This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler

NEIGHBOURHOOD

A YEAR’S LIFE IN AND ABOUT

AN ENGLISH VILLAGE

BY
TICKNER EDWARDES
AUTHOR OF ‘THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE’

WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS

NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
31 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET

1912

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

If you love the quiet of the country—the real quiet which is not silence at all, but the blending of a myriad scarce-perceptible sounds—you will get it in Windlecombe, heaped measure, pressed down, and running over, year in and year out.

The village lies just where Arun river breaks the green rampart of the Sussex Downs. To the west, the lowest cottages dwindle almost to the water’s brink. Northward and eastward, the highest buildings stand afar off, clear cut against the blue wall of the sky; while in between, filling the deep, steep combe, church and inn and every kind of dwelling-house, little or big, huddle together under their thatch and old red tiles, with the village green in their midst, and a thread of white road rippling through them all and up the steep combe-side till it is lost in the sunny waste of the hills.

But there is no way through Windlecombe. From the market town four miles off, the road is good enough; and good it remains until it reaches the highest human outpost of the village. But there it suddenly changes to a mere cart-track, soon to vanish altogether in the green sward of the Down. And therein lies Windlecombe’s chiefest blessing. Far away on the great main road, when the wind is southerly, we can hear the motor-bugles calling, and see pale comet-beams careering through the night. But these things come no nearer. At rare intervals, perhaps, a stray juggernaut will descend upon us, and demand of some placid rustic the nearest way to Land’s End or Aberdeen, returning disgusted on its tracks when it learns that there is only one road from here to anywhere, and that the road it came. But these ear-splitting, malodorous happenings are few and far between. At all other times, Windlecombe wears the quiet of the hills about it like a garment. The dust of the highway has no soaring ambition to whiten the hedgerows, or fill the cottagers’ cabbages with grit. It still keeps to its ancient, lowly work of smoothing the path for man and beast; and our children can play in it unterrorised, our old dogs lie in it at their slumberous ease.

How wild and quiet the place is, you can only realise by living in it from year’s end to year’s end, as has been my own privilege for longer than I care to compute. For how many ages a human settlement has existed in this wooded, sun-flooded cleft of the Downs, it is impossible to hazard a guess. Windlecombe is mentioned in Domesday, but the stones of the old church proclaim it as belonging to times more distant still. Be that as it may, its clustered roofs and grey church tower have long been reckoned in the traditions of wild life as part and parcel of the eternal hills. Birds frequent Windlecombe as they haunt the beech-woods that hang upon the sides of the combe. They use the rick-yards and gardens, the very streets even, as they use the glades in the woodlands or the verges of the brooks. You may come out of a winter’s morning and see a heron flapping slowly out of your paddock, or listen to a pheasant’s trumpeting on the other side of the hedge. And in early summer you can sit on the garden bench, and, looking up into the dim elm labyrinth overhead, watch a green woodpecker at work, cutting the hole for his nest straight and true into the heart of the wood. That the thrushes sing all day long from Michaelmas to Midsummer Day, that in June you cannot sleep for the nightingales, that there is never an hour of daylight all the year round when a lark is not carolling against the blue or stormy grey above the village—these things you take as part of your rightful daily fare, and are content.

But life in an English village derives its charm only in part from its intimacy with wild Nature and all her wonders and beauties, indispensable as these are to the daily lives of most thinking, working men. There is no error so disastrous, humanly speaking, as that which leads a man to seek happiness or sublimity out of the beaten track of his fellows. Neighbourhood, the daily interchange of thought and word and kindly deed, is a necessity for all healthy human life, and the natural medium of all true advancement. And nowhere will you find it of such sturdy growth, rooted in such nourishing, yet temperate soil, than in the villages of modern England.

Yet here it is necessary to discriminate, to mark conditions. If one’s duty towards one’s neighbour assumes a real and prime world’s importance in village life, it is equally true that all men are not alike fit to be villagers, nor all villages to be accounted neighbourly. It is an essential part of the life I would describe in these pages that both the people and the place should depend for existence on the day’s work; work done, as far as may be, on the soil from which all sprang, and to which all some day must return. The show villages, the little lodging-letting communities that are to be found here and there, must be excluded from the argument. Nor can men of private means, however modest, find a natural place in the true villager ranks. Where to all men life is a series of laborious days, tired evenings, dreamless nights, you, lolling in the sunshine, or playing at work, or more fatal still, working at play, will be for ever a public anomaly. You will get civility, a patient, dignified tolerance from all. But you will not have a neighbour: though you live until your feet have graven their mark into every stone of the place, you will be a stranger in a strange land.

For my part, such as my work is, I have done it, every stroke, in Windlecombe for half a lifetime back, and may claim to have fairly won my villagership. And what it is worth to me—how it is sweetened by daily touch of kind hearts and grip of clean hands; what the country sunshine means, filtering through the vine-leaves of my workroom window; and what the song of the robin that sits on the ivied gate-post without, or, in winter-time, comes fluttering and tapping at the old bull’s-eye panes for crumbs; how the daily walk, in wood or meadow or by riverside, brings ever its new marvel or revelation of unimagined beauty; and how, above all, the lives of the quaint, courageous, clever folk, in whose midst Destiny has thrown me, overbrim with all traits human, delectably mortal, divinely out-of-place—these, and many other aspects of villagership, I have here tried to set down in plain words and meaning, believing that what has proved of interest and profit to one very human, always erring, often doubting soul, may do the like for others, though journeying by widely sundered tracks.

T. E.

JANUARY

I

I have just been to the house-door, to take a look at the winter’s night. A change is coming, the long frost nears its end—so the old ferryman has told me every morning for a fortnight back, and his perseverance as a prophet has been rewarded at last. As I flung the heavy oak door back, a breath of air struck upon my face warm, it seemed, as summer. All about me in the grey darkness there was an indescribable stir and awakening of life. The moon no longer stared down out of the black sky, a wicked, venomous-bright beauty on her full-fed, rather supercilious face: now she wore a scarf of mist upon her brows, and looked nun-like, dim-eyed, and mild. The stars had lost their cruel glitter. I stepped forth, and felt the grass yield beneath my tread—the first time for near a month past. And as I stood wondering and rejoicing at it all, some night-bird lanced by overhead, a note of the same relief and gladness unmistakable in its shrill, jangling cry.

Hard weather in the country has a thousand enjoyments and interests for those who care to look for them; but when the frost holds relentlessly week after week, as it has done this January, the grimmer side of things comes obtrusively to the fore. There is too much shadow for the light. It is as though you rejoiced in the beauty of sunset beams on a wall, and it were the wall of a torture-house. You lie awake at night, and in the death-quiet stillness, hear the measured footfall of death—a dull, reiterated thud on the frozen ground beneath the holly-hedge, each sound denoting that yet another roosting thrush or starling has given up the unequal fight. Roaming through the lanes in your warm overcoat and thick-soled boots, you note the loveliness of the hoar-frost, at one step dazzling white, and at the next aglow with prismatic colour; and turning the corner, you come upon the gipsy’s tent, and realise that, while you lay snug and warm, nothing but that pitiful screen of old rent rags has stood between human beings and the terror of a winter’s night.

On one of the hardest days I met the old vicar of Windlecombe, and regaled him with the story of how I had just passed along the river-way as the tide was falling; how, at full flood, at the pause of the waters, the frost had sheathed the river with ice; and how, when the tide began to go down, this crystal stratum had remained aloft, held up by the myriad reed-stems; until at length, loosened by the sunbeams, it had fallen sheet by sheet to the wildest, most ravishing music, each icy tympanum, as it fell, ringing a different, dear, sweet note. And, in return for my word-picturing, the old man gave me a story of the same times to match it; how he had just learnt that certain ill-clad, ill-fed children—whom the law compelled to tramp every morning from Redesdown, a little farming hamlet miles away over the frozen hills, to the nearest school at Windlecombe, and tramp back again every night—were given a daily penny between the three of them for their midday meal; and how, as often as not, the bread they needed went unbought from the village store, because of the lure of the intervening sweetstuff shop. Later, in the red light of sundown, I met those children going home, as I had often met them, plodding one behind the other, heads down to the bitter blast. Each wore a great new woollen muffler, and had his pockets stuffed. I knew who had cared for them, and my heart smote me. Somehow the pure austerity of the evening—the radiant light ahead, the white grace of the hills about me, the star-gemmed azure above—no longer brought the old elation. The jingle of my skates, as they hung from my arm, took on a disagreeable sound of fetters. Though I carried them many a time after that, I never put them away without the honest wish that I should use them no more.

But lucidly, these long spells of unremitting frost are rare in our country. Ordinary give-and-take winter’s weather—the alternation of cold and warmth, gloom and sunshine, wind and calm—brings little hardship to any living thing. Country children have a wonderful way of thriving and being happy, even though their diet is mainly bread-and-dripping and separated milk. As for wild life, we need expend no commiseration on any creature that can burrow; and while there are berries in the hedgerows, and water in the brooks, no bird will come to harm.

It is curious to see how Nature ekes out her winter supplies, doling out rations, as it were, from day to day. If the whole berry harvest came to ripe maturity at the same season, or were of like attractiveness, it would be squandered and exhausted by the spendthrift, happy-go-lucky hordes of birds, long before the winter was through. But many things are designed to prevent this. Under the threat of starvation, all birds will eat berries; but a great proportion of them will do so only as a last resource. At first it is the hawthorn fruit that goes. The soft flesh of the may-berry will yield to the weakest bill, and the whole crop ripens together in early winter. But even here Nature provides against the risk of immediate waste, that will mean starvation hereafter. The missel-thrushes have been given a bad name because each of them takes possession of some well-loaded stretch of hedgerow, and spends the whole day in driving off other birds. Yet, on this habit of the greedy missel, depends not only his own future sustenance but that of all the rest. For all his agility, he cannot prevent each bird snatching at least enough to keep life going, and while he is so busy, he has himself no chance for gluttony.

Other berry supplies, such as the privet and holly, seem to be preserved to the last because they are universally distasteful, though nourishing at a pinch. But it is the hips, or rose-berries, which provide the best example of Nature’s way of conserving the lives of birds throughout hard weather against their own foolish, squandering instinct. These berries do not ripen all at once, whether late or early in the season. On every bush, the scarlet hips soften in regular, long-drawn-out succession, some being ready in early winter, and some not until well on in the new year. When the hip is ripe, the tenderest beak can get at its viscid fruit; but until it begins to soften, there is hardly a bird that can deal with it. The rose-berries, with their scanty but never-failing stores, are really the mainstay of all in hard times. It is doubtful, indeed, whether the birds that die wholesale in prolonged frosty weather, are killed by hunger at all. Probably their death is due rather to thirst. So long as the brooks run, bird life can hold against the bitterest times. But once silence has settled down over the country-side—the only real silence of the year, when all the streams are locked up at their source—then begins the steady footfall under the holly-hedge, and you must needs turn from the crimson sunset light upon the wall.

I have shut the heavy old house-door, and got back to my table by the workroom fire. The thaw has come in earnest now. I can hear the drip of the melting rime in the garden, far and near. The warm west wind is beginning to sigh down the chimney. The logs simmer and glow, but not with the greedy brightness of frost-bound nights.

It is on these long winter evenings that Solitude comes into her kingdom. Men are not all made alike, nor is solitude with all a voluntary condition, at least a self-imposed necessity, as it is with me—a something that I must fashion out of my own will and abnegation, weave about me as the tunnel-spider weaves her lair. In this ancient house the walls are thick, yet not so thick but that an ear-strain will just trip the echo of far-off laughter. If I but drew that curtain and set the door ajar, I could catch a murmur of voices like the sound of bee-hives in summer dark; and a dozen strides along the stone-flagged passage would yield me what I may not take for hours to come—tried and meet companionship, the flint-and-steel play of bandied jest, my own to hold, if I can, in brisk exchange of nerving, heartening thought. But these things in their season. Mine now it is to dip the grey goose-quill, to gird up for the long tramp over the foolscap-country before me—that trackless white desert where I must lay a trail to be followed, whether by many or few or none, or with what pleasure or weariness, I may never certainly know. For the writer is like a sower, that is ever sowing and passing on. He can seldom do more than take a hurried, fleeting shoulder-glimpse at the harvest behind him, nor see who reaps, if haply it be reaped at all.

Scratching away in the cosy fireside quiet of the old room, there comes to me at length a sound from the chimney-corner, to which I must needs listen, no matter what twist or quirk of syntax holds me in thrall. You often hear aged country folk complain that the crickets no longer sing on the hearth, as they used to do in their childhood. My own crickets have always seemed to sing blithely enough, too blithely at times to help one forward with a difficult task. But I had always been glad to accept the statement as one more proof of the decadence of modern times. Hobnobbing one winter’s evening, however, with the old ferryman in his riverside den, and noting how merrily the crickets were chirping in his chimney-corner, I wondered to hear him give way to this same lament. Then, for the first time, I realised that not the crickets, but his old ears, were at fault. Though the little smoke-blackened cabin rang with their music, the old man, who would, on the loudest night, have heard a ferry-call from the other side of the water instantly, failed now to grip the high-pitched sound. And this set me to philosophising. When the crickets cease to pipe in my own chimney-corner, then, and not till then, I will admit I am growing old.

But though we speak of the chirp or pipe of the cricket and grasshopper, it is well to remember that neither these, nor any other insects, possess a true voice. It would be nearer the fact to call the cricket a fiddler than a piper. For it is by sitting and drawing the corrugated rib of his wing-case to and fro over the sharp edge of the wing beneath, that his shrill note is developed. And it is only the male cricket who can chirp. The female carries upon her no trace of any fiddling contrivance. When all things were made, and made in couples, on the females of at least one numerous species, it is pleasant to remark, a significant and commendable silence was imposed.

Solitude by a fireside in an old country dwelling, the murmurous night without, and, within, the steady clear glow of candles made by your own hands out of wax from your own hives, it would be strange if the evening’s work failed to get itself done cleverly and betimes. Pleasant as it is to all penmen to be achieving, there is no depth of satisfaction like that of leaving off. Then, not to return incontinently to the sober, colour-fast world of fact, but to stay in your dream-country, idling awhile by the roadside, is one of the great compensations of this most exacting of lives.

Your tale is done. You have scrawled ‘The End’ at the bottom of the sheet, and thrown it with the others. You have turned your chair to the fire, put up your slippered feet on the andiron, and have filled your most comfortable pipe. The end it is, in very truth, for all who will read the tale; but for you there will never be an end, just as there never was a beginning to it. Unbidden now, and not to be gainsaid even if you had the mind, your dream-children live on in the town or country nook you made for them; live on, increase and multiply, finish their peck of dirt, add to the world’s store either of folly or sanctity, come to their graves at last, each by his own inexorable road, and each leaving the seed of another tale behind.

To the enviable reader, when, after much water-spilling and cracking of crowns, Jack has got his Jill, and the wedding-bells are lin-lan-loning behind the dropt curtain, there is the satisfaction of certainty that so much love, and one pair of hearts at least, are safe from further chance and change in the whirligig of life. But to the teller of the tale, there is no such assurance. Just as his dream-children came out of an immortality he did not devise, so will they persist through an eternity not of his controlling; and for ever they will be subject to the same odds of bliss or disaster as any stranger that may pass his door. Yet, being only human, he will nevertheless go on with his tales in the secret hope that Jove may be caught napping, and a little heaven be brought down to earth before its allotted time. For living in a world of law and order—where even Omnipotence may not deny to every cause its outcome—is too realistically like camping under fire. The old fatalists had peace of mind because they believed it availed nothing to crouch when the bullets screamed overhead, nor even to dodge a spent shot. But to take one’s stand in the face of the myriad cross-purposes and side-issues of an orderly universe, needs a vastly different temper. Perhaps it is just the secret longing in all hearts to have at least a little make-believe of certitude—if nowhere else but in the pages of a story—by which the art of fiction so hugely thrives.

I have put out the candles, each shining under its little red umbrella of paper, the better to see the joyous colour of the fire. When drab thoughts come—those night-birds of sombre feather—the pure untinctured glow from well-kindled logs has a wonderful way of setting them to flight. Let unassailable optimism make his fire of coals: for him of questioning, craving, often craven heart, there is no warmth like that from seasoned timber. Coals, with their dynamic energy, their superfluity of smoke, their sudden incongruous jets of flame, seem to be for ever insisting on facts you would fain forget a while, much as you may admire them and depend on them—the progress and competition of outer life. But wood fires serve to draw the mind away from modernism in all its phases. So that you burn the right kind of wood, and this is important, your fireside thoughts need never leave the realm of cheery retrospect. Good, seasoned logs of beech or ash are the best. Oak has no half moods; it must make either a furnace unapproachable, or smoulder away in dead, dull embers. Elm gives poor comfort, and the slightest damp appals it. Poplar is charity-fuel; burn it will, indeed, to good purpose, but too explosively. There is no rest by a fire of poplar: one must be for ever treading out or parrying the vagrant sparks.

