Then a strange thing happened, which made it a sad and anxious home to the inmates for many long months, running to nigh on two years. They were fond of riding, and one afternoon when there was no visitor or any person to accompany them, the youngest girl said she would have her ride and ordered her horse to be brought from the paddock and saddled. Her elder sister, who was of a somewhat timid disposition, tried to dissuade her from riding out alone on the highway. She replied that she would just have one little gallop—a mile or so—and then come back. Her sister, still anxious, followed her out of the gate and said she would wait there for her return. Half a mile or so from the gate the horse, a high-spirited animal, took fright at something and bolted with its rider. The sister waiting and looking out saw them coming, the horse at a furious pace, the rider clinging for dear life to the pummel of the saddle. It flashed on her mind that unless the horse could be stopped before he came crashing through the gate her sister would be killed, and running out to a distance of thirty yards from the gate she jumped at the horse's head as it came rushing by and succeeded in grasping the reins, and holding fast to them she was dragged to within two or three yards of the gate, when the horse was brought to a standstill, whereupon her grasp relaxed and she fell to the ground in a dead faint.
She had done a marvellous thing—almost incredible. I have had horses bolt with me and have seen horses bolt with others many times; and every person who has seen such a thing and who knows a horse—its power and the blind mad terror it is seized with on occasions—will agree with me that it is only at the risk of his life that even a strong and agile man can attempt to stop a bolting horse. We all said that she had saved her sister's life and were lost in admiration of her deed, but presently it seemed that she would pay for it with her own life. She recovered from the faint, but from that day began a decline, until in about three months' time she appeared to me more like a ghost than a being of flesh and blood. She had not strength to cross the rooms—all her strength and life were dying out of her because of that one unnatural, almost supernatural, act. She passed the days lying on a couch, speaking, when obliged to speak, in a whisper, her eyes sunk, her face white even to the lips, seeming the whiter for the mass of loose raven-black hair in which it was set. There were few doctors, English and native, who were not first and last called into consultation over the case, and still no benefit, no return to life, but ever the slow drifting towards the end. And at the last consultation of all this happened. When it was over and the doctors were asked into a room where refreshments were placed for them, the father of the girl spoke aside to a young doctor, a stranger to him, and begged him to tell him truly if there was no hope. The other replied that he should not lose all hope if—then he paused, and when he spoke again it was to say, "I am, you see, a very young man, a beginner in the profession, with little experience, and hardly know why I am called here to consult with these older and wiser men; and naturally my small voice received but little attention."
By-and-by, when they had all gone except the family doctor, he informed the distracted parents that it was impossible to save their daughter's life. The father cried out that he would not lose all hope and would call in another man, whereupon old Dr. Wormwood seized his brass-headed cane and took himself off in a huff. The young stranger was then called in. The patient had been given arsenic with other drugs; he gave her arsenic only, increasing the doses enormously, until she was given as much in a day or two as would have killed a healthy person; with milk for only nourishment. As a result, in a week or so the decline was stayed, and in that condition, very near to dissolution, she continued some weeks, and then slowly, imperceptibly, began to mend. But so slow was the improvement that it went on for months before she was well. It was a complete recovery; she had got back all her old strength and joy in life, and went again for a ride every day with her sister.
Not very long afterwards both sisters were married, and my visits toCannon House ceased automatically.
Now the two White Houses are but a memory, revived for a brief period to vanish quickly again into oblivion, a something seen long ago and far away in another hemisphere; and they are like two white cliffs seen in passing from the ship at the beginning of its voyage—gazed at with a strange interest as I passed them, and as they receded from me, until they faded from sight in the distance.
He was of mixed breed, and was supposed to have a strain of Dandy Dinmont blood which gave him his name. A big ungainly animal with a rough shaggy coat of blue-grey hair and white on his neck and clumsy paws. He looked like a Sussex sheep-dog with legs reduced to half their proper length. He was, when I first knew him, getting old and increasingly deaf and dim of sight, otherwise in the best of health and spirits, or at all events very good-tempered.
Until I knew Dandy I had always supposed that the story of Ludlam's dog was pure invention, and I daresay that is the general opinion about it; but Dandy made me reconsider the subject, and eventually I came to believe that Ludlam's dog did exist once upon a time, centuries ago perhaps, and that if he had been the laziest dog in the world Dandy was not far behind him in that respect. It is true he did not lean his head against a wall to bark; he exhibited his laziness in other ways. He barked often, though never at strangers; he welcomed every visitor, even the tax-collector, with tail-waggings and a smile. He spent a good deal of his time in the large kitchen, where he had a sofa to sleep on, and when the two cats of the house wanted an hour's rest they would coil themselves up on Dandy's broad shaggy side, preferring that bed to cushion or rug. They were like a warm blanket over him, and it was a sort of mutual benefit society. After an hour's sleep Dandy would go out for a short constitutional as far as the neighbouring thoroughfare, where he would blunder against people, wag his tail to everybody, and then come back. He had six or eight or more outings each day, and, owing to doors and gates being closed and to his lazy disposition, he had much trouble in getting out and in. First he would sit down in the hall and bark, bark, bark, until some one would come to open the door for him, whereupon he would slowly waddle down the garden path, and if he found the gate closed he would again sit down and start barking. And the bark, bark would go on until some one came to let him out. But if after he had barked about twenty or thirty times no one came, he would deliberately open the gate himself, which he could do perfectly well, and let himself out. In twenty minutes or so he would be back at the gate and barking for admission once more, and finally, if no one paid any attention, letting himself in.
Dandy always had something to eat at mealtimes, but he too liked a snack between meals once or twice a day. The dog-biscuits were kept in an open box on the lower dresser shelf, so that he could get one "whenever he felt so disposed," but he didn't like the trouble this arrangement gave him, so he would sit down and start barking, and as he had a bark which was both deep and loud, after it had been repeated a dozen times at intervals of five seconds, any person who happened to be in or near the kitchen was glad to give him his biscuit for the sake of peace and quietness. If no one gave it him, he would then take it out himself and eat it.
Now it came to pass that during the last year of the war dog-biscuits, like many other articles of food for man and beast, grew scarce, and were finally not to be had at all. At all events, that was what happened in Dandy's town of Penzance. He missed his biscuits greatly and often reminded us of it by barking; then, lest we should think he was barking about something else, he would go and sniff and paw at the empty box. He perhaps thought it was pure forgetfulness on the part of those of the house who went every morning to do the marketing and had fallen into the habit of returning without any dog-biscuits in the basket. One day during that last winter of scarcity and anxiety I went to the kitchen and found the floor strewn all over with the fragments of Dandy's biscuit-box. Dandy himself had done it; he had dragged the box from its place out into the middle of the floor, and then deliberately set himself to bite and tear it into small pieces and scatter them about. He was caught at it just as he was finishing the job, and the kindly person who surprised him in the act suggested that the reason of his breaking up the box in that way that he got something of the biscuit flavour by biting the pieces. My own theory was that as the box was there to hold biscuits and now held none, he had come to regard it as useless—as having lost its function, so to speak—also that its presence there was an insult to his intelligence, a constant temptation to make a fool of himself by visiting it half a dozen times a day only to find it empty as usual. Better, then, to get rid of it altogether, and no doubt when he did it he put a little temper into the business!
