How fast time flies you can never truly estimate until you go step and
step with it through the summer woods and fields. In a sense,
town-life—where there is so much of permanence in environment—puts a drag
on time, and not seldom pulls it up altogether. Moreover, in towns time
is estimated by events, by experiences. You hear a great musician, see a
great play, look on at some magnificent pageant, or are shocked by some
catastrophe; and straightway there is half a lifetime of emotion thrust
between two strokes of the clock. By so much in very truth your life has
been lengthened; for it is the intensity of living that counts in the
civic tale of years. If you find an old man not only declaring that he
has lived long, but believing it, it is a great chance but he tells you
so in the close-clipped cockney tongue of the town.
And yet it is better to live in some far-away country nook like
Windlecombe, and be reminded with every gliding summer hour that time
flies and life is short, if only because of the undoubted fact that such
a frame of mind carries a belief in eternal youth as a necessary
implication. Between life’s dawn and the dusk of its western sky, there
is literally no time to grow old in a natural, aboriginal environment.
So inextricably interwoven are the threads of human existence and that of
the green world round about, that the annual rejuvenation of the one
infallibly communicates itself to the other. With every spring we start
life afresh. Though we may live to threescore years and ten, we are
children still; and come upon death at last like an unexpected gust at a
corner, old age unrealised to the very end.
In the weeks that are closing now, I have heard and seen more of the
galloping hoofs of this swift, high-stepping jade, summer, than is good
for entire peace of mind. Years ago I made a vow that I would never
again eke out the fleeting golden days, like a miser to whom spending is
not pleasure but only pain. I vowed that I would always squander time at
this season; let it drift by unthinkingly; get my fill of sunshine, and
fill and fill again to my heart’s content; yet do it as a strayed heifer
in the corn, wantoning over an acre to each mouthful. But this time, as
ever, the good resolution has been forgotten. The old parsimony has
dogged the way at every step. I must be up with the sun in the small
hours of each morning, fearful of losing a single beam from the millions.
To waste in sleep the blue, spangled summer nights, when all the
country-side is resonant of life and fragrant with the scent that comes
only with the darkness, has seemed like sacrilege. Yet, for all my
industry, July is nearing its end, and I know that I have drunk but a
drop or two out of its vast ocean. And already I have renewed the old
vow, to be disregarded as ever, doubtless, when July again comes round.
On all the high-lying corn lands now, harvest has begun; and the fields
in the valley are fast taking on that deep tinge of gipsy-gold which is
the sign of full maturity. Scarce had the shrill note of the
mowing-machine stilled in the meadows, when the deeper voice of the
reaper-and-binder began on the hill. All day long I sat in this cool
quiet nook of a study, and the steady jarring sound came over to me from
the hillside, filling the little room. I saw the machine with its pair
of grey horses, waiting at the field-gate, while the scythe-men cut a way
for it into the amber wall of the grain. Steadily hour after hour it
worked round the field, until at last, looking forth towards noon, I saw
that only a small triangular piece remained uncut in the middle of the
field.
Now there were a score or so of the farm folk waiting hard by, each armed
with a cudgel; and with them seemingly every dog in the village. As the
machine went round, every time making the patch of standing corn smaller,
I could see rabbits bolting in all directions from the diminishing cover;
and there uprose continually a hubbub of voices from dogs and men.
Towards the end, the stubble became alive with the little dark scurrying
forms, fleeing to the surrounding fields, the most of them escaping
harmlessly for want of pursuers. But even then, as I afterwards learned,
some eight or nine dozen were killed.
I have always kept away from these harvest battues, as indeed from all
scenes of sport and congregations of sportsmen. I am willing enough to
profit by these activities, and receive and enjoy my full share of the
furred and feathered spoil admittedly without one humanitarian qualm.
