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.
[Picture: ‘Old Friends’]
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.