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.
Health and pleasure resorts and all parasitic towns in fact, inland or on the sea, have no attractions for me and I was more than satisfied with a day or two of Sidmouth. Then one evening I heard for the first time of a place called Branscomb—a village near the sea, over by Beer and Seaton, near the mouth of the Axe, and the account my old host gave me seemed so attractive that on the following day I set out to find it. Further information about the unknown village came to me in a very agreeable way in the course of my tramp. A hotter walk I never walked—no, not even when travelling across a flat sunburnt treeless plain, nearer than Devon by many degrees to the equator. One wonders why that part of Devon which lies between the Exe and the Axe seems actually hotter than other regions which undoubtedly have a higher temperature. After some hours of walking with not a little of uphill and downhill, I began to find the heat well-nigh intolerable. I was on a hard dusty glaring road, shut in by dusty hedges on either side. Not a breath of air was stirring; not a bird sang; on the vast sky not a cloud appeared. If the vertical sun had poured down water instead of light and heat on me my clothing could not have clung to me more uncomfortably. Coming at length to a group of two or three small cottages at the roadside, I went into one and asked for something to quench my thirst—cider or milk. There was only water to be had, but it was good to drink, and the woman of the cottage was so pretty and pleasant that I was glad to rest an hour and talk with her in her cool kitchen. There are English counties where it would perhaps be said of such a woman that she was one in a thousand; but the Devonians are a comely race. In that blessed county the prettiest peasants are not all diligently gathered with the dew on them and sent away to supply the London flower-market. Among the best-looking women of the peasant class there are two distinct types—the rich in colour and the colourless. A majority are perhaps intermediate, but the two extreme types may be found in any village or hamlet; and when seen side by side—the lily and the rose, not to say the peony—they offer a strange and beautiful contrast.
This woman, in spite of the burning climate, was white as any pale town lady; and although she was the mother of several children, the face was extremely youthful in appearance; it seemed indeed almost girlish in its delicacy and innocent expression when she looked up at me with her blue eyes shaded by her white sun-bonnet. The children were five or six in number, ranging from a boy of ten to a baby in her arms—all clean and healthy looking, with bright, fun-loving faces.
I mentioned that I was on my way to Branscombe, and inquired the distance.
"Branscomb—are you going there? Oh, I wonder what you will think of Branscombe!" she exclaimed, her white cheeks flushing, her innocent eyes sparkling with excitement.
What was Branscombe to her, I returned with indifference; and what did it matter what any stranger thought of it?
"But it is my home!" she answered, looking hurt at my careless words. "I was born there, and married there, and have always lived at Branscombe with my people until my husband got work in this place; then we had to leave home and come and live in this cottage."
And as I began to show interest she went on to tell me that Branscombe was, oh, such a dear, queer, funny old place! That she had been to other villages and towns—Axmouth, and Seaton, and Beer, and to Salcombe Regis and Sidmouth, and once to Exeter; but never, never had she seen a place like Branscombe—not one that she liked half so well. How strange that I had never been there—had never even heard of it! People that went there sometimes laughed at it at first, because it was such a funny, tumbledown old place; but they always said afterwards that there was no sweeter spot on the earth.
Her enthusiasm was very delightful; and, when baby cried, in the excitement of talk she opened her breast and fed it before me. A pretty sight! But for the pure white, blue-veined skin she might have been taken for a woman of Spain—the most natural, perhaps the most lovable, of the daughters of earth. But all at once she remembered that I was a stranger, and with a blush turned aside and covered her fair skin. Her shame, too, like her first simple unconscious action, was natural; for we live in a cooler climate, and are accustomed to more clothing than the Spanish; and our closer covering "has entered the soul," as the late Professor Kitchen Parker would have said; and that which was only becoming modesty in the English woman would in the Spanish seem rank prudishness.
In the afternoon I came to a slender stream, clear and swift, running between the hills that rose, round and large and high, on either hand, like vast downs, some grassy, others wooded. This was the Branscombe, and, following it, I came to the village; then, for a short mile my way ran by a winding path with the babbling stream below me on one side, and on the other the widely separated groups and little rows of thatched cottages.