But this much confessed, I would gladly welcome the day when everywhere,
save in the rabbit warrens, the sound of the sporting gun should cease
throughout this southern land. Rabbits must be kept down to the end of
time; but, for the creatures that require preservation, too great a price
is paid, and paid by the wrong class. It is not the owner of
game-preserves who bears the main cost of his thunderous pleasuring. It
is the lover of wild life, who sees the hawks and owls and small deer of
the woodlands growing scarcer with every year; and the children who, in
the springtime, are cheated out of their right to wander through the
primrose glades.
To many this may seem a wearisomely trite point of view, affecting a
grievance as old as the hills, and even less likely of obliteration. But
though the point of view is ancient enough, the grievance is no longer
so. Of late years the ranks of village dwellers have been very largely
reinforced from the classes who care little for sport and a great deal
for all other allurements of the country-side. Rural England is no
longer peopled by sportsmen and the dependents of sportsmen; but, slowly
and surely, a majority is creeping up in the villages, composed of men
and women both knowing and loving Nature, and to whom the old-time local
policy of endurance under deprivation of rights for expediency’s sake, is
an incomprehensible, as well as an intolerable thing. All the
vast-winged, beautiful marauders of the air that I love to watch, are
ruthlessly shot down by the gamekeepers on a suspicion presumptive and
unproved; but the fox that, in a single night, massacres every bird in
the villager’s hen-roost, must go scatheless because poor profit may not
be set before rich pastime.
One day, almost the hottest so far, I was out in the meadows, and came
upon a curious thing. The path, or rather green lane, ran between high
hedges. On either hand there was a great field of flowering crops, the
one red clover, the other sainfoin. There must have been twenty or
thirty acres of each stretching away under the tense still air and light,
much of a colour, but the sainfoin of a softer, purer pink. Both fields
seemed alike attractive to the bees; but while, to the right, the
sainfoin gave out a mighty note of organ music, the red clover on my left
was utterly silent. Looking through a gap in the foliage, I could not
see there a single butterfly or bee. The truth, of course, was that the
nectar in the trumpet-petals of the clover was too far down for the
honey-bee to reach; nor would even the bumble-bees trouble about it, with
a whole province of sainfoin hard by, over-brimming with choicer, more
attainable sweets.
As I wandered along, between these great zones of sound and silence, the
air seemed to grow hotter and more oppressive with every moment. There
was something uncanny in the stillness of all around me. The green
sprays in the tops of the highest elms lay against the blue sky sharp and
clear, as though enamelled upon it. Not a bird sang in the woodland.
Save for the deep throbbing melody from the sainfoin, all the world lay
dumb and stupefied under the noontide glare. And then, chancing to turn
and look southward, I saw the cause of it. A storm was coming up. Close
down on the horizon lay a bank of cloud like a solid billow of ink. It
was driving up at incredible speed. Though not a leaf or grass blade
stirred around me, the cloud seemed tossed and torn in a whirlwind’s
grip. Every moment it lifted higher towards the sun, changing its shape
incessantly, black fold upon fold rolling together, colliding, giving
place to others blacker still. And flying in advance of all this, borne
by a still swifter air-current, were long sombre streamers of cloud rent
into every conceivable shape of torn and tattered rags.
And now, as the dense cloud-pack got up, the brilliant light was blotted
out at a stroke, and this startling thing happened. Every bee,
apparently, at work in the vast field of sainfoin, spread her wings at
the ominous signal, and raced for home. They swept over my head in
numbers that literally darkened the sky. Again, literally, the sound of
their going was like a continuous deep syren-note, striking point-blank
in the ear. For a minute at most it endured, and then died away almost
as suddenly as it came. A bleak ghostly light paled on everything around
me. Little cat’s paws of wind flung through the torpid air. Afar the
harsh voice of the oncoming tempest sounded. Slow hot gouts of water
began to fall, and every moment the inky pall of cloud lit up with an
internal fire.