A joyous colour it is—the wavering amber light that fills the old room now from the piled-up beechen logs; joyous, yet having a sedate, ruminative tinge about it, like old travellers’ tales of ancient times. Nor does the colour appeal only to the eye: there seems to be a fragrance in it. That this is no mere conceit but simple fact, I was strangely reminded when I blew the candles out, and from the smouldering wicks two long white ribbons of vapour were borne away on the draught. The fragrance of the smoking wax brought up a picture of the summer nights when the bees lay close to fashion it. Round about the cluster in the pent-up hive were thousands of little vats of brewing honey, each giving off a steam that was the life-spirit of clover-fields and blue borage, and sainfoin which spreads the hills with rose-red light. All these mingled scents had got into the nature of the wax, and now they were given off again in sweet-smelling vapour, such a fragrance as you may rarely chance upon in certain foreign churches, where the old ordinances yet prevail, and the candles are still made from the pure product of the hives.

And it is the same with burning logs. Each kind of wood has its own essential odour, which pervades the room as though it were soul and body with the light. You cannot separate the two; no riding down of fancy will dissociate the flickering gipsy-gold of the embers and the perfume of the simmering bark. If these do not fill your mind with memories of the green twilight of woodlands, of hours spent in leafy shadows of forest-glades, then—then you are not made for a country fireside, and were happier hobnobbing with Modernity by his sooty, coal-fed hearth.

II

It is not difficult to understand why indoor work is at most times tolerable in cities, fair weather or foul. For in cities earth and sky have long been driven out of their ancient comradeship. Stifled by pavements and masonry, the earth cannot feel the touch of the sunbeams, nor the air enrich itself with the breath of the soil. The old glad interchange is prevented at all points. There is no lure in the sunshine, no siren voice in the gale. Summer rain does not call you out into the open, to share the joy of it with the drinking grass and leaves. Amidst your dead, impenetrable bricks-and-mortar, you can plod on with your scribbling or figuring without a heart-stir; no vine-leaf will tap at your window, no lily-of-the-field taunt your industry, nor song of skylark dissipate your dreams.

But indoor work, carried on in a village deep in the green heart of some beautiful country-side, is on an entirely different plane. At times, perhaps, it becomes the hardest work in the world. With one lavish hand life gives you the things most necessary for close, unremitting application, and with the other she ruthlessly sets all manner of obstacles in your path. On such a day as now dawned crystal-clear over Windlecombe, with the first warm wind of the year blowing new life into everything, there was no stopping indoors for me. I got down to my work punctually enough, even a little before the wonted time. But good resolutions could make no headway against such odds. The south-west wind boomed merrily in the elm-tops. The sunbeams riddled my old house through and through. Out in the garden robins and thrushes had formed themselves into a grand orchestra; and when the breeze lulled for a moment, I could hear the larks singing far overhead, as though it were a summer’s day. An hour of half-hearted tinkering saw my fortitude break like a milldam. Five minutes later I had shut the house-door behind me, and was off up the village street, gulping down deep draughts of the sweet morning air.

I chose the path that led to the Downs. Mounting the steep, chalky track in the arms of the gale, with the misty green heights looming up before me against the blue of the winter’s morning, one fact was borne in upon me at every step. Though I must needs write winter—for January was but three parts done—it was no longer winter, but spring. A few days’ sunny warmth had worked what seemed like a miracle. In the hedges and trees the buds were swelling. Birds were pairing. Young green spears of grass showed underfoot. Across the path clouds of midges danced in the sunshine. I heard the first low love-croon of a wood-dove; and, when I stopped for breath in the lee of the hazel-copse, there drifted out upon me a song never yet heard on winter days—the mellow voice of a blackbird calling for a mate.

But the more we study Nature out of doors, the more we come to disbelieve in winter altogether. Winter is in truth a myth. From the moment the old year’s leaves are down, the earth is in vigorous preparation for the new year’s life and growth. Nature lies by quietly enough during the cold spells, but each awakening is a stronger and more joyous one. While they last, the long frosts seem to hold all the life of things suspended. Yet, with every return of the south-west wind, it is easy to see that this is not really so. Though the visible sunbeams have had no power for progress, those stored in the earth have been slowly and steadily at work. And when the thaw comes, Nature seems to take up the slack of the year in one tremendous forward pull.

I reached the crest of Windle Down, and made over the springy, dew-soaked grass, content to go wheresoever the tearing wind should drive me. The long, billowing curves of the hills stretched away on all sides until they lost themselves in distant violet haze. Here and there flocks of sheep made a grey patch in the sunlit solitude, and a low clamour of bells was in the air blent with the unending song of the larks. On the combe-sides the gorse spread its darker green, and, near at hand, I could make out its gold buds already bursting under the touch of the sunbeams The next hill before me was topped with a ring of fencing, near which stood a solitary figure, clear cut against the tender blue of the north.

Shepherding on the South Downs is an hereditary family calling, and old George Artlett, the shepherd at Windlecombe farm, had trained up two at least of his four sons to follow in his own tranquil steps. In village life, though the essence of neighbourliness is that it must be exercised impartially to one and all, worthy or unworthy, there are ever some about you with whom the daily traffic of genial word and deed comes more aptly than with the rest. In all the years I had known the Artletts, there had been scarce a day when I had not encountered one or other of that sturdy clan, and generally to my profit. If it was not the old shepherd himself placidly trailing along in the rear of his flock with his shining crook, it was ‘young’ George, the fifty-year-old under-shepherd, his pocket bulged out with a Bible; or Dewie, the shepherd’s boy; or John, the sporting handy-man, tramping off to covert with his pack of mongrels; or quaint ‘Mistus’ Artlett, carrying her household basket to and from the shop. Of Tom Artlett—the ‘Singing Ploughman,’ as he was called in the neighbouring market town—I got a glimpse sometimes in the early grey of morning, or more often of late afternoon, as he journeyed between home and farm. He ploughed his acre a day conscientiously, walking the usual twelve miles in the doing of it; and all the while his rich, powerful voice made the hills about him echo with the songs he loved.

Why he sang these songs, and why young George’s pocket always bulged, would have been at once evident to you if you could have looked out of window with me any Sunday morning about eight of the clock. Punctually at that hour, the two brothers strode by in their scarlet guernseys and blue, braided coats, on their way to the town; and there they passed a seventh day more toilsome than all the other six, coming home at nightfall hoarse and weary, yet plainly as happy as any men could be.

Young George Artlett stood on the hill-top, leaning upon his crook. The wind fluttered his coat about him, and lashed his haversack to and fro. He stood with his back in my direction, bare-headed, his grey hair streaming in the breeze. It was not until I had almost come up with him that I marked his uplifted face, his closed eyes, his moving lips; and then I stopped irresolutely, ashamed of the blunder I had committed. But before I could turn and retreat, the dog at his side had signalled my presence. The old tarpaulin sou’wester hat was returned to its place. Young George wheeled round, and looked at me with eyes of welcome.

‘I knowed by th’ bark o’ him, who ’twur,’ he said, in his slow, deep, quiet voice. ‘Rowster, ’a has a name fer all o’ ye. That there little happy shruck, ’tis yerself an’ nane other. When ’a perks up an’ bellers, ’tis th’ poodle-dorg an’ Miss Sweet. An’ when ’a grizzles, I an’t no call to look around; there be a black coat no gurt ways off, sure as big apples comes from little uns.’

He smiled to himself, as though the memory of some recent encounter with the black coat had returned to him. Then he took a quick glance at the sun.

‘Drinkin’-time!’ said he.

His sheep were all on the far hill-side, half a mile off perhaps, feeding—as sheep always do on windy days—with their heads to the breeze; and shouldering together in long, straight lines, roughly parallel—as, again, sheep generally will, in spite of the prettily ordered groups on painters’ canvases. It is only on days of perfect calm that grazing sheep will head to all points of the compass, and on the South Downs such days are rare indeed.

George Artlett put his hands to his mouth funnel-wise, and sent the shepherd’s folding-call ringing on the breeze.

‘Coo-oo-oo-o-up! Coo-oo-oo-o-up! Coom along—coo-oo-up!’

The shrill, wild notes pealed out, drawing an echo from every hill far and near. At once all the ewes on the distant sunny slope stopped their nibbling, and looked round. Again the cry rang forth. This time the foremost sheep moved a step or two in our direction, hesitated, then came slowly on. A moment later the whole flock was under way, pouring steadily up the hill-side and filling the air with a deep, clamorous song.

But two or three of the younger sheep had stayed behind in a little bay of grass beyond the furze-brake. Rowster looked inquiringly at his master, got a consenting wave of the arm, and was off with the speed of light. We watched him as he raced down the hill in a wide semicircle, and, taking the malingerers in the rear, drove them helter-skelter after the rest. Yelping and snapping behind them, he brought the whole flock up to the dew-pond at what seemed an entirely unnecessary pace.

‘’Tis allers so wi’ dorgs,’ observed young George reflectively. ‘Ye can never larn them as shepherd work ought to go slow as the sun i’ the sky. All fer hurry an’ bustle they be, from birth-time to buryin’—get the hour by, sez they, the day over, life done, an’ on wi’ the next thing!’

We turned our shoulders to the blustering wind, and leant over the rail together, watching the sheep drink. These dew-ponds on the Sussex Downs are always a mystery to strangers coming for the first time into the sheep country; and they are never quite bereft of their miraculous quality, even among the shepherds themselves. That in a land, where there are neither springs nor natural pools of water, man should dig hollows, not in the lowest sink-points of the valleys where one would reasonably make such a work, but on the summits of the highest hills, and then confidently expect Nature to fill them with water, keeping them so filled year after year, in and out of season, no matter what call was made on their resources—must appear little else than downright ineptitude to one who has never had the feasibility of the plan demonstrated under his very eyes. Yet the seeming wonder of the dew-pond has a very simple explanation. It is nothing more than a cold spot on the earth, which continually precipitates the moisture from the air passing over it; and this cold spot is formed on the hill-top because there it encounters air which has not been robbed of its vapour by previous contact with the earth.

The best dew-pan makers are the men of Wiltshire, as all flockmasters know. The pond, having been excavated to the right depth and shape, is lined first with puddled clay or chalk, then with a thick layer of dry straw; finally, upon this straw a further substantial coating of clay is laid, and well beaten down. Nothing is needed then but to bring a few cart-loads of water to start the pond, and to set a ring-fence about it to keep off heavy stock. The action of the straw, in its waterproof double-casing, is to intercept the heat-radiation of the earth at that particular point, so that the pond-cavity and its contents remain colder than the surrounding soil.

How the dew-pond came to be invented has often been the subject of wondering speculation. No doubt there have been dew-pond makers for untold centuries back, but at one time, however far distant, a first discovery of the principle underlying the thing must have been made. Probably the dew-pond, in some form or other, had its origin in those remote times when all the high-lying chalk-lands of southern England were overrun by a dense population. But then, as now, the region must have been waterless; and the people, living there for security’s sake, must, nevertheless, have been constrained to provide themselves with this first daily necessity of all life. We read of the manna given in the Wilderness, and the water struck from the Rock. These were miracles worked, as miracles ever are, for children: they were grown men, evidently, in mind and heart, to whom the dew-pond was given. For though the thing, in essence, was set to shine about their feet wherever men trod, so that none could forbear seeing, its adaptation to human need was left to man’s own labour and thoughtful ingenuity. To-day, as in those far-off ages, the dwarf plume-thistle studs the sward of the Downs, each circle of thick, fleshy leaves, matted together and centrally depressed, forming a perfect little dew-pond, that retains its garnered moisture long after all other vegetation has grown dry in the heat of the mounting sun. Even if there were no such thing as a dew-pond on all the Downs to-day, and every flock must perforce be driven miles, perhaps, down into the valley to be watered, it is inconceivable that no one of prime intelligence, wandering the hills alive to the need of the thirsty thousands around him, would mark the natural reservoirs of the thistles, reason out the principles they embodied, and straightway set brain and hand to work on the first dew-pond—using perchance, in earliest experiment, the actual thistle-leaves for the indispensable heat-retarding layer.

I had often talked the matter over with George Artlett, and now we drifted into the old subject. But he was never to be cajoled out of his belief in the miraculous nature of the affair.

‘Him as sent th’ fire down to th’ could altar,’ he said, his long arm going up to heaven, and his voice taking on that deep, vibratory chime so familiar to Sunday loiterers in Stavisham marketplace, ‘He knaws how to send watter to faith an’ a dry pan. Ay! but I ha’ seed it comin’, many’s the time. An’ th’ first time, I ’lowed as ’twur High Barn ricks burnin’. We was goin’ hoame to fold, and there afore me, right agen th’ red night-sky, I seed a gurt topplin’ cloud o’ summut as looked like smoke ahent th’ hill. Sez I, ’tis High Barn ricks afire! But it warn’t. It wur jest Gorramighty gatherin’ together His dew from the fower winds o’ heaven, an’ pourin’ it into Maast’ Coles’s pond.’

III

One afternoon, when the month was all but at its end, I came home through the riverside meadows. The sun had just dipped below the misty earth-line. Before me, in the east, the darkness was spreading up the sky, and the larger stars already shone with something of their nightly lustre. But behind me it was still day. From the horizon upward, and far overhead, the sky was a pale, luminous turquoise, overflecked with cloud of fiery amber—the two colours a perfect harmony of cold and heat. As I trod the narrow field-path, facing the dusk, with all that glorious enmity reconciled at my back, I became aware of a mysterious sound somewhere in the chain of tree-girt meadows on ahead. A missel-thrush had been singing hard by, but now his clarion had ceased, and this other far-away note forced me suddenly out of my musing. It was not a single song, but a deep, continuous outpouring, a medley of music like the splashing and tumbling of mountain brooks. With every step forward it grew in volume. At last, in a belt of elm-trees that bordered one of the farthest fields, I came upon the cause of it; and though I had many times seen vast congregations of starlings, I had never before encountered so huge a company as now met my gaze.

The trees stretched across the entire field, and every twig on every branch had its perching songster, the combined effect being as though the trees had suddenly shot out a magic foliage, coal-black against the deepening blue of the sky, heavy and thick as leaves in June. Now the mountain brooks had swollen to Niagaras. The hubbub was literally deafening. I shouted my loudest, hoping to set the gargantuan host to flight, but I could scarce hear my own voice. For a full ten minutes I stood in that great flood-tide of melody, and all the time fresh detachments of birds were continually arriving to swell the multitude, and add their voices to the chorus. At length I saw two birds break away from the mass, and fly straight off side by side. Immediately the tumult ceased, and there followed a sound like the long, rumbling roll of thunder. The whole concourse had taken wing together, the tree-tops, released from their weight, lashing back as though struck by a flaw of wind. Now the army swept over my head, darkening the sky as it went. The thunderous sound grew less and less as the flock made for the distant woods. A moment more, and an uncanny silence had fallen on everything. Then, half a mile away in the misty dark, I heard the rich, wild voice peal out again, where the starling host had taken up their quarters for the night.

Thus it happened every evening for a week after, when they passed on out of the district and I saw them no more. Probably no single stretch of country could support such incredible numbers for more than a few days together, and they must be for ever trekking onward, leaving behind them a famine-stricken land, and making life all the harder for our own native birds. For there is little doubt that these vast hordes of starlings that sweep the country-side in winter, are foreigners in the main.

FEBRUARY

I

From where my old house stands, behind its double row of lindens at the top of the green, you can see well-nigh all that is happening in Windlecombe. Sitting at the writing-table in the great bay-window, you get an uninterrupted view down the length of the village street. From the windows right and left—through a trellis of bare branches in winter, and, in summer, through gaps in the greenery—you overlook the side-alleys where dwell the less profoundly respectable, the more free-and-easy, of Windlecombe folk. And in the rear, beyond my garden and little orchard, there is the farm—rickyard and barn and dwelling-house all crowded together on the green hill-side bestrewn with grazing cattle, cocks and hens innumerable, all of the snow-white breed, gobbling turkeys, and guinea-fowl that cry ‘Come back, come back!’ every waking moment of their lives.

