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.