Finally, I came to the last and largest group of all, the end of the village nearest to the sea, within ten minutes' walk of the shingly beach. Here I was glad to rest. Above, on the giant downs, were stony waste places, and heather and gorse, where the rabbits live, and had for neighbours the adder, linnet, and wheatear, and the small grey titlark that soared up and dropped back to earth all day to his tinkling little tune. On the summit of the cliff I had everything I wanted and had come to seek—the wildness and freedom of untilled earth; an unobstructed prospect, hills beyond hills of malachite, stretching away along the coast into infinitude, long leagues of red sea-wall and the wide expanse and everlasting freshness of ocean. And the village itself, the little old straggling place that had so grand a setting, I quickly found that the woman in the cottage had not succeeded in giving me a false impression of her dear home. It was just such a quaint unimproved, old-world, restful place as she had painted. It was surprising to find that there were many visitors, and one wondered where they could all stow themselves. The explanation was that those who visited Branscombe knew it, and preferred its hovels to the palaces of the fashionable seaside town. No cottage was too mean to have its guest. I saw a lady push open the cracked and warped door of an old barn and go in, pulling the door to after her—it was her bed-sitting-room. I watched a party of pretty merry girls marching, single file, down a narrow path past a pig-sty, then climb up a ladder to the window of a loft at the back of a stone cottage and disappear within. It was their bedroom. The relations between the villagers and their visitors were more intimate and kind than is usual. They lived more together, and were more free and easy in company. The men were mostly farm labourers, and after their day's work they would sit out-of-doors on the ground to smoke their pipes; and where the narrow crooked little street was narrowest—at my end of the village—when two men would sit opposite each other, each at his own door, with legs stretched out before them, their boots would very nearly touch in the middle of the road. When walking one had to step over their legs; or, if socially inclined, one could stand by and join in the conversation. When daylight faded the village was very dark—no lamp for the visitors—and very silent, only the low murmur of the sea on the shingle was audible, and the gurgling sound of a swift streamlet flowing from the hill above and hurrying through the village to mingle with the Branscombe lower down in the meadows. Such a profound darkness and quiet one expects in an inland agricultural village; here, where there were visitors from many distant towns, it was novel and infinitely refreshing.
No sooner was it dark than all were in bed and asleep; not one square path of yellow light was visible. To enjoy the sensation I went out and sat down, and listened alone to the liquid rippling, warbling sound of the swift-flowing streamlet—that sweet low music of running water to which the reed-warbler had listened thousands of years ago, striving to imitate it, until his running rippling song was perfect.
A fresh surprise and pleasure awaited me when I explored the coast east of the village; it was bold and precipitous in places, and from the summit of the cliff a very fine view of the coast-line on either hand could be obtained. Best of all, the face of the cliff itself was the breeding-place of some hundreds of herring-gulls. The eggs at the period of my visit were not yet hatched, but highly incubated, and at that stage both parents are almost constantly at home, as if in a state of anxious suspense. I had seen a good many colonies of this gull before at various breeding stations on the coast—south, west, and east—but never in conditions so singularly favourable as at this spot. From the vale where the Branscombe pours its clear waters through rough masses of shingle into the sea the ground to the east rises steeply to a height of nearly five hundred feet; the cliff is thus not nearly so high as many another, but it has features of peculiar interest. Here, in some former time, there has been a landslip, a large portion of the cliff at its highest part falling below and forming a sloping mass a chalky soil mingled with huge fragments of rock, which lies like a buttress against the vertical precipice and seems to lend it support. The fall must have occurred a very long time back, as the vegetation that overspreads the rude slope—hawthorn, furze, and ivy—has an ancient look. Here are huge masses of rock standing isolated, that resemble in their forms ruined castles, towers, and churches, some of them completely overgrown with ivy. On this rough slope, under the shelter of the cliff, with the sea at its feet, the villagers have formed their cultivated patches. The patches, wildly irregular in form, some on such steeply sloping ground as to suggest the idea that they must have been cultivated on all fours, are divided from each other by ridges and by masses of rock, deep fissures in the earth, strips of bramble and thorn and furze bushes. Altogether the effect was very singular the huge rough mass of jumbled rock and soil, the ruin wrought by Nature in one of her Cromwellian moods, and, scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness—potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes—each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repass wholly occupied with their own affairs.
