“Southdown Ewesâ€
‘After all,’ said he, ‘George Artlett and I never really fell out. But we agreed to differ, and that is the most fatal, most lasting disagreement of all. I should have known better. I think I will risk a hand to him again.’
As we clambered down the precipitous slope, into the shelter of the combe, the wind suddenly stopped its music in our ears. There fell a dead calm about us. At the bottom, we seemed to be walking between two widely separated, yet almost perpendicular cliffs of green, with a great span of blue sky far above, across which the heavy cumuli raged unceasingly. George Artlett got to his feet at our approach, thrust his paper into his pocket, and gravely clawed off his old tarpaulin hat. He took the hand held out to him with wonder, and a little hesitation.
‘And how fares the good work, George?’
Artlett was silent a moment. He tried to read the sightless eyes.
‘Shepherdin’, sir? ’Tis allers slow goin’, but goin’ all th’ time. We did famous with th’ wool, an’—’
‘George, leave the wool alone. You know what I mean.’
George Artlett swung round on his heel, and swung back again. He counted the fingers on his gnarled hand slowly one by one.
‘Be ut priest to lost runagate, or be ut man to man?’ he asked, looking up suddenly.
‘It is just one child in the dark way putting forth hand to another. For, to the best of us, George, comradeship can be no more than a heartening touch and sound of a footstep going a common road, and the voice of a friend. Do you see a light at the end of your path?’
‘Ay! I do that!’
‘Look closer. Is not the light just the shine of a Beautiful Face, very grave and sorrowful, but with a great joy beginning to spread over it, and—’
Though the deep voice stemmed on in the sunny quiet of the combe, I could distinguish the words no longer; for something, that was by no means part of me but of a more delicate nurture, had set my feet going against my will. I was halfway down the long alley of the combe before Istopped to wait for the old vicar. And then, looking backward, I fell to staring with all my eyes.
‘Reverend,’ said I, after he had rejoined me, and we had walked on together in silence for a minute or two, ‘I wish you could see what is before me now.’
I had brought him out of his reverie with a jerk. ‘Well: on with it!’
‘I see a green sunlit space, with the shadow of an old hawthorn upon it. And in the shadow I see two men kneeling, bareheaded, their faces turned up to the sky. And with all my heart I wish there were a third with them; but there is not another fit for such company, to my certain knowledge, within ten thousand miles.’
He seemed to weigh his reply before he uttered it. But:—
‘You’re a good fool,’ said he, ‘and I love you. And there were three there, nay! a Fourth,—all the time.’
In winter-time, ‘when nights are dark and ways be foul,’ I can conceive of no pleasanter aspect of village life at any season than the indoor, fireside one; but when the long radiant August evenings are here, there is equally no other time for me. More and more, with everyyear that glides by, life in Windlecombe at this season seems to focus itself round the Seven Sisters’ trees upon the green. All the summer day through, the old folk gather there; and always a low murmur of voices comes drifting up to my window from their garrulous company. But it is after the day’s work is done, and all, able or disable, are free for recreation, that the true life of the place begins.
There is something about the ease-taking of men physically tired after a long day’s work in fresh air and sunshine, that fascinates one who is only mind-weary, and that alone from much chaffering with pen and ink. Though you have but cramped limbs to stretch out over the green sward, and, by comparison, but a torpid, attenuated flow in your veins, somewhat of your neighbour’s healthful, dog-tired humour over-brims upon you; and after a pipe or two, and an hour’s slow desultory chat, you can almost forget the tang of the study, the reek of old leather burdening imprisoned air, and congratulate yourself on a man’s work manfully done, albeit vicariously—the day-long tussle with the good earth, mammoth ‘nunches’ and ‘eleveners’ devoured under hedgerows, a shirt a score of times soused with honest sweat, and as many dried by the thirsty harvest sun.
All the old Windlecombe faces were thereto-night under the drooping pine boughs, and most of the middle-aged ones. The younger men and boys were down on the Mead at cricket practice, and there they would stay as long as a glimmer of daylight remained in the sky. But the sun had still a fathom to go before it would lie, red and lusty, caught in the toils of the far-off Stavisham hills. I evaded with what grace I could the cake of ship’s tobacco held out to me by Captain Stallwood, accepting as fair compromise a charge from the tin box of old Tom Clemmer, his dearest friend. Gradually the talk got back to the point where my coming had intersected it.
‘’Tis trew,’ said the Captain now, ‘trew as I sets here on a plank o’ th’ ouldKing, as ye cut an’ shaped yersel’, Dan’l.’
I followed his glance round the circle of benches. There was not a head among the company but was wagging dubiously. Old Daniel Dray’s face was an incredulous, a horrified blank.
‘What!’ said he, ‘a human critter swaller seventeen live—’
‘I seed it,’ interrupted the Captain, pointing his pipe-stem solemnly at us for emphasis, ‘I seed it wi’ my own pair o’ eyes. Little lirrupy green chaps, they was, all hoppin’ an’ somersettin’ i’ th’ baasket. An’ th’ blackamoor, ’a putts ’a’s mouth to th’ lip o’ it, an’ “hap! hap!†sez he, an’ every time ’a sez it, wan o’ ’em jumpsin. An’ when they was all down, ’a gies a sort o’ gruggle, an’ skews ’a’s head ower th’ baasket, an’ “hap! hap!†sez he agen, an’ every time ’a sez it, out pops— But there! ’tis no sense tellin’ ye! Folks sees naun o’ th’ wureld i’ little small village places, an’ an’t got no believes.’
He was silent a while, then brought out a tobacco-box like a brass halfpenny bun, and held it up to the common view. It was old and battered, and had certain initials scratched on the lid. The Captain fingered it in mournful reminiscence.
‘Lookee now,’ he said, ‘I doan’t rightly know as I ever telled ye. “G.B.â€Â That bean’t Tom Stall’ard, be ut? Ah! No, sez all on ye, ready enow. ’Twur George’s, ould George Budgen as— Dan’l, what year war’t as I went aff to sea?’
Daniel Dray’s lips moved in silent calculation.
‘Seventy-three belike, or maybe seventy-four, ’cause ye’d been gone, Joe, a year afore Harker’s coo slipped the five-legged heifer, an’ that wur—’
‘Ay! trew, Dan’l. An’ George Budgen, ’a wur shipmate along o’ me purty soon arter I gooed away. Well: an’ this here baccy-box—th’ least time as I seed ut i’ George’s haand, ’a took a fill out av ut, jest afore ’a went on watch. An’ ut come on to blaw that night—Gorm!how ’t did blaw! An’rain, not aarf! An’ i’ th’ marnin’ never a sign o’ pore George Budgen to be seen! Well now, full a fortnit arter that, what ’ud we do but ketch a gurt thresher on a trail-line, an’ inside o’ th’ crittur what ’ud we find but a halibut, big as a tay-tray, all alive an’ lippin’, ’a wur. Sez th’ cappen—I wur ship’s-boy then—“Joe,†sez he, “git an’ clane un, an’ I’ll ha’ un fer me supper,†’a sez. Now then, Dan’l, ye’ll never believe ut, but trew as ye sets there, clink goes my knife agen summut inside o’ th’ halibut, an’—’
‘Goo on, Stallard!’