Dandy, from the time I first knew him, was strictly teetotal, but in former and distant days he had been rather fond of his glass. If a person held up a glass of beer before him, I was told, he wagged his tail in joyful anticipation, and a little beer was always given him at mealtime. Then he had an experience, which, after a little hesitation, I have thought it best to relate, as it is perhaps the most curious incident in Dandy's somewhat uneventful life.
One day Dandy, who after the manner of his kind, had attached himself to the person who was always willing to take him out for a stroll, followed his friend to a neighbouring public-house, where the said friend had to discuss some business matter with the landlord. They went into the taproom, and Dandy, finding that the business was going to be a rather long affair, settled himself down to have a nap. Now it chanced that a barrel of beer which had just been broached had a leaky tap, and the landlord had set a basin on the floor to catch the waste. Dandy, waking from his nap and hearing the trickling sound, got up, and going to the basin quenched his thirst, after which he resumed his nap. By-and-by he woke again and had a second drink, and altogether he woke and had a drink five or six times; then, the business being concluded, they went out together, but no sooner were they in the fresh air than Dandy began to exhibit signs of inebriation. He swerved from side to side, colliding with the passers-by, and finally fell off the pavement into the swift stream of water which at that point runs in the gutter at one side of the street. Getting out of the water, he started again, trying to keep close to the wall to save himself from another ducking. People looked curiously at him, and by-and-by they began to ask what the matter was. "Is your dog going to have a fit—or what is it?" they asked. Dandy's friend said he didn't know; something was the matter no doubt, and he would take him home as quickly as possible and see to it.
When they finally got to the house Dandy staggered to his sofa, and succeeded in climbing on to it and, throwing himself on his cushion, went fast asleep, and slept on without a break until the following morning. Then he rose quite refreshed and appeared to have forgotten all about it; but that day when at dinner-time some one said "Dandy" and held up a glass of beer, instead of wagging his tail as usual he dropped it between his legs and turned away in evident disgust. And from that time onward he would never touch it with his tongue, and it was plain that when they tried to tempt him, setting beer before him and smilingly inviting him to drink, he knew they were mocking him, and before turning away he would emit a low growl and show his teeth. It was the one thing that put him out and would make him angry with his friends and life companions.
I should not have related this incident if Dandy had been alive. But he is no longer with us. He was old—half-way between fifteen and sixteen: it seemed as though he had waited to see the end of the war, since no sooner was the armistice proclaimed than he began to decline rapidly. Gone deaf and blind, he still insisted on taking several constitutionals every day, and would bark as usual at the gate, and if no one came to let him out or admit him, he would open it for himself as before. This went on till January, 1919, when some of the boys he knew were coming back to Penzance and to the house. Then he established himself on his sofa, and we knew that his end was near, for there he would sleep all day and all night, declining food. It is customary in this country to chloroform a dog and give him a dose of strychnine to "put him out of his misery." But it was not necessary in this case, as he was not in misery; not a groan did he ever emit, waking or sleeping; and if you put a hand on him he would look up and wag his tail just to let you know that it was well with him. And in his sleep he passed away—a perfect case of euthanasia—and was buried in the large garden near the second apple-tree.
At sunset, when the strong wind from the sea was beginning to feel cold, I stood on the top of the sandhill looking down at an old woman hurrying about over the low damp ground beneath—a bit of sea-flat divided from the sea by the ridge of sand; and I wondered at her, because her figure was that of a feeble old woman, yet she moved—I had almost said flitted—over that damp level ground in a surprisingly swift light manner, pausing at intervals to stoop and gather something from the surface. But I couldn't see her distinctly enough to satisfy myself: the sun was sinking below the horizon, and that dimness in the air and coldness in the wind at day's decline, when the year too was declining, made all objects look dim. Going down to her I found that she was old, with thin grey hair on an uncovered head, a lean dark face with regular features and grey eyes that were not old and looked steadily at mine, affecting me with a sudden mysterious sadness. For they were unsmiling eyes and themselves expressed an unutterable sadness, as it appeared to me at the first swift glance; or perhaps not that, as it presently seemed, but a shadowy something which sadness had left in them, when all pleasure and all interest in life forsook her, with all affections, and she no longer cherished either memories or hopes. This may be nothing but conjecture or fancy, but if she had been a visitor from another world she could not have seemed more strange to me.
I asked her what she was doing there so late in the day, and she answered in a quiet even voice which had a shadow in it too, that she was gathering samphire of that kind which grows on the flat saltings and has a dull green leek-like fleshy leaf. At this season, she informed me, it was fit for gathering to pickle and put by for use during the year. She carried a pail to put it in, and a table-knife in her hand to dig the plants up by the roots, and she also had an old sack in which she put every dry stick and chip of wood she came across. She added that she had gathered samphire at this same spot every August end for very many years.
I prolonged the conversation, questioning her and listening with affected interest to her mechanical answers, while trying to fathom those unsmiling, unearthly eyes that looked so steadily at mine.
And presently, as we talked, a babble of human voices reached our ears, and half turning we saw the crowd, or rather procession, of golfers coming from the golf-house by the links where they had been drinking tea. Ladies and gentlemen players, forty or more of them, following in a loose line, in couples and small groups, on their way to the Golfers' Hotel, a little further up the coast; a remarkably good-looking lot with well-fed happy faces, well-dressed and in a merry mood, all freely talking and laughing. Some were staying at the hotel, and for the others a score or so of motor-cars were standing before its gates to take them inland to their homes, or to houses where they were staying.
We suspended the conversation while they were passing us, within three yards of where we stood, and as they passed the story of the links where they had been amusing themselves since luncheon-time came into my mind. The land there was owned by an old, an ancient, family; they had occupied it, so it is said, since the Conquest; but the head of the house was now poor, having no house property in London, no coal mines in Wales, no income from any other source than the land, the twenty or thirty thousand acres let for farming. Even so he would not have been poor, strictly speaking, but for the sons, who preferred a life of pleasure in town, where they probably had private establishments of their own. At all events they kept race-horses, and had their cars, and lived in the best clubs, and year by year the patient old father was called upon to discharge their debts of honour. It was a painful position for so estimable a man to be placed in, and he was much pitied by his friends and neighbours, who regarded him as a worthy representative of the best and oldest family in the county. But he was compelled to do what he could to make both ends meet, and one of the little things he did was to establish golf-links over a mile or so of sand-hills, lying between the ancient coast village and the sea, and to build and run a Golfers' Hotel in order to attract visitors from all parts. In this way, incidentally, the villagers were cut off from their old direct way to the sea and deprived of those barren dunes, which were their open space and recreation ground and had stood them in the place of a common for long centuries. They were warned off and told that they must use a path to the beach which took them over half a mile from the village. And they had been very humble and obedient and had made no complaint. Indeed, the agent had assured them that they had every reason to be grateful to the overlord, since in return for that trivial inconvenience they had been put to they would have the golfers there, and there would be employment for some of the village boys as caddies. Nevertheless, I had discovered that they were not grateful but considered that an injustice had been done to them, and it rankled in their hearts.