I spent hours of rare happiness at this spot in watching the birds. I could not have seen and heard them to such advantage if their breeding-place had been shared with other species. Here the herring-gulls had the rock to themselves, and looked their best in their foam-white and pearl-grey plumage and yellow legs and beaks. While I watched them they watched me; not gathered in groups, but singly or in pairs, scattered up and down all over the face of the precipice above me, perched on ledges and on jutting pieces of rock. Standing motionless thus, beautiful in form and colour, they looked like sculptured figures of gulls, set up on the projections against the rough dark wall of rock, just as sculptured figures of angels and saintly men and women are placed in niches on a cathedral front. At first they appeared quite indifferent to my presence, although in some instances near enough for their yellow irides to be visible. While unalarmed they were very silent, standing in that clear sunshine that gave their whiteness something of a crystalline appearance; or flying to and fro along the face of the cliff, purely for the delight of bathing in the warm lucent air. Gradually a change came over them. One by one those that were on the wing dropped on to some projection, until they had all settled down, and, letting my eyes range up and down over the huge wall of rock, it was plain to see that all the birds were watching me. They had made the discovery that I was a stranger. In my rough old travel-stained clothes and tweed hat I might have passed for a Branscombe villager, but I did no hoeing and digging in one of the cultivated patches; and when I deliberately sat down on a rock to watch them, they noticed it and became suspicious; and as time went on and I still remained immovable, with my eyes fixed on them, the suspicion and anxiety increased and turned to fear; and those that were sitting on their nests got up and came close to the edge of the rock, to gaze with the others and join in the loud chorus of alarm. It was a wonderful sound. Not like the tempest of noise that may be heard at the breeding-season at Lundy Island, and at many other stations where birds of several species mix their various voices—the yammeris and the yowlis, and skrykking, screeking, skrymming scowlis, and meickle moyes and shoutes, of old Dunbar's wonderful onomatopoetic lines. Here there was only one species, with a clear resonant cry, and as every bird uttered that one cry, and no other, a totally different effect was produced. The herring-gull and lesser black-backed gull resemble each other in language as they do in general appearance; both have very powerful and clear voices unlike the guttural black-headed and common gull. But the herring-gull has a shriller, more piercing voice, and resembles the black-backed species just as, in human voices, a boy's clear treble resembles a baritone. Both birds have a variety of notes; and both, when the nest is threatened with danger, utter one powerful importunate cry, which is repeated incessantly until the danger is over. And as the birds breed in communities, often very populous, and all clamour together, the effect of so many powerful and unisonant voices is very grand; but it differs in the two species, owing to the quality of their voices being different; the storm of sound produced by the black-backs is deep and solemn, while that of the herring-gulls has a ringing sharpness almost metallic.
It is probable that in the case I am describing the effect of sharpness and resonance was heightened by the position of the birds, perched motionless, scattered about on the face of the perpendicular wall of rock, all with their beaks turned in my direction, raining their cries upon me. It was not a monotonous storm of cries, but rose and fell; for after two or three minutes the excitement would abate somewhat and the cries grow fewer and fewer; then the infection would spread again, bird after bird joining the outcry; and after a while there would be another lull, and so on, wave following wave of sound. I could have spent hours, and the hours would have seemed like minutes, listening to that strange chorus of ringing chiming cries, so novel was its effect, and unlike that of any other tempest of sound produced by birds which I had ever heard. When by way of a parting caress and benediction (given and received) I dipped my hands in Branscombe's clear streamlet it was with a feeling of tender regret that was almost a pain. For who does not make a little inward moan, an Eve's Lamentation, an unworded, "Must I leave thee, Paradise?" on quitting any such sweet restful spot, however brief his stay in it may have been? But when I had climbed to the summit of the great down on the east side of the valley and looked on the wide land and wider sea flashed with the early sunlight I rejoiced full of glory at my freedom. For invariably when the peculiar character and charm of a place steals over and takes possession of me I begin to fear it, knowing from long experience that it will be a painful wrench to get away and that get away sooner or later I must. Now I was free once more, a wanderer with no ties, no business to transact in any town, no worries to make me miserable like others, nothing to gain and nothing to lose.