All the oldest houses in Windlecombe are gathered round the village green. Here, amidst its thicket of live-oak and yew, the church tower rears its bluff grey stones against the sky, its clock-face with the one gilded hour-hand (minutes are of no account in Windlecombe) turned to catch the last light of evening. The parsonage, the village shop, the forge and wheelwright’s yard, a dozen or more of ivy-smothered tenements, stand at easy intervals round the oblong of the green. There is the little sweetstuff shop at the far corner, side by side with the cobbler’s den; and, beyond them, the inn juts boldly out half across the roadway, silhouetting its sign against the distant, bright patch of river which flows at the foot of the hill.

I often wonder how other villages get on without a green. In Windlecombe all the life of the place seems to culminate here. On summer evenings every one drifts this way at some time or other for a quiet stroll, or a chat with friends on the seats under the ‘Seven Sisters,’ a group of gnarled Scotch pines almost in the centre of the green.

Even in winter I seldom look forth and see it entirely deserted. Except in school-hours, there are always children playing upon it, and the old men, whose work in the fields is done, hold here daily a sort of informal club whenever the sun shines. But the old women I never see. All their lives long, their activities and interests have been centred in the home, and now they spend the dusk of their days consistently by the firesides. On week-days, the fairest summer weather has no power to tempt them abroad. Up to seventy or so, they can be seen creeping over the green towards the church on Sunday mornings; but it is duty, not desire, that has drawn them from their burrows. For the rest of the week they sit, most of them, stitching tiny scraps of silk and cotton together. It seems to be an indispensable condition of future bliss with all the old women in Sussex, that each should finish a patchwork quilt before she dies.

There comes a morning in the year, generally in early February, when the fact that the days are getting longer is suddenly driven in upon your consciousness, as though the change had come about in a single night at the touch of some magician’s wand.

A long spell of gloomy weather ends in a crisp, bright dawn. Through the chinks in the blind, the sun casts quivering spots of gold upon the wall. You wake from your dreams, and immediately know that life has become a different thing from that of yesterday. Throwing the casements back, there comes in upon you a flood of new light, new air, new melody. It is barely eight o’clock, and already the sun is high over Windle hill. The thrushes have given up their winter piping, and have begun to sing in the old glad way, linking half a dozen sweet notes in a phrase together, and pouring it out over and over again. The air has the savour of warm earth in it, the scent of green growth; and, looking down at the flower-borders in the garden, you see sheaves of snowdrops breaking up through the soil, and the first crocuses yielding their treasure to the first bees.

To-day, though it was only the first of February, just such another morning startled me from sleep, and sent me out of doors tingling to the finger-tips with this new spirit of wonder at a changed order of things. Over Windlecombe, in the level sunlight, half a hundred violet plumes of smoke rose into the calm air. From the smithy came the steady chime of Tom Clemmer’s anvil. The pit-saw was droning in the wheelwright’s yard. Up at High Barn they were threshing wheat, and the sound might have been that from a great cathedral organ, so far off that nothing but the deep tones of the pedal-pipes could reach the ear. But though all these sounds denoted humanity astir, and busy at the day’s task, to the eye there was no sign of any one abroad. I was as much alone as Crusoe on his island, and just as free to wander where I would.

I skirted the green, and turned in at the churchyard gate. Everywhere between the crowding stones, the grass was white with dew. Glittering water-bells rimmed every leaf, and trembled at the tip of every twig. The old yew dripped solemnly in its shadowed corner. Down the face of each memorial-stone, tiny runnels coursed like tears.

It was strange to see how the dewdrops obliterated all vestige of natural colour in the grass, and yet lent it a thousand alien hues. As I moved slowly along, sparks of vivid green and crimson, orange and blue, flashed incessantly amidst the frosted silver. Turning my back to the sunshine, all these colours vanished, and the glittering quality of the dew was lost. Now it was just a dead-white field, crossed and re-crossed with lines of emerald where the foraging birds had left their tracks. But all round the head of my shadow, that stretched giant-like before me, there was still a shining circle of light. I remembered to have read somewhere of one of the religious painters in the Middle Age, who accounted himself divinely set apart from his fellows, by reason of a halo which, he said, appeared at certain seasons about him as he walked in the fields. Probably he saw then what I saw this morning; but, being an artist, he won inspiration, new freshets of saintly energy, from what, to the ordinary unemotional sinner, would be no more than an interesting, natural fact.

II

Towards afternoon, quite a little throng of ancient folk gathered on the benches under the Seven Sisters, drawn thither by the sunny mildness of the day. Sauntering about on the green hard by, I could hear the low hum of their voices; and at last I took a place, almost unobserved, on one of the outer seats a little distance from the group.

Eavesdropping, even in its most innocent form, hardly comes into the category of virtues; but, in any serious attempt to study country life and character, it must be reckoned almost a necessary vice. I confess, in this respect, not only to having yielded to it as a lifelong, irresistible habit, but to having cultivated it on many occasions as an art. The English peasant under open observation is no more himself than a wild bird in a cage; and these old folk, in particular, needed as much wary stalking-down as any creature of the woodland. Settled myself quietly now behind a newspaper in the corner, my presence, if it had been marked at all, was soon forgotten; and the talk began again among the group in the usual desultory, pondering style—talk in the ancient dialect of Sussex, such as you will hear to-day only in the most out-of-the-way villages, and then only among those with whose passing it also must pass irrevocably away.

Daniel Dray, the old wheelwright, was tapping his stick reflectively on his boot-toe, keeping time with the song of the pit-saw in the neighbouring yard, where young Daniel was mightily at work. By his side sat Tom Clemmer the elder, his bleak grey eyes far away in space. All the rest of the company were studying the horizon in much the same distraught, silent fashion. A very old, but still hearty man, in a wide blue suit, was chipping at a plug of sailor’s tobacco with a jack-knife, and smiling to himself. At length the smile developed into a rich chuckle.

‘Dan’l,’ said he, ‘now you ha’ spoke a trew wured, if never afore! So they be, Dan’l, so they be! Ay! an’ all round the wureld ’tis th’ same wi’ ’em! Doan’t I know?’ He made a telling pause at the question, and then—‘Not ’aaf!’ he added in solemn irony, as he struck a match on his hindermost serge.

The old wheelwright stretched himself luxuriously in the sunshine.

‘I knows naun o’ Frenchies, an’ blackamoors, an’ sech-like,’ said he. ‘But a Sussex maid!—Ah!’

The exclamation, long drawn out, was echoed round the circle. Old Tom Clemmer turned argumentatively in his seat.

‘Ay! real purty, Dan’l!—purty enough!’ he agreed. ‘Ye wur i’ luck’s way, as I minds well wur said by all th’ folk, forebye ’tis so long ago. But, Fegs! man! We han’t all had your fortun’ i’ bright eyes! What sez Maast’ Grimble there?’

A thin high voice quavered out from the end of the bench. For full five minutes it hovered in mid-air, like a long-drawn-out treble note on a violin.

‘Ay! trew, Tom! Never a wured o’ a lee, Tom! But ’twur nane o’ my doin’, as many’s th’ time I ha’ tould ye. Stavisham Fair, ’twur, i’ Fifty-three, as I first seed her, all i’ sky-blew an’ spangles; wi’ th’ lights flarin’, an’ th’ drooms bustin’, an’ th’ trumpets blowin’; an’ sech a crowd o’ gay folk as never got together afore, i’ th’ wureld. Wunk, ’a did, at me; an’ I wunk back. Then ’a wunk agen, an’ ’twur all ower, neighbours! We got church-bawled th’ follerin’ Sunday; an’ hoame I fetched her all within th’ month. An’ then, Tom, ye knowed how’t fell out. Six weeks o’ it, we had together; an’ then off ’a goos after ’a’s ould carrawan agen, an’ I goos fer a souldger. An’ nane but th’ gurt goodness knows whether I be married man or widder-man to-day.’

The faint, shrill voice ceased. A lean, old man, with a chubby face and eyes of so pale a blue, that they seemed almost colourless in the rich, yellow light of the afternoon, had been intently listening, a trembling hand to each ear. He wore a spotless white round-frock, and was punctiliously, unnaturally clean in all other respects. Now he brought his finger-tips softly together, and stared at the sky in an ecstasy of reminiscence.

‘Eighteen thousand happy days,’ said he triumphantly, ‘agen six weeks o’ rough an’ tumble—pore George! Ah! well-a-day! But ’tis so, neighbours. Th’ Reverend, ’a figured it out fer Jane an’ me laast catterning-time. Eighteen thou— Gorm! but I should ha’ lost ’em all, if she hadn’t up an’ spoke out! I ne’er had no thought on’t, trew as th’ sun goos round th’ sky. But Jane, ’a gie me a red neckercher wan Hock-Monday. Thinks I, “Wat’s that fer?” An’ then ’a gie me a bag o’ pea-nuts, an’ sez I to mysel’, “’Tis a queer maid surelye!” An’ then ’a cooms along at harvest-time, an’ sez she, “’Enery Dawes, I ha’ jist heerd as ould Mistus Fenny ’ull gie up th’ malthouse cottage at Milemas, an’ seein’ as how you warnts me an’ I warnts you, ’twould be a pity to lose it; so let’s get arsted i’ church directly-minute,” sez she. Wi’ that, ’a putt both arms around th’ red neckercher, as I wore; an’ gie me wan, two, three—each chop, an’ wan i’ th’ middle. Lor’ bless ye! I knowed then what ’a meant, I did! I wur allers th’ sort as could see through a brick wall fur as most folk: never warnted no more ’n an ’int.’

‘There agen!’ said old Tom Clemmer, after a pause. ‘Ye wur another o’ th’ lucky wans, ’Enery. Th’ best o’ wimmin plunked straight into your eye, in a manner o’ speakin’. Ah! but courtin’ days warn’t all pea-nuts an’ red handkerchers wi’ some o’ us, ’Enery! Dear! oh Lor’! what trouble I did ha’, surelye!’

He stopped, and sat for a while smiling down into the bowl of his pipe, and shaking his head.

‘But ye got her at laast, Tom!’ said Daniel Dray softly. He stole a commiserate glance round at the other members of the company, and had a silent, meaning nod from each. Old Tom Clemmer blushed, then laughed outright.

‘Trew, Dan’l! An’ well I reckermembers th’ day as ’a first come to Windlecombe—up to th’ farm-us yonder, though ’tis forty year ago. All o’ a heap, I wur, soon as I sot eyes on her. “Churn-maid?” sez I to mysel’, “’twunt be long afore y’are summut better’n that, down at th’ forge-cottage ’long o’ me!” Come Sunday, I runs agen her on th’ litten-path. “Marnin’, Mary!” sez I, an’ gies her th’ marigolds I’d picked fer her out o’ my own gay-ground; an’ down ’a throws ’em in th’ mud, an’ off wi’out so much as wured or look. Ah! a proud, fine maid ’a wur!—to be sure an’ all!’

Tom Clemmer knocked out his pipe upon his crutch. Then he threw an exultant glance about him.

‘What might a man do then, ye’d think? Well, as marigolds warn’t no good, I tries laylocks. Not a bit on it! Jerrineums—wuss an’ wuss! Roses—never so much as a sniff! Summut useful, thinks I; but they little spring onions as I tied up in a bunch wi’ yaller ribbin, an’ hung on th’ dairy gate fer her, there they hung ’til they was yaller too. Then I has a grand idee. Off I goos to Stavisham, an’ buys a gurt big hamber brooch; an’ a silver necklace wot weighed down my pocket, carryin’ of it; an’ a spanglorious goulden weddin’-ring. “Now, my gel, we’ll jest see!” sez I all th’ way hoame. I bides quiet ’til Sunday, then I hides ahent th’ gurt elver-tree, an’ pops out upon her suddentlike, as ’a cooms along. I offers her th’ brooch. “Get out o’ my way!” sez she, “’tis jest a common ha’penny fairin’— No, ’tis hamber, ’tis real purty!” ’a sez, an’ brings up stock-still. Then out cooms th’ necklace, an’ down went ’a’s good book slap i’ th’ dirt. “Oh! ’tis kind o’ ye, blacksmith!” sez she, ketchin’ hould on’t. “Ah! but what thinks you o’ this here?” sez I; “but I mount gie it ye yet awhile, ’cause ’tis unlucky fer a maid to ha’ th’ ring afore th’ day.” Lor! what eyes ’a had, surelye! ’A thought a bit, then sez she, “Thomas Clemmer, how much ha’ ye got laid by?” An’ soon as I’d tould her, sez she, “I’ll ha’ ye, Tom, darlin’, fer I never loved nane but you!” Ah! well, well! Most onaccountable, ’tis, how th’ very wureds cooms back to ye, arter years an’ years!’

He fell into a brown study, out of which he presently came with a jerk.

‘Fower o’clock? Never! Gorm! how high th’ sun be! I must be getten hoame-along!’

He rose upon his one serviceable foot, fitted the other foot, a shapeless bundle of linen, into the sling that hung from his neck, seized his crutches, and stumped placidly away. There was a direct path from the Seven Sisters across the green to Tom Clemmer’s cottage, but he always came and went by the roundabout route through the churchyard. For the excellent, but frugal-minded Mrs. Clemmer had lain there, under a home-made iron cross and a carefully tended bed of marigolds, these twenty years back.

III

Living year after year in Windlecombe, I have come by old habit to associate with each month that passes its own characteristic changes and events. February always stands in my mind for three great ebullitions of the year’s life, equally wonderful in their several ways—the coming of the elm blossom, the earliest clamorous music from the lambing-pens, and the first rich song of the awakening bees.

Through my study window, all this week of warm, glittering, showery weather, I have watched the elm-trees about the churchyard gradually lose their sharp, clear-cut outline of winter, and dissolve into the misty softness of spring. Already the tree-tops are so dense that the blue sky can barely penetrate them. This change is not caused by the expanding leaf buds, but by the opening of the myriad blossoms, which come and go before the leaf. Their colour is a magnificent, sombre purple; and the whole tree stands up in the sunshine, clad in this gorgeous raiment from its bole to its highest twig—an imperial garment reminding you in more ways than one of ancient Rome and its Cæsars; for there is little doubt that the elm is no British tree, but was brought to us by the Romans, all those centuries ago, with so many other good things.

In the deep pockets of rich soil which have sifted down to the valleys, and in the shallower soil of our chalk hills, almost every species of forest tree makes generous growth. But perhaps nothing takes so kindly to highland Sussex conditions as the elm. The village gardens are fringed about with its beautiful, wide-spreading shapes, and, in summer, griddled over with its long blue shadows. But no tree stands within a distance of its own height from any dwelling. Hard experience has taught men that the elm is undesirable as a near neighbour. Of all trees it is the most comely, because it is never symmetrical, but it owes this picturesque trait to a habit intolerable in a close acquaintance. Not only does the elm cast its great branches to earth at all times and without creak or groan of warning, but during the season of the equinoctial gales, you never know when the whole tree may not come toppling over in a moment, measuring its vast length on the ground with a sound like the impact of the heaviest wave that ever thundered against Beachy Head.

It was so that the King of Windlecombe, the oldest and mightiest elm through half the county, came down one pitch-black, tempestuous night in a September of long ago. None of the children, nor many of the younger folk in the village, now remember the King, where he towered up beyond the east wall of the churchyard, and every sunset threw his vast shadow half way up the combe. But they are all familiar with the story of his downfall. A wild night it was. Every window shook in its frame; every chimney was an organ-pipe for the wind’s blowing; the sound of the rain on roof and wall was like an incessant hail of musketry. Thatches were stripped off. The inn-sign went clattering down the street. The gilt weather-cock on the church tower took a list that it has kept to this day. No one dared go abroad that night, but families sat close at home, keeping shoulder to shoulder in timorous company, and dreadfully wondering what it was like at sea. Had you need to speak, you must shout your words, so great was the din of the hurricane. All night it raged undiminished, and no one slept; some even would not venture to bed, not knowing but the roof might be plucked off any moment as they lay, and let the drenching torrent in upon them. Then, as the first grey tinge of dawn blanched in the eastern sky, high above the voice of the storm came one tremendous booming note, as though the earth had split asunder. And with the light, people looked out and saw that the King of Windlecombe was down.

To-day, as I settled myself to work with the lattices tight closed, to shut out the lure of the songful morning, there came a patter of earth upon the glass. At first I thought it was one of the martins’ nests broken away from the eaves above, being stuffed too full of hay by interloping sparrows. But the sharp volley sounded again, and looking out, there on the path below I beheld the old vicar in wide-brimmed hat and tartan shawl.