‘He, he! We all knaws what be acomin’, cap’n!’
‘An’ there wur—ah! but ye’ll ne’er believe ut, not if ye was Jonah hisself—there, inside o’ th’ halibut wur a gurt rusty hook as— What-say, Dan’l?’
‘Doan’t ’ee say ut agen, Dan’l! You a reg’lar prayers-gooer, too!’
The Captain filled his pipe from the box, tragically ruminating in the silence that followed.
‘Ah! pore George Budgen! ’A little knowed as ’twould be th’ laast time as ’a ’d pass his tobaccer-box to a friend!’
The sun had long set, and the dusk was creeping up apace. Here and there in the shadowy length of the street, lights were beginning to break out.
Where we sat under the dense canopy of pine-boughs, night had already asserted itself, and to one another we were little more than an arc of glowing pipe-bowls. Old Stallwood chuckled richly from his corner. A sort of inspiration of mendacity seemed to have come over him to-night.
‘But Lor’ bless ye!’ he went on, ‘that bean’t nauthin’!—not when ye’ve been five-an’-thirty year at sea. I knowed a man wanst as worked in a steam sawmill way over in Amurricky somewheres; an’ what did ’a do wan fine marnin’ but get hisself sawed i’ two pieces; an’ wan piece died—th’ doctor cud do nought to save ut. But t’other piece kep’ alive for ten year arterwards—ah! an’ did a man’s work every day!’
Old Daniel bounced to his feet. He breathed hard for a full half-minute.
‘Joe Stall’ard!’ he said at last, severely, ‘shame on ye fer a reg’lar, hout-an’-hout, ould leear! A man cut in two? An’ lived ten year arter—leastways th’ wan part o’ him? Fer shame, Joe! ’Tis traipsin’ about i’ all they heathen countries, I reckons, as has spiled ye! Ah, well, well-a-day! There they be, lightin’ up at th’ Thatchers! Coom along, Tom Clemmer!’
Three squares of red shone out amidst the twinkling dust of the street, denoting thecurtained windows of the inn. It was the signal for which all had been waiting, and a general stir took place in the assembly. At length none remained about me but the old seaman. He had said nothing while the dismemberment of the group was in progress, but had sat shaking in silent merriment. Now he, too, got slowly to his feet.
‘’Tis wunnerful,’ he observed, moving away, ‘real onaccountable, th’ little simple things as some folks wunt b’lieve. There be a thing now, as—’
But this story of partitioned, yet still living humanity, even though it came from America, was too much also for me; and I told him so. He stopped in his easy saunter towards the inn.
‘’Tis trew!’ he averred as stoutly as ever. His rich, oily chuckle came over to me through the darkness. ‘Mind ye! I didn’t say as th’ man wur sawed into two ekal parts: ’twur but th’ thumb av him as wur taken off. Belike I’ll jest step acrost to th’ Thatchers now, an’ tell that to Dan’l.’
Augustholiday-makers in Windlecombe are mainly of the normal, obvious kind, the people for whom guide-books and picture postcards are produced, and by whom the job-masters and the boat proprietors gain a livelihood. But September brings to the village a wandering crew of an altogether different complexion. There is something about the temperate sunshine and general slowing up and sweetening of life during this month, that draws from their hiding-nooks in the city suburbs a class of man and woman for whom I have long entertained the profoundest respect. With every year, as soon as September comes round, I find myself looking out for these stray, for the most part solitary, folk, and, in quite a humble, unpretentious spirit, taking them beneath my avuncular wing.
That they seek the quiet of an inland village in September, and not the feverish, belated distractions of the seaside town, is an initial point in their favour. But almost invariably theybring with them a much more subtle recommendation. They are down for a holiday, but they have come entirely without premeditation. Suddenly yielding to a sort of migratory impulse, they have locked up dusty chambers, or left small shops to the care of wives, or begged a few precious days from niggardly employers; and come away on a spate of emotional longing for country quiet and greenery, irresistible this time, though generally the impulse has been felt and resisted every autumn for twenty years back. Indeed, there must be some specially fatal quality about this period of time, for I constantly hear the same story—no holiday taken for twenty years.
At noon to-day, after a long tramp through the fields, I came up the village street, and paused irresolutely outside the Three Thatchers Inn. The morning had been hot, and the walk tiring; moreover, it was the first of September, and the guns had been popping distressfully in all the coverts by the way. I knew that before sundown a brace or two of partridges would be certain to find their road to my door; but this did not prove, and never has proved, compensation for the flurry and disturbance carried by the noise of the guns into all my favourite conning-places, or arenas for quiet thought. The whole world of wild life was in a panic, and I with it.
The red-ochred doorstep of the inn glowed in the sunshine at my feet, and from the cool darkness beyond came a chink of glasses and murmur of many tongues. It all seemed eminently consolatory for the moment’s mood. Within there, no one would fire a gun off at my ear, nor stalk past me with a shoulder-load of limp, sanguinary spoil, nor warn me out of my favourite coppices with a finger to the lip, as though a nation of babies slumbered within. I was a lost man even before I began to hesitate. I stood my stout furze walking-stick in the porch beside a drover’s staff, a shepherd’s crook, and three or four undenominational cudgels; and plunged down the two steps into the bar.
Now, before my eyes had accustomed themselves to the subdued light, and I could see what company was about me, I had become aware of a strange odour in the air. It was the scent of a tobacco, happily unknown in Windlecombe: neither wholly Latakia nor Turkish, not honeydew alone nor red Virginia, cavendish nor returns, but a curious internecine blend of all these. I knew it at once to be something for which I have a constitutional loathing—one of the new town mixtures, wherein are confused and mutually stultified all the good smoking-weeds in the world.
Looking more narrowly about me, after theusual greetings, I discovered a vast and elaborate meerschaum pipe in the corner, and behind it a little diffident smiling man. But this could not entirely account for the overpowering exotic reek in the room. I missed the familiar smell of our own good Windlecombe shag, although there were half a dozen other pipes in full blast round me. And then I realised the situation. The stranger had seduced all the company to his pestilent combination; and now, as I lowered at him through the haze, he was holding out his pouch even to me, who would not have touched his garbage if it had been the last pipe-fill left on earth. But he took my curt, almost surly refusal as if it were an intended kindness.
‘Ah! you do not smoke? Well: it does seem a kind of insult to the pure country air. But in towns, you know, what with the din and the dust, and the strain on one’s nerves, everybody— And of course I must not quarrel with my bread-and-butter!’
I produced my own pipe and pouch, and filled brutally under his very nose. Serenely he watched the operation, and without a trace of offence.
‘I am in the trade, as I was telling these gentlemen here when you came in. Do you know the Walworth Road, in London? My shop is just behind the Elephant, and any day you arepassing, I— But wasn’t I glad to get away, if only for the few hours! And I do assure you, sir, I haven’t been out of London for nearly—nearly—’
‘Twenty years, I suppose?’
