I
AUGUST holiday-makers in Windlecombe are mainly of the normal, obvious
kind, the people for whom guide-books and picture postcards are produced,
and by whom the job-masters and the boat proprietors gain a livelihood.
But September brings to the village a wandering crew of an altogether
different complexion. There is something about the temperate sunshine
and general slowing up and sweetening of life during this month, that
draws from their hiding-nooks in the city suburbs a class of man and
woman for whom I have long entertained the profoundest respect. With
every year, as soon as September comes round, I find myself looking out
for these stray, for the most part solitary, folk, and, in quite a
humble, unpretentious spirit, taking them beneath my avuncular wing.
That they seek the quiet of an inland village in September, and not the
feverish, belated distractions of the seaside town, is an initial point
in their favour. But almost invariably they bring with them a much more
subtle recommendation. They are down for a holiday, but they have come
entirely without premeditation. Suddenly yielding to a sort of migratory
impulse, they have locked up dusty chambers, or left small shops to the
care of wives, or begged a few precious days from niggardly employers;
and come away on a spate of emotional longing for country quiet and
greenery, irresistible this time, though generally the impulse has been
felt and resisted every autumn for twenty years back. Indeed, there must
be some specially fatal quality about this period of time, for I
constantly hear the same story—no holiday taken for twenty years.
At noon to-day, after a long tramp through the fields, I came up the
village street, and paused irresolutely outside the Three Thatchers Inn.
The morning had been hot, and the walk tiring; moreover, it was the first
of September, and the guns had been popping distressfully in all the
coverts by the way. I knew that before sundown a brace or two of
partridges would be certain to find their road to my door; but this did
not prove, and never has proved, compensation for the flurry and
disturbance carried by the noise of the guns into all my favourite
conning-places, or arenas for quiet thought. The whole world of wild
life was in a panic, and I with it.
The red-ochred doorstep of the inn glowed in the sunshine at my feet, and
from the cool darkness beyond came a chink of glasses and murmur of many
tongues. It all seemed eminently consolatory for the moment’s mood.
Within there, no one would fire a gun off at my ear, nor stalk past me
with a shoulder-load of limp, sanguinary spoil, nor warn me out of my
favourite coppices with a finger to the lip, as though a nation of babies
slumbered within. I was a lost man even before I began to hesitate. I
stood my stout furze walking-stick in the porch beside a drover’s staff,
a shepherd’s crook, and three or four undenominational cudgels; and
plunged down the two steps into the bar.
Now, before my eyes had accustomed themselves to the subdued light, and I
could see what company was about me, I had become aware of a strange
odour in the air. It was the scent of a tobacco, happily unknown in
Windlecombe: neither wholly Latakia nor Turkish, not honeydew alone nor
red Virginia, cavendish nor returns, but a curious internecine blend of
all these. I knew it at once to be something for which I have a
constitutional loathing—one of the new town mixtures, wherein are
confused and mutually stultified all the good smoking-weeds in the world.
Looking more narrowly about me, after the usual greetings, I discovered a
vast and elaborate meerschaum pipe in the corner, and behind it a little
diffident smiling man. But this could not entirely account for the
overpowering exotic reek in the room. I missed the familiar smell of our
own good Windlecombe shag, although there were half a dozen other pipes
in full blast round me. And then I realised the situation. The stranger
had seduced all the company to his pestilent combination; and now, as I
lowered at him through the haze, he was holding out his pouch even to me,
who would not have touched his garbage if it had been the last pipe-fill
left on earth. But he took my curt, almost surly refusal as if it were
an intended kindness.
‘Ah! you do not smoke? Well: it does seem a kind of insult to the pure
country air. But in towns, you know, what with the din and the dust, and
the strain on one’s nerves, everybody— And of course I must not quarrel
with my bread-and-butter!’
I produced my own pipe and pouch, and filled brutally under his very
nose. Serenely he watched the operation, and without a trace of offence.