‘How now, old mole!’ cried he, shaking his stout oak cudgel at me. ‘The sun shines, the west wind calls, all the brooks are laughing over their beds! Yet there you hide in your burrow, grouting among dead words, warming up stale, cold dreams a twelvemonth old! Shame on you! Come out, and let the air and sunbeams riddle your dusty fur! Come and lend me your eyes for a long morning. I have seen to Mrs. Dawes’ rheumatics. I have done the school. Old Collup has had his bedside talk. I am free for a ramble, and I want to go everywhere and hear tell of everything. Come this moment, or I’ll huff and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down!’

With his jolly, wrinkled face turned upward, his long white beard wagging, and his kind eyes steadily meeting mine, it was difficult to believe that he could see only the faintest shadow of all before him; that for years past he had lived and worked in a world of deepest dusk, wherein the very noontide sun of summer was no more than a pale spot in never-ending gloom. I got my thick boots, and was soon trudging down the hill with him towards the riverside woods and meadows, every yard of which had been familiar to him in his days of light.

Arun was running high, with three spring tides yet to come. Much rain had fallen of late. It looked as though the floods would soon be upon us, unless the wind changed, and drier, colder weather set in. We skirted the river-bank, with the wind whipping light ripples almost to our feet, and the sun making a broad path of gold along the waters. Beyond the river stretched level green pastures intersected by deep dykes, and beyond these again lay the misty blue sierra of wooded hills. The old parson strode easily forward, his face turned up to the sky. His step never faltered, but his stick hovered incessantly about the path as he went.

‘Hark to the wind in the trees!’ he said. ‘That is a new voice: the elms must be in full bloom, and I can guess what they look like. And the sound is different in that clump of beeches there: the leaf-buds must be getting long and green now. Only the ash and the oak keep their winter voice in February.’

Thus it always was on our walks together. What he heard, he told me of; and what I saw, I gave him as well as I was able.

‘Listen!’ he said presently. ‘Did you hear that? That is the first chaffinch-song of the year. And there is the great-tit clashing his silver cymbals together, and the bullfinches blowing over the tops of their latchkeys, and a green woodpecker laughing—he never laughs in that grim, scornful way until the year is well on the wing!’

Then I, not to be behind him:

‘I see grass—fresh new growth pushing up everywhere. Young nettles too: they are coming up green amongst the old dead stems. But they cannot sting yet—yes, they can! and badly! Stop here a moment, Reverend! The celandines are out thick on the bank—you remember their shining, yellow, five-rayed stars, set in dark green leaves like the spade-blades of Hamlet’s diggers. Below on the bank, where it is too steep for anything else to grow, there are coltsfoot flowers. The drab earth glows with them—no leaves at all, but just long, curved, scaly stems, each ending in a tuft of golden fleece. And then there is—’

‘I know, I know! I can look back a dozen springs, and see them all as well as you. But listen to that thrush! That is his honeymooning note, and the pair must be nesting not far away. I have found thrushes’ nests in February many a time. See if you can find this one.’

‘Your singer has flown. And there goes the hen, out of the other side of the bush; if the nest is anywhere, it will be here under this tangle of clematis. Yes, two eggs already! I wish you could see their clear greenish-blue, with the dapple-marks on it.’

I guided his hand to the nest, and his fingers wandered lightly over it.

‘Cold!’ said he. ‘She will not begin to sit yet. Perhaps never on this clutch. There is frost and snow ahead of us still, though all of us forget it this weather, bird, beast, and man.’

The path led us into the hazelwood; hazel below, and overhead soaring columns of beech, whose branches touched finger-tips everywhere across the white-flecked blue of the sky. As we went along, the sound of our footsteps in the fallen leaves was like the sound of wading through water. I must read off to him what I saw about me as though it were from a book.

‘The hazel-catkins were never so fine, I think, as they are this spring. The wood is full of them, like showers of gold-green rain falling. Whenever we brush against them, clouds of pollen drift off in the wind. It is the wind that makes the hazel-nuts which we gather by and by. What millions upon millions of spores only to make a few bushels of nuts! I struck a single bush with my stick just now, and, for yards ahead, the sunshine was misty with the floating green dust. Then, here and there on every branch—’

‘Yes! I can see it all! There are little green buds each with a torch of bright crimson at its tip, flaming in the sun. Why should they be so vividly coloured, if only to catch what the wind brings—floating pollen as blind as I? No, no! The hazel-nut was made for the bees originally, depend upon it. Nature never uses bright colour unless to attract winged life.’

We came out of the wood on the south side. Stopping just within the shade of the last trees, we had a view over a chain of sunny, sheltered meadows that lay between the riverside willows and the first steep escarpment of the Downs. Here the wind was only a song above our heads. Scarce a breath stirred where we leaned upon the gate in the sunshine. I must be at my living book again, yet knew not where to begin, so crowded was the page.

‘March is still three weeks off, and yet the hares are already as mad as can be. Over there under the Hanger, a mile away, I can see them racing and tumbling about together. There are more celandines and coltsfoot blossom everywhere. I can see daisies wherever I look, and there is a disc of dandelion by the gate-post just where you stand. What clouds of midges! Thousands are dancing in the air above our heads, and I can see their wings making a hazy streak of light all down the hedgerow, where the elders are in flourishing green leaf. Did you ever hear so many birds all singing at the same time? And there goes an army of rooks and jackdaws overhead! What a din!—the high, yelping treble of the daws, and the deep-voiced rooks singing bass to it.’

The Reverend put a hand upon my arm to stop me.

‘I can hear something else,’ he said. ‘A dandelion, did you say? Then she will come straight for it.’ And as he spoke, I heard the old familiar sound too. It was a hive-bee, tempted abroad by the glad spring sunlight. She came straight over the meadows. Passing all other blossoms by, she settled on the single flower half-hidden in its whorl of ragged green leaves close beside us, and forthwith began to smother herself in its yellow pollen.

‘And there she goes again!’ said the old vicar, as the soft, rich sound mingled once more with the myriad other notes about us. ‘High up into the air—doesn’t she?—making ever a wider and wider circle until she gets her first flying-mark, and then in the usual zigzag course, home to the hive! A bee-line! People always make the words stand for something absolutely straight and direct. But a true bee-line is the easiest way between two points, not necessarily the shortest. To take a bee-line, if folk only knew it, is just to fly through the calmest, or most favouring airs, judge the quickest way between all obstacles, dodge the ravenous tits and sparrows, and so get home safe and sound to the hive.’

IV

This spring, the Artletts have built their lambing-pens on the sunny slope of Windle Hill in full view of the village. When, at threshing-time last autumn, the waggons toiled up the steep hillside with their shuddering loads of yellow straw, and the ricks were fashioned end to end in a curving line against the north, strangers wondered why a farmer should carry his bedding-down material so far from its main centres of consumption, the stables and cowsheds. But the reason for the work is clear enough at last. Behind the solid rampart of straw, the lambing-pens lie in cosy shelter, and every day now sees them more populous; day and night, as the month wends on, there arises from them a fuller and fuller melody.

Alone, perhaps, of all other rural occupations, shepherding remains unaffected by the avalanche of machinery and chemistry which has descended upon agriculture. Here and there may be found a flockmaster who talks of shearing-machines, but it is rare to find anything but the old hand-clippers in use by the old-fashioned, wandering gangs of shearers. Flocks are larger, and so bring the modern shepherd more anxious care; but in all essential ways, his year’s round of work is the same as in that time of old when the shepherds watched their flocks by night near Bethlehem.

For the first time, in near upon fifty years, old Artlett has had no hand in the pen-making. Rheumatism, the life-long foe of the shepherd, has got him by the heels at last; and, if it turn out with him as with nearly all his kind, he will never again leave the chimney-corner, until he is carried thence and laid to sleep beside his long line of forbears up in the churchyard. But young George is as good a shepherd as any of his line, in this, as in all other branches of the craft. Wherever you go among the neighbouring sheep-farms, you will hear tell of the amazing good luck of Windlecombe at lambing-time. George Artlett views the matter from a different standpoint.

We sat together in his cosy hut on the hillside, towards twelve o’clock of a gusty, moonlit night. The coke-fire burned in the little stove with a steady brightness, casting its red rays through the open door, and far out into the resounding night. Overhead a lantern swung gently to and fro, rocking our shadows on the walls. From the lambing-pens hard by there rose a ceaseless yammering chorus, and from the outer folds a confusion of tongues deeper still, mingled with the tolling of innumerable bells. George Artlett sat on the straw mattress in the corner, his knees drawn up to his chin.

‘Ah! luck!’ said he, a little scornfully, peering at me through the cloud of tobacco-smoke—all from my own pipe—which hovered between us. ‘An’ how be it then, as them as believes in luck, gets so onaccountable little on’t? Gregory, over at Redesdown yonder—’a wunt so much as throw a hurdle on a Friday, an’ ’a wears a bag o’ charm-stuff round’s neck, an’ ’a wud walk a mile sooner ’n goo unner a laadder—well, how be it wi’ un? Lambs dyin’ every day, folks say; ah! an’ yows too—seven on ’em gone a’ready! “’Twill be thirteen,” ’a sez, “thirteen, th’ on-lucky number, an’ then ’twill stop. ’Tis Redesdown’s luck!” sez he; “ye can do nought agen it!” An’ next year, ’a’ll goo on feedin’ short an’ poor, jest as ’a allers doos; an’ putten th’ yows to th’ ram too young; an’ lambin’ i’ th’ hoameyard agen, where ’tis so soggy an’ onhealthy, jest because ’tis near to ’s bed. When a man doos his night-shepherdin’, swearin’ at th’ laads through ’s windy, ’a may well look fer bad luck!’

He rose, and drew on his great blanket-coat, and pulled his sou’wester over his eyes. Then he took down the lantern from its hook, and together we plunged out into the buffeting wind to make the round of the folds for the sixth time since my advent, although the night was but half over.

The moon was nearly at the full. In its flood of pure white light, the lambing-yard, with its surrounding folds, looked like some extensive fortification, so high and impregnable seemed the walls that hemmed it in on every side. These walls were made of sheaves of straw, standing on end, shoulder to shoulder, of such girth and density that not a breath of the unruly wind could penetrate them. Within, the lambing-yard was floored a foot deep with the same straw, and on all sides were the pens, little separate bays flanked and topped by hurdles covered in with the like material. The whole place was crowded with ewes and lambs; the newest arrivals still in the pens with their mothers, the rest almost as snugly berthed out in the mainway of the yard. Outside this elaborate stockade were two great folds, the one containing the ewes still to be reckoned with, the other thronged with those whose troubles were happily over, and with whom already the cares and joys of motherhood were verging on the trite.

Shepherd Artlett took no chances at any stage of his work. At the entrance to the lambing-yard, he carefully covered up the lantern with his coat, and thereafter allowed its light to fall only where he need direct his scrutiny.

‘Nane o’ Gregory’s luck fer me!’ he said. ‘There bean’t no wolves on th’ Hill nowadays, but sheep, they be jest as much afeared o’ summat as ’twur born in ’em to dread. ’Tis in their blood, I reckons. Now look ye! A naked light carried i’ th’ haand, an’ let sudden in upon ’em—see how it sets th’ shadders dancin’ an’ prancin’ all around! Like as not, ’tis so th’ wolves came leapin’ round th’ folds ages an’ ages back; an’ so it bides in th’ blood wi’ all sheep—a sort o’ natur’s bygone memory. Froughten wan yow, an’ ye be like to froughten all. Set ’em stampedin’, an’ that means slipped lambs, turned milk, an’ trouble wi’out end—Gregory’s luck agen!’

On these rounds, every pen in the yard was visited, and its denizens critically examined: not a sheep of the huddled, vociferating crowd through which we threaded our difficult course, but had her share in George Artlett’s swift-roving glance. Here and there we came upon a newborn lamb, and then George took its four legs in one handful and carried it head downwards through the throng to the nearest vacant pen, its frantic mother bleating her expostulation close in our rear. There were the feeding-cages to fill with hay, and mangold to be carried in and scattered amongst the crouching sheep. Sometimes there was a sickly lamb or ewe to doctor, when we went trudging back to rifle the medicine-chest in the hut; and rarely a weakling, who refused its natural food, must be taken under George’s coat, a silent shivering woolly atom, and restored to life and voice by the warmth of our fire and the bottle.

In how great a measure the luck of Windlecombe or any sheep-farm depends on the foresight and tender care of the shepherd, was well brought home to me as, in the first ghostly light of morning, something like a crisis came to vary the monotonous round of our task. I had dozed off as I sat in my corner, and woke to find grey dawn picking out the tops of the hills, and George away on his unending business. Presently, through the little window at my side, I saw him coming back over the rimy grass, his coat bulged out with the usual burden. He set the lamb down on the straw by the fire. Limp and lifeless it looked, and past all aid; but George fell patiently to work swabbing it. As he worked, he talked.

‘’Tis White-Eye agen—a fine yow, but a onaccountable bad mother, ’a be, surelye. Purty nigh lost her lamb laast season, an’ now agen ’tis ne’ersome-matter wi’ un. Wunt gie suck. Butts th’ little un away, ’a do. That, an’ th’ could, ’tis. Terr’ble hard put to ’t, I wur, laast time, to save un! An’ this—well: if ’a cooms round, ’twill be a miracle—’

He stopped to fetch his breath, then set to more vigorously than ever.

‘Lorsh! I do b’lieve! . . . Ay! I’ll do ’t!—better ’n a score o’ dead uns, ’a be, a’ready. Now, shaap wi’ th’ bottle!’

But the wretched mute morsel of woolliness was too weak to suck. And then George Artlett did what I had never seen done before.

‘Well, well!’ he said confidently, ‘we must try th’ ould-fangled way wi’ un!’ He took a gulp of the warm milk, and bringing the lamb’s mouth to his own, tenderly fed it. Again and again this was done, until life began to flicker up strong once more in the little creature’s body.

‘But mind ye!’ said George, as presently he stood looking down on the resuscitated lamb, and regaling himself with its pitiful bleating, ‘No more o’ White-Eye! Off to Findon Fair ’a goos wi’ th’ draught-sheep next May, sure as she’s alive!’

MARCH

I

The charm of Sussex woods, though you may frequent them at all times in and out of season, is that they are never the same woods from year to year. The great trees, indeed, keep their old familiar forms and stations, but the undergrowth of hazel, ash, larch, or silver-birch is periodically cleared away. This year, a certain hillside or deep hollow may be hidden under a thicket of growth impenetrable not only to the casual wanderer, but to the very sunlight itself; and next year the wood-cutters may have swept it clean, leaving only the forest trees to cast their shadows over a sunny wilderness that your eyes, though you have journeyed this way scores of times, have never yet beheld. Clearings wherein the children gathered primroses by the thousand one spring, are overgrown and all but impassable the next. The very paths and waggon-ways change their direction, as the woodmen vary the scene of their labours from year to year. And in the track of the copse-cutters, arise all manner of new plants; new birds come to nest; new sights and sounds throng about the way at every turn—so, in nearly all seasons, a strange new land is brought to your very feet, in the midst of things familiar, maybe, for a score of years.

In the dead deeps of winter, nothing seems so remote, so hopelessly unattainable, as the March sunshine; yet here it is at last, and here I am, sitting on a hazel-stole softly cushioned with ivy, alone and deliciously idle, in a clearing I have just discovered in the heart of Windle Woods.

All this part of the wood has lain untouched for a decade, perhaps, given over to the jays and magpies, and other wildest of wild nesting things. There is a green lane only a few hundred feet distant, and along it I have journeyed many a time during the past year, never dreaming that the clearing existed. And yet, no later than last April, the woodmen must have been here with their bill-hooks, hacking and hewing, and letting in the living sunlight where the earth had known no more than green gloaming on the brightest day.

It is strange how quickly the fertile soil awakens from such a lethargy of long, dark years. From where I sit, high upon the sunny slope, I can see nothing but greenery. All that remains of the dense growth of hazel, that covered this part of the wood, is gathered into great square piles, looking like windowless houses set here and there on the sunny declivity. Primroses shine everywhere; truly not in the abundance of April, but still there is no yard of ground without their sulphur sheen. Red deadnettle makes a rosy flush in the grass at my feet. There is ground-ivy round the base of each hazel-stole, with its pale violet flowers, so minute, yet making such a brave show by sheer strength of numbers. And hovering everywhere over this still mere of sunshine, with its sunken treasure of blossom, are butterflies—great sulphur-yellow butterflies—flapping idly along, little tortoiseshells and peacocks that have laid up through the winter, and one gorgeous red-admiral, also a hibernator, veering about in the sunshine with outspread, motionless wings.