He looked at me in placid surprise.
‘Lor’, how did you know that now? But it is quite true. Being single-handed, you see, it isn’t easy to— But I was glad, I tell you! And I had never seen a real country village in my life, until I got out of the train at Stavisham and walked on here. Isn’t it quiet! And how funny it seems—no asphalt-paving, and no wires running all ways over the house-tops, and the singing-birds all loose in the trees! And flowers! I suppose there is a law to prevent people picking ’em: there were no end along by the road I came.’
Somehow my heart warmed to this inconsiderable by-product of civilisation that had strayed amongst us; and presently, as much to my own surprise as his, I found myself loitering down the hill again, with him at my elbow, having promised to show him that there were other flowers in the country beside the dust-throttled daisies and dandelions of the roadside.
We took the path that runs between the river and the wood. He soon let his pipe go out, for he moved in open-mouthed wonder all the way,which rendered smoking impracticable. At last we came to a bend in the river, where the bank sloped gently down to the water-side covered with all the rich-hued September growths, and we sat down to rest. I did not plague him with the names of things, nor with any talk at all; but lay, for the most part silently, watching the effect of the place upon him, as one might study the demeanour of a dormouse let loose amidst the like surroundings, straight from Ratcliff Highway.
He took off coat and hat, and sat quite still for awhile with legs drawn up, and his chin upon his knees. But presently he fell to wandering about like a child, ducking his pallid bald head over each flower as he came to it, but keeping his itching fingers resolutely clasped behind his back. It was a brave show, even for this brave time of year. Though other months afford perhaps a greater variety in colour and kind, Nature in early autumn seems more forceful and impressive because she concentrates her energies into the dealing of the one blow, the urging of the one appeal upon the colour sense. It was the Purple Month. Look where we would, the same royal colour filled the sunshine. Purple loosestrife edged the river, and purple knapweed, thistles, heather, purple thyme and willowherb and climbing vetch hemmed us in on every side.Paler of hue, yet still of the same regal dye, the wild mint and cranesbill, marjoram and calamint, crowded upon one another; and close to the water’s edge, the Michaelmas daisies were already in full flower—under both banks the soil was tinged with their pure cool lilac, mirrored again yet more faintly in the drowsy water below.
For half an hour, perhaps, the little tobacconist wandered up and down this enchanted place; and then he came back to me, treading on tiptoe, hushed, and solemn-eyed, as if he were in church.
‘You live hereabouts?’ he asked, in a voice little above a whisper, ‘all the year round, don’t you? And nothing to do but just put on a hat whenever you want to come here, and in ten minutes here you are! Nothing to pay, and no trouble. Oh, my stars!’
‘And it is not always the same, you know. I pass this way nearly every week, and there is always something different. The flowers change with every month. You hear different birds singing, according to the season. The leaves on the trees come and go, and the sky shows you a new picture every time you look at it. Even the river changes. It is the top of the tide now: that log, floating out there, has not moved a dozen feet in the last five minutes. But in an hour’s time the water will be driving down swift and strong, and all the reeds and rushes, thatnow stand up quite straight and still in the sunshine, will bending and trembling in the flow.’
‘Ah!’ He crowded a perfectly bewildering variety of emotions into the breathed monosyllable. ‘Is that a nightingale singing over there?’
‘No; you are too late for nightingales: they have done singing these two months and more. That is a robin. The robins have just begun to sing again after their summer silence; and when that happens, you know the summer is almost done.’
He sat now mute at my side for so long, that at last I must steal a glance at him. I saw him brush a hand hastily across his eyes.
‘I—I am glad I came, of course,’ said he, musing, ‘but—but I have been the worst kind of fool all the same. Just think of going back there to-night! Lor’! just think of it! Yesterday morning I watered the geraniums in the window-boxes, and gave the canary his seed; and, says I, “Here’s singing-birds and flowers, as good as any you’ll get in the country!â€Â Then I went to the shop door, and saw a cart full of straw going by, and another of green cabbages for Boro’ Market. “Lor’!†I says, “the country comes on wheels to your very door in London! London for me!â€Â And now I’ll never get thatfeeling back again, no, never! The very worst kind of fool, Idon’tthink!’
Close by us there grew a great tuft of valerian. As he sat staring tragically at its disc of deep red blossom, butterflies came to it with every moment, sipped awhile, then passed on. Painted ladies, red admirals, little tortoiseshells always in twos or threes; finally a peacock butterfly sailed over to the valerian and settled there, her rich colours aflare in the sunshine. She spread out her great vanes, the upper covering the lower. Then she gently slid her upper wings forward, and gradually the wonderful spots on the lower wings appeared, like a pair of slowly opening, drowsy, violet eyes. The little tobacconist breathed hard.
‘I can see it all clear enough,’ he said tremulously. ‘A man gets a real chance here. Come worry, come sickness, come bad luck, come anything you like—all you have got to do is to open your eyes and ears, and off it goes like the bundle of sins in thePilgrim’s Progressbook. But in London—’ He stopped short; then, in a tone of deep, despairing disgust, ‘Geraniums!—Canaries!—Cartloads of cabbages! bah!’
I had not found myself confronted by so difficult a proposition for many a long day. If only the Reverend had been there! But there wasnothing for it but to try a joust with the situation alone.
‘Depend upon it,’ said I, ‘if coming amongst the beautiful natural things of the world has made you despise the mean, ugly, necessary parts of your life, then you have been a fool indeed—one of the worst kind. But are you really the sort of fool you think? And have you not overstated both cases alike? In neither town nor country is there all of good, or all of evil. There are plenty of geraniums and cabbages in Windlecombe, and—alas!—canaries. And in London there is plenty of beauty, if you look for it with the right eyes.’
‘Beauty?—in London?’ he repeated incredulously.
‘Yes, truly; and the people who see it, and enjoy it most, are just those people who have the deepest knowledge of, and love for, the natural things of the country-side. Now, shall I tell you what sort of a fool you really are?’
He thought a moment, eyeing me in some perplexity. ‘Well—yes,’ said he at last, ‘if it isn’t too much trouble.’
‘It is a lot of trouble, and I am not sure I can do it. But I will try. Did you ever hear of the saying, “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise?â€â€™
‘No: I can’t say that I ever—’
‘Well, you have fallen right into that trap. You have given yourself twenty years of that kind of bliss, and now you have got to pay for it. But what was it made you start off this morning in such a hurry to get to the country, when only yesterday you were quite content with your window-boxes and your screeching yellow gewgaw?’
He considered a little, then blushed to his eyes.