‘I am in the trade, as I was telling these gentlemen here when you came
in. Do you know the Walworth Road, in London? My shop is just behind
the Elephant, and any day you are passing, I— But wasn’t I glad to get
away, if only for the few hours! And I do assure you, sir, I haven’t
been out of London for nearly—nearly—’
‘Twenty years, I suppose?’
He looked at me in placid surprise.
‘Lor’, how did you know that now? But it is quite true. Being
single-handed, you see, it isn’t easy to— But I was glad, I tell you!
And I had never seen a real country village in my life, until I got out
of the train at Stavisham and walked on here. Isn’t it quiet! And how
funny it seems—no asphalt-paving, and no wires running all ways over the
house-tops, and the singing-birds all loose in the trees! And flowers!
I suppose there is a law to prevent people picking ’em: there were no end
along by the road I came.’
Somehow my heart warmed to this inconsiderable by-product of civilisation
that had strayed amongst us; and presently, as much to my own surprise as
his, I found myself loitering down the hill again, with him at my elbow,
having promised to show him that there were other flowers in the country
beside the dust-throttled daisies and dandelions of the roadside.
We took the path that runs between the river and the wood. He soon let
his pipe go out, for he moved in open-mouthed wonder all the way, which
rendered smoking impracticable. At last we came to a bend in the river,
where the bank sloped gently down to the water-side covered with all the
rich-hued September growths, and we sat down to rest. I did not plague
him with the names of things, nor with any talk at all; but lay, for the
most part silently, watching the effect of the place upon him, as one
might study the demeanour of a dormouse let loose amidst the like
surroundings, straight from Ratcliff Highway.
He took off coat and hat, and sat quite still for awhile with legs drawn
up, and his chin upon his knees. But presently he fell to wandering
about like a child, ducking his pallid bald head over each flower as he
came to it, but keeping his itching fingers resolutely clasped behind his
back. It was a brave show, even for this brave time of year. Though
other months afford perhaps a greater variety in colour and kind, Nature
in early autumn seems more forceful and impressive because she
concentrates her energies into the dealing of the one blow, the urging of
the one appeal upon the colour sense. It was the Purple Month. Look
where we would, the same royal colour filled the sunshine. Purple
loosestrife edged the river, and purple knapweed, thistles, heather,
purple thyme and willowherb and climbing vetch hemmed us in on every
side. Paler of hue, yet still of the same regal dye, the wild mint and
cranesbill, marjoram and calamint, crowded upon one another; and close to
the water’s edge, the Michaelmas daisies were already in full
flower—under both banks the soil was tinged with their pure cool lilac,
mirrored again yet more faintly in the drowsy water below.
For half an hour, perhaps, the little tobacconist wandered up and down
this enchanted place; and then he came back to me, treading on tiptoe,
hushed, and solemn-eyed, as if he were in church.
‘You live hereabouts?’ he asked, in a voice little above a whisper, ‘all
the year round, don’t you? And nothing to do but just put on a hat
whenever you want to come here, and in ten minutes here you are! Nothing
to pay, and no trouble. Oh, my stars!’
‘And it is not always the same, you know. I pass this way nearly every
week, and there is always something different. The flowers change with
every month. You hear different birds singing, according to the season.
The leaves on the trees come and go, and the sky shows you a new picture
every time you look at it. Even the river changes. It is the top of the
tide now: that log, floating out there, has not moved a dozen feet in the
last five minutes. But in an hour’s time the water will be driving down
swift and strong, and all the reeds and rushes, that now stand up quite
straight and still in the sunshine, will bending and trembling in the
flow.’
‘Ah!’ He crowded a perfectly bewildering variety of emotions into the
breathed monosyllable. ‘Is that a nightingale singing over there?’
‘No; you are too late for nightingales: they have done singing these two
months and more. That is a robin. The robins have just begun to sing
again after their summer silence; and when that happens, you know the
summer is almost done.’
He sat now mute at my side for so long, that at last I must steal a
glance at him. I saw him brush a hand hastily across his eyes.