I remembered all this while the golfers were streaming by, and wondered if this poor woman did not, like her fellow-villagers, cherish a secret bitterness against those who had deprived them of the use of the dunes where for generations they had been accustomed to walk or sit or lie on the loose yellow sands among the barren grasses, and had also cut off their direct way to the sea where they went daily in search of bits of firewood and whatever else the waves threw up which would be a help to them in their poor lives.
If it be so, I thought, some change will surely come into those unchanging eyes at the sight of all these merry, happy golfers on their way to their hotel and their cars and luxurious homes. But though I watched her face closely there was no change, no faintest trace of ill-feeling or feeling of any kind; only that same shadow which had been there was there still, and her fixed eyes were like those of a captive bird or animal, that gaze at us, yet seem not to see us but to look through and beyond us. And it was the same when they had all gone by and we finished our talk and I put money in her hand; she thanked me without a smile, in the same quiet even tone of voice in which she had replied to my question about the samphire.
I went up once more to the top of the ridge, and looking down saw her again as I had seen her at first, only dimmer, swiftly, lightly moving or flitting moth-like or ghost-like over the low flat salting, still gathering samphire in the cold wind, and the thought that came to me was that I was looking at and had been interviewing a being that was very like a ghost, or in any case a soul, a something which could not be described, like certain atmospheric effects in earth and water and sky which are ignored by the landscape painter. To protect himself he cultivates what is called the "sloth of the eye": he thrusts his fingers into his ears so to speak, not to hear that mocking voice that follows and mocks him with his miserable limitations. He who seeks to convey his impressions with a pen is almost as badly off: the most he can do in such instances as the one related, is to endeavour to convey the emotion evoked by what he has witnessed.
Let me then take the case of the man who has trained his eyes, or rather whose vision has unconsciously trained itself, to look at every face he meets, to find in most cases something, however little, of the person's inner life. Such a man could hardly walk the length of the Strand and Fleet-street or of Oxford-street without being startled at the sight of a face which haunts him with its tragedy, its mystery, the strange things it has half revealed. But it does not haunt him long; another arresting face follows, and then another, and the impressions all fade and vanish from the memory in a little while. But from time to time, at long intervals, once perhaps in a lustrum, he will encounter a face that will not cease to haunt him, whose vivid impression will not fade for years. It was a face and eyes of that kind which I met in the samphire gatherer on that cold evening; but the mystery of it is a mystery still.
Through the scattered village of Churt, in its deepest part, runs a clear stream, broad in places, where it spreads over the road-way and is so shallow that the big carthorses are scarce wetted above their fetlocks in crossing; in other parts narrow enough for a man to jump over, yet deep enough for the trout to hide in. And which is the prettiest one finds it hard to say—the wide splashy places where the cattle come to drink, and the real cow and the illusory inverted cow beneath it are to be seen touching their lips; or where the oaks and ashes and elms stretch and mingle their horizontal branches;—where there is a green leafy canopy above and its green reflection below with the glassy current midway between. On one side the stream is Surrey, on the other Hampshire. Where the two counties meet there is a vast extent of heath-land—brown desolate moors and hills so dark as to look almost black.
It is wild, and its wildness is of that kind which comes of a barren soil. It is a country best appreciated by those who, rich or poor, take life easily, who love all aspects of nature, all weathers, and above everything the liberty of wide horizons. To others the cry of "Back to the land" would have a somewhat dreary and mocking sound in such a place, like that curious cry, half laughter and half wail, which the peewit utters as he anxiously winnows the air with creaking wings above the pedestrian's head. But it is not all of this character. From some black hill-top one looks upon a green expanse, fresh and lively by contrast as the young leaves of deciduous trees in spring, with black again or dark brown of pine and heath beyond. It is the oasis where Churt is. The vivifying spirit of the wind at that height, and that vision of verdure beneath, produce an exhilarating effect on the mind. It is common knowledge that the devil once lived in or haunted these parts: now my hill-top fancy tells me that once upon a time a better being, a wandering angel, flew over the country, and looking down and seeing it so dark-hued and desolate, a compassionate impulse took him, and unclasping his light mantle he threw it down, so that the human inhabitants should not be without that sacred green colour that elsewhere beautifies the earth. There to this day it lies where it fell—a mantle of moist vivid green, powdered with silver and gold, embroidered with all floral hues; all reds from the faint blush on the petals of the briar-rose to the deep crimson of the red trifolium; and all yellows, and blues, and purples.
It was pleasant to return from a ramble over the rough heather to the shade of the green village lanes, to stand aside in some deep narrow road to make room for a farmer's waggon to pass, drawn by five or six ponderous horses; to meet the cows too, smelling of milk and new-mown hay, attended by the small cow-boy. One notices in most rural districts how stunted in growth many of the boys of the labourers are; here I was particularly struck by it on account of the fine physique of many of the young men. It is possible that the growing time may be later and more rapid here than in most places. Some of the young men are exceptionally tall, and there was a larger percentage of tall handsome women than I have seen in any village in Surrey and Hampshire. But the children were almost invariably too small for their years. The most stunted specimen was a little boy I met near Hindhead. He was thin, with a dry wizened face, and looked at the most about eight years old; he assured me that he was twelve. I engaged this gnome-like creature to carry something for me, and we had three or four miles ramble together. A curious couple we must have seemed—a giant and a pigmy, the pigmy looking considerably older than the giant. He was a heath-cutter's child, the eldest of seven children! They were very poor, but he could earn nothing himself, except by gathering whortleberries in their season; then he said, all seven of them turned out with their parents, the youngest in its mother's arms. I questioned him about the birds of the district; he stoutly maintained that he recognised only four, and proceeded to name them.
"Here is another," said I, "a fifth you didn't name, singing in the bushes half a dozen yards from where we stand—the best singer of all."
"I did name it," he returned, "that's a thrush."
It was a nightingale, a bird he did not know. But he knew a thrush—it was one of the four birds he knew, and he stuck to it that it was a thrush singing. Afterwards he pointed out the squalid-looking cottage he lived in. It was on the estate of a great lady.
"Tell me," I said, "is she much liked on the estate?"
