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.