Pausing on the summit to consider which way I should go, inland, towards Axminister, or along the coast by Beer, Seton, Axmouth, and so on to Lyme Regis, I turned to have a last look and say a last good-bye to Branscombe and could hardly help waving my hand to it.
Why, I asked myself, am I not a poet, or verse-maker, so as to say my farewell in numbers? My answer was, Because I am too much occupied in seeing. There is no room and time for 'tranquillity,' since I want to go on to see something else. As Blake has it: "Natural objects always did and do, weaken, deaden and obliterate imagination in me."
We know however that they didn't quite quench it in him.
Abbotsbury is an old unspoilt village, not on but near the sea, divided from it by half a mile of meadowland where all sorts of meadow and water plants flourish, and where there are extensive reed and osier beds, the roosting-place in autumn and winter of innumerable starlings. I am always delighted to come on one of these places where starlings congregate, to watch them coming in at day's decline and listen to their marvellous hubbub, and finally to see their aerial evolutions when they rise and break up in great bodies and play at clouds in the sky. When the people of the place, the squire and keepers and others who have an interest in the reeds and osiers, fall to abusing them on account of the damage they do, I put my fingers in my ears. But at Abbotsbury I did not do so, but listened with keen pleasure to the curses they vented and the story they told. This was that when the owner of Abbotsbury came down for the October shooting and found the starlings more numerous than ever, he put himself into a fine passion and reproached his keepers and other servants for not having got rid of the birds as he had desired them to do. Some of them ventured to say that it was easier said than done, whereupon the great man swore that he would do it himself without assistance from any one, and getting out a big duck-gun he proceeded to load it with the smallest shot and went down to the reed bed and concealed himself among the bushes at a suitable distance. The birds were pouring in, and when it was growing dark and they had settled down for the night he fired his big piece into the thick of the crowd, and by and by when the birds after wheeling about for a minute or two settled down again in the same place he fired again. Then he went home, and early next morning men and boys went into the reeds and gathered a bushel or so of dead starlings. But the birds returned in their thousands that evening, and his heart being still hot against them he went out a second time to slaughter them wholesale with his big gun. Then when he had blazed into the crowd once more, and the dead and wounded fell like rain into the water below, the revulsion came and he was mad with himself for having done such a thing, and on his return to the house, or palace, he angrily told his people to "let the starlings alone" for the future—never to molest them again!
I thought it one of the loveliest stories I had ever heard; there is no hardness comparable to that of the sportsman, yet here was one, a very monarch among them, who turned sick at his own barbarity and repented.
Beyond the flowery wet meadows, favored by starlings and a breeding-place of swans, is the famous Chesil Bank, one of the seven wonders of Britain. And thanks to this great bank, a screen between sea and land extending about fourteen miles eastward from Portland, this part of the coast must remain inviolate from the speculative builder of seaside holiday resorts or towns of lodging-houses.
Every one has heard of the Fleet in connection with the famous swannery of Abbotsbury, the largest in the land. I had heard so much about the swannery that it had but little interest for me. The only thing about it which specially attracted my attention was seeing a swan rise up and after passing over my head as I stood on the bank fly straight out over the sea. I watched him until he had diminished to a small white spot above the horizon, and then still flying he faded from sight. Do these swans that fly away over the sea, and others which appear in small flocks or pairs at Poole Harbour and at other places on the coast, ever return to the Fleet? Probably some do, but, I fancy some of these explorers must settle down in waters far from home, to return no more.
The village itself, looked upon from this same elevation, is very attractive. Life seems quieter, more peaceful there out of sight of the ocean's turbulence, out of hearing of its "accents disconsolate." The cottages are seen ranged in a double line along the narrow crooked street, like a procession of cows with a few laggards scattered behind the main body. One is impressed by its ancient character. The cottages are old, stone-built and thatched; older still is the church with its grey square tower, and all about are scattered the memorials of antiquity—the chantry on the hill, standing conspicuous alone, apart, above the world; the vast old abbey barn, and, rough thick stone walls, ivy-draped and crowned with beautiful valerian, and other fragments that were once parts of a great religious house.