He pondered the question for a few moments, then replied, "Some likes her and some don't," and not a word more would he say on that subject. A curious amalgam of stupidity and shrewdness; a bad observer of bird-life, but a cautious little person in answering leading questions; he was evidently growing up (or not doing so) in the wrong place.
Going out for a stroll in the evening, I came to a spot where two small cottages stood on one side of the road, and a large pond fringed with rushes and a coppice on the other. Just by the cottage five boys were amusing themselves by throwing stones at a mark, talking, laughing and shouting at their play. Not many yards from the noisy boys some fowls were picking about on the turf close to the pond; presently out of the rushes came a moorhen and joined them. It was in fine feather, very glossy, the brightest nuptial yellow and scarlet on beak and shield. It moved about, heedless of my presence and of the noisy stone-throwing boys, with that pretty dignity and unconcern which make it one of the most attractive birds. What a contrast its appearance and motions presented to those of the rough-hewn, ponderous fowls, among which it moved so daintily! I was about to say that he was "just like a modern gentleman" in the midst of a group of clodhoppers in rough old coats, hob-nailed boots, and wisps of straw round their corduroys, standing with clay pipes in their mouths, each with a pot of beer in his hand. Such a comparison would have been an insult to the moorhen. Nevertheless some ambitious young gentleman of aesthetic tastes might do worse than get himself up in this bird's livery. An open coat of olive-brown silk, with an oblique white band at the side; waistcoat or cummerbund, and knickerbockers, slaty grey; stockings and shoes of olive green; and, for a touch of bright colour, an orange and scarlet tie. It would be pleasant to meet him in Piccadilly. But he would never, never be able to get that quaint pretty carriage. The "Buzzard lope" and the crane's stately stride are imitable by man, but not the moorhen's gait. And what a mess of it our young gentleman would make in attempting at each step to throw up his coat tails in order to display conspicuously the white silk underlining!
While I watched the pretty creature, musing sadly the while on the ugliness of men's garments, a sudden storm of violent rasping screams burst from some holly bushes a few yards away. It proceeded from three excited jays, but whether they were girding at me, the shouting boys, or a skulking cat among the bushes, I could not make out.
When I finally left this curious company—noisy boys, great yellow feather-footed fowls, dainty moorhen and vociferous jays—it was late, but another amusing experience was in store for me. Leaving the village I went up the hill to the Devil's Jumps to see the sun set. The Devil, as I have said, was much about these parts in former times; his habits were quite familiar to the people, and his name became associated with some of the principal landmarks and features of the landscape. It was his custom to go up into these rocks, where, after drawing his long tail over his shoulder to have it out of his way, he would take one of his great flying leaps or jumps. On the opposite side of the village we have the Poor Devil's Bottom—a deep treacherous hole that cuts like a ravine through the moor, into which the unfortunate fellow once fell and broke several of his bones. A little further away, on Hindhead, we have the Devil's Punch Bowl, that huge basin-shaped hollow on the hill which has now become almost as famous as Flamborough Head or the Valley of Rocks.
At the Jumps a shower came on, and to escape a wetting I crept into a hole or hollow in the rude mass of black basaltic rock which stands like a fortress or ruined castle on the summit of the hill. When the shower was nearly over I heard the wing-beats and low guttural voice of a cuckoo; he did not see my crouching form in the hollow and settled on a projecting block of stone close to me—not three yards from my head. Presently he began to call, and it struck me as very curious that his voice did not sound louder or different in quality than when heard at a distance of forty or fifty yards. When he had finished calling and flown away I crept out of my hole and walked back over the wet heath, thinking now of the cuckoo and now of that half natural, half supernatural but not very sublime being who, as I have said, was formerly a haunter of these parts. This was a question that puzzled my mind. It is easy to say that legends of the Devil are common enough all over the land, and date back to old monkish times or to the beginning of Christianity, when the spiritual enemy was very much in man's thoughts; the curious thing is, that the devil associated in tradition with certain singular features in the landscape, as it is here in this Surrey village, and in a thousand other places, has little or no resemblance to the true and only Satan. He is at his greatest a sort of demi-god, or a semi-human being or monster of abnormal power and wildly eccentric habits, but not really bad. Thus, I was told by a native of Churt that when the Devil met with that serious accident which gave its name to the Poor Devil's Bottom, his painful cries and groans attracted the villagers, and they ministered to him, giving him food and drink and applying such remedies as they knew of to his hurts until he recovered and got out of the hole. Whether or not this legend has ever been recorded I cannot say; one is struck with its curious resemblance to some of the giant legends of the west of England. Near Devizes there is a deep impression in the earth about which a very different story is told: it is called the Devil's Jumps and is, I believe, supposed to be an entrance to his subterranean dwelling-place. He jumps down through that hole, the earth opens to receive him, and closes behind him. And it is (or was) believed that if any person will run three times round the hole the Devil will issue from it and start off in chase of a hare! Why he comes forth and chases a hare nobody knows.
It was only recently, when in Cornwall, the most legendary of the counties, that I found out who and what this rural village devil I had been thinking of really was. In Cornwall one finds many legends of the Devil, as many in fact as in Flintshire, where the Devil has left so many memorials on the downs, but they are few to those relating to the giants. These legends were collected by Robert Hunt, and first published over half a century ago in hisPopular Romances of the West of England, and he points out in this work that "devil" in most of the legends appears to be but another name for "giant," that in many cases the character of the being is practically the same. He believes that traditions of giants, which probably date back to prehistoric times, were once common all over the country, that they were always associated with certain impressive features in the landscape—grotesque hills, chasms and hollows in the downs and huge masses of rock; that the early teachers of Christianity, anxious to kill these traditions, or to blot out a false belief or superstition with the darker and more terrible image of a powerful being at war with man, taught that "giant" was but another name for Devil. If this is so, the teaching was not altogether good policy. The giants, it is true, were an awesome folk and flung immense rocks about in a reckless manner and did many other mad things; and there were some that were wholly bad, just as there are rogue elephants and as there are black sheep in the human flock, but they were not really bad as a rule, and certainly not too intelligent. Even little men with their cunning little brains could get the better of them. The result of such teaching could only be that the Devil would be regarded as not the unmitigated monster they had been told that he was, nor without human weaknesses and virtues. When we say now that he is not "as black as he is painted" we may be merely repeating what was being said by the common people of England in the days of St. Augustine and St. Colomb, and of the Irish missionaries in Cornwall.
"What is your nearest village?" I asked of a labourer I met on the road one bleak day in early spring, after a great frost: for I had walked far enough and was cold and tired, and it seemed to me that it would be well to find shelter for the night and a place to settle down in for a season.
"Burbage," he answered, pointing the way to it.
And when I came to it, and walked slowly and thoughtfully the entire length of its one long street or road, my sister said to me:
"Yet another old ancient village!" and then, with a slight tremor in her voice, "And you are going to stay in it!"