‘It was an old book,’ he said mysteriously, looking round apparently to make certain we were alone, ‘nothing but an old book on a bookstall. I picked it up just out of curiosity as I went by last night, and there were some dried flowers in it—dog-roses, I think. And then I looked up and saw the moon shining very small and bright high up in the sky; and it came over me that though she kept one eye dutifully on the Walworth Road, with the other eye she might well be looking down on the country lane where those roses grew years ago. And thinks I, all of a creep, like, Why can’t a man look two ways at once; and if he must give one eye to business, why can’t he give the other to just what he likes? And then I—’
‘And then you certainly left off being the kind of fool I mean—left off for ever. Well: that saves us both a lot of trouble, for we are bothwrong about your case, it seems. You need not fear to go home to-night. You will find those geraniums as fresh and sweet as the valerian there, and just as populous of butterflies. And the canary—you will hear in his song every morning the notes of all the wild birds that have sung to you to-day. And when next a wagonload of straw goes by your shop, it will not be mere straw, but a field of wheat under the country sunshine: the sound of the wind in the Walworth telephone wires will be for you only the rustle of wind in the corn. That is what I meant by London beauty.’
That summer is drawing to its end, and autumn close at hand, one need not look at the calendar to know. Throughout a morning’s walk, signs of imminent change crop up now at every turn. The wild arums that you have forgotten since last you saw them turning their pale green cowls from the light, give out a bold glitter of scarlet in the shady deeps under every hedgerow. Each day sees the hips and haws growing ruddier. Though September is scarce half gone, the green bracken-fronds in the woods are already alight at the tips with crimson and gold; and the heather on the combe-side has lost itsclear rose-red. The song of the bees in it seems as loud as ever, but for every tuft of living blossom there are two that are faded and brown. The good times are nearly over for the honey-makers, and each day the gathering of a full load of nectar means travelling farther afield.
I wonder why it is I always look forward to the renewal of the year’s life with so much eagerness and impatience, and yet meet its decline with such surpassing equanimity. Am I—I have often asked myself lately—the same being who industriously searched the river bank for a whole bleak February morning in quest of the first coltsfoot, greeting it with an unconscionable extravagance of rejoicing: I who now tread the same way in nowise perturbed, nor even unelated, at the obvious fact of each day’s lessened ardour? The truth that the year is already on the long downward road, riding for its winter fall, awakens in me not a pang of regret. Indeed, I neither remember the departed magnificence of June as something lost, nor regard the ever-diminishing September days as portent of penurious times to come. With autumn, as with advancing age, when once each is assured, irrevocable, the natural tendency seems to be towards a looking neither backward nor forward, but towards a joyful acceptance of the things that are. And so, at these times, whatever ourdeclared principles, we one and all develop, or degenerate, into optimists.
But, of a truth, it needs very little of this mental condiment to be happy in a Sussex Downland village in September. Perhaps none but the very old can, at any time, sincerely avow a repugnance towards machinery in farming: certainly, at this season of the year, the whole spirit of village life receives benefit from it. They have been threshing up at the farm to-day, and from sunrise to sunset, all through the still, quiet, golden hours, the voice of the threshing mill has permeated everything, blent itself with the song of the robins in the garden, with the chime from the smithy, with all the other sounds of labour that go to make up the silence of country dwelling-places. I have come to look upon this sound as the veritable keynote of autumn, and to believe that it has an influence on all hearts at this season, entirely underrated by those whose business it is to study rural affairs.
It is the fashion to contemn the old melodramatic trick of still-music; but, for my own part, I have never been able to resist the low sobbing and sighing of the violins when the stage-story is being cleared up, all wrongs righted, and the villain given his due. The speech itself is nothing to me. It is seldom regarded, and remembered never. I should be just as deeplymoved if all that leashed, melodious passion went as setting to ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ or ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.’ And on the same principle, when this beautiful, solemn voice of the threshing mill dwells in the autumnal air, I find myself doing the commonest things with a sense of high Fate and speeding of the world’s progress. But, indeed, Nature works throughout largely on this still-music plan, and therein lies one inestimable advantage of living in the country. Bird song, to all intents and purposes, unceasing throughout the year—the songs of stream, river, and sea—the songs of the four winds—all work together for good on the hearts of those men and women who, by their own design, or by external destiny, have been led to keep their thread of life running by green woods and fields.
As the sun went down behind the hills, and left the world afloat in wine-coloured mist, every sound of work ceased in the village, save this rich throbbing voice of the threshing mill up at the farm. I went out into the dreaming light to listen to it. From where I sat on the churchyard wall, I could make out that they were prolonging the work into the dusk, so that the last rick might be finished now, and the threshing gang move on to-night to the next farm. There was the deep sound of the mill itself, onetremendous baritone note succeeding another, each held for a moment, and then suddenly changing to one higher or lower in the sonorous clef. Apart from this, I could distinguish the fuss and fume of the engine, as it drove its white breath in little unsteady gusts up against the violet calm of the sky. And there was another sound—the flapping song of the driving-belt—a note that punctuated everything, as though some invisible conductor were beating time to the general symphony. But the combined effect of all was infinitely harmonious and restful.
Yet I had come out, in the main, to hear, not this familiar part of the music, but something about it that I loved to hear most of all; and this was the stopping of the machine. It was almost dark before the last sheaf went to the mill, and steam was shut off. And then the wonderful note began. The machine took an appreciable time to run down. But now there was no upward inflection in its voice. Note by note, each note more drawn out and quieter, the rich tones fell through every stage of an octave, until at last they died away in the profoundest, softest bass. Even then I fancied I could feel the solid earth still shuddering with a music too deep for human ear.
I think the last of the summer boating parties to Windlecombe has come and gone; at least for a week I have seen and heard nothing of revelry. But the thin stream of odd folk still dribbles into the village from road or Down.
There were two elderly ladies, obviously sisters, wandering about the place one day, who afforded material for commentary to most curious tongues. Severely and sparely clad in grey tweeds, wearing black felt hats each wrapped about with a wisp of grey gauze, and gold spectacles, over the shining hafts of which little tight glossy-white ringlets depended, pink serene faces inclined to be downy, and voices low and gentle yet extraordinarily penetrating and clear—they crept about the village all day long in an ecstasy of enjoyment, peering into cottage doorways, looking over garden fences, watching the children at play on the green and the mothers hanging out their linen, gazing with timorous delight down into the wheelwright’s sawpit, and into the black deeps of Tom Clemmer’s forge. And all the while, though they kept up an incessant low interchange between themselves, they accosted no one. Apparently Windlecombe was to them a sort of spectacle, half peep-show and halfmenagerie, where everything might be looked at, but nothing touched. The last I saw of them, they were standing at the far end of the green, looking towards the seats under the Seven Sisters where two old rustics slumbered peacefully in the sun. The pair were in earnest consultation, and obvious, though wholly affectionate difference on some point. At length one, apparently the more ancient by a year or two, raised her hands with a gesture of reluctant consent. And then the other timidly approached the old men, presented each with what, at a distance, appeared to be a surplus sandwich drawn from a reticule, and returned to her companion, giving her—before they made off down the street together—a grateful, childish little hug.
On another day a very different pair dropped down from the skies amongst us. They were two men scarcely of middle age, the one with a swirl of coppery hair topping a high forehead, the other sombre-locked, low-browed and swarthy; both alike shabby, unshaven and unkempt. They came swinging down the hill-path together, hatless and barefooted, laden up with certain dusty travelling-gear, the one of them carrying in addition a leather-cased violin. As they strode through the village street they made the place resound with their laughter, jovially greeted all and sundry that chanced in their way,and finally disappeared through the door of the Three Thatchers Inn.