To this secret nook of woodland I came but an hour ago, yet in that one hour of still March sunshine, I have seen and heard more things than could be chronicled, perhaps, in a day’s hard driving of the swiftest pen. To set down only the things that dwell foremost in the memory is not easy. I had been here only a few minutes when a rabbit came racing across the clearing, dodging in and out of the hazel-stoles in tremendous hurry and fear. On seeing me, he turned off at a sharp angle, then scurried away into the wood. A full five minutes after came a stealthy rustling from the same direction, and a ruddy-furred stoat drew into view, his snake-like head alternately poised high in the sunshine and lowered amidst the grass, as he carefully picked up the rabbit’s trail. He was going at only a tithe of the rabbit’s pace, but going without an instant’s hesitation. Where the rabbit had turned off at seeing me, the stoat also veered sharply round. He went straight for the wood, entering it, as far as I could judge, at exactly the same spot. So he would go on, I knew, until at last his blood-thirsty cunning and pertinacity had outworn the rabbit’s speed.

Then a woodpecker came over the clearing, his crimson cap and tarnished jerkin of lincoln-green looking strangely tawdry and theatrical in the brilliant sunshine. He flew heavily yet swiftly, arresting the motion of his wings at every four or five beats, much as a finch flies. As he passed over, he uttered his weird call-note, that sounds something like ‘Ploo-ee, ploo-ee!’ wherein, however, there is a tang of crafty cynicism indescribable. Not far from where I sat was a beech-tree, and to this tree I watched him go. He climbed up the smooth bark like a cat, taking the trunk spiral-wise. Then, when almost at its summit, he stopped and beat out of the hard wood, with his pick-axe of a bill, such a note as can be likened to nothing else in nature. So fast fell the blows of his beak, that between them no interval could be distinguished. They ran together into one smooth, continuous volume of sound. Extraordinarily musical it was, with a plaintive quality and a variableness of tone, now loud, now soft, that could not fail to impress the dullest ear. The note was prolonged for half a minute or so, and then the bird stopped to listen. Far away over the wood-top I heard the answering sound. For this woodpecker-music in springtime is a true love-call, and you will hear it onward through the months until the last pair of birds is mated in the wood.

This is the time when the queen-wasps come out of their winter hiding-places, and the first bumble-bees appear. Of the hive-bees very few seek out these isolated clearings; they have all gone to the riverside where the sallows and willows are in bloom. But as I sat listening to the medley of birds and insect-voices around me, trying to pick out one after the other from the chaos of song, I heard the soft note of a honey-bee down in the blue veronica close at hand. Yet she touched none of the flowers. She passed all by, and went scrambling down among the moss and dead leaves. Knowing that the honey-bee never wastes time, and anxious to find out what she might be doing there, I watched her as she painfully went over the moss-fronds one by one, sending forth a shrill, fretful note at intervals, very like an interjection of disappointment at not finding what she needed. At last her search came to a successful end. It was a dew-drop she had been seeking, one of the few that had escaped the thirsty glances of the sun. Silently she drank. And then, as she rose into mid-air with her burden, there was no mistaking the triumphant quality of her song. At this time, water is the all-important factor in the prosperity of the hive; and the bee knew well she was carrying home something of greater worth even than a load of the purest honey.

Leaving the clearing at length, I went homeward by a roundabout way, through the oldest part of the wood. Traversing one of the shadiest paths, where the oaks grew thick together overhead, I came to a turn in the way. Just beyond, there was a single spot of sunshine lying on the moss-green path, and in it a squirrel gambolled, as though he were taking a bath in the yellow pool of light. Often throughout the winter I had come upon squirrels thus, tempted out of their warm winter-houses by some day of exceptional mildness. For the squirrel is no true hibernator. He sleeps through the cold spells, often for weeks at a stretch. But, like the hive-bees, warm weather at once rouses him from his dray, and sends him forth ravenous to his secret store of acorns or beech-mast.

Old Tom Clemmer once told me of a custom regarding the squirrel which, in his boyhood, was rife in most Downland villages. On Saint Andrew’s Day, towards the end of each November, most of the Windlecombe men and boys used to foregather on the green, armed with short sticks, shod at one end with some heavy piece of metal. The party would then go out into the woods for this, the annual squirrel-hunt, or ‘skugging’ as it was called. The weighted sticks were thrown at the squirrels as they leaped in the branches overhead; and some of the folk, Tom Clemmer himself among the number, were famous for their skill at this pastime. Skugging, however, being essentially a poor man’s brutal sport, has been long ago suppressed.

My squirrel in the pool of sunshine blocked the path, and there was no way round. I must perforce disturb him. I watched him clamber upward into the wilderness of budding oak-boughs, his glossy red-brown coat gleaming in the sunshine as he went.

Presently, coming into a spacious valley of beeches, where the eye could wander far and wide, between the grey-green trunks, over a bare, undulating carpet of last year’s leaves—for scarcely anything will grow under beech—I caught sight of an object which drew my steps over to the near hillside. It was a spot of shining white painted about breast high on the smooth bark of one of the trees. I knew what it meant. It was the White Spot of Doom—the token of the woodreeve to his men that the tree was to be felled; and this was the time, when the sap was beginning to run strong and rinding would be easy, for the death sentence to be carried out.

I looked at the white spot, and if I could have saved the tree by obliterating it there and then, I would have done so gladly. Carved deeply into its wood, and so long ago that the characters were all but illegible, was a double set of initials, and, between them, two hearts at once united and transfixed by the same arrow. Below these roughly-hewn signs a date appeared. I had often come upon the legend in my walks, and stopped to ruminate over it. Who had cut it I never knew, nor indeed whether C. D. and L. E. W., if they were alive to-day, would have joined with any enthusiasm in my desire for its preservation. But somehow it came to me at the moment as an infinitely pathetic thing, that the tree should be cut down after all those years, and the record destroyed—it had been done so obviously for perpetuity. What kind of stony-hearted villain must the woodreeve have been, I thought to myself, who could daub that patch of white paint so callously near to the silent eloquence of such an inscription?

Out of the far distance now, as I lingered over the carving in that mood of moralising sentimentality, there came creeping up the hollow stillness of the glade a murmur of voices, and, in a little, the tramp of heavy feet. I recognised the gang of woodmen carrying the tools of their craft; and behind them a little rabble of village-folk, mostly children. I drew off some way up the hillside, and sat me down on a stump, to look on at the now imminent, as well as inevitable spectacle.

To watch a great tree felled, especially when such a giant as this lovers’ tree was in question, is one of the most exciting things to be met with in country-life. There is ever growing suspense for the onlooker from the moment when the first axe-blow sends its echo ringing through the aisles of the wood, to that last stunned feeling after the mighty tree is down. The speed and workmanlike dexterity with which the gang now got to their task only served to intensify this sensation. One buckled on a pair of climbing-irons and carried aloft two long ropes, securing them to the trunk at its highest point of division. While he was still up there, like a perching crow black against the sky, another took a great glittering axe, and, stepping slowly round the tree, dealt it a succession of downward and inward blows, cutting out a deep ring all round the bole some six or eight inches above ground-level. On the side towards which the tree was to fall, this cut was now widened and deepened until it laid bare a good foot breadth of the solid heart of the wood. And while the amber chips were still flying under the axe, the rest of the gang were carrying the ropes away at two sharp angles, and binding them securely to neighbouring trees.

And now began the crucial part of the business. The great wood-saw was got to work, with four strong men at it. Cutting close to the ground on the far side of the tree, the shining blade tore its way steadily into the wood. Inch by inch it drove its ragged teeth forward, and at every lunge it gave forth a savage gasping scream, and a spume of yellow sawdust spirted from the cut, gathering in an ever-growing heap on either side. No other sound broke the stillness of the glen for a full ten minutes or more. No one among the mute, expectant crowd, nor any of the woodmen, seemed to move hand or foot. All watched and waited, as it appeared, breathlessly. There were just these four strong men labouring to and fro, the flash of the hungry saw-blade in the sunlight, and the harsh sudden screech of the direful thing every time it ripped at the vitals of the tree. The gang of woodmen had divided at a sign from their chief, and stood, three or four of them bearing on each rope. The leader watched the saw, a hand on each hip. Once he raised a hand the saw stopped; a row of steel wedges was driven in behind it; the saw began once more its old rasping melody. At last the hand went up again. The work was done. I could see the black line of the cut reaching within an inch or so of the deep axe-cleft on the face of the tree.

Long ago, on shipboard, I had been present at the firing of one of the heaviest guns that ever put to sea; and what followed now reminded me strangely of that deafening experience. The leader marshalled his men, and directed operations with short, sharp words of command, much as the gun-lieutenant had done. There was the same busy preparation and skurrying to and fro, the same moment of suspense, the same terrific outcome. Every available man was now set to haul on the ropes, while the leader of the gang himself took a mallet and, with mighty blows, drove the wedges in. Thick and fast the blows fell, and their echoes went chevying each other down the ravine. The vast-spreading tree quaked, lashed its branches wildly about overhead. The crowd of waiting children and old women were ordered farther back from the zone of danger. Now the great mallet redoubled its blows, and the two gangs of men bore on the ropes with all their might and main. Still, though the commotion overhead increased to the force of a hurricane, no other sign of movement other than a faint shudder, was visible in the trunk of the tree. One last blow of the mallet, and one last pull all together, and then a sharp crack sounded, as it were, from the bowels of the earth. The ropemen leant back in one huge final effort, then dropped the ropes, and ran for their lives. There came a slithering, tearing noise as the mighty beech toppled forward, tearing itself from the clinging, cumbering embrace of its age-long fellows, then down it came to earth with one long, rolling, thunderous, crackling roar.

Where I stood, I felt the solid earth quake and shudder. Between the moment when the uppermost branches of the great tree began to force their way in a wide, descending arc through the thicket of intercepting branches, and the moment of the last terrific boom, as the trunk struck the earth, there seemed a strangely long interval of time. Another thing struck me with all the force of unimaginable novelty. All the undermost branches of the tree as it fell were splintered into a thousand fragments, and these, flying upward and outward, in a great cloud, gave an effect as if the mighty trunk had fallen into water.

And now I learned for the first time why all the poor folk had followed the woodmen with their baskets. The tree was no sooner prone on the ground, and the last soaring splinter come rattling out of the sky, than a rush was made to the spot by all. Here was firewood in plenty for every one, as much as each could gather or carry. And it was firewood already chopped.

II

It was Tennyson who first set us looking for kingfishers in March, though, indeed, the ‘sea-blue bird’ makes the riverside beautiful at all seasons. There is a little creek here, winding away from the main current of the river through a thicket of willow and alder, where, coming stealthily along the shadowed footpath, you can always hear the shrill, creaking pipe of the bird, and generally catch the glint of his gay plumage as he darts down-stream, or sits on some branch overhanging the clear, brown water.

But it was from the stern-seat of the old ferryman’s boat that I learnt whatever I know about kingfishers and river life in general; and these secret excursions seldom began until March was well under way. For me, therefore, the kingfisher, as for all Tennyson lovers, is most clearly associated with the still barren hedgerows and brakes, the song of the thrush mounted high amidst leafless branches, and that wonderful array of crimson tassels and brown bobbins, all set in a mist of pale green needles, which at this time makes the larch one of the sights of the country-side.

I have said secret excursions; and, indeed, all my relations with old Runridge during recent years have necessarily taken on this furtive character. It was not always so. In happier days, when the old man was a widower, I used to drift down to his cabin by the water-side for a quiet pipe at all seasons of the day and openly, whenever the mood seized me. Then, if tide and the weather served, we would take the little skiff and go off for hours together exploring the shiest nooks of the river, either with or without the ancient fowling-piece that hung over his kitchen hearth. At these times the ferry was left to take care of itself, which it did sufficiently well, there being often quite a little collection of pennies on the thwart of the boat when the old man got back from these unpremeditated truantries.

But, one fateful day, a distant cousin of Runridge’s arrived on a visit—a sedate, ponderous woman, very black as to brows and eyes, and with a hard, shiny face whose colour seemed all on the surface, like red paint. She never went away again, for within the month she became Mrs. Runridge. From that day, for peace and quiet’s sake, the old ferryman and I pursued our ancient courses only by stealth. Fortunately Mrs. Runridge had a genius for household economy, which led her to eschew the village shop, and took her off with her basket at least once a week to Stavisham and its cheaper wares. This was always our opportunity; and regularly on the town market-days, when Mrs. Runridge and her basket had been safely stowed into the carrier’s cart and it had turned the distant bend of the lane, the little green wherry set forth over the shining tide with its self-congratulatory crew, bent on visiting the ‘harns,’ or looking for reed-warblers’ nests, or anything else that might fit the occasion.

To-day we went up on the full tide, and turned into the little creek where the kingfishers have their nests. It has been one of those dead-still, cloudless days, that so often come in mid-March just before the gales of the equinox—a halcyon day, in very truth. As our little craft sped up the glittering pathway of the waters, hardly a whisper sounded in the dense jungle of reeds that flanks the river here on either side. The treetops stood motionless against the sky—one clear, blue arch except where just above the horizon a series of white clouds peered over the hill-tops like a row of beckoning hands. The willows on the banks were full of yellow blossom in which the bees crowded; their soft music was with us wherever we went. Larks carolled overhead. Thrushes, blackbirds, hedge-sparrows sang in every bush. There was a great cawing and dawing from the rookeries, where the black companies had returned for the season, and were busy furbishing up their nests. We drove our boat’s prow through the willow branches that all but hid the entrance to the creek, then let her drift idly down the narrow way until we gained the broader basin near the footbridge, and moored her to an overhanging branch.

Keeping quiet and still in our corner, we had only a few minutes to wait. The familiar, high-pitched cry rang out from the sunny breadth of the river. And then, into the cool, grey light, came what looked like a flying spark of emerald fire. The bird pitched on a wand of sallow that drooped nearly to the water just opposite our retreat. Here he sat awhile carelessly preening his magnificent feathers. Below him the water lay glassy-still and clear, reflecting his tawny breast and the rich chequer-work of gold blossom and blue sky overhead. The kingfisher did not watch the stream with that motionless vigilance that one reads of in the nature books. He seemed to give the gliding water scarce a thought, but to be intent only on the contemplation of his own finery, as he twirled on his perch, reaching now and again over his shoulder to set straight a feather that had gone awry.

But suddenly he stopped in this popinjay performance, pointed his bill downward, and plunged like a stone. The glittering emerald vanished. On the mirror of the waters there spread ring within ring of light. What seemed like whole minutes passed in waiting and silence. And then all the brilliant green and blue and amber burst into view again, as the bird came up in a scatter of diamonds, and lanced straight back to his perch. Now we could see he held a minnow, a little writhing atom of silver, crosswise in his beak. He struck it to and fro on the hard wood until he had killed it. Then, at a single gulp, it was down his throttle. Again the kingfisher sat preening his gorgeous plumage, with the same dilettante touch and light carelessness, as though the shining treasury of the waters below concerned him not a jot.

III

I often wonder how it is that the old saying, about March and its leonine or lamb-like incomings and outgoings, should have kept so sturdily its place in popular credence. Looking through a pile of old note-books ranging back over a couple of decades or so, I find that, in the majority of years, March has both begun and ended in the lamb-like character. The lion appears only in the rôle of an interloper, a go-between; for, almost invariably, there has been a period of chilly, riotous weather sometime after the middle of the month.

So it has come about this season. Yesterday was a day without a flaw; and as the sun began at last to mellow and decline, dragging a net of shining golden haze behind it over the western hills, I gave up a day-long, though still unfinished task, and went to sit awhile on the churchyard wall.

The north-west wall is the last rampart of Windlecombe. It is made of flint, with an oval, red-brick coping of generous breadth: there is none in the parish, as far as I know, but can be comfortable upon it. Sitting thereon side-saddle-wise, you have a view, on the one hand, of the grey stones and evergreenery of the churchyard, and, on the other, your glance can wander unchecked straight down the combe to the river, then forward over the brook-country to the far-off Stavisham woods. As yet the light had abated scarce a jot of its dynamic brilliance. Shadows were long, and the white house-fronts had taken on a leaven of rosy sweetness; but in the most retiring nooks it was still broad day. I turned my back on the serene prospect of level plain, where here and there the sunlight picked out a glittering coil of river, and set myself to the contemplation of a remarkable fellowship near at hand.