"Yes," I replied, in a tone of studied indifference: but as to whether it was ancient or not I could not say;—I had never heard its name before, and knew nothing about it: doubtless it was characteristic—"That weary word," she murmured.
—But it was neither strikingly picturesque, nor quaint, nor did I wish it were either one or the other, nor anything else attractive or remarkable, since I sought only for a quiet spot where my brain might think the thoughts and my hand do the work that occupied me. A village remote, rustic, commonplace, that would make no impression on my preoccupied mind and leave no lasting image, nor anything but a faint and fading memory.
Thus I pacified Psyche and kissed her,And tempted her out of her gloom—And conquered her scruples and gloom.
And fortune favoured her, all things conspiring to keep me content to walk in that path which I had so readily, so lightly, promised to keep: for the work to be done was bread and cheese to me, and in a sense to her, and had to be done, and there was nothing to distract attention.
It was quiet in my chosen cottage, in the low-ceilinged room where I usually sat: outside, the walls were covered with ivy which made it like a lonely lodge in a wood; and when I opened my small outward-opening latticed window there was no sound except the sighing of the wind in the old yew tree growing beside and against the wall, and at intervals the chirruping of a pair of sparrows that flew up from time to time from the road with long straws in their bills. They were building a nest beneath my window—possibly it was the first nest made that year in all this country.
All the day long it was quiet; and when, tired of work, I went out and away from the village across the wide vacant fields, there was nothing to attract the eye. The deadly frost which had held us for long weeks in its grip had gone, for it was now drawing to the end of March, but winter was still in the air and in the earth. Day after day a dull cloud was over all the sky and the wind blew cold from the north-east. The aspect of the country, as far as one could see in that level plain, was wintry and colourless. The hedges in that part are kept cut and trimmed so closely that they seemed less like hedges than mere faint greyish fences of brushwood, dividing field from field: they would not have afforded shelter to a hedge-sparrow. The trees were few and far apart—grey naked oaks, un-visited even by the tits that find their food in bark and twig; the wide fields between were bare and devoid of life of man or beast or bird. Ploughed and grass lands were equally desolate; for the grass was last year's, long dead and now of that neutral, faded, and palest of all pale dead colours in nature. It is not white nor yellow, and there is no name for it. Looking down when I walked in the fields the young spring grass could be seen thrusting up its blades among the old and dead, but at a distance of a few yards these delicate living green threads were invisible.
Coming back out of the bleak wind it always seemed strangely warm in the village street—it was like coming into a room in which a fire has been burning all day. So grateful did I find this warmth of the deep old sheltered road, so vocal too and full of life did it seem after the pallor and silence of the desolate world without, that I made it my favourite walk, measuring its length from end to end. Nor was it strange that at last, unconsciously, in spite of a preoccupied brain and of the assurance given that I would reside in the village, like a snail in its shell, without seeing it, an impression began to form and an influence to be felt.
Some vague speculations passed through my mind as to how old the village might be. I had heard some person remark that it had formerly been much more populous, that many of its people had from time to time drifted away to the towns; their old empty cottages pulled down and no new ones built. The road was deep and the cottages on either side stood six to eight or nine feet above it. Where a cottage stood close to the edge of the road and faced it, the door was reached by a flight of stone or brick steps; at such cottages the landing above the steps was like a balcony, where one could stand and look down upon a passing cart, or the daily long straggling procession of children going to or returning from the village school. I counted the steps that led up to my own front door and landing place and found there were ten: I took it that each step represented a century's wear of the road by hoof and wheel and human feet, and the conclusion was thus that the village was a thousand years old—probably it was over two thousand. A few centuries more or less did not seem to matter much; the subject did not interest me in the least, my passing thought about it was an idle straw showing which way the mental wind was blowing.
Albeit half-conscious of what that way was, I continued to assure Psyche—my sister—that all was going well: that if she would only keep quiet there would be no trouble, seeing that I knew my own weakness so well—a habit of dropping the thing I am doing because something more interesting always crops up. Here fortunately for us (and our bread and cheese) there was nothing interesting—ab-so-lute-ly.
But in the end, when the work was finished, the image that had been formed could no longer be thrust away and forgotten. It was there, an entity as well as an image—an intelligent masterful being who said to me not in words but very plainly:Try to ignore me and it will be worse for you: a secret want will continually disquiet you: recognize my existence and right to dwell in and possess your soul, as you dwell in mine, and there will be a pleasant union and peace between us.
To resist, to argue the matter like some miserable metaphysician would have been useless.
The persistent image was of the old deep road, the green bank on each side, on which stood thatched cottages, whitewashed or of the pale red of old weathered bricks; each with its plot of ground or garden with, in some cases, a few fruit trees. Here and there stood a large shade tree—oak or pine or yew; then a vacant space, succeeded by a hedge, gapped and ragged and bare, or of evergreen holly or yew, smoothly trimmed; then a ploughed field, and again cottages, looking up or down the road, or placed obliquely, or facing it: and looking at one cottage and its surrounding, there would perhaps be a water-butt standing beside it; a spade and fork leaning against the wall; a white cat sitting in the shelter idly regarding three or four fowls moving about at a distance of a few yards, their red feathers ruffled by the wind; further away a wood-pile; behind it a pigsty sheltered by bushes, and on the ground, among the dead weeds, a chopping-block, some broken bricks, little heaps of rusty iron, and other litter. Each plot had its own litter and objects and animals.
On the steeply sloping sides of the road the young grass was springing up everywhere among the old rubbish of dead grass and leaves and sticks and stems. More conspicuous than the grass blades, green as verdigris, were the arrow-shaped leaves of the arum or cuckoo-pint. But there were no flowers yet except the wild strawberry, and these so few and small that only the eager eyes of the little children, seeking for spring, might find them.
Nor was the village less attractive in its sounds than in the natural pleasing disorder of its aspect and the sheltering warmth of its street. In the fields and by the skimpy hedges perfect silence reigned; only the wind blowing in your face filled your ears with a rushing aerial sound like that which lives in a seashell. Coming back from this open bleak silent world, the village street seemed vocal with bird voices. For the birds, too, loved the shelter which had enabled them to live through that great frost; and they were now recovering their voices; and whenever the wind lulled and a gleam of sunshine fell from the grey sky, they were singing from end to end of the long street.
Listening to, and in some instances seeing the singers and counting them, I found that there were two thrushes, four blackbirds, several chaffinches and green finches, one pair of goldfinches, half-a-dozen linnets and three or four yellow-hammers; a sprinkling of hedge-sparrows, robins and wrens all along the street; and finally, one skylark from a field close by would rise and sing at a considerable height directly above the road. Gazing up at the lark and putting myself in his place, the village beneath with its one long street appeared as a vari-coloured band lying across the pale earth. There were dark and bright spots, lines and streaks, of yew and holly, red or white cottage walls and pale yellow thatch; and the plots and gardens were like large reticulated mottlings. Each had its centre of human life with life of bird and beast, and the centres were in touch with one another, connected like a row of children linked together by their hands; all together forming one organism, instinct with one life, moved by one mind, like a many-coloured serpent lying at rest, extended at full length upon the ground.