Thereafter, sitting at work by the window, I forgot all about them, until a far-off strain of music gradually forced itself upon my ear. I could make out the violin, played as though it were three instruments at least, and above it such a voice as I had heard only once in my life before. I saw that passers-by were halting in the roadway to listen. Some were crowded round the inn window, craning over one another’s heads. Then the music stopped, the pair of harmonious vagabonds reappeared, and made straight for the Seven Sisters, all the folk jostling at their heels. A moment later, the violin struck into an air that sent my pen clattering to the paper, and my feet speeding towards the house-door. It was the ‘X—,’ the tenor song from ‘Q—,’ played by a master hand. Before I reached the fringe of the little crowd—taking the old vicar by the arm as I went—the copper-haired man had mounted upon the seat and had begun to sing the incomparable melody, hurling it over the heads of the crowd with a passion, a force, yet with a surpassingly delicate sweetness of tone, that drew the people spellbound closer and closer with every moment round him. The old parson’s grip tightened on my sleeve.
‘What is he like?’ he whispered. And whenI had told him—‘Strange that he should come here and— But there can be few with a voice like that: it must be— Ah! listen! Don’t you know now?’
For the song had changed. The violin had slowed down into a simple quiet undertone. And then there pealed out upon us an air that a year ago had been made famous by one man alone, and he almost the greatest in his art. As he sang, his great chest heaving in the sunshine, I watched him, and once he looked swiftly in our direction. He gave us the whole piece, that finishes on a note incredibly high, yet is not really an end to the song, for the note is one picked out, as it were, at random in the scale. Then, to my amazement, he got down from the bench, took the hat from the head of the nearest boy, and went gravely about among the folk, collecting pennies. From me he levied toll as from the rest, but instead of holding out the hat to the Reverend, he placed it, money and all, into his hands, adding to the goodly store a shining piece from his own pocket. ‘You will know what to do with it,’ said he, his grey eyes twinkling merrily.
A minute later the pair were trudging off together down the street, as they had come, with their dusty, travel-stained satchels swinging behind them, and their long hair blowing in the breeze.
Yes, the summer is gone, in very truth. With every day now, and every hour of the day, the writing on the wall shows plainer. While the hushed, hot times endured, it was still possible to believe red autumn as far away as ever; for not a leaf in oak or elm has changed, nor will change, perhaps, for weeks to come. But the tell-tale winds of the equinox are upon us, bringing the very voice of autumn with them; and the acorns are falling by the river, and the thistle-down drifting white upon the hills.
I began this day badly—badly, that is to say, from my own private point of view; which is a point, it may well be, like Euclid’s, having position but no dimensions, yet a point nevertheless. Chancing to wake with the dawn, I saw that the day was beginning with a beautiful smoke-pearl trellis in the east, behind which welled up an ever-strengthening fountain of silver white. Coming presently out upon the green under this pure pale glow of morning, I was startled by a cry that came echoing from the misty twilight of the hills.
‘Hi-up! Hi-up! Voller, voller, voller!’
Hoarse, harsh, undeniably brutal it sounded in the sweet, snow-white lustre of the virgin light. And then came the shrill blare of thehuntsman’s horn, the confused yelping and baying of the pack, and the dull thunder of beating hoofs, as the hunt drove over the hill-top, and fell to drawing Windle coverts.
At once the silent village awoke. Windows were thrown open and heads appeared. Dark figures burst from cottage doors and went pounding up the lane that led to the hills. Round the covert the horsemen gathered in a motionless ring, while the huntsman drove his pack through the undergrowth, for ever urging them forward with that fierce guttural note, which was more like the cry of a wolf than a man. At length a fine cub fox broke cover, and led the whole company a ding-dong chase over the hills, and out of sight and hearing for good.
Some hours later, I met Farmer Coles and his two sons returning from the sport, the youngest, a mere schoolboy, mounted on a pony, his head, as he rode, reaching scarce to his father’s saddle-peak. He was in huge high spirits, displaying the brush, his share of the spoil, to all acquaintance as he passed. And the face of this yellow-haired, chubby child was bedaubed with blood, thick zebra-like streaks of it smudged across his smooth forehead and rosy baby cheeks. He was going home delighted, to show to an admiring mother how he had been ‘blooded’ at his first cub-hunt; and in all that country-side, I thoughtto myself as I passed on, there was scarce a man or woman of station and breeding who would not have applauded son of theirs returning home in such a plight.
Nor, though at the time the thing filled me personally with genuine horror and loathing, did I condemn it, nor wish to see its like made impossible in the land. For the sybaritish, lotus-eating danger is too imminent in our midst for any such fabian trifling: it will be a woeful day for England when we have bred out of our young manhood the last instincts of the healthy brute.
I got into Runridge’s skiff, in the absence of its owner, and pushed off into mid-stream, letting the little craft drift whither it would. Wind and tide together were setting strongly up-country. Swiftly the reedy banks glided by, as we bore through the meadows that lie at the foot of the hills. The summer was gone, indeed; and gone with it that sense of striving towards achievement. The year seemed to be resting upon its oars, as I was doing. All its fruit was set: there remained nothing now but to wait and let it ripen. It was just this waiting and resting that made up autumn’s greatest charm.
I set my elbows on my knees and my chin on my hands, and let the little boat choose a destiny for the idle pair of us. The bank was high to windward. We drifted in an almost unruffledcalm, while overhead there sailed by an unending cloud of thistle-down, tiny verticals of sunlit silver, each gleaming star-like against the morning blue. Most of them took the broad river at a stride, disappearing over the opposite bank, but many fell upon the water. Thousands of them floated around me, and as far as eye could reach the water was grey and misty with them. And this was only one nook of earth in innumerable miles. How was it, I asked of the wind above me, that with such inexhaustible store of thistle-seed, she could not sow the whole land thick with thistles in a single season, and drive all other things from the fields? The answer was to be obtained for the mere raising of a hand. For it is not the thistle-seed that flies, but only the harmless thistle-down. Moreover, among the millions of air-ships that each thistle-patch sends off upon the wind throughout a breezy autumn day, not one in fifty ever bore a seed, or, if bearing it, contrived to carry its burden more than a yard or two. The curved seed-pod of the thistle is attached to its feathery volute only by the slenderest thread, and is brushed off by the lightest touch of the first grass-blade as it sails low over the sward. But the thistle-down, lightened of its counterpoise, bowls on for ever.
Witheach October in every year for a long time past, I have watched for the going of the martins, but have never yet contrived to witness the moment of their flight. It has always happened in the same way. One day they have been as busy as ever about the roof-eaves, their chattering song pervading the house unceasingly from dark to dark. And then a morning comes, generally towards the end of the first week in the month, when I awaken to a curious sense of strangeness and loss. First I mark the unwonted silence outside the windows, and then I guess what has come about. Looking forth, I see that the little mud-houses, huddled together in a long row under the eaves, are deserted and silent at last.
