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.