Looking back at the great round hill from the village it is impossible not to notice the intense red colour of the road that winds over its green slope. One sometimes sees on a hillside a ploughed field of red earth which at a distance might easily be taken for a field of blossoming trifolium. Viewed nearer the crimson of the clover and red of the earth are very dissimilar; distance appears to intensify the red of the soil and to soften that of the flower until they are very nearly of the same hue. The road at Abbotsbury was near and looked to me more intensely red than any ordinary red earth, and the sight was strangely pleasing. These two complementary colours, red and green, delight us most when seen thus—a little red to a good deal of green, and the more luminous the red and vivid the green the better they please us. We see this in flowers—in the red geranium, for example—where there is no brown soil below, but green of turf or herbage. I sometimes think the red campions and ragged-robins are our most beautiful wild flowers when the sun shines level on the meadow and they are like crimson flowers among the tall translucent grasses. I remember the joy it was in boyhood in early spring when the flowers were beginning to bloom, when in our gallops over the level grass pampas we came upon a patch of scarlet verbenas. The first sight of the intense blooms scattered all about the turf would make us wild with delight, and throwing ourselves from our ponies we would go down among the flowers to feast on the sight.
Green is universal, but the red earth which looks so pleasing amid the green is distributed very partially, and it may be the redness of the soil and the cliffs in Devon have given that county a more vivid personality, so to speak, than most others. Think of Kent with its white cliffs, chalk downs, and dull-coloured clays in this connection!
The humble subterraneous mole proves himself on occasions a good colourist when he finds a soil of the proper hue to burrow in, and the hillocks he throws up from numberless irregular splashes of bright red colour on a green sward. The wild animals that strike us as most beautiful, when seen against a green background, are those which bear the reddest fur—fox, squirrel, and red deer. One day, in a meadow a few miles from Abbotsbury, I came upon a herd of about fifty milch cows scattered over a considerable space of ground, some lying down, others standing ruminating, and still others moving about and cropping the long flowery grasses. All were of that fine rich red colour frequently seen in Dorset and Devon cattle, which is brighter than the reds of other red animals in this country, wild and domestic, with the sole exception of a rare variety of the collie dog. The Irish setter and red chouchou come near it. So beautiful did these red cows look in the meadow that I stood still for half an hour feasting my eyes on the sight.
No less was the pleasure I experienced when I caught sight of that road winding over the hill above the village. On going to it I found that it had looked as red as rust simply because it was rust-earth made rich and beautiful in colour with iron, its red hue variegated with veins and streaks of deep purple or violet. I was told that there were hundreds of acres of this earth all round the place—earth so rich in iron that many a man's mouth had watered at the sight of it; also that every effort had been made to induce the owner of Abbotsbury to allow this rich mine to be worked. But, wonderful to relate, he had not been persuaded.
A hard fragment of the red stuff, measuring a couple of inches across and weighing about three ounces avoirdupois, rust-red in colour with purple streaks and yellow mottlings, is now lying before me. The mineralogist would tell me that its commercial value is naught, or something infinitesimal; which is doubtless true enough, as tens of thousands of tons of the same material lie close to the surface under the green turf and golden blossoming furze at the spot where I picked up my specimen. The lapidary would not look at it; nevertheless, it is the only article of jewellery I possess, and I value it accordingly. And I intend to keep this native ruby by me for as long as the lords of Abbotsbury continue in their present mind. The time may come when I shall be obliged to throw it away. That any millionaire should hesitate for a moment to blast and blacken any part of the earth's surface, howsoever green and refreshing to the heart it may be, when by so doing he might add to his income, seems like a fable, or a tale of fairyland. It is as if one had accidentally discovered the existence of a little fantastic realm, a survival from a remote past, almost at one's doors; a small independent province, untouched by progress, asking to be conquered and its antediluvian constitution taken from it.
