I
‘No mirth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member;
No warmth, no shine, no butterflies, no bees—
November!’
IT was the old vicar of Windlecombe who ironically quoted the lines, as
we went along our favourite path together—the path that runs between Arun
river and the woods.
The first frosts had come and gone, and left us in the midst of the usual
revolutions and surprises. In a single day, the ash-trees had cast their
whole weight of foliage to earth, green as in summer prime. Though as
yet not a single leaf had fallen from the other forest trees, all had
changed miraculously. The beech-woods looked like vast smouldering
fires. Every elm stood up clothed to its finger-tips in shreds of
gold-leaf. Here and there in the wood a dash of vivid scarlet showed
where a sycamore had been found and struck by the frost. Larch, willow,
maple, birch, each added to the glowing prospect its individual shade of
tawny brown, or drab, or yellow. We walked in a land where, for once,
the sunshine seemed a superfluous thing. To turn the eye away for a
little while from all that intolerable radiance, and rest it on the
oak-woods where alone a vestige of summer greenery endured, or on the
cool grey stems of the stripped ash-trees, was a pleasure I found myself
furtively snatching as we went along, although I left the sentiment
discreetly unexpressed. The old vicar stopped, removed his great white
panama, and mopped his forehead luxuriously.
‘No warmth, no shine!’ he repeated. ‘Now where in the world could the
poor soul have lived who wrote that? And no bees! Why, I can hear them
now—thousands of them!’
It was true enough, and with the bees were the November butterflies too,
if he could only have seen them. In a sunny corner by the path-side
stood an old pollard ash, its trunk rearing up out of the thicket high
over our heads, like a huge doubled fist thrust into a green gauntlet of
ivy. It was only one tree among innumerable others in the wood, and the
same stirring scene was enacting round each of them. Though with
everything else the season was autumn, for the ivy it was the heyday of
spring. The great tree above us was smothered in golden blossom, the
nectar glistening in the sunshine, a rich honey scent burdening the still
air. There were not only hive-bees and butterflies rioting at this, the
last outdoor feast of the year, but bumble-bees, wasps, drone-flies,
every other creature that could fly and had escaped the chills of the
November nights. The air was misty with the glint of their wings, and
full of a deep sweet song. As we passed along by the wood, we were
always either drawing into the zone of this ivy music or leaving it
behind us, and never once did it forsake our path all the morning
through.
We came at last to a spot where the woods fell back from the waterside,
and a stretch of wild, hillocky grassland, overgrown with brier and
bramble, bordered the stream. Between the willows that stood upon the
bank dipping their yellow autumn tresses in the flood, I could see the
placid breadth of the river, with its topsy-turvy vision of the glowing
hills beyond—hills that, by reason of the interlacing boughs above, were
directly invisible. A lark broke up almost from under our feet, and went
slanting aloft into the blue sky, singing as though it were April. The
Reverend put a hand upon my arm.
‘Well: what do you see?’ he asked. ‘Everything must be changed since we
were here last, and—’
‘I see,’ said I, rather disturbed, ‘a painter’s easel straddled in front
of your favourite creek—an easel with a three-legged stool before it, but
no painter. I see also, a little farther on, a big white umbrella, with
the top of a sombrero just showing above it, and a great cloud of tobacco
smoke drifting out of it, but here again no other sign of painter or man.
Shall we go back?’
But he was for pushing on. As we approached the umbrella, a throaty
tenor voice was uplifted to a weird foreign strain:—
‘En passant par Square Montholon,
La digue-digue donc! la digue-digue donc!
Je rencontre une jeune tendron!
La digue-digue—
‘Superb! _Su_-perb! If only I could excite myself to— Ah! if only that
tumultuous thrill, which I know always presages—
‘la digue-digue donc!
J’offre tout de suite ma main—ye
La brigue-donc-dain-ye—’
Or at least so the gibberish sounded. But now it suddenly left off. A
palette went rattling to the ground. The short squat figure of the owner
of the caravan burst into view.
‘Grewes! I cannot do it, I really cannot! I am not sufficiently inspired
to-day! I am not great enough! I— Oh! I beg your pardon! I thought it
was my friend’s step. Why! the water-bearer, to be sure! How do you
do?’
It was my first glimpse of Spelthorne by light of day, and I owned to
myself frankly that the night had been kind to him. A fringe of
yellow-grey hair escaped in all directions beyond the brim of his hat.
He had a florid, puffy, indeterminate face, eyes at once selfish and
sentimental, and a week-old beard still further ostracised a chin already
too retiring. Like his companion, he wore a gold watch-chain of heavy
calibre, with a bunch of seals and trinkets upon it; but his clothes,
that in the darkness had seemed much tattered and torn, now appeared
entirely disreputable. They were, moreover, covered with finger-marks of
paint, to which he was now adding, as he ceremoniously welcomed us.
‘Art—what is it?’ he cried, removing his hat, and running his fingers
through his hair, when presently, at his earnest invitation, the Reverend
had sat himself down before the easel, and was making a grave show of
inspecting the canvas on it. ‘And the artist—where is he?’ He made a
dramatic pause.
‘Where indeed?’ quoth the Reverend, grimly staring before him.
‘You see this picture?’—wagging a chrome-yellow thumb over the
canvas—‘nine-tenths of it are the work of one exalted day: the rest the
unilluminated toil of a week! Strange that we should be made so! At one
moment, like Prometheus, stealing the very fire from heaven, and at the
next— Ah! but only an artist can really comprehend!’