I imagined the case of a cottager at one end of the village occupied in chopping up a tough piece of wood or stump and accidentally letting fall his heavy sharp axe on to his foot, inflicting a grievous wound. The tidings of the accident would fly from mouth to mouth to the other extremity of the village, a mile distant; not only would every individual quickly know of it, but have at the same time a vivid mental image of his fellow villager at the moment of his misadventure, the sharp glittering axe falling on to his foot, the red blood flowing from the wound; and he would at the same time feel the wound in his own foot, and the shock to his system.
In like manner all thoughts and feelings would pass freely from one to another, although not necessarily communicated by speech; and all would be participants in virtue of that sympathy and solidarity uniting the members of a small isolated community. No one would be capable of a thought or emotion which would seem strange to the others. The temper, the mood, the outlook, of the individual and the village would be the same.
I remember that something once occurred in a village where I was staying, which was in a way important to the villagers, although it gave them nothing and took nothing from them: it excited them without being a question of politics, or of "morality," to use the word in its narrow popular sense. I spoke first to a woman of the village about it, and was not a little surprised at the view she took of the matter, for to me this seemed unreasonable; but I soon found that all the villagers took this same unreasonable view, their indignation, pity and other emotions excited being all expended as it seemed to me in the wrong direction. The woman had, in fact, merely spoken the mind of the village.
Owing to this close intimacy and family character of the village which continues from generation to generation, there must be under all differences on the surface a close mental likeness hardly to be realised by those who live in populous centres; a union between mind and mind corresponding to that reticulation as it appeared to me, of plot with plot and with all they contained. It is perhaps equally hard to realise that this one mind of a particular village is individual, wholly its own, unlike that of any other village, near or far. For one village differs from another; and the village is in a sense a body, and this body and the mind that inhabits it, act and react on one another, and there is between them a correspondence and harmony, although it may be but a rude harmony.
It is probable that we that are country born and bred are affected in more ways and more profoundly than we know by our surroundings. The nature of the soil we live on, the absence or presence of running water, of hills, rocks, woods, open spaces; every feature in the landscape, the vegetative and animal life—everything in fact that we see, hear, smell and feel, enters not into the body only, but the soul, and helps to shape and colour it. Equally important in its action on us are the conditions created by man himself:—situation, size, form and the arrangements of the houses in the village; its traditions, customs and social life.
On that airymiradorwhich I occupied under (not in) the clouds, after surveying the village beneath me I turned my sight abroad and saw, near and far, many many other villages; and there was no other exactly like Burbage nor any two really alike.
Each had its individual character. To mention only two that were nearest—East Grafton and Easton, or Easton Royal. The first, small ancient rustic-looking place: a large green, park-like shaded by well-grown oak, elm, beech, and ash trees; a small slow stream of water winding through it: round this pleasant shaded and watered space the low-roofed thatched cottages, each cottage in its own garden, its porch and walls overgrown with ivy and creepers. Thus, instead of a straight line like Burbage it formed a circle, and every cottage opened on to the tree-shaded village green; and this green was like a great common room where the villagers meet, where the children play, where lovers whisper their secrets, where the aged and weary take their rest, and all subjects of interest are daily discussed. If a blackcap or chaffinch sung in one of the trees the strain could be heard in every cottage in the circle. All hear and see the same things, and think and feel the same.
The neighbouring village was neither line, nor circle, but a cluster of cottages. Or rather a group of clusters, so placed that a dozen or more housewives could stand at their respective doors, very nearly facing one another, and confabulate without greatly raising their voices. Outside, all round, the wide open country—grass and tilled land and hedges and hedgerow elms—is spread out before them. And in sight of all the cottages, rising a little above them, stands the hoary ancient church with giant old elm-trees growing near it, their branches laden with rooks' nests, the air full of the continuous noise of the wrangling birds, as they fly round and round, and go and come bringing sticks all day, one to add to the high airy city, the other to drop as an offering to the earth-god beneath, in whose deep-buried breast the old trees have their roots.
But the other villages that cannot be named were in scores and hundreds, scattered all over Wiltshire, for the entire county was visible from that altitude, and not Wiltshire only but Somerset, and Berkshire and Hampshire, and all the adjoining counties, and finally, the prospect still widening, all England from rocky Land's End to the Cheviots and the wide windy moors sprinkled over with grey stone villages. Thousands and thousands of villages; but I could only see a few distinctly—not more than about two hundred, the others from their great distance—not in space but time—appearing but vaguely as spots of colour on the earth. Then, fixing my attention on those that were most clearly seen, I found myself in thought loitering in them, revisiting cottages and conversing with old people and children I knew; and recalling old and remembered scenes and talks, I smiled and by-and-by burst out laughing.
It was then, when I laughed, that visions, dreams, memories, were put to flight, for my wise sister was studying my face, and now, putting her hand on mine, she said, "Listen!" And I listened, sadly, since I could guess what was coming.
"I know," she said, "just what is at the back of your mind, and all these innumerable villages you are amusing yourself by revisiting, is but a beginning, a preliminary canter. For not only is it the idea of the village and the mental colour in which it dyes its children's mind which fades never, however far they may go, though it may be to die at last in remote lands and seas—"
Here I interrupted, "O yes! Do you remember a poet's lines to the little bourne in his childhood's home? A poet in that land where poetry is a rare plant—I mean Scotland. I mean the lines:
How men that niver have kenned aboot itCan lieve their after lives withoot itI canna tell, for day and nichtIt comes unca'd for to my sicht."
"Yes," she replied, smiling sadly, and then, mocking my bad Scotch, "and do ye ken that ither one, a native too of that country where, as you say, poetry is a rare plant; that great wanderer over many lands and seas, seeker after summer everlasting, who died thousands of miles from home in a tropical island, and was borne to his grave on a mountain top by the dark-skinned barbarous islanders, weeping and lamenting their dead Tusitala, and the lines he wrote—do you remember?
Be it granted to me to behold you again in dying,Hills of my home! and to hear again the call—Hear about the graves of the martyrs, the pee-wees crying,And hear no more at all!"
"Oh, I was foolish to quote those lines on a Scotch burn to you, knowing how you would take such a thing up! For you are the very soul of sadness—a sadness that is like a cruelty—and for all your love, my sister, you would have killed me with your sadness had I not refused to listen so many many times!"