From the summit of that commanding hill, over which the red path winds, a noble view presents itself of the Chesil Bank, or of about ten miles of it, running straight as any Roman road, to end beneath the rugged stupendous cliffs of Portland. The ocean itself, and not conquering Rome, raised this artificial-looking wall or rampart to stay its own proud waves. Formed of polished stones and pebbles, about two hundred yards in width, flat-topped, with steeply sloping sides, at this distance it has the appearance of a narrow yellow road or causeway between the open sea on one hand and the waters of the Fleet, a narrow lake ten miles long, on the other.
When the mackerel visit the coast, and come near enough to be taken in a draw-net, every villager who owns a share (usually a tenth) in a fishing-boat throws down his spade or whatever implement he happens to have in his hand at the moment, and hurries away to the beach to take his share in the fascinating task. At four o'clock one morning a youth, who had been down to the sea to watch, came running into the village uttering loud cries which were like excited yells—a sound to rouse the deepest sleeper. The mackerel had come! For the rest of the day there was a pretty kind of straggling procession of those who went and came between the beach and the village—men in blue cotton shirts, blue jerseys, blue jackets, and women in grey gowns and big white sun-bonnets. During the latter part of the day the proceedings were peculiarly interesting to me, a looker-on with no share in any one of the boats, owing to the catches being composed chiefly of jelly-fish. Some sympathy was felt for the toilers who strained their muscles again and again only to be mocked in the end; still, a draught of jelly-fish was more to my taste than one of mackerel. The great weight of a catch of this kind when the net was full was almost too much for the ten or twelve men engaged in drawing it up; then (to the sound of deep curses from those of the men who were not religious) the net would be opened and the great crystalline hemispheres, hyaline blue and delicate salmon-pink in colour, would slide back into the water. Such rare and exquisite colours have these great glassy flowers of ocean that to see them was a feast; and every time a net was hauled up my prayer—which I was careful not to repeat aloud—was, Heaven send another big draught of jelly-fish!
The sun, sinking over the hills towards Swyre and Bridport, turned crimson before it touched the horizon. The sky became luminous; the yellow Chesil Bank, stretching long leagues away, and the hills behind it, changed their colours to violet. The rough sea near the beach glittered like gold; the deep green water, flecked with foam, was mingled with fire; the one boat that remained on it, tossing up and down near the beach, was like a boat of ebony in a glittering fiery sea. A dozen men were drawing up the last net; but when they gathered round to see what they had taken—mackerel or jelly-fish—I cared no longer to look with them. That sudden, wonderful glory which had fallen on the earth and sea had smitten me as well and changed me; and I was like some needy homeless tramp who has found a shilling piece, and, even while he is gloating over it, all at once sees a great treasure before him—glittering gold in heaps, and all rarest sparkling gems, more than he can gather up.
But it is a poor simile. No treasures in gold and gems, though heaped waist-high all about, could produce in the greediest man, hungry for earthly pleasures, a delight, a rapture, equal to mine. For this joy was of another and higher order and very rare, and was a sense of lightness and freedom from all trammels as if the body had become air, essence, energy, or soul, and of union with all visible nature, one with sea and land and the entire vast overarching sky.
We read of certain saints who were subject to experiences of this kind that they were "snatched up" into some supramundane region, and that they stated on their return to earth that it was not lawful for them to speak of the things they had witnessed. The humble naturalist and nature-worshipper can only witness the world glorified—transfigured; what he finds is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would have been nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences during their period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it would be idle to report them, since their questioners lived on the ground and would be quite incapable on account of the mind's limitations of conceiving a state above it and outside of its own experience.
The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea turned grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the men departed slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth, about fifteen years old. Some important matter which he was revolving in his mind had detained him alone on the darkening beach. He sat down, then stood up and gazed at the rolling wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle at his feet; then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath his thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his coat, threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the resolute air of a man about to engage in a fight with an adversary nearly as big as himself. Stepping back a little space, he made a rush at the sea, not to cast himself in it, but only, as it turned out, with the object of catching some water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an incoming wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in hastily retreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he got up and renewed the assault, and when he succeeded in catching water in his hands he dashed it on and vigorously rubbed it over his dirty face. After repeating the operation about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several falls and wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched away homewards with a composed air.