He filled his pipe, with a resigned, quiet sadness.
‘Now Grewes—that is my friend who is travelling with me—’ he went on;
‘Grewes, poor fellow, he never realises the difficulties in his path
because—because— Let me put it in the kindest way. Because—well, the
truth is, poor Grewes has mistaken his calling. No better fellow in the
world, you know! A hard plodder: always trying, always doing his best;
but—but— You see, that brings us back to what I said just now: art and
the artist—where will you find them? and what are they?’
A slight cough sounded in our rear. Looking round, I saw that the long
lean man had returned to his easel unmarked by any of us. The Reverend
got abruptly to his feet.
‘Well,’ said he, ‘you have a great responsibility. Supreme gifts in a
man mean that much will be required of him. So bend your back to it.
Good day!’
As we passed by the other easel, its owner looked up pleasantly, but his
brush kept busily to work.
‘Don’t go yet,’ he entreated, ‘I am so glad to— But you won’t mind, will
you, if I go on with— You see, I have not had very long at it this
morning. Spelthorne, he was getting so anxious about the stew, that I—I
had to run back to the caravan and— Or else he would have— It wouldn’t
have done, of course, to let him go himself. When once he has got into
the mood, the slightest little thing—’
He rambled on thus, scarcely ever finishing a sentence, and all the while
dabbing away industriously at his sketch. He, too, I had never yet
beheld in daylight; but, unlike his friend, sunshine rather improved his
appearance than otherwise. It could not fill up the gaps in his coat,
nor had it a lustrating effect upon his linen; yet it revealed in his
long, cadaverous face, and in his mild, sad eyes, a delicacy, a
sensibility, that I had not remarked in them before. As he talked, the
old vicar studied his voice attentively.
‘Spelthorne,’ he went on, in his curious, disjointed, breathless way,
‘Spelthorne, his work is so immeasurably— He has such a demand for it
that— And I am always so glad, of course, to do any little thing to save
him trouble. I—I really think no man in the world ever had a better
friend.’
The Reverend was standing close behind him now. He laid a hand gently on
Grewes’s dilapidated shoulder.
‘Don’t hurry,’ he said, ‘at least don’t hurry with your mind. Above all,
don’t worry: it is all coming beautifully. When did you see your doctor
last?’
The question, unexpected as it was by myself, seemed to surprise Grewes
infinitely more. The blood got up into two bright points in his cheeks.
His brushes rattled against his palette. He looked round at the old
vicar tremulously.
‘Doctor? Why, do you— What makes you think I— Oh! I am very well
indeed; never better.’
He stopped, looking up into the sightless, kindly blue eyes that appeared
to be as steadily gazing down into his. There was a moment’s silence.
And then, if I ever saw real untrammelled joy spring into a human face, I
saw it in his.
‘Do you really think so?’ he cried. ‘You think I— Well, sometimes
lately I have thought myself that—’
Spelthorne’s voice grumbled out from behind the umbrella.
‘Now, my dear Grewes, have I not frequently told you that, though I am
willing to lend you anything I have, I always expect—’
Grewes sprang to his feet.
‘It is his cadmium,’ he whispered, horrified. ‘I borrowed it, and never—
How very annoying for him!’
‘Now there is a strange thing,’ said the Reverend musingly, as we trudged
on our way together. ‘A man well on in a rapid decline, and neither
knowing nor caring about it; as glad, indeed, to hear the thing confirmed
as if some one had left him a legacy! A month, did you say? Then he may
never go out of Windlecombe by the road.’
We made a long day’s round, taking meadow, riverside, wood, and downland
in our walk, and reaching home again only when the lights were beginning
to star the misty combe; for we had a special object in our journey. To
the townsman it may well seem as fruitless a task to seek wild flowers in
November, as to go ‘gathering nuts in May.’ Well, here is a list of what
we found in one November day’s ramble about a single village in highland
Sussex—fifty-seven distinct species, and of many we could have gathered,
not single flowers, but whole handfuls, had we willed. Nor is the list
an exhaustive one either for the district or the time of year. Bringing
more eyesight, leisure, and diligence to the task, no doubt a fuller
inventory could be made in any mild season.—
Dandelion. Hawkweed. Strawberry.
Furze. Penny Cress. Teasel.
Red Dead-nettle. Hedge Mustard. Sun Spurge.
White Dead-nettle. Dwarf Spurge. Hedge Parsley.
Knapweed.
Mallow. Rock-rose.
Marguerite.
Harebell. Crane’s-bill.
Poppy.
Daisy. Heather.
Musk Thistle.
Hogweed. Betony.
Charlock.
Yarrow. Viper’s Bugloss.
Buttercup.
Sheepsbit. Burnet Saxifrage.
Red Clover.
Marjoram. Sow-thistle.
White Clover.
Cudweed. Wild Pansy.
Pimpernel.
Groundsel. Shepherd’s Purse.
Calamint.
Nipplewort. Nonsuch.
Blackberry.
Small Bindweed. Ivy.
Mayweed. Herb-Robert.
Chickweed.
Field Madder. Ragwort.
Veronica.
Sandwort. Silverweed.
White Campion. Persicary.
Red Campion. Mouse-ear.