"No! No! No! Listen now to what I had to say without interrupting me again: All this about the villages, viewed from up there where the lark sings, is but a preliminary—a little play to deceive yourself and me. For, all the time you are thinking of other things, serious and some exceedingly sad—of those who live not in villages but in dreadful cities, who are like motherless men who have never known a mother's love and have never had a home on earth. And you are like one who has come upon a cornfield, ripe for the harvest with you alone to reap it. And viewing it you pluck an ear of corn, and rub the grains out in the palm of your hand, and toss them up, laughing and playing with them like a child, pretending you are thinking of nothing, yet all the time thinking—thinking of the task before you. And presently you will take to the reaping and reap until the sun goes down, to begin again at sunrise to toil and sweat again until evening. Then, lifting your bent body with pain and difficulty, you will look to see how little you have done, and that the field has widened and now stretches away before you to the far horizon. And in despair you will cast the sickle away and abandon the task."
"What then, O wise sister, would you have me do?"
"Leave it now, and save yourself this fresh disaster and suffering."
"So be it! I cannot but remember that there have been many disasters—more than can be counted on the fingers of my two hands—which I would have saved myself if I had listened when I turned a deaf ear to you. But tell me, do you mind just a little more innocent play on my part—just a little picture of, say, one of the villages viewed a while ago from under the cloud—or perhaps two?"
And Psyche, my sister, having wonherpoint and pacified me, and conquered my scruples and gloom, and seeing me now submissive, smiled a gracious consent.
One afternoon when cycling among the limestone hills of Derbyshire I came to an unlovely dreary-looking little village named Chilmorton. It was an exceptionally hot June day and I was consumed with thirst: never had I wanted tea so badly. Small gritstone-built houses and cottages of a somewhat sordid aspect stood on either side of the street, but there was no shop of any kind and not a living creature could I see. It was like a village of the dead or sleeping. At the top of the street I came to the church standing in the middle of its church yard with the public-house for nearest neighbour. Here there was life. Going in I found it the most squalid and evil-smelling village pub I had ever entered. Half a dozen grimy-looking labourers were drinking at the bar, and the landlord was like them in appearance, with his dirty shirt-front open to give his patrons a view of his hairy sweating chest. I asked him to get me tea. "Tea!" he shouted, staring at me as if I had insulted him; "There's no tea here!" A little frightened at his aggressive manner I then meekly asked for soda-water, which he gave me, and it was warm and tasted like a decoction of mouldy straw. After taking a sip and paying for it I went to look at the church, which I was astonished to find open.
It was a relief to be in that cool, twilight, not unbeautiful interior after my day in the burning sun.
After resting and taking a look round I became interested in watching and listening to the talk of two other visitors who had come in before me. One was a slim, rather lean brown-skinned woman, still young but with the incipient crow's-feet, the lines on the forehead, the dusty-looking dark hair, and other signs of time and toil which almost invariably appear in the country labourer's wife before she attains to middle age. She was dressed in a black gown, presumably her best although it was getting a little rusty. Her companion was a fat, red-cheeked young girl in a towny costume, a straw hat decorated with bright flowers and ribbons, and a string of big coloured beads about her neck.
In a few minutes they went out, and when going by me I had a good look at the woman's face, for it was turned towards me with an eager questioning look in her dark eyes and a very friendly smile on her lips. What was the attraction I suddenly found in that sunburnt face?—what did it say to me or remind me of?—what did it suggest?
I followed them out to where they were standing talking among the gravestones, and sitting down on a tomb near them spoke to the woman. She responded readily enough, apparently pleased to have some one to talk to, and pretty soon began to tell me the history of their lives. She told me that Chilmorton was her native place, but that she had been absent from it many many years. She knew just how many years because her child was only six months old when she left and was now fourteen though she looked more. She was such a big girl! Then her man took them to his native place in Staffordshire, where they had lived ever since. But their girl didn't live with them now. An aunt, a sister of her husband, had taken her to the town where she lived, and was having her taught at a private school. As soon as she left school her aunt hoped to get her a place in a draper's shop. For a long time past she had wanted to show her daughter her native place, but had never been able to manage it because it was so far to come and they didn't have much money to spend; but now at last she had brought her and was showing her everything.
Glancing at the girl who stood listening but with no sign of interest in her face, I remarked that her daughter would perhaps hardly think the journey had been worth taking.
"Why do you say that?" she quickly demanded.
"Oh well," I replied, "because Chilmorton can't have much to interest a girl living in a town." Then I foolishly went on to say what I thought of Chilmorton. The musty taste of that warm soda-water was still in my mouth and made me use some pretty strong words.
At that she flared up and desired me to know that in spite of what I thought it Chilmorton was the sweetest, dearest village in England; that she was born there and hoped to be buried in its churchyard where her parents were lying, and her grandparents and many others of her family. She was thirty-six years old now, she said, and would perhaps live to be an old woman, but it would make her miserable for all the rest of her life if she thought she would have to lie in the earth at a distance from Chilmorton.
During this speech I began to think of the soft reply it would now be necessary for me to make, when, having finished speaking, she called sharply to her daughter, "Come, we've others to see yet," and, followed by the girl, walked briskly away without so much as a good-bye, or even a glance!
Oh you poor foolish woman, thought I; why take it to heart like that! and I was sorry and laughed a little as I went back down the street. It was beginning to wake up now! A man in his shirt sleeves and without a hat, a big angry man, was furiously hunting a rebellious pig all round a small field adjoining a cottage, trying to corner it; he swore and shouted, and out of the cottage came a frowsy-looking girl in a ragged gown with her hair hanging all over her face, to help him with the pig. A little further on I caught sight of yet another human being, a tall gaunt old woman in cap and shawl, who came out of a cottage and moved feebly towards a pile of faggots a few yards from the door. Just as she got to the pile I passed, and she slowly turned and gazed at me out of her dim old eyes. Her wrinkled face was the colour of ashes and was like the face of a corpse, still bearing on it the marks of suffering endured for many miserable years. And these three were the only inhabitants I saw on my way down the street.
At the end of the village the street broadened to a clean white road with high ancient hedgerow elms on either side, their upper branches meeting and forming a green canopy over it. As soon as I got to the trees I stopped and dismounted to enjoy the delightful sensation the shade produced: there out of its power I could best appreciate the sun shining in splendour on the wide green hilly earth and in the green translucent foliage above my head. In the upper branches a blackbird was trolling out his music in his usual careless leisurely manner; when I stopped under it the singing was suspended for half a minute or so, then resumed, but in a lower key, which made it seem softer, sweeter, inexpressibly beautiful.
There are beautiful moments in our converse with nature when all the avenues by which nature comes to our souls seem one, when hearing and seeing and smelling and feeling are one sense, when the sweet sound that falls from a bird, is but the blue of heaven, the green of earth, and the golden sunshine made audible.
Such a moment was mine, as I stood under the elms listening to the blackbird. And looking back up the village street I thought of the woman in the churchyard, her sun-parched eager face, her questioning eyes and friendly smile: what was the secret of its attraction?—what did that face say to me or remind me of?—what did it suggest?
