Of summer evenings in Windlecombe, all through haying and harvest time,
you see men lounging about the village, one and all obsessed by the same
trance-like, serenely dilatory mood. All have pipes well alight, leaving
a trail of smoke behind them on the dusky golden air. All have hands
thrust deep in trouser-pockets, carry their unshaven chins high, are
tired as dogs, and look as somnolently happy as noontide owls. And of
all the days of the week, there are more of these placid optimists
abroad, and these characteristics are most to be noted in them, on the
evening of the last working day.
To-night I went up and down the green—the most uncertain of a
deliberately irresolute company—half a dozen times, perhaps, before, by
common but unvoiced consent, we turned our lagging footsteps towards the
inn. All the while I was rejoicing in a possession, priceless indeed,
yet hard-won as might be—a heart and mind filled with the spirit of the
_Cottar’s Saturday Night_. You cannot get this chief of all country
pleasures in exchange for money. It is to be had in only one way, at the
cost of long laborious days in the fields; and every tired muscle, every
aching joint in my body, stood then as witness that I had done my best to
earn what I had of it, if it might be earned at all. The old oak
window-seat, in the parlour of the Three Thatchers, was as softly welcome
as the Chancellor’s woolsack: I would not have exchanged that mug of
home-brewed ale for a draught of ambrosia at the feet of the gods.
The crimson sunset light streamed hot upon me, as I sat on the
window-ledge half among the parlour company, and half among those
congregated on the benches under the virginia creeper outside. Every
moment or two some other tired haymaker strolled up, and added his solid
breadth and his tobacco smoke to the throng. But we were not all
field-workers in the Three Thatchers to-night, nor had only the common
causes of tired limbs and sun-parched throats brought us together. Young
Daniel Dray was knitting his dark brows over some papers and
account-books at the trestle-table; and young Tom Clemmer sat close by,
thoughtfully swinging a cricket-bat pendulum-fashion between his
outstretched legs. A silence fell upon the company.
‘Well,’ said Tom Clemmer at last, ‘I dunno. ’Tis ne’ersome-matter
awk’ard fer Windlecombe. Wi’ young Maast’ Coles hayin’, an’ Tim Searle
hayin’; an’ George Locker, an’ Tom an’ George Wright, an’ Bill here all
hayin’, how i’ fortun’ be us to make up a team?’
You could pick out the members of the cricket-club committee amidst the
crowd by reason of their grave, troubled faces; whereas all other faces
wore the easy contented smile of the village Saturday night. We had
weighty business to consider. The annual challenge had arrived from the
Stavisham club. They were a cocksure, overweening lot, the town-eleven;
and we had set our hearts on beating them at next Saturday’s match. But
there was the hay to carry, if the weather held. Many of our best
players would be in the fields. It looked as though the town were to add
Windlecombe again to their long list of village victories. Secretary
Dray gnawed savagely at the butt of his pen.
‘I knows how ’twill be,’ he said. ‘Five men an’ a tail o’ boys—the ould
story! Tom here ’ull knock up his couple o’ score; and then ’twill be
hout, hout, hout, fer th’ rest o’ us i’ two hovers. An’ I can jest hear
they chalk-headed town chaps larfin’!’
It was a dismal picture. The fragrance went out of our tobacco, and no
man thought of his ale. The three canaries carolled so joyously in their
cages overhead, that I could have wrung their necks with all the pleasure
in life. Young Daniel stared straight into the eye of the setting sun
with the very face of disaster.
‘But ’tis th’ bawlin’,’ he went on. ‘Ne’er a change o’ bawlers, there’ll
be; an’ me an’ George Havers caan’t go on fer ever. Na, na! ’tis all
over agen, I tell ye! The boys ull ha’ their fun, an’ Windlecombe
another smashin’!’
He swept the club papers into his pocket, and rose to fill a pipe.
‘But mind ye!’ he added, looking grimly round on the company, ‘I’ll ha’
that there flitter-mouse grocer-chap’s wicket this time, or I’ll be— Ah!
you see if I doan’t, if I ha’ to throw at his ’ed!’
* * * * *
Long after night had fallen, and all the village was quiet under the dim
half-moon, I came out again upon the green, to wander and ruminate over
the week that had gone by. I bared my arm to the biceps, and even in
that disguising light I could see the sunburn dark upon it. Yawning and
stretching involuntarily, a delicious ache spread over me from top to
toe. The Seven Sisters loomed hard by, and I went and lay down at full
length on one of the seats, looking up through the black wilderness of
boughs at the flinching starshine, and watching the nightjars as they
wheeled and whirred above me through the scented dark.
They are a merry company, the nightjars. Perhaps there is no other sound
in Nature that comes nearer to pure mirth and jollity than this rhythmic,
spinning-wheel chorus of theirs. Up there, where the dense pine foliage
made a sort of black coast to the dark blue ocean of the summer night, a
whole nation of them was astir. They did not utter their peculiar note
when on the wing; but every moment or two one of the concourse came to
rest on a branch with a sudden snap, and forthwith set his spinning-jenny
blithely going.
There is another sound which you hear of summer evenings, often far into
the night, and which is nearly akin to that of the nightjar. I heard it
only a minute ago in one of the garden hedges as I came across the green.
But when the two songs occur together, there is no confusing them. They
are both continuous, mechanical sounds, and each is curiously varied in
tone, speed, and intensity. But while the nightjar’s music is a rich
full tremolo, uttered from some high point, generally the branch of a
tree, the grasshopper-warbler sings always close to earth. His note is
thinner, shriller, faster. If your fingers were as deft as his slender
throat, you could imitate the sound exactly by the rapid chinking
together of two threepenny-bits.