At first, as I made off homeward in the track of the vanished bee-army, I
tried to emulate their speed. But the torrent came surging and crying up
in my rear, and in a dozen yards I was waterlogged. Thereafter, going
leisurely, I came at last into the village, and so to the house. And
here, in spite of the deluge, I must stop and look on at more wonders.
It seemed almost impossible for any bird to sustain itself on wings under
such a cataract. But there above me the martins were at their old
incessant gambols, circling and darting about, hither and thither, high
and low, in a whirling madcap crew; and higher still, right in the throat
of the tempest, I could make out the swifts, hundreds strong, weaving
their old mazy pattern on the sky, as though in the pearl and opal dusk
of a summer’s evening.
THE TEA-GARDEN
AUGUST
I
OLD Runridge’s misadventure in wedlock has proved a trouble to more
people than one in Windlecombe. In former years, though boating parties
from the town were continually to be seen on the river, when the August
holiday season began, they seldom pulled up at our ferry stairs. From
the waterside the village had a somewhat inhospitable look, while a mile
farther on there were the North Woods, Stavisham’s traditional picnicking
ground, where, at the gamekeeper’s cottage, all were sure of a welcome.
Such wandering holiday-makers as found their way into Windlecombe came
usually by road, and were of the tranquil, undemonstrative breed, like
pedestrians all the world over. There would seem to be something about
sitting long hours in a rowing-boat which is detrimental, even debasing,
to a certain common variety of human nature. The tendency to run and
shout and skylark on reaching dry ground again appears to be irresistible
to this numerous class. And it is at Mrs. Runridge’s door that we must
lay the blame of submitting Windlecombe to a pestilent innovation.
‘Look ye!’ said the old ferryman from his seat in the boat, waving a
scornful hand towards his garden, as I chanced along the river bank one
fine Saturday afternoon. ‘’Twur me as painted un, an’ me as putt un up,
jest fer peace’s sake; but I’d ha’ taken an’ chucked un in th’ river if
I’d only ha’ knowed what sort o’ peace ’ud come on ’t!’
A great white board reared itself on ungainly legs above the elder-hedge
of the garden, and on it, in huge irregular characters, appeared the
single word, ‘TEAS.’ By the side of the ferry-punt half a dozen town
rowing-boats lay moored. And from the green depths of the garden there
arose a confusion of voices, shrill laughter, and an incessant clatter of
crockery. I had hardly realised what it all meant, when Mrs. Runridge
showed a vast white apron and a hot perspiring face in the gateway. She
bore down upon us with upraised hand, as though she intended bodily harm
to one or both.
‘Here, Joe!’ cried she, giving the old ferryman a coin. ‘Change fer half
a suvverrin, an’ shaarp ’s th’ wured! Try th’ Thatchers, or Mist.
Weaverly, or belike— Doan’t sit starin’ there, looney! Dear, oh Lor!
was there ever sech a man! An’ us all run purty nigh off our legses, we
be!’
‘Th’ seventh time,’ gasped Runridge, as we hurried together up the steep
street, ‘or like as not th’ eighth—I dunno! An’ ut bean’t as though ’a
warnted money. Money?—th’ bed bean’t fit fer Christian folk to sleep on,
wi’ th’ lumps in ’t! An’ to-morrer ull be wuss, if ’tis fine. Lor’ send
a hearthquake, or Noah’s flood, or summat!’
When a naturally silent man attempts self-commiseration in words, his
case is sure to be a desperate one. But we are all fated to share in his
trouble now. On any fine Saturday or Sunday in the month, Runridge will
be a familiar figure, hunting down from door to door the change that, in
villages, is so scanty and so hard to discover. On Mondays we shall all
suffer from our foolish kindness in allowing this reckless exportation of
bullion. Only Susan Angel at the sweetstuff shop, and her small
customers, will be unincommoded; for the handful of battered farthings
that has served them as currency during whole decades past will be
necessarily saved by its insignificance, and will remain, no doubt, in
the village for service amidst generations yet unborn.
