So many and minute were the directions I received about the way from
the blessed cowkeeper, and so little attention did I give them, my mind
being occupied with other things, that they were quickly forgotten.
Of half a hundred things I remembered only that I had to "bear to the
left." This I did, although it seemed useless, seeing that my way was
by lanes, across fields, and through plantations. At length I came to
a road, and as it happened to be on my left hand I followed it. It was
narrow, worn deep by traffic and rains; and grew deeper, rougher, and
more untrodden as I progressed, until it was like the dry bed of a
mountain torrent, and I walked on boulder-stones between steep banks
about fourteen feet high. Their sides were clothed with ferns, grass
and rank moss; their summits were thickly wooded, and the interlacing
branches of the trees above, mingled with long rope-like shoots of
bramble and briar, formed so close a roof that I seemed to be walking in
a dimly lighted tunnel. At length, thinking that I had kept long enough
to a road which had perhaps not been used for a century, also tired
of the monotony of always bearing to the left, I scrambled out on the
right-hand side. For some time past I had been ascending a low, broad,
flat-topped hill, and on forcing my way through the undergrowth into the
open I found myself on the level plateau, an unenclosed spot overgrown
with heather and scattered furze bushes, with clumps of fir and birch
trees. Before me and on either hand at this elevation a vast extent of
country was disclosed. The surface was everywhere broken, but there
was no break in the wonderful greenness, which the recent rain had
intensified. There is too much green, to my thinking, with too much
uniformity in its soft, bright tone, in South Devon. After gazing on
such a landscape the brown, harsh, scanty vegetation of the hilltop
seemed all the more grateful. The heath was an oasis and a refuge; I
rambled about in it until my feet and legs were wet; then I sat down to
let them dry and altogether spent several agreeable hours at that spot,
pleased at the thought that no human fellow-creature would intrude upon
me. Feathered companions were, however, not wanting. The crowing of cock
pheasants from the thicket beside the old road warned me that I was on
preserved grounds. Not too strictly preserved, however, for there was my
old friend the carrion-crow out foraging for his young. He dropped down
over the trees, swept past me, and was gone. At this season, in the
early summer, he may be easily distinguished, when flying, from his
relation the rook. When on the prowl the crow glides smoothly and
rapidly through the air, often changing his direction, now flying close
to the surface, anon mounting high, but oftenest keeping nearly on a
level with the tree tops. His gliding and curving motions are somewhat
like those of the herring-gull, but the wings in gliding are carried
stiff and straight, the tips of the long flight-feathers showing a
slight upward curve. But the greatest difference is in the way the
head is carried. The rook, like the heron and stork, carries his beak
pointing lance-like straight before him. He knows his destination, and
makes for it; he follows his nose, so to speak, turning neither to
the right nor the left. The foraging crow continually turns his head,
gull-like and harrier-like, from side to side, as if to search the
ground thoroughly or to concentrate his vision on some vaguely seen
object.
Not only the crow was there: a magpie chattered as I came from the
brake, but refused to show himself; and a little later a jay screamed at
me, as only a jay can. There are times when I am intensely in sympathy
with the feeling expressed in this ear-splitting sound, inarticulate
but human. It is at the same time warning and execration, the startled
solitary's outburst of uncontrolled rage at the abhorred sight of a
fellow-being in his woodland haunt.
Small birds were numerous at that spot, as if for them also its wildness
and infertility had an attraction. Tits, warblers, pipits, finches, all
were busy ranging from place to place, emitting their various notes now
from the tree-tops, then from near the ground; now close at hand, then
far off; each change in the height, distance, and position of the singer
giving the sound a different character, so that the effect produced was
one of infinite variety. Only the yellow-hammer remained constant in
one spot, in one position, and the song at each repetition was the same.
Nevertheless this bird is not so monotonous a singer as he is reputed.
A lover of open places, of commons and waste lands, with a bush or dwarf
tree for tower to sit upon, he is yet one of the most common species in
the thickly timbered country of the Otter, Clyst, and Sid, in which I
had been rambling, hearing him every day and all day long. Throughout
that district, where the fields are small, and the trees big and near
together, he has the cirl-bunting's habit of perching to sing on the
tops of high hedgerow elms and oaks.
By and by I had a better bird to listen to--a redstart. A female flew
down within fifteen yards of me; her mate followed and perched on a dry
twig, where he remained a long time for so shy and restless a creature.
He was in perfect plumage, and sitting there, motionless in the strong
sunlight, was wonderfully conspicuous, the gayest, most exotic-looking
bird of his family in England. Quitting his perch, he flew up into
a tree close by and began singing; and for half an hour thereafter I
continued intently listening to his brief strain, repeated at short
intervals--a song which I think has never been perfectly described.
"Practice makes perfect" is an axiom that does not apply to the art
of song in the bird world; since the redstart, a member of a highly
melodious family, with a good voice to start with, has never attained to
excellence in spite of much practising. The song is interesting both
on account of its exceptional inferiority and of its character. A
distinguished ornithologist has said that little birds have two ways of
making themselves attractive--by melody and by bright plumage; and that
most species excel in one or the other way; and that the acquisition of
gay colours by a species of a sober-coloured melodious family will
cause it to degenerate as a songster. He is speaking of the redstart.