Close by the wall stood an almond-tree, its wide-spreading branches covered to the tips with pink blossom, and behind it glowered and gloomed a venerable yew. The one tree, as it were, reached out glad, welcoming arms to the spring, squandering its all to make one hour of joyous festival at the return of the prodigal light; the other turned but a niggardly side-eye on all the inflowing radiance of the season. It seemed to be trying to do its least and worst, to discount the extravagant jubilation of its neighbour. For very shame it could not wholly resist the call of the sunshine. Grudgingly it put forth, at the tip of each sombre green frond, a sparse sprig of lighter green. And because the almond-tree threw down its spent blossom in largesse of rosy litter upon the grass below, this dour-natured vegetable, turning its necessities to virtuous account, now shed the dead brown buds of the foregoing year, sending this rubbish fluttering to earth with the same hesitant, sidelong action with which the almond petals fell, as though in a mockery of imitation.

As I sat on the wall with my back to the declining sun,—humouring this, and many similar far-fetched, vain conceits as the best antidote I knew against the day’s long overstrain of fancy,—high overhead in the church tower hard by, the bell began its quiet summons for evensong. Through gaps in the thicket of ilex and laurel, I saw, first, the tall, gaunt figure of the Reverend go by on the litten-path with his vast, confident stride, the pallid threadpaper of a curate flickering at his heels. After them came Miss Sweet, the rich and lonely spinster up at the great house, mincing along under a puce sunshade, with an extended handful of ivory books; then Mrs. Coles from the farm, as ever, hot and out of breath; finally, at a respectful interval carefully calculated, three or four of the village women dribbled through, and disappeared into the north porch after the rest.

The usual weekly congregation being now complete, the bell stopped. The harmonium gave out one low, sonorous note, which on weekdays was the beginning and end of its share in the service. For the next twenty minutes, no other sound drifted over to me but the clucking and whistling of the starlings on the chancel roof. And then, having become again immersed in the affair of the yew and almond trees, both now alike steeped by the setting sun in the same rose-red dye, I was startled by a hand on my arm. The Reverend stood at my side, ruddy-faced, red-bearded, the very blackness of his clothes changed mysteriously to the like glowing hue. His kind eyes looked straight into mine, just as if he could see them.

‘A fine evening, isn’t it?’ he said, ‘just one rich flood of crimson without form—only a great light spreading up the sky from where the sun has disappeared; spreading up and gradually paling and changing until there is nothing but pure blue, with one silver peg of a star sticking in it—is it not so?’

‘Why, no, it is not quite that,’ said I, considering, ‘the star is there sure enough, and the great red light. But the red does not merge into blue, it melts gradually into a wonderful, luminous, metallic green, with the star, almost white, swimming in the midst of it. Far overhead the sky is blue enough, and up there more stars are blinking out every moment. But the green! If you could only see its—’

‘Snow!’ interrupted the old vicar placidly.

‘What!’

‘Snow. Wind first, a gale perhaps; and then the snow. You will see. What says the almond-tree here?’

‘It says,’ I contended, ‘but one word. Spring!—abounding new life and growth; sunshine kindling stronger and stronger every day; the winter gone and already half forgotten. With every pink bloom it promises nightingales, and white flannels and straw hats and—’

‘Ah! And you never will grow up now: you’re too old. The almond-blossom?—it lies in my memory always side by side with the snowdrop and the Christmas-rose. Snow-flowers, all three! Wait a little, and be convinced. But now look, and tell me which way the chimney-smoke is blowing.’

‘Blowing! There is not a breath of—’

There was more than a breath down there in the fair-way of the combe, although here we could feel nothing of it. Under the deep red dusk I could make out the smoke-plumes from the village chimneys all driving off at a sharp right-angle to the south. Even as I looked, there came a sudden flaw of wind overhead that set the yew boughs rocking, and its voice was the old-remembered voice. The north wind again! Somewhere in its black tangled depths the yew-tree creaked derisively. The Reverend put his arm through mine.

‘But it is mercifully late,’ he said, as we turned homeward together. ‘Artlett need not fear for his lambs now, nor I for mine. Is the sky already overcast? Or am I only blinder than usual?’

IV

After that day I was house-bound for near upon a week. Later than its wont by a good hour, the dawn broke every day; but as in darkness so with the grey wan light, the wind never abated one iota of its whistling fury; the soft thud-thud of the flying snow reverberated on the panes; the white drifts at the street corners mounted steadily higher and higher; in the fireplace, where I already thought soon to start my summer fernery, I had the logs crackling and glowing with more than their old wintry might. Poor almond-blossom! I thought to myself again and again, as I sat industriously scratching away in the strange dumbness and the thin, queer light that fills the room in snowy weather.

Yet this was not so ill a wind but that some good was blown my way. I found myself overhauling arrears of work at a surprising rate. When the wind fell at last, backing steadily to west, then to south-west, and there came a night of drenching rain—rain that felt like hot tea to a hand held out in it—I was ready for any sort of idleness and any wandering company.

Two long days and nights the world lay under that simmering, steaming cataract. And then such a morning—almost the last morning of the month—rose over Windlecombe as made the mere awakening in one’s bed seem like a sort of first act in a miracle play.

The sun had hardly breasted Windle Hill before I was out and clear of the village: its last red tinge had faded into night when I turned my tired steps homeward, and so to bed once more.

Lying there cosily, with the delicious ache of thirty miles in my bones, and in my ears the lilt of a thousand melodies, all the glad day’s journey projected itself like swiftly changing pictures thrown upon the screen of the starry night. The Downs first—the green sea of hills that seemed to heave and subside as the violet cloud-shadows lazily drove from crest to crest; the unending sheep-bell music, and lark-song, and the playing of the gulls high up in the blue, like scraps of white paper fluttering in the breeze. Then down the steep hill-side to the sunny flats, where the plovers were at their love-play—each pair rising and falling, somersaulting together, crying continually, coming to rest a moment, then up again at the old interminable gambols.

Here in the deep ditches the frogs croaked. There was a golden rim of marsh-marigold to every strip of water, over which you must peer if you would study the submerged life below. And what a life there was down in each crystal deep! Queer water-beetles wove a bright pattern on the surface of the slow-moving, almost stagnant stream; and their shadows made just the same pattern on the sunlit weed of the bottom, though here it was black instead of bright. Down there were mimic forests or jungles of ferny, bronze-green growth, all in gentle undulating motion as the water glided imperceptibly by. Shoals of minnows cruised about in the sunny open, or lay in wait singly in the shadowy glades. These single fish seemed to be for ever quarrelling; either making sudden raid on the lairs of their neighbours, or being attacked in their turn. When they banded themselves together, evidently making common peace the better to rout a common enemy, and swam boldly in the sunshine, I could see that each fish was faintly tinged with blue and green and orange-red, the identical colours, although vague and subdued, of the kingfisher, their traditional foe.

Then came up the vision of a long white road barred with tree-shadows, flowing between thorn-hedges already full of a green promise of leafage, and edged with butterfly-haunted flowers. Little cottages passed by, ankle-deep in blue forget-me-nots, and aflare with blossoming creepers. Deep pine-woods took the road and folded it in fragrant gloom, then set it forth in the sunshine again to wander over gorse-clad heaths, or amidst spangled meadows. I saw the inn, where I sat awhile in a company of travelling ‘rinders’—men who strip the bark from the felled oaks for the tanneries-who would now be camping, like Robin and his merry rascals, a month long in the woods.

I dozed off, and woke again where, in the drowsy afternoon sunshine, I had rested under a great pollard ash weighed down with ivy. Upon the grass about my feet there shone an infinity of small, rounded objects, much as if Aladdin had passed by and thrown down a handful of superfluous rubies. Everywhere their soft carmine lustre gemmed the sward. Year by year I have found the like on meadow-paths, wood-rides, by the church tower, sometimes in the very streets of the village, and have never known how they came into being. You may have broken asunder the ivy-berries a hundred times, and noted the pale-hued seeds within, yet never guessed that here was the mining-ground for your treasure. It is the sun and air that make rubies of the fallen ivy seeds.

And, for a last vision, as I lay watching the starshine travelling across the square of the window, I saw within it a picture, and heard again a note of music, perhaps the most wonderful thing in the whole day’s idle round. It was a keeper’s cottage at the entrance to a wood. On the steep thatch, white pigeons hobbled amorously; and behind, in a green bower of elder, a wild bird sang. I could see the bird; I knew it to be a common song-thrush; but the song was the song of a nightingale—not the loud, silver-toned warble that the poets love, but the low, slow, sorrowful keening that always seems as if torn from the very heart of the bird. And here is a pretty problem. If the nightingale were already with us, singing in every brake, there would be nothing strange in the thrush—prone as he is to imitation—borrowing a stanza from the new melody here and there. But it is more than strange that he should do so at the present time, seeing that, for eight or nine months back, there has been no nightingale music in the land. Yet we, who are mute fowl, are all thinking of April now, and what it has in store for us: can the thrush be thinking of April too? And, as with us, can old memories of nightingales be stirring in him?—in him that alone can sing his thoughts aloud?

APRIL

I

Sunday morning in Windlecombe, especially when the season is early April and the weather fine, is, of all mornings, the one not to be spent indoors.

To-day, until the church-bell had ceased its quiet tolling, and the last belated worshipper had hurried up the street, I stood just within the screen of box-hedge that divides my garden from the public way, so as not to obtrude my old coat and pipe and week-day boots on those more ecclesiastically minded. And then, bareheaded, hands thrust deep into trouser-pockets, and pipe leaving a grey trail of smoke behind on the tranquil air, I lounged out upon the green—deserted and still in the sweet April sunshine—to study Windlecombe under one of its most inviting aspects—its seventh-day spirit of earned sloth and unstrung, loitering ease.

Though the old vicar has held his post here for nearly half a century, and is better acquainted with the parish than almost any other, there is just this one aspect of life in Windlecombe which must be to him for ever a sealed book. When once he has got his little flock together for morning service, with the church-door shut upon them, the village and all its doings pass, for the time being, out of his ken. On wet Sundays, and on the great church festivals, he knows that many accustomed corners—my own included—will be as infallibly occupied as they are at other times unvaryingly empty: and thereof he never makes either complaint or question. He goes on his way, never doubting but there is some saving good somewhere in the worst of us, and whole-heartedly loving us all; while we, the black sheep, who would sacrifice for him our right hands, our money, our very lives even, anything but our fine Sunday mornings, go our ways too, satisfied—if there is meaning in looks—of his secret sympathy. For there never was human man, whether lay or clerical, who, of a fine Sunday morning, believed himself so nearly at one with his Maker on his knees in a dusty pew, as abroad in the vast green church of an English country-side.

I had gone no more than a dozen paces over the level, worn grass of the green, when I stopped to look about me, knowing well what I should see. Like rabbits coming out of their burrows after the gunner has passed on, the non-churchgoing folk began to appear. I saw young Daniel Dray and young Tom Clemmer go off with a bag of ferrets and their faithful terriers at their heels. Dewie Artlett arrived at the well-head—the traditional meeting-place for Windlecombe lovers—and stood waiting there with a big nosegay of primroses in his hand and another in his cap. He was joined a moment later by one of the girls from the farm, and off they went together for a morning’s sweethearting in the lanes. At the far end of the green, the inn-door came clattering open, and that genial reprobate, the inn-keeper, appeared in his shirt-sleeves, blinking up at the sky as though but lately out of his bed. Other doors here and there were thrust back, each giving egress to some happy loiterer in his Sunday best. Within five minutes, almost every garden-gate had a pair of brown arms comfortably resting on it, and voices began to pass the time of day to and fro in the whole sunny length of the street. By easy stages, stopping for a word here and there by an open door, or a chat with some old acquaintance sunning himself amidst his cabbages, I got to the foot of the hill and so to the river. The ferryman sat in his boat, but as he returned me for my greeting only a stare and a scarce-perceptible shake of the head, I knew that our common enemy was in ambush close by. I made off along the river-path, and turned into the woods.

There was a blackbird singing somewhere in the budding thicket, and I managed to get quite close to his perch without being seen. To the songs of birds like the thrush, the skylark, the robin, you may listen for five minutes; and, beautiful as they are, in that short space of time you will have learnt all that the song has to tell. But the blackbird’s song is very different. It has an endless succession of changes in rhythm, power and quality. You may listen to it for an hour, and never hear a phrase repeated in its exact form. The difference between the blackbird’s song, and that of nearly all other birds, is the difference between the singing of a happy schoolgirl and that of a prima donna. While both have melody, one alone has finished artistry. Until you have stayed in a wood with a blackbird a whole sunny April morning through, and got from him the truth of things as he alone can tell it, you do not really know that spring is here.

Now, by the riverside copse, as I leaned on the old, lichen-gilded timbers of the fence, listening to the pure, unhurried notes, the fact that it was really April at last was suddenly borne in upon me. In the daybreak and eventide choruses of birds, the thrushes, by dint of sheer numbers and vehemence, easily overpower all other singers. Now and again you can catch and isolate a matchless phrase of blackbird music; but to hear the song in perfection, you must wait until the day is wearing on towards noon, and he seeks solitude for his singing.

If bird-song is a language, then the blackbird must be the supreme orator of the woods. Though you understand not a syllable of what he is pouring forth, there is no doubt of its ever-varying meaning. In the midst of a succession of quite simple phrases, each consisting of three or four notes at the most, he suddenly gives you a passage whose melodious complexity is almost bewildering. He constantly varies the pace of his delivery. He embellishes his song with grace-notes—beautiful silver-chiming triplets in the midst of his lowest, most leisurely strains. There is emphasis, attack, a sort of blustering use of sheer power of utterance; or he may run over a slow, quiet tune at his lightest tongue-tip. At times, indeed, it is well-nigh impossible to believe that you are not listening to two birds together, of totally different qualities of voice, alternating their melodies.

How long I should have tarried there, furtively renewing this old acquaintance, I know not; but it seems my cover was incomplete, and the song came to its usual termination. It stopped short in the midst of one of its brightest stanzas, and I knew my presence had been observed. The blackbird made off. There was first the defiant, yet fearsome cluck-cluck-cluck until he was clear of the bushes and free to fly, and then away he went through the sunshine to the far bank of the river, hurling over his shoulder as he went the usual mocking laughter-peal.

II

A week of April has gone by—a week of rain and shine, and the singing of the south wind by day; and, at nights, an intense dark calm full of the sound of purling brooks.

The river runs high. All the streams are swollen. The low-lying meadows are half green grass overspread with a pink mist of lady’s-smock, and half glittering pools of water that bring down the blue of the sky under your feet as you go. You can never forget the rain for an instant. On this page, as I sit writing at the open window, the morning sun was streaming a minute ago: now a ragged grey rain-cloud has come tumbling over the hills, and I cannot see across the green for the torrent. It is by almost as quickly as I can set down the words; and now the sunbeams are pouring in at the window again: the whole village lies before me drenched and sparkling, the street one long river of blinding light.

Tom Artlett, going by early this morning to his work and spying me in the garden, called out that he had heard the cuckoo twice already; and it may well be so. The ringing note of the wryneck—the ‘cuckoo’s mate’—has been sounding in the elm-tops all the morning through, and the cuckoo is seldom far behind her messenger. Nightingale and swift, swallow and martin, they are all on their way northward now, and any day may bring them. But time spent at this season in looking forward to the things that will be, is always time wasted. Every hour in early April has its own new revelation, and common eyes and ears can do no more than mark the things that are.

Yesterday, in a blink of sunny calm between the showers, I took my midday walk through the hazel-woods. The young leaves already tempered the sunlight to the primroses and anemones that covered the woodland floor, giving all a greenish tinge. Though the whole wood was full of primroses, it was only by the edges of the fields, where they grew in full sunshine, that their rich yellow colour had any significance. Here under the hazels this was so diluted and explained away by the white of the anemones, and again by the leaf-filtered sunbeams from above, that the primroses no longer seemed yellow. At a few yards distant, in the dimmest spots, you could scarce tell one flower from another but for its shape.

Wherever I went in the wood, the soft droning song of the bees went with me. You could hardly put one foot before the other without dashing the cup from the lip of one of these winged wanderers. But though the anemones and primroses grew so thick, so inextricably mingled together, the honey-bees kept to the one species of flower. They clambered in and out of the star-like anemones, sometimes two and three at a blossom together. But the primroses were always passed over, by hive-bee and humble-bee alike. Here and there, I picked one of the sulphur blossoms, and tearing it apart, made sure that there was nectar in plenty—its presence was plain even to human eye. The truth was, of course, that the sweets of the primrose were placed so far down the trumpet-tube of the flower, that no bee had tongue long enough to gather them, even if they were to her mind.

