“One day I was sitting on a bank under a garden hedge. It was a hot day and I was very thirsty. I said aloud, ‘Oh, for a drink of beer.’ Just then a voice came over the hedge, a nice, clear, silvery voice it was, like as if an angel from heaven was a-talking to me—‘You shall have one, my dearie.’ And in a minute or two a kind lady came down with a big jug of beer. How I did bless that lady for her kindness to a poor Gypsy, and I drank the lot. About a month afterwards, I heard of the death of that lady, and I vowed to myself and to the rawni’s muli (lady’s spirit) that I would never touch another drop of beer as long as I lived, and I never have done and never will no more.”
CHAPTER IV
MY POACHING PUSSY—A ROMANY BENISON—MY FIRST TASTE OF HEDGEHOG
My clerical life has been spent for the most part in green country places, chiefly amid wind-swept hills. Consequently one has learned to delight in the creatures that run and fly, the wild things of wood and wold and brookside, and this love of Nature and her children has never left me; it has companioned with me throughout my wanderings. Give me now an elevated crest commanding a broad sweep of field and forest, with the swift rush of keen air over the furze bushes, a footpath among the thorn-scrub where the finches chatter, the sedgy bank of a moorland stream from which I can hear the “flup” of the trout, or the call of the peewits somersaulting in the sunlight: simple pleasures are these, yet they bring a world of happiness to a man who loves the wilds more than cities, and the windy wold better than the stifling street.
Contrary to the popular notion that Lincolnshire is no more than a dreary expanse of black fenland soil intersected by drains of geometric straightness, I may point out that there are two well-defined hill ranges extending almost throughout the county—the chalk and greensand Wolds, and the limestone “Heights,” running parallel after the manner of the duplex spina of Virgil’s well-bred horse.
On the western edge of the Wolds, overlooking a richly varied landscape, nestles the hamlet where I made my first home after marriage, and the country lying around our hilltop parsonage was an ideal hunting-ground for a naturalist. Borne on the rude March gales the wild pipe of the curlew greeted the ear as you met the buffeting gusts along the unfrequented ridgeways, and over winter snows an observant eye might trace the badger’s spoor. On summer evenings when the far-away minster of Lincoln was a purple cameo upon an amber ground, and the shadows creeping out of the woods began to spread over the hills, a brown owl would sail by on noiseless wings, or Reynard might be seen trotting across the sheep-nibbled sward towards the warren below the clustering firs.
Rambling along the wold one gleaming autumn afternoon, my attention was attracted by the rapid movements of some diminutive, fluffy-looking creature, which to a casual saunterer might have been a wren or a hedgesparrow; but after having stood quietly for a moment or two, a dark velvety ball of fur darted towards me, and in a most confiding manner ran over my boots, and sniffed at the stout ash-plant which I invariably carry with me along the lanes. For some time I stood watching the unconscious play of this tiny mouse. At last, however, I made a move and my wee friend fled like a thought to his retreat in the hedge.
On another occasion, I was seated in my old oak stall in the village church. It was a harvest festival, and a college friend was in the midst of his sermon, when I distinctly felt something nibbling at the hem of my cassock. It was a plump grey mouse, and on moving my foot I saw him speed down the aisle like an arrow. As fortune had it, the ladies in the front pew, being properly rapt in the eloquent discourse, escaped the disquieting vision of my church mousie.
These mice incidents, with a few more like them, were strung together and dispatched to the Pall Mall Budget, edited at that time by Mr. Charles Morley. My literary effort was duly printed, with pleasing sketches from the pencil of that peerless lover of pussies, Mr. Louis Wain, the then president of the Cat Club.
It was in the same parish that I had a favourite pussy, “Tony” by name, who would daily follow me to church, and wait at the vestry door for my reappearance after matin-prayers. But, alas, he acquired the poaching habit, a sure path to destruction, as I learned one day to my sorrow in passing the keeper’s gibbet at the end of a woodland glade.
One of my rambles with this pussy I recall quite vividly. One afternoon I set off across the wold intending to make pastoral visits upon a few outlying cottagers. I had got about half a mile from home, and, looking round, there was Tony just at my heels. I strolled along, and presently heard a squealing, and out of a clump of nettles came my cat dragging a plump rabbit. It was dead, and the cat, panting after his effort, looked up at me, as much as to say, “You’re not going to leave it here, are you?” Whereupon I remembered the saying of an old Gypsy, “If you had a dog that brought a hare or a rabbit to your feet, wouldn’t it be flying in the face of providence to refuse to take it?” So, picking up the rabbit, I put it in one of the roomy pockets of my long-tailed coat, and went on. The cat persisted in following. By and by, we drew near to a disused quarry, where the cat captured a second rabbit, which went into the other pocket of my long coat. By this time I began to feel the charm of the sport of that gentleman who sallies forth on “a shiny night at the season of the year.” The pastoral visits had now perforce to be abandoned, but on turning my face homeward, oh, horrors! there, not a hundred yards away, was a man on horseback, accompanied by a dog, and, seeing them, my cat scooted along a gulley up the hill, and was gone. I could not disappear quite so easily. However, as I did not altogether fancy a strange dog sniffing at my coat-tails, I made a detour, and the horseman passed a good way below me on the slope. You should have seen my wife smile as I plumped two nice bunnies on the kitchen table. We observed that those rabbits tasted quite as good as any you purchase at a game-dealer’s stall in the market.