‘I—I am glad I came, of course,’ said he, musing, ‘but—but I have been
the worst kind of fool all the same. Just think of going back there
to-night! Lor’! just think of it! Yesterday morning I watered the
geraniums in the window-boxes, and gave the canary his seed; and, says I,
“Here’s singing-birds and flowers, as good as any you’ll get in the
country!” Then I went to the shop door, and saw a cart full of straw
going by, and another of green cabbages for Boro’ Market. “Lor’!” I
says, “the country comes on wheels to your very door in London! London
for me!” And now I’ll never get that feeling back again, no, never! The
very worst kind of fool, I _don’t_ think!’
Close by us there grew a great tuft of valerian. As he sat staring
tragically at its disc of deep red blossom, butterflies came to it with
every moment, sipped awhile, then passed on. Painted ladies, red
admirals, little tortoiseshells always in twos or threes; finally a
peacock butterfly sailed over to the valerian and settled there, her rich
colours aflare in the sunshine. She spread out her great vanes, the
upper covering the lower. Then she gently slid her upper wings forward,
and gradually the wonderful spots on the lower wings appeared, like a
pair of slowly opening, drowsy, violet eyes. The little tobacconist
breathed hard.
‘I can see it all clear enough,’ he said tremulously. ‘A man gets a real
chance here. Come worry, come sickness, come bad luck, come anything you
like—all you have got to do is to open your eyes and ears, and off it
goes like the bundle of sins in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ book. But in
London—’ He stopped short; then, in a tone of deep, despairing disgust,
‘Geraniums!—Canaries!—Cartloads of cabbages! bah!’
I had not found myself confronted by so difficult a proposition for many
a long day. If only the Reverend had been there! But there was nothing
for it but to try a joust with the situation alone.
‘Depend upon it,’ said I, ‘if coming amongst the beautiful natural things
of the world has made you despise the mean, ugly, necessary parts of your
life, then you have been a fool indeed—one of the worst kind. But are
you really the sort of fool you think? And have you not overstated both
cases alike? In neither town nor country is there all of good, or all of
evil. There are plenty of geraniums and cabbages in Windlecombe,
and—alas!—canaries. And in London there is plenty of beauty, if you look
for it with the right eyes.’
‘Beauty?—in London?’ he repeated incredulously.
‘Yes, truly; and the people who see it, and enjoy it most, are just those
people who have the deepest knowledge of, and love for, the natural
things of the country-side. Now, shall I tell you what sort of a fool
you really are?’
He thought a moment, eyeing me in some perplexity. ‘Well—yes,’ said he
at last, ‘if it isn’t too much trouble.’
‘It is a lot of trouble, and I am not sure I can do it. But I will try.
Did you ever hear of the saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to
be wise?”’
‘No: I can’t say that I ever—’
‘Well, you have fallen right into that trap. You have given yourself
twenty years of that kind of bliss, and now you have got to pay for it.
But what was it made you start off this morning in such a hurry to get to
the country, when only yesterday you were quite content with your
window-boxes and your screeching yellow gewgaw?’
He considered a little, then blushed to his eyes.
‘It was an old book,’ he said mysteriously, looking round apparently to
make certain we were alone, ‘nothing but an old book on a bookstall. I
picked it up just out of curiosity as I went by last night, and there
were some dried flowers in it—dog-roses, I think. And then I looked up
and saw the moon shining very small and bright high up in the sky; and it
came over me that though she kept one eye dutifully on the Walworth Road,
with the other eye she might well be looking down on the country lane
where those roses grew years ago. And thinks I, all of a creep, like,
Why can’t a man look two ways at once; and if he must give one eye to
business, why can’t he give the other to just what he likes? And then
I—’
‘And then you certainly left off being the kind of fool I mean—left off
for ever. Well: that saves us both a lot of trouble, for we are both
wrong about your case, it seems. You need not fear to go home to-night.
You will find those geraniums as fresh and sweet as the valerian there,
and just as populous of butterflies. And the canary—you will hear in his
song every morning the notes of all the wild birds that have sung to you
to-day. And when next a wagonload of straw goes by your shop, it will
not be mere straw, but a field of wheat under the country sunshine: the
sound of the wind in the Walworth telephone wires will be for you only
the rustle of wind in the corn. That is what I meant by London beauty.’