Yet though the bees might scorn the primrose for much the same reason as the fox contemned the grapes in the fable, there was one creature specially told off by Nature to do the necessary work of fertilisation. Now and again in the general low murmur of voices about me, I could distinguish an alien note. This came from a large fly, in a light-brown fluffy jacket, with transparent wings fantastically scalloped in black. He jerked himself to and fro in the air from one primrose to another, hovering a moment over each before settling and thrusting a tongue of amazing length down the yellow throttle of the flower. His name I have never heard, but I know that, until recent times, he continued to conceal, not only his means of livelihood, but his very existence from the vigilance of naturalists: Darwin himself failed to identify this primrose-sprite with his special mission in fertilising work.

It is strange how familiarity with the commonest natural objects may exist side by side with a pitiful ignorance about them. I had gathered primroses every spring for half a lifetime through before I realised that I bore, not one, but two kinds of blossom in my hand. The discovery, I remember, came with something like a shock of surprise. Yet there was no blinking the fact: the wonder, indeed, was that in all the thousands I had gathered, as boy and youth and man, the thing had never before occurred to me. There was no difference in the sulphur-hued faces of the flowers. But while the deep, central tube of some was closed with a little whorl of pale buff feathers, in others this tube was open, and there stood just within it a slender stem topped with a small green globe—it seemed at first sight, then, that the sexual principle in the primrose was divided, each plant bearing only male, or only female flowers. But investigating farther, I found that this was not so. Each flower was truly hermaphrodite, only in one the male feathery anthers were uppermost, and in the other the green pistil of the female appeared above.

Thirty years it took me to discover these simple, obvious facts about a thing I had handled every spring since childhood: how many decades more, I wonder, must pass ere I shall clear up the final mystery about them, a matter now to me dark as ever—how, with the primrose alone, this came to be so; and, above all, why?

III

If I tell the plain, honest truth about the day which has just ended, and call it a day of adventure and excitement from its first grey gleam to its tranquil golden close, I am not sure that there are many who will understand me, save the one who shared it with me almost hour by hour.

For nothing really happened on this day, as the world estimates events. Over an obscure Sussex village, a mid-April sun shone out of a cloudless sky; certain migrant birds arrived in the neighbourhood; certain wild flowers and insects were observed for the first time; there was nothing more. No wandering stranger appeared in the street, to bring us all to our doors; no big-gun practice was going on thirty miles away at Portsmouth, outraging our blue sky with incongruous thunder; nor did even the gilt arrow on the church-clock slip an hour at midday, as it often does, and send us scurrying home to dinner before the time. To all save two in Windlecombe, the day was just an ordinary working week-day; but, to these, it was no less a day than the one on which the year comes suddenly into its full young prime.

For me it began when the grey eastern sky took its first tint of morning rose. There is no sweeter sound than the song of the house-martins, and this it was that roused me now. In the darkness they had come, straight to their old nesting-site under the eaves; and now they filled the room with their quaint, voluble melody, and wove a mazy pattern against the sky as they circled to and fro.

While I dressed, I watched them dipping and crying in the sunny air; and, peering out through the window now and again, I could see them all along under the eaves, clinging to the rough bricks of the wall, where they had left their mud-houses last October. But of these none remained now. Not to break down the martins’ nests in early spring, before the sparrows begin to stuff them with grass, is to prepare for the little black-and-white voyagers’ war instead of welcome. And they seem quite as happy and content if, returning, they find nothing but a clay-mark on the wall.

Later, by an hour at most, I had the Reverend by the arm, not so much to guide, as to restrain him, for he went ever a little before me through the meadow with the sure, swift stride of a mountain-goat. There was but one thing that could betray his affliction to a close observer. While I went blinking in the intolerable glory of the sunshine above us, and the scarce lesser glory of the buttercups below, he strode onward, his calm old face turned straight up to the sun, his blue eyes meeting it unflinchingly from under their shaggy arches of white. He might be Gabriel looking into the very focus of heaven, I thought, as I stole a glance at him a little fearsomely. Indeed, I never quite limited his vision to that of his poor, purblind, human eyes.

‘It will be down in the little birch-clump near the Conyers,’ he said. ‘That is where the first nightingale always comes. It will take us a good five minutes, and why are you not talking to me? Come! do not keep all the brave, beautiful things to yourself!’

How to tell him of all the things I saw in a single yard of meadow about us! But I got to work with the will, if not the power.

‘We are walking,’ said I, ‘through buttercups a foot high; and almost with every step we send a cloud of little blue-and-copper butterflies chevying before us. Listen to the grasshoppers piping! The buttercups make a sort of thick scum of gold as on the surface of a green lake. Down below, like pebbles on the lake-bottom lie the daisies—their white discs touch each other in all directions; nay, they overlap, they are heaped upon one another. An insect might crawl over them from side to side of the great meadow and never tread on anything but daisy-white. And the dandelions! There are millions of them, I think, filling the air with a perfume like choice old wine. And smell these, Reverend! Do you know what they are?’

‘Cowslips! They must be in full bloom now: they were always fine cowslips in this field. But you should pull them—never pick them. Then you get all their beauty, the crimson at the base of the stem, and— Hark!’

From the oak-clad hill-side to the northward, clear and slow on the gentle air, came the cuckoo’s double chime. The old vicar faced about, and took off his hat ceremoniously. I did the like. It was no superstitious greeting of the bird on its first appearance. We were not thinking even of the ancient Sussex legend—that an old witch goes to Heathfield Fair every fourteenth day of April, with all the year’s cuckoos in her bag, and there lets them fly. On our part, it was merely a precautionary measure against a very ancient rustic pleasantry. Farmer Coles of Windlecombe loved his joke, and that was Farmer Coles’s wood. Though we had no real doubt that we were listening to our first cuckoo, it was well to be on the safe side.

The path now left the full fair-way of the meadow, and meandered along by the edge of the wood. I was bidden to go on with my chronicle.

‘The bluebells are out as thick as ever I saw them, Reverend. Under the shadow of the trees they look like purple smoke stealing up the hillside; and where a bar of sunshine pierces through, the colour seems to leap into the dim air like a tongue of flame. How the rabbits play! Every moment they break cover and dart across the open spaces, two or three together. There goes a spotted woodpecker!—I saw his black-and-white coat and crimson plume as he swung through the bar of light. They are scarce here. Here comes something flitting along that I wish you could see—you know how the orange-tip—’

‘The butterfly with his wings on fire? Don’t grizzle over me, man! I can see it!—lazily looping along, though you think he will fall to earth a cinder any moment at your feet. He is like Nero fiddling, I always think. There must be chervil growing close by.’

‘Yes, a great bank of it, and the butterfly has gone.’

‘Well: he is only settling there. Look how the mottled green and white on the under side of his wings, now he has closed them, exactly match the colours of the chervil. All his fire is quenched till you disturb him, and then off he goes, burning himself up as unconcernedly as ever.’

We rounded the corner of the wood, and came upon a little open stretch of heathland. The sulky sweet fragrance of the gorse so loaded the air as to make one’s breath come hard. Over the gorse, linnets sang their slender, tweeting melody. The blossom-laden bushes spread away before us like great heaving waves of gold, flowing up to the hill-brow and over out of sight. Where the crests of yellow bloom stood against the sky, they made the sky a deeper blue. But between the gorse-brakes the heather showed no sign. It crouched low upon the earth, looking black and dreary and dead, as though a forest fire had lately swept by.

‘Dead!’ cried the Reverend scornfully. ‘Turn up a frond of it, and look at the under side of the leaves. Each leaf is black above, but see how green and sappy and full of life it really is, if you look at it aright. One misses a lot in life by taking too lofty a standpoint. The heather in April may be black to you, but it is green enough to the hiding mice.’

We went along in silence for a minute or two.

‘And what about the trees?’ he asked presently. ‘Is it death or life there? The cuckoo never will wait for his green leaves, you know.’

‘Green leaves I see, but leafage nowhere. All the wood-top is chequered into different clear zones of green, or grey, or russet, or soft sad yellow—buds bursting and leaves just promising everywhere; but leaves, as I want them, none. How slow it all is! I can understand the cuckoo’s impatience. Flying all the way from Africa only to find—’

He had ceased to listen. He had turned swiftly towards the sun-bathed meadows. He put up a thin hand—blue-veined, almost transparent—against the light. He visibly started.

‘I heard the throb of a wing—a new sound. It must be—’

‘Yes, there it is! The first swallow! Wheeling and darting over the buttercups yonder, like a bit of bright, blue-tempered steel!’

And as I uttered the words, there drifted out of the thorn-hedge hard by us the note we had come to seek. All the ringing music of the woodland seemed to grow mute at the sound. Wild and pure, with a force and a lingering sweetness indescribable, the nightingale’s song poured out of the thicket, dwelling upon the one silver, clarion note, moment after moment, as though it would never cease. At my side two gaunt arms rose tremblingly into the sunshine:

‘They are all here!’—the voice was husky, faltering—‘All! all! I have heard them again, every one of them, the good God be praised! Though I never hoped to— Yes, one by one, I bade them all a long farewell last year!’

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.

MAY

I

Sometimes for days together, a whole week, perhaps, I may never set foot outside the area of the village. These are generally times when the tide of work runs high, and one must keep steadily pulling to make any real headway against it. They are days, and nights too, of necessarily close and constant application, varied, however, by odd half-hours of quiet loafing hither and thither about the village—delicious moments pilfered recklessly from the eternal grindstone of the study, to be remembered for their pipes smoked and their talks with old acquaintance at street corners, long after the labour which sweetened them has passed, maybe fruitlessly, away.

So it has happened this last week, during which the season has journeyed out of April into May. At one time or another in the chain of busy hours, I have renewed acquaintance with all my favourite bits of old Windlecombe, and the personalities from which they are inseparable.

Getting out into the sunshine, I usually find my steps turning, first of all, towards the smithy. It stands just behind the Clemmers’ cottage, its yawning black doorway wreathed about with elder branches full of white blossom, and deep green spray reminding one of the foliage in old paintings, which looks as if it were compounded of indigo and gamboge. I never knew a smith who could beat out such ear-assuaging music from an anvil as young Tom Clemmer. If you hear it in passing, you are bound to turn aside, and stand for awhile looking in at the door, and fall adreaming under the spell of its quiet melody. But standing out there, with the sun across your eyes, you can see nothing at first save a sputtering red spot of fire, and hear nothing but the chime of hammer and anvil, to which the gruff, wheezy bellows add a sort of complaining undertone. When you catch sight of young Tom Clemmer, it is to make him out as one of great height, immensely broad in the shoulder and lean of hip—a peg-top figure of a man. Through the smoke and flying sparks he shows you a black face with a pair of grey eyes, deep-set, glittering, mirthful, and a great head covered with crisp flaxen curls. He is of the old South-Saxon blood through and through.

But at the wheelwright’s yard, a little farther along the green, you are confronted with quite a different breed of Sussex peasant. The Drays are thickset, of middle height; and dark, almost swarthy of feature. Up in the churchyard, you come upon the two names at every step. You read Clemmer, Dray, Dray and Clemmer, everywhere amidst the moss-grown stones, in varying degrees of illegibility back for hundreds of years. The two families are by far the oldest in Windlecombe. You note that the Clemmers were nearly always Thomases, and the Drays for the most part Daniels; while the females of both races were, and are still, either Marthas or Janes. Looking over the ranks of this silent company, it is impossible to think of any member of the former clan as other than long-limbed, grey-eyed and fair; and a Dray, even though he were a serf under Harold, who was not dark of glance and visage would be an anomaly unthinkable. Young Daniel now—as you pass by and see him bending to and fro over his cavern of a sawpit, with the red elm-dust spurting up fountain-like in the sunshine between his gaitered legs—must be the very counterpart of the Dray who, doubtless, fought at Hastings; or him of older times who, daubed in blue war-paint, might have watched with wrath and wonder from his seaside ambush the first Phoenician galley that came adventuring after Cornish tin.

When it rains, though work and the house have for the nonce become alike intolerable, I have several havens wherein I can be sure of finding just that quiet anchorage that the moment needs. The little sweetstuff shop is foremost among them. Over the long, low window, with its curious lattice panes of bull’s-eye glass, there runs a legend, in one uniform character and without stop or break:—‘BERLIN WOOLS TOYS SUSAN ANGEL ALL KINDS OF SWEETS.’ And within at her fireside behind the little counter, sits Miss Angel, always busily knitting, and always ready for a chat.

I reserve Miss Angel and her flute-like under-flow of small-talk, for moments of placidity. But at unruly seasons of mind, I go to the cobbler’s den, and getting my elbows upon the half-door, look in upon him, often without spoken word on either side, for ten minutes at a stretch. It is dark in there, with a penetrating smell of tanned leather wonderfully soothing in certain states of the nerves. My own taciturnity is real enough at these times; but that of the cobbler, a garrulous old soul by nature, is usually forced upon him by circumstances. His mouth seems to be permanently full of brass brads, which come automatically through his closed lips one by one, and always miraculously head-first, to be ready when his quick left hand needs them. With his right hand he keeps up an incessant monotonous tattoo on the boot between his knees; and to watch the shining brass pins flowing from his mouth into symmetrical rows on the leather is pure balm for eyes tired of staring at paper and ink. I know the cobbler means to talk directly he has finished his mouthful. Now and again he looks up with premonitory gleams of politics or ground-bait in his eye; or, worse still, with that slow double-wink which I know presages a story ancient even in his great-grandfather’s time. So I watch the flow of the brads, and when I judge the supply to be nearly exhausted, I generally execute a stealthy retreat.

The parlour of the Three Thatchers Inn is, I know of old, an unrivalled place for the rejuvenation of a jaded faith in the reality of life, at times of idleness and dismal weather. It is not the talk of the old landlord behind his bar—talk at once serenely simple and shrewdly worldly-wise; nor the unending volley of song from the three canaries, each in its crinoline-like cage overhead; nor even the quality of the liquor, that draws me to this cosy, sawdust-carpeted, crimson-curtained nook. It is the furniture of the bar itself, all that stands upon its shelves and hangs upon its old wainscoted walls, that attracts me at these odd, unemployable moments—a collection of articles never to be got together, I think, in less than four generations of like-minded men.

All the woodwork is of oak, planted, grown, and felled, no doubt, within an arrow-flight of the village. On the walls of the parlour hang various framed and coloured prints, disreputable by tradition, yet so embrowned with varnish as to be long ago relegated into harmless indecipherability. There is a picture of a bird of dubious species, from whose open beak issue the words—‘As a bird is known by his song, so is a man by his conversation.’ Opposite the door, where all entering must immediately observe it, hangs another picture, this time of a dog lying upon its back with all four legs rigidly pointing upwards, and a very long red tongue lolling out of its mouth; and, underneath, the inscription—‘Poor Trust is dead: bad pay killed him.’

Behind the bar, the walls are lined with shelves, backed up by scrolled looking-glass, wherein all the treasures that crowd before it have their blurred and distorted counterparts. On the uppermost shelves, hard against the smoke-blackened ceiling, stand rows of pewter-pots, kept scrupulously clean and bright, but never taken down for use within living memory. Below these is a regiment of cut-glass bottles in different rich colours, quaintly fluted, each with a gilt vine-leaf upon it; and between the bottles stand inverted wine-glasses, every one upon a little mat of gaudy wool, and balancing a lemon upon its upturned foot. Other shelves are taken up with toby-jugs, curious old snuff-boxes and tobacco-jars, row upon row of earthenware mugs, ringed with brown and blue, and stamped with a mysterious ornament like black seaweed. There are three large wooden kegs with brass taps, marked respectively with the letters—O.T., J.R., and C.B. The local pleasantry has it that these are needed to store the special liquor of three devoted patrons of the inn. The ferryman and Bleak the cobbler reject the insinuation with contumely; but O.T., as I have the best of all reasons for knowing, regards it as a compliment of subtle hue.

But perhaps the most fascinating item in the whole collection is a certain ancient puzzle-mug of blue crockery-ware, with a suspiciously heavy handle and an elaborately perforated lip. A stranger is invited to drink from this, but, by reason of the open lattice-work all round the rim, it appears an impossible feat. The trick, however, is easy to one in the secret. The handle of the cup is hollow, and communicates with the interior at its lowest extremity. By setting the mouth to a small hole in the handle-top, the liquor can be slowly sucked through.

II

It being the day of the fortnightly market at Stavisham, and the weather fair, Runridge and I took the little green punt from its moorings this afternoon, and set out to explore the Long Back-Reach.

The Reach is just a winding side-alley of the river, overgrown with willows and reeds—a mere crevice of glimmering water hiding itself in the heart of the wood. Coming into it from the dazzling sunlight of the main river, it strikes at first almost chill and gloomy, for all it is an afternoon in May. But this is only an illusion that soon passes. After a minute or two you get its quiet keynote; the green dusk becomes deliciously tempered sunlight, the cool air something finer and more delicate than the sun-scorched breath of the open river-way.