Unfortunately for the rule there are too many exceptions. Thus confining
ourselves to a single family--that of the finches--in our own islands,
the most modest coloured have the least melody, while those that have
the gayest plumage are the best singers--the goldfinch, chaffinch,
siskin, and linnet. Nevertheless it is impossible to listen for any
length of time to the redstart, and to many redstarts, without feeling,
almost with irritation, that its strain is only the prelude of a song--a
promise never performed; that once upon a time in the remote past it
was a sweet, copious, and varied singer, and that only a fragment of its
melody now remains. The opening rapidly warbled notes are so charming
that the attention is instantly attracted by them. They are composed of
two sounds, both beautiful--the bright pure gushing robin-like note, and
the more tender expressive swallow-like note. And that is all; the song
scarcely begins before it ends, or collapses; for in most cases the pure
sweet opening strain is followed by a curious little farrago of gurgling
and squeaking sounds, and little fragments of varied notes, often so low
as to be audible only at a few yards' distance. It is curious that these
slight fragments of notes at the end vary in different individuals, in
strength and character and in number, from a single faintest squeal to
half a dozen or a dozen distinct sounds. In all cases they are emitted
with apparent effort, as if the bird strained its pipe in the vain
attempt to continue the song.
The statement that the redstart is a mimic is to be met with in many
books about birds. I rather think that in jerking out these various
little broken notes which end its strain, whether he only squeaks or
succeeds in producing a pure sound, he is striving to recover his own
lost song rather than to imitate the songs of other birds.
So much entertainment did I find at that spot, so grateful did it seem
in its openness after long confinement in the lower thickly wooded
country, that I practically spent the day there. At all events the best
time for walking was gone when I quitted it, and then I could think of
no better plan than to climb down into the old long untrodden road, or
channel, again just to see where it would lead me. After all, I said,
my time is my own, and to abandon the old way I have walked in so long
without discovering the end would be a mistake. So I went on in it once
more, and in about twenty minutes it came to an end before a group of
old farm buildings in a hollow in the woods. The space occupied by the
buildings was quite walled round and shut in by a dense growth of trees
and bushes; and there was no soul there and no domestic animal. The
place had apparently been vacant many years, and the buildings were in a
ruinous condition, with the roofs falling in.
Now when I look back on that walk I blame myself for having gone on my
way without trying to find out something of the history of that forsaken
home to which the lonely old road had led me. Those ruinous buildings
once inhabited, so wrapped round and hidden away by trees, have now a
strange look in memory as if they had a story to tell, as if something
intelligent had looked from the vacant windows as I stood staring at
them and had said, We have waited these many years for you to come and
listen to our story and you are come at last.
Something perhaps stirred in me in response to that greeting and
message, but I failed to understand it, and after standing there awhile,
oppressed by a sense of loneliness, I turned aside, and creeping and
pushing through a mass and tangle of vegetation went on my way towards
the coast.
Possibly that idea or fancy of a story to tell, a human tragedy, came to
me only because of another singular experience I had that day when the
afternoon sun had grown oppressively hot--another mystery of a desolate
but not in this case uninhabited house. The two places somehow became
associated together in my mind.
The place was a little farm-house standing some distance from the road,
in a lonely spot out of sight of any other habitation, and I thought I
would call and ask for a glass of milk, thinking that if things had
a promising look on my arrival my modest glass of milk would perhaps
expand to a sumptuous five-o'clock tea and my short rest to a long and
pleasant one.
The house I found on coming nearer was small and mean-looking and very
old; the farm buildings in a dilapidated condition, the thatch rotten
and riddled with holes in which many starlings and sparrows had their
nests. Gates and fences were broken down, and the ground was everywhere
overgrown with weeds and encumbered with old broken and rusty
implements, and littered with rubbish. No person could I see about the
place, but knew it was inhabited as there were some fowls walking about,
and some calves shut in a pen in one of the numerous buildings were
dolefully calling--calling to be fed. Seeing a door half open at one end
of the house I went to it and rapped on the warped paintless wood with
my stick, and after about a minute a young woman came from an inner room
and asked me what I wanted. She was not disturbed or surprised at my
sudden appearance there: her face was impassive, and her eyes when they
met mine appeared to look not at me but at something distant, and her
words were spoken mechanically.
I said that I was hot and thirsty and tired and would be glad of a glass
of milk.
Without a word she turned and left me standing there, and presently
returned with a tumbler of milk which she placed on a deal table
standing near me. To my remarks she replied in monosyllables, and stood
impassively, her hands at her side, her eyes cast down, waiting for me
to drink the milk and go. And when I had finished it and set the glass
down and thanked her, she turned in silence and went back to that inner
room from which she first came. And hot and tired as I had felt a few
moments before, and desirous of an interval of rest in the cool shade,
I was glad to be out in the burning sun once more, for the sight of that
young woman had chilled my blood and made the heat out-of-doors seem
grateful to me.
The sight of such a face in the midst of such surroundings had produced
a shock of surprise, for it was noble in shape, the features all fine
and the mouth most delicately chiselled, the eyes dark and beautiful,
and the hair of a raven blackness. But it was a colourless face, and
even the lips were pale. Strongest of all was the expression, which had
frozen there, and was like the look of one on whom some unimaginable
disaster or some hateful disillusionment had come, not to subdue nor
soften, but to change all its sweet to sour, and its natural warmth to
icy cold.