But to-day, though I missed the departure of the martins as usual, I was not wholly disappointed. Getting up in the new silence and throwing the windows back, I looked along the roof-edge. Save for the chippering and flutteringof a few sparrows, there was nothing to be seen or heard in the dim grey light. But it seemed the little army could have been away only a few minutes before me, for while I looked, I saw the last of them depart. One single note of the remembered song broke out overhead; there was a whir of wings, and the little black-and-white bird lanced straight off, going due south unhesitatingly, as though the vanished throng of her companions was yet visible far away in the skies.
It was a still, grey, warm morning. There had been no dew. Everything, as presently I went along by the wood-side, was quite dry; and though it was barely eight o’clock, all the spiders in the bushes were hard at work weaving their snares. It was almost perfect spinning weather. On windy mornings, though the webs must be made, the task is difficult and the work seldom properly carried out. But to-day there was only a vague air moving from the south-west, and all the spiders had got to work betimes, and with light hearts.
The great charm in all nature study is to find out the truth for yourself at first hand. There are few things in my life I regret so keenly as the reading of nature books. This has robbed me of many a moment of pleasurable surprise; for to recognise a commonly accepted fact ispoor substitute for its original discovery, although this discovery may have been made by others a thousand times before. Looking back over twenty years’ poking and prying in the woods and fields round about Windlecombe, I rejoice not so much at the many things I have found out, but at the fact of so many things still unread of, and still remaining to be discovered. This morning, as I went along by the bushes in the lee of the wood, and saw the spiders at work, it suddenly occurred to me that I knew little or nothing about them; and the recognition of this ignorance came to me as truest bliss. I fell to looking on at the ingenious, complicated work with almost as much anxiety and interest as the male spiders themselves.
For it appears to be only the female who spins a web. The big-bodied spider, so industriously occupied in every gap of the thicket, is always the female, though the male is never far off. You are sure to find him peering out from under one of the adjacent leaves, or treading timidly on the circumference of the web, trying to attract the attention, and thereafter, perhaps, the regard of its maker.
Spider nets and their weavers have, I think, never been given quite their place in the world of wonders. As far as human profit is concerned, spiders are useless things; and have thereforemissed, because, from that standpoint, they have not merited, popular favour. But no doubt their ingenuity as craftswomen stands very nearly on a level with that of the worker honey-bee. The waxen comb of the bee, whose perfection is due to the combined arts of engineer, mason, and geometrician, is very little superior in design and carrying-out to the spider’s web.
On these still, grey autumn mornings, the tendency of the eye is not to wander far afield, but to concern itself with the little things of the wayside close at hand; and so, more than at any other time of year, perhaps, the spiders and their ways come in for narrow scrutiny. And here is something, in the first loving investigation of which the uninformed, unread observer is much to be envied.
He notices in the outset that these fine silken snares, hung by the spiders in the hedgerows, are of two kinds—the one placed vertically across a gap in the surface of the thicket; the other placed horizontally, closing up some shaft or upward passage-way in the heart of the green bush. The vertical net is seen to be composed of a number of threads radiating from a common centre, and upon these threads an ever-increasing spiral line has been laid, forming a regular, meshed net. But the horizontal web has none of this geometric neatness. It is a mere expanseof fine tissue irregularly woven into a sort of crazy pattern, and slung hammock fashion, completely closing the chimney-like hollow wherein it has been made. From a view of the finished webs, two other facts will be noted—the vertical net is supported only by lines springing from its circumference, and the spider sits at its centre in front; the horizontal net is suspended by numberless fine lines attached at all points in its upper surface, while the spider clings to the under side as she lies in wait for her prey.
But it is in the actual weaving of the nets that the interest of the onlooker will be chiefly centred. The maker of the vertical, or cartwheel, pattern of web begins operations in various ways, according to the conditions imposed upon her by the weather and the spot she has selected. Webs made in calm seasons, or when only light airs are stirring, will have few mainstays, and these may be of considerable length; but in windy times the spider will stretch her snare on only short hawsers, using as many as may be necessary to make assurance doubly sure. But in either case she will commence the work in much the same way.
First she goes to the highest point on the windward side of her gap, and turning her head to the current, begins to pay out a line behind her. As this floats out, she continually tries it with herleg until she knows that the end of the line has caught in the opposite twigs. Then she runs to the middle of this horizontal line, dragging after her another thread which she has previously attached to her original starting-point. From the centre of the first line she lowers herself vertically, always dragging the second line in her rear, until she reaches a twig below. Here she draws her second line tight and fastens it, after which she climbs to the horizontal line and repeats the manœuvre, only this time from its leeward end. Thus the triangle of mainstays—the first essential in all spider-web making—is complete.
The weaving of the net within this triangular frame is the next work undertaken. The spider, when she first dropped from the centre of her uppermost thread, made a vertical line in descending. Some point on this line marks the centre of the future cartwheel pattern of web, and this central point the spider now finds unerringly, and begins to put in one by one the radiating spokes of the wheel. When all these spokes are in place, she returns to the centre, and revolving her body quickly, she forms upon it a close spiral of four or five turns. This is to be her seat and watch-tower, whence she will keep the whole web under observation. Having done this, she now—if the morning is at all breezy—carriestemporary stay-lines from spoke to spoke all round the web, these isolated circles of thread occurring at intervals of an inch or so between centre and circumference. But on still mornings this part of her work is omitted as unnecessary, and she proceeds at once to the main spinning of the net.
The construction of the cross-threads between the spokes of the web is always commenced at the extreme outer edges of the space to be filled; and the spider works inwardly, carrying the thread round and round from spoke to spoke until she arrives within half an inch or so of the central small spiral. But the two are never joined: an interval is always left where the web consists of nothing but bare radiating lines. The snare is now finished. The spider takes up her station in the middle of the net, with no more to do for the rest of the day but take what fair chance, and her own crafty ingenuity, may provide.
Yet, having thus watched the making of a spider-web from start to finish, and having noted all the details of construction here set down, there is something more about the matter which, if it escape the observer, will leave him in the rather disgraceful plight of having missed the most wonderful thing of all.
The spider’s snare is not woven throughout ofthe same kind of thread. Two kinds are used, and the difference between them is apparent even to eyes of very moderate power. While the triangle and the radiating lines are made of plain silk, the cross-threads are corrugated, and look like strings of tiny, transparent beads. A touch of the finger will prove that these beads are really adhering drops of some glutinous fluid, whose use is not difficult to guess. But how do the beads get on the line, seeing that this, when first drawn from the spider’s body, is visibly nothing but a plain filament of silk, like the rest of the web?
The question has been asked many times, and the answer commonly given is, I have come to believe, an entirely erroneous one. We are told that the thread used for the cross-bars in a spider’s web, when it first emerges from the creature’s body, is only smeared, not beaded with the gluten; but that after attaching each segment of the spiral to the spokes, the spider gives it a twang with her foot, thus causing the gluten to separate into beads. Here then is a fact such as one would read in the nature books, and unquestionably accept. But a little independent experiment with various kinds of strings, elastic or non-elastic, and smeared with different glutinous substances, reveals the fact that no amount of twanging will induce the latter todivide into beads, such as one sees in the spider line. In every case, the tendency of the gluten in the experiment is to fly off altogether, or to gather to one side of the string.