But disturbing visitors to Windlecombe do not all come by the river.
There is an iniquitous job-master in Stavisham who has long had the
village in his evil eye; and at intervals, fortunately rare, he descends
upon us with charabancs drawn by three horses, and filled with
heterogeneous human gleanings—the flotsam and jetsam of holiday-land
strayed for the day into Stavisham from contiguous seaside towns.
They come in families, in amorous couples, in collective friendships of
each sex and every number and age. They bring baskets of provisions,
cameras, balls wherewith to play rounders on the green; and of musical
instruments many weird kinds—concertinas, mouth-organs, babies, and often
yapping terriers that set all our own dogs frantic on their chains. An
altruist, whose convictions have grown up amidst the quiet slow
neighbourliness of the country, never finds his principles less easy of
application than when he must atune himself to the holiday moods of
people escaped from the town. There is no harm in all the shouting and
laughter and fatuous horseplay. Inebriety is practically extinct among
those who make summer the season, and the country the scene, of their
year’s brief merry-making. And yet it all seems mistaken, reprehensible,
on the same principle that a blunder is worse than a crime. It is futile
to tell him so, unless he already knows it, and then it is equally
unnecessary; but when the day-tripper learns to enjoy himself on the
green country-side in the true spirit for which the sun was made to shine
and the flowers to grow, he will have found the Philosopher’s Stone that
is to change, not mere lead and iron, but Time and Life themselves into
gold.
On most mornings in August the more careful of us will go about thrusting
greasy paper-scraps out of sight under bushes, flicking the incongruous
yellow of banana-peel into obscure corners, lamenting stripped boughs,
and marvelling at nosegays thrown heedlessly away, as if the joy of them
had lain in the mere plucking. But all the strange folk that use the
village for their pleasuring at this time, do not leave these unlovely
tokens behind them. Only yesterday, as I sat on the edge of the old
worked-out, riverside chalk-pit here—whence you have a view north and
south of the glittering water for miles—there came a new sound in the
air, and I must throw aside my sheaf of galley-proofs to listen. The
sound came from the river, and was still afar off. Many voices were
joined in singing one of the old catch-songs, which go round a circle of
three or four phrases, and to which there is never an end until you make
an end of its beginning in slow time.
The sweet medley grew louder and clearer, and presently there was united
to it the rhythmic plash of oars. A great tarry old sea-boat came round
the water’s bend, holding a party of a dozen or so. At last the
labouring craft and the music came to a halt together, and the singers
clambered ashore. I should have forgotten all about them now, for they
soon passed out of sight amid the waterside foliage. But as I was coming
homeward up the village street, I heard the voices again; and there,
under the Seven Sisters on the green, the little company were standing
together, singing apparently for their own solace and delight. It was a
strange thing, here in unemotional England, and many of the village folk
had been drawn wonderingly to their doors. Yet the singers did not seem
to remark this, nor to regard their action as anything out of the common.
For, the song finished, they broke into several parties and sauntered on,
talking quietly amongst themselves as if to make music were part of the
daily conversation of their lives.
All that afternoon, from the quiet of my garden, I heard the voices at
intervals, and from different points about the village, near and far.
Once I saw the party right on the top of Windle Hill, strolling about in
twos and threes, looking like foraging crows on the heights. After a
while I saw them get together in a little circle; and then, right at the
ear’s-tip, I could just catch the higher notes of their singing—a strange
wild song, much like the song of the larks that must be contending with
them up there against the blue sky.
The last I saw of this mysterious company was at sunset, from my perch
over the chalk-pit again. They had already embarked when I arrived, and
had got their little ship well under way. The oars were dipping steadily
to the same old catch-song that had brought them hither: there was still
a faint throbbing echo of ‘White Sand and Grey Sand’ upon the air long
after the sun had plunged, and the pale half-moon was beginning to enter
a timid silver protest against the lingering crimson in the sky.