Alton will tell you of that Famous Fight
Which ys man made & bade the world good night,
His Verteous life fear'd not mortalyty
His body must, his Vertues cannot die,
Because his Bloud was there so nobly spent,
This is his tombe, the Church his monument.
The next morning, after seeing the church, as I was departing the landlord exclaimed, and that in spite of a fast-falling barometer and a plentiful supply of suspicious clouds about: "You'll have a fine day, for I notice the ants are throwing up their tiny heaps on the bowling-green, and when they do that the day is certain to be fine." I had not heard of this method of prognosticating the weather before; all the same it proved true, excepting for one short shower, when from the look of the sky at the start, and the south-westerly wind that was blowing, I should certainly have expected little but rain; yet even the shower we experienced I found out was local and did not extend very far.
CHAPTER XIX
The Meon Valley—Warnford—A hidden church—A house "a million years old"!—A Saxon sun-dial—A ruined home—Corhampton and its Saxon church—A modern "Naboth's Vineyard"—An out-of-the-world village—A curious story—Quaint carvings and their legend—A church tower built by servants.
We left Alton by the Winchester road; we did not, however, follow it for long, but turned down a by-road and soon reached a pretty village of some thatched cottages built round a little green, with its pond to make the picture complete. The inn there had on its signboard the representation of a fat monk with the legend "The Grey Friar," a fresh sign to me. Then passing a finely timbered park with many wide-branching elms in it, causing grey patches of shade on the great sweeps of sunlit sward, we began to explore the lovely Meon Valley, through which runs the clear and bright river Meon between richly wooded banks and gently sloping hills. I really do not think an artist could have designed prettier scenery had he the designing of it. A valley full of quiet beauty, yet so ignorant was I of my own land I had not heard of its charms before; many a guidebook-lauded valley is not half so beautiful as it. No poet has been born in that valley to sing its praises, otherwise it might have been famed. The day, too, was perfect, and the soft sunshine helped to make everything pleasant; the day and scene were attuned one to another.
Up and down hill we went, then we dropped down to West Meon, a neat, clean village. The chief occupation of its inhabitants at the time appeared to be in standing idly at their doorways, or loafing in the road; it somehow reminded me of a scene at a theatre ready set, with the minor performers in place and awaiting the principal actors to come on the stage and play their parts. I often wonder how these villagers live with no local industry; they cannot live on one another, and they do not seem exactly the sort of people to receive dividends on investments, though in all of them at least the public-house appears to prosper. It is a problem beyond me. Here we crossed the Meon on a little stone bridge and proceeded by a delightfully tree-shaded road, as pleasant as a road could be, and along by the river-side to the tiny decayed village of Warnford, a mere hamlet rather of a few pretty and ancient cottages deep in woods where each cottage is a picture. Yet it had a depressingly lonely look as though the village were under some spell, for I did not see a soul about it, not a face at a window, not a figure at a door, no one in its cottage gardens, not a child, nor a dog, nor a fowl in the road. I stopped in the village for an hour, or more, to make some sketches and to take some photographs, yet all that while there was no sign of life about the place, no one going or coming. I could not but marvel at this, it was so curious an experience. It looked like a deserted village, yet the cottages appeared well cared for, and their little gardens loved and well tended. The strange loneliness and silence of the spot impressed me. Why was it? I could not account for it, unless all its inhabitants were away making holiday, but where were the dogs and the fowls? It might almost have been one of those picturesque model villages one sees in an exhibition at an early hour before the very properly dressed up and show village maidens have arrived and when no one is there, only it was far too real for that.
There was one thing besides its loneliness that seemed strange and incomplete about the spot, though for a time I could not realise what I missed; then it struck me it was the absence of a presiding church, that is generally such a prominent feature of a village and centres the life of it. I looked carefully around, but nowhere could I see the church; there was no sign of one, nor a chapel. For even peaceful villagers cannot worship one God in one way.
As I left the village by a road that bent round sharply by the side of a park, at last I saw a human being, a man close at hand in a field. So I pulled up and asked where the church was, or if there were one. "The church," replied he, "it be away in the park opposite, right in the woods. You cannot see it till you come to it. You go in at the lodge gate and follow the road over the bridge, then when you comes in sight of the house you turns to the right, and there be the church in the woods. It be a curious old place, over a thousand years old they do say." I thought I would see it. A thousand years old is a fair age for a building, and though the man might be mistaken in that, probably the building was very ancient. So off I set in search of the church that I found some way off in the park, half hidden and surrounded by trees and green in the shade of them. A humble little church with a damp and time-worn look, yet with a certain pathetic charm about it that belongs to most things ancient of man's contriving. I was surprised in so poor a church to come upon a fine altar-tomb with the recumbent effigies of a man and his two wives, and the kneeling figures of their children below; and another similar monument, both to members of the same Neale family, the earliest one bearing date of 1599. Drops of moisture were dripping down the sides of the monuments as though the very stones were mourning for the forgotten dead. There is some fine carved oak in the church going to decay, and a curious old pillared font. But the interior was so dim and damp I was glad to get out of it. It certainly is an ancient church, and perhaps looks more ancient than it really is. Some of the walls, and certainly the small yet massive tower, are Norman, but that would not make it over a thousand years old; still, a century or two is nothing to rural folk. I once asked a man in a little country town if he could tell me the age of an interesting old house there. "I don't rightly know just how old it be," he replied, "but it's over a million years old, that I know for certain." I was astonished. "Surely you have made a mistake?" I exclaimed. "No, I haven't," he responded, "for there's the date carved upon it, as you may see," and he pointed this out to me, for it had escaped my notice, carved in Roman letters, "MDXCII." "There, I told you it was over a million years old. 'M' stands for a million, as you know, and the other letters for more years, but I cannot rightly read them." I said nothing; it was not my business to educate the countryman. Once I did attempt to correct a villager about some glaring mistake in reading an inscription—he would read it to me; he resented my correction and walked off in a huff; now I am careful not to run the risk of so offending again.