Runridge pulls a long clean stroke, and dips his oar-blades with a perfect rhythm. He is silent company, as far as words go; but he has an eloquence of look and gesture which more than takes the place of speech. And there is something about his mute system of comradeship that irresistibly impels itself on others. With his tanned, wrinkled face sedately smiling under the brim of his battered old felt hat, and his thoughtful eyes for ever roaming over the landscape, you feel that the ordinary human method of conveying ideas by sounds is somehow out of place in the little green wherry. Over and over again to-day, when a scarce bird or uncommon flower showed itself on the river bank, and I would direct his notice thither, I found myself insensibly adopting his silent way of a waved hand or an inclination of the head, when, in other company, my tongue would have been set agoing on the instant with less sufficing words.

Out on the broad water-way the tide was still running up, but here in the Long Back-Reach the drift of the current was hardly perceptible. The old ferryman had laid by his oars, and now sat filling an ancient pipe with tobacco that looked like chips of ebony. As for me, I lay back in the boat, head pillowed on clasped hands, dimly recalling a dream I had had, ages and ages back, of a world without green leaves or nightingales—a weirdly impossible world of nipping frost and firesides, the sob of the winter wind, and the dreary deluge of winter rain.

The reeds stood high on either hand: above, the old yellow reeds, with their nodding mauve-grey plumes, and below, the fresh green growth, wherein the reed-warblers would soon be building—a living emerald thronging up amidst the old dead stems. Over the solid rampart of the reeds the willows reached down, trailing their ferny branches in the water. And beyond these, the great forest trees hemmed us in, oak and elm and beech in two vast cliffs of verdure towering above us, and interlocking their laden boughs against the far blue sky.

The little sugar-scoop of a boat drifted on. Everywhere about us the martins were skimming over the clear water, chattering as they went. The seeding willows sent down tiny flecks of white, that hovered and dwelt in the dim air, like snow-flakes; and from the beeches overhead there was a constant rain of light fine atoms, the discarded sheaths of the leaf-buds, that fell upon the waters and gathered into all the little nooks and bays among the reeds like pale, dun foam.

Somewhere far in the distance a cuckoo sang. Runridge took his pipe from his mouth, and gave it a rocking motion. Never a word he said, but his thought passed to me just as if he had spoken it: a see-saw melody it was, and will be until the hay is down. There were willow-wrens singing far above in the tree-tops. A chiff-chaff went looping by with his soft, broken note. To count the nightingales that we heard as the boat stemmed onward were almost to count the white-budded hawthorns that shone out through every gap in the reeds. And now the old ferryman put out an oar, and turned the little craft towards the bank, where a great willow-tree drooped half across the stream. The boat-prow clove its way into the heart of this leafy shelter, and we came to rest. The pipe went up warningly. In the dense reed thicket hard by there was a new maytide song.

Of all utterances of wild birds, perhaps none attains to a human-like quality more nearly than that of the sedge-warbler. It is not so much a song as a continuous complaint, and that of a characteristically feminine kind. To me the little sedge-bird, restlessly flitting from stem to stem through the waving jungle of reeds, and singing as she goes, inevitably suggests a type of dutiful, laborious womanhood, all affection and unselfishness, but ever ready alike with sharp words and an aggressive tearfulness that disarms as completely as it maddens. And the sweetness, the occasional sudden bright abandon of the song only serves to strengthen the comparison. You can picture the bird stopping in the midst of her most fretful, self-commiserate strain, bravely to estimate her compensations. The sun shines, the nest is well-built and furnished, the larder easy to be filled. Material good is unlacking; but— And then the singer goes hopelessly under again. Now the song is nothing but sweetly lachrymose expostulation, voiced grief all the more intolerable for its tunefulness,—an epic of melodious woe.

Turning over in my mind this fantasy about the sedge-bird, as we lingered under the willow bower, I found the old ferryman looking at me with a strangely reminiscent eye. It flashed across me that long ago, when all days were as good as market days to us, I had put before him just these thoughts, and had received his silent, amused concurrence in them. Then there had been no chance of inconvenient application; but now—I sat bolt upright and looked closer at him. I was beaten at this talk of eyes. I harked back to the old safe path with which I was familiar. He had turned away now, and did not revert his glance though my hand was upon his arm.

‘Why, why did you do it, Runridge?’ I blurted out, almost as forlornly as the sedge-bird. ‘You never minded living alone! You were happy enough! And I—I—’

He was looking at me straightly enough now.

‘Do it?’ His breath whistled in through his set teeth. ‘Do it—did ye say? I do it?—never! ’A did it hersel’! Kind o’ mesmerised, I wur. Never rightly knowed as ’twur done, till ’twur all ower. But there ’tis i’ th’ book, an’ no gettin’ ower it now. Ah! well, well! purty near time we was skorkin’ hoame-along, bean’t it? Gie tired women-folk a could kettle for welcome, an’ ’tis trouble wi’out end.’

III

Whitsuntide has fallen early this year, and that seems to me always the fittest thing. It should come, as it has come now, at the full fair tide of the spring, when the apple-blossom, last ebullition of the year’s youth, is at the zenith of its glory, and summer is still only a promise yet to be fulfilled.

Whitsunday in Windlecombe, to all average folk, at least, excels in importance every other day in the year, Christmas Day alone excepted. There is neither man, woman, nor child in the parish, with the ability to get to church, but arrives there somehow and sometime during the day. For the old vicar, from his early communion service to the time he gives the benediction at close of evensong, it is a day of ceaseless action and exaltation. Every Whitsunday—when, in fulfilment of an ancient compact between us, I go to the vicarage to share the last light of day with him alone—I find him sitting in the little summer-house at the foot of the garden, radiantly happy, yet tired as a navigator, and hoarse as a crow. What befalls the curate at the end of this arduous day no one knows; for he is never visible after the final service. But Miss Sweet is said to pervade the neighbourhood of his lodging like an unquiet ghost far into the twilight, waylaying his housekeeper with offers of night-socks and eau-de-cologne.

On this fine Whitsunday morning I got to my corner in the grey old church earlier than my wont, before, indeed, the bell began its measured tolling. The school children were in their places in the south aisle, a whispering, nudging crew. The curate flitted about the chancel in his long black cassock like a bat disturbed from its dreams. The little organist sat at her harmonium. No one else as yet had come to church.

It was good to sit thus in the cool and quiet before the service began, letting the heart go back over all the other Whitsuntides I had spent in Windlecombe, and letting the eye rove here and there through the hollow, sun-barred twilight of the old place, comparing the garlands that beautified it now with those that, in former years, had registered the attained prosperity of the season. For though, wherever you looked, from the window-ledges of the sanctuary to the multi-centred arch of the west door, there were flowers and greenery in profusion, no garden blossom shone amongst them. They were all wildflowers. Every child, most of the women, and many of the men, who could spare an hour from work the day before, had been busy in the woods and fields to make this House Beautiful. The old vicar’s ambition was known to all—that in the church to-day every wild Maytide blossom should have its place. I looked hither and thither, but could think of none that was missing. The altar was golden with cowslips, primroses, buttercups, every flower that bore the colour of gold. Bluebells hid the old oak carving of the pulpit, and with them others that were blue or purple, violet and veronica, forget-me-not and pimpernel. On all the window-ledges, not to vie with the richness of the painted glass, white flowers alone were assembled—chervil and elder, daisies that are snow-white in the mass, sprays of silver stitchwort, wreaths of hawthorn entwining all. The chancel screen was hung with festoons of pink herb-robert and deadnettle; and the steps beneath it flanked with those wild growths that bear greenish flowers as well as green leaves—the woodspurge and the paler green of arum and bryony. No colour was crowded unthinkingly upon another. Each blossom held by its kinsfolk of a like complexion, and a hundred forms and shades of verdure underflowed them all. Gladly I marked that there were no roses anywhere, and this it was that gave the day its special meaning. Last year I remembered how the wild dog-roses lorded it over everything, making Whitsun a summer feast, which it never should be. But this year we are weeks in front of the roses and the may is scarce half-blown.

Now the bell commenced its slow rhythmic chime, and in the south porch, where the surplices hung, the choir boys began to assemble. The west door stood open, and, mingling with the songs of the birds and the joyous note of the wind in the trees, footsteps sounded on the churchyard path. At first they came singly, then in twos and threes. After awhile their shuffling note became continuous, and the church began to fill on all sides. I could no longer look about me, but must sit straight in my pew, contenting myself with rare side glances. I heard the stump of old Tom Clemmer’s crutches afar off in the street, heard it grow gradually louder and nearer, until it ceased on the floor of the pew behind me, and Clemmer set himself to subdue the hurricane of his breath. Mrs. Runridge fluttered up the aisle, with the tall old ferryman so close behind her, and his head so decorously lowered, that he seemed to be regaling himself with the smell of the roses in her new bonnet as they went. Farmer Coles and his retinue arrived, blocking the aisle for a full minute, until hot and flurried Mrs. Coles, by much pointing and nudging, and a hubbub of whispered directions, had succeeded in packing all her family into the two great pews. With astonishing suddenness the erstwhile empty church had become a crowded building. All Windlecombe was there, every woman or girl in her new Whitsuntide bonnet and gay new cotton frock.

And now the bell stopped; a few late stragglers came hurrying up the path, and into the rustling silence of the church with but half-restrained momentum; a sonorous Amen came from the south porch; the little harmonium uplifted its voice afar off in the chancel; the white-robed choristers began to pour up the nave, singing as they went; the curate followed, and last of all the old vicar, as upright as any, with his sure, unfaltering stride. No stranger, seeing him keep the true centre of the way, and pass unhesitatingly to his desk in the chancel, would have dreamed that he walked in almost utter darkness; nor when he faced about, and began the service with that deep-toned serene voice of his, did any one of us believe it, though we had known him all our lives. Not a word halted, not a word went awry. Only when the time for the Bible lessons came did he give place to his helper; and even at these times we were not always delivered over to the sad-voiced, diffident curate. How much of the Bible he knew by heart not even he himself could say; but often he would come down to the lectern, and with a face of inspiration turned upon us, recite the whole lesson as though he who wrote it ages back stood whispering at his side. Many a time, as he ceased, and turned back to his chancel seat with unerring step, and every man fetched his breath in the silence, I have marvelled at the force of habit that, when all hearts were inwardly exclaiming, could hold us mute of voice.

The same thought came to me when, a little later, he stood in the pulpit, his deep tones rumbling in the rafters over our heads; and most of all it pressed itself upon me when, at close of the long service, I beheld him afar off in the radiant flower-garden of the sanctuary, a towering white figure, with arm uplifted, nebulous, uncertain, in the multitudinous lights. But, with the thought, came always a kind of fear, a sensation that we were all living recklessly outside our defences, going our ways like children sheltered, aided, and irresponsible:—what would happen to Windlecombe, and to us all, when the strong arm failed and the voice no longer guided? At these times my comfort was always in a word of Susan Angel’s, spoken with a cheery, quiet conviction from behind her rows of sweetstuff bottles and knick-knack trays. With her young, almost girlish eyes shining out of her crabbed, ancient face, she pointed a knitting-needle at me for emphasis.

‘Depend on ’t, my dear,’ said she, ‘’a wunt goo far, when th’ call comes. Him as has christened, an’ married, ay! an’ buried well-nigh all i’ th’ place, an’ been more ’n a faather to us, what ’ud ’a be doin’ aloane up there i’ the skies? Na, na! Man or sperit, ’a belongs to Windlecombe. Here ’a’s treasure be, an’ here ’a’ll bide.’

IV

I heard a weird, tom-toming somewhere in the village to-day, and going forth, soon tracked the sound down to cobbler Bleak’s garden that lay at the far end of the green.

The old man was ringing his bees. Through a gap in the hawthorn hedge, I could see him standing under his apple-trees surrounded by the hives, and beating on a saucepan with a door-key, while the air above was alive with flashing wings, and resonant with the high shrill music of the swarm. This was the first swarm of the season, although it was well on in May. Most of the Windlecombe folk kept a few hives in some odd nook or other of the garden, and these were nearly all of the ancient straw pattern. He who could get the earliest swarm was accounted at once the luckiest and most astute of beemen; and the old cobbler’s face glowed with pride through its encircling fringe of ragged white hair and whisker, as he pounded away with his key, never doubting for a moment that the noise would soon induce the swarm to settle.

But the bees were in no hurry to end this one mad frolic of their laborious lives. They rose higher and higher into the blue air and sunshine, drifting to all parts of the compass in turn. They veered out far over the roadway; swept back towards the cottage, hovering awhile like a grey cloud over the chimney-tops; took an indecisive turn round the next garden; reappeared in their old station above the orchard, as little inclined as ever, apparently, to make a permanent halt. And all the time their high tremulous music burdened the air, every dog in the village barked, and every goose quacked its sympathy, and the old cobbler beat steadily on his pan.

I got my elbows comfortably into the gap in the hedgerow, the better to enjoy the scene. The garden was completely surrounded by the hawthorn-hedge, a glowing wreath of white, against which shone masses of blooming lilac and laburnum and red garden-may. The little cottage at the back of the shop stood up to its window-sills in bright colour, every old-fashioned flower crowding about it. The winding red-tiled paths ran between borders of the same rich living hues. And beyond in the orchard, splashed over with blue-grey shadows and quivering gold, as the sunshine filtered through the leaves, were innumerable hives, old-fashioned skeps of straw, each with its little chanting company of bees.

The old cobbler spied me in the hedgerow gap, and beckoned me to join him. He was without hat or coat, and wore his leather apron. A half-mended boot thrown down on the path showed how hastily he had been summoned from work. As I came up, he managed somehow to extract from the saucepan an exultant, almost jeering tune.

‘Ah, ha!’ cried he, blinking up at his whirligig property, ‘can ye show th’ like o’ that ’n?—you as keeps bees in patent machines? Naun like straw, there be; as I allers telled ye! These yere new-fangled boxes!—ye’ll ha’ ne’er a swarm this side o’ Corp Christian, I’ll lay a pot o’ six!’

It wanted still four or five days to the date of the great Roman festival of Corpus Christi in Stavisham, which annually drew all village sightseers from far and near. I reflected sadly, and rather shamefacedly, that not only was a swarm from my modern, roomy frame-hives little to be expected during that interval, but that it was the last thing I had hitherto desired. Working at home among my trim, up-to-date hives, with all the latest scientific methods in apiculture at my finger-tips, it seemed a fine thing to possess bees that had almost forgotten how to swarm, and that could bring me in a double or treble harvest of honey. But here in the beautiful old bee-garden, I began dimly to perceive another side to the argument. Whether courage or ignorance had led him to resist the tide of progress in beekeeping that has all but engulfed this gentlest, most picturesque of village crafts, the old cobbler might be right after all. My honey was better and more abundant than his; but it might well be dear at the price.

The swarm was coming lower now, and the wildly flying bees closing their ranks. Above our heads the air grew dark with them. It was plain that they would soon be settling. Of a sudden the clanging key-music ceased. Bleak pointed triumphantly to a bough in a tree hard by. A little knot of bees had fastened there, no bigger than a clenched fist. But as I looked it doubled its size with every moment. From all the regions of sunny air above us the bees thronged towards the cluster. In a short five minutes hardly one remained on the wing; and in place of the wild trek-song, a dull, uncanny silence held the air. From the drooping apple-bough the whole multitude hung together in a dark brown mass, looking strangely like a huge cigar, as it swayed idly to and fro in the gentle breeze.

And now the old cobbler went about the work of hiving the swarm in the old way, punctiliously observing all the traditional rites of the craft. A jar of ale was brought out, from which we must both drink, to sweeten our breath for the coming ceremony. Then, having washed his hands, Bleak set about the dressing of the hive. It was a new skep, one of many he had himself made during the long winter evenings bygone. He gathered first a handful of mint and balm and lavender, and with this he carefully scrubbed out the skep. Then he made a syrup of brown sugar and beer, wherewith he gave the hive a second thorough dressing. Finally, having cut two or three leafy boughs of elder, he took the skep with its baseboard under his arm, and approached the swarm on tiptoe and with bated breath.

The bees hung in the sunshine, as silent, as inert as ever; except that a dozen or so were hovering about the cluster, humming a drowsy song. The note contrasted oddly with the wild merry music of the flying swarm, when all had seemed mad with excitement, as though they were setting forth on some fierce neck-or-nothing adventure, instead of the rather tame business in which they were at present absorbed.