It is all sheer exultation—the changing light, and the song of the gale, and the lark’s unceasing challenge above you. Now, of all times, you must learn how good a thing it is to be out and about on these Sussex highlands, washed in the sun and the rain and the pure salt breath of the sea.