But to any that desires to know the truth of the thing, the spider herself will speedily resolve the difficulty. Watch her at work, and it will soon be seen that the beads are formed on the line not by twanging, but by stretching. At the moment each length of sticky thread is drawn from the spider’s spinnerets, it is destitute of beads. But the spider quickly stretches it out to nearly double its original length, and then as quickly slackens it; whereupon, before she has well had time to fasten the thread in its place, the beads will be seen to have formed themselves throughout its entire length.
Said Miss Susan Angel this evening, as I leant over the counter of her little dark shop, studying the rows of sweetstuff bottles beyond: ‘Th’ chillern here, ’tis real astonishin’ how changeable they be. One time ’tis all lickrich wi ’em, an’ next ’tis all sherbet-suckers, an’ then maybe ’tis nought but toffee-balls for weeks on end. But you!’—she turned me a glance full of smiling, proud approbation—‘You!—comewinter or summer, come rain or shine, I allers knaws ’twill be nobbut black-fours!’
She reached down the ancient glass jar, and stabbed at its contents ruminatively with an iron fork.
‘Black-fours—ah!’ she mused, as the shining magpie lumps rattled into the brass scale-pan. ‘An’ I never smells ’em but I thinks o’ my ould missus as— Lorey me! how many long year ago! Fond on ’em, wur she? Ah! an’ scrunch ’em up, ’a could, quicker ’n e’er wan wi’ a nateral jaw!’
‘What kind of jaw, then, had she, Susan?’
‘Ah! I believe ye! My dear! th’ money as ut costed! All gold, an’ ivory like, an’ red stuff! An’ when ’a died— Did never I show ’em to ye?’
She disappeared into the little kitchen behind the shop. I heard a drawer unlocked; there was a sound of rummaging, accompanied by asthmatic interjections; Miss Susan Angel came forth again bearing a bulky parcel. This, as she removed various coverings, became smaller and smaller until, from a final wrapping of tissue-paper, there appeared a beautiful double set of false teeth. Miss Angel held them up to my gaze admiringly.
‘Left ’em to me, ’a did! ’Twur all writ in her will—“To my faithful servant an’ friend,Susan Angel, I give an’ bequeathâ€â€”an’ all th’ rest on ’t. Ah! bless her an’ rest her sowl!’
It seemed rather an appropriate legacy, for Miss Angel had possessed not a single tooth of her own in all the years I had known her. But the display of the treasure provoked a very natural commentary.
‘How long have you had these put by, Susan?’
‘Nigh upon thirty year, my dear.’
‘And never used them yourself all that time, although you—’
‘What!’ The old lady drew herself up, the youthful blue eyes in her wrinkled face flashing indignation. ‘What d’ ye say!—me use ’em?Me? Th’ very same as my dear ould missus chawed wi’? Shame on ye! Not if there was nought to eat but cracking-nuts left i’ th’ wureld fer us all!’
I took the rebuke in penitent silence. When she had restored the revered relics to their locker in the back room, she resumed her knitting in the great wicker chair behind the counter. In a minute or two she had alike forgiven me and forgotten the cause of her displeasure, as I knew from her tone.
‘How the evenin’s do draw in, to be sure!’ she observed, laying down her work. ‘A’most dark, ut be, though ’tis no more ’n six o’clock.’
The ancient timepiece in the corner promptlydroned out eleven. Miss Angel clapped her hands.
‘What did I tell ye?’ she said triumphantly. ‘Wunnerful good time ’a keeps, when I recollects to putt un back reg’lar.’
She rose and reversed the hands for a circle or two.
‘That’ll do till mornin’,’ said she placidly. ‘Ye warnts to be a little particler i’ country places: ut bean’t like i’ towns where—Gipsies! I do believe! An’ this time o’ night, to be sure!’
I followed her sudden glance to the doorway. A heavy grinding of wheels had sounded outside, and across our field of view, silhouetted against the deep turquoise blue of the night, there passed what looked like a gipsies’ caravan. A bony horse toiled in the shafts, and a long lean man walked in front, dragging at the animal’s bridle with almost as much apparent effort. Lights shone from the windows of the vehicle, and its chimney smoked voluminously against the stars. As it went by, we could see another man sitting upon the steps in its rear, his squat bulky form entirely blocking the open door-place. The caravan pulled up about midway over the green.
‘Now, that wunt do!’ observed Miss Angel decisively. ‘We warnts nane o’ they sort traipsing about Windlecombe after dark,leastways not them as keeps chicken. ’Tis on your road hoame: jest gie ’em a wured as you goos by, my dear. Tell ’em as you warnts to save trouble fer th’ policeman.’
In nowise intending to disturb the gipsies, I nevertheless took the short cut over the green, passing in the darkness close by their queer, spindle-spanked, top-heavy dwelling. As I cut through the beam of light that poured from the doorway, a suave voice hailed me.
‘Hi! my man! Just a moment! Now, Grewes, your difficulty is at an end. I have intercepted one of the inhabitants, and doubtless he will— Yes: inquire of him—very politely now—where we may obtain water.’
The long lean man had blundered into the light beside me, carrying two pails. He was clothed in little better than rags from head to foot. A massive gold watch-chain glittered across his buttonless waistcoat. He turned upon me two gaunt, diffident eyes.
‘Water,’ he hesitated, holding out the pails helplessly before him. ‘Water, you know! Could you be so kind as to—’
The suave, flute-like voice sounded again from the depths of the caravan.
‘Now, Grewes! if I am to carry out the little supper scheme I explained to you, no time must be lost. When once they are peeled, potatoesshould never—’ The owner of the voice appeared in the doorway. ‘Dear, dear! My good fellow! there you are, still standing there; and I fully impressed it upon you that if rabbit is permitted to bake one moment longer than— Grewes! give me those pails!’
But the long lean man had drawn me precipitately away. As we hurried across the green together in the direction of the well-house, he seemed to consider himself under some necessity of explanation.
‘It is his caravan,’ he said, ‘Spelthorne’s, you know. And I am travelling with him for a bit, because I was run down, and—and other things. One of the best fellows breathing, he is, though you mightn’t—I mean I so often forget what I— Of course, I really don’t wonder that sometimes he— Why! I have forgotten to unharness the horse! Do remind me—will you?—when we get back; but quietly, you understand? Spelthorne, he is the best fellow breathing, but— Oh, is this the well? It is most kind of you, I’m sure!’
He seemed in so strained and nervous a mood that I did not trust him to handle the heavy bucket and chain, nor to return unaided to the caravan with his burden. When we drew into the beam of light again, I could see Spelthorne inside, stooping over the little cooking-stove inhis shirt-sleeves and a great sombrero. If anything, his clothes were even more tattered and soiled than his companion’s. At sound of our clanking pails he turned, stared, then swept me a low bow with the sombrero.
‘Thoughtless, very thoughtless!—indeed, most selfish of Grewes!’ he said confidentially, for the long lean man had hurried away to attend to the horse. ‘A good fellow, such a good fellow, you cannot think! But he has this little failing of sometimes taking advantage of any kindness that— But excuse me: I must get the potatoes on!’