Now it was plain enough. She was still a child at heart, in spite of those marks of time and toil on her countenance, still full of wonder and delight at this wonderful world of Chilmorton set amidst its limestone hills, under the wide blue sky—this poor squalid little village where I couldn't get a cup of tea!
It was the child surviving in her which had attracted and puzzled me; it does not often shine through the dulling veil of years so brightly. And as she now appeared to me as a child in heart I could picture her as a child in years, in her little cotton frock and thin bare legs, a sunburnt little girl of eight, with the wide-eyed, eager, half-shy, half-trustful look, asking you, as the child ever asks, what you think?—what you feel? It was a wonderful world, and the world was the village, its streets of gritstone houses, the people living in them, the comedies and tragedies of their lives and deaths, and burials in the churchyard with grass and flowers to grow over them by-and-by. And the church;—I think its interior must have seemed vaster, more beautiful and sublime to her wondering little soul than the greatest cathedral can be to us. I think that our admiration for the loveliest blooms—the orchids and roses and chrysanthemums at our great annual shows—is a poor languid feeling compared to what she experienced at the sight of any common flower of the field. Best of all perhaps were the elms at the village end, those mighty rough-barked trees that had their tops "so close against the sky." And I think that when a blackbird chanced to sing in the upper branches it was as if some angelic being had dropped down out of the sky into that green translucent cloud of leaves, and seeing the child's eager face looking up had sung a little song of his own celestial country to please her.
The apple has not come to its perfection this season until the middle of May; even here, in this west country, the very home of the spirit of the apple tree! Now it is, or seems, all the more beautiful because of its lateness, and of an April of snow and sleet and east winds, the bitter feeling of which is hardly yet out of our blood. If I could recover the images of all the flowering apple trees I have ever looked delightedly at, adding those pictured by poets and painters, including that one beneath which Fiammetta is standing, forever, with that fresh glad face almost too beautiful for earth, looking out as from pink and white clouds of the multitudinous blossoms—if I could see all that, I could not find a match for one of the trees of to-day. It is like nothing in earth, unless we say that, indescribable in its loveliness, it is like all other sights in nature which wake in us a sense of the supernatural.
Undoubtedly the apple trees seem more beautiful to us than all other blossoming trees, in all lands we have visited, just because it is so common, so universal—I mean in this west country—so familiar a sight to everyone from infancy, on which account it has more associations of a tender and beautiful kind than the others. For however beautiful it may be intrinsically, the greatest share of the charm is due to the memories that have come to be part of and one with it—the forgotten memories they may be called. For they mostly refer to a far period in our lives, to our early years, to days and events that were happy and sad. The events themselves have faded from the mind, but they registered an emotion, cumulative in its effect, which endures and revives from time to time and is that indefinable feeling, that tender melancholy and "divine despair," and those idle tears of which the poet says, "I know not what they mean," which gather to the eyes at the sight of happy autumn fields and of all lovely natural sights familiar from of old.
To-day, however, looking at the apple blooms, I find the most beautifying associations and memories not in a far-off past, but in visionary apple trees seen no longer ago than last autumn!
And this is how it comes about. In this red and green country of Devon I am apt to meet with adventures quite unlike those experienced in other counties, only they are mostly adventures of the spirit.
Lying awake at six o'clock last October, in Exeter, and seeing it was a grey misty morning, my inclination was to sleep again. I only dozed and was in the twilight condition when the mind is occupied with idle images and is now in the waking world, now in dreamland. A thought of the rivers in the red and green country floated through my brain—of the Clyst among others; then of the villages on the Clyst; of Broadclyst, Clyst St. Mary, Clyst St. Lawrence, finally of Clyst Hyden; and although dozing I half laughed to remember how I went searching for that same village last May and how I wouldn't ask my way of anyone, just because it was Clyst Hyden, because the name of that little hidden rustic village had been written in the hearts of some who had passed away long ago, far far from home:—how then could I fail to find it?—it would draw my feet like a magnet!
I remembered how I searched among deep lanes, beyond rows and rows of ancient hedgerow elms, and how I found its little church and thatched cottages at last, covered with ivy and roses and creepers, all in a white and pink cloud of apple blossoms. Searching for it had been great fun and finding it a delightful experience; why not have the pleasure once more now that it was May again and the apple orchards in blossom? No sooner had I asked myself the question than I was on my bicycle among those same deep lanes, with the unkept hedges and the great hedgerow elms shutting out a view of the country, searching once more for the village of Clyst Hyden. And as on the former occasion, years ago it seemed, I would not enquire my way of anyone. I had found it then for myself and was determined to do so again, although I had set out with the vaguest idea as to the right direction.
But hours went by and I could not find it, and now it was growing late. Through a gap in the hedge I saw the great red globe of the sun quite near the horizon, and immediately after seeing it I was in a narrow road with a green border, which stretched away straight before me further than I could see. Then the thatched cottages of a village came into sight; all were on one side of the road, and the setting sun flamed through the trees had kindled road and trees and cottages to a shining golden flame.
"This is it!" I cried. "This is my little lost village found again, and it is well I found it so late in the day, for now it looks less like even the loveliest old village in Devon than one in fairyland, or in Beulah."
When I came near it that sunset splendour did not pass off and it was indeed like no earthly village; then people came out from the houses to gaze at me, and they too were like people glorified with the sunset light and their faces shone as they advanced hurriedly to meet me, pointing with their hands and talking and laughing excitedly as if my arrival among them had been an event of great importance. In a moment they surrounded and crowded round me, and sitting still among them looking from radiant face to face I at length found my speech and exclaimed, "O how beautiful!"
Then a girl pressed forward from among the others, and putting up her hand she placed it on my temple, the fingers resting on my forehead; and gazing with a strange earnestness in my eyes she said: "Beautiful?—only that! Do you see nothing more?"
I answered, looking back into her eyes: "Yes—I think there is something more but I don't know what it is. Does it come from you—your eyes—your voice, all this that is passing in my mind?"
"What is passing in your mind?" she asked.
"I don't know. Thoughts—perhaps memories: hundreds, thousands—they come and go like lightning so that I can't arrest them—not even one!"
She laughed, and the laugh was like her eyes and her voice and the touch of her hand on my temples.
Was it sad or glad? I don't know, but it was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard, yet it seemed familiar and stirred me in the strangest way.
"Let me think," I said.
"Yes, think!" they all together cried laughingly; and then instantly when I cast my eyes down there was a perfect stillness as if they were all holding their breath and watching me.
That sudden strange stillness startled me: I lifted my eyes and they were gone—the radiant beautiful people who had surrounded and interrogated me, and with them their shining golden village, had all vanished. There was no village, no deep green lanes and pink and white clouds of apple blossoms, and it was not May, it was late October and I was lying in bed in Exeter seeing through the window the red and grey roofs and chimneys and pale misty white sky.