I had hardly gone a dozen paces towards home, when I heard him pounding after me.
‘What is—the name,’ he asked breathlessly, ‘of—of this village?’ And when I had told him: ‘There are beautiful old cottages here, are there not? And quaint people? And charming country round about? Such a spot—isn’t it?—where two artists could find incessant inspiration, and—and—’
But the question had been put to me before, and too often.
‘Well, I don’t know,’ said I discouragingly. ‘The place is very quiet and humdrum, and most inconvenient—no railway and no roads to anywhere and—’
‘The very place!’ he broke in delightedly.‘I shall persuade poor Grewes to remain here with me a month.’
And when I took a last look at the night some hours after, I beheld the faint glow, from the windows of the caravan upon the green, with dismal foreboding. A month of that prospect! And not only that, but something worse; for, upon the wings of the slow night wind, there drifted over to me the mournful thrumming of a guitar.
As it has turned out, the caravanners have proved very little trouble to any, and to myself least of all. In a day or two, they moved down to the riverside, choosing one of the wildest and leafiest corners of the old abandoned chalk-quarry; and for a week past I have seen nothing of them but a wisp of blue smoke from afar.
And, indeed, October in the country, if your design is to keep step and step with the month through all its bewildering changes, leaves you but scanty leisure for social traffic with your kind. Every day now there is something new to wonder at, and ponder over.
To-day the gossamer was flying. If you stood in one of the low-lying sheltered meadows, and turned your back to the light, the air seemed fullof these ashen-grey flecks, some only the merest threads, others of the breadth of a finger and several inches long. I have always believed that the gossamer spiders sit in the hedgerows spinning these fairy draperies, and letting them go upon the breeze to little more use and purpose than when a child blows soap-bubbles for the mere delight of watching them soar. At least, what end could possibly be served by them, other than the sufficient and obvious one of bringing a note of austere, chilly delicacy into the riotous colour of an October day? But idling along this morning with literally thousands of these grey filaments tempering the rich gold of the sunshine far and near, I chanced to stretch forth a hand and capture one of them. Between my fingers there hung a shred of fabric infinitely finer than anything that ever came from loom devised by man; and within it sat the gossamer spider herself, a shining black atom, evidently vastly surprised and alarmed at the sudden termination of her flight. After that I pulled down a score or so of these gossamer air-ships, and although a few were tenantless, the most of them bore a passenger embarked on, who shall say how long and how hazardous a voyage? Yet, while none fell to earth as I watched, but seemed to have the power of rising ever higher and higher, it is certain that the gossamerspider’s flight must end with each day’s sun. The heavy autumn dews must sweep the air clear of them at first tinge of dusk.
If there is anything in the old saying that a plentiful berry harvest foretells a hard winter, then have we bitter times in store. The hedges are loaded with scarlet wherever you go, and yet in all this flaunting brilliance there seems to be no two shades of red alike The holly-berries approach more nearly than any to pure vermilion. Then come the hips, the rose-berries, with their tawny red; and the haws that are richer of hue than all others, perhaps, yet of a sombreness that quietens the eye for all its glow. Ruddy are the bryonies and the bittersweet. The rowans love to hold aloft their masses of pure flame, the rich rowan-colour that is always seen against the sky. Along the edge of the hazel copse, where the butcher’s broom grows, its curious oblong fruit gives another note of red. But they are all essentially different colours. Nature often duplicates herself in blues, yellows, and particularly in a certain shade of pale purple, of which the mallow is a common type. But among red flowers, red berries, finding one, you shall not find its exact counterpart in hue in all the country-side.
In southern England, the general lurid effect due to change of leafage in the forest treesbelongs of right to November, but already there are abundant signs of what is coming. Though the woods, on a distant view, still look gloriously green, a nearer prospect reveals a touch of autumn in almost every tree. In the beech-woods nearly all the branches are tipped with brown. The elms have bright yellow patches oddly dispersed amidst foliage still of almost summer-like freshness. The willows by the river are full of golden pencillings. Only the oaks remain as yet uninfluenced by the changing times. The temperate autumn nights, that have checked the sap-flow of less hardy things, have had no influence on the oak-woods. They wait for the first real frosts—the knock-down blow.
And strangely, though October is nearing its end, the frosts do not come. The nights are still, moist, dark; and full of the twanging note of dorbeetles, and now and again the steady whir of passing wings. This is the sound made by the hosts of migrant birds, all journeying southward, travelling in silence and by stealth of night.
Coming out into the darkness, and hearing this mighty rushing note high overhead, you get a queer sense of underhand activity and concealed purpose in the world, as though scenery were being swiftly changed, a new piece hurriedly staged, under cover of the blinked lights. It tends towards a feeling that is rather foreign, notto say humbling, to your desires—that of being made a spectator rather than a participant in the great earth play. Or it may have another and a stranger effect. The sound of all that strenuous motion, the deep travel-note high in the darkness, may come to you with all the urging inspiration of a summons: you may restrain only with difficulty, and much assembling of prudence, the impulse to gird up and be off southward in the track of the flying host. The old nomadic instinct is not dead in humanity, as he well knows who keeps his feet to the green places of earth, and his heart tiding with the sun.
Now, too, the brown owl begins his hollow plaint in the woodlands. ‘Woo-hoo-hoo, woohoo!’ comes to you through the fast-falling dusk, the direction and intensity of the cry varying with astonishing swiftness, as you stop to listen on your homeward way. This is conceivably the ‘to-whoo’ that Shakespeare heard; and there is another note, which seems to be an answer to it, and which sounds something like ‘Ker-wick,’ and might by a stretch be allowed to stand for the ‘to-whit’ in the song. But ‘to-whit, to-whoo!’ in a single phrase, from a single throat—that seems to be a piece of owl language that has become obsolete with the centuries.
There is a stretch of lane here, running between high grassy banks densely overshadowed by trees, which is always dark on the clearest nights of any season, but of a Cimmerian blackness on these moonless evenings in late October. As if they knew their opportunity for service, the glowworms often light up the place from end to end, so that it is possible, steering by their tiny lamps alone, to keep out of the ditch that yawns invisibly on either hand. I came through the lane this evening, and counted near upon a score of these vague blotches of greenish radiance hovering amidst the dew soaked grass, each bright enough to show the time by a watch held near. As long as I can remember, glowworms have been plentiful in this stretch of dark, overshadowed lane, and very scarce in all other quarters of the village. New colonies of glowworms seem difficult to establish, although single lights do appear in places where they have not been seen before, and in ensuing year appear again and again, generally in slowly increasing numbers. It is not wonderful that glowworms should keep to the same grassy bank season after season, because, as all countrymen know, it is only the lampless male that flies. The female, who bears the light, and on whom the persistence of the race depends, lives and dies probably within no more than the same few square yardsof tangled herbage. What seems really wonderful is that single glowworms of the female sex should occur in places far removed from old resorts of their kind, seeing how feeble are their means